CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Hogan”
Excited barking cracked the silence. Loud, joyful barking, getting louder. Stella looked. A furred missile ran toward her tail wagging. Stella sat on her heels arms wide to receive 120 pounds of German shepherd. Steve knocked her over and furiously began licking her face. Stella laughed and laughed, half-heartedly warding the dog off with her arms.
“Well hello,” Otto said appearing minutes later. “What a surprise.”
Stella pulled the chunk of jerky from her pocket and gave it to the dog. She stood, blushing and brushing the hair out of her face. What do you say to an old lover whom you last saw in the psychiatric ward?
“Otto.”
Walking around the tank trap Otto went up to Stella and hugged her and Stella found herself hugging back, remembering the warmth of his hard body, that aftershave he wore. Even here in the wilderness. A little flame flared. She tamped it down.
Business, girl.
She stepped back a little breathless and looked at Otto. He had a military haircut and the tanned lean body to go with it. He wore a fishing vest over a white T-shirt, blue jeans and heavy leather boots. He wore an Aussie bushman’s hat with one brim pinned up and a pair of Foster Grant sunglasses. He looked like the host of some survival show.
“How long have you been here?” he said.
“Just got here.”
“Well come up to the house. I’ll show you around. Steve and I just got back. I haven’t even been in the house yet.”
“Where were you?”
“Just walkin’ around. We saw a pair of eagles wipe out an unkindness of ravens.”
“An ‘unkindness?’“
“That’s what you call a bunch of ravens.”
Steve running circles they walked toward the long low structure. The horizontal windows looked like they’d been taken from a lab. In a clearing at the far end was Otto’s Road Warrior Power wagon looming over the landscape on tractor-sized tires.
It was cooler inside the hogan-like structure. The hardwood floors were made of recycled bark beetle timber and bore that species’ unique pattern. Otto had finished them himself and put them in using tongue and groove. Navajo rugs covered the floor. The east-facing side had all the windows. A great room combined kitchen, dining, and living, two skylights shining on the painting over the mantle . Beyond that a hall led to the master bedroom, a full bath, and a spare bedroom. There was dog hair everywhere. Tufts formed into balls along the baseboards. A set of kettlebells in increasing size were lined up on the floor like a set of Russian nesting dolls. A lava lamp blobbed red on an oak end table.
The back wall was mostly built-in bookshelves holding tons of books, miniature Egyptian sarcophagus, and a perfect 1/25th scale model of Otto’s truck. Stella stared at the model from a half meter. A tiny gold crucifix hung from the truck’s rear view. The hi-fi system consisted of a Transcriptors turntable, a Harmon Kardon amp, and Bose speakers, all ancient by modern standards. There was a Count Basie record on the turntable. Stella looked at the two-foot shelf of vinyl: Ellington, Basie, Miles, The Rascals. All retro as befitting a man digging his heels in against the future.
On the north wall a crucifix hung above a framed print of Michelangelo’s Madonna and Child. There were three framed Ansel Adams black-and-white photographs of the mountains. Several cardboard boxes labeled EMERGENCY FOOD SUPPLIES were stacked in the corner.
Otto took off his hat and shades. He removed two Mason jars from his hand-built cabinet and opened the olive green refrigerator. “Would you like a glass of iced tea?”
“I’d love one. You have electricity?”
Otto nodded, closing the door. “Put the line in last fall. My requirements are nugatory. I’ve mounted 120 solar panels to a frame that goes up tomorrow. All my water comes from the sky or the mountain. I’ve got basins all over the place.” He handed her a Mason jar filled with iced tea. Stella sat on the weathered brown leather sofa. The cushions creaked and something hard dug into her ass. Working her hand between the cushions she retrieved a Grendel P30 .22 automatic. She looked at it for a second as if it were a turd, then placed it carefully on the wood end table with a thunk.
Steve came over and licked her knee.
“Stop that,” she said without conviction.
“Don’t lick the knee, Steve,” Otto said.
“Otto, when you said you would build a tank trap I thought you were joking.”
Otto sat in a big leather creaker angled toward her around the free-form mahogany slab coffee table. He shrugged and the corners of his mouth turned down.
“This is private property. I can do whatever I want.”
“Actually, you can’t. Although it’s private property, you would be responsible if someone trespassed and hurt themselves because you did not take reasonable precautions to remove an obvious hazard. What would have happened if I’d stepped on that thing?”
“Nothing. It’s strong enough to support a few people.”
“How would anybody even get a tank up here?”
“That’s their problem. You didn’t hike up here to give me grief about my tank trap.”
“No. I don’t suppose you know what’s going on.”
Otto smiled and stretched. “Not the slightest.”
Stella was practiced at concealing her emotions, partly through Sam’s example, partly through her work. She struggled to say it in an even tone. “Two days ago Sam died. He burst into flames at a rural Virginia resort.”
Otto’s demeanor did a U-turn as he leaned forward, arms on knees, face creased with concern. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Stella! I’m so sorry!”
He half raised himself to go to her but something about Stella’s demeanor--hostile pheromones perhaps---queered the deal. She looked drained, like she’d done all her crying beforehand. The motion failed and he sank back into the chair. “He burst into flames?”
“He’s the sixth prominent American to die by spontaneous combustion this year. The FBI is trying to determine how far back they go.”
“Okay.”
“It’s for real. The President wants you to take charge of the investigation.”
Otto peered at her.
“Why me?” he said.
“They have a computer program that matches ops with jobs.”
“Who was number two? Get him.”
“Otto,” Stella said quietly. “We’re talking about Sam. You’re an arson investigator. You’re one of a handful of people who’s actually seen this happen. You understand special ops. I’m asking you.”
Otto sat perfectly still. He’d lied about his age to join the Army, partly to piss off his old man, a university professor who taught American history. Professor Jonathan White lectured on white privilege, institutional racism, and that the U.S. was the chief engine of war and poverty throughout the world.
As each generation rebels against its parents Otto rebelled against Jonathan’s relentless America-bashing and contemptuous atheism. Even as a child Otto was fiercely independent. He looked at his father and thought here was a guy who couldn’t pound a nail hauling down big bucks to teach kids that the United States was the root of all evil.
Otto instinctively shunned his father’s values. He came to doubt his father knew the value of hard work. Otto was a throwback to his Scots Irish forbears who fought for hearth and home. In Jonathan’s house the Federalist Papers were considered seditious so Otto read them. The Declaration of Independence and Constitution were considered outmoded and irrelevant so Otto studied them. Thomas Jefferson was a slaveholder and libertine so Otto eagerly sought out his biographies.
Jonathan gave Otto Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn to read. It only reinforced his opinion that his father was out to lunch.
Otto’s mother left when he was fourteen upon learning that the professor had been carrying on an affair with an undergrad. Otto credited Babs with instilling in him a love of the Church, or if not the Church, God. She’d let her faith lapse during the Jonathan years in the face of his aggressive and pedantic atheism. Once divorced, she began attending church again and Otto joined her. At first it was just to piss off the professor. But he gradually came to accept not only the need for faith, but faith itself. Who was he to second-guess the Founding Fathers?
Otto joined at the beginning of Desert Storm. The Army assigned him to the Army Engineers, who in turn taught him all they could about investigating explosive devices and the results, which included arson investigation. The CIA recruited him after he figured out he was too crazy to be in the regular Army.
He touched the crucifix tat above his heart. He thought about what he’d seen in Libya. He thought about what he’d seen on the mountain.
“Of course I’ll come,” he said. “On one condition.”
“What?”
“Steve comes too.”
***