NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY
LIAM CAMPBELL BOOK 03
Dana Stabenow
A DF Books NERDs Release
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY
A Signet Book / published by arrangement with the author
All rights reserved.
Copyright 2000 by Dana Stabenow
This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.
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ISBN: 0-7865-2289-5
A SIGNET BOOK
Signet Books first published by The Signet Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
SIGNET and the “ S design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.
Electronic edition: February 2002
Table of Contents
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the authors Imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is
http://www.penguinputnam.com
for Dawn
the perfect niece
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As always, I have taken a high and free hand with the geography of Alaska. Some of the place names are right, but few of the names are in the right places. Storytellers privilege.
My thanks to Dennis Lopez, for teaching me the difference between boy trucks and girl trucks. My education is now complete.
My thanks to Mary Kallenberg, for so generously buying a Jayco popup for Liam.
My thanks to Jim Kemper, Worlds Greatest Meteorologist, for the storm.
As for Uuiliriq, his is a story I first heard from Mary Ann Chaney, who spent seven years of her childhood in Manokotak, a Yupik village forty miles west of Dillingham. Her parents, Van and Alice, were Bush teachers who believed strongly in the incorporation of the local culture into the curriculum. Whenever Van had to leave town on school business, he asked Yupik elder Simeon Bartman to take over his classes. Simeons method of teaching was to tell stories, a medley of Yupik history and legend. The students didnt know it then, but he was passing on an oral tradition that goes back centuries. So, my very special thanks to Simeon Bartman, whose memory casts a long shadow.
ONE
Newenham, September 1
A seven-foot Jayco popup camper perched unsteadily in the back of a Ford F250 truck is not the best of all possible beds for a six-foot-two-inch man. Even sleeping corner to corner, Liams feet still stuck over the edge. There was no toilet, no shower and no place to hang his clothes, in particular his uniform, which, to uphold the dignity of the Alaska State Troopers, maintain the authority of the judicial system and invoke the might and majesty of the law, should at least begin the day unwrinkled.
On the other hand, the Ford F250 was parked in the driveway of Wyanet Chouinard. He had free access to Wys kitchen, Wys laundry room and Wys bathroom. He had free access to Wy, when Tim wasnt home, as the door to Wys bedroom was six feet down the hall from Wys bathroom. Even if the bed in that bedroom was smaller than the one in the Jayco popup, Wy was in that bed, and he didnt really give a damn if his knees stuck out over one end of it and his head and shoulders the other.
Of course, Tim was home now, having returned from fish camp the day before to start school the day after Labor Day, so nights in Wys bed, comfortable or not, would be severely curtailed. Shed made that clear last night. “No hanky-panky with the boy in the house.
“Is it hanky-panky if were married?
“We arent married.
“Then lets get married.
“Not yet was all she would say. “Not yet.
He rolled over on his back and stared at the ceiling fourteen inches from his nose, thinking of her less than fifty feet away, waking up in her bed. She slept in T-shirts, no panties. Handy, as he woke up with an erection pretty much every morning. Hed certainly put it to good use during the last month.
Not this morning. He cursed his way out of bed, stamped his legs into sweats and let himself out of the camper. He stretched and examined the southeastern horizon, where most of Newenhams weather came from. Partly cloudy, looked like. He lowered his eyes and stood for a moment regarding the Ford F250. At least it was a boy truck.
“A boy truck? Wy had said.
“As opposed to a girl truck, Liam said.
“And a girl truck is?
“A smaller truck. Like a Ford Ranger, or a Dakota Sport.
She looked from the big brown truck to the little gray truck parked next to it. “Like my truck, do you mean? My trucks a girl truck?
“No, your trucks an old mans truck.
“Why?
“Because its rusty and all the bumpers are dented and it needs a ring job and a front-end alignment and you have to hold the door on the canopy open with a bungee cord and add a quart of oil with every second or third gas tank, but it still runs. That makes it an old mans truck.
“Ah. So big trucks are boy trucks and little trucks are girl trucks, except for little trucks that need paint jobs, which are old mens trucks.
“Yes, he said. “Except for any truck of any size painted banana yellow.
“Oh.
“Or lipstick red.
“Uh-huh, she said.
“Then its a girl truck.
“Right.
