“Okay,” Dad said. “Got any ideas?”
“I was thinking, a case of Alpo. We give the dogs something to eat, maybe they won’t eat us.”
10
IT WAS TIME to set other problems aside temporarily and start tackling the chores at Denny’s Cabins. Helping out around the place was, after all, the initial reason for my decision to hang in, although other things that threatened to keep me here longer seemed to be growing exponentially.
“This is dump day,” Dad informed me.
“Shit,” I said. “I forgot to get you a card.”
“Do you want to help, or do you just want to be a smartass?” Dad asked. It was, I had to admit, a tough question. I believed it was possible, with some effort, to do both. I had been pissed at him ever since Timmy Wickens’s visit for not being creative enough to come up with an excuse to get us out of dinner with people we were trying to find a way to evict.
“You could have said something,” he said accusingly.
“He was inviting you,” I said. “I was just an afterthought.”
We bickered about that for a while, got nowhere, finally decided to move on. “Tell me what needs to be done around here,” I said, which had brought us to the exciting news that it was dump day.
But there was more. “Once you do a run to the dump, there’s grass to cut, fish guts to bury, we need to make sure we’ve got worms, there’s-”
“See if we’ve got worms?”
“Night crawlers, bait, for crying out loud. I keep ’em in a fridge out in the shed.”
I sighed. “And the fish guts?”
“You’ve seen the bucket under the fish-cleaning table down by the docks?”
Who could forget?
“Well, they won’t let us put raw fish guts in the municipal dump, so we have to deal with them ourselves.”
“I’m guessing they won’t flush.”
“You have to take them out to the woods and bury them.”
“Are you kidding?”
“There’s already a hole dug out there. There’s a big board over it. Take the guts up, dump it in the hole, throw some dirt in over it, put the board back over.”
I nodded tiredly. “Okay, you stay here, I’ll get these things done.”
“You know how to drive a garden tractor?” Dad asked. “ ’Cause the grounds are really looking a bit unkempt. I would have done it yesterday if it hadn’t been for all this other shit happening.”
“I think I can figure it out.”
“Because it’s a bit special, this tractor, because-”
“Dad. I can figure it out.”
Dad held up his hands. “Okay, okay, you’re the expert, I don’t know a goddamn thing.”
“Whatever,” I said, heading out the door.
“Yeah, whatever!” Dad shouted as the door slammed shut. I was tempted to go back, say “Good comeback!” but decided someone had to be the mature one. An hour ago, I was a genius and a hero, coming up with the plan to talk to a lawyer about evicting the Wickenses, but now I was an idiot again.
I decided to tackle the garbage run first, loading half a dozen plastic cans jammed with green garbage bags filled to bursting into the back of Dad’s Ford pickup. Leonard Colebert strolled over, hands parked in his front pockets so as to reduce the risk of being asked to lift something.
“So, this is garbage day?” he asked, smiling. I decided Leonard was probably undeserving of a smartass response-although that could change-so I merely nodded. “That was a good time last night,” he said, referring to the party at Dad’s cabin. “I didn’t get a chance to tell you even a fraction of what’s involved in the diaper business, or all the plan for my big resort.”
“Well, it was pretty busy,” I said, loading a can into the back of the truck and making sure the lid was secure.
“You mind if I tag along with you?” he said, one hand already on the passenger door. I couldn’t think of a way to say no, so I motioned for him to hop in.
“I rode with your dad to the dump one day,” he said. “You pass right by the property I’m getting to build my resort on. I’ll show you.”
Oh boy.
When we were on the highway, Leonard said, “God, I love it up here. I could go anywhere, you know, Club Med, you name some fancy place, I could afford it. But there’s nothing like being up here.”
“There a Mrs. Colebert?” I asked.
“Not at the moment, but you never know, that could change,” Leonard said, puffing out his chest. “I’ve had my share of ladies over the years, that’s for sure. But never really found the right one.”
There had to be a girl somewhere, I figured, who wanted to listen to diaper talk all day.
The road took a slight bend to the right when Leonard shouted, “Here! Here’s the spot! Slow down.”
I pulled over onto the shoulder and brought the truck to a halt, leaving it running in drive with my foot planted on the brake. Leonard was pointing into dense forest. The lake was probably no more than a couple hundred yards away, but you couldn’t see it.
“Okay, this is where you’d drive in, there’d be a big sign here, maybe something like ‘Colebert Lodge,’ I don’t know, and a huge neon fish jumping out of the water, a line coming out of its mouth. Can you picture it? It’d be super vivid, like a Vegas sign, but tasteful, you know?”
“Right,” I said.
“It’d be bright in the daytime, but at night, it would light up the sky, you know? There’s nothing like that around here, let me tell you.”
“You’re right about that.”
“So we take down about two acres’ worth of trees over there to put in some parking, and once we do that, you’ll be able to see right through to the lake, where there’ll be the main hotel, about five stories high, I figure, and restaurants and snack bars, a huge bait shop. Just huge.” He shook his head in wonderment. “Can you imagine it? Huh? Can you?”
“Actually, yes,” I said, doing a very good job of concealing my excitement, and wondering, for the first time, what Leonard, sitting next to me, was wearing under his khakis.
“Come on,” Leonard said, already opening his door. “I’ll show you.”
He was out of the truck before I could say no, so I killed the engine and followed him through the tall grass at the edge of the highway and into the forest. For a short, not particularly fit-looking guy, he was hard to keep up with.
“You think we’re going to need the bear spray?” he called back to me.
“Let’s chance it,” I said.
“Okay,” he said, once we were shrouded in trees. “Okay, hotel over there, maybe a swimming pool over there, although we’ll have lakeside swimming, too. There’s some weedy areas, a bit of marshland along the shore, but we can backfill that in, landscape it, you’d never know there was anything natural there before.”
“Well,” I said.
“Hey, here’s an idea,” Leonard said. “Looks like I’ve already got Bob Spooner talked into working for me, running a charter.”
“I wouldn’t be so-”
“But there’d probably be something here for you, too. You could help me write up press releases, the literature, that kind of thing? Be my PR guy, my media relations officer. Because every big resort, you gotta have one of those. I’d make it worth your while.”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
We were climbing now, the ground gradually sloping upwards. When we got to the top, I instinctively leaned back. We were standing at the edge of a sharp dropoff. It was a good thirty feet down to another section of heavily wooded forest.
“Down there, we clear the trees, that’s where I’m going to put in the children’s playland. I’m thinking of a huge model of a whale, the kids can run through it, pretend they’ve been swallowed by Jonah. And there’ll be a fountain, shooting water out of the blowhole, the water’ll come down the side, like one of those splash pads. Even from out in the middle of the lake you’ll be able to hear the kids laughing and screaming.” He smiled with self-satisfaction. “I’ve got lots of conceptual drawings, if you’d like to see them.”