Badger Games (14 page)

Denny made a defensive, apologetic grimace. “Oh, well, he said it was all right,” he said, “but…. Look, I'll be straight with you. You aren't cops, are you?”

Joe's surprise must have been convincing. Denny smiled and said, “He grows a little pot, maybe, nothing big. He doesn't sell it or nothing, but you know how it is …”

Joe and Helen both laughed, relieved. “Oh, for cryin' out loud,” Joe said. “That sounds like Franko, all right.”

Denny drew them a crude map on a bar napkin, showing the road that ran up Frenchy's Fork. They had to take another road, this
one not so good, and it soon got much worse, becoming a mere two-track that angled up over rocky humps, ran along bluffs above the stream, and wound through scrubby pine thickets. But they had four-wheel drive and were pleased with an opportunity to use it. Just when the road dropped down to the stream—which may not have been Frenchy's Forque anymore, for all they knew—and seemed to promise to angle into a valley, it would climb up into the hills again and into a different drainage. They forded streams twice and carefully crawled over some pretty rough knobs and ridges before the road let down into a beautiful valley that opened out before them, backed by craggy mountains beyond. Altogether, it was a good ten miles back into the brush before they came out onto an open meadow.

They arrived at a well-constructed barbed-wire fence line, at last, and a gated cattle guard. There was no sign of a house, just a rising meadow filled with brown bunchgrass waving in the steady breeze and an occasional pine tree. Joe got out to try the gate and look around. It appeared that there was a bluff off to the south, presumably fronting the stream. The rising land crested a quarter of a mile before him, and a couple of modern-looking windmills poked their tops over the ridge, their huge propellers spinning briskly. Joe supposed that beyond that might be the house they were looking for. But there were no signs. And when he tried the gate, which wasn't chained or padlocked, it didn't yield.

“Now what?” he said to Helen, who had gotten out to join him at the gate.

“Maybe we have to climb over and walk,” she said.

At that moment a voice spoke from a concealed speaker somewhere nearby: “Yes?” it said. “Mr. Humann?”

Joe looked around. The best he could make out was that the voice emanated from a pile of field rocks about five feet high beyond the gate. He peered at it. There could be a television camera there as well, he thought.

“That's us,” Joe said, loudly.

“Come on in,” the voice said. There was a buzz, and the gate swung open on oiled hinges. “The house is just down the road. You'll see it.”

They found the house all right. They drove up the road, accompanied by four large Rottweilers, and stopped in a yard in which were parked three four-wheel-drive pickup trucks of vintages ranging from old to current. The dogs waited patiently, tongues lolling, not barking, but watching.

The house was impressive, essentially a rustic greenhouse. It was more or less oval, sheathed in rough cedar, with a roof that was covered with solar-collector panels and a lot of skylights. It even had a tower. The southern exposure and parts of the east and west sides were glassed in and all but bursting with cultivated greenery. It looked like Frank Oberavich grew more than just a little pot.

The man who came out to greet them, shushing the Rottweilers, was not anyone Joe or Helen had expected to see. This man was short and slight, heavily bearded, with long blondish hair gathered into a ponytail that trailed out from beneath his battered old cowboy hat. He squinted at them in the bright sunlight through glasses mounted in clear plastic frames. His thin, wiry arms were deeply tanned, and he wore baggy frayed khaki shorts and mocassins with no socks. It was sunny, but cool in the fall air, and his stained T-shirt was inadequate. He crossed his arms on his narrow chest and rubbed his elbows. He was none too clean, and when he smiled they saw that his teeth were stained brown.

“Hi,” he said, in a soft voice. He addressed Helen, who was in the driver's seat. “I guess you must be Mrs. Humann?” He turned to the nosing dogs and told them to get back. They retreated but looked on with interest. Joe and Helen got out, warily eyeing the dogs.

“Don't worry about them,” Oberavich said. “They recognize dog people. They're very reliable that way.”

“I never thought of myself as a dog person,” Helen said. “I had a puppy once, but he got run over by a car, and I was so heartbroken I never got another one.”

