Nothing gold can stay (2 page)

They should have been working together because there was certainly enough business to go around. Wy had toyed with the notion of adding a second Cessna to her fleet, but that would have meant hiring on another pilot, and that would mean she would have to start a payroll and find a group health insurance provider and begin paying Social Security and unemployment. It might have been the smart thing to do as far as the business was concerned, but it would be the top of a slippery slope toward a desk for her, and from the age of sixteen, when she had first stepped into the cockpit of an aircraft, all she had ever wanted to do was fly. Her parents had wanted her to be a teacher, like them; fine, she had completed her degree in education, and the day after she had received her diploma had enrolled in flight school. They had sighed in disappointment but they hadnt stopped her. As her mother said to her father, she thought out of Wys hearing, “She can teach from a wheelchair if she has to.

The postmaster, a short, bull-necked man with a too-tight collar and a red face, met her at the freight door. “Youre late, he said.

“I know, Im sorry, I got held up at home. Wy walked around to the back of her pickup and lowered the tailgate, and without further pleasantries helped the postmaster load the mail. Forms were signed in quadruplicate, and without another word the postmaster disappeared into the bowels of the big square building with the coppery-colored plastic siding. She cut him slack for his brusque manner; he was new to the job. The previous postmasters wife had pled guilty to murder that summer, her very fancy lawyer having engineered a sentence that would have her out in eighteen months. Unable to hold his head up under the shame and disgrace of it all, her husband had given up the job of postmaster and joined the missionary corps of his church. Last Wy heard, he was on his way to Zimbabwe. She hoped the Zimbabweans were tolerant people.

She made it to the airport, calculated the weight of the freight and had to choose: two trips in the Cub or one trip in the Cessna. The Cessna was too big to get into two of the villages; the Cub too small to take all the mail at one go. Plus, she had a passenger scheduled, if he ever showed up.

Each destination had its own brown leather bag, strapped and locked; Kagati Lake had two and the two heaviest, but then that bunch of hard-core Bush dwellers had made an art form out of shipping everything by U.S. mail. Wy still remembered delivering cinder blocks for the foundation of a house, one at a time.

There was a single, small bag for Akamanuk. By its shape and weight, there was a prescription included with the letters. Probably Ted Gustafsons insulin, which came in every three months. Akamanuks strip wasnt big enough for the Cessna, but she could get around that. Russell she could mail bomb, too. One trip and the Cessna it was, so long as her passenger didnt weigh three hundred pounds. She backed the Ranger LT around until the tailgate faced the cargo door. She had pulled the rear seats the night before and 68 Kilo was refueled and ready for loading.

She was topping off the tanks when she heard a car drive up and looked around to see Betty Reynolds pull her Ford Airstream van with the “Taxi sign in the window up to the Chevron fuel pump.

“How you doing, Betty?

“Hey, Wy. Got your passenger here. Sorry were late, had to get help to get Rodney Graham out of the back.

“He passed out?

Betty, a short, rotund woman with a square-cut bob of straight, fine brown hair and an unfiltered Camel fixed permanently to her lower lip, made a disgusted face. “My fault, I left the doors unlocked. He must have decided home was too far to crawl. The radio bolted to the dash crackled, and she answered briefly. “Gotta go. Good flying.

“Thanks.

Her passenger was a man with thinning gray hair combed carefully across his bald spot. He was carrying a buckled leather case that looked, she was pleased to see, heavier than he was. “Mr. Glanville? she said, descending the stepladder.

“Ms. Chouinard?

“Yes. They shook hands. “That van smelled vile, he said.

“Im sure it did. Ready to go?

Mr. Frederick Glanville of the Internal Revenue Service looked apprehensively at 68 Kilo, and was clearly rethinking the attraction of the vile-smelling van. “Is this little plane what were going in?

“Yes.

“And youre the pilot?

“I am, and were late, Wy said briskly, “so lets get a move on.

