“I didn’t.”
“Maybe you should talk to your daughters some more.”
Joe sighed. At least Sheridan, his oldest, hadn’t texted him. He wasn’t surprised. Since taking a job with Yarak, Inc. as an apprentice falconer the year before, she was often traveling or in remote locations with bad cell service.
“Is this whole hunting trip going to be posted to social media for all the world to see?” Joe asked.
“What do you think?” Joannides replied.
“Is that wise?”
Joannides paused to consider the question. Finally, he said, “Steve-2 made the call. He thinks it’s important to expose our users to aspects of real life they probably don’t know, like the hunting culture. His life is an open book. Sometimes it’s hard to restrain him when he gets enthused about a new topic. He knows there’ll be some serious pushback from users who hate the idea of hunting, but there has been serious pushback before and our users keep growing. ConFab has grown two hundred and fifty percent this year alone. We’re taking on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and all of the ‘dinosaur platforms,’ as Steve-2 likes to put it.”
Joe nodded. Joannides had answered the wrong question.
“Aren’t there people out there who don’t like him?” Joe asked.
“Sure there are. There are always negative people and haters, especially on social media. But we like to think of them as users who just haven’t been persuaded yet.”
Joe nodded again and drove on. In the past, he’d been accused of appearing naive at times. But it was nothing compared to Steve-2’s crew, he thought.
But then again, as Governor Allen had said, Steve-2 was a billionaire tech mogul. Joe was a Wyoming game warden.
* * *
—
The pavement gave way to gravel, then eventually narrowed into a two-track road. The pine trees closed in on it and branches swept by and sometimes scratched the exterior of Joe’s pickup. Each time it happened, Joannides flinched as if he expected a branch to break through the windshield and impale him.
Joe drove slowly and cautiously as the trail switchbacked up the mountain. At clearings he slowed to look ahead for oncoming vehicles—there were too many places where trucks meeting on the road would have no place to pull over or back up.
As they made a sharp turn to the right on the side of the slope, the Twelve Sleep Valley opened up to the east. The vista was almost overwhelming, even for Joe, who had experienced the view many times before. Depending on the weather, the time of day, and the cloud cover, the look of the valley changed every time. The tree-clogged river zippered through the bottom and the small town of Saddlestring shimmered in the sun in a distant cluster of sun-glints. Thirty miles away, another mountain range emerged from low-hanging clouds.
The magnificence and vastness of the scene was lost on Joannides.
“I brought the green smoothies for tonight since you said we might be getting to camp late,” Joannides said, not even looking up. “You don’t need to worry about that.”
“Good. I packed a sandwich.”
“Monday, tomorrow, is green/red day. Veggies and red meat.”
“Got it.”
“Tuesday is chicken paprikash and spaetzle,” Joannides said with a roll of his eyes. “Zsolt insisted on it and he claims he makes the best dish you can find outside of Budapest.”
“I bought all the ingredients,” Joe said.
“And Wednesday we fast.”
“You can fast all you want,” Joe said.
“Thursday I’ve written down ‘fresh elk.’ Will we have fresh elk meat by then?”
Joe shrugged. “It depends on our good fortune and Steve-2’s aim.”
“If not, you bought free-range chicken?”
“Either that or roasted pine grouse,” Joe said. “There’s a bunch of them up there where we’re going.”
Joannides made a pained expression at the deviation in his menu.
Joe said, “Look up and you’ll see a little bear.”
In fact, a small black bear, likely a yearling, was running up the middle of the road ahead of them. Its coat shone in the morning sun and the pads of its feet looked like pink slipper soles.
“A what?” Joannides said.
“A little bear.”
The assistant glanced up from his iPad just as the bear ducked into the timber to the left. “It didn’t look very scary,” he said.
“It isn’t a grizzly.”
Joannides shrugged and continued. “Friday is oily fish night.”
“There are a dozen cans of sardines in the panniers,” Joe said.
“Sardines? I asked for wild-caught oily fish.”
“I didn’t have a lot of options at the grocery store. We’re a long way from the ocean.”
Joe didn’t want to bring up the fact that all of the food he’d purchased for the ConFab group had been paid for out of his own pocket. Eventually, perhaps, the state would reimburse him. Marybeth had been concerned about it since it was the middle of the month and their budget was already stretched—they had a car repair bill due on her van and Lucy’s tuition payment. It was an issue that probably hadn’t even occurred to Joannides or Steve-2.
“Maybe we can have more fresh elk meat on Friday,” Joannides clucked while he updated the dinner schedule on his iPad. “Then we get to Saturday. We should be done and back on the jet by then, right?”
“If it all goes well,” Joe said. “No guarantees.”
“If it doesn’t, this whole trip will be a disaster,” Joannides warned.
“I’ll do my best,” Joe said.
“You’ll need to,” the assistant said. “Do you realize how much it costs Aloft to keep our CEO away for an entire week? We’re paying for pilots to sit around in your little town while we do this. The jet alone uses four hundred and fifty gallons of fuel per hour. Plus, every decision he isn’t there to make can mean millions of dollars to our shareholders.”
Joe took a deep breath and held it. Then he said, “I sent you a list as well. Did you get all the gear and equipment I wrote down?”
“We did our best,” Joannides said. “I’m sure you can imagine that some of the items aren’t easily found in downtown San Francisco.”
“Got it,” Joe said. “So let me know what you brought and what you didn’t. I’m sure I can fill in where you’re short.”