“I don't think it's necessary to actually have dogs,” Oberavich said, “just be … I don't know …
okay
people.” He smiled uncertainly, as if embarrassed.

“Well, I'm Helen,” she said, thrusting out her hand. “Sedlacek, actually. It's more convenient to say Mrs. Humann. You know?”

“Sid-logic?” he repeated. “You're Serb?”

Helen shrugged. “Could be. I'm not sure.” They both laughed lightly.

This was not Franko, Joe was sure. Not Colonel Tucker's Franko, anyway.

But he was amiable. He invited them in, and while they sipped some wine, which they'd brought along on Denny's recommendation (and at his extravagant price, for California jug wine), he enthusiastically showed them around his amazing greenhouse. It was plenty warm inside, and moist. There were plants everywhere, huge and small. One walked through and among them on a slatted walkway. Besides magnificent marijuana plants he had flowers, many kinds of cacti, and some ornamental shrubs. He had devised an elaborate watering system, run off the solar-power-generating system. A radio played classical music from a distant station.

They got along very well, right away. He had a truly interesting house, albeit considerably disheveled and disorderly, except for his plants. There were books everywhere, dishes in the sink, clothes tossed about at random. Although there were a couple of bedrooms and a bath, it seemed that he lived in one large room, basically, except for a delightful tower room, which one reached by climbing a ladder. Here there were more books, a stereo system, and many recordings, mostly CDs of Mozart and Haydn. The tower room had a bench running about it at desk height. The room was barely
large enough for the three of them to stand in; there was only one chair, a pretty good upholstered leather desk chair. He had a typewriter buried under some books and papers, and a very up-to-date laptop computer with the lid open, running a screen saver that displayed constantly changing geometric shapes.

There were windows all around, and one could look out on a splendid panorama of mountains. The stream, Frenchy's Fork, was beyond the line of scrubby pines, he pointed out. The bluff dropped down about a hundred feet, but there was a good path. If they liked, they could walk down there. The fishing was very good, he said. Fly fishermen came up there from time to time, but not many knew about it or were willing to drive back in this far.

Joe was intrigued. How did he keep all these things going, the pumps, the stereo, and so on, without commercial power? Oberavich eagerly showed them his power system. It was multifaceted, employing not only solar converters but the windmills and even a couple of small stream-driven turbines, and was backed up with a bank of batteries. All of this, in turn, was connected to a very deep well that provided heat and water and served as an energy reservoir. It was fairly complicated, a little capital intensive, but totally reliable and over time almost free to run.

“I never have power failures,” Oberavich said proudly. “The power company is always breaking down. Not me.”

From there the conversation went on to topics like flowers, music, books, and so on, mostly conducted with Helen, while Joe drifted about, nodding and remarking approvingly. Oberavich built furniture, he raised vegetables, he had been studying the stars. Soon he was urging them to stay for dinner. Joe and Helen readily accepted. While he was preparing dinner they went for a stroll over to the bluff and looked down at the stream below. They could see up a narrow canyon, from which the stream issued, towering cliffs on either side.

When they came back and sat down to a decent spaghetti with a marinara sauce, they asked about the canyon. You could walk up it about a mile, Oberavich told them, and it was spectacular, but eventually it got to be pretty tough going. There was nothing beyond it but more mountains, as far as Deer Lodge, he said. He owned several hundred acres of this, he added, shyly. How many hundreds? Actually, a couple thousand or so.

Developers had been after him to sell for years. They'd bring in power, sell large acreages to wealthy Californians. He wasn't having any of it. He was well protected, with a state forest and BLM land adjoining his. He didn't think there would be any development in his lifetime, although across the river was some property owned by an old lady in Great Falls, which might eventually be sold. But the bluff isolated him from that. “I don't need their power,” he said, smugly.

Joe was enraptured. This was a Hole-in-the-Wall indeed! He was already trying to figure out how to get into this paradise. But he didn't mention it to Oberavich. That would take some doing, he realized. A long, careful campaign would be required. He didn't mind; he could be patient.

