Better To Rest

NINE

By ten o’clock Liam still wasn’t home, and Wy was restless, the conversation with Jo replaying in her head. Was Jo right? Was Wy so untrusting that she was afraid to make a commitment? If so, was that something she could live with, or something she had to change? Did she want to change it? Which, when it came down to it, meant one thing: Was she ready to commit the rest of her life to Liam Campbell?

One thing seemed sure: Men left her. Men came into her life, made her love them, and left. Her father, Bob DeCreft, Liam.

She could get really angry about that if she wanted to. She could let herself get royally pissed off.

The conversation she’d had with Tim that evening came back.Sooner or later you have to accept what happened to make you angry, acknowledge it and move on.

Her father had given her life. Bob had given her wings. Liam had taught her to love. Would she change any of it, just to spare herself pain?

No. She would not.

There. It was amazing how much relief one unequivocal answer provided.

There were other questions she needed answers to. Would Liam stay in Newenham or return to Anchorage? If he stayed, was she willing to make him a permanent part of her life? If he went, would she go with him? Would Tim?

She went out on the deck. It was crisp and cold, with frost already forming underfoot. The stars burned white-hot holes in the night sky and were reflected in the river below. They called it the Nushugak but really, it should have been called Bristol Bay Route 1. It carried boats up and down its one-hundred-fifty-mile length all summer long, and then it froze over and turned into a highway for snow machines, lasting until breakup. The river was the breath of life for Newenham and the hundred villages and homesteads and fish camps along its length. Wy liked living next to it. Sooner or later, everyone you knew floated or drove by.

Sooner or later, it brought everyone home.

She dropped into horse stance, to see if tai chi would give her some peace of mind, but they were working on the four Fair Ladies and she needed Moses to untangle her.

Or Liam.

Screw it.

She went back inside, started her computer and got on-line. She checked her Web site first, to see if anyone had posted a reservation. The Web site was a new innovation and had cost her a lot of money, but contrary to her fear that no one would search the Net for “air taxi-Bristol Bay,” it was already paying off. Four caribou hunters from Anchorage wanted a ride to Mulchatna. Someone else wanted to take his girlfriend and another couple out to a lodge at Outuchiwenat Mountain. A pilot up in Niniltna she had met at the air show in Anchorage the year before had written complimenting her Web site and asking her who maintained it. She sent confirmations to the first two and a name, phone number and e-mail address to the pilot.

She wasn’t sleepy, and the house was very quiet. The crack beneath Tim’s door was dark. Maybe Liam had driven back up to the crash site, although she couldn’t think why. On impulse she keyed into a search engine and looked up DC-3s. The amount of information that came up made her blink.

The Douglas C-47 Skytrain was a redesign of the civilian DC-3 twin-engine commercial airliner, which she already knew. The RAF called them Dakotas, the U.S. Navy the less romantic R4D. The military used it to transport troops and cargo, including carrying paratroopers over enemy territory, especially during the Normandy invasion. She shuddered. Why the hell anyone would want to jump out of an airplane was beyond her. The whole point was to stay in the air, where the Wright brothers had intended you to be, until you were ready to come down with, not without, your aircraft.

This of course led memory back to the previous summer, when none other than Trooper Liam Campbell had jumped out of a Piper Super Cub into a lake in hot pursuit of a felon getting away on a four-wheeler. The Super Cub had been hers and she’d been on the stick at the time, aiding and abetting the aforesaid trooper. Plus the felon hadn’t been quite as felonious as previously thought.

Which, of course, was completely different from parachuting into a war zone. She clicked on the first link in the list and thought she’d made a mistake when a site on Lend-Lease popped up. She knew what Lend-Lease was, sort of: It was the act under which the United States shipped war materials to friendlies in World War II before Pearl Harbor brought them directly into the war themselves. March 11, 1941, was when the site said the act had gone into effect. The Japanese attack had come barely nine months later. She thought of the glacial processes of the Federal Aviation Administration, and nine months didn’t seem long enough to move the federal government into that much action.

