Marcus saw the driver of the truck suddenly look up from whatever had distracted him and lurch the steering wheel to the left and back onto the road. The driver over-corrected and crossed the centerline of Johnson Road as he headed into the bend. Fifty yards ahead, it nearly collided head-on with the truck coming from the other direction and again lurched to the right.
Marcus sat on the snowmobile in the farmer’s driveway and shook his head as he saw, in the light of the headlamps, the Tanana Valley Electrical Cooperative emblem on the side of both trucks.
“Crazy,”he whispered to himself. “Someone’s going to catch hell for that near miss.”
The two trucks disappeared into the distance. Marcus continued until he came to the Richardson Highway and turned left on the trail that followed alongside it. A few minutes later, he pulled into the parking lot of the Salt Jacket General Store. The lights were on in the building and at the gas pump. The outage had apparently been repaired in the time it took him get there.
Marcus stopped the snowmobile in front of the store and took off his helmet as he rose to enter. A few yards away sat the electric company truck that had almost hit Marcus and the other truck. He noted the number on the side—forty-eight. He would call TVEC and lodge a complaint. Folks from the city seemed to think they could drive like idiots in the country, with immunity. They acted like they didn’t realize people actually lived out there. For all the driver of that truck knew, Marcus’s snowmobile could just as easily have been a child riding to a friend’s house. The other truck could have been a mom returning from hockey practice with a vanload of kids. He shook his head in disgust and mounted the wooden steps to the entrance.
A bell suspended on a flat metal spring jangled noisily as Marcus opened the door. Once inside, he was greeted by the luscious odors of rich beef stew and hot apple pie. The smiling face of Linus Balsen beamed at him from behind the cash register, where he sat on a tall, padded bar stool just inside the door. Marcus’s tension eased at the sight. He and Linus had been very close friends throughout their lives, growing up together as playmates and continuing into adulthood as close as brothers.
Joseph Balsen, a locally famous scientist and inventor, had started the Salt Jacket General Store in a metal Quonset building in 1954. Originally called Swede’s Café, it primarily served to finance his never-ending research into “Arctic Thermo-Engineering”. Over the years, it grew in successive renovations from its original postage stamp of a building to over 6000 square feet of grocery, dry goods, and hardware. While his inventions never made him wealthy, the store did pretty well on its own. Linus was the third generation of his family to run it.
They still served homemade soup, sandwiches, and pies to local residents, road workers, airmen, soldiers, and tourists who often filled the long diner bar that stretched past the register counter. Six booths provided more seating in a small, square room at the back half of the original Quonset building. Black-and-white pictures of the community’s past hung from the curved walls, evoking nostalgic memories of the region’s history.
From the register, Linus could look down the length of the rest of store, over shoulder-height racks of canned goods, bread, cereal, and medicines, and the glass doors of freezer cabinets filled with TV dinner entrées and packages of meat. A collection of “Alaska Grown” brand T-shirts and hooded sweatshirts were displayed along with a small assortment of other clothing, mainly intended for tourists. In the far back corner were the restrooms and several shelves of dog-eared paperback books, the small town’s de facto library.
“Hey! The Marines have landed,” Linus called from across the counter. “You must have some kind of freaky control over nature, huh? The power has been out all day, and then a few minutes before you show up, it comes back on. So, how’s it going for you out there in the woods, old man?”
“Oh, it’s going,” Marcus responded. “I’ve been cutting fire wood all day, and I must say, it kicked my buttocks.”
Linus smiled. “Man, for an old warrior, you sure are a wuss!”
Marcus grinned back. “Yeah, well, that’s Master Sergeant Wuss to you, storekeeper.”
Linus snapped to attention and raised his right hand in a mock salute.
“Aye, aye, Top!”
Marcus chuckled. He glanced down the length of the room as he took a stool at the long diner bar. A man stood midway down the store, comparing the ingredients of two cans of energy drink. The scent of the food grew stronger where Marcus sat. His hunger increased exponentially as it floated from the opening to the kitchen and swirled around his head.
“All right,” Marcus said, turning back to the counter, “where’s that pretty wife of yours? I need a hot bowl of her famous stew and some strong coffee.”
“I’m here, Marcus.”
The slightly accented voice drifted from behind the swinging doors that led to the small kitchen. A somewhat plump, yet still shapely, blonde-haired woman with attractive blue eyes and a pleasant face stepped out through the door with a large bowl of stew. She put the steaming food down in front of Marcus, who leaned over it and inhaled deeply. Cara Balsen reached into the warmer under the counter and came up with a small loaf of soft, warm bread, which she
