Nothing Gold Can Stay

FIVE

Nenevok Creek, September 1

Mark couldn’t understand why she was so angry. In seven years of marriage, he hadn’t known she could get this angry. He’d never known silence could be so loud, either; this one was thunderous, reverberating off the steep sides of the three peaks and tumbling down the mountainsides until it filled the valley down to the very surface of the creek.

One moment she had been in his arms, and the next he was on his ass, his chest still smarting from the foot she had used to push him away. The silence began as she made him corned beef sandwiches with mustard and lettuce, just how he liked them, on bread out of the Dutch oven the night before. Nothing interfered with Mark’s appetite, so he wolfed them down with the macaroni salad and the large dill pickle Rebecca produced to go with them. He’d made the effort, holding up his end by carrying his plate to the wash tin on the counter, but when he tried to pull her into his arms again, she had slipped free, sat down and used the bead tray to block any further attempt at embraces.

In seven years of marriage, he had never once been incapable of seducing her into seeing things his way.

Now, clad once again in hip waders, he bent over the creek to wash dirt out of a pan in pursuit of that elusive gleam of color. An eagle cried overhead, and he raised his head to look, shading his eyes against the sun. A rustle of brush warned that some wild thing was nearby, how sharp of teeth or long of claw he had no idea. He ignored it, as he always did. “Come on, honey,” he’d said to Rebecca, “we’ll leave them alone, they’ll leave us alone. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

Pity about that bear charging them the first week. It had only been a fake charge, the sow had skidded to a halt fifty feet away, bellowed out a roar of defiance and then turned abruptly on the space of a dime and lit out for the hills like she had been shot from a catapult. They had come to no harm, but the experience had unsettled Rebecca. Well, that and the moose eating all the broccoli and cauliflower out of the garden and then approaching the cabin to nibble at the bark of the logs. “They’re eating the house!” she’d said when he had come home that evening.

He had laughed and loved her out of her fear. God, she was beautiful, his wife. He couldn’t see her even in jeans and T-shirt without wanting to rip them off and wallow in her, inhaling her, burying himself in her.

He’d never been quite sure how he had managed to win her. Looking like she did, Rebecca had had men lining up three deep wherever she went. He had beat them all to the gate, by god.

He tilted the pan and let the rest of the water drain out. There were a few specks of color, nothing more. He rinsed out the pan and looked upstream. There was an outcropping of large rocks at the first bend that he had been slowly, steadily zeroing in on. If he hadn’t run out of summer he would have discovered the big one, the pocket where the heavier gold had settled as it was being washed downstream. No mere dust there, he was sure, but nuggets the size of peanuts, nuggets by the pound, never mind the ounce. One more summer and he would hit pay dirt. Why couldn’t she understand that?

Bewilderment was giving way to resentment. She was his wife. She had promised before God and man to love, honor and obey him. He hadn’t insisted on the traditional words; she had. In his turn, he had promised to provide for her, to endow her with all his worldly goods. His worldly goods were about to increase in a big way. Under the next rock or around the next bend, the gold beckoned him on, promising wealth and riches beyond his wildest imaginings and, evidently, her comprehension.

Gold. Number 79 on the periodic table. He’d panned his first gold at the Alaska State Fair two years before. He hadn’t wanted to go, but Rebecca had beaded some artsy-craftsy thing into a small brass ring and entered into one of the competitions, and she’d dragged him along for the judging. He had wandered off and discovered a long trough with water circulating through it. The water was very dirty.

“Like to try your hand?”

He looked up and saw a man twice his age, half his weight and a foot shorter than he was peering at him through Coke-bottle lenses. “At what?”

The man had handed him a battered gold pan that looked as if it had come across the Chilkoot Pass in 1899, and that was when he’d first realized he’d stopped in front of the Alaska Mining Association booth.

He’d filled the pan with dirt and water and swirled it around. The man showed him how to tilt it so the water ran out and the dirt settled in a half-moon at the bottom. He dipped more water and dirt, swirled out more water and dirt, wetting his sleeves to the elbow, soaking the front of his shirt and jeans, repeating the motion again and again until there, in a few grains of sand, there it was, a single tiny perfect flake of gold, gleaming up at him, beaming up at him.

He’d looked up and the man had grinned at him. “Nothing like it, is there?”

No, he thought now, looking down at the pan in his hands. Nothing.

Fine. He set his jaw. They’d never had a bump in the marriage before, but all marriages had them. They’d ride it out. Anchorage wasn’t much of a proving ground, all the modern luxuries, the modern conveniences. Out here, a man was tested.

