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Photo:
Doug LePage
See also Contest 01:
Chairlift Encounter
See also Contest 02:
Panic
See also Contest 03:
Squalor
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Detour Ahead
By ANTON BALES
"Came for a season, never left."
Caleb looked up from the application and offered a polite smile to the loquacious man behind the counter. His name tag said Burt, and the curlicue moustache and casual drawl hammered it home. Caleb chuckled at the remark, and wondered how old Burt was. A combination of yellowed teeth and etched facial lines, lean skin and muscular arms and hands, placed him somewhere between 30 and 55. But to Caleb he looked old, too old to be working behind someone else's register.
The one-size-fits-all catch phrase spoke of years of being asked the same question by meandering tourists. How does someone like you end up staying in a town like this? Only Caleb didn't ask the question—Burt yielded the answer freely. Any feeling Caleb had of being a newbie in Whitefish was amplified times ten.
When he steered his Tacoma into town the leaves were mercury-red and spinning in the air. In the late afternoon haze he looked down Central Avenue straight to Big Mountain where the runs were cut brown into the shag evergreen. A dusting of early snow capped the rounded peak. Ten more hours to Seattle and a girl he knew, but the road lost its pull and he stopped at Coffee Traders for 16 ounces, black. Soon he was walking the strip.
"Whereya lookin' for housing?" Burt's moustache twitched at the ends, hiding his lips.
Caleb brushed off the inquiry. "Oh I've got something lined up." He'd asked himself a tangent of the question all year. Stay at the university for grad school in Missoula? Troll for winter kings in Prince William Sound? Join Cass in Portland at the brewery? He settled on shacking up with Lena reluctantly, but she played in a local band at the Crocodile in Seattle, and Puget Sound seemed like a good change of pace.
"Oughta check out the Bunkhouse, always lookin' for a caretaker. I mean, if workin' here doesn't pan out."
"Okay," said Caleb. He grabbed a pair of teal Croakies out of a plastic bin and placed them on the counter. "Do I get a local's discount?"
"$6.31," said Burt, taking Caleb's twenty in his left hand and doling out change with his right. He closed the drawer and pulled the application near, looking down at Caleb's digits. He twitched his moustache and smirked at Caleb, showing a hint of something in his eyes, something welcoming but guardedly reserved. "Not yet."
Caleb picked up a newspaper and scanned the ads for rooms for rent. He met with a portly woman named Sam who showed him the studio above her barn, a mile outside of town. With dusk peeling away shades of blue outside the picture window, he picked at a corner of wood paneling chipping off the wall. The room smelled of dog and cigarettes. Caleb said he'd think overnight about it. She offered him chicken soup to go in a Tupperware dish at her door as three sheep nipped at his heels. Big Mountain loomed large in the distance.
Twice that night he got up to pee. The woods smelled of moss and ringing frost. Orion blinked youthfully above camp, its sword extended, ready for a good fight. Lena was waiting, and so was the rest of his life. They pushed at him like momentum. In the dim light of his truck's canopy, on the foam-mattress bed and beneath the down-fill bag, he looked at the torn, well-used map of the western U.S. He folded it and put it away.
The skis fit snugly beside his gear bag, the sum of his treasured belongings. It was 28 degrees outside, but the warmth Caleb felt in the truck bed was magnetic.
Seattle, Alaska, the brewery, school—they'd have to wait. For how long he didn't know or care. He knew right then he'd spend the winter camped in Whitefish parking lots, whichever ones would take him.
He hoped Lena would understand. But more than that, seeing colorful gear and a cheap season's pass in his mind's eye, he hoped to God that tomorrow morning Burt's boss would hire him.
Next: contest winner
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