After dinner, Oberavich was comfortable enough with them to roll some huge spliffs of his best stock. It was dynamite grass, potent but mild to the palate. They went out and sat on the grass in the yard, smoking and drinking the last of the wine. It had turned quite cool, and as night had fallen the sky had filled with an almost oppressive number of brilliant stars. Oberavich was mellow, relaxed in long pants now and a heavy sweater. He pointed out the constellations to Helen.

Joe and Helen were having trouble focusing. They were absolutely swelling with good feeling from smoking so much powerful marijuana. Although they had discussed Joe's quest for his old friend earlier and had dismissed it as a lost cause, Joe cautiously
brought it up again. He vaguely described having met Franko Bradovich “back East.” They'd worked together, he said, on a “research project.” He said it was a “nature thing,” trying to organize some research materials for computers. It was too complicated to go into. But he hadn't really known Franko very well. In fact, he hadn't given much thought to the guy since, but after coming to Butte …

Oberavich didn't press for details, fortunately. He was obviously feeling pretty mellow himself. But he did ask what this Franko looked like. When Joe provided the description given them by the colonel, however, Oberavich said, after a very long moment in which they all just sat back in the now cold grass and stared at the billions of stars, “Sounds like my cousin.”

“Really?” was all Joe could think to say.

After another long moment, Oberavich said, “Yeah. Paulie's into that stuff, that research. Eco stuff. He's the smart one in the family. Always traveling around. India. Got up into Kashmir. Loved Kashmir. Went to the poppy fields.”

“Poppy fields?” Helen said. “You mean, like opium?”

“Oh yeah,” Oberavich said. “He said it was bitching stuff. Too good, he said. Scared him, I think. He left, went to … I don't know, somewhere in Yugoslavia. He spent quite a while there, I think. Another great place. But then they had the war, you know. Whew! Are you guys as fucked up as I am?”

They all laughed at the incredible wit of the comment, almost uncontrollably. Eventually they staggered to their feet and went inside. It was warm indoors. They were amazingly hungry again. But when they'd devoured the remains of the spaghetti, they were soporific. No way they could drive out. Oberavich invited the visitors to sleep over—an extra bedroom that he used for storage had a mattress on the floor, and he had blankets. Joe and Helen fell asleep in seconds.

T
he next morning there were the usual awkwardnesses, inevitable in such situations. The parties realize that they've experienced an unanticipated intimacy with someone they don't really know. It was surely more awkward for Oberavich. Two strangers had waltzed into his life and he had fallen into perhaps a too familiar easiness with them, unusual behavior for him. He couldn't be sure how much he had said. But he didn't think he had said anything too revealing. If it had just been the grass, he thought, but there had been all that wine. He had more than a slight hangover.

As it worked out, the three people were quite agreeable to one another, and the awkwardness soon dissipated. Oberavich, with Helen's assistance, cooked up an enormous breakfast of bacon and eggs, with plenty of coffee and toast. They fell on it like famished dogs, and it was only in the eating of it that they recalled that they had polished off all the leftover spaghetti before bed. But that didn't stop them from mopping their plates clean.

After that, however, it became apparent that Oberavich was eager to get on with his normal routine. Joe and Helen politely refused his invitations to linger, and they left after pitching in to help
him clean up. Helen and Joe drove away promising to come back soon and declining a generous offer of a grocery sack of the excellent grass. Nobody had as much as mentioned Paulie.

Nothing may have been said to Oberavich, but it was the major topic between Joe and Helen as they sped back to Butte. Joe was sure there was something worth pursuing here. He recalled very well the things that Oberavich had said. He had drunk very little wine, leaving the greater quantity to Oberavich and Helen.

“There were several things about Paulie that were too good to ignore,” Joe said.

“Evocative, you mean?” Helen said. She was driving, as usual.

“Exactly. That stuff about poppies, opium, and then Yugoslavia, and the fact that the description fit. Paulie could be our guy. Maybe, for who knows what reason, Paulie used a version of his cousin's name while he was in Kosovo. He probably entered the country on his own passport, as Paul Oberavich. That's why they didn't catch it.”