With a wave, Dave got back into the van, which sped off in another little cloud of dust. Leaving the kid standing there by himself, and in that minute, Marston had a small pang of sympathy. The kid was on his own. Didn’t have any teammates either. Marston knew what that was like.
“Hey, I’m Gabe, your team lead,” said Gabe, holding out his hand for the kid to shake. “You’re Kelliher, right? Kelliher Dodson?”
“Kell,” the kid said, looking at Gabe with enormous green eyes, clutching his backpack to his chest like he was sure someone was going to rip it out of his hands. “Kell, if that’s okay.”
“Sure,” said Gabe in his friendliest, calmest tone, because it was obvious that he could see, as well as Marston could, that Kell was scared, maybe out of his mind, a slight shake in his shoulders, the bones of his fingers standing out as he clutched that backpack.
If Kell was like this while standing in a clearing in a pretty forest, he must have been a mess in prison. Marston itched to see Kell’s folder so he could read it and figure out what was going on, but it was none of his business because Kell was on Gabe’s team.
Gabe dropped his offered hand, because Kell simply wasn’t taking it. Instead, he gestured to the little group standing in a half circle.
“I’ll show you where your tent is, but in the meantime, this is everybody. You’ll be on my team with Blaze and Wayne.” Gabe pointed the two men out. “And that’s Royce, and his team, Gordy, Jonah, Duane, and Tyson. And then there’s Marston.”
Marston lifted his chin when Gabe pointed him out and saw the flicker in Kell’s eyes as though he was trying to figure out the pattern. Team lead, team. Team lead, team. Then lone guy, no team. Well, he might get a team at some point during the summer, but today was not that day. Tomorrow didn’t look good either.
“You’ll be sharing with Wayne, so let me show you where that is.”
Gabe and his team, Kell in tow, headed off to the tent that Wayne, up until that moment, had occupied by himself, since his original tent mate, Kurt, had been expelled from the valley due to his violent nature.
Royce and his team headed off into the woods, which left Marston standing on his own for a minute, taking stock of his day, the momentum of energy created by them all standing together suddenly dissipated. Then he headed to his workshop in the woods.
Leland had given Marston a free hand in setting the workshop up exactly how he wanted, but that was like Leland. He liked to give his employees enough rope to hang themselves. At least it had seemed that way to Marston in the beginning. Now he knew better.
The truth of it was, Leland lavished his employees if not with too much praise, then with the exact right tools to do their jobs. Thus it was that when Marston had brought Leland his sketches of his workshop, started by him and finished by Austin, the ranch’s accountant, who was also an artist, Leland had held the sketches at arm’s length and then nodded.
“We can expand on this,” said Leland, as he handed the sketches back. “When the first season gets underway. We can get an even bigger tent to shade the area and hold arts and crafts. I like it. Order what you need, and send the invoices to Maddy.”
The final result was a wide but not deep shed with doors that slid closed to keep out the rain and weather and to hold Marston’s tools and paint, chisels and dust cloths, everything he might need to make signs. The shed was painted a light sage green to help it blend into the surroundings.
The wood for the signs he’d be making was going to arrive in batches, so he would only need to store it for a little while. Also on order were a jig saw and a belt sander, two pieces of equipment that would need to be covered with canvas every night, as there was simply no room in the shed. In retrospect, the shed should have been bigger, but it wasn’t, and so Marston was just going to have to deal with that.
The crown jewel of Marston’s workshop was the white canvas pavilion tent, ten by thirty feet, with sturdy pole, and screened cutout windows at either end and along the longest wall that could be covered if the rain kicked up. From a distance, the open-faced tent made it look like there was a little festival going on, and if Marston ordered flags, it could look like the circus was in town.
But what it meant in reality was that he could work in the shade with a cross-breeze coming through the screened openings, in the midst of a pretty forest. When he stepped out of the tent, he could see the blue lake through the trees, sparkling in the sunlight.
And, as he walked up to it along the narrow dirt path, he knew he was a lucky man to have landed such a great gig. Lucky except for the fact that he had no team to work with, but he was simply going to have to get over that.
Inside the tent were two tables. One was for planning, sawing, chiseling, anything dry. The other was for painting, so as to at least attempt to keep paint stains to a dull roar. Beneath was a wooden platform, currently covered in old paint canvas; at the end of the summer, or as needed, the canvas could be replaced, leaving the wooden platform of the tent looking like new.
Marston stepped up and went to the planning table, where Royce had left a folder beneath a large rock so it wouldn’t blow away.
Had Royce been anyone else, he would have sent his list of information about what signs needed to be made to Marston’s iPad. But Royce was, evidently, an old-fashioned guy, so he had made his list on a pad of paper, ripped out the sheets, and put them in a folder.
There was no way he could memorize the Latin names of things, but now Marston had what he needed in Royce’s tidy, old-school cursive handwriting, listing every geological feature, every bird, every tree, every plant.
He was a marvel for detail, too, making suggestions about where the signs might be placed. There was even a little hand-drawn map, though Marston imagined he needed to get a real map and mark it up, so he could plan the distance between signs enough that guests didn’t feel the place was littered with them.
Eventually, all of this would all have to be marked on an online map and recorded in a database, so they could keep track of the signs and replace them as needed. Had Leland agreed to plastic signs, those signs wouldn’t need to be replaced for fifty years, but seeing as they were going to be made of wood, with rough edges, for verisimilitude, the need for replacements would come much sooner than that.
Humming under his breath as he leaned over the planning table, Marston made mental notes, thinking he’d do all the directional signs first, as they could be used right away by everybody in the valley. Then he’d make signs for the various plants and trees and wildlife, along with signs indicating the names of any geographical points of interest, such as Guipago Ridge.
He still needed to order a couple bags of cement, and get his own posthole digger, a small one, just the right size to create a sturdy base for each sign. A bucket and trowel for mixing cement.
He already had a large dumpster on order, with the intention of keeping his area immaculate. No doubt Leland would want to come by and inspect Marston’s progress, and he meant to be ready for that.
Propped up on the tall stool in front of the planning table, he studied Royce’s list and then realized that because of the cursive handwriting, he couldn’t make out half of the names. It was evidently important to have the Latin names along with the regular ones, and Marston was fine with that. But there was no way he was going to make any sign until he was sure of the spelling.
Tucking the list into his back pocket, he sauntered through the woods, intending to find out where Royce was, so he could ask him. And also, as he wended his way toward the mess tent, to take some mental notes as to how big each sign should be, probably starting with a basic size and then increasing or decreasing depending on the setting, plant, or geological outcropping.
