Helitak Daze

Helitak Daze - Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Yellowstone National Park, in Katlin's opinion, was a piece of heaven on Earth. Becoming a Forest Ranger had taken 9 long years. Taking classes as she could afford them, working full-time and family commitments meant her degree in Forestry Management was her dream come true. She traveled a long way from South Jersey to make a life for herself. There were a few regrets, big ones from bad choices made in her youth, but her appointment to this park made it all worthwhile.

She had friends and a job she loved. She lived in one of the highly coveted park cabins and woke up most mornings with a smile on her face. This morning was no exception. Whenever time permitted, Katlin would rise early and take her mountain bike and camera down the deer trails, where park visitors were not permitted. Her first purchase, upon moving to Yellowstone, had been a good camera. Her photos had been bought by a few travel magazines, which helped to supplement her income and by now she could identify nearly every plant and animal she photographed. April and May had seen rainfall levels of 150-200% above normal, so her early morning rides had been few and far between, riding wet trails would ruin them. Memorial Day was coming up and there would not be a whole lot of down time. With about 3 million tourists, campers and hikers a year, most came in the summer months.

This morning, dawn was just breaking over the hills, in what promised to be an exceptional day. She laid her bike at the edge of the woods and slowly made her way to the small stream that ran through the center of the meadow. A light fog still covered the ground, slowly dissipating as the sun began his morning climb. In this small, secluded spot, Mother Nature was bursting at the seams. The wildflowers in full bloom, so thick you could barely see the field grass. Purple Larkspur, Indian Paintbrush and Columbine of every color, Blue Camas, Scarlet Gilia, cornflower blue of the Harebell, tall stalks of pink Musk Thistle and low growing clusters of white Phlox crowded the meadow. They glittered like diamonds before the sun burned off the morning dew. The photos would be amazing.

Wading through the flowers, her pants were soaked by the time she reached her destination. A bend in the stream offered a shallow pool, with a rock big enough to lie on and dangle your feet in the water. Katlin made sure her radio was at her side and double checked for signs of danger. A bull moose stood at the edge of the clearing, trying to decide if she was a threat as Katlin tried to decide the same thing. The moose was nothing to fool with, but as he took a step further out of the wood, she assumed all was well and relaxed herself. Removing her boots and socks, before settling on the rock, she placed them under her head for a pillow. The sky was as blue as the Harebells; as blue as His eyes.

Crap! Less than six months they were together, but her memories of time spent with him still brought a smile to her face and a languid warmth spread over her limbs. Over twenty years she had been dreaming of those eyes. For such a practical person, she absolutely disgusted herself by this dream she kept alive. Stupid leprechaun! Reading her palm and telling her, "You will find the one you search for." She thought back, it had been a year and a half after she had lost touch with HIM. Her life was a disaster with no direction.

She thought back 21 years.

Just six months before, Katlin had met a sailor, when she was stationed at Willow Grove Naval Air Station. She was then a 20 year old Army Reserve helicopter crew-chief. The damned squid was an ET in the Navy, the strong silent type, but they had a lot of fun. A month before said leprechaun incident, she found she was pregnant, then found out his wife was also pregnant. Oh my God! As cynical as she was about the entire male population and all of WGNAS had managed to keep this secret from her. Obviously, he freaked. So, she said she'd handle it and that night, one month pregnant, he finished his tour of duty and went back to his family, never to be heard from again.

So, there she was. Drunk off her ass, sitting on a bar stood, in a Horsham tavern drowning her sorrows among strangers. Little did she know that the next half hour was going to be the weirdest experience of her life. She was trying to decide what to do about her secret, when she realized that crying into her fifth shot of bourbon might not have been her best decision. She sat there, crying in her drink, thinking about Him, Michael. The one she let slip through her hands. The one she searched for months after he stopped writing. If only she had not left Ft Rucker, Alabama, after her Army training was done. He had said he loved her, but she couldn't trust any man with her heart, no matter how much it hurt to walk away that day. She was sick to her stomach, thinking about what could have been. She'd called several Post Locaters throughout the US, in the past year and found him stationed at none of them. She only knew he had married and gone to Korea, but was trying to get a divorce. Why did you stop writing, Michael? Katlin always thought of him as He or Him, because every time she said his name, she would burst into tears. There was hardly a day that went by, in two years that she had not thought of him.

A handsome bartender came over and said there was a gentleman down the bar that wanted to speak to her. "Yeah, right."

"No." the bartender replied, "it's not like that. He's a retired cop. He's a very nice old guy and wants to help."

"Fine, I'll talk to him." She got up and walked around the end of the bar. There sat a small-rounded man, maybe 5 feet tall when he stood, white horsehoe-crown of hair, with a perfectly bald pat in the middle. His eyes twinkled, a dimple appeared in his chin and the apples rose in his cheeks as he smiled.

"Aah, Lassie. Sure and I'm glad that you came down here to talk to an old man." Katlin's jaw dropped. He was a leprechaun. That is the only thought that popped into her head to describe the picture in front of her. She took a step back.

"No need to fear me," he said, "I just want to be reading your palm."

Kat took another step back, "I don't think so."

"Coom now, Lass. Ye've been having a bad time of it and I think I can help you out."

Be for real she thought. Any idiot can see the puffy, red eyes and nose, with dirty tear streaks down her face. But something in his eyes made her extend her hand.

"Hmm. I see you are going to have a wee one." She tried to jerk her hand from his grasp. "Not finished, Lassie." He looked a little further. "You will find the one you search for."

Katlin gasped. "I'm not searching for anyone!"

"Of course, you are and he is not the wee babe's father. Now remember things can change with the choices you make, but I'm also seeing you will die young."

Katlin stared into his eyes for three seconds when she took back her hand and ran out to her vehicle. Not one to drink and drive, she was totally sober, when she hit her truck, and drove half way to Philadelphia, before she finally pulled over to get her shaking under control. She never questioned the three pieces of information the Irishman had given her; neither did she ever go back to that bar.

Back to reality, laying on a rock in Yellowstone, she could still remember every detail of that meeting. That piece of her soul still belonged to only Michael. She still harbored the hope that she would find him again. Well, she thought, maybe 20 years was long enough. He probably had a very beautiful wife and 2.3 kids by now. Besides, it was time to get to work.