Дана Стейбнау - Spoils of the Dead

“I wonder if I’ll ever get used to that view,” Wy said. Seiners, drifters, pleasure craft, sailboats, a Coast Guard buoy tender, all passed in review on the other side of the window.

“I haven’t and I’ve lived here for over thirty years, my dear,” Sybilla said. The server appeared and she ordered a vodka martini with three olives and a steak sandwich, rare. Wy ordered a diet Coke and a bowl of clam chowder. The drinks came immediately—there was a lot to be said for eating out in the off season in a tourist town—and they toasted and sipped.

Sybilla, on her best society dame manners, said, “What do you do, dear?”

“I’m a pilot.”

The martini, which was disappearing fast, paused midway. “You fly airplanes?”

“Yes.”

Sybilla nodded her head at Wy’s glass. “No consumption of alcohol within eight hours of flying.”

“Yes.”

“I will feel that much more safe when I fly with you, my dear. Do you work for an air taxi, or are you freelance?”

“Both, now, I guess. I owned my own air taxi in Newenham before we moved here. I’m basically on call for now.” Only to the state of Alaska so far, but flight hours were billable hours no matter who she was in the air for.

“You owned your own business?” Something snapped together behind Sybilla’s eyes and she became suddenly far more present. “What was your annual gross?”

Wy answered that and other questions about net income, expenses, insurance, depreciation, amortization, and taxes as best she could without her files in front of her. In the end Sybilla was pleased to give an approving nod. “Well done, my dear, well done, indeed. You sold it when you moved here, you said?”

“I did.”

“Profitably, I hope.”

Wy straightened in her chair. “Of course.”

Sybilla signaled the waiter, addressed him by name, and ordered another martini. He looked at Wy and she shook her head. “Do you mean to start another business here in Blewestown?”

“I don’t know,” Wy said. “Not right away, at any rate.”

“Thinking of starting a family, are you?”

It didn’t matter what she said to this old lady, who would very probably forget it before lunch was over. Wy told her the truth. “No. I’m infertile.”

Sybilla nodded. “I see. And how does your husband feel about that?”

“He says he’s okay with it.” As usual, whenever Wy thought about it, she wondered if it was true. “We have one son, adopted.”

Sybilla’s third martini arrived. Her hand was steady and her diction was perfect. Maybe octogenarian livers, having stood up under all their hosts could throw at them for that long, were impervious to further abuse. “I didn’t have children, either, but in my case it was by choice. I had a good voice and a talent for business and, god knows, Alaska during the pipeline years was the place to make money. If you knew how, and I did. Customers would come in after nine weeks on the line, deposit an entire paycheck with the bartender, and drink until it was gone.”

Wy had heard the stories. “Were they ever unhappy when they sobered up?”

Sybilla raised her eyebrows. “Some were, yes, but they were all over twenty-one. If they wanted to party in my club and they could afford to do so, I was happy to oblige.”

Wy laughed. As she knew from long experience of the Bristol Bay fishery, there was no easier task than separating young men from their money. “And your husband?”

“I didn’t meet Stanley until I was in my forties.” Sybilla smiled at Wy over the rim of her glass, mischief in her eyes. “He came into Barney’s one evening and never left.”

“Love at first sight?”

“Every woman should have that experience at least once.” Sybilla sighed reminiscently. “He was so handsome, my Stanley, and so very… determined.” Her voice layered that last word with meaning. She smiled to herself and Wy could plainly see the vibrant, laughing ghost of the younger woman reflected in the older woman’s eyes. “Much like your Liam, I should think. Not the kind of men to take no for an answer.” She quirked an eyebrow in Wy’s direction. “I’m all for women’s lib or whatever we are calling it nowadays, but oh my. There is something to be said for a man who wants what he wants and won’t stop until he gets it.”

“What happened to Stanley?”

“We had seven glorious years. And then he died. A drunk driver. At eight o’clock in the morning, can you imagine?” A sigh. “I sold the club and our house and moved to Blewestown.”

“Why Blewestown?”

“Stanley designed and built the road here, for one thing. We spent a great deal of time here together. It was a way to remain close to him. And my brother lives here, and he’s my only family, so I thought…”

“Is your brother still—here?” Wy said delicately.

Sybilla’s mouth pulled down. “Oh yes, he’s still here. Not that we see much of each other.”

Not by Sybilla’s choice, Wy deduced, and thought dark thoughts about the brother. Their food arrived, and it was hot and good if unremarkable and Wy was hungry. So was Sybilla, who had cleaned her plate as if she were eight instead of eighty. “What’s for dessert, Wayne?” she said when the server returned.

He rattled off the selections and Sybilla chose the molten chocolate cake and Wy coffee with cream. Sybilla wanted to know what it was like, running an air taxi, and Wy beguiled her with stories of flying the mail to remote communities with airstrips like rock gardens and no flight service so dropping a half-used roll of toilet paper out the window to determine wind speed and direction was standard practice. Not to mention the inevitable curmudgeons who were annoyed that women, who had no business with their feet on the rudders in the first place, were entrusted with ferrying the You-Ess Mail. “That is to say, the ones who didn’t propose marriage before I took off again.”

Sybilla laughed delightedly. “How very flattering!”

“Not flattering at all. Golda Meir would have looked good to those guys.”

“Oh my dear, the adventures you have had! How perfectly marvelous! Alaska has always been good at that, you know, at giving women an equal shot at whatever job was going. Mostly I think because there were so few people here to begin with, businesses were happy to hire anyone with a pulse. I had no trouble raising a loan to build my club.” She winked at Wy. “Of course, it didn’t hurt that the bank president had a reserved table down in front every Saturday night.”

No, indeed.

Wayne brought the check and Sybilla gained her feet with some effort but her steps were perfectly steady on the way back to the car, even down the stairs in too-big shoes. Wy could only marvel. Three martinis would have put her on the floor and the next morning would not have been pretty. Sybilla’s really was the Greatest Generation.

When they turned on Alder and drove past the trooper post, they saw a young woman unlocking the door. “Oh, there’s that nice young Petroff girl. Such a shame about her father. I wonder if she knew him?”

Evidently Sybilla’s cognitive issue had kicked back in. Wy made a noncommittal murmur.

“Such a handsome young man, once he lost his puppy fat. All the girls after him, one could easily understand how it happened. Still, people can be so unkind. They were both in my class, you know.”

Wy stopped at the stop sign. “What class?”

“Oh my dear, didn’t I mention? I taught music and voice at the high school after I moved down here.” She sighed. “So much tragedy for one family.”

They pulled up in front of Sunset Heights, and the attendant, whom Wy now knew as Liz, came out to assist Sybilla from the Forester. It was high enough that it was a little matter of her swinging her legs over the side and sliding. She smoothed down her skirt and beamed at Wy. “What a lovely afternoon! What was your name again, dear?”