At the end of the day, the pantry had been framed and also had a roof. The shelves had not been made yet and they also lacked a door. Those were on the schedule for the framers for the following day. A smoker for preserving the meat was also to be made the next day. It would be a small house, built with thick wood and metal bars on the door and window, to protect the meat from bears and other predators. A team had been gathering lots of leaves and pine cones to burn so they would have smoke even after the snow came.
When Karen came downstairs to feed Max his breakfast, Max asked her, “Karen, what do you do all day when you are not feeding degenerates?”
She laughed and said, “Well dahling, it is not yust one think. One day I polish the wood banisters, one day I help with laundry and sometimes I take care of the sick. I am a rotator!”
Max laughed at her funny language and said, “I get so bored sitting here all of the time. It is enjoyable watching all of the activities going on but I would like to do something.”
“I don’t know vat ve would have you do, dahling. You are so naughty your hands would find trouble. Do you see? I mean ve have so many things to be done, but how can ve trust you?”
“Oh, that,” Max said. “I see what you mean. To be honest, I wouldn’t trust myself either. I do need to return the rented houseboat to Seattle, though. I am overdue on getting back to work too. I guess I made a mistake coming after you guys when I had been told to leave you alone. This is a real perplexing situation. I could help a lot around here if I could be trusted. I am a sharp shooter and although I have never hunted game, I am a quick study and could help with stocking the pantry.”
“Oh no, dahling, the guns do not belong in your hands!” Karen said. “You see, if we untie you, you run away. If we give you a gun to help hunt, you shoot us. If you work in the kitchen, all the women hide from you and the knives and the frying pans. You are young and fast, we are old and slow. Not a good match! You are finished eating. I must go. Put the thinking cap on. Maybe there is a solution.”
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Max understood. He could see things from their perspective. These people had not run away to spite him but because they were not finished with their lives, yet. They simply wanted to keep living until it was their real time to go. They were not hurting anybody here, except maybe Donald’s pocketbook! They were off of the streets and they worked damn hard for people in their golden years. Maybe he was wrong about the whole thing, at least with these particular people. Why, they had been feeding him and had him in a warm place. Sleeping upright was getting pretty old, but hadn’t he been trained to get by in difficult situations in his FBI training? This seemed like a convoluted way of thinking, but who was to say?
Bruce came home that night beaming! He had bagged the biggest moose that Donald had ever seen in all of his outfitting years! It had taken the framers to build a litter to drag the moose back to camp and four men to drag the moose on it and then get the whole contraption back to camp! What an ordeal! He was too large to bring into the processing shed, so he had to be processed outside on the ground the same evening and all of the meat had to be put away safely before they could call it quits for the night! The smokehouse was put to work the same night it had been built!
Bruce and Donald were too busy to do the tanning of the hides so they had taught two other men to do that job. Clarence and Simon went straight from supper to the shed and got right to work. Clarence had very thin gray hair done in a comb over and was a jovial sort. Simon was tall and slender and was actually one of the younger men. They got along really well. Simon asked Clarence what he thought about making something special for Bruce out of the hide and while Clarence thought it was a fine idea, he thought they should probably ask Donald if this hide had been planned for anything else. They got the ok and went to work on the project for their friend!
Meanwhile, Ray Moss made it up to the resort and was surprised how smoothly things had gone with the reporters snooping around. He thought, “The real test is going to be seeing what they actually put on TV about this place.” He knew sensationalism sells, so he realized if the story was not what they expected, they might simply embellish it and he was hoping they wouldn’t. Later, he caught the eleven o’clock news and marveled at the show. The hot tub was full of people talking and having fun, the pool had a young lady leading the white haired old ladies exercising, there were people outside playing badminton and croquet, and so on. The reporters couldn’t have done a better job convincing the public that this was a fine resort and the perfect place for the elderly to go! He heaved a sigh of relief and turned off the boob tube. “Well, we did it for now,” he told himself.