They’d called it “An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States,” and like all government documents, it went on forever. She waded through thenotwithstanding s and theheretofore s until she got to what seemed to be the relevant clause. It began, of course, with

Notwithstanding the provisions of any other law, the President may, from time to time, when he deems it in the interest of national defense, authorize the Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Navy, or the head of any other department or agency of the Government (1) To manufacture in arsenals, factories, and shipyards under their jurisdiction, or otherwise procure, to the extent to which funds are made available therefor[e], or contracts are authorized from time to time by the Congress, or both, any defense article for the government of any country whose defense the President deems vital to the defense of the United States.

Any defense article for the government of any country whose defense the President deems vital.That seemed pretty broad, even for the president of the United States. Someone should have been looking over Roosevelt’s shoulder. Where was Congress? Where was Jesse Helms? She was pretty sure her teacher had mentioned something about checks and balances between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government in her high school civics class.

And then, after he caused them to be built, the act said the president could sell them, transfer them, lend them, or lease them. The act covered food, machinery, and services. Harry Hopkins, FDR’s good friend and true, started the ball rolling before handing it off to one Edward R. Stettinius Jr., of whom Wy had never heard and probably never would again. Originally intended to benefit China and the British empire back when Churchill was still fighting like hell to keep it one, in November 1941 the act was extended to include the Soviet Union. Yeah, that had worked out well.

The budget for Lend-Lease was a billion three, back when a billion three was serious money. Of course, in the way of government programs everywhere, it wound up costing much more than that, exceeding $50 billion in the end. Nobody ever paid it all back. Most of the countries settled for lesser amounts within fifteen years, although the USSR didn’t get to the table until 1972.

She scrolled down. Well, well.

It turned out that C-47s came under the heading ofdefense article.

She wondered, a little guiltily, if any of this stuff should have been a surprise to her. She held a degree in education, which had included a three-hundred-level class in Alaskan history. Had they studied Lend-Lease? Seemed like they ought to have, but she couldn’t remember doing so. True, she hadn’t been the most dedicated student ever to pass through the doors of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.

Wy had gone to college at the behest of her adoptive parents, teachers both. The only classes she’d ever taught had been during her student-teaching internships, as the day after graduation she’d enrolled in flight school. She’d soloed after eight hours and from then on, as much time as possible was spent in the air, filling up her flight log until three years ago when Bob DeCreft, in anticipation of his eminent retirement, offered her the Nushugak Air Taxi Service at a bargain-basement price. The sale brought her a Piper Super Cub, a Cessna 180, two tie-downs at the Mad Trapper Memorial Airport, a shed at same, and a two-bedroom, one-bathroom house on the Nushugak River. It also brought her a lot of goodwill in Bristol Bay. People were willing to take on faith anyone Bob DeCreft recommended.

Professionally, it was what she had been aiming at since she’d earned her pilot’s license; a business small enough to run by herself that kept her in the air most of her working hours. Personally, there had been two benefits, one expected and one not: It got her out of Anchorage and away from Liam, at the time a much-married man and father, and, one day on a flight into Ualik, it had brought her Tim.

So she couldn’t complain, and neither could her parents, retired now and living in Anchorage, with twelve weeks of each winter spent in a condo on a golf course on the Big Island. They couldn’t say she had wasted her education, independent businesswoman that she was now. But the fact of the matter was, she’d never been that good a student. It was probably more rebellion than anything else. She was maintaining an outward show of compliance by studying something her parents wanted her to, while determining inwardly to retain as little of it as possible.

She did another search, and discovered that World War II had been good to the territory of Alaska. During the war, the federal government had spent over a billion dollars on infrastructure, including docks, wharves and breakwaters in harbors up and down the coast. The Alaska Railroad was updated and improved, and roads were constructed, including the AlaskaCanada Highway, the only highway into Alaska. The Alcan had been built by the military during World War II-she knew that much-but she hadn’t realized how much it had to do with Lend-Lease. Lend-Lease aircraft were supposed to be flown through Canada, following the route of the highway, on to Nome and then across the Bering Strait to Russia.

The phone rang, the business line next to the computer. “Nushugak Air Taxi,” she said into the receiver.

“I’ll be late tonight.”

She looked up at the clock. It was ten minutes to twelve. “You already are.”

“Surprised you noticed.”

She winced away from the force of his hang-up. Ouch. Was he really that angry about Gary Dunaway being in town? Liam had never struck her as the jealous type.

