Nothing Gold Can Stay

NINETEEN

Newenham, September 6

“You’re not going,” Liam said.

Wy looked at him, her face empty of all expression. “That’s my son up there. You can’t stop me.” She walked over to the map of southwest Alaska. They’d driven to the post with Prince, who was standing with her arms folded, shaking her head.

Wy pointed. “The airstrip for the Old Man Creek fish camp is Portage Creek. The fish camp is about four miles downriver from the strip. Moses keeps his skiff at Portage, but it’ll be at the fish camp now.”

“So even if you are crazy enough to get in the air in the first place,” Prince said, “and even if you’re lucky enough to get down in one piece, you’ve got to get from the airstrip to the fish camp. How?”

“There will be a boat. There’s always a skiff, somebody’s dory, something that floats that somebody leaves behind.”

“You don’t know that for sure. What if you get out there and this is the first time there isn’t? And what makes you so sure anyone is heading in that direction anyway? That’s a hell of a long way to hike through a storm. Especially when there are other settlements along the way.”

“Look,” Wy said, her tone so patient that Prince gritted her teeth. “Dead woman at Kagati Lake. Dead man at Rainbow. Dead man at Nenevok Creek. Connect the dots.” She snapped her fingers impatiently and Liam tossed her a pen. She drew a line between the three settlements. “Old Man Creek is the only dry ground on the Scandinavian Slough besides Portage Creek, and the creek is on the wrong side of the slough. The rest of the area is just one big swamp. Everyone in the Bay and on the river knows this, and by now she has to know that everyone in the Bay and on the river knows that some nutcase is killing people. The river is the best road out of here, she hits it, steals a boat, floats downstream and is home free. It’s logical for her to head in that direction.”

“You keep saying ‘her’ and ‘she,’ like one person killed all three people and that person is Rebecca Hanover,” Prince said. “She wasn’t anywhere near Kagati Lake. She couldn’t have killed Opal Nunapitchuk. And she didn’t have any reason to, no motive, nothing. Not to mention which, you just got done painting the most heartrending picture of Little Miss City Girl, who doesn’t know squat about surviving a trek through the Bush. How is she supposed to know where she’s going? What does she think she’s going to find when she gets there?”

Wy’s temper flared. “Look. There is a trail of bodies on a line heading southeast. The last body reported found-and please note we have no idea if it’s the last body to be found-is lying twelve miles from Old Man Creek. You’re right, I don’t know that Rebecca Hanover killed her husband, let alone Opal or Peter. Hell, for all we know, maybe she’s got a lover, maybe they’re in it together, maybe he killed Opal and Pete to make it look like there is a crazed killer on the loose. I don’t know and I don’t care. I am not taking any chances with Tim’s safety.” She tossed Liam’s pen back. He snatched it out of the air before it skewered his eye. “I don’t care what the two of you do or don’t do. I’m getting in the air and I’m going to Portage Creek. I’ll find a way to Old Man Creek when I get there.”

“You can’t do that.”

“The hell I can’t,” she said curtly, opening the door. The wind snatched it from her hand and slammed it against the wall. “I’m a private pilot flying alone. There’s no law against that. Yet.”

The wind snatched the door from her hand a second time and slammed it shut behind her. When Liam wrenched it open again to follow, a raven, riding out the wind on the bough of a spruce tree, croaked overhead. For once, Liam didn’t even look up.

Little Muklung River, September 6

She didn’t, couldn’t know how far she had come.

All sense of direction had been lost in the fog and the snow.

She knew she was leaving footprints to follow. The weather had betrayed her, a storm with snow in September, how could that be? Until then, she’d had a chance.

Now all she wanted was warmth and food. Coffee. Hot coffee, creamy with half-and-half and sweet with a heaping spoonful of sugar, two spoonfuls, three. She could almost smell it, and her mouth watered.

There was a river. She was following it downstream, although she knew he would be following it, too, knew that her footprints in the new-fallen snow left a track a child could follow.

The biggest battle now was to put one foot in front of the other. The left foot had lost all feeling, but that wasn’t surprising, as she’d lost her left shoe in a half-frozen bog a mile back. Or maybe it was yesterday.

She stepped slowly, with all the deliberation of a drunk.

There was the sound of water running swiftly between banks, as if the creek had widened suddenly. She looked, but it wasn’t so. She had long ago stopped believing her eyes. Now she could not believe her ears.

But what about her nose? She was sure she could smell the coffee now. She closed her eyes and inhaled. Coffee and woodsmoke. And fish.

There was a sense of brightness before her, or rather a thinning of the gloom. She squinted.

She was in a clearing.

There was a cabin in the clearing.

There was a light in the cabin window, and movement behind that light.

