Chapter 24

May 2004

It took a while to settle into having a baby in the house, and with working out the new routines Randy just didn't get around to calling the number on the boat for a couple weeks; when he did, he got a recording. He made a mental note to try again in a couple days, but then he got busy with work, and didn't call.

Over the years Randy had heard stories about new babies getting their parents up at all hours of the night, and it happened with them some, but nothing like the horror stories he had heard. Brent slept through the night about half the time right from the beginning, and Randy did what he could to share Nicole's load, although what he could do was limited since she was breastfeeding the baby. Still, he could change the kid and bring him to her, and watching the two of them brought a fatherly warming to his heart.

Nicole was alone with the baby through much of the day, although Myleigh frequently dropped in to help pass the time – her classes were done for the semester, and while she had concerts planned they tended to be around the weekends. Randy's mother often dropped in after school, and Nicole reported that it helped the day go more quickly, too.

Construction season was now in full swing. Several jobs were under way now; the steel was being erected for the pellet plant, and concrete work was getting readied at the Three Pines lodge expansion.

A few days after Brent had been born the contract on the Newton house was signed, which meant that they could get started. The very next day a crew was busy assembling the raft out at the landing on Chandler Lake, and since it had been his idea Randy spent more time out there than he really needed to in checking things out. The raft was an ungainly looking box, but it went together in a couple of days, and soon there was nothing left to do but see if it worked. There had been some question of how to launch it, but Wooten and the backhoe made short order of that problem by just shoving it into the water, apparently with no damage.

The area of access to the lake where the raft had been built was shallow, and it was clear that was going to present a problem; even empty, the raft would be grounded on the landing when it was within reach of the ramps from shore. With Wooten and the backhoe, that would be an easy problem to solve, but doing underwater digging would mean that the DNR would have to be involved, there would be permits to file, and it seemed likely that it would take half the summer to get them. Randy dithered about it for a while – it would screw the whole schedule up royally.

By then it was getting near the end of the day, so everyone headed home, with the idea of ferrying a little lighter stuff out to the island the next day so they could get started. The next day, Randy went back out to the site with the crew to see if he could figure out a way to build longer ramps, maybe with a temporary pier or something to hold them; his thinking revolved around concrete road barriers. When they got there, they found that the raft was now floating closer to the shore in deeper water, with no problems.

It didn't take long to figure out what had happened, mostly because Wooten had a big grin on his face. "Jim," Randy said. "What did you do?"

"What you don't know won't hurt you," the backhoe driver told him. "More importantly, what the DNR doesn't know won't hurt them, either, as if they ever get out this way anyway."

"I suppose," Randy shook his head, realizing that the backhoe driver had come back out to the site after everyone had left and had dug out a slip for the raft. "I only have one question. What did you do with the spoil?"

"It's under water," Wooten grinned. "I know where it is, and no one will notice. I can put it back when we're done and no one, especially the DNR, will be the wiser."

"You win," Randy grinned. "I owe you one. Let's see if that thing will float the backhoe. If we can get it out to the island today, there's a lot we can get done with it."

The raft sank low in the water at the near end as Jim drove the backhoe up the ramp onto it, but from what Randy could tell it didn't touch bottom, telling him that Jim had dug the slip out plenty deep enough. When the backhoe was centered on the raft, it floated a little higher than he figured it would, so it had plenty of reserve.

Randy had bought a couple cheap used rowboats and outboard motors to tow the raft and ferry people and small tools back and forth, so after only a moderate amount of confusion they started out with the ungainly looking tow. They didn't go fast – even with both rowboats pulling they couldn't go fast – but everything went smoothly. In half an hour or so they nosed the raft into the spot that Randy had picked out earlier. They manhandled the ramps into place, and Jim triumphantly drove the key piece of machinery onto the island. With it there, the job was going to be a whole lot more manageable.

There was still a lot of stuff to be brought to the island before they could get started seriously working, but with the backhoe there it was clear that getting other things there wasn't going to be a problem. Randy rode the raft back to the landing, and figured that he'd hung around the site enough for a while, and it would be best to let his people get on with the jobs they knew how to do.