But then, how well did she really know him? They hadn’t had that much time together. A few months of flying him to crime scenes when she was on contract to the state’s Department of Public Safety, four intense days in Anchorage, and the last six months, during which they hadn’t exactly lived in each other’s pockets.

She knew he preferred single-malt scotch, read poetry and history, could tutor Tim at math. He had allowed himself to be browbeaten into learning tai chi under the direction of that fiery little tyrant, Moses Alakuyak. He loved wearing the uniform of the state trooper; he seemed to expand inside it, some mysterious alchemy transforming him into more than a man. Call it a manifestation of the law of the land.

And he was good at it. Even after six months of laying it down, even as new to the area and to the people in it as he was, in a place where the previous trooper had made himself despised by his indifference and his indolence, Liam had earned the respect of town dweller and villager, hunter and guide, fisher and fish hawk, white and native alike. The main difference, so far as she could tell, seemed to be that Liam loved the job. He seemed to love being a trooper the way she loved being a pilot, and in some way she had yet to explain to herself it was the reason Wy loved him most.

And, yes, she was in love with him-she knew that-madly, passionately in love with him, the love-story kind of love, the rip-your-heart-out-and-serve-it-up-on-a-platter-to-do-with-as-you-will, the Pyramus-and-Thisbe, Tristan-and-Isolde, Abelard-and-Heloise kind of love.

Although, come to think of it, most or all of those couples wound up dead. Or castrated. She placed the receiver in the cradle and pushed back from her desk. The screen of the computer went black, with points of light zooming into and then out of range. The traveling-through-space screen saver. She could wish for a little journey to the stars at the moment.

She got the Bushnells out of the desk and went out on the deck. The stars hadn’t gone anywhere, Orion and the Pleiades and the Dippers and Cassiopeia, Taurus the Bull, the Great Square of Pegasus. It was cold out, below freezing, according to the thermometer fastened to the frame of the living room window, but she put the binoculars down and went into horse stance and forced herself through the form, blowing through the Fair Ladies like she knew what she was doing. The second time it was easier; the third time she was sweating freely and her thighs were trembling. She went through it a fourth time just to prove she could, and when she reached Step Up, Parry and Punch she really let loose.

“That Liam you knocking on his ass?” a voice said.

She slid into Apparent Close-Up and Conclusion, brought her right fist into her left palm, and bowed, once and low, in Moses’ direction.

The old man was sitting on the top step of stairs leading from the deck to the edge of the cliff and the beach below. That beach was littered with shards of ice, which, in another snow and a few more high tides, would join together and reach out to the opposite shore, where the same process was taking place. In a month, perhaps less, the two would meet in the middle in a frozen handshake that would last the winter long.

“I didn’t know you were there,sifu. ”

“Yeah, well, there’s a lot of things you don’t know.”

His words were a little slurred, which meant he’d been drinking. Although she wasn’t sure he was ever entirely sober, and he had to drink a lot before it affected him in speech or gait. He claimed to drink to drown out the sound of the voices that afflicted him with prophecy. He could tell the future, could Moses Alakuyak, and it never brought him any joy. Perhaps it was because people had always done what they wanted to in the first place, regardless of the best advice given them, and always would. It didn’t help Moses’ disposition any to watch lives going down in flames all around him, when the way out of the inferno was so clearly seen only to himself. He was a prophet without honor in his own country.

Still, that was no reason to allow him to attack unchallenged. “Is this my night to get beaten up by every man in my life?” she wondered out loud.

“It’s sure as hell your night to get beaten up by me.” He didn’t sound like he was joking.

“Always a pleasure,” she said. “You want something to drink?”

“Got any scotch?”

Liam did, single-malt, and Moses knew it. “I was thinking of something more along the lines of a mugup. You have any more to drink this evening and you’re going to roll right off this deck.”

“Who gives a shit?”

“Pretty much anyone who knows you, though I’m beginning to wonder why,” she retorted. “Why don’t you come inside?”

“I’m fine out here.”

“You be fine out here, then.” And she gave him the satisfaction of stamping back into the house and slamming the door behind her until the glass rattled in the frame.

He was still perched on the top step when she came back outside with two steaming mugs. This time she had her down jacket and her boots on, and she brought out a blanket, too, and wrapped it around his shoulders. It surprised her, and made her a little uneasy, when no scathing commentary followed on it being a fine thing when the wimmenfolks felt they had to swaddle up a grown man like he was some kind of baby too dumb to stay out of the cold.

