Dana Stabenow - So Sure Of Death

The mouth of the Nushagak opened before her, a wide stretch of water gray with glacial silt moving with stately deliberation between banks a mile apart. It formed part of the lifeblood of the Bay, along with the other hundred rivers of the area, providing the way home for salmon returning from the sea. It was, as well, the umbilical cord connecting the interior villages to Newenham. It was to Newenham they came, by boat in summer and by snow machine in winter and by plane year-round, to shop, visit relatives, play basketball, buy duck stamps, apply for moose permits, attend school, stand trial, serve time, take communion. Wy flew the river every day, upstream and down, and its size and power and importance in all their lives never failed to impress her.

In her more fanciful moments, she thought of the river as a woman, old and infinitely wise, loving but stern, never capricious but never quite predictable, either. When she took a life, or lives, when she sucked down a skiff with swift gray intent, or opened a lead in her frozen winter face to swallow a snow machine, she had her reasons, good ones, and if those on shore were left to mourn, why, death was a part of life, after all, and that was the way of the world, and the river, to give and to take with the same hand.

The beach was a wide strip of gravel and sand littered with driftwood bleached white by time and tide. That driftwood made for wonderful fires, and Wy could see the smoke from several here and there. Fishermen out early for the first red of the day.

The closest one was right at the base of her cliff. The last step was a big one, twenty inches to the beach. She jumped it, landing both feet solidly in a patch of gravel that rattled loudly on impact.

The man feeding the fire didn't so much as turn around.

“I already practiced, old man,” she said to his back.

“I know,” he said. “I saw you on my way down.”

“Oh.” She hesitated, and then moved forward to sit next to the fire, a little apart from him.

They contemplated the flames in silence. The weight of the river pulled at the banks, tangling in its current here a downed spruce, there an empty skiff that had slipped its mooring. A river otter chittered at her young where a creek flowed into the river. An eagle soared overhead, causing a flock of ducks and half-grown ducklings clustered at the edge of the water to fall silent. The tide was out, revealing the muddy banks of the river and the goose grass growing there. The water was half salt, half fresh, and the marsh on the Delta supported a rich and varied avian lifestyle. The ducks were fattening nicely, and both Moses and the eagle eyed them with approval. When the last salmon had made its run up the river, the ducks and the geese would be next on the menu.

Wy looked at Moses. He wore a dreamy expression, one she didn't see often, one he did not permit to show through his usual cantankerous crust. His mouth, usually held in a disapproving line, was relaxed, caught in a half-smile. He seemed to be remembering something pleasant. It didn't happen often, and she didn't try to interrupt.

He looked up suddenly and caught her eyes in his. “Are you angry when it rains? Do you blame God?”

“Blame?” she said, puzzled. “Who's to blame? The weather's the weather. It happens.”

A light, brief shower of raindrops fell on her hair and she looked up, startled. There were clouds overhead, big, cottony cumulus clouds not heavy enough with moisture to shed any of it. Had they been there when she came down the bank?

“Are we less, then, than the rain?” he said softly, his face turned up into it. A sliver of sun, a deep, rich gold, appeared on the northeastern horizon. “Are we more than the sun?”

She sat very still. Moses was a drunk, but he was also a shaman, and, no matter how thorough her indoctrination had been at the hands of her adoptive parents and at the University of Alaska, Wy remembered enough of the first five years of her life not to reject the presence of what she couldn't see.

Moses opened his eyes and added a piece of driftwood to the fire. The salt crystals caught in the wood flared with color. The wood burned steadily, radiating warmth and light.

“You didn't answer my question,” he said.

“I don't have an answer,” Wy replied.

“No?” He smiled. “Need some help?”

Wy swallowed. She wanted to say no. “I don't know.”

“I say you do,” Moses said firmly.

Wy made a show of looking at her watch. “Gee, look at the time, it's past six-thirty. I'm flying in a couple of hours, so-”

“Sit down.”

She sat down with a thump, heart beating uncomfortably up high in her throat. “Look, I-”

“You will listen,” he said firmly, “and when questioned, you will answer truthfully.”

Sez you, Wy thought.

He eyed the mutinous line of her mouth and grinned, a wide, wise grin as full of charm as it was of guile. “Wy,” he said, his voice not ungentle, “what do you want?”

She huffed out an impatient breath. “I want to live my life. I want my business to succeed. I want to fly, and I especially want to fly this morning.”

Moses contemplated the fire. “You're in danger.”

She was startled again. She looked over her shoulder. No one nearby on the beach, no one on the river. “What do you mean?”

“What do you want?” he repeated.

“Goddamn it!” she shouted. “I want to adopt Tim! I want to live my life!” She leapt to her feet. “I want to be left alone!”

“Sit down,” he said again, and she subsided like a puppet who had lost its strings.

He picked up an eagle feather lying next to him in the sand, and used it to cup smoke from the fire over his face, eyes closed, expression meditative. She struggled for composure, and found it in the tuneless humming that emanated from his rusty old man's voice.

He opened his eyes. “Are you so afraid?”

“I'm not afraid of anything,” she said, and was immediately ashamed. She sounded exactly like a child whistling past the graveyard. “I'm afraid of everything,” she said, as her defenses fell with an almost audible thump. “I'm afraid customers will show up who won't fly with me because I'm a woman. I'm afraid I won't earn enough to make my loan payments. I'm afraid Tim's natural mother will steal him back. I'm afraid-” She stopped.

“Yes?” Still with that unnaturally gentle voice.

“You know what I'm afraid of.”

“He's a good man.”

“I'm not a bad woman,” she snapped. “I'm smart, I'm capable. I don't need rescuing, or redemption.”

“How about company?” he snapped back, a momentary backsliding of role, wise shaman to cranky drunk. “He's pretty good company, that guy, even if he is a cop.”

“There's nothing wrong with being a cop!” she said indignantly. “They catch the bad guys. They keep the peace. Every day they get their noses rubbed into the worst of human behavior. When someone's shooting off a gun, they have to go take it away. They don't get near enough credit or even half the pay they deserve.”

He smiled, a brief, nasty little smile, and she blushed hotly, annoyed at being maneuvered into defending Liam.

“So you don't object to his profession.”

“Of course not.”

“What is it, then? What stops you from going to him?”

“Maybe,” she said through her teeth, “just maybe I don't think there's anybody out there more fun to live with than me.” She pushed her jaw out, daring a response.

She got it, a full-throated belly laugh that rocked him backward. “Oh yeah,” he said, wiping away a tear, “oh yeah, you are just like your mother, just full of piss and vinegar, self-righteous and pigheaded and so damn sure you're right.”

She said sharply, “You knew my mother? My natural mother?” He said nothing. “Moses?”