Дана Стейбнау - Spoils of the Dead

She looked like sex on a stick, Liam thought, but wisely did not say so out loud.

Sybilla chuckled, busying herself with pouring the tea from a pretty flowered teapot into translucent cups that matched. “Yes, I cleaned up pretty well back in the day. You look nice yourselves. Thank you for indulging an old woman by dressing for the occasion. That’s a lovely color on you, my dear.”

She was in very good form, sparking on all four cylinders. She was fully clothed, today in a black and white dress that made her look like Grace Kelly in Rear Window . Again, it was about two sizes too big. She remembered who Wy and Liam were, their names, and that she had invited them for tea. They sat and she served them warm scones with butter and raspberry jam. Wy took the first bite and said with her mouth full, “You can cook, too?”

Sybilla waved an airy hand. “I am a woman of many talents, my dear. And they do allow us kitchen privileges here, thank goodness.”

It was a pleasant afternoon, and Sybilla wiled away the time by spinning tales of Alaskans in days gone by, when men were men and women did all the work.

“So like now,” Wy said.

Sybilla’s eyes sparkled. “Exactly like now, my dear.”

Liam, outnumbered, reached for another scone.

Among Sybilla’s collection of days gone by was a turntable and a collection of vinyl records. She selected an album by Ella Fitzgerald and put it on. Sybilla’s voice was still strong enough to sound good and she kept up with every word and every note of “It Don’t Mean a Thing.” She laughed at their expressions when the song ended. “By way of establishing my bona fides,” she said.

A little later Liam said, “Did you know that Erik Berglund was Sally Petroff’s biological father?”

Sybilla looked surprised. “Of course, dear. Erik and Kimberley were both students of mine.” She grimaced. “It was pretty obvious, but then it always is. Girls disappear for a semester or a year and there is always some plausible excuse, an exchange student program opportunity out of state, something like that. And then the following year they come back and life goes on.” Her face clouded over. “This was different, of course. Erik went Outside to college, and Kimberley married Alexei and seven months later Sally was born. A few snide remarks were made but—” She shrugged. “There was another scandal, as there always is, and that one was forgotten.”

“They were from Kapilat,” Wy said. “Why didn’t they go to school there?”

“Unfortunately at that time the Kapilat school had fallen beneath the ten-student limit and the state had closed it. Some families went the home schooling route but a few who had relatives in Blewestown they could board their children with sent them here to complete high school. The two were in the band together. Kimberley played the clarinet and Erik the saxophone.” She looked down at her hands and said softly, “I feel responsible. I paired them up on that duet. Benny Goodman, you know. And of course Kimberley’s parents would never have let them marry.” She saw their mystified looks. “He wasn’t Native, you see, and her parents were very traditional. Much like Alexei’s family.” She sighed. “Which was probably why she chose him.”

Wy could feel Liam looking at her. She knew he was remembering her insistence on a small wedding, Bill to officiate, Moses to give her away, two random witnesses they’d pulled off their stools at the bar. None of Wy’s blood relatives from Ik’iki’ka. “Did Alexei know?” she said.

“I don’t know. I wondered at the time. But Kimberley was smart and capable and a true beauty, quite the catch. He might have known and not have cared.”

Toward the end of the visit, Liam and Wy exchanged a glance, and Wy said, “We were so sorry to hear about your brother Hilary.”

“Who?” Sybilla said vaguely, and for a moment Liam thought she was going to phase from one reality to another. He looked around and spotted a robe lying on her bed. Just in case. And then Sybilla’s eyes sharpened into the now and she said, “Oh yes, Hilary. Well, my dears, I appreciate the sentiment but Hilary and I were never close.”

“What a shame,” Wy murmured.

“Yes, well, he was a bit of a prude, my brother. He did not approve of either my job or my lifestyle, I’m afraid.”

“He didn’t like you singing?”

“Not singing or slinging liquor, either,” Sybilla said cheerfully. “Although to be fair, his dislike of my owning a bar might have had something to do with his intolerance for alcohol. It wasn’t as if he could partake himself, you see.”

There was a pause. “His intolerance for alcohol?” Liam said.

“You mean like allergic?” Wy said.

“Oh my yes,” Sybilla said, “acutely. We found out when we were teenagers. The two of us were at a party at a friend’s house and his parents weren’t home so of course we got into the liquor cabinet. After one drink Hilary started vomiting and his blood pressure dropped so low and so fast that he actually fainted. No, he never touched liquor, my brother.”

“Who else knew this, Sybilla?” Liam said in a voice that sounded strange to his own ears.

She shrugged. “Myself, a few close friends. It wasn’t something he talked about.” She reflected. “The fainting incident didn’t do his social life any good afterward, I’m afraid. The other kids nicknamed him the Dying Swan and he was incapable of laughing it off, so he carried that all the rest of the way through high school. I think he went to college out of state to get away from it. And then, when he did come home, the arthritis kicked in. He was three years younger than I was and he looked thirty years older.”

Illness might have had that effect, Liam thought.

So might guilt.

“Poor Hilary,” Sybilla said. “He never really had a chance at life, you know? I’m certain he died a virgin.”

She looked up to see them staring at her. “What?”

Acknowledgments

ALL MY GRATITUDE GOES TO BARBARA Peters and Nic Cheetham, who never beat up on me for being first one, and then two, and then three, and now four months over deadline. The price of an understanding editor and publisher is far above rubies. The title of my next work is going to be Love and Not Writing in the Time of Covid-19 .

Astute readers will notice the geographic similarities between the real life Kachemak Bay and the wholly imaginary Chungasqak Bay. Liam’s new post was inspired by but not based on the real thing, in much the same way his old post of Newenham was inspired by but not based on Dillingham. It is, you might say, a distinction with a difference, and in this case a whole lot of differences, beginning with place names. I love true local place names and many of the names herein were found in online dictionaries like Liicugtukut Alutiit’stun. By all accounts the old folks were practical people and if there was a bay where the blueberries grew especially well I’m betting they would have called such a place Blueberry Bay, so I did, too.

Oil companies were run out of Kachemak Bay decades ago, mostly due to their own ineptitude. Chungasqak Bay, not so much. I mean it to be a fictional reflection of the eternal Alaskan fight between maintaining the natural resources that have nourished Alaskans for millennia and the commercial extraction of fossil fuels and precious minerals that provide jobs and the state taxes that pay to fix potholes. If you want to start a fight, stand on a street corner anywhere in Alaska and take one side or the other.

The bits and pieces found by the archeologist were inspired by Janet R. Klein’s ‘The Fort Kenai Collection,’ collected in 150 Years: Proceedings of the 2017 Kenai Peninsula History Conference . Klein has written a lot about history and archeology in Alaska, including Archeology in Alaska and Kachemak Bay Communities: Their Histories, Their Mysteries , and with her daughter co-authored a children’s book called Alaska Dinosaurs and other Cretaceous Creatures . It doubles as a coloring book, and the icon for carnivore is hilarious. My recommendation for any kid’s next birthday present. You’re welcome.