“I think they were sober when they stumbled across the wreck. They weren’t by the time I got to John’s house, that’s for damn sure, and I can’t say I blame them.”
“Why didn’t they call you?”
“I got the impression they were about to when we knocked on the door. By then, they’d had a few, and they panicked.”
Bill reflected. “Is there a law against possession of a severed limb?”
“You’d know that better than I would.”
“I’ll have to check my index of Alaska statutes. I’m sure it’ll be right under ‘Limbs, Severed.’ Right after ‘Lifesaving Medical Procedures’ and right before ‘Limitation of Actions.’ ” She shook her head. “I’d love to preside over that case.”
“Yeah, right.” Liam tilted his glass and the last droplet of whiskey dropped onto his tongue with something approaching a sizzle.
Someone besides Moses had gotten to the jukebox, and Santana was telling everyone within hearing to make it real or else forget about it. On the tiny excuse for a dance floor, Mark Walker was showing Cindi Guttierez how to do a natural underarm turn, only he missed her hand. She, an enthusiastic if uncoordinated partner, spun wildly out of control, careened off the table where Jerry Lee Kwethluk and Lyle Willoya were hunched over their usual battle for the Newenham arm-wrestling championship, and slammed up against Eric Mollberg.
Jerked rudely from his peaceful slumber, Eric snorted, sat up, lost his balance, and fell off his bar stool. He might have stayed upright if that garbage sack hadn’t been sitting at Liam’s feet. As it was, he tripped over it and fell flat on his face. The arm with its clenched fist was propelled out of the bag and slid across the floor to come to rest against Eric’s face.
The way he’d kicked it must have loosened the fist, because suddenly the fingers relaxed. Something small and round and bright rolled out of the palm, around Eric’s head, and into the middle of the dance floor. The music kept playing but people had stopped dancing, and it looked like stopped breathing as well.
The coin rolled and rolled, right into the middle of eleven pairs of paralyzed feet, where it spun in an ever-shrinking circle and eventually came to rest, the side up gleaming dully in the dim light of the bar. Everyone watched it, mesmerized, or perhaps just reluctant to look again at the severed arm.
Eric, whose eyes had followed the coin like everyone else’s and watched it until it came to rest, traveled back to the now almost-open hand, forefinger outstretched to where it nearly touched his nose.
He screamed, a high-pitched sound of pure terror. He screamed again, leaped to his feet, and raced to the door, hitting it with both hands held straight out in front of him and disappearing into the night.
“Oh, hell,” Liam said, and got down from his stool to stuff the arm back in the bag. He took a few steps forward and picked up the coin, trying unsuccessfully to read the raised print. It looked like it was in English, and it was heavy.
When he stood up, his eyes met Wy’s, who was staring in horrified incomprehension from his face to the bag in his hands and back again.
Tim sat next to her, and his eyes were pretty big, too. The back of Liam’s neck prickled in an unpleasant sort of way, and he took a step forward to see who was sitting across from them.
“Hey there, Liam,” Jo Dunaway said with a sunny smile that was all teeth. “You remember my brother, Gary.”
December 3, 1941
The goddamn radio went out again. We were coming back from Attu and the ceiling came down and we were wandering all over hell and gone. I know the way Ive been over it enough times but even I cant see through clouds. It doesnt help that the frigging maps are all wrong. Half the rivers are missing and the lakes are fifty miles away from their actual locations and we almost ran into a mountain that was only supposed to be 3600 feet high and was really 4600 feet high. Jesus!
Another letter from Helen. There’s some kind of problem with the baby she dosnt say what. I wrote and told her to go see the doctor and tell him well find the money to pay. If old Doc Bailey was still alive this wouldnt be a problem he knew my father and he delivered me he would know I was good for it. I wrote to Mom to go over there. I know they dont like each other but Helen shouldnt be alone. God how I hate being this far away.
Peter the old Eskimo guy is quite a storyteller. He says he’s not really an Eskimo hes from a little village on the coast southwest of here. Hes got a name for his tribe but I can’t pronounce it let alone spell it. He was telling me the other day about how his people used to paddle big canoes from Alaska to Russia to fight each other. He showed me a vest he said was armor. It dint look real substantial to me but then I want to be bullet-proof and his folks probably only needed to be spear-proof.
The next morning was clear and cold enough to generate a thin layer of frost, but the wing covers were quickly removed and the problem solved. She was sorry for that. She wanted to be very busy. Liam had the worst case of fear of flying she’d ever seen, and so long as she was doing things with the plane he wouldn’t bother her. If she made it look too easy, they would have to talk about the night before.
They leveled off at a thousand feet and she drew a bead on Bear Glacier, which according to the map hung off the lip of Carryall Mountain. “Carryall,” if the little Yupik she retained from her upbringing in Ik’ikika, a village on the shore of One Lake, was accurate, was an anglicized version of one of the many words her ancestors on the Yupik side of her family used forbear. She didn’t know if it stood for black bear or brown bear or polar bear, or feeding bear or sleeping bear or running bear, for that matter. She ought to study up on her Yupik. Maybe she and Tim could take a class. Maybe she and Tim and Liam could take a class.
She gave a mental snort. Yeah, right, that’d happen. Liam was all but packed for his transfer back to Anchorage, where he would have no use for Yupik. Other language skills, perhaps. Bureaucratese, maybe. Brownnosing, definitely.
She pulled herself up short, ashamed for automatically assuming the worst. Just like Jo. Liam hasn’t said if he’s leaving or staying, she told herself. You could ask, instead of getting mad over nothing.
Then again, if she asked, he’d have to answer. And then he’d ask her to come with him, which would entail leaving her home, selling her air-taxi business, and pulling Tim out of school to start all over again in a city whose population thoughtBush meant half an hour out of town.
And then she would be faced with her own decision: Go or stay.
It wasn’t like she didn’t have a choice. It hadn’t killed her to break it off with Liam the first time.
It had only felt like it had.
She found herself getting angry all over again. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, grateful the noise of the engine covered the sound. She cast a surreptitious glance over her shoulder at the man sitting behind her, rigidly upright, knuckles white on the edge of his seat, his breathing audible over the headset. Liam wasn’t noticing anything except how he was personally holding the plane up in the air.
According to John and Teddy, the crash site wasn’t far from an airstrip not too overgrown with brush and long enough for a Super Cub, which in turn was accessible by what had been a game trail just wide enough to take a four-wheeler in from Icky. It was quicker to fly, though, and Liam had wanted to inspect the site as soon as possible.
The Wood River Mountains grew on the horizon, four-and five- and six-thousand-foot peaks covered with the winter’s first snowfall. A series of four long, deep, narrow landlocked fjords filled up four long, steep, narrow valleys between the mountains, lying before them like the fingers of a giant’s spread hand. Not quite like the outspread hand of the night before, but close enough to bring it to both their minds.