Nothing Gold Can Stay

SEVEN

Kagati Lake, September 2

“I thought you’d be mad.”

She said nothing.

“Actually, I thought you’d be furious.”

It was the morning after. The two officers had spent the rest of yesterday, before Prince left with the body, gathering evidence, including a piece of lead Prince dug triumphantly from the log wall next to the fireplace-“How the hell did it get over there?” she wondered out loud. Liam held his peace-and what Liam was sure would prove to be a slug from a twenty-two-a pistol and an automatic. The family, holding together with amazing dignity, helped by compiling a catalogue of missing items. A jade necklace, an ivory hairpiece, a gold nugget the size of a baby’s fist if the picture of it could be believed.

Breakfast-bacon, eggs and fried potatoes-had been served promptly at eight a.m. Liam and Wy had escaped immediately afterward and walked down to the dock on the lake together, partly to allow the family some privacy, and partly because it was a relief to be away from their grief. Leonard’s grief, especially, because his was compounded by guilt. The reason there had been no rifle in the clips beneath the post office counter was that Leonard had borrowed it to take with them to fish camp. There was a shotgun in the kitchen, mounted in a rack over the door, but she hadn’t been able to get to it. “I should have put it behind the counter when I took the rifle,” he kept saying. His children gathered around in anguished sympathy. Liam checked to see that the shotgun was where it was supposed to be and then he and Wy slipped outside.

It was another clear day, colder than usual. The outside thermometer had read forty degrees when Liam got up. Birch leaves were falling like rain, golden and brittle. The peaks of Oratia and Alayak and Outuchiwenet were already capped with snow. Their southwestern faces were a collection of reds, ranging in hue from salmon to salmonberry to blood. A faint mist hung over the lake like the ghost of summer past, the warm temperature of the water rebelling against the cooler temperature of fall air.

Liam was sitting on the edge of the dock, feet dangling over the side a foot above the water. Watermarks on the pilings showed that he would have been nearly up to his knees during spring runoff. “I figured you’d want a six-inch strip of my hide before breakfast.”

She was sitting next to him, legs dangling next to his, one foot swinging slowly back and forth, sneakered toe pointed with the elegant and unconscious grace of a ballet dancer. Her head was turned away. She seemed to be looking toward the north end of the lake. All he could see of her face was the tip of her ear, revealed by the loose braid that pulled back her dark blond hair. The morning sun picked out gold and bronze and red highlights. It was very pretty, but he’d rather see her expression, have some clue as to what he was dealing with.

He sighed and faced forward. Who understood mothers?

An eagle flew high and slow straight up the center of the lake, heading for home after a summer spent fishing the rivers and streams for salmon. When winter came the eagles would have to work for a living, hunting rabbits and other small mammals, follow the ravens to a downed moose or caribou and share in the pickings, or find a Dumpster. The prospect didn’t seem to worry the eagle over Kagati Lake.

Liam watched him until he was out of sight. September meant the mosquitoes were gone. They needed their jackets, though. Everything’s a trade-off.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

She turned to face him squarely. “You’re an officer of the court, sworn to uphold the Constitution, and the judicial system, enforce their powers.”

“Yes,” he said cautiously.

“If you’d done that, you would have enforced Natalie’s writ.”

He shifted. The plank surface of the dock was hard and far from clean. It was probably messing up the seat of his uniform pants, and his two tailor-made uniforms had seen hard use over the past summer. “Yeah. Well.”

“John Barton will eat your ass if he finds out.”

“John Barton eats my ass all the time anyway.”

She smiled. “True.” She paused. “Liam?”

He stared out at the mist hovering indecisively over the surface of the lake. “Yeah?”

“Thank you.” She reached for his chin and pulled his face around. Her eyes stared straight into his. “Thank you.”

He almost squirmed. “Yeah. Well.”

“He’ll be safe with Moses. And you were right, Natalie never lasts long away from the bottle.” She gave a faint sigh.

“What?”

Her shoulders moved up and held. “I don’t hate her anymore. I feel sorry for her. She can’t stay off the sauce, every time she hooks up with a guy he beats on her, and now I’ve taken away her son.”

“She’s a drunk and a child abuser,” Liam said.

Wy smiled at him, eyes narrowed against the first direct rays of the sun, which was just cresting the V between Alayak and Outuchiwenet. “There’s the cop I know.”

“I thought you’d be mad at me,” he said, a little plaintively.

She grinned. “You say that like you’re disappointed.”

“Well, I had this great comeback all planned, and then I had a fallback position, and when you demolished that I was going to jump you.”

“We could skip directly to three,” she suggested.

He looked over his shoulder. “Down, girl. I’m on duty.”

She followed his gaze. “Yeah. Those poor people. What do you think happened?”

