Quaking Ch. 01

CHAPTER 1: Cade

The phone icon ballooned around Cade's thumb. When he identified the caller, he hesitated. A heartbeat cycled. He ended the call before it had a chance to ring.

Cade's phone lit up again.

A geyser of mist erupted in the late autumn air. Cade's contemplation of a Sawtooth Mountain sunset would have to wait another day. He settled back on his rocking chair, scuffed an inch of snow off the porch rail with his boots and answered the call.

"Howdy, Jasper."

"Cade! Damn, man, you're hard to get a hold of. How are you?"

"Great." The word fell like a basalt brick upon the receiver. Jasper was a good man. And a friend--as far as Cade had friends. But he represented a different life, a life that Cade had left behind.

"Do you know how long I've been trying to reach you?"

"Three days."

"Do you ever answer your phone?"

The fatigue that had lain over Cade like a second skin during the past few years grew heavier. "I just did."

"Yeah, but three days. Three days, Cade! What if it'd been an emergency?"

"It's always an emergency--" 'with you' went unsaid. Jasper was a management type with far too many irons in the fire. No person could excel with the kind of workload that had become Jasper's norm. "The world got by just fine before I came along. It'll get by just fine after I'm gone."

"You and your--" Cade could almost hear Jasper's air quotes. The guy talked with his hands. "--life philosophy. It's like you found God or something."

"Had to sometime. 'Seek and you shall find' is wrong. It should've been 'find and you shall have what you seek.'"

Jasper groaned. "That's bad. But, for your information, it is an emergency."

Cade uncrossed his legs and pulled the heels of his Ariat cowboy boots back down off the rail. He leaned forward in his chair, poised over his knees. "When isn't it?"

"I need a huge favor."

Cade combed a hand through his crew cut. His hair was quite dark, but in the past year, the gray--almost white--had started multiplying in his sideburns. "I'm retired, Jasper."

"You're forty-eight, Cade. Who retires at forty-eight?"

"I did." Way earlier than planned. He'd actually been forty-seven. Cade had never imagined retiring at forty-seven and sometimes the money scared him. Another million and he could've lived for eternity. Right now, things looked dicey after age eighty.

"No, you didn't. You're just up in that little cabin of yours moping. Even moping, you were one of the best field engineers we've ever had. Come on, man, join the real world. It's way past time."

"You mean join your world. I've tried that." Hadn't he? "Like my whole adult life. Your world pretty much sucks."

"Come on, what about your life philosophy? Life doesn't suck."

"You're right, life doesn't suck. Wage slave. Guilt slave. Fear slave. That sucks."

"You're just bummed because Heather left you."

"Left me?" A sulfurous cloud of despair welled up within Cade's chest. Razor claws ripped at his heart. "She slept with that misogynistic dick in Projects and then filed sexual harassment with HR when I confronted her. What does HR have to do with it? She was my wife!"

"You were at work." Jasper's voice had a deadpan note to it.

"She was blowing him!" Fire seared Cade's soul. He tried to reign in his runaway emotions, but his mind's eye painted him a pornographic picture of Heather on her knees. The slurping sounds. Derik's cruel smile when Cade walked in. How that smile was wrecked by his release. Heather's hum of approval. An audible gulp. Derik's blissed-out groan. Heather climbing out from under Derik's desk. "Under his desk!"

"Yeah, that's messed up. Really messed up. But hey, look on the bright side, you got a sweet severance. I mean, you were, like, paid to leave work! How awesome is that?"

"Of which she kept half!" He wanted to strangle Heather. Or Derik. Or both. No, he didn't. Ex-wife or not, he didn't want to hurt her. But he did. Frustration charbroiled him. Cade would've done anything to make the agony stop.

"You know," Jasper dragged out the word, "victim does not sound good on you."

Anger seeped from a rupture in Cade's soul like poisoned pus. "Don't you think I know that? If I knew how to change the way I think, I'd be the first to kick me in the ass to get on with it."

"All you've got to do is look at the bright side. You ditched your soul-sucking job and your dick-sucking wife. You got a new job. You got me for a boss!"

Cade's gaze drifted longingly toward the fading sunset. That was his bright side. Or he tried to make it his bright side. "I lost a quarter of a million dollar a year job."

