bring me a cup? Coffee’s in the lower cupboard to the left of the stove. And you better put that damn frying pan on the floor before Chilkat grabs it out of your hand. He’s the pot licker around here and you’re driving him crazy.”
CHAPTER TWO
THE ADMIRAL HAD KNOWN he was sick long before he was diagnosed with cancer. His energy levels had been dropping steadily, and the pain that he used to hold at bay with handfuls of aspirin began to cripple him up. He’d finally sought professional advice. Aside from announcing to Jack with blunt matter-of-fact realism, that the doctor had told him he wouldn’t live out the year, McCallum never spoke of his illness. The two of them carried on as if by ignoring the bad news, eventually it would go away. This was fine with Jack. He’d come to like the admiral very much in the eight years he’d known the man, so he’d just as soon avoid any discussions of the unfair and untimely fate that awaited his friend.
Jack knew the admiral came off as a cold-hearted bastard to the multitudes who had dealt with him in the military, but he had an advantage that most people didn’t. He knew the admiral was a dyed-in-the-wool fly fisherman who lived and breathed to cast his lines upon some of the greatest fishing waters in the world, so when Jack’s commanding officer had asked him eight years ago for some advice about where to take his father fishing, Jack never missed a beat.
“Labrador,” he said. “That’s one of few places left on this continent where fish are still the size God intended them to be, and the wilderness is still wild.”
His commanding officer wanted to know more, and Jack was happy to provide any and all information. When his CO asked if he’d like to come along as an informal guide, all expenses paid, Jack could scarcely believe his luck. “Yes, sir,” he’d said, immediately. “I’d be glad to.”
“My father’s an admiral,” his CO had warned.
“I know he is, sir. I’ll be on my best behavior,” Jack promised.
Jack’s CO was Stuart McCallum, Jr., son of Admiral Stuart McCallum, the Sea Wolf, who had long been known as the toughest, meanest admiral in the fleet. But if he was a genuine fly fisherman, Jack was sure he’d find some common ground with the crusty old man. He’d been prepared for the worst, but on that trip with the two McCallums he’d made a good friend of the old admiral. They’d fished annually in Labrador until his CO died in a plane crash and the admiral retired that same year. Two years later Jack had taken a midnight phone call on board a ship in the middle of the Persian Gulf.
“McCallum here,” the gruff voice said. “I’m in Labrador, looking at a piece of property, and I need your advice.”
It took him a while, the Navy being the way it was about unscheduled leave and all that, but the old sea wolf, though retired, still had some pull. Two weeks later Jack was standing on the shore of Grand Lake, a major jumping-off point to all of Labrador’s intriguing wilds, and the admiral was saying in his raspy voice, “I want to retire here, Hanson. I want to build a place right on this lake, and I want to build a fishing lodge in the interior that’s only accessible by float plane for people who care enough to make the effort. I’m looking for a business partner, if you’re interested. How long can you stay?”
Jack stayed as long as he dared, being as he was only a captain himself and not ready or willing to be court-martialed, but when he left, the admiral was already beginning construction of his retirement home. One year later, Jack’s marriage was over and he decided to end his naval career as well. True to his words, the admiral readily allowed the younger man to buy into his Labrador dream.
And what a dream it was. That the admiral could harbor ambitions that required such vision and herculean physical effort astounded Jack, who believed himself to be unique in that regard. But the admiral’s tireless strength had played out rapidly near the end of the project on the Wolf River. His doctor advised him to return to the States for further tests and chemotherapy treatments, but Admiral McCallum had no use for doctors or hospitals. “I’ll die in my own place, and in my own time,” he said. “I want to see our lodge on the Wolf River completed. I want to sit on the porch and sip my scotch and watch the river run past. I want to see the salmon come up it to spawn. I need to know that life goes on, no matter what.”
They’d both worked hard toward making that vision become a reality, though Jack shouldered the brunt of the work in the final year of the admiral’s life. As his health steadily failed, McCallum lost energy but he never lost sight of his dream. The last time Jack had flown the old man into the interior and landed on the river just below the lodge, McCallum had known he’d never live to see it up and running.
“Put my chair on the porch,” he said that evening, laboring for each precious breath. “I’ll sip my scotch and watch the sun go down.”
One week later, the admiral was dead. All of North West River gathered for the traditional Irish wake the old admiral had requested, though McCallum was only half Irish, the other half being pure bull-headed Scot. All of North West River attended the party, a grand send-off the old man would have enjoyed…all except the part where the wedding planner showed up, and Jack won their last bet.
It was one of the few times he and the admiral had spoken about what would come after.
“I’ve named my granddaughter executor of my estate,” McCallum had said. Jack was feeding the sled dogs, and the admiral walked out to the dog yard to smoke his pipe and watch. Retired from the team, Chilkat was his constant companion, but the admiral’s faded blue eyes softened as he looked upon the dogs. Clearly, he loved them all.
Jack straightened from ladling soupy dog food into a bowl. “The wedding planner?” he said. “Why not one of your grandsons?”
“They’re city boys. They wouldn’t want anything to do with a place like this. Senna’s the only one who might feel something for it.”
Senna McCallum was the only person the admiral regularly spoke of in his family, though he also had two grandsons living somewhere on the East coast and a spinster sister out in Oregon. He’d told Jack about Senna right at the outset on that first fishing trip. “She’s a good girl. Spirited, but lacks guidance. Makes all the wrong choices. She’ll end up the way most girls do, paying homage to a man that’s not good enough for her, raising a bunch of spoiled brats that want and get everything for nothing. Too bad, because she’s sharp. She could go places, if she’d just take some good advice, but she doesn’t think much of her old grandfather. Never listened to a thing I said.”
Since then, he’d made brief but frequent references to Senna, which Jack had strung together into this general assessment: She makes her living planning other people’s weddings. Got her degree in wildlife biology, wrote a brilliant paper on the Yellowstone wolf pack and landed a good job with the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, but couldn’t hack the politics. Couldn’t compromise what she knew to be right with what would keep her employed. She’s too brash, doesn’t know when to pull her horns in. Was let go for stirring up all kinds of controversy and bucking the big hunting lobby over the snaring of coyotes and the baiting of bears with stale doughnuts. Spunky. She made the front page of the paper at a big legislative hearing in Augusta. Shortly after that she was conveniently laid off. Her mother’s sister owns a country inn on the Maine coast, and her aunt gave her a job there, so now she’s nothing but a wedding planner.
A wedding planner was someone who dealt with weepy, emotional brides, bossy overbearing mothers and grooms who didn’t realize what the hell they were getting into. Queasy. Jack couldn’t imagine a more insipid career, and knew from listening to the admiral talk that he wouldn’t like his granddaughter at all. He hoped she never showed up in Labrador.
“She doesn’t give a hoot about me,” the admiral alleged not a week before his death, puffing on his pipe with a contemplative gaze, “and that’s not her fault. I was never a very warm and friendly grandfather. I didn’t know how to be. And after her father died I didn’t visit them anymore. Senna’s mother never liked me much, nor did the boys. It was easier to stay away. I doubt Senna will come to Labrador when I die. But I’ve made it all nice and legal.