A woman, too.

His resentment began to fade. Hell, it wasn’t her fault she’d never hauled water from the creek, or chopped wood for a fire to keep her warm. It would take time for her to get used to the life, that was all. Maybe he had enough time before the hard frost set in to dig a new hole, move the outhouse closer to the cabin. That’d probably make a big difference.

He looked at the rock upstream, a shard of quartz sparkling at him with a come-hither look in its eye. The sun was well behind one of the mountains by now, and getting to it earlier every day. Not enough daylight left to fetch the pry bar. For a moment he was sorry he hadn’t taken on someone to help, someone who might know more about mining than he did, but he dismissed the thought almost at once. At least that was one thing he didn’t have to worry about out here, no men to vie for Rebecca’s attention. Out here, he had her all to himself. Days hunting gold, nights sleeping with Rebecca. Although they never got all that much sleep. Last night, for example. He shrugged his shoulders, and the marks still stung.

Why couldn’t it be enough for her, too?

He put away his equipment in the shed and hung the hip waders to dry. The smell of salmon frying and rice boiling greeted him as he opened the door. He brightened. Good. She must be over her mad. He’d known it wouldn’t take long.

He pulled the door closed behind him, and without turning around from the counter, she said, “I don’t care what you do, Mark, but I’m flying out of here with Wyanet Chouinard on Monday.” She flipped the salmon steaks onto a plate and put it on the table. “Supper’s ready. Sit down and eat.”

He sat automatically. “But, Rebecca-”

She brought the rice, the soy sauce and the salad, already dressed. “No, Mark,” she said, and whatever he had been going to say was stopped dead by the firm decision in her voice. “I have done everything you’ve asked me to. I quit my job when I didn’t want to, I turned over our home to a house sitter I didn’t know, I left behind my friends-”

“I sold it,” he said, looking at his plate.

“-and family and-what?”

“I sold the house.”

Silence. He looked up to see her fork suspended in midair, her blue eyes staring at him unblinking. “Before we left in May, I sold the house.”

More silence. Compelled to fill it, he said, “I sold it to Jeff Kline. He always liked it, and you know he’ll take good care of it. You don’t have to worry about our stuff, I paid a mover to pack it up and put it into storage. We’ll have it shipped out here after I add on a couple of rooms to the cabin.”

He looked up and her eyes were fixed on his face but she was looking more through him than at him. “Rebecca?” He took her hand. She let it lie in his, limp, lifeless, unresponsive.

“How could you sell it?” she said finally.

He misunderstood. “It was in my name. It was my house before we were married. We never did get it changed over.”

“No,” she said, her voice coming more strongly. “Howcould you?”

He couldn’t quite meet her eyes, couldn’t quite face that wounded look. “Just give it a chance, Rebecca, okay? We’ll be together and that’s all that really matters, isn’t it?” He took a deep breath and made the supreme sacrifice. “And maybe we can have that kid you’re always bugging me about. Great place to raise kids, isn’t it? No drugs on the street corner, no crazy people shooting up the high schools, no television to monitor. You could teach him, home-school him, you know, and I could teach him everything else. You’ll like it, Rebecca, you’ll-”

She stood up, pulling her hand free.

“Rebecca? Honey?”

Her eyes darted around the room, looking at the thin mattress of the cot they’d slept on for the last three months, the corners of the room filling with darkness five minutes earlier this evening than the evening before, the stained and torn linoleum covering the floor, the battered counter that served as kitchen, laundry and bathroom, the rough, peeling surfaces of the uninsulated logs.

There was a look on her face that he didn’t like. “Rebecca, I know it hasn’t come as easily to you as it has to me, but-”

She pushed back her chair and walked around him to the door. She flung it wide, and he heard the splash of the neighborhood grizzly as he went into the creek for supper.

Rebecca stood on the doorstep for a long time, but she never stepped outside.

Kagati Lake, September 1

An hour later they had the body bagged and in the plane, and the rolls of film out of the camera and carefully labeled. The prints Prince had lifted were in an envelope, also labeled. The family was gathered around the kitchen table, a fire in the fireplace shared by both kitchen and living room, and all the lanterns in the house lit. Leonard had insisted on cooking everyone a meal, fried salmon steaks, salad from the garden out back and boiled potatoes, also from the garden out back. Simple food, well cooked, it tasted of dust in Liam’s mouth and he knew from Wy’s expression that she felt the same. Prince cleaned her plate and asked for seconds.

“Who could have done this?” Leonard said for what had to be the ninth or tenth time.