“The money’s gone from the till. There’s a bunch of jade and ivory artwork and a gold nugget the size of a red potato missing. She was robbed, she resisted, and something went wrong. She might have known him, but she ran the only post office in miles, so she could also have not known him. You get drifters out here the same way you get them everywhere else. It’s just that here you hope the Bush takes them out before they start killing people.”

“And usually it does.”

“And usually it does,” he agreed.

“Not this time.”

“No.”

“Her family seemed to love her very much.”

“Yes.”

A brief silence. “Liam. You think you’ll find him?”

He pulled his blue ball cap from his head and examined the cloth badge fastened to the crown. A brown bear with all of its teeth bared in a snarl held a badge between his front paws. “Alaska State Troopers,” the badge read. In between the “State” and “Troopers” was a circle with the unsetting sun and the Alaska flag set inside it. Eight stars of gold on a field of blue.

“I’ll look for him,” he said finally. “We dusted for prints, and if we’re lucky we’ll find some out of the hundreds that postal customers and family members have left behind that match up with some we’ve got on file. I’ll go around to the neighbors, see if any of them saw anything, got hassled by anyone. Of course, the nearest neighbor’s four miles away, so chances of that are not good. When I get back to Newenham I’ll call around to the other trooper posts in the area, see if they’ve had anything similar happen.” He put his hat back on and pulled it down over his forehead. “I’ll look for him.”

He got to his feet and reached for her hand and pulled her up next to him. “But unless he kills again, I’m probably not going to find him.”

“Not necessarily something you want to hope for.”

“No.”

She dusted her hands on her jeans and looked at the palms. “Liam.”

She looked at him, the rising sun causing her hair to gleam with dark red secrets. Half a smile kicked up one side of his mouth, and her heart turned over. She cleared her throat. “Ford Ranger,” she said.

“Uh-huh,” he said, smile spreading.

“Wide tires all around.”

“Okay.”

“Snap-on tool chest in the bed.”

“Got it.”

“Hot pink paint job.”

“Oh man, oh no,” he said, his head shaking in disgust, “no way, girl truck trying to look like a boy truck. Paint job’s a dead giveaway.”

In that moment she loved him as much as she ever had. “Liam-” There are some things I have to tell you, she wanted to say. There are things that have to be said.

“Hold it.” His hand touched her arm, and when she raised her head he was looking up. She heard the sound of the engine then. “Prince,” he said, and started for the airstrip.

She opened her mouth to call after him, closed it again without saying anything, and followed him up the path.

Old Man Creek, September 2

“You’re here because your mother’s in Newenham,” Moses said bluntly. Moses never said anything any other way. “She wants to see you, spend time with you. I don’t think that’s a good idea, so I brought you here to keep you out of her way.”

Tim paled beneath his summer tan, suddenly looking much younger and more vulnerable.

“She can’t last long without a drink. She never does. We’ll stay here three, four days, be home in time for the first day of classes. Your math teacher’ll still be there when you get back, don’t worry.”

Bill waited for Tim to wander disconsolately down to the mouth of the creek before she said, “Lower the boom, why don’t you.”

Moses shrugged. “No point in taking it easy on him. Life won’t.”

He was right, of course. Bill said no more, refilling her mug from the pot that sat warming itself on the Earth stove at the back of the cabin. She went outside to enjoy the contrast of hot, strong coffee and crisp, cool air. A porch fronted the little cabin, built of deck boards Moses had conned somebody out of a couple of years back. There was a creaky rocking chair, a bottomed-out armchair with square cushions covered in some nubby brown fabric, and a couple of metal folding chairs with no cushions at all. Bill opted for the armchair, propping her feet on the porch railing.

Moses Alakuyak’s fish camp sat on the confluence of Old Man Creek and the Nushagak River, about thirty miles upriver from Newenham, around Black Point and about halfway between there and Portage Creek, where Moses kept his skiff when he wasn’t at fish camp, and where there was a landing strip. And wouldn’t Wy be royally pissed when she discovered that Finn Grant had flown the four of them in.

The camp itself was a modest affair, a cabin with bunks for eight, a propane stove for cooking, a woodstove for heating, and two counters, one inside for cooking and one outside on sawhorses for cleaning fish. There were racks for drying salmon, a smokehouse made out of an old refrigerator for smoking them, a banya for sweats, a tiny dock made of wooden planks fastened to Styrofoam floats anchored to the bank. There was a well and a pump, although the water was brackish and had to be filtered. A clothesline was strung between the house and one of the few trees, an overgrown alder really. There wasn’t much between Scandinavian Slough and Bristol Bay that was over three hundred feet above sea level. It was one big swamp south of the Nushagak from here on, and the fish camp was on the leading edge of that swamp. It didn’t encourage tree growth.

