Chapter 8

On the even longer, slower, and sadder trip back to Spearfish Lake, Randy let Nicole drive so he could make the necessary calls on his cell phone to pass along the news. Among them was Myleigh, although well down the list – there were a number of people who needed to be called at Clark Construction.

"Oh my, Randy," she said. "This is indeed not good news. It must be a real sorrow for you."

"Yeah, it is, in more ways than one," he told her. "I mean, in a way it's not unexpected, but still the reality of it bites."

"I wish there were more that I could do to share your sorrows," she told him. "Would you feel offended if Crystal and I were to put together a light dinner for all of us? It would spare you and Nicole the effort."

"Let me bounce the idea off Nicole," he said, and passed along the question.

"Sure," Nicole told him. "Maybe we ought to invite your folks and Alma. They probably don't feel like cooking anymore than I do."

"I can ask," Randy nodded, then turned back to the cell phone to pass along the idea to Myleigh, who agreed without comment, suggesting that he be the one to call his father.

Randy and Nicole were nearly back to Spearfish Lake before he was able to reach his father. "Sure, might as well," his father said gloomily. "I don't think Linda feels much like cooking either. I'll ask Alma if she'd like to come. Let us know what time."

"We'll work something out and get back with you."

"Fine with me, but let me know as soon as you can," his father replied. "If you don't have any objections, there might be a few more people who would like to come."

"Sure, might as well. I'll tell Myleigh to do something open-ended where leftovers aren't going to be a problem."

"Good, everybody ought to appreciate it, and you've got a bigger space to work with than we do. Do you have any objections to the funeral being at one o'clock on Tuesday?"

"About as good as any other time," Randy told him. "I'll have to call a bunch of people again, but I would have to sooner or later, anyway."

"You might have Regina do some of the calling of the Clark Construction people," Ryan suggested.

"I already thought of that, I'll let her know. Anything else?"

"I just got off the phone with Ruth. She and Dave are going to drive up tomorrow, but they can stay till Wednesday. I'm still trying to get hold of Rachel, but all I can get is voicemail."

"They're probably out and around somewhere."

"Probably," Ryan sighed. "Hey, look, I know you have Crystal and Preach there already, but we're probably going to have some people staying with us and we're going to run out of space. Any chance someone could stay with you?"

"Sure thing, we've got room," Randy said. "As far as that goes, I'm sure that Crystal and Preach wouldn't mind going over and staying with Myleigh and Trey for a while, if it comes to that."

"I hate to ask it of them, but it may come to that."

"I'm sure they'll understand," Randy said.

"We'll just have to see what happens," Ryan sighed. "I wish I knew if Rachel and Joel were coming. I'd hate to dump them on you at the last minute."

"If you have to, you have to. I can put up with them for a couple days."

"Yeah, but still. Find out about dinner and let me know."

"I'll call right now," Randy replied, clicking off and punching the button to autodial Myleigh. He got a voicemail prompt for his efforts, and mentally examined a few sarcastic notions about the miracle of modern telecommunications. By now, they were getting pretty close to home and decided it could wait till he got there. He snapped the phone closed and said to Nicole, "We may get tagged to have a few guests, and there's a chance they could include Rachel and Joel."

"Well, if they do, they're just going to have to live like the common folk for a couple days," Nicole replied with a pointed sneer.

Randy had once been on somewhat better terms with his four-years-older biggest sister, but that was then. Now he was just as happy that she and her husband lived in an upscale suburb of San Jose, except for the fact that it might have been a little too close. Hawaii might have been better. Maybe even China.

It's not uncommon for kids growing up in small Midwestern towns to want to head for the big city and the bright lights, and Rachel had had the disease worse than most. When Randy had gone to college he had been perfectly happy to settle for Northern Michigan University, mostly because it was fairly close to home, and he didn't have any idea what he really wanted to study anyway. Rachel, on the other hand, had long had her eye set on Michigan State University, considering it the biggest name school within her reach, and hopefully a steppingstone on the way to something better. So it proved; it was also a steppingstone to Joel Lancaster, a guy with rich tastes and an eye on even greater things.

Greater things, in Joel's case, proved to be Silicon Valley – not on the technical side, but on the business side. He was involved in the venture capital business there; Randy wasn't sure exactly who he worked for because it seemed to change with fair regularity. At least, the names of the companies changed about as much as Joel changed jobs. From what Randy could tell Joel's shiftiness hadn't made a huge killing, although he apparently was doing all right for himself, even though from the distance of Spearfish Lake it was hard to tell.