Except for the subject matter, it had been a repeat of one of those nothing and everything conversations they had so delighted in when they had first met, three years and a lifetime ago. In the interim, he had lost his wife and his son to a drunken driver, and very nearly his job as well, and she had acquired a new home, an air taxi and an adolescent son. They were still getting to know each other, feeling their way, on a direct heading, he hoped, for a permanent relationship, formalized by the local magistrate and vows, the whole nine yards. Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, The last of life, for which the first was made. Browning, not his favorite poet, but this time right on the mark.
The front door of the house was unlocked, and he padded down the hall.
Someone was already in the bathroom. He looked around and saw that Tims door was still closed. Employing the covert tactics taught him at the trooper academy in Sitka, he opened Tims door and saw the boy deeply asleep beneath a tangle of blankets, a book open on the floor next to
his bed, noise coming from a set of headphones that had slipped from his ears.
He grinned and closed the door.
The bathroom door locked from the inside. “Tim? Wys voice came from behind the shower curtain.
Liam stepped out of his sweats and pulled the curtain to one side. Wy blinked at him through the water running down her face. “Liam!
He stepped into the tub and pulled her against him.
“You cant be in here!
He lifted her and kneed her legs apart.
“Tim is right down the
He kissed her and slipped inside her in the same moment.
“haaaaaall, she said. Her other leg came up to wrap around his waist. “Liam, she whispered.
“Wy, he whispered back.
“We shouldnt be doing this, she said weakly, and arched her back to take him all the way inside her. “Tim might wake up. He could come in, he might
He paused. “Want me to stop? He kissed her, the water running warm down his back. “Ill stop, he whispered.
“Noooooo, she said, and after that they didnt talk.
Liam and Wy were both late for work, and Wy was later because on a whim, she had reversed back into the driveway and run into the house to put on her gold hoop earrings. Liam had given her those hoops during a four-day trip to Anchorage three years before. The trip hadnt ended well and she hadnt worn them since. Today seemed like a good day to resurrect them. She was unaware of just how complacent the smile on her face was when she left home for the second time that morning, headed for Mad Trapper Memorial Airport and the headquarters for Nushagak Air Taxi Service, which business consisted of one Piper Super Cub, one Cessna 180, one small shack and Wy, owner and chief pilot.
Nushagak Air Taxi held the contract to deliver the U.S. mail north of Newenham, to settlements scattered along and to the west of the Nushagak River. Bristol Bay Air Freight held the contract for the east side of the river and for the communities south and west from Newenham to Togiak. Dagfinn Grant, the owner and operator of Bristol Bay Air Freight and Wys direct competitor, had been her nemesis ever since the United States Postal Service had decided to spread governmental largesse around and carved off a slice of Grants mail route to award to Wy. It was only ten villages, with mail service once a week year-round, but to Wys one-woman operation it meant the difference between paying attorney fees for Tims adoption or letting Tim be remanded to the custody of his mother, who had nearly killed him the last time he was in her care.
To Finn Grant, it meant war. When Wy was approached by potential passengers on a day that was booked solid, she directed them to Bristol Bay Air Freight. When Grant was approached by potential passengers on a day that was booked solid, they were told that there were no other air taxis in Newenham and that hed try to squeeze them in sometime later in the week. Grants pilots were forbidden, on pain of instant dismissal, to give Wy any information about weather or strip conditions anywhere in their mutual flying area, and Grants mechanic had been docked a days pay when he sold Wy an oil filter at cost.
Mechanics by nature being contrary, cantankerous and fiercely independent creatures, this one had told Grant to take his job and put it where the sun dont shine and marched across the primary Newenham runway beneath the nose of a taxiing Alaska Airlines 737, there to offer his services to Wy, at a discount. She couldnt afford to hire him on full-time, but she was grateful for the offer, and when he set up his own shop shed directed pilots his way. Troy Gillis had been servicing her Piper Super Cub and her Cessna 180 for a year now. The engines on both planes had never sounded better, and when a boat skipper with more malice than brains had ripped up the fabric of the wings on her Cub that spring, Troy had had them recovered in two weeks.
Of course, this was just something else for Finn Grant to hold against Wy. She kept sending him her overflow business in hopes that in time he would come to realize how ridiculous the feud was. He ran a single Otter and two Beavers. With her Super Cub, she could get into strips for which his aircraft were too big, and her Cessna hauled only a maximum of six people. Finn could haul twelve in the Otter alone.
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.
Stabenow, Dana - Liam Campbell 03 - Nothing Gold Can Stay Page 1