Moses came out here every summer, to catch and dry and smoke and salt and kipper the salmon that every year made the long journey from the north Pacific Ocean to the upper reaches of the Nushagak and all its tributaries. He didn’t eat much of it, she reflected, staring toward the river, instead giving most of it away to family and friends. He had no place to store it, come to that; Moses didn’t own a house. Probably he would have said he didn’t own the fish camp, either, he was just borrowing it from the Old Man for a time. As near as she could figure, the sum total of Moses’ personal belongings amounted to a Nissan longbed pickup, his tai chi uniform and the clothes on his back. He ate-and drank-in her bar. He slept with her.

And he communed in solitude at fish camp. It was a good place for communing. Bill had never seen so much sky before, not in Alaska. She was more used to mountains jostling for position with the sun and the stars and the clouds filling up the spaces in between. Here, there was nothing to interfere with your line of sight, only a dome of pale blue over a flat marsh filled with dwarf alders and stunted willows and fireweed and reeds and ryegrass. The water table was very high here. The river had both split and narrowed by the time it got this far north, although it wasn’t really that far north, as it hung a right and then another right east of Newenham before correcting course for north again after the Keefer Cutoff.

It was a place to be valued, a home for hundreds of different species of birds and water-loving mammals. Case in point-an otter poked his or her head above the bank, whistled indignantly, as if to say, I thought you left for the year once already. A small splash and it was off again. Little trickles and tributaries riddled the country in every direction, all winding their way somewhere safe to the Nushagak River, and thence to the sea.

Tim needed a dog, she decided, a dog to drape his arm around when he was sitting on a dock with his feet dangling over the edge. Maybe the dog would make him look less frightened, less forlorn.

The door opened and Moses came out, dressed in his sifu clothes, a black jacket and black pants with the cuffs folded and tied closely at the ankles. He walked down the steps and into the yard, faced north, brought his feet together and his hands up, right fist cupped in left palm, and bowed once, holding it for a long moment.

He straightened, his hands dropped to his sides, he took several long, deep breaths, his knees bent, his arms came up, elbows at his sides, to form two gentle curves before him, and he appeared to go into a trance. Minutes passed, and more minutes, until Bill could see the beginnings of a fine trembling about his thighs and knees, first hinted at by the faint vibration of fabric in his pants. Still he held it, what he called standing post, until the trembling increased into an obvious tremor, and what must have been twenty minutes passed before he sighed, a long, continuous inhalation and exhalation of air, and slowly straightened into an erect posture, only to sink back into it again, and this time from the stance into motion.

She never tired of watching him practice tai chi chuan. In Chinese the name meant “soft boxing,” a form of martial arts dating back five thousand years. It focused more on defense, designed to take advantage of an opponent’s offensive moves and discourage them, deter them or deflect them.

Moses in motion was grace personified, wholly concentrated on his art, from commencement to conclusion, through movements with prosaic names like Pull Back, Press Forward and Push, to the more exotic movements with names like Step Back and Repulse Monkey, Stork Spreads Its Wings and Retreat to Ride Tiger.

He went through the form three times. Sounds natural to the creek, birds calling and fish jumping and branches creaking in the breeze, seemed muted and distant. One was aware, watching Moses practice his art, of the inherent possibility of mankind. One grieved that, in five thousand years of practice, that potential had yet to be achieved. But for a few precious moments Moses shrugged off the millstones of modern man and reached back in time for the grace and strength and endurance inherent in us all. It was always there, waiting to be tapped. It was only that so few knew to reach for it.

Bill looked around to see that Tim was watching Moses, too.

Moses said, “Come here, boy.”

At first it didn’t seem that Tim would obey.

Moses waited, without turning, without moving, without repeating himself, facing north, waiting.

Tim approached reluctantly. “What?” He affected a yawn.

“This is called a modified horse stance,” Moses said, sinking back into the bent-knee, arm-bent-at-the-elbow position.

“So?”

“So,” Moses said, displaying a rare patience, “this is the best exercise to tone your muscles for the practice of tai chi chuan.”

Tim opened his mouth to say “Who cares?” caught Bill’s eye, and changed it to the less dangerous “So?”

“So do it. Now.” Moses stood straight and walked behind Tim, poking his hands into the backs of the boy’s knees and manipulating Tim’s arms into the raised position, much as someone would operate a marionette. “Not like that, like this. Not straight, curved, and cup your hands. Deeper.” He nudged the backs of Tim’s knees again. “You’re young and healthy, you can go deeper than that.”

“Why would I want to?” Tim muttered, just loud enough for Moses to hear.

