So Sure Of Death

Wy looked at her. “Oh god, are we doing the come-on thing again? I hate it when you do that, Jo.”

She climbed out of the plane, Jo right behind her. Jo smoothed her T-shirt, patted her hair and walked toward McLy

But the oil company executive was still in jail, and Professor McLy

Wy made an abrupt ninety-degree turn and veered toward the edge of the bluff. She thought about jumping off, and then thought better of it, sitting down instead to hang her legs over the edge.

Tim was helping Moses mend his gear. In a couple of days they'd head upriver to Moses' fish camp, to pull in their share of the season's silvers. Wy wouldn't see Tim again for two weeks, maybe three. The one condition she'd laid down to Moses was that Tim had to be back in time for the first day of school. Moses had bitched and whined and in the end made her promise to practice her form twice a day, instead of just once, before reluctantly acquiescing. There had been a gleam in his eyes that made her wonder if he hadn't been driving her in that direction all along.

Neither of them referred to her question of the day before. She hadn't forgotten asking it. She could wait for her answer, though, so long as she got one. The Yupik in her, she thought, willing me to patience. What if he is? What if he isn't? What does it matter either way?

Three years before, she'd moved to Newenham, bought out an air taxi business, had rescued an abused child and acquired a son in the process and had begun-had been dragooned into, was more like it-learning tai chi. She had come to Newenham to start a new life, and all Moses could say was that she was escaping from her old one. He knew things, that old man, and he was always around to prophesy-or pontificate.

And now here he was telling her that he'd known her mother. Martha and Ed Lewis had been BIA teachers all over south-western Alaska, a year in Ouzinkie, two in Old Harbor, one in Egegik, four in Togiak, five in Manokotak, two in Icky, nine in Newenham. They retired two years before Wy graduated from high school and moved to Anchorage, to a home in Spenard they had bought years before. At West High she made her first real friend, Joan Dunaway, and in spite of the trauma of being yanked out of high school and moved from a Bush community into the big city, she had never resented it.

Martha and Ed had demanded A's on her report cards but had not punished her for her occasional lapse into the nether world of the C student, made her go to mass when Father Mike flew in but had deferred baptism into the church until she came of age and hadn't objected when she'd decided against it, hadn't let her date until she was sixteen but thereafter had set her curfew at midnight and had trusted her enough not to stay up to see that she kept it. They'd loved her, she was sure they still did, but she often wondered if it was a love that had grown more out of duty than any real affection.

She worried that she was doing the same thing to Tim; if what she felt for him was obligation, if she had acted out of compassion and pity, or maybe because she felt she had to pass it on. That was their mantra, Martha and Ed: Pass It On. If someone did something for you, don't pay it back, Pass It On. Was she doing the Pass It On thing with Tim?

Martha and Ed Lewis had removed Wy from the cycle of alcoholism and abuse embraced by her birth family before it had had a chance to take hold of her, the way it had Frank Petla and so many others. She would always be grateful, she would forever honor them, but try as she would, she could not remember a time when one of her adoptive parents had hugged her. Jo's father had hugged her the first time she went home with Jo at Thanksgiving. He hugged everybody, big bear hugs strong enough to lift you right off your feet. So did his wife, so did Jo's sisters and especially her brother-her mind veered away from that memory. It was the first real affection she had ever felt, and the Dunaways heaped it on her lavishly, without question. She was Jo's best friend, therefore she was family. She hadn't known families could be like that. It was what she wanted for Tim.

And Liam? How did Liam fit into the picture? She didn't know yet. She wanted him physically, but then she always had; that was nothing new. She respected the work he did, and that was very important; she could never commit to someone who was not good at his job. It didn't matter if he dug ditches or programmed computers or cleaned teeth or was a state trooper; a man had to be good at what he chose to do with his life or Wy wouldn't look at him twice. Gary, Jo's brother, had been the first in his class of petroleum engineering. He worked for British Petroleum now, from the North Sea to China to Siberia. If they hadn't- No. She wouldn't go there. That was then, this was now, and now she had a business, a son and, on the horizon, a relationship forming with a man she wasn't sure she either trusted or respected, at least in a personal, emotional sense. They were dating, that was all she knew for certain. If it was possible to date in Newenham.

Her thoughts hounded her up and back to camp. The deck chairs had vanished and she heard the murmur of conversation coming from the work tent. She made a seat back out of a Blazo box and sat down on the ground, stretching in the sun. So much of an air taxi's business was hurry up and wait. Hurry up and wait on the customers, hurry up and wait on the fish, hurry up and wait on the caribou, hurry up and wait on the weather. Especially the latter. She thought of the omnipresent fog in Kulukak and was grateful it was keeping to that side of the Bay for the moment, unusual for this time of year, when the normal weather pattern called for blankets of fog and mist miles in diameter to come sweeping up the Nushagak and envelop all of the coastal communities in a dank, damp shroud.

She closed her eyes and was dozing off when she heard Jo say firmly, “He wrote to me several times, Desmond.”

“Did he?” There was a rustle of movement. “What did he say?”

McLy

Jo didn't seem concerned. “He said he'd discovered something at the dig that I would be interested in seeing.”

“Really? What was that?”

“He wanted me to come out so he could show me in person.”

“I see.” More rustling. “You see this, Jo?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know what it is?”

Jo, voice puzzled, said, “It looks like a manuscript.”

“It is. It's mine. It's the product of twenty years of study and work and making aerial maps and grubbing around in the dirt and no summers off.”

Jo oozed respect and deference for the sacrifice involved. “A long-term project.”

“Very long. My wife left me over it,” he added abruptly.

“Oh.” Jo sounded startled, then rallied. “I'm sorry to hear that.”

“Her name was Noreen.”

“Oh,” Jo said again, adding lamely, “It's a beautiful name.”

Wy gri

“Yes. She was a good worker. There wasn't anything she couldn't turn her hand to: cooking, cleaning, bookkeeping, mending. She'd even take a hand in the dig-under strict supervision, of course.”