OK, there are all these threads and stories swirling around, and I need to connect the dots before I’m done. Here’s my attempt to suture one part, a critical part, into the rest of the mess:

Ollie Svenberg lived his entire life in a circle twenty miles in diameter, centered on the house his grandfather built. Karl Svenberg came over from Sweden to log the forest, an axeman who liked to jump from board to board, chipping blocks out of the giant old growth trees that dwarfed the ones he had known in the forests around Göteborg. Karl was smart and was soon managing one of the many lumber mills in the young town of Hoquiam. He built his house from the lumber that ripped through that mill and that old house stood as strong as the douglas firs it was born from.

Johann “Jonny” Svenberg knew the forest wouldn’t last forever, the way the Americans plowed through them, so he convinced his father, Karl, to help him start a business that never lacked for customers, a funeral parlor. Sturdy wood coffins and warm swedish coffee helped his reputation as the friendliest little mortician in town. Ollie followed in his father footsteps, learning everything about the business of death and kept the family concern healthy. Jonny Svenberg was always quick to offer comfort or even a joke if that’s what the family needed, but Olaf was much more serious. After Jonny died, Olaf and Inga took over, keeping the Swedish coffee but losing the smile.

There wasn’t much to smile about in The Harbor once they had mowed down all the trees. People held on to the small piece they had, only moving away when there was no other choice. Now, sixty years later, there were only a couple mills still running, and with all his women gone, Ollie Svenberg lived just for the next bit of bad news for his neighbors. That and his debt to the trees. When the lumber companies clear cut a piece of land, they might clean it up and plant it, or they might sell it off cheap. All the value was in the standing timber and the dirt was, well just dirt.

Ever since Inga died, Ollie had been buying up dirt. Dirt that one day he hoped would grow trees back. He used to hike through his land, watching the ferns take over the old stumps and the little trees fight for spot in the sun. He owned over twenty thousand acres of forest land and it took a while to walk through all of it, but that’s what he did when Hanna and Frida died.

He couldn’t bear the thought of seeing his daughters in death, he wouldn’t. He asked a lady that lived in the old folks home to move his car around town so no one would look for him and he walked out of town. He walked north along the river and into his land, with a few things to eat, a warm coat and a compass, he’d come out when he was ready, or he wouldn’t.

The tenth day he was in the woods, he got caught in a storm. Wet to the bone and freezing, he found an old cedar tree where he stripped his wet clothes off and tried to start a fire. In the night he passed out, overcome by hypothermia. He woke up three days later, wearing his clothes, but his shoes were on the wrong feet. He didn’t remember what happened, but the dreams returned. Those three days of fever dreams haunted him when he got back to town.

*****
“Are you ready to try this again?”, Ralph asked Peter when he showed up at Ralph’s house on Saturday morning.

“Can we even get up to that geocache again? Have the cops left?”, Peter asked.

“I don’t know yet. But now I have all the clues, still encrypted, and if need be the clue that will lead to the next location”, Ralph said, waving a bunch of papers that he had just run through his printer.

“I’m not bringing the dogs today”, Peter said.

“Although that takes some of the adventure out of it, that is probably a good idea.”

“Your neighbor is outside washing that old hearse. I’ve never seen him before.”, Peter said, pushing the curtain back to look out the window at the old man.

“Oh, Svenberg. Let’s go see what he’s up to. He’s a strange one, he is”, Ralph said, putting his shoes on to go outside.

Mr. Svenberg hadn’t washed the hearse in two months, the rain kept it pretty clean if he didn’t drive it out of town, or behind a logging truck. The last funeral was a new fangled, green affair and he had to drive up a dirt road to the top of a hill where the family buried their grandfather in the woods, wrapped in cotton cloth. He didn’t make much money on that type of funeral but it paid for gas.

“Hey, Mr. Svenberg. How’s it going?”, Ralph asked, walking up to the old man. “This is my friend Peter, he’s my sidekick!”, Ralph joked, nodding at Peter, who smirked.

“Nice to meet you Peter. I’m Ollie, the undertaker, boo!”

“Ha, funny”, Peter replied, shaking the old man’s hand.

“This car would be great for hauling gear around in”, Ralph said.

“Do you need that much beer?”, Svenberg asked, not hearing properly.

“No, not beer. Gear, for my band. My van died and I keep making Peter haul the amps and things around”, Ralph said.

“That’s my van over there”, Peter said, pointing out the vanagon in the street.

“Oh, nice German car. I’d like to have a Volvo instead of this old Cadillac, but it’s here”, Svenberg said, shrugging.

“We’re going to try to go up to the woods where they found all those body parts last week!”, Ralph told Ollie.

“Hmm, watch out for the cops”, Ollie said.

“We’ll try to stay out of their hair”, said Ralph.

“Say hi to the trees for me.”

Oh, I’m at 41,791 words.