They sat next to each other on the top step, if not in companionable silence then in silence. She’d made them tea and laced it well with honey. After an initial contemptuous snort, he drank without complaint.

Orion was well up in the sky, the Pleiades a bright cluster just out of his reach.

Wy loved flying on nights like this, when the stars went on forever and the lights on the control panel were a dim green glow, with no sun to create thermals to bounce over and the comforting drone of the engine the only sound. She hated to land on night flights, wanted to keep going as far as she could, as long as she could, wrapped in an immense cloak of warm, black velvet studded with bright, glittering rhinestones, just her, and the plane, and the night.

A meteor streaked across the sky, another, followed by a third. What day was it? That’s right, October 21st, the first day of the Orionid meteor shower. One day she wanted to be Outside in August during the Perseid meteor shower, maybe Colorado, high up in the Rockies, to see John Denver’s “raining fire in the sky.” Meteor showers were invisible in Alaska in the summertime; the days were too long.

Moses had been quiet for a long time, when his expressed intent in coming here had been to give her grief. “What’s wrong, uncle?” she said, using the honorific earned by every elder the length and breadth of the YK Delta just for outliving their contemporaries.

He raised his head and stared out across the river. “You asked me about your father.”

Wy forgot to breathe.

His voice was dry and without expression. “His father ran out on him before he was out of diapers, and his mother did the best she could, but the booze got hold of her and she wasn’t much use after that. Still, he was a cute little bugger, and smart, too. He managed to make it all the way through high school, supported them both working deckhand, and could have had a full-time job with just about anybody when he graduated. But he wanted to work the big boats, Alaska Steam, the ferries.”

Moses paused for tea, and Wy discovered her hands had clenched around her mug. She unclamped them, one finger at a time, cautious not to make it obvious, terrified that even the smallest movement would distract him, change his mind.

“He worked for a couple of years, saving his money, and he was all set to go to school in Seattle when he fell in love.”

Her mother.

“I have never seen any two people more in love in my life,” Moses said, sounding almost judicial in tone. “They were crazy for each other, dancing the night away at the bars, necking in his truck out at the end of River Road, holding hands so they couldn’t hardly get through a door when they needed to.” He shook his head, and in the softest voice she’d ever heard him use, said, “No. That’s not how I mean it to sound. That’s not how it was. They were in love, girl. Head-over-heels, fly-me-to-the-moon, I-only-wanna-be-with-you love. You understand?”

Her throat tight, she managed to say, “Yes.”

“Thought you might.”

She waited as long as she could. “What happened?”

He shrugged. “What usually happens when two people fall in love? They got married.”

“Was she pregnant?”

“What? No. They didn’t have to get married; they wanted to. He told her all his plans, and she was all for it, so they were careful not to let anything happen to get in the way. They needed a place to live, though, so he used up his savings to buy them a little house, and he went back to work deckhanding, saving up enough to get the both of them Outside and him to school. She was miserable with him out on the water most of the time, but she handled it. Got herself a job down to the cannery on the slimer. Then she got herself an idea, and the next time he was in town and they had come up for air-”

His dry tone made her smile involuntarily.

“-she tells him. They could apply for a loan. They’d just opened up a local branch of an Anchorage bank, and he was a local boy with a good reputation. No reason somebody wouldn’t lend him money. So they did.”

You really are a master of the dramatic pause, you miserable old son of a bitch, she thought, not a respectful way even to think of one’s elder and teacher. She was determined this time not to ask, but she didn’t last thirty seconds. “What happened? Did the bank turn them down?”

“No.” He shook his head and laughed, not a nice laugh. “No, the bank didn’t turn them down. It would have been better if they had.”

“Uncle! What happened?”

“The bank manager told them she would have to sign the loan because she was the responsible member of the marriage.”

She stared at him, again trying to make out his face in the dark. “Why?”

“She was white.”

“What?”

“She was white, Caucasian, Polish-German-Scotch-Irish-English. A round-eye. A gussuk. Daughter to the BIA teacher couple in Icky. Think they were from Indiana, or some such.”

Wy closed her eyes and bowed her head. “And he was native.”

