Дана Стейбнау - Spoils of the Dead

Liam smiled. “If it’s clean and warm and there is hot water, Wy will be fine with it. She cares more about what she flies than where she sleeps.”

“That’s right, you said she was a pilot.” Jeff cocked his head. “Commercial?”

“Bush. Owned her own air taxi in Newenham. Sold up when this job came along.”

“When does she get here?”

Liam looked out the window at the clear skies beyond. The Bay was flat as a skating rink. “This afternoon, if the weather holds.”

And if Wy hadn’t changed her mind, again, and turned around halfway.

Three

Monday, September 2, Labor Day

SHE HADN’T.

She was taking her time, however. Leaving behind the place where she’d lived much of her life and owned and operated a successful business had not come easily. When Liam had been offered the job in Blewestown they had half-heartedly discussed the possibility of a long-distance marriage. She was a pilot, after all, with two paid-for airplanes with her name on the titles, one of which, if she pushed it, had a cruising speed of upwards of a hundred fifty mph. Liam’s new posting was only about two hundred fifty miles from Newenham, less than two hours in the air in the Cessna, wind and weather permitting.

Not that she would push it because of the wear and tear on the engine, but in the end, neither of them could face the time apart. Newenham had changed on them, too, and recent events made leaving sound more attractive than staying. Her adopted son, Tim Gosuk, was d é j à vu , at AvTec in Seward, a town a hundred fifty miles from Blewestown with an actual paved and maintained highway connecting the two, a rarity in Alaska. His current proximity to Liam’s new post was another incentive.

She was still smarting from the sale of Nushugak Air Taxi, though. Fifty percent of small businesses failed by their fifth year. Hers had not failed, it had thrived, and she was leaving behind a decade of experience and goodwill to begin cold somewhere else. It was not an attractive prospect.

Housing in the Alaskan Bush was always at a premium and commanded what one might kindly term extortionate prices, but she wasn’t ready to sell so she rented her house to a young couple from Icky who said they were ready to move into town. Wy suspected it was more about them escaping the too-attentive eye of their relatives, most of whom lived in Ik’iki’ka. She had relatives in Icky, too, and she knew how that went. The husband had a job working road maintenance for the state and she worked at the hospital and Wy knew them to be good people, so she signed the lease and arranged for the rent to go into her account at the local branch of First Frontier, which she also kept open. No harm in keeping all her bases covered, she thought. She didn’t mention it to Liam. Not that he ever asked. He was pretty smart that way.

It startled her, when it came time to pack, to realize how little she had in the way of personal property. Almost everything she owned was business-related, from the two planes down to her tools, pilot handbooks, aircraft manuals, work clothes, and four survival kits, winter and summer times two, one for each aircraft. Her photographs were on her phone. Her only jewelry was her wedding ring and a pair of diamond stud earrings and she never removed either.

What she owned more of than anything else was books, and those she had packed and shipped. She downloaded the Kindle app to her phone and filled it with favorites and to-reads to tide her over until her books appeared in Blewestown. Since they would travel by barge to Anchorage and then by truck to Blewestown, that wouldn’t be tomorrow. Her music had already been transferred to iTunes. Everything else she packed into 68 Kilo and lashed it down with cargo nets. 78 Zulu was already in Blewestown, ferried there by a Newenham pilot Wy trusted who had family in Cook’s Point.

Her last night she walked through the little clapboard cottage, looking to see if she had missed anything. Liam had bought a house fully furnished in Blewestown and she was renting hers the same way, which was going to save on freight. Everything had worked out so smoothly she was inclined to be a little suspicious of the whole process, because nothing in her life had ever been this easy before. She walked out onto the deck that reached the edge of the bluff and stood looking out at the great river, gray with glacial silt that made it look like a flow of molten lead moving rapidly toward the sea. A fish jumped and smacked back into the water. Probably a late silver.

She would miss this view, and this deck. Here it was that she had practiced form with her grandfather, Moses Alakuyak, almost every morning. Without thinking about it she dropped down into horse stance, feet shoulder width apart, knees bent, spine straight, arms bent at the elbows, palms cupped to face inward, body weight centered. Root from below, suspend from above. Without her willing it her limbs flowed into commencement, ward off left, right push upward, pull back, press forward, push. Below, needles rattling, a porcupine with the rolling walk like a drunken sailor characteristic of her species trundled into the middle of a dense patch of high bush cranberries and began to eat her way out again.

Moses had strong-armed Liam into form on Liam’s first morning in Newenham, and in memoriam to that diminutive, irascible old shaman the two of them continued to practice together each and every morning they woke up in the same place. Moses was gone now, killed by a stray bullet, one of a swarm of bullets loosed by an idiot who had no business anywhere near firearms, and, too late for Moses, never would be again.

Fist under elbow, step back and repulse monkey, slanting flying, raise hands, stork spreads its wings. Bill was gone, too. Bartender extraordinaire, local magistrate, longtime lover of Moses Alakuyak, and one of Wy’s few really close friends in Newenham. Bill had sold her bar the month after they buried Moses and made good on a lifelong threat to move to New Orleans. She had written to say that she’d bought a townhouse two doors down from the Terminator’s terminator. There had been no second letter so after a few months passed Wy had had Jim Wiley, Liam’s geeky friend in Anchorage, track down Bill’s phone number. Bill had answered on the first ring. She’d sounded pleased to hear from Wy but said she was on her way out the door to her new job tending bar. She name-dropped at least three Marsalises and one Neville, explained the Terminator reference, and hadn’t called back.

A vee of Canadian geese flew past, honking steadily, heading south to join up with other flocks at the mouth of the river. There they would spiral up into one gigantic flock and peel out south for warmer climes. It was a sight Wy looked forward to every year. Perhaps she would get a glimpse of them when she took off in the morning.

Left brush knee and twist step, needle at sea bottom, fan through the back, turn and white snake puts out tongue. A pair of eagles chirped and warbled at each other from adjoining treetops. One of them, as if in punctuation, lifted its tail and squirted a rich stream of yellow poop, just missing a parky squirrel. The squirrel said what he thought. The eagles responded with what sounded a lot like laughter, although Wy told herself she was anthropomorphizing. Something Alaskans often did as a matter of course, seeing as they were surrounded by wildlife designed by nature to eat them first chance it got. They were easier to live with if you ascribed human behavior to them.

Pull back, press forward, and push, single whip, all four fair ladies working at shuttles, and back into ward off left and through to push. As it always did the form steadied her, calmed her, focused her. Root from below, suspend from above. Her muscles loosened and stretched, supple, elastic, strong. She sank into single whip creeps down and stepped up to form seven stars. The chi that Moses had told them lived behind their bellies held her steady over her own center of gravity. That belly that would never hold a baby.