Chapter 23

The visit to the Archer/Reynolds home that evening was a series of surprises for the whole group from Bear Creek, and they were met with eye-openers in more ways than one. The first of those began shortly after they entered Joe Archer’s home and were being introduced to his wife, Rita. She seemed quite disinterested as she was introduced to Sandy, Kelly, and Jack, but the moment she caught sight of Tom, her eyes lit up, and she smiled from ear to ear as she moved toward him.

“Lieutenant Redding, what a pleasant surprise. Where on earth have you been hiding all these years?” she said loudly as she grabbed his right hand in both of hers. “You remember Joe, don’t you? He and I finally got together and got married. We have a nice house too. Do you want to see it?”

For the next few moments, she simply refused to believe that Tom was Sid Redding’s grandson, and she was quite animated as she told Tom and Sandy about her house. Then suddenly, it was as if a switch had been thrown, and she didn’t recognise anyone else except Joe and Josie. Needless to say, that short episode put something of a damper on the feelings of the whole group because they weren’t sure what to say or do.

However, while Josie took her mother off to have a rest, Joe explained that he was quite happy that she had seemed animated for a short while, since recently his wife had become quite depressed.

“She lives almost totally in the past, and the doctors tell us there’s not much we can do about it. She can remember every word of a conversation we had years ago, but not much from last week or, at times, even from earlier on the same day. The disease is progressive, and eventually, she’ll deteriorate until she’ll be little more than a vegetable. It’s a damn shame too; she was a wonderful woman and a fine nurse. She was part of the crew that saved my life and nursed me back to health after that debacle in Korea. We lost track of each other for a few years, and when we met again, she was a single mother raising a child on her own. Then we married and added two kids to our family.”

“Joe, I can’t stick around Victoria for long, but if there’s anything I can do to help, just ask,” Tom said instantly.

“That’s the whole problem, there isn’t anything anyone can do,” Joe turned and faced away, looking at the door his wife and daughter had just closed behind them. “Right now the doctors don’t have a clue how to stop the damn disease or even how to slow it down, so we’re helpless. Thanks for the offer, but all we can do is hope and pray that she doesn’t get worse. If she does, I think she’ll have to be moved to a care home, because we’ve almost reached the point where she’s more than we can handle. Josie’s pregnancy is advancing and it won’t be long before I’ll have to hire someone to help out around the house, or else move Rita to a care home.”

“Do Art and Josie live here with you as well?” Kelly asked.

“Well, not right in the house. You see, Art and I converted the old double garage behind the house into a two-bedroom cottage, and they live there with their two kids,” Joe sighed. “Honestly, with Josie off work on maternity leave and Art’s job somewhat up in the air, the added pressure of caring for my wife is something Josie really doesn’t need. Josie and Art had planned to move out of the little cottage, but then Josie got pregnant, and Art’s job isn’t all that permanent now because the business he works for has just been sold. Otherwise, they were going to move to Victoria to be nearer their work, and David and Linda were going to move into the cottage to help out with Rita. Not only that, but my son, David, and his wife are both stretched a bit thin right now as well. Ideally, they should be the two who are helping me to care for Rita, because they’re both involved in health care, and David is already working in a care home. Unfortunately, they’re living in an apartment, but the building is being converted to condos, and they can’t afford the buy-in costs.”

“Well, I may be adding another complication to their lives, because I was going to offer Art and Josie jobs up in Bear Creek,” Tom said quietly. “My business needs someone like Art to run a warehouse and shipping job, and in the near future, we’re going to need someone like Josie to set up a small child care facility. By the way, where is Art?”

“You have to be kidding me!” Joe spun to face Tom. “Art got a call from work about an hour ago, and I doubt if it was a rush shipping job, not on a Sunday. I have a suspicion the business he was working for has been sold again, which might mean he’ll be out of work in only a few days. If you have a steady job for him now and a job for Josie when she’s recovered from having a baby, I think they’d be silly not to take it. That would actually help our whole family.”

“Well, I can offer them a good job, a decent wage, and a place to live, but they’d have to move up to Bear Creek. I’ll offer them a hiring bonus, and I’ll even cover their moving expenses,” Joe smiled.

“I overheard part of that, but I don’t understand. What would a prospector or a miner need with a dispatcher and a very pregnant nurse?” Josie said as she came into the room.

