Chapter 11

Thursday, November 22, 2001

For reasons of their own, both of Randy's older sisters had decided to have the annual Thanksgiving Dinner with their husband's families, so that meant the Clark family dinner was only going to involve the five of them, including grandfather Brent. Somewhere along the way Linda Clark had gotten to feel that it was hardly worth the effort, and had more or less decided on just going out to dinner someplace. When Nicole got wind of it, she wouldn't have it – so the result was that for the first time she hosted the dinner at her house, and invited her family along to make it a crowd.

Not unexpectedly, it turned out to be a nuthouse for Randy, who would have liked to find some way to escape the hassle but was pretty well stuck with it. This was Nicole's show, and she wanted everything to be perfect, just to show off to the mothers that she really could do it. In spite of the large size of their house, Randy and Nicole's dining room table wasn't big enough for all the people since some extra relatives somehow got included in the affair. That meant that on Thanksgiving morning, with no warning, Randy was ordered to take his pickup, get a table from his folks and some chairs from hers. The fact that there were several inches of fresh fallen snow on the ground didn't help matters, and it took him longer than both he and Nicole had hoped to get that chore done. Then, getting the table inside the house wasn't that easy, either, especially since the new hot tub partially blocked the way. Still, he toughed it out and tried to make his escape to the garage or somewhere, but Nicole caught him at it and found more chores for him to do. This was rapidly turning into a real pain in the ass.

It was no walk in the park for Nicole, either. She felt she was perfectly capable of doing everything herself, but a mother and a mother-in-law present for much of the cooking process and each of them with their own methods really complicated things. Randy did his best to stay out of the middle of that mess, but when he watched the hassle, the words "Chinese Fire Drill" came to mind.

Then right in the middle of the whole show, there was an ambulance call. Both Randy and his father Ryan were EMTs and they knew the call list was crippled for the holiday, so there was no choice but to head to the fire station. It turned out to be a bad one, a family running off the road and into a tree out on the state road. No one was killed, but several people were hurt badly enough to need a ride to Camden General, which was a two-hour round trip. There really wasn't much choice but to load them up and go, with a cell phone call to Nicole warning her that they'd be running late.

At least it got Randy out of the madhouse of his own home, but considering how this family's holiday had been screwed up, he really would rather not have been there. "It shouldn't be that big a deal," Randy's father commented. "With all the 'help' Nicole has, she's going to be running two hours late, anyway." Randy couldn't help but think back to meals down in the Grand Canyon that were bigger, nearly as elaborate, and cooked by river guides on a four-burner propane stove using a warped griddle. Get a handful of guides together, say, Crystal, Preach, Scooter, and Jim and they would have done Thanksgiving dinner in a quarter of the time with a tenth of the hassle.

The fresh snow made the going slow, even in the ambulance, so Randy and Ryan were well over two hours getting back to Spearfish Lake. Ryan had hit it just about between the eyes; in spite of a call warning of their estimated time of return, things were still not quite ready when they got there. They did have time to clean up, and Randy was at least glad they weren't at his folks' house, where it had become traditional to be in a suit and tie for Thanksgiving Dinner – a practice that Crystal and Myleigh had started years before.

The food was good, and there was plenty, but Randy still wondered if it was worth all the hassle. Maybe his mother had a point about finding some place to eat out.

Once the dinner was over with and most of the women were working on the dishes while the dishwasher churned away at the first of several loads, several of the Szczerowski men headed for the living room and got back to the Packers game. As luck would have had it, somehow most of the dinner had been at half time, and it didn't take long before they were all snoring. Randy had never been much of a football fan, and neither had his father, so they soon gravitated to the porch, where Brent soon joined them.

"So, how do you like that new hot tub?" Ryan asked.

"It's pretty neat," Randy said. "Just the thing to relax in after a hard day. I would not be surprised that as soon as the last guest gets into their car, Nicole's heading for it leaving every stitch of clothes behind along the way, and I don't blame her one damn bit. Hell, I'll be right with her, and there's no way I had it as bad. What do you want to bet we eat out for Thanksgiving dinner next year?"

"Hell," his father snorted. "If you're smart you'll be off surfing somewhere."

"That might just be the case," Randy agreed. "If Nicole hadn't gotten this bug up her butt to host the dinner, we could be having a good dinner in Flagstaff right now, where we'll be tomorrow."

"I'm glad to see you're getting away a little," Brent, Randy's grandfather said. "I realize it's not much time off, but you've put in a lot of time the last few months, and some of it hasn't been easy."

"No fooling," Randy said, seeing the opportunity to make a point.