Glanville climbed in, clutching his briefcase on his knees. She removed it, helped him fasten his seat belt, stowed the case next to the survival kit (water, matches, mosquito dope, a compass, flares, two Kit Kat bars and half a dozen paperbacks; another month and it would be water, matches, compass, flares, parka, bunny boots, a Sterno stove, a couple of aluminum pouches of freeze-dried food, an itty bitty booklight and half a dozen paperbacks), and in ten minutes they were airborne and headed northwest. It was ten a.m. and she was behind schedule, but she had a nice little ten-knot tailwind and shed make up some time in the air.

Her first stop was Mable Mountain, a hop of forty miles, and Drake Henderson was waiting at the end of the strip with his truck and as much attitude as the Newenham postmaster. Next came the ranger station on Four Lake. She buzzed the station before landing so they would meet her at the strip. Theyd be coming out for the winter in a weeks time, but theyd be coming out with Dagfinn Grant, so she didnt have to dawdle while they made plans.

Next up was a zig to Akamanuk, perching precariously on the edge of the Nushagak River two big bends above Newenham. She buzzed the homestead, two buildings, a short airstrip crowded with trees and a tilled rectangle of earth with what looked like a very healthy crop of potatoes. Ted came out and peered skyward. She turned, banked, dropped down to fifty feet and opened the window, straining a little against the force of the air generated by their forward motion. Wind roared through the cabin and the sound of the engine doubled in decibel level. Over the headphones Wy heard Mr. Glanville, silent until now, whimper the tiniest bit, but he made no other sound and she wouldnt have listened if he had. First pass she dropped a half-used roll of toilet paper, the end straggling free, the roll falling about ninety feet from Teds front door. She could do better than that, and turning and banking again, she came around for a second pass, this time waiting another fifteen seconds before she dropped the mailbag.

It thudded onto the ground ten feet in front of Ted. She painted a lazy eight in the sky while he fetched it and checked the contents. Shed included a box of sugar-free chocolates, his favorite ballast, and he waved his thanks. She waggled her wings in reply and zagged north, following the river to another river community, Kokwok, this one with a bigger strip, where she deposited a relieved Mr. Glanville along with Kokwoks mailbag.

Between Warehouse Mountain and Kemuk she buzzed the mining camp on Nenevok Creek and dropped another bundle of magazines neatly in front of the shack, but no one had come out before she had to pull up and get out of the way of any one of three mountains that were trying to snag the Cessna by the wing. It had been a long summer for the miners wife, and Wy could still remember the forlorn look on her face the last time Wy had dropped off a load of freight. But they would be coming out, along with the rangers, the following weekend. Wy bet the wife was counting the seconds.

Next stop Rainbow, where Pete Cole had left the mail to be picked up in a bag leaning against a stump at the end of the strip, surely a violation of the Postal Code, but who was going to tell? Certainly not her, and she had no intention of remonstrating with Pete, either. Pete didnt like visitors, women or engine noise, in that order and without discrimination. How hed managed to become postmaster for Rainbow remained a mystery, considering he sorted the mail in the little shack hed constructed at the extreme edge of his property for that purpose, and left the door unlocked so that no one would come up to the cabin bothering him for the mail. Probably Rainbow wasnt on the postal inspectors regular route. She traded the outgoing mailbag for the incoming one and was in the air in ten minutes.

Weary River next, in and out in twenty minutes, then a flyover of Russell, where she just missed putting the mailbag onto Devon Russells roof. Devon shook a friendly fist at her, and Wy ran up and back on the prop pitch in reply. It would have to be the Super Cub next Wednesday, when the mail had to be picked up as well as dropped off.

Then the longest hop, north by northwest fifty miles to Kagati Lake. Half an hour on the ground and she could head for home. She checked her airspeed and then her watch, and grinned. Shed be back in Newenham by five oclock.

Bankers hours.

Liam drove to work in a distracted frame of mind, mostly because hed left his mind at home. Living with Wy did that to him. Or not living with Wy, or whatever the hell it was they were doing.