She stopped dead and stared, disbelieving. Was it another hallucination? She’d had so many, of Mark holding out his hand and smiling, of Nina laughing, of Linda’s table strewn with beads, of her mother’s fried chicken, of Maalaea Bay on Maui, where she had spent so many vacations, and where it was so very, very warm.

She took a hesitant step.

The cabin did not vanish into the snow and the fog. There might even be voices.

There was a door.

She stumbled into a run.

Old Man Creek, September 6

“Hey!”

“What? You unnatural brat,” Moses added, somewhat unfairly, since he’d been awake for an hour.

“It snowed!” Tim opened the door wider. “Look!”

The snow lay two inches on the ground, and the pure, pristine white lightened the low, leaden look of the sky.

Moses came to stand behind him. “And more coming, I bet.” The snow swirled up in a sudden gust of wind and he shivered. “Come on, get out or get in.”

“I gotta pee,” Tim said, and dashed around the corner.

Amelia yawned and stretched. Moses looked at her approvingly, or as close to approvingly as he ever looked at anyone. The bruises had nearly faded from her face, there was color in her cheeks, and even rumpled with sleep her hair had regained a healthy shine. She looked good. “You look good,” he said.

She was startled, and a little wary. “Thank you, uncle.”

“Get your pants on, let’s stand a little post while my woman makes us some coffee.”

Bill sent him a haughty look, and he grinned.

They assumed the position, and Tim walked in. “Oh man. It’s too small in here to do tai chi.”

“I’ve done form in airplane bathrooms,” Moses said. “Where there ain’t even enough room to crap, I might add. There’s all the room in the world. Get your butt over here.”

Grumbling, Tim complied, and Bill noticed that both kids were moving more easily. The price of a good teacher is above rubies, she thought. She made coffee then, but only because she wanted some herself.My woman, indeed.

She looked out the small window over the counter. Gray skies, swirling snow, and only yesterday it had been Indian summer. The thermometer mounted to the outside wall of the cabin read thirty-nine degrees. The snow would be gone by noon. She peered skyward. The storm looked as if it were taking five before turning around into a real nor’wester.

She lit the Coleman stove and put the pot on to boil before checking the woodstove. The wood box was nearly empty after she stoked the fire. “Hey guys, sorry to interrupt, but we’re about out of wood.”

“Then go get some,” Moses growled.

She turned and gave him a smile. “Your woman gets the coffee made. Her man gets the wood in.”

That surprised him into a laugh and he stood up. “I can’t be freezing my ass off out there alone. Come on, boy.”

He and Tim donned jackets and went outside. Amelia continued to stand post, forearms perpendicular to her torso, forming a gentle curve, legs bent with her knees directly over her toes. Bill admired her for a moment before going back to the counter and getting out the ingredients for her famous oatmeal. The secret was lots of butter and brown sugar, but steel-cut rolled oats were also very important, as was the evaporated milk. Heart attack in a bowl, she thought fondly, and dumped raisins into the pot.

“Bill?”

“What, honey?”

“How did you come to Newenham?”

Bill turned with the bag of oats in her hands to meet Amelia’s inquiring gaze. “What brought that up?”

“I don’t know,” Amelia said. “No reason, I guess.”

Bill looked at her thoughtfully. She was asking for something, Bill wasn’t sure what, exactly, but she was asking, and Bill had the feeling that Amelia hadn’t asked for much in her life. She turned back to the counter. “I was married once. To an Army officer. It didn’t work out. I left him, and came to Newenham. I’ve been here ever since.”

“Why did you leave him?”

“He hit me,” Bill said matter-of-factly. She measured the oatmeal, added more because she hated soupy oatmeal, shook some salt into it, stirred both into the raisins.

Amelia’s breath sucked in. “He hit you?”

“That’s what I said.”

“Somebody actually hit you?”

The mixed note of disbelief and awe in Amelia’s voice made Bill grin out the window. “Yeah.”

“What did you do?”

“I told you. I left him.”

“After the first time?”

“Yeah. You only get one shot at me.”

A brief silence. “I let my husband hit me again and again and again.”

Bill sighed. She covered the pot and set it on the stove. She turned and leaned back against the counter and folded her arms. “What are you going to do about it?”

“What do you mean?”

“You told Moses you weren’t going back to your husband. Did you mean it?”

“I meant it.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Okay, then. You’ve taken action. You’ve made a decision. Stick to it.”

Amelia looked at her. “You don’t think I will.”

Bill shook her head, let out a breath. “Amelia, I don’t know you well enough to say what you will or you won’t do. I will say that I’ve seen a lot of women in your position, and that I’ve seen a lot of women take it and take it and take it. I’ve even seen a few men in that kind of situation. It’s never pretty. But it wouldn’t happen if the person letting it happen didn’t get something out of it.”