“Yupik as you and me. More. Myself, I think that was the beginning of the end. Oh, they went out to Seattle, and he came back with his certificate, and he got on the big boats. I imagine most of the big boats had mostly white crews and they weren’t easy on him. He started drinking, and they started fighting. In the middle of all this, she gets pregnant.”

“With me.”

“With you. He ran off, Wy. Maybe he was just following the sterling example set by his own father. Maybe he just couldn’t watch the world be mean to a child of his. I don’t know. One day he was there; the next he was gone.”

“What did my mother do?”

“She had you and farmed you out to your father’s sister. Not the best thing she could have done, in the circumstances.”

Wy remembered what little she could of her first years on earth, and bile rose up in her throat. No. Not the best thing.

“And then she left.”

“Do you know where she is?”

He hunched a shoulder.

“What about my father? Do you know where he is?”

“Your father’s dead, Wy.”

She drew in a sharp breath.

“He quit drinking and eventually moved up to master on the Alaska ferry system. He divorced your mom and remarried. He had three kids by his second wife.”

“I have half brothers and sisters?”

“Yeah.”

“Where are they?”

“Outside somewhere. I don’t know exactly where.”

“Would someone in Icky know?”

“Probably. Whether they’ll tell you…” He shrugged.

The red buoy at the mouth of the river winked on and off, on and off. Red right returning. On the very edge of the horizon she thought she could see the lights of a boat, too far away to see if it was coming up the river or passing it by. A meteor streaked across the sky. She took a long, shaky breath. “Thanks for telling me, uncle.”

He grunted.

“Why now?” she said. “Why didn’t you tell me all this when I first moved back to Newenham? You must have known from the beginning who I was, and who my father was. You knew I wanted to know. Why didn’t you tell me?”

Another long silence, during which she got the impression, unusual in the extreme, that Moses was picking out the right words to use. “I hoped I wouldn’t have to,” he said finally.

She stared at him, trying to decipher his expression in the dark. “ ‘Wouldn’t have to’? I don’t understand.”

“Remember last month, when you launched that two-bit kite into a gale-force wind to come after that boy of yours?”

Now she was angry. “Don’t try to change the subject, old man.” And then she added, “And sixty-eight Kilo isn’t a kite.”

“I’m not changing the subject,” he said, his voice flat. “Do you remember?”

“Of course I remember. I nearly wrecked the plane, which would have taken out half my equipment inventory.” And Liam had been with her.

“What made you do it, girl?” He sounded only curious, but she knew him well enough to know that, for Moses, curiosity alone was never a reason to do anything. “Gale-force winds, abrupt temperature changes, snow changing to sleet changing to hail changing to rain. It wasn’t VFR; hell, it wasn’t even good enough to be IFR. It was a National Weather Service wet dream. So what made you do it?”

“I…” She tried to think. “Jim and Jo had figured out that somebody was leaving bodies in a line leading to Old Man Creek. I knew Tim was there. I knew you and Bill and Amelia were there. I didn’t think about it much, I just-”

He was inexorable. “Why did you come, Wy?”

“I guess… I couldn’t not come, Moses.”

There was a brief silence before he sighed and shifted, the rough nap of the army blanket catching at the shoulder of her parka. When he spoke again, his voice, a deep, raspy husk to begin with, sounded like gravel being ground together. “Something tell you to?”

Wy stiffened. “I beg your pardon?”

“Did something tell you to come to Old Man? Call it instinct, intuition, a gut feeling.”

“A voice?” she said.

He was surprised into a snort of laughter. “Yeah. A voice.”

She was almost amused. “I don’t do voices, Moses. That’s your line of work.”

He was silent for a while. “It’s hereditary.”

“What is?”

“Hearing the voices. It’s passed down, generation to generation.”

She felt a pricking at the back of her neck. A flash caught her eye, and she looked up to see another meteor, a second, a third. It seemed to be a long time before she could form her next question, and when it came it was a weak “So?”

“So sometimes it skips a generation or two, according to the stories. Sometimes they just take a while to make themselves heard.”

“Moses-”

“I was the man who ran out on your father, Wy.”

“What?”