“We don’t know yet, sir,” Liam replied. “It looks as if your wife was getting ready to open the post office for the day. What time might that have been?”

“She was always early,” one of the daughters-in-law volunteered. “She was always at the counter by nine o’clock, catching up on the books, ordering stamps, stuff like that.”

“What time do you normally get here?” Liam said to Wy.

Wy pushed away her plate, still full. “Depends which way I fly the route. Sometimes I start here and work south, sometimes I start at Mable Mountain and work north. Today I started at Mable Mountain.”

“Anybody know which way you’re flying on any given day?”

She shook her head.

“Who else lives in Kagati Lake?”

Leonard answered. “Not that many. This area is just a collection of homesteads, but not the normal kind of homesteads, you know, buying land from the state, proving up with a cabin in seven years and then it’s yours. A bunch of gold miners came through around the turn of the century, on their way to the Yukon, and some of them stopped off to do a little panning. They found color, so they staked claims. Some stayed, like my great-grandfather.”

Leonard pointed at a row of gold pans lined up on top of the kitchen cupboard that looked as if they had seen long and hard use. “He always said he was a gold miner, but he never did pack out much gold. Other than the one big nugget.” He got to his feet. “I’ll show you.”

The rest of them waited. “What the hell?” they heard him say, and then he reappeared in the kitchen door. For the first time he looked angry. “Is that what this was about? Opal killed over a lousy goddamn gold nugget?”

Not only was the gold nugget missing that had sat on the burlwood table for seventy years, but walrus bookends carved from jade, a hair clasp made of ivory and baleen carved in the shape of a whale, the ivory tusks that had hung from one wall, the collection of Yupik ivory animal charms from the mantelpiece, and a couple of the masks. Leonard pointed out the empty nails on the walls, his face dark with rage. “Somebody must have been ripping us off, and Opal caught him. Son of a bitch!” He rounded on Liam and said fiercely, “You got any idea who did this?”

“No,” Liam said.

Leonard glared. “Then what good are you?”

Prince opened her mouth and Liam waved her to silence. “I’ll need the names and locations of all your neighbors, Mr. Nunapitchuk.”

“Oh bullshit,” Leonard said. “Ain’t one of them going to do something like this. We’ve been living side by next to most of them for years.”

“Any of them you don’t get along with?”

“No!”

“Dad,” one of the sons said. “What about Dusty Moore?”

“Who’s he?” Liam said.

Leonard’s lips tightened, and the son said, “Dad and Dusty have been mad at each other for ten years, ever since Mom won the postmaster’s contract. Dusty wanted it, and he wasn’t a good loser.”

“He make any threats?”

“He made threats all over the place,” Leonard said, “but he wouldn’t kill over something like this.”

To the son Liam said, “Do you have a map of the area, with the settlements marked?”

“You going to try finding them tonight?”

“No, we have to get your mother’s body back to Newenham tonight so we can get it into Anchorage first thing tomorrow morning.”

“I can do that, sir,” Prince said, and from the expression on her face immediately regretted it. She’d rather be in hot pursuit than ferrying a body.

To Wy Liam said, “You give me a ride back in the morning?”

She hesitated. “What about Tim?”

He’d completely forgotten about Tim, and the reminder made him uncomfortable. “Tim,” he said. “Right.” He turned to Prince. “Give Bill a call, tell her to tell Moses that he’s got baby-sitting duty.”

Prince nodded crisply. Natalie Gosuk had never mentioned Wy’s name, so Prince had probably not made the connection, Natalie to Tim to Wy. Liam was relieved. Prince was a straight arrow. She wasn’t going to take kindly to him helping to flout a court order, and he would just as soon put that evil day off as long as possible.

“Certainly, sir,” she said.

“Okay?” he said to Wy.

“Okay.” To Prince she said, “Tell Bill to tell Moses to tell Tim I’ll be back before noon tomorrow.”

Prince nodded.

“About that map,” Liam said to the son.

Later, the dinner dishes cleared away, Liam and Wy stepped outside to allow the family to mourn in private. “Poor Leonard,” Wy said.

“I would have said, poor Opal.”

Wy shook her head. “That’s not what I meant. This is the second time in eight years he’s lost a member of his family.”

“Who else?”

“They had another daughter. Ruby.”

“What happened to her?”

“Nobody knows.” Wy sighed. “Leonard took all four kids out hunting one fall some years back. They spread out in back of a herd of caribou. Ruby got lost. They never found her.”

“Poor Leonard,” Liam agreed.