Chapter 3

Walt and Sarah were in bed by the time Josh got home, even though the sun hadn't gotten around to setting yet. That was one of the downsides to railroading, Josh knew from a life of experience; you sometimes found yourself working some pretty wierd hours. With a 0600 OS, Walt had to be checking the engines by 5:30, and that meant getting up at 4:30 AM, to get dressed and head downtown to Rick's Cafe for breakfast. Located right next to the rail yard, Rick's opened at five, but it was usually dead at that hour. With a 0700 OS, Josh could sleep an hour later, but the chance was too good to pass up. He set his own alarm for 4:30 AM too, then went to bed, taking the Attla book with him. He was tired, though; a few pages were enough to set him nodding, even though it was really interesting stuff.

At 4:00 AM, the alarm was mighty demanding, but Josh drug himself out of bed, anyway. He was pretty sure the activity wouldn't wake his mother; she'd long since learned to sleep through wierd call hours. "Ain't you gonna sleep in?" Walt asked as he met Josh as he came out of the bathroom.

"Thought I'd go out and have breakfast with you," Josh said. "Got a couple of things I need to do before the run."

Things were a little cumbersome, but Josh let his father run ahead of him, simply because he was on the tighter schedule. He was a few minutes behind when he came out the door, the Attla book and the Record-Herald in his hand, and saw the dog box still sitting on the truck. He'd forgotten he'd left it there, but it wouldn't hurt to stay on for the day. He got in the truck, and headed on out to Rick's. There was already a trace of twilight in the northeastern sky; nights didn't last long, this time of year.

Walt was sitting in the second booth back when Josh got there. Sure enough, he was the only customer in the place. "Sorry I missed you last night," Walt said as Josh sat down. "I got home and found out your mother had that set up with Jill. We tied it up awful early, though."

"Just as well," Josh said. "Last night was a zoo, with everything but the monkeys and the elephants."

Before Josh could say anything more, the cook came out, carrying a pot of coffee. At this hour, she doubled as the waitress. The coffee smelled good as she poured it. "The usual, Walt?" she asked.

"Yeah, sure."

"Josh, you're in awful early," she said. "The usual for you, too?"

"I guess I'd better have the special," Josh said. "I didn't get much dinner last night. Over easy, bacon and sausage, white toast."

"I saw the dog box on the truck," Walt said after the cook left. "Out working the dogs?"

"I wish I was," Josh said, and explained about the frantic call from Dennis Bergen."

Walt shook his head several times during the telling of the tale. "Bet Mark was real happy to see you show up," he commented.

"It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be," Josh said. "He said that under the circumstances, he'd have done the same thing."

"Women," Walt said, shaking his head again. "They're a pain, sometimes."

"Speaking of that," Josh said, sipping at his coffee. "Have you told Mom yet?"

"Well, yes and no," Walt said. "I didn't get the chance to tell her before we left for Ed and Jill's, and of course, both Ed and Jill had to talk about it, so it sorta left me hanging out on a limb."

"So, what happened?"

"Look, right now, you've got to understand that she's got mixed feelings. She knows what getting on engine service means. You're ten years younger than I was, even if that was back on the D&O, and the unions slowed things down. Anyway, she knows what it means, and she's proud of you. But, she also has a pretty good idea of what it means for you."

"Well," Josh said. "I don't want to say that it puts college totally out of the picture forever. I keep thinking that with the dead winters, I might still be able to squeeze in some winter terms, at least part-time. But, as a full-time thing, I don't see any point in it for now."

"Can't say as I blame you," Walt agreed, setting his empty coffee cup down. "But, she ain't gonna see it that way, especially after she thinks it through."

"Don't I know it? It's for darn sure not going to make things any easier. I keep thinking that maybe what I ought to do is get a place of my own. I could afford it, now."

Walt shook his head. "I don't want to sound like I'm pushing you out, but that would beat you having to pay room and board, like she talked about last fall, before you went to LaGrange."

"Yeah, room and board, and all the grief we both can take," Josh agreed.

"You gotta figure that it'd be more peaceful all around," Walt said. "And, with the kind of money you're making now, it might even be cheaper, if she got that room and board idea into her head again."

"Well, I'm thinking about it real hard," Josh said. "One of the things I got up early for was to spend a few minutes with the Record-Herald, looking at the real estate ads."

"You looking to buy something, rather than rent?"

"I about have to," Josh said. "Mostly, it's the dogs. It's a pain in the butt to have to be spending all my time running back and forth to Mark and Jackie's, and it's not right to be living in their pockets, or asking them to be doing so much for me. They've been real good about it, and haven't said anything, but I just don't want to have to do it any more than I have to. But can you see anybody talking rental when I tell them I have, cripe, I don't even know how many now, I guess twenty-eight dogs, if the deal with Dennis goes through?"

"Uh, yeah," Walt nodded his head. "That does make things a little more complicated."

"I keep thinking there's got to be some little place that's not too far back in the woods, with no neighbors to bother, but where I can get to town easily, but where I've got trails and two-ruts pretty close by, so I can train the dogs."

"Going to keep messing with them for a while, huh?"

"I think so," Josh said, as the cook came back and set down their orders, refilling their coffee. "You knew about the ten-dog business. We got that pretty well settled last night. It's not the best deal we could ask for, but it was the best one we could get. It's probably not going to mean much this year, and maybe not next, but sooner or later, that race is going to be past the guy that just has a handful of dogs to fool around with, at least if he wants to run in the top end of the field. I happen to be real fat on dogs right now, but that's just a couple of accidents, and won't last long." He sawed off a piece of sausage, and held it on his fork while he talked. "The core team is still down at five or six dogs, and that's a pretty reasonable number. So the question is whether I want to just have fun with them, or get serious. If I get serious, there's other races I could run, not just the Warsaw Run once a year, and a few sprints."

