Nothing Gold Can Stay

THREE

Nuklunek Bluff, September 1

John Kvichak and Teddy Engebretsen had been sworn companions since kindergarten. They’d studied grammar together beneath the beady eye of Mrs. Johnson in the fourth grade, stood shoulder to shoulder against the bully boys in the seventh grade, they’d lusted after the same girls in high school and they’d graduated together attired beneath their caps and gowns in the same jeans and gray sweatshirts, ready to party as soon as the diplomas were given out and the caps tossed into the air. They fished salmon together, hunted caribou and moose together, trapped beaver together. When they reached legal age, they drank together. It was said in Newenham, their hometown, that they would never marry because they could never find a woman capable of putting up with both of them, and although the saying began as a joke, there was probably some truth to it.

They owned a drift netter together now, theIsabella Rose, named for both of their mothers. Isabella, Teddy’s mom, won the coin toss for whose name came first. Rose, John’s mom, took it well, frying up a panful of bread and bringing it down to the christening. Of course, it was all charred to a crisp. Isabella laughed and laughed, and made John and Teddy eat up every bite.

Each fall, after the fishing season was over and theIsabella Rose was hosed down and put into dry dock for the winter, John and Teddy would go hunting together in the Wood River Mountains. They concentrated on moose and caribou, but took time out on occasion to bring out the shotguns and go for geese, ptarmigan and spruce hens.

Neither one of them was a pilot, so they chartered Wy Chouinard to fly them into their preferred hunting area, the long, level plateau between the broad plain that sloped down into the Nushagak River in the east and the Wood River Mountains in the west, where a small but fecund herd of caribou fattened on lichen, where the occasional moose wandered up the narrow chasms and canyons. Birdlife was plentiful, and one year Teddy even brought down a brown bear with a beautiful coat, which now hung in a place of honor on his mother’s living room wall.

So long as they stayed sober they were responsible hunters, harvesting what they killed, packing out the meat, taking no more than they could eat in a winter, in no way giving Newenham’s fish and game trooper Charlene Taylor cause to arrest them for violating the wanton waste law.

They had, however, come to feel somewhat proprietary about the bluff: the Kvichak-Engebretsen Private Hunting Preserve. Hikers and campers, thinking they were well within the boundaries of the Wood River-Tikchik State Park, had occasionally run across John and Teddy’s path and been apprised of their error. Once a couple had returned from a hike up Kanuktik Ridge to find their tent slashed and all their belongings scattered in the creek. “Could have been a bear,” Charlene told Liam. Two others had had their canoe shot out from under them on Three Lake. “Probably not a bear,” Liam told Charlene. A group of Great White Hunters in the tender care of Dagfinn Grant had been in hot pursuit of a bull moose sporting what looked like a record rack when suddenly gunshots fired from an unknown source had spooked the bull, who was last seen heading across the Middle Fork at a clip that would put a four-wheeler to shame.

Charlene had been waiting for John and Teddy at the airport that time, alongside a steaming Finn Grant, mustache crawling down either side of his mouth like Fu Manchu’s. “Gosh,” Teddy said, eyes wide, “I didn’t hear anything. Did you hear anything, John?”

John shook his head. “Nope.”

Teddy turned to Grant. “Sorry we can’t help, Finn. I think it’s just awful the way some people go around popping off guns in the woods, don’t you? Somebody could get hurt out there.”

Grant threw a punch at him, which Charlene stepped in to block, and for a few halcyon moments Teddy and John basked in the delightful prospect of pressing charges for assault. “Don’t push your luck, boys,” Charlene said dryly, so they loaded John’s pickup with meat and headed into town to distribute their haul, to the loud hosannas of both families. Times were tough in Newenham, the salmon catch down and down again for two years running. For some families, if they didn’t get their moose they didn’t eat meat that winter.

It was serious business, providing meat for their families, and John and Teddy took it seriously. Mostly. Which meant that sometimes they took beer, and sometimes they didn’t.

This time they had.