After that, Randy made it out to Windmill Island once or twice a week, just to see the progress for himself and not get in the way too much. After the first couple days of hauling tools and materials to the island the crew didn't often get back to the mainland during the day, so Randy started hauling a sea kayak around on the rack on his truck. It made a nice break in the middle of the day to unload the kayak and paddle out to the island to see what was going on.

The foundation for the house was complicated, mostly because the vertical structure of the windmill had to be solidly mounted on concrete piers, which meant that the rest of the house had to be on similar piers if not quite as substantial. That meant a lot of digging to get everything ready to pour the concrete, and that involved more than the backhoe – jackhammers were often involved, and there were times they had to resort to rock drills and judicious amounts of dynamite. The digging wasn't completed yet when the concrete started getting poured, and that was a slow process since it had to be mixed in a small mixer on the site – there was no way the raft could handle the weight of a loaded concrete truck. They'd allowed extra time for this, but they were sagging a little behind schedule anyway. It wasn't anything they couldn't catch up on in later parts of the project, but it was a little irritating.

Randy knew there wasn't a lot he could do to hurry things along – the crew had everything they needed to work with and all the hands they needed. It was still a cause for concern, so he started driving out there more often than absolutely necessary just to see if there was anything he could do to help them out. That was what he was doing out there one Friday in the middle of May, and the fact that it was a nice day to get the sea kayak out for a while had little to do with it.

The crew was down to the final four holes needed for the piers for the house and concrete were going into place. Mike Shanahan, the foreman for the excavating and foundation part of the job, said that they ought to have all the concrete in place by the middle of the week, so that was a loss of only about three days, tolerable under the circumstances. "It's been kind of nice being out here," Mike told him. "Going back to building those bridge abutments out on 484 won't be anywhere near as much fun."

"It all needs to be done before winter," Randy told him. "But we're still in good shape and the county isn't bitching yet. Don is going great guns on that house addition he's building down in Albany River and has started wondering when he's going to be able to get out here."

"The inner piers should be cured enough for him to get started a week from Monday," Mike replied. "I'd say that as soon as he gets done down in Albany River he could start moving materials out here."

"Good, I'll let him know," Randy said. "Don gets antsy about that stuff from time to time."

"Don't I know it," Mike shook his head as Randy's cell phone went off.

There had only been cell service out there for a week or so – David Newton's company had finally gotten the tower up. That eased communications with the site, although Randy was privately of the opinion that having cell service on tended to ruin the peace of the place. Still, he pulled out the phone, flipped it open, punched it on, and answered, "Randy."

"Randy," his father said, "I just got off the phone with Brayton out in San Jose. He's got Joel's hide ready to nail to the wall."

"Jeez, it took him long enough," Randy commented.

"Apparently it wasn't a regular thing, just kind of catch as catch can. But they had a hidden camera in the motel room yesterday at noon, and they got him in bed with this hooker. Not the same girl you saw him with, apparently; this gal has dark hair. Brayton e-mailed me a couple of the pictures, and they were everything we hoped for. He says he has a lot more. I say it's time to get off our butts on this."

"I'd say so, too," Randy said. "I'm out on Windmill Island so I'll have to paddle back to the landing and load the kayak, but I can be back to town in an hour."

"It's not that big a rush, we've got the weekend coming up. We still need to bring Ruth up to speed on this, we've got to fly out there, and we need to meet with Brayton before we go see Rachel. All that argues for doing it Tuesday morning."

"I guess," Randy sighed. "I'd be happier if it had been Tuesday morning a couple months ago."

"Well, me too, but from what Brayton said this has been worth the wait. He has photos of Joel with a couple other girls as well, maybe even the girl you saw him with, he's not sure, but none of them are caught-in-the-act kinds of photos. Anyway, I'm going to go ahead and see about airline tickets, and I'm thinking that you and your mother and I should head down and get Ruth in the picture tomorrow."

"I'll have to run that by Nicole, but it shouldn't be a problem. I guess that means I should be heading back to town, anyway."

"Suit yourself, but there's nothing to rush back for today."

"Yeah, but if we do it on Tuesday, that means I'm going to be gone most of the week, and that means I need to get Carlos up to speed and get a dozen other things done. I'll be on my cell, whatever it takes, but there may still be a dead spot or two between here and town. I'll be in touch when I get back."