“Oh, Tom only wears a miner’s helmet part of the year,” Sandy grinned. “He also owns an office building, a warehouse, an airfield, a few semi-trailer trucks, and he’s the major shareholder in a flight service that handles a lot of freight. That means he has several people working for him, and some of those are women who happen to want children, which means he’ll need to have childcare.”

“He also seems to have a soft spot toward hiring ex-military people,” Liz added. “He hired me as a pilot, even if I am pregnant. That is where you come in, because six months or a year after our kid is born, I’m going to want to fly again. Now I wouldn’t trust just anyone to look after my kid, but a nurse, especially one who has kids of her own? I couldn’t ask for anyone better than that, could I?”

“You have a job for Art and one for me too, after I’m able to work again?” Josie wheeled to face Tom.

“In the first place, I need a warehouseman who can act on his own to stock, weigh, and ship a wide variety of materials - either by truck, plane, or even helicopter. He’s going to have to work with a female purchasing agent at the warehouse and a variety of pilots or truckers, some male, some female, especially when he’s working out at the airstrip. He’ll have a helper who can do the pickups and deliveries as well as handling most of the heavy lifting, so his job won’t include much in the way of lifting and carrying. However, the person I hire is going to have to be very accurate with his weights and measurements because almost everything is eventually going to be shipped by air. Basically, I need someone who understands the limitations of air freight.” Tom said shortly. “I’m also going to need a second person to set up a daycare for all the kids who are going to be born to people who work for me. One of my pilots is pregnant, one of my support staff is pregnant, and it looks like one of my office people is thinking about getting pregnant. I’ll need that daycare to be up and running inside of eighteen months at the most.”

“So you’re talking about a small, in-house daycare then, are you?” Josie asked.

“Yes, I was,” Tom nodded. “I don’t really know how that would work, but I do think one will be necessary.”

“I happen to be involved in leasing part of Tom’s commercial building, and I know of at least four other young women there who may have children in the near future, so I think the daycare may need to be somewhat larger,” Sandy smiled as she joined the conversation. “What I’m saying is that all of our businesses are involved in one way or another. Tom’s sister and I run an accounting firm, and both of us are within the childbearing age. One of my best friends is a woman lawyer, and there’s also a real estate firm in Tom’s building that employs several young women. Now, I doubt if we want a daycare right in that building, but if Tom’s business has a daycare, I can easily foresee a time when our people might be customers as well. Actually, my friend Rachel has a house that she’s having renovated that might just be ideal for the job.”

“Whoa there, I was thinking of covering seed costs and the wages for perhaps two people running a daycare, not a whole darn preschool, but I can see this thing is going to snowball,” Tom sighed. “I’m not going to want to be involved with it very much, so I’m going to toss that ball to Liz, who started the whole thing, and you, of course, since you’d be doing the job. My whole idea was an attempt to make life simpler for the people working for me, not develop a full preschool complex.”

Just then, the outside door opened, and Art came in, looking like someone had kicked his dog and not like a person who was going to want to talk to strangers.

“Just the man you were looking for, Tom,” Josie headed for Art and gave him a hug. “Well, did those skinflints lay you off or what?”

“No, but I’m thinking about quitting,” Art said quietly. “The new owners want me to take a pay cut, but still do just as much work, and on top of that, I’m going to have to put in more hours to train a helper. I just can’t see any way I can do it and still stay healthy.”

“So they’re literally forcing you to quit, are they?” Tom asked quietly.

“More or less, I guess.” Art sighed. “I’m sorry to be bellyaching about my job when you’re visiting, Tom.”

“No problem, I was rather hoping that you’d been fired, because I need a man like you to work for me, but if those idiots are forcing you to quit, I know a damn good lawyer. Not only that, but I’ll still offer you the job.”

“What? Back up, please, did you just say you want to hire me?”

“Well, my private army does and I try to listen to them,” Tom pointed to his crew and winked at them. “These guys knew I need to hire someone to run my new warehouse as well as set up the freight operation at our new airstrip and you’ve impressed them. They’re the folks who recommended that I offer you the job.”

“But, you don’t even know me.” Art protested.

