Better To Rest

THIRTEEN

The phone rang as he was getting out of his blueberry-stained uniform and into the last clean one hanging in Wy’s closet. Since Wy didn’t own a lot of dress-up clothes, most of hers were folded into the dresser drawers and he had most of the closet for his own. It hadn’t been like that with Jenny, a true disciple of the women’s department at Nordstrom. He remembered having to hang his uniforms in Charlie’s closet, and thinking that that would be a problem in fifteen or sixteen years.

He wondered what kind of a teenager Charlie would have been. Probably not as high-maintenance as Tim Gosuk, but you never knew. He’d dealt with enough parents in severe shock at their offspring’s behavior to know that all biological, sociological and anthropological studies to the contrary, much of the time procreating was a crapshoot. He’d read another study recently that claimed that a bad kid in a good neighborhood had a better chance of succeeding in life than a good kid in a bad neighborhood. The author of that study had obviously never been to the village of Ualik, where Tim had gotten his start.

The phone rang. He heard Wy answer it in the living room.

She was upset about something, and it wasn’t his not coming home last night. He’d finally told her that he’d spent the night at the office, and she’d nodded without much interest, her mind obviously elsewhere. He’d expected irritation, even anger. What he hadn’t expected was indifference. It unsettled him.

It made him wonder where Gary had spent the night.

“Liam?”

He buckled his belt and padded out to the living room, snagging his shoes on the way. He tucked the receiver in between his shoulder and his chin and sat down on the couch. “Campbell.”

“Sir, this is Prince. I have interviewed all of Lydia’s book club members.”

“Yeah?”

“No hope there; they were all pretty tight. But she did do some volunteer work down at the Maklak Center.”

TheMC on Lydia’s calendar. “Any run-ins with clients?”

“They’re closed for the day. They open again tomorrow at eight.”

“Baloney. Nose around, find out who works there, call them at home.”

“Yes, sir. Also, one of Lydia’s friends thinks she might have had a gentleman caller.”

“A what?”

“A boyfriend, sir.”

Liam remembered the frankly female appraisal in Lydia’s eyes the night they had met. “I wouldn’t bet the farm against it. Got a name?”

“No. One of the Literary Ladies-”

“The who?”

“The book club, that’s what they called themselves. Anyway, one of them saw a bouquet of flowers Lydia got. She said it was a birthday present from a friend, and that she got the distinct impression that the friend was male and that the relationship was romantic.”

“Any indication it was a local guy?”

“No. But Charlene Taylor says Lydia never went farther from Newenham than a Costco run to Anchorage.”

“So a local guy. How did the flowers get here?”

“Sharon-Sharon Ilutsik, the one who saw the flowers-didn’t know, but she figured they were Goldstreaked down from Anchorage. There isn’t a florist in Newenham, and this was a professional arrangement.”

“She remember the date?”

“No, but Lydia said they were a birthday present.”

Liam got his shoes tied and stood up, changing ears. Wy was standing out on the deck, staring across the river. The wind had picked up and was teasing curls out of a fat braid, forming a bronze corona around her head. Clouds, low and thick and dark, were scudding by, and Liam thought he saw a snowflake in the dimming light. “Okay, Diana,” he said, “find out Lydia’s birthday and call Alaska Airlines to check their records to see when the flowers came in. Should have been paid by credit card, if he called it in to Anchorage.”

“Will do. You coming back in?”

“No. I’ve got a dinner date with my dad.”

“Lucky you.” She meant it.

“Yeah.” He didn’t.

He hung up and joined Wy on the deck. “Hey.”

She looked up at him with a faint smile showing through the escaped wisps of hair. “Hey, yourself.”

“How was your day, dear?”

She laughed, as he’d meant her to. “Not bad. Got a flight from the U.S. Air Force, a thing that hardly ever happens, since they prefer to fly their own. Not to mention the FBI. We small-time air-taxi outfits just love federal expense accounts.”

He grinned. “I should start taking a commission.”

“Right after you take your first flying lesson.”

“That’ll happen.”

“I can hardly wait.”

A gust of wind whistled overhead and tugged at their clothes. She was in a blue plaid shirt tucked into blue jeans cinched down by a wide leather belt. Her hiking boots were stained with salt, mud and wax, held together by a new pair of shoelaces, red-and-white-striped like a barber pole. It didn’t vary much from what she had been wearing the day before, or three years before. It had to be one of the most unseductive outfits he’d ever seen on a woman of his acquaintance, and he didn’t understand why his first, last and only inclination was to rip it off.

As if he had spoken his need out loud she looked up and met his eyes.

“Where’s Tim?”

Her eyes widened. “Basketball practice.”

“When will he be back?”

“They’re going out for pizza after.” Her knees were shaking. She wasn’t sure how much longer they’d hold her up.

His eyes narrow and intent, he reached out a hand and unbuttoned the top button of her shirt.

“Not out here,” she said, her voice weak, her head falling back.

“Why not?” He unbuttoned the second button.

