Chapter 20

Saturday, December 15, 2001

As things turned out, Saturday was a great day for skiing. The overcast and threatening snow moved out overnight, leaving a clear, bright winter day, if on the chilly side. There was nothing wrong with that; both Randy and Nicole were northerners and were used to cold weather. Skiing and snowboarding on a day like this held the prospect of the day being enjoyable, as long as business didn't get in the way too much.

Randy and Nicole left for Three Pines before the crack of dawn, which came late on this winter day. Considering that it was intended to be at least partly an evaluation, there were both skis and snowboards in the back of Randy's pickup. The drive up to the reservation was fine, while Nicole and Randy talked about several things. It had been arranged to meet Norm, Tom, and a couple others at the restaurant in the main casino for a brief breakfast meeting so that Randy and Tom could get to know each other a little and discuss plans.

Randy didn't mind the casino; he'd been there before, even though he'd never dropped so much as a quarter into one of the "one armed bandits", which were all electronic now in any case. Even considering the hour, the place was moderately busy, and the dinging and whirring penetrated the restaurant. Randy had been a little concerned about Cornplanter, at least partly from not knowing him; he suspected he might have been hired for the job because he was an Indian, rather than because he knew anything.

In any case, Tom proved to be quite different from what Randy had expected. He was older, for one thing, about forty to look at him, and in a few minutes Randy found out that he'd been in the business for years, and had only recently decided to branch out as a ski resort specialist. He seemed to know what he was talking about, and was genial and talkative, so that made things a little easier. Randy was afraid that his own relative youth might be a little off-putting and wished for a moment he'd brought one of his superintendents with him, Rod or Don or someone, but the chance for that was past, and he had to make do. Early on, Cornplanter said, "Norm told me that you people did this building. Nice work."

"We prefer to do nice work," Randy told him. "I wasn't actually with the company when this part of the building was built; it was done before my grandfather came down with heart trouble. I've been involved with a lot of the work around this complex, though."

"Clark Construction has been our primary builder around here for years," Norm explained. "There have been times we've had to get into a project without clear plans, and they've always come in ahead of schedule and under budget. We trust them and work well with each other. I'd be very reluctant to get into a project of this scale and this time frame with a builder we don't have that kind of relationship with."

"That's good to know," Tom nodded. "Have you ever had any problems?"

"Not really," Randy said. "We had one job a few years ago, where we had some construction workers sneaking off to play the slots when they were on clock, but my superintendent and I put a stop to that real quick. I don't mind if the guys play them on their own time, but not on ours."

"What Randy didn't tell you was that all he had to do was make a couple threats to have his word stand," Norm laughed. "Don't let this little shrimp fool you. He has more black belts than he has waist, and there's nobody, and I mean, nobody on a construction site who will fuck with him. Except maybe for the superintendent he was talking about, who has about the same number of black belts."

"Is that the superintendent you're going to be using on this job?" Tom asked.

"Not at this point," Randy shrugged. "We're planning on him doing a new school gym down south of here this summer. He and his crew are more steel and masonry oriented, and I'm guessing you don't want this ski resort to look like an institutional building."

"I hope not," Tom smiled. "Nothing's settled yet, but right at the moment we're sort of thinking about doing a log building. Do you know anything about them?"

"We've done logs off and on over the years," Randy said. "I have a superintendent who's familiar with the style, and if we really get stumped, so to speak, we can still call my grandfather in for a consultation. He's forgotten more about building with logs than you or I will ever know."

"Are there any examples of your work with logs that I might be familiar with?"

"Hard to say," Randy shrugged again. "There's several places I could take you. The place we're proudest of is a place called 'Commons', which is about an hour east of here. It's been in several architectural books; the one I have is Great Log Structures of the Midwest. It's over fifty years old, but it was my grandfather's and Clark Construction's first big project. My grandmother's, too; she designed it. We did a major renovation last year that we're fairly proud of. You can't tell the new work from the old."

"I've heard of the building," Tom replied, visibly relaxing. "I guess I knew it was around here. Do you think that there's a chance I could see it sometime?"

"I'm sure it could be arranged," Randy said. "A close friend is the chairman of the board of directors. They close it down entirely for the winter, so I'm sure it would be cold in there and nothing would be plowed out, but I could find a dog team if we wanted to go check it out."

"No rush," Tom smiled. "I suspect we'll have the chance. I think we're going to have plenty to do today, anyway. I think I'm going to enjoy working with you."

As soon as they were finished with breakfast, they headed out to the proposed site for the ski lodge, which was in a narrow valley about three miles from the casino complex. The half dozen of them gathered around their vehicles while they waited for the promised snowmobiles to show up. "Yeah," Randy commented. "This is where I was thinking you were wanting to put this. You've got a pretty nice, open slope for an intermediate hill that's not going to require a lot of grading and finishing, a potentially good spot for a bunny hill, and plenty of room for the lodge and parking with some room for expansion. On top of that, with a lot more site preparation you've got a couple potentially good advanced runs on either side of the valley, and more room farther on down if you want to expand some more."

