Broker toed a hoary clump of grass. Maybe the sun would come out and melt this fairyland. And maybe it wouldn’t. If this cold snap continued they’d have to be careful.
He stirred the banked coals in the fire pit, added tinder, and built up the fire. Then he placed his boots near the flame to thaw. He walked a hundred yards into the brush to where he’d hoisted the food packs on the branch of a tall spruce beyond the reach of prowling black bears. He carried the packs back to the campfire and set out utensils and ingredients for breakfast.
You could still drink from the lakes along the Canadian border, so he took the coffeepot to the shore, poked through a wafer of shore ice, and filled it. Then he scooped up a handful and brushed his teeth. A few minutes later he had a blue flame hissing on the small Coleman camp stove.
He stretched, rotated his neck, and gauged the stiffness in his back and shoulders from two days of paddling and portaging. Starting to show streaks of gray in his forty-seventh autumn, Broker still looked like he could knock a man down or pick a man up, and like he wouldn’t talk about it either way. His dark, bushy eyebrows met over the bridge of his nose, his eyes were quiet gray-green, and he wore his thick, dark hair trimmed just over his ears. At six feet tall and 190, he was ten pounds over his best weight. A few more days on the trail would pound down the kinks and trim off the flab. But he had to admit, as he scanned the white solitude, that he was starting to feel his age. For the last two years his chief workout had been chasing his daughter around.
He stooped, attended to the fire, and when the coffeepot perked he withdrew a cigar the size of a fat fountain pen from a Ziploc bag and carefully nibbled the plug. When the coffee smelled done, he turned off the camp stove, poured a tin cupful, and wedged the pot in the coals. Then he went down to the shore and found a seat on a granite ledge. There would be no sunrise today to go with his morning coffee. Not even a shiny spot in the overcast.
A match flared and migrant smoke from Spanish Honduras mingled with the steaming Colombian bean. Cigars were a weaning vice-all tease and foreplay-no inhaling. They got him off the cigarettes and now he worried that the thing that would get him off the cigars would be Ben and Jerry’s ice cream.
“Good morning, I think,” announced a voice that ended in a cough. Turning, Broker saw Milton Dane’s short salt-and-pepper hair poke through his tent flap. Milt was nursing a cold, which did nothing to diminish his childish delight as he looked at the forest made over into frosted parsley.
Milt at forty-five stood six foot one in pile underwear and felt boot-liners. Broad shouldered, deep-chested, and deliberate in movement; he collected a cup of coffee and joined Broker on the sloping rock beach. He drew his knuckles across the stubble on his square chin and shivered. “Jesus, it’s
“Yeah, and I got a feeling we’re going to see some big, cold snowflakes,” Broker said.
“Still beats the office.” Milt toasted Broker with his coffee cup.
“Agreed. But maybe we should stay put till this front works on through,” Broker said.
“No pain, no gain,” Milt said with a grin.
“Right. And pneumonia is God’s way of telling you to get out of the rain,” Broker said.
Milt was unmoved. Being a serious white-water kayaker, he refused to be impressed with the concerns of flat-water paddlers. He pointed to Broker’s tent and said, “Heads up.”
Across camp, Sommer emerged from Broker’s tent robed in his sleeping bag.
“Check it out, we woke up on a wedding cake,” Sommer said, blinking at the hushed foliage.
Then he stooped, knelt, felt around for a flat place on the ground, found one, laid out the bag, sat down on it, and folded his legs in a casual lotus position. With the rest of the bag drawn around his shoulders he sat upright and draped his hands on his knees. Just like yesterday.
Broker studied the lanky writer sitting Buddha-fashion against a background of snowy spruce. Sommer had this tattoo on his left wrist, like a colorful bracelet, until you got a good look at it, and then you realized that the color scheme and sequence were the exact reds, greens, and grays of the lethal coral snake.
While Sommer did his morning meditation, Broker and Milt talked weather and drank their coffee. Then Sommer unfolded from his sitting position, bent forward, placed his forearms on the ground, clasped his hands, tucked in his shaggy head, and slowly hoisted himself up perfectly vertical into a headstand.
“Does that every morning, too?” Broker asked.
“Yeah, he’s trying to stay mellow.” Milt paused and rolled his eyes. “Until Jolene rings him up again.”
“We should be out of cell-phone range soon,” Broker said.
“Knock on wood,” Milt said.
Chapter Two
“So, what do you think?” Broker jerked a thumb at the low clouds.
“I think you’re right, it’s going to snow,” Milt said.
“I heard that,” Sommer called out, as he lowered his feet to the ground, sat up, and looked around. “How soon?”
“Can’t tell. There’s coffee by the fire,” Broker said.
Sommer poured a cup, squinted his hazel eyes, ran a hand through his thick blond hair, and lit a Camel straight. Barefoot, wearing just a T-shirt and Jockey shorts with the cell phone tucked into the waistband, he appeared immune to the cold. His size 13 feet ended in long toes and were attached to heavily muscled, slightly varicose legs. His chest seemed narrow because his sinewy arms were so long, and his neck was embedded in wedges of more wrinkled muscle that sloped up from his shoulders. In addition to the poison bracelet on his left wrist, he had five red teardrops tattooed on his right forearm. The tattoos had a crude jailhouse texture and Broker, who had some experience in evaluating jailhouse art, reflected that the raunchy designs might harmonize just fine with a woman named Jolene.
When Sommer took his coffee back into the tent to get dressed, Broker wondered aloud: “Where’s a writer get arms like that?”
Milt raised an eyebrow. “Oh, he’ll get around to telling you about how he grew up in the factories of Detroit.”
As Sommer disappeared into one tent, Dr. Allen Falken emerged from the other. He stretched and stood for a minute, methodically kneading moisturizing cream into his hands, taking extra care with each finger. When he finished, he inspected the overcast sky.
“Well, super,” said Allen. A general surgeon, and the youngest at forty, he was racquetball-smooth and wrinkle free. Broker cooked plain trail-fare and Allen proved to be a picky eater. And he fussed with his appearance; fresh from his sleeping bag, every strand of his thick sandy hair was in place like a styled wire hedge. He had wide blue eyes under a broad forehead, wide cheeks, a long narrow nose and tapering chin, strong hands and supple, well-tended fingers.
“I doubt it’s going to rain again,” Allen said, eyeing the misty sky and forest.
“Probably it’ll snow,” Broker said.
“Good, easier to see the moose against a white background. What’s for breakfast?” Allen asked as he rubbed his hands together to warm them. Three precise rubs, no wasted motion. Broker was forming the impression that Allen never stopped following instructions.
“Oatmeal, Tang, toast and jam,” Broker said, getting up and returning to the campfire. He threw his cigar stub into the coals and, as he prepared the porridge, speculated that they wouldn’t be out here unless it was a once-in-a-lifetime hunting trip. They had won a state lottery that allowed them to take a moose in the Boundary Waters in the “greatest wilderness, big-game hunt east of the Mississippi.”
From their banter Broker had learned that they had climbed Mount Rainier, mountain-biked through Moab, and rafted white-water rapids in Chile. Now they intended to paddle twenty-five miles into rough country and tote out a bull moose to add to their trophy repertoire.
Their destination was a burned-over area on Lake Fraser, a two-hour paddle to the north, where tender green shoots had thrived in the ash and were prime moose-browse. So far, they’d been out for two days in the rain with no sign of anything bigger than a fox.
When they’d eaten and were finishing their coffee, Broker went on record with the prudent option: “I think we should hunker down in camp until this weather blows over.”