“I didn’t get anything out of it except hurt.”

Bill raised her eyebrows.

“I didn’t want to get hurt! I didn’t like it!”

Bill shrugged. “Then don’t go back.” She unfolded her arms and stood straight. “Understand one thing, Amelia. Whatever happened to you in your marriage, whatever happened to you before that”-Amelia went white beneath her newly acquired tan-“none of that matters a good goddamn. It’s what you do now that counts. It’s what you do tomorrow. It’s your life. Moses has given you a breather. What happens when we leave here is up to you.”

“I know that.”

“Good.” Bill peered through the window. The woodshed was around back and she couldn’t see the menfolk, but she heard Moses curse and Tim’s laughing oath and was satisfied.

“Why do you want to go to New Orleans?”

“What?”

Bill turned to see Amelia pointing at the Frommer’s guide to New Orleans lying open on the bunk. “Oh. Why? Why not? Best music, best food in this hemisphere. Who wouldn’t want to go?”

“What’s it like there?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never been.”

“When are you going?”

“I don’t know. Sometime. Have to get free of the bar.”

“Dottie’s taking care of the bar right now,” Amelia pointed out.

Bill turned, half laughing, half exasperated. “What’s going on? You want to come?”

Amelia’s eyes lit up. “Sure!”

Bill shrugged. “Okay. Start saving your money for a ticket.”

“Oh.” The light in the girl’s eyes faded. “I don’t have a job.”

“Get one.”

A silence. “Yeah,” Amelia said slowly. “I could do that.”

A rustle of clothing told Bill that the girl was getting dressed. “One more thing.”

“What?”

Bill turned to meet her eyes. “Don’t hurt that boy out there. Not any more than you have to, anyway.”

The girl flushed. “I won’t.”

“Good.”

“Bill-?”

“What?”

“We saw you,” the girl said in a low voice. “You and uncle. On the porch. When we were coming back from the pond.” She sneaked a look through her hair and saw that Bill looked more amused than appalled.

“You did, did you? That must have been an eyeful.”

“I-we-”

“Never mind,” Bill said. “I can guess.” She turned. “It was okay?”

Amelia blushed a deep vivid red this time. “Yes.” She hesitated.

“Go ahead. Tell. Ask. Whatever you need to know.”

“We-well, we did it twice.”

“Ah, to be a teenager again,” Bill murmured.

“What?”

“Never mind.”

“It was okay,” Amelia said, the wondering tone back in her voice. “It didn’t even hurt. And the second time… it even feltgood. ”

“It’s supposed to.”

“It is?”

“Yes,” Bill said firmly.

“Oh.”

“Amelia.”

The girl raised her head from contemplation of her clasped hands.

“You’re seventeen, you’ve been to school, you know all the dangers. Hell, you have to know about the STD problems in the Bush, especially AIDS.”

The girl nodded.

“Be careful, okay? Just be careful.”

Amelia stood up, very solemn. “I promise, Bill,” she said, as if she were taking an oath. “I promise I will be careful.”

“I checked your day pack,” Bill said.

Amelia ducked her head, her face flushing. “I thought maybe you did.”

“I notice your prescription runs out this month.”

“I have more at home.” Amelia paused. “My husband doesn’t want kids.”

Bill nodded. “Do you?”

“Yes. Someday. Not now.” The response was automatic, and Bill watched the girl listen to herself say the words. “Maybe,” she said slowly. “I don’t really know that I do want to have kids.”

Bill nodded, as if Amelia had confirmed some inner conclusion. “We have choices about that nowadays. Get the prescription refilled.”

“I will,” Amelia said, still with that look of surprise. “I will,” she said again, more firmly.

There was a noise at the door and Amelia looked alarmed. “Don’t worry,” Bill said, grinning. “This was strictly girl talk.”

Amelia looked relieved.

The door opened and a third woman fell into the room.

At first they couldn’t tell she was a woman, she was so covered in snow and frost and mud. Leaves and twigs were caught in hair so lank and matted they couldn’t tell what color it was. Her blue jeans were soaked through. She was wearing tennis shoes, one of which was missing, and the white anklet on that foot was torn and the flesh beneath bleeding. Her shirt was ripped at the left shoulder, the same with the T-shirt under it, revealing a long tear of flesh, reaching from the top of the shoulder to halfway down the back. A flap of skin hung loose, to show the shoulder bone gleaming whitely.

They were caught motionless in shock. The woman looked up at them and opened her mouth. Her voice was the merest croak of sound. “Help.”

She tried to say more, but couldn’t. “Help,” she said again, and lay her head down on the floor and closed her eyes.