Surprising everyone in the clearing, Moses laughed. “Oh, you want to, all right, young Gosuk. You were watching me, and you thought what I was doing was way cool.” He raised his voice. “Amelia!”

He had to shout her name three times before she came to the door, rumpled clothes and bloodshot eyes and hair askew. She looked hungover because she was.

“Down here,” Moses said, pointing next to Tim.

Befuddled, she shuffled down the steps, and stood next to Tim, swaying a little. Tim watched from the corner of one eye. She was pretty, underneath all the bruises, and not that much older than he was. It seemed strange to think of her as married. People seventeen didn’t get married, they went to high school. Melanie Choknok, the junior he had a secret crush on, was Amelia’s age.

Moses poked and prodded her, too, until she and the boy stood in a parody of Moses’ assured stance. “Breathe,” he barked. “Feel the air, the breath of life, making a circle around your body, pulling all life to you and in you. Breathe, goddamn it! Bend your knees, deeper, deeper, I said! What are you trying to do, boy, pluck a duck? Give me a respectable tai chi cup on that hand. Yeah, okay, that’s close enough for now. You, girl, nobody yelled ‘Attention!’ Lower your chin. I said lower it, damn it, not fall face forward onto your chest. Bend your knees. Bend them!”

He kept them in one position for half an hour, always carping, always criticizing, grudgingly accepting their stances only as an imitation of the real thing. “Okay. Stand up. Where you going, boy?”

Tim halted. “I thought we were done.”

“Who told you to think?” Moses demanded. “Resume your position.”

Tim resumed his position. Bill was left to wonder how Moses did it. He was five feet seven inches tall, his features were boringly regular with the merest hint of his Yupik ancestry, he had no dignity to speak of, there was no authority vested in him by the power of the state, in fact no earthly reason for anyone to say “How high?” when he said “Jump!” Tim, who had had a very rough and very nearly fatal childhood in the Yupik village of Ualik and who had been rescued from it by the timely intervention of one Wyanet Chouinard, and who was only now learning how to be an American boy, jumped. Amelia, who had been beaten into a cringing and nearly servile subservience within the space of little more than five months, her obedience was easier to understand.

Still, Moses commanded. There was no other word for it. Maybe it was his eyes, a penetrating gray so light they seemed at times absent of any color at all. Maybe it was the grin, saved from being purely evil by the curl at one corner that invited you to laugh with him. Maybe it was his age, which no one knew but everyone agreed had to be ancient.

He sat on his stool in Bill’s and he drank an endless amount of beer, but never got too drunk to talk or make love, the two things most drunks most wanted to do and couldn’t. Petitioners for news of the future approached him with the deference normally reserved for royalty, or genocidal maniacs. Should I marry the father of my child, should I quit fishing and go to school, should I move Outside? From time to time he issued proclamations. He had declared Bill’s bar to be a cell-phone-free area, reinforced his edict by launching the mayor’s cell phone out the front door and into orbit, and no one had murmured so much as a protest. Nobody brought any more cell phones with them when they dropped by for a beer, either.

Half the people in Newenham thought he was crazy. The other half thought he was divine. The whole of the population trod with care in his presence, and most of them listened when he spoke. If and when they didn’t, they almost immediately regretted it. If they lived.

She watched him chivvy and chastise Tim and Amelia for two hours, a grouchy little bully even older than she was, and loved him and wished for him immortality, or to live as long as she did, because she had no wish to live without him.

“All right,” Moses finally decided, and stepped back.

Amelia, trembling in every limb, tears and sweat running down her bewildered face, folded up where she stood, subsiding to the ground with a thump and a grunt. Tim, more prideful, managed to walk to the porch and more or less fell onto one of the folding chairs.

“Now to the sweat,” Moses said. “Come on, come on, move it!”

Amelia began to cry in earnest. With no regard for her distress, Moses took hold by the scruff of her neck and yanked her to her feet. Tim, determined to work the old fart into the ground if it killed him, struggled upright on his own. Both of them tottered around the cabin to the sweat lodge next to the creek, a tiny, enclosed shack, weatherproofed more to keep the steam in than the cold out. There was a woodstove inside, vented through the roof, with a pan of rocks sitting on top and a bucket of water sitting on the floor. Built-in benches wide enough to lie down on provided space for four. Moses stripped both kids down to their underwear and more or less shoved them onto a bench. Tim tried not to look at the lacy little brassiere Amelia was wearing, or at the further bruising the removal of her clothes had revealed. Amelia lay down and closed her eyes, oblivious to his presence.

Moses’ head popped around the corner of the cabin. “You coming?”

Bill smiled at him. “A little too crowded at the moment for my taste.”

His grin was equal parts understanding and lechery. “Later.”

“Later,” she agreed.