A tradition, a storm, a niece and a radical change
Author's note:
This is Part 1 of a 4 part story arc. As with all my stories, this one starts slowly with background and character development. This time I've tried using flashbacks during the initial setup to keep the pace up a little. I'd be interested in your feedback. Please vote -- it is the only way I can see if I am pleasing you, the reader.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
We had stopped to feed ourselves and water the horses, and as we were packing up to keep going, I noticed some fairly dark storm clouds starting to drift down from the mountain tops. It was definitely starting to get darker.
"If we're lucky, Squirt," I told Beth, "we make it to the cabin before that hits. Looks pretty nasty, and I don't think it's snow. Probably a cold, hard rain."
"Lovely, Uncle Jim," she muttered. "I may love the Great Outdoors, but this is the part that I don't particularly like -- unless I'm dressed for it, which I'm not."
"No poncho or rain gear?" I asked. I was suddenly realizing that all my wet weather gear was still back at Eddie's, all neatly packed up to come up with the trailer. Cold, I thought I needed to be prepared for. Wet, not so much.
"No, my wet weather gear is back at Uncle Eddie's, packed up," she told me. Apparently great minds think alike.
"Well, we're closer to the cabin than to Eddie's," I mused aloud. "Guess we push on and hope we don't get soaked."
"Wish in one hand, shit in the other..." Beth commented as she mounted up. Sometimes she sounded a lot like her father.
* * * * *
Her father was my older brother, Tom, now deceased. Beth, better known as Squirt, was my niece. We were riding up to the family cabin north of Pagosa Springs to open it for the season. It was tradition for the family to get together each Spring to open the place, a tradition started by my parents.
This year it would be the "Family Retreat That Wasn't". Almost.
When my two brothers and I were kids, we would spend the week of Spring Break -- it used to be called Easter Break -- helping our parents open the mountain cabin for the season, and then we'd get to spend part of Summer Vacation living up there. In the Fall, after hunting season was over, we'd Winter-proof it and then look forward to the next Spring.
Our Mom and Dad would trailer horses up to the cabin, to go along with the pine forests, hiking trails and "swimming hole" in the Piedra River, where it meandered through the mountains on its way to the San Juan River. Well, actually, now it's the Navajo Reservoir covering up the confluence of the Piedra and San Juan Rivers. We'd drive up to Pagosa Springs, then stock up on food and sundries before making the long trek up to the cabin, up near Rock Mountain and the Williams Creek Reservoir.
A lot had changed since those days, but a lot had stayed the same, anchored to a more carefree time.
Then, as we grew up and got married, and had kids of our own, those of us who could would troop up to meet Mom and Dad and open the cabin for the season. Our kids grew up with summer vacations in the mountains.
When Mom and Dad passed, the cabin and its land fell to us three boys, and indirectly to our families. At the time, my older brother Tom was married and a Staff Sergeant in the Army, with three kids -- two older boys and the youngest one a girl. I was an IT consultant, mostly security, and my wife and I had two kids, one son, one daughter. My younger brother Eddie wasn't married, but he sure seemed to date a lot.
He'd actually decided to settle in Pagosa Springs, near the cabin. He didn't want to live in it year 'round, but he didn't mind watching the place while being an assistant manager at The Springs Resort and Spa... one of several to capitalize on the sulfur hot springs that gave the town its name. Not to mention having rich, good-looking women as a mainstay of their clientele.
Beth and I were riding up together, without the rest of the family, because Murphy had done his damnedest to conspire against us. Normally, it would have been all of us and Eddie's big horse trailer, all going up together. Or most of all of us anyway.
For four or five years after our parents died, Tom would try to get leave in the Spring and bring his family to meet mine at Eddie's place and we'd all trek up to the cabin and open it up for the year. Basically keeping the tradition alive. If Tom was deployed, his wife Sherry would come up with the kids without him.
Then four years ago, Tom got killed over in Afghanistan by some stupid Taliban IED. And it really ripped a hole in our families. The only good thing to come out of it was, we were all drawn a lot closer by the time the healing was done, and we made a point of not just opening the cabin in the Spring, but vacationing there in the Summer, like the old days. And Sherry, bless her heart, was a real godsend. Between Tom's insurance and a trust that she'd inherited from her parents, she could spend a month in the Summer, working on her jewelry business and making everyone feel at home.
This year, though, everything went haywire.