"Hey! We paid you a quarter of a million." A little quieter, Jasper said, "Almost."

"And you worked me twelve hours a day."

"You worked fourteen at Blow-Jobs-R-Us. Don't deny it."

Cade's forehead sank into his free hand. He couldn't deny it. He wondered if that's what had gone wrong between him and Heather. Work. Eat. Sleep. That had become Cade's whole life. Never mind that he'd thought he'd been doing it for Heather. For them. "What do you want, Jasper?"

"You."

Yeah, like that was a surprise. "Me where? Doing what?"

"Quaking."

"Quaking, Utah?" Cade's voice sounded perplexed even to him.

"That's the one."

"What's in Quaking besides a ski lift or two?"

"You mean besides sweet slopes, six feet of powder and nice asses in ski pants?"

Heather, in her pink ski bibs, surfing over powder on her board, filled his mind's eye. Cade burned the memory down. "That ass in ski pants is going to be like twenty-four. I'm forty-eight." Heather in her forties had been hotter than any twenty-four-year-old.

"And a half. Don't forget that half. But really, man, it's been three years since Heather. If anyone could use some twenty-four-year-old ass right now, it's you. What do ya say?"

"I don't even know what the job is, Jasper. I'm a drive tech. What's in Quaking that needs a drive tech?"

"You're an engineer and a damn good one. Don't deny it."

Cade's internal critic sighed. "That life's over. What's the job, Jasper?"

"Moose Mountain."

"Moose Mountain?" Cade couldn't help the note of interest that wormed into his voice.

"Yeah, Moose Mountain, the ski resort."

"I know it's a ski resort, Jasper. A really small one. Like three lifts or something. What of it?"

"They installed a fourth lift over the summer. Six-seater to the summit. Or tried to, at least."

"Tried to? What happened?"

"What's happened everywhere? The plague. People got sick. Labor shortages. Engineering delays. Parts deliveries. The season's starting and the drive is still in pieces all over the floor."

"It's in pieces?"

"Yeah. Not one of our finer moments." A somber note crept into Jasper's tone. "We shipped it incomplete."

"Like how many pieces?"

"Incoming, inverter and reactor section were all separate."

"That's not bad. So, what do you need done? Power wiring, QA/QC and controls? You know I've not programmed a PLC in years and I've never done a ski lift. You've got a good control narrative and a complete program, haven't you? I mean, people sit on these things, suspended in the air. It's not like an oil refinery where last minute, 'Oh, do we need to control that?' engineering is like some kind of mantra. A ski lift isn't the kind of thing you just wing." That was part of the reason Cade had left engineering in the dust. He'd gotten exhausted with the hurry up and let's make all the same mistakes we made last time style of project management.

"We don't have controls. Moose Mountain insisted on Allen-Bradley. Allen-Bradley subbed some firm out of the Seattle area to do the controls."

"So, some kid barely out of college has programmed the controls?" Cade deadpanned. "That sounds like fun. I want to be the first skier on that lift."

"We don't know it's a kid."

"Yes, we do. Good, experienced control engineers don't work for integrators and can't be had for any amount of money. I know. My phone still hasn't stopped ringing and I left that business years ago. But if we don't have controls, what'd you need me for?"

"We shipped the IGBTs, firing cards and snubbers after the fact."

"You what?" Shock crescendoed with Cade's words. "Are you insane? What was your plan?"

A depressed note entered Jasper's voice. "We were going to send Casey."

"Casey's good."

Silence.

"Jasper?" Cade looked at his phone to make sure the call hadn't dropped. "Jasper, what happened?"

"COVID happened."

"Is he okay?"

"He is--" There was another pause, as though Jasper was trying to decide how much to say. "--but the kids and Debbi. Debbi's bad. She might not make it."

Horror stole Cade's breath. He'd worked side by side with Casey on a number of occasions--both as a customer and as a coworker after he'd joined Toshiba. He'd met Casey's wife, a vibrant, no-nonsense engineer over at the Mitsubishi manufacturing plant where Toshiba sourced their vacuum contactors. He liked her. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

"Yeah, Cade, there is. Take the job. Please."