"You read it about like I read it," Tom said. "The road access isn't particularly good, but it's better than the other sites we've considered. There are a couple places where there could be a somewhat superior hill, but with more site preparation and not the room for expansion. The only thing is that the last time I was here it was all bare ground, so I'd like to know what it's like to ski."

"Well, I guess we're going to find out if those guys with the snowmobiles ever show up," Randy said. "And I hear snowmobiles off in the distance. I don't know if those are our guys or not."

"Norm," Nicole said. "I've got a question, if you don't think it's out of line for me to ask."

"I doubt you would ask it if it was too far out of line," he smiled. "What is it?"

"Randy has been telling me for years about the projects over here, so I know quite a bit about the hassles you've been going through," she said. "How come you guys have had so much trouble with the government over the new lodge or the lodge addition down at the casino, but not with this?"

"You answered it. It's at the casino, so every nanny bureaucrat thinks they have to have their fingers on it because they obviously know better than we do," Norm replied sarcastically. "Otherwise, they wouldn't be the bureaucrats and get to throw their weight around. We've never had any static about the golf courses, which are as big an investment and almost as big a revenue producer, because they don't involve gambling, at least in an organized sense. Same here. It's not the casino, so we've already had general approval from a different office. Of course," he grinned, "That doesn't mean we're not going to have shuttle buses running continually between the two."

The answer satisfied Nicole. Randy had often wondered about the same thing but hadn't bothered to ask. Randy knew that twenty years before, the Shakahatche had been about the poorest tribe in the Midwest, and if it hadn't been for the casino and resort complex it still would be. The Shakahatche had the advantage of watching the mistakes that other tribes had made and had learned from them, so that was all to the good. Debbie Elkstalker had lived through much of the change and improvement, and had talked about it to Nicole and him in the hot tub the other night; there were still many improvements needed in the tribe, for a few lush years don't wipe out generations of deprivation and poverty. But the changes were coming, and not everything was hinged on the gambling. "I'm guessing you're talking about getting the logs from your mill," Randy observed. "Are they going to be able to supply everything?"

"Should be able to," one of the others in the group said – he'd shown up at the gathering a little too late for the round of introductions. "We've been stockpiling a little, and we've got some fairly seasoned stuff stacked up and ready to mill. It's not impossible our orders could increase this spring, but we could put on a second shift if we had to."

"You run the mill?" Randy asked.

"Yeah, I'm Larry Elkstalker. "I'll put up our quality against anyone's in the Midwest, and we should be able to save some bucks on this project," he replied. "Are you going to be able to cut us a deal on composition board?"

"We get a special rate," Randy smiled. "It has something to do with my dad making the stuff, and being a part owner of Clark Construction. It sure helps out at bid time."

"I'll bet it does," Tom laughed. "It's got to be nice when you can keep it in the family like that."

"It cuts wholesaler and shipping costs," Randy shrugged. "In this business it'd be foolish to turn down an opportunity like that."

"Are you any relation to Debbie Elkstalker?" Nicole asked. "She lives down in Spearfish Lake, we're good friends with her and her boyfriend."

"She's a distant cousin," Larry said. "Of course, on this reservation everyone is a distant relation to everyone else."

It proved that the snowmobiles that Randy had been hearing were the ones coming for them. There were half a dozen or so, mostly driven by men who had worked on construction jobs in the past. Randy recognized most of them, although he didn't always know names. One of the reasons that Clark Construction got a lot of business out of Three Pines was that they hired people from the reservation whenever possible. His grandfather had told him that in the past the skill levels and work ethic of the workers had been pretty poor, but those days were gone, too. A large part of the Clark crew were skilled trades people from the reservation, and the company was still involved with some special apprenticeship programs in the winter months. This was also a reason why Clark Construction had an inside track with projects at Three Pines.

"Well, let's go check it out," Tom said. "I think we'd better take it a little conservatively at first. After all, these aren't groomed runs, yet."

"Yeah, I think I'll take the first run or two on slats, rather than on the board," Randy said.

"You go ahead and be conservative," Nicole said. "I don't get the chance to snowboard a virgin hill very often."

"Suit yourself," Randy shrugged.

Getting up the hill on snowmobiles turned out to be a little cumbersome, as Randy had figured it would be. The hill was steep enough that the passenger had to hang on very tightly, which made it difficult to hang on to skis or a snowboard. Fortunately one of the snowmobilers had brought a trailer sled, something like a dogsled, and wound up hauling everyone's gear up the hill at once. The drivers kept well off to one side of the hill, where they wouldn't carve up the skiing surface, and they managed to keep things moving reasonably smoothly.