The thing that yanked Randy's chain – and had done so from the first time he'd met Joel – was his arrogance, his absolute confidence that anything that was more than fifty miles or so from Atlantic or Pacific salt water was flyover country inhabited by sub-humans. The fact that Joel was from Ohio had little to do with it – it was a fact that he admitted to as reluctantly as possible. Worse, as far as Randy was concerned, he'd passed that attitude on to Rachel. It had been a couple years since Rachel had been home, and Joel hadn't been with her at the time. It went without saying that if Rachel, and especially Joel, were to stay with them, Nicole and Randy would hear all the whining about how isolated and primitive everything was, including their showpiece house.

"We'll just have to put up with it," Randy said. "Of course, you have to wonder if Dad is trying to shove her off on us because he doesn't want to put up with them himself."

"Randy!"

"I know, I know," Randy shook his head. "I shouldn't have said it but I can sure think it."

"I don't particularly like her attitude either," Nicole snorted. "But at least we should be civil even if they're not."

"I suppose," Randy sighed. "I mean, it's not like I have anything else on my mind. Yeah, we'll have to do the family thing, it goes with the territory. But I'll guarantee you that if Joel shows up the only reason he'll have come is to look for some angle."

What fell together that evening in Randy and Nicole's great room was something less than a party and something less than a wake, although at times it was hard to tell. It was a lot bigger than anyone had been expecting, with several people from the construction company and from the plywood plant management there as well, to pay respects, have a drink or try out the buffet. Danny had been a bartender at times in his past, and although he'd given up drinking he hadn't forgotten how to mix a stiff one, and he mixed a few that evening.

A number of people gathered around the big fireplace, where sort of a running eulogy was going on, mostly carried out by Ryan, his only surviving son, who had known Brent Clark about as well as anyone – which really wasn't very well.

The truth, Ryan explained, was that his father was a tragic figure, in his way. "In fact it was tragic right from his birth."

Brent Clark had been born only a few months after his parents were married. "I don't want to say that it was a shotgun wedding, because in that social circle shotguns were rarely used," Ryan wisecracked. "I suspect the pressure used was somewhat more subtle but no less effective. In any case, Wayne and Flora weren't married long. She died as a result of childbirth of her second child, who also died. I'm not sure why and I'm not sure anyone else knows, either. Those things happened in those days. It's a lot less common today, thank God. Anyway, and again I assume there was more going on socially than met the eye, Wayne wound up raising Dad, at least as much as he did. There was a series of nannies, and Dad told me more than once that sometimes weeks would go by between times he saw his father. They were never particularly close, especially when he was very small. Of course, that was Chicago in the Roaring Twenties, and I think everyone knows what that means. I don't want to say that Wayne was involved in the mob or rum running or anything like that, because I doubt that he was. He was a little too upper crust for that in those days, but from the stories I've heard he never had trouble finding a bottle when he was looking for one, and that was pretty often."

"Chicago in the twenties," someone put in. "That's kind of a legend."

"Yeah, it was," Ryan said. "Dad never had any exciting stories about those times, since he was just a little kid when all that was happening. He was never particularly clear why his father decided to pull out of the stock market about six months before it crashed and move up here to the family so-called summer cottage, but he may not have known, either. The story goes that his father had an interest in a beat-up sawmill and lumbering operation, some big ideas, and some money to invest, but once again, no one really knows for sure where Wayne was concerned, and it could well have been something else. By the way, if you're thinking that Dad was not thinking very well of his father, you're dead right, although how much of that was true at the time they moved up here and how much of that came later is hard to say. Well, anyway, Dad went off to college, got involved in ROTC, and eventually wound up as a second lieutenant in the local National Guard field artillery unit, "D" Battery, not long before World War II broke out.

"Now, I'm sure that at least some of you remember Danny's grandfather Garth Matson, who we used to call Colonel Matson, although he was then a captain. When they called up the National Guard, he was executive vice-president of the Spearfish Lake State Savings Bank and the battery commander. The battery was really under strength at the time, and it may have been that Dad was the only other officer; I'm not sure about that. The important part about the story was that Wayne and Garth's wife, Donna, had been nosing around each other even before the call-up. From everything I ever heard the train carrying the battery down to Camp Knox wasn't even out of sight before the two of them were getting it on out in Wayne's hunting cabin."

As a one-time thing, considering the heat of emotional stress and all, Captain Matson might have been willing to overlook his wife's deviation from the straight and narrow, but it didn't stop there. It did not take long for word to reach the commander of "D" Battery, down at Camp Knox, that the two were shacking up at the cabin two and three nights a week. Resolving to bear his cross in silence and get on with the subject at hand, Matson decided that if he came back from the war, he could then deal with Donna appropriately. Stringing her up by the thumbs seemed like a good idea.