“In the wind, and the snow, and the cold?”

“I’ll keep you warm.” He lowered his mouth to her throat.

“Someone will see.”

“Let them,” he said, and bit her.

Liam Campbell was a civilized man and an intuitive and generous lover, but that evening something feral had gotten off the chain. He took her down to the deck with hands that were rough and impatient, and he knew it and didn’t seem to be able to control it. He ripped open her shirt and pushed up the T-shirt and bra beneath it and put his mouth on her breast, sucking hard. She made a sound deep in her throat, her own hands fumbling with his clothes, but he would have none of it. He didn’t want her participation; he wanted her submission, and he pulled at her jeans until they tangled around her feet, unzipped his, and pushed inside.

“Liam!” The word was almost a scream.

He managed to hold it together for one frantic, heart-thumping moment. “Don’t let me hurt you.”

“You aren’t. You won’t. You couldn’t.” She pulled one foot free of her jeans and hooked it around the small of his back, tilting up and pulling him deeper. “Do it.”

She screamed for real this time, a sound swallowed up by the wind and the snow and the dark. For a split second he could feel everything as if with a separate sense. The sudden quick flush of heat rising up from her torso. The kiss of snowflakes on his ass. The long, lovely line of her throat as she arched up into him, like she couldn’t bear an inch of space between them.

“Do it again,” he muttered.

Her eyelids fluttered. “What?” Her voice was slurred.

He thrust again. “Come on,” he said, “come again for me, baby.”

“No, Liam, I can’t-”

“Sure, you can.”

And she could.

And then he followed her into the dark.

Neither of them moved for long moments afterward, lying in a stupor of sexual satisfaction on the deck, the wind gusting to twenty-five knots, the temperature dropping another degree every minute, the snow moving from a snow flurry to a snowfall. Liam thought he could stay there, in that position, on top of that woman, forever, and he might have, if she didn’t eventually exhibit some signs of being unable to breathe.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and shifted his weight to his elbows.

She smiled without opening her eyes. “Don’t be.”

“Okay.” He nuzzled her neck.

He felt a laugh catch in her breast.

“The only time a man is sane,” he said, belatedly going for a little foreplay with her ear, which he knew she loved, “is the first ten minutes after orgasm.”

She laughed out loud this time.

He raised his head and smiled down at her. “It’s true.”

“Says who?”

“Says Dapper Dan.”

“And who, may I ask, is Dapper Dan? Not that I’m contesting his thesis.” She raised her hips and exercised a muscle or two.

“Oh, man, I’ll give you a week to quit that.” He gave her a hickey, just to reestablish his supremacy. “Dapper Dan was a friend of Damon Runyon’s.”

“Why’d they call him Dapper Dan?”

“Because he was very dapper, and a very successful ladies’ man.”

“Not unlike someone else we might name.”

“The only woman I want to be successful with now is right here. Lying under me, as a matter of fact.”

She raised a hand to trace his eyebrow, nose and lips. He sucked her finger into his mouth. She shivered, and he smiled.

But when they managed to pull themselves off the deck, get dressed and go back inside, the constraint came back. “I’m supposed to meet Dad for dinner at Bill’s.”

“Tell him to come here instead.”

“He wants to talk about that wreck on the glacier, and he doesn’t want civilians around when he does.”

She grimaced. “Okay.”

“Wy?”

“What?”

“You seemed a little out of it when I got home. What’s going on?”

She made a wry mouth. “So much for my powers of concealment.”

“I love you.” He said it simply, without flourishes. “I’ll always see more than you want me to.”

Her eyes softened. “Oh, Liam.”

“There is something, isn’t there?”

“Yes.”

He took a deep breath. Damn the torpedoes. Remember theMaine. Tora, tora, tora. “Is it about the job John offered me in Anchorage?”

She looked as relieved as he did to finally open up the subject to discussion. “No.”

“All right, then.” He had not spent so many years walking through the fire to get to her to give up without a serious fight. He’d go to war for Wyanet Chouinard. He just didn’t know if he’d live in Newenham for her.

She seemed to make up her mind about something. “I’ll banish Tim to his room the minute he gets back. We’ll talk then, really talk.” A half smile. “Don’t be late.”

When he was gone the house seemed very empty. She checked for messages on the answering machine. A teacher in Togiak wanted a competitive bid for bringing four students and herself into Newenham over the Thanksgiving weekend for the Bristol Bay Academic Olympics. Dagfinn Grant had given her a quote and she thought it was too high. Wy, knowing Finn, thought it probably had been, and called her back. They arranged fares and pickup times to their mutual satisfaction, and Wy filled in the dates on her calendar. She’d been looking for a toehold into business with the various school districts. This was a start.

Ronald Nukwak had called from Manokotak, needing a ride for his family to Newenham for a wedding. That one she let go, reluctantly, because Ronald already owed her for seven round-trips, Manokotak to Newenham and back again. If one of the kids had been sick, she would have rolled out the Cub, but this wasn’t an emergency. She hated losing Ronald’s business, not to mention pissing off the half of Manokotak to whom Ronald was related, but she had bills to pay, too.