That morning they had dropped a bull that would provide them with six hundred pounds of meat, dressed, something to celebrate, John said, and Teddy agreed. They’d already got their caribou, hanging in quarters now from trees around camp. There were four dozen ptarmigan in canvas bags, and another dozen geese, gutted but not plucked.

“We deserve a beer,” John said, standing and stretching. The moose was gutted and skinned and hanging next to the caribou. The heart, tongue and liver were set to one side and steamed gently in the crisp fall air. Liver and onions tonight, he thought, smacking his lips, and pictured his mother’s face when he came in the door. “You’re a good boy, John,” she always said, whether he brought home the meat or not. This fall, he felt he’d earned it.

“Hell,” Teddy said, “we deserve six,” and opened the case of Miller Genuine Draft with bloodstained hands.

Newenham, September 1

Liam did what he had to do without compunction, without reconsideration, without, in fact, any thought of his sworn oath to uphold the law and Constitution and parental rights. He ordered his usual fatburger and fries at Bill’s and ate them to the accompaniment of Bill’s countdown of Things to Be Done While I’m Gone. The recipient of all this good advice, Dottie Takak, took it as she took most things in life, stolidly, silently, without question or expression on her wide brown face. She’d been cooking for Bill for nine years, she’d subbed for Bill when Bill went on Costco runs to Anchorage, when Bill and Moses took time out for trysts during walrus hunts or purse seining or New Year’s jaunts to the Kenai Princess Lodge, where once Bill claimed she had actually talked Moses onto cross-country skis. Dottie listened stoically as Bill told her not to forget to restock the beer, wash the glasses, sweep the floor, unplug the jukebox (currently floating Ivan Neville’s “Why Can’t I Fall in Love” out over the room, definitely not one of Liam’s many problems, so he tuned it out), scrub the grill, take out the trash and lock the doors, the front and the safe’s. Count the till each night, keep each day’s take in a separate envelope, messages should be entered in the Daily Diary for Bill to peruse when she chose to return. As far as magistrating went, she’d keep a schedule at ten a.m. every morning on the shortwave at the fish camp; tell the hyperventilating to call her there. If there was a murder, she might come back. Otherwise, they could wait.

Finally Bill ran down. Dottie, still silent, took the list and vanished into the kitchen. Bill looked at Liam. “You weren’t gone long.” She found a saltshaker and passed it over the counter.

He anointed his fries. Could never have too much salt on potatoes and popcorn. He could feel Bill’s eyes on his face as he continued to eat.

“What happened?” she said.

He rubbed a fry in the pile of salt on his plate. “Case I’ve got.”

“You weren’t gone long enough to acquire a new case,” she said. “Must be one of the old ones.”

He ate the fry.

“What, I’m supposed to guess?”

“No,” he said, swallowing. He put half his burger down, his appetite gone. “Just this woman, beat up on her son, she came back into town carrying a court order says she can visit him. It’s limited, supervised, but…”

“What pea-brain judge signed that order?”

“Legere.”

Bill’s snort said that she shared Liam’s opinion of the jurist in question.

“The kid’s terrified of her, doesn’t want to have anything to do with her, and he’s just starting to settle in where he’s at now. This is really going to shake him up.”

“Who’s got him?”

Liam raised his eyes. “Wy.”

There was a long silence. Liam watched Bill’s face as realization dawned. “Natalie Gosuk’s the one with the court order?”

He nodded. “She’s sober, too, who knows how long. But she’s got the order, she knows what it means and she’s going to use it. I think she’ll run off with him first chance she gets.”

Bill’s eyes narrowed.

“Sooner or later, she’ll start drinking again, like she always does. But for the moment, she’s here, and she’ll be knocking on Wy’s door, wanting to see Tim.” He looked down at his plate. “Too bad Moses brought him in from fish camp. School doesn’t start until Monday, and Natalie never lasts longer in town than three or four days.”

She spoke carefully and deliberately. “You miserable, manipulative, Machiavellian son of a bitch.”

He nodded with no particular pleasure.

She tossed the bar rag and turned to go. Over her shoulder she said, “You want to be a social worker, you better lose the trooper uniform.”