“I’m your grandfather. Me, Moses Alakuyak. You, born Wyanet Kukaktlik, to Eleanor Murphy and Doug Kukaktlik, adopted by Mary Anne and Joseph Chouinard. You are my granddaughter. Mine by blood and bone, if not by my presence in your life, up till three years ago.”

The meteors were raining down on them now; every time one painted a streak across the horizon, a second burned into existence before the first’s tail had faded. She said the only thing she could think of saying. “My father’s name was Kukaktlik?”

“I didn’t marry his mother.”

She had wondered about the marital status of her parents. There had been hints here and there, a look from an Ickyite now and then. Icky was a notoriously upright village, and they wouldn’t take kindly to illegitimate children. And she had wondered about the families they had come from. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t already suspected the truth, but last summer Moses himself had refused to answer the direct question.

And now he was volunteering information like there was no tomorrow. “You are my grandfather,” she said, testing the sound of it on the night air. The stars did not alter in their courses. The meteor shower seemed to have tapered off. Everything seemed much as it was before she had said the words out loud.

And yet everything was changed.

“Yes,” he said. “I wasn’t going to tell you.”

“Why?” she said in quick protest. “Why not? You knew I wanted to know who my family was, that one of the reasons I decided to come back to Newenham was to find out.”

He sighed, a sound she had never before heard him make. “I got as drunk as I could before I came out here.”

“Why?”

“Same reason as anybody looking for the courage to do the right thing.”

“Moses, I don’t know what you mean.”

He heaved himself to his feet and stood looking across the river at Bulge, the three-house village on the opposite shore, away to the south at the lights of an approaching boat, anywhere but at her. “I hear voices. It’s a hereditary curse, according to legend. You’re my granddaughter.”

When she got it, she only wondered why it had taken so long. “Are you saying I’m going to start hearing voices?” Her voice scaled up.

“I’m saying I think you already do.”

She searched frantically for something to say in reply to that, and came up empty.

“It’s why I started teaching you tai chi in the first place.”

She blinked, confused. “What? I thought… What are you talking about? You showed up on my doorstep one day and bullied me into horse stance and you wouldn’t leave until I got it right, and then you left me standing in it until I actually fell over! I thought it was some kind of initiation, that you did it to everyone who moves to Newenham, and so I went along with it because I wanted to make friends.”

“I was hoping,” he said, ignoring her interruption, “that if and when they started in on you, the discipline would give you some peace. Be nice if you didn’t have to start boozing it up. Boozing’s hell on the liver, and you’ve got a kid to raise.”

She was on her feet without knowing how she got there. She was so angry she stuttered. “You- I’m- This is bullshit, Moses. This is just total bullshit. Voices. Nobody hears voices; sometimes I think you don’t even hear voices.”

“Yeah, that’s your mother talking through your mouth, girl.”

“Nobody talks through my mouth but me!” She pulled herself together and said tightly, “You know, Moses, you’re going to have to make up your mind. Either the voices are talking or my mom is.”

His voice was quiet and a little sad. “I knew you’d be pissed.”

“Pissed?” She almost lost it, and only by an effort of iron will kept control. “I’m not pissed. You’re just confused, Moses, is all. You said yourself you’ve had too much to drink tonight. I’m grateful to you for telling me about my parents, and…” She softened, touched his shoulder, wary of offering an embrace. “You,” she said. “I have family now.”

“Not a family you can take much pride in,” he muttered.

“Stop that,” she said. “I am proud of you. A lot of people are. Liam cares for you, Bill loves you with everything she’s got, even Tim-”

“They’ll come, Wy. They’ll come when you least expect them, at the most inconvenient, inopportune times.”

“Moses-”

“They’ll come whether you want them to or not. I wish to God- Hell.” He turned and walked away.

“Moses?” she said, coming down the steps after him. “Do you want me to drive you home?”

“I’m fine, girl. Track down that man of yours and take him to that itty-bitty thing you call a bed. He’ll wipe the voices right out of your mind.”

He disappeared around the corner of the house, and she probably imagined what she heard next.

“At least for a while.”

The boat was closer to the mouth of the river, and she wondered in a detached sort of way where it was going, and why it had left the voyage upriver so late in the year. More meteors fell, but fewer and farther between, until at last they seemed to stop altogether.

Inside, the monitor was still flying through space. She shut the computer down and went to bed.

Liam never did come home.