“Alvin and Arnie do though. They tell me you saved their bacon on the day you were injured and they have a fair idea of what it takes to handle a freight operation, so they made the suggestion,” Tom smiled. “Not only that, but I have a job for Josie as well, if she wants it. Of course it does mean you’ll have to move to Bear Creek, up in the Cariboo country. I even have a place for you to live, a condo for now, but if you want one, we can find you a house. In fact Sandy seems to think she knows of a perfect place for you to live.”

Josie got into the act then, so Tom and everyone else held back as the couple moved a few feet away to talk over the dual offers. As a result, Joe took everyone else down to see his workshop in the basement.

The group from Bear Creek was surprised by that basement. They weren’t expecting to see a well-laid-out metalworking shop and a nearly complete working model of a steam locomotive sitting on display. Joe had a small lathe, a small milling machine, and a drill press as well as hundreds of hand tools hung on the walls. The whole place was clean, neat, and well laid out.

“The loco is a one-eighth scale model of one of the logging locomotives that worked on Vancouver Island,” Joe said proudly. “I worked from scale drawings, and this is a working model, not a static display, so almost everything works exactly the same way the full-sized version did. I fill the boiler with water, stoke the fire with coal, and run the engine the same way the engineer of the big one did; everything is just smaller. Of course, the controls are slightly oversized, but that’s because I don’t have scale-sized hands.”

“What do you do with it then?” Jack asked in astonishment.

“Oh, I’m a member of a local club that has a track where we operate our engines and give members of the public rides on special days, usually once a month. I can haul as many as four miniature rail cars, each loaded with three or four people, and I can easily make a lap on the track without stopping, even loaded with a full train of people. I sit on a cushion that fits on the tender and operate the controls from there; that way, I can add water and coal on the run.”

“Wow, how long did it take you to make it?” Alvin asked.

“Altogether, I spent about four years building the engine, but that was with Art’s help. His father was a blacksmith, who became a mechanic, then branched out into machining parts he couldn’t buy easily. Art is extremely good with machine tools, and once he started helping me, things went rather quickly.”

“So you’re letting me know that I might be hiring someone who is a lot more than just a simple dispatcher?” Tom smiled at Joe.

“Oh, quite definitely. He’s a decent draughtsman, a good machinist, and an excellent mechanic. He can work well with sheet metal and knows a lot about casting metals like brass, bronze, and aluminum. I think he’s also a good blacksmith, but I’ve only seen him working on small things,” Joe paused and frowned. “I don’t think he was ever formally trained, but I do know his youngest brother runs an autobody shop, and his older brother runs a machine shop.”

“So what in hell is he doing working as a dispatcher?” Arnie demanded.

“That’s what I have asked both Art and myself many times,” Joe snorted. “One problem is the job market, because there are a number of retired naval people in Victoria, and many of them were oilers or mechanics of some sort. Besides that, Victoria isn’t really an industrial area, which means that job openings in almost any industry are quite scarce. On top of that, Josie had an excellent job in Victoria when he met her, and with Rita’s failing health, she wanted to remain in the area to help me, so Art took the best job he could find.”

“And what’s changed since then?” Tom asked quietly.

“Well, they’ve been married for six years and have two kids, with one more on the way, which has meant Josie hasn’t been able to work for almost two and a half of those years. Meanwhile, Rita’s health has gone downhill, and the rest of the family has had some problems, so financially, none of our family is as well off as we were a few years ago. My stepson is out of work and has just gone through a nasty divorce, but he’ll survive quite easily since he’s an electrician who works on those alternate power setups. Our next oldest son has had his workload cut back, and the apartment building he and his wife have been living in is being converted to condominiums. They can’t really afford to buy a condo right now, which means David, Linda, and their two daughters will have to move. They could both get better jobs in Vancouver, but they’d like to stick around Victoria, not just because of Rita and me, but because their oldest is going to university here, and the youngest is still in high school. If Art and Josie take your job offer, I imagine David, Linda, and the girls will gladly move into the cottage out back, which will mean I’ll have even more help for Rita.”

“Wow, that sounds like your family has been kicked around a bit in the last while.” Tom frowned. “I’m a bit curious. You mentioned that your stepson is an electrician who works on alternate power setups. Are you referring to wind turbines or do you mean something else? The reason I’m asking is because I have a couple of contacts involved with that sort of thing, and besides that, my gold mine is twenty odd miles from the nearest hydroelectric line.”