Clark Construction was a family business, at least sort of. Brent owned most of the company, but his heart attacks had made it impossible for him to manage the business the way he once had. These days, he only dealt with policy, but stopped in for an hour or so most days to exercise his experience on problems that Randy couldn't handle. Ryan owned the rest of the business, but since he was much more involved with the other family business, Clark Plywood, a much bigger operation, he didn't even try to keep up with the construction end of Clark Construction. He handled several administrative functions – well actually those functions were handled by Clark Plywood staff members. That made a nice backstop if something tricky came up. Randy didn't own any of the business but was effectively the manager, more or less. It really was more responsibility than he had envisioned for himself at this point in his life, and he would have been happy if it had taken another ten years to get there, but that wasn't how things had happened and he had to live with it.

"I've been thinking about some things," Randy said. "I know we don't have a Three Cherries job on the books right now, but I'll bet we'll have one by summer. A little bird told me the other day that if they get held up on this new lodge at the casino, they may work on a ski area. I don't know if it includes a residential lodge or what, but it's apparently nothing that they'll have to go begging to the BIA about. Whatever happens, it's going to be a quick build and hope the architects can stay ahead of the carpenters, so you know I'll spend half my time on the road between here and there. Then the Blair gym is a school job, and that means all those state inspectors. There just aren't going to be enough hours in the day. As soon as I get back from this trip to Flagstaff, I think I'll head up to Northern for a day or two and see if there's some nice bright young stud in the Construction Management department who would be interested in a summer internship. That might, and I underline might, keep me off the road enough to get a few other things done and still get an hour or two of sleep every now and then. I have no idea what it will cost, but from what I can find out, the interns don't expect to get paid squat, so I'll bet it will be under five figures."

"Sounds like a hell of a good idea to me, Randy," Brent told him. "One thing you've got to is to delegate authority and stop trying to carry the whole load yourself."

That just about caused Randy to mess up his pants. Brent had worked that kind of schedule for most of his life, so Randy had just presumed he was expected to do the same thing – and he had, for a number of years. "I'm glad you think so," Randy managed to say. "It's really getting to be a 'got-to' in a lot of ways. Nicole pointed out to me the other day that the reason I came aboard was you didn't have any backup if you got sick or something happened, Brent. Now, you can't work like that anymore, and I don't have the backup."

"You're right," Randy's father said. "I was thinking about that the other day. In fact, I'd almost suggest that you don't just look for a summer intern, that you look for a really good kid who's getting set to graduate so we can get started training him as a backup."

"Good idea," Brent agreed. "In fact, I'd think we can still use a summer intern for running around on the piddly-ass stuff, and just keep getting college kids for the summer. Maybe if a good one comes along, we might want to make more use of him. But yeah, find someone. I know I worked harder than I should have over the years, but part of it was because I didn't have much else to do after your grandmother died, Randy. Like I said about delegating authority – you have to do it, because it was the only way I could ever get everything done, too. I mean, you see what it's like with Don Bailey. Let him do the job he knows how to do, don't get in his way if you don't have to, and try to help where you can. Of course, we have to have people we know we can trust to do something like that, and we haven't had as many come up through the ranks as I would have liked the past few years. That's something you're going to have to worry about in the long range."

Jesus, Randy thought. As much as I've had to worry about that over the years and all I had to do was ask, or just say I was going to go ahead and do it. I wonder how long Brent has been waiting for me to learn that.

"I agree," he said. "That's a problem, and not just in the long range. If we had to do three big jobs this year I don't know where I'd find the supers to do them. Rod is going to have his hands full down in Blair this summer. If we don't have to do a Three Cherries job, then we have someone who can backstop him. But like I said, I think we're going to find ourselves doing a job up on the reservation, and if we do, maybe we ought to think about bringing in someone from the outside to backstop Rod and we can maybe build up to be a super in the future."

"That's not the dumbest idea I've ever heard," Brent replied. "I've always tried to bring people up through the company, but maybe we can't do it this time. We don't have to make a decision now, but you might want to see if you can figure out how you're going to find someone like that if we need them."

"I'll ask around the next few days," Randy promised. "I might be able to pick up an idea or two when I make that run up to Northern."

"Sounds like a good idea," Brent agreed. "This ain't like the old days, Randy. It's gotten a hell of a lot more complicated, and there's a damn sight more paperwork. I'll admit, when you first came into the job, I thought you mostly had book skills and were going to have to learn the way it was really done, and to some extent that's how things worked out, but those book skills were important too. It's going to be your business probably sooner than it is later, especially if my heart keeps acting up, but I think we'll have you about ready to deal with it when it happens. I figured it was going to take years more to do it."

Over time the talk drifted away to other things, but for the most part Randy was paying little attention. Yes, he knew his grandfather was in his eighties and had seriously slowed down over the past few years, but Randy had more or less considered him immortal, or as close to it as you could get. But to be realistic, he probably didn't have all that much longer and was going to be even less help with the management than he had been in the past. Even though this was just an informal bull session on the porch, Randy felt somehow the torch had been passed to him and he'd better be prepared to run with it. That put a different spin on a lot of things, and he wasn't sure that he even knew all the implications at that point.