Take the books. They were all over the house. There was a copy of
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
in the bathroom, which she and Tim were reading simultaneously, different-colored sticky notes marking each others places.
The Human Factor
by David Beattie sat on the kitchen counter, a book that after the first careless perusal Liam never picked up again, as it dealt with the hazards of planes and the flying of. On the coffee table in the living room sat a beat-up British paperback edition of
Round the Bend,
a book that in spite of also being about flying Liam liked very much, possibly because the narrator was a mechanic and a good one and worked very hard to see that the planes he worked on never broke in the air. Liam was convinced that every plane he was on was going to break in the air.

In the bedroom there were
Ethan Frome, In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead,
and
Persuasion,
from evidence of bookmarks being read simultaneously.

Liam read a lot, too, mostly history and poetry, but hed never had books stacked back to back all going at once the way Wy did. He was pretty sure she had kept every book shed ever read, too; there were bookcases in every room of the house including the bathroom, all flavors, essays by Carl Sagan, historical romances by Thomas B. Costain, the entire Oz collection.

Hed found her weeping one day the previous week, huddled over a much-thumbed copy of a mystery, one of a series. In this one the heroines lover had died. She took it as a personal affront“I cant believe she did that! How could she do that?and threw the book across the room, only to retrieve it a moment later and force him to listen to her read the death scene out loud. He was amazed at how involved she became in the story, and a little amused, but he was afraid that if he made some smart remark the next time shed throw the book at him, so he kept his mouth shut.

It was something else to know about her, something they hadnt gotten around to sharing in that brief time they had had together three years before, something he could add to his growing store of information. He wanted to know everything about her, every single thing, from the way her toes curled when he bit the sole of her foot to the way she played air mandolin with John Hiatt, to the way she mothered Tim, the adopted son in the room down the hall.

A green Chevy Suburban pulled out suddenly from a side street and wavered from center line to shoulder, put on a brief spurt of speed, slowed down, speeded up again.

Well, hell. Liam hit the lights and the siren.

The Suburban put on another burst of speed and, just about the time he thought he might have a Hollywood car chase on his hands, screeched over to the side of the road and slammed on the brakes, skidding another four feet in the loose gravel before coming to a halt somewhat perpendicular to the line of traffic.

Liam got out of the Blazer. The driver got out of the Suburban. “Stay in your vehicle, maam, Liam said, but she ignored him, walking toward him with a step as straight as the course she had been driving.

He sighed. But this day had begun with such promise, he thought, struggling to master a reminiscent grin when the woman reached him. The smell of alcohol got to him first.

She stopped four feet away, glaring at him and weaving a little on her feet. This time he had no trouble holding back a smile. “Amelia, did you have breakfast at the Breeze Inn again?

“Damn right, she said, blinking rapidly, as if trying and failing to focus. “I can do anything I wanna, Im the councilmans wife.

“Yes, you are, Liam said, taking her by one arm.

She pulled free. “You know which councilman? she said belligerently.

“Yes, he said, taking her arm again.

“Thats Councilman Darren Gearhart, she said. “
H-a-r-t.
No
e.

“Yes, he said. This time she followed him to the passenger door of the Blazer.

“Im his wife, she said as he sat her down. She leaned back against the headrest and fell asleep as easily and instantly as a child.

“Amelia, Amelia, Amelia, he said. “What the hell am I going to do with you?

The letter of the law required that he take her into custody.

So he took her to Bill.

TWO

Kagati Lake, September 1

Opal Nunapitchuk was a happy woman. Fifty-six years old, with three children and eight grandchildren, she was the postmistress of the tiny (population thirty-four in summer) village of Kagati Lake. A corner of her living room, furnished with a wooden counter polished smooth by forty years of elbows and a cubbyholed shelf fixed to the wall, was devoted to the getting and sending of letters, magazine subscriptions, bank statements, utility bills, Mothers Day cards and birthday and Christmas packages between the citizens of Kagati Lake and the outside world, and to the upholding of the generally fine standards of the United States Postal Service. People could sneer all they wanted to, but in Opals opinion the best federal service her taxes provided was the post office and priority mail (delivery guaranteed in two days for three dollars and twenty cents). She loved being the bearer of good tidings, and she was ready with Russian tea and Yupik sympathy when the tidings were bad. She was a thoroughly round peg in a thoroughly round hole and she knew it.