"Well, do it while you can, if you want to," Walt counseled while he hacked away at a blueberry pancake, smothered in maple syrup. "You're going to have a few winters that are pretty free, at least as far as work goes. But, in time, you're going to be working more in the winter, and then it won't be so easy. You could be married, have a family, all those sort of expenses, too, like Johnny has, and you'll find yourself looking back, wishing you'd done things that you wanted to do while you still had the chance."

"I hadn't thought about it that way," Josh replied, "But if you get right down to it, that's the main argument for getting serious."

"Ahhhh, if nothing else, get it out of your system," Walt said. "That was one thing about Mark and Jackie. They did it right. They both had a lot of wanderlust in 'em, especially Mark, but Jackie, too, even though she didn't realize it. They went off, spent eight months in that plane, helling around the country, and when they got back, they were ready to settle down. Did a pretty good job of it, too. You've got one thing on them. They were scraping shoestrings to make that trip, sleeping in a tent every night, working where they could. You're lucky to have both a good job and time to do things."

"Don't I know it," Josh agreed. "And there's a good reason not to go to college. Why mess up a good thing?"

"It'd be a damn sight easier to enjoy yourself if you were out of the house," Walt said. "That's another thing Jackie did right."

"That's what I think, too," Josh said. "I just hope I can come up with some place that's cheap enough that I've got money left over."

"Well," Walt said, finishing his pancake. "I'd suggest that we not tell your mother about it until you've got something pretty well pinned down and ready to go."

"I figured that," Josh agreed. "I mentioned it to Mark and Jackie last night. He gets around a lot, and he's bound to have some ideas. That's one thing with these eleven, twelve hour shifts, I'm not going to have much chance to look around, but I do want to get something together pretty quickly."

"Yeah," Walt said. "The longer you're in the house, the more your mother is going to stew at you. I'll help you where I can, but I may have to go along with your mother when we're around her."

Josh shrugged. "I can pretty well stay out of the house when she's awake, what with the work schedules we've got, at least on the weekdays, and I want to help Tiffany with the dogs as much as I can on the weekends."

"That could help," Walt agreed. "Well, I'd better be getting a move on. The 401 motor, it starts hard sometimes."

"Well, see you at lunch," Josh said.

After his father had paid his bill and left, Josh still had an hour to kill. The cook came by and warmed up his coffee, and he opened the Record-Herald, turning to the classified pages. There were quite a few real estate ads, but on reading them more carefully, the pickings seemed a lot slimmer. A good percentage were for places that were in town, automatically rejected, and though it was often hard to tell where some of the places were located, it was clear that many were more than ten miles out of town. In addition, a lot of stuff seemed beyond Josh's price range; if it was on the lake, it was well beyond his price range. Still, after he'd spent a few minutes, there were still several possible places left over that would warrant further investigation. The new Record-Herald would be out today, and he'd go through that, the first chance he got, even though he didn't see how he could do anything about it until Saturday.

After a few more minutes, when he'd digested about what he could from the Record-Herald, he decided that he could find other things to do, rather than to go through the real estate ads again. He folded the paper neatly, and opened "Everything I Know About Training And Racing Sled Dogs" again.

Though it was cool in the morning, it got hot quickly. Josh and Danny peeled off their flannel shirts by the time they reached Kremmling Pit, and it was hot and sweaty every inch of the way down to Camden and back to Spearfish Lake, even with all the windows and doors open in the cab of the 601. A shower would feel wonderful, Josh thought as he shut down the SD-38s back in the yard at Spearfish Lake. Even better, a jump in the lake, down at the beach.

He was in his pickup, heading home, when he came up with an even better idea. He needed to talk with Tiffany, and Mike had a pool in his back yard; he had a standing invitation, and he could kill two birds with one stone.

He made a quick stop at home, taking a quick shower -- there was no point in making Mike's pool filter work too hard, after all -- and pulled on his swim suit, then pulled on a clean pair of pants and a t-shirt. As he headed for the door, his mother stopped him. "We're having liver and onions tonight," she said. "Do you want to stay for dinner?"

"I better not," he said. "I've got to talk to Tiffany, and then Mark." That might be far enough away to avoid the smell of the fried liver, the absolute bottom of his list of least favorite foods. Well, no, there was one even lower; there had been that lutefisk supper at the Lutheran Church that time... "I'll grab something at the Frostee Freeze."

"When'll you be back?"

"It sorta depends," he said. "Before dark, for sure."

"I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to congratulate you," she said. "I'm proud that you made the engineer roster. That's going to make a real nice summer job for you."

"It really should be a good job," he said, not missing her subtle hint at all. "Hey, look, I've got to run."

"Have a good time," she said.

There was no way that it wasn't going to turn into an issue before long, he thought as he drove away in his pickup. Well, maybe it won't have to be one for long. At least, he could hope it wouldn't.

A couple of chintzy hamburgers from the Frostee Freeze, eaten while driving out the state road to Mike's didn't add up to a supper, but they would keep his appetite down for a while. Maybe he could raid the refrigerator when he got home, if the smell of the liver had died down.

Mike and Kirsten were out on the patio when he drove up; the three kids were in the pool, with Susan, the youngest at three, wearing water wings. As Josh walked closer, he could see that wasn't all there was in the pool: there were seven puppy heads in the midst of the commotion, too, and Bullet, the mother of five of them, sat on the deck, watching, still damp. So much for any concerns about overworking Mike's pool filter.