She heard enough of the next message to understand the speaker was calling from Ualik, but they were on a cell phone that faded in and out. Somebody wanted a ride, but she didn’t know who and couldn’t figure out when, so she let that one go, too.

She closed her calendar and leaned back with a sigh. The first time she’d flown into Ualik and landed on the runway that also formed the main street of the town, she’d found Tim Gosuk crouched, shivering, beneath his own porch, hiding from his next beating. The village hadn’t improved in the interim. The last time she’d been there her fare had been late getting to the plane, and during her wait two men had staggered by, and a third had stopped and threatened her, followed by two small children, who also smelled of drink and who threw snowballs at her. She wouldn’t have minded the snowballs so much except that they hit the plane. She had run them off, and they’d come back with their father just as she was loading the passenger, a woman who was also drunk and who she was very much afraid was going to throw up en route. The father cursed her most foully and, what really scared her, got in front of the plane after she’d started the engine. She knew from firsthand experience what a prop could do to a human head, and she was just about to cut the engine when he staggered off again. The kids threw snowballs until she was in the air.

She had been incredibly lucky that no one had managed to lay hands on a gun. It wouldn’t have been the first time a stranger to a village had been attacked. Alcohol, the blight of the Alaskan Bush, was almost always involved. Usually the incident wound up involving the community health representative, the troopers, and sometimes the medical examiner. She was glad she couldn’t understand the last message, and then she was ashamed that she was glad. They were her people, after all, Yupik, Alaskan, Bush rats. That she hadn’t wound up an alcoholic herself was due only to the fact that, at least once, the cards had fallen for her instead of against her. God knows she carried the gene.

The time she’d spent with Moses on the deck the night before came back to her, along with his words.

“No,” she said out loud. “Not now. Later, when Liam comes home.”

She picked up a copy ofThe Fiery Cross, her current book, but she was too restless to read. Liam was readingNathaniel’s Nutmeg, but that didn’t hold her interest either. She clicked on the television. Ninety-nine channels and nothing on. She paced. Finally she went to the computer and got on-line, checking the Nushugak Air Web site for messages, finding none.

Then she remembered the Web site she had visited when she was looking up stuff on Lend-Lease, before Moses came over. She clicked on the bookmark and found the page of links. One went to the full texts of the various Lend-Lease acts. Another went directly to the United States Navy’s Web site, and the cargo ships that plied the Atlantic run funneling Lend-Lease materials to Britain, in the teeth of the U-boat wolf packs. There were links to the air force and the army as well. She followed another link and fetched up at a site sponsored by McDonnell Douglas, these days aka Boeing, which contained a brief history of the C-47.

In 1941 the Army Air Force (recently transmogrified from the Air Corps) selected it as its standard transport aircraft. The floor was reinforced and a large cargo door added, and hey, presto, the Skytrain was born. It could carry up to six thousand pounds of cargo, a fully assembled jeep, a thirty-seven-millimeter cannon, twenty-eight soldiers in full combat gear, or fourteen stretcher patients and three nurses.

All the Allies flew it, on every continent and in every major battle of World War II. By 1945 there were more than ten thousand of them in the air, answering to the nickname of “the Gooney Bird.” General Dwight D. Eisenhower himself called it one of World War II’s most important pieces of military equipment.

Her eyes dropped down to the specs with professional curiosity. It had a wingspan of ninety-five feet, six inches and was seventeen feet high. Its maximum ceiling was twenty-four thousand feet, with a normal range of sixteen hundred miles and a maximum range of thirty-eight hundred miles. It weighed thirty-one thousand pounds and cruised at one hundred sixty miles per hour, powered by two twelve-hundred-horsepower Pratt & Whitney engines. It was a three-holer, pilot, copilot and engineer, although she thought they’d been called navigators back then.

There was a picture, too, black-and-white, the aircraft gray with the barred white star on the fuselage just before the tail, and the tail numbers small and white on the vertical tail above and behind it. It was a shock to see what the wreck on Bear Glacier had looked like whole and proud.

Twenty-four thousand feet. And according to Colonel Campbell, they were on their way to Russia, to Krasnoyarsk, so already they were way the hell and gone off course. She wondered what the weather had been like that night. She did another search and raised the National Weather Service’s site, which was excellent but was more focused on forecasts than on history.

Well, hell. You could see Carryall Mountain from Newenham, couldn’t you? She tried to picture the horizon in that direction. She thought so. If you could, and if it had been clear that night, someone might actually have seen the plane auger in. There were a lot of Alaskan old farts in Newenham, a lot of people who’d been around from well before war had broken out. The plane must have made one hell of a bang when it went in, and that wasn’t something you forgot.

She’d make a few calls tomorrow, she promised herself. She shut down the computer and resumed pacing away the minutes until Liam got home.