It started out with "growing up" catching up with us. This year, Tom's two older boys, John and Scott, weren't going to be there for "opening day" in the Spring. They were both off at college and their Spring Break didn't coincide with the rest of us. So only Sherry and Squirt were going to join us. Squirt isn't her real name -- she got tagged with it from her brothers, growing up, and it stuck. Actually, her christened name was Elizabeth, and just about every nickname you could derive from that. She was usually Beth to me, when I wasn't calling her Squirt, and to her I was Uncle Jim.
And my son, Paul, wasn't going to make it, either. Same reason. Off at college and couldn't get away. And then my wife, Linda, gave me the rest of the bad news. She had to take my daughter, a Senior in High School like Beth, off to visit a prospective college that opening weekend, although they could join us later that week. I was just going to put it off, but she insisted that I go ahead with tradition and go with Eddie and Sherry and Squirt, and do all the hard work of getting the place up and running for the season. Then she and Maggie, my daughter, could just mosey on up and be lazy.
I think she was joking. I hope she was joking. In any case, I called Eddie and told him I'd be coming up alone to start and I'd see him that weekend.
When I got there, the next piece of the puzzle fell apart.
Beth was there and Sherry wasn't.
* * * * *
"Mom had to stay at the jewelry exposition because some kind of business reps wanted to talk to her and she had to meet with some people from China," Beth explained as we sat over coffee in Eddie's kitchen on Saturday morning. It was still frosty out.
"But she'll be here by Tuesday at the latest, and she told me to come on up and help get the place open. Then I get here and find out it's you, me and Uncle Eddie. And it isn't clear he can trailer the horses up this weekend. Hell of a way to spend my eighteenth birthday, huh?"
That set me back. I'd forgotten when her birthday was, or even that she was turning eighteen. I should have remembered, though, because she was almost two months exactly younger than my daughter, and Maggie had turned eighteen two months ago.
"Not much of a birthday present to ask you to come do a stint of hard labor, opening the cabin," I conceded. "Maybe when Eddie gets his lazy butt down to breakfast, we can figure out a way you don't have to."
"Oh, I don't mind, Uncle Jim, really!" she told me. "I love the outdoors. I'm just grousing because I can." She gave me one of those impish smiles teenage girls are good at -- part little-girl and part all-grown-up. And I was beginning to notice the grown-up.
"And Uncle Eddie isn't sleeping in," she went on to inform me. "He beat you by an hour, easy. He's up and outta here, as they say. Had to go in to the spa for some kind of problem. That's why he might not be able to trailer the horses up there today. I'll admit, I'm not looking forward to doing that with just the two of us. That six-horse trailer is pretty big to handle."
My Dad had gotten an old World War II surplus Jeep to use up at the cabin, for running errands and such, so he didn't do any more damage to his pickup than he had to. That old Willys MB would sure jounce us boys around a lot, but we'd eventually get from Point A to Point B. And Point B usually involved sawing and splitting wood, and hauling it back to the cabin. My brothers and I learned to drive on that old Jeep. Dad figured it had survived the war, it could survive us.
Eddie kept it at his place over the Winter now.
When there were a bunch of us going, we'd load Eddie's big 6-horse trailer and he'd drive it up that same Forest Service access road as close as we could get and the rest of us would follow in the Jeep. Then we'd unload the horses, saddle them and ride them the couple of miles to the cabin while somebody, usually my wife, would bring the Jeep along. Then Eddie and I would take the Jeep and the trailer back to town and come back with the Jeep and his pickup, loaded with whatever else needed to come up to the cabin.
By then, somebody had a fire going and dinner ready. Pretty efficient and I didn't have to cook.
Doing that with just the two of us was going to be rough. Even if Eddie could make it, it would still be difficult. I was seriously considering scrubbing the horses for later and just taking the Jeep up to open the house when Beth made her fateful suggestion.
Which is how we got in the position we were now in.
"Maybe we could ride up," she offered. "You know, take a couple of horses and the gear we'd need and ride on up there and get the house warmed up. Eddie can bring the other horses later, when Mom gets here, or Aunt Linda and Maggie."
"I'm sure they'd appreciate having all the hard work done," she smiled, and there was that imp again.
"It's a bit of a ride," I pointed out. "You sure you're up for that kind of punishment?"
"Oh, it's not bad," she told me. "It's what? Six hours? Maybe seven at a leisurely pace. We could leave later this morning and be there late afternoon. Think of it as a birthday present... a nice long ride in the clean mountain air."
