“Chop a lot of firewood out here?” he asked conversationally as Theo wound down the work on the second pole. They were a good size, maybe ten feet in length, and while not exactly straight, they were sturdy all the way to the end.
“Look around,” Theo said. “We’ve got trees, and we’ve got sky. Sometimes we’ve got water, and sometimes not so much. Sometimes we’ve got snow. But there’s always trees.”
Spencer had to smile because he sounded so put out. “You don’t like trees?”
“Like ’em fine,” Theo said, pulling the debris into a pile by the built-in utility box. “Sometimes they can feel a mite confining, that’s all.”
“You grow up here?” Spencer asked.
“Yup. Moved from Tucson when I was a little kid. Mom got a job teaching, Dad got a job trucking, and we got Annie the cat—perfect childhood.”
“That why you came back after college?”
Theo looked up at him and gave a brief smile. “How do you know I’ve been to college?”
Spencer took a deep breath and assessed his body. Everything hurt and most of it was fucked. But they were getting close to tangling with the rest of the tree, so it was time to move.
“Education and travel,” he said, pushing up on the fence. “Two things that give someone authority that they don’t need to push in people’s faces. You’ve had first-aid training, and they put you in charge of teenagers. What’s your degree in?”
Theo half laughed. “Land management and just plain management,” he said. “I knew I wanted to be right where I am. I got the EMT training because if you’re in charge of a parks and rec division in the middle of nowhere, sometimes people fall down and get hurt, and someone’s got to know what to do.”
Spencer found himself chuckling. “Well, aren’t you the prepared Junior Woodchuck. Here, give me one of those.” He stuck his hand out imperiously, but Theo walked the pole up to him and handed it over, taking stock.
“You’re bleeding through your bandages,” he said quietly. “And you’re starting to flush.”
Spencer nodded, not bothering to contradict him or even give him shit. “Yeah, Woodchuck. I reckon we’ve got a timeline here. Elsie’s got to get your kids to safety. She’s got to hook up with Glen and Damien, maybe get themselves another guy on the crew to man the crane, and she’s got to refuel. I’ve been here, what? Two hours?”
Theo’s mouth slashed up, and for a moment, Spencer’s sweet little Junior Woodchuck looked older—and dangerous. “Three,” he said grimly. He held up his wrist, and Spencer saw one of those all-weather watches, the kind that worked underwater. “Water’s still rising.”
Spencer nodded. “And they’re not going to know where we are. We need to pole this… this house along the closest thing we can guess is the road, because that’s going to be where they look for us.”
“Not the river?” Theo asked. “It’s not far off.”
Spencer swallowed. “The dam feeds into the river, doesn’t it?”
“Yessir.”
“Then the river is going to be like Grizzly River Run at Disneyland, and that’s not a ride either of us—nor our sturdy porch here—are prepared to take.”
Theo nodded. “I hear you. Okay. So we pole out. You going to let me steer? You seem awfully determined to take charge here, Mr. Helmsley.”
Spencer gave him what he hoped was a good-ole-boy grin. “Oh, I can take orders when it suits me.”
And for no reason at all, Theo flushed.
Spencer’s good-ole-boy grin spread and sort of curled out. He felt a little evil. “Oh my, Mr. Woodchuck, what are you thinking?”
Theo grunted and spun on his heel. “Nothing that would be of any interest to you,” he said shortly, and Spencer gave a wicked chuckle.
“Oh sure. Pique my interest there.”
Theo shook his head. “You’re incorrigible. You’re lucky your bosses didn’t have you up on harassment charges.”
Spencer guffawed out loud and turned his attention toward the situation at hand. “Oh, I’m sure they’ve wanted to bind and gag me and leave me in the dog kennels a time or two,” he said confidently. “But, you know, mediocre pilots are hard to find.”
“I doubt that.”
“That I’m hard to find?” Spencer snorted, and used his pole to push off. “I’m gonna get us away from the trees. You may want to push us where we should go,” he said.
“Oh my God, you are so bossing me around when I’m supposed to be in charge.”
“Topping from the bottom,” Spencer said, eyebrows waggling, even though Theo was busy with his own steering and couldn’t see. “It’s a specialty.” He didn’t want to add that all things in bed were his specialty. He’d never been picky, really. Mostly, he just didn’t want to be alone.
“I know what that means, and if you let anybody top you it’s because you’re in a mood,” Theo said grumpily. “And I meant that I doubt you’re a mediocre pilot. All your BS and you’d have to be pretty decent, or they’d dump you on your keester.”
“I’m tall and I’m decked,” Spencer said without conceit. His double-wide on Glen’s brother’s property had three bedrooms, of all things, and one of them he’d filled with free weights. The only thing he really missed about moving out into the country onto Preston’s dog-training property was the gym. Well, and the hookups. But once he had a place he could keep Colonel, he really didn’t need to bring home strangers anymore, did he? “They can’t dump me on my ass. But mostly I show up for work, and I get the job done, and let’s not forget Elsie. She and I come as a team, so they can’t ditch me, or they’d lose the real best pilot on the West Coast, and that would be a shame.”
Theo didn’t answer for a minute, and Spencer turned to see him scoping out their surroundings. Most of the smaller trees had become completely submerged, but this was the deeps of Oregon, and many of the pines and redwoods here stood over 150 feet tall. The result was they were poling their way around an obstacle course, and Spencer imagined it would be pretty damned hard to find a landmark of any sort in the immediate vicinity. But if Theo had grown up around here, he’d know which direction the river was, and which direction the current would take them. He imagined that the water pouring from the dam would ease up eventually, and in the meantime, the pressure of the water through the little valley would push them through to Stucky or Stickly or Sticky or whatever near the mouth of the valley, where the interstate branched off.
If they could find their way through the trees to where the valley flattened out and the town started, they might be able to find a house or an apartment building to perch on top of until the waters went down.
But as Spencer took a moment and surveyed their area from what was probably fifty feet higher than ground level, he had to admit it was still hard to see which direction would take them away from the dam and toward the open.
Theo let out a long, slow breath. “Mr. Helmsley?” he said, his voice a little shaky. “What do you think the odds are that my town is still there?”