by Henry, Sue
Soon Aklak might be hungry again, but as he dozed a lethargy crept over him with thoughts of the den he had so carefully prepared. During the night he left the pile and crawled into the brush nearby, where he spent the remainder of the dark. He did not fully wake till late the following morning, and when he did, it was to a whitened world. Six inches of snow had fallen, covering everything with a cold, wet layer.
The great bear could still smell his kill, which he dug out and fed upon once more, tearing it apart as he did so, but soon he lost interest. The thought of his den, less than an hour away on another northern slope, was growing ever stronger in his mind. Halfheartedly scratching a few clawfuls of dirt and snow back over the partially consumed kill, he left it and headed east, dismissing it completely as he traveled.
That night the temperature dropped to well below freezing, where it stayed for the next week. More snow fell, until over a foot of it blanketed the plateau and its grizzly remains. In December, a fox dug up one rib where it had been tossed away from the carcass and stripped it of its few scraps of frozen flesh. Through the winter the rest lay as Aklak had left it, silent, still as the snow that covered it.
1
SHE CAME UP OUT OF SLEEP THE WAY A POWERFUL swimmer rises out of deep water…slowly, languidly, sensing the light over darkness, reaching for the surface with no anxiety…aware of the sensation of smoothness along the strong length of her body…anticipating the contrast of air on her eyes…but not yet willing to abandon the pleasant, silent suspension. Floating just below the surface, she resisted the impulse to analyze, clutching at wisps of feeling and her dream, unwilling to release it or the precious person in it who was no longer a part of her waking life. She did not dream of him often.
As soon as she recognized her own reluctance, she knew she was awake and was immediately aware of the dream fading as fog evaporates in sunlight.
The telephone rang.
She threw back the covers, sat up, swung her legs over the side of the bed, opened her eyes, and picked up the receiver.
“Yes?”
“Rochelle?”
“Ed.”
“Chelle…the plane…they found the plane.”
One image from the dream came back strongly and she recalled for the first time in days just what his eyes looked like when he smiled. Abruptly, she closed her own, clinging to the image, refusing to breathe, knowing that the next breath she drew would fill her chest and face with the familiar agony. It came anyway—the loss—like a wave.
“Chelle?”
“U-uh.” Then she could speak. “Where?”
“The plateau the other side of Susitna.”
“I looked there.”
“Yeah…well, you missed it…in some small lake. It was mostly underwater. Couple of hunters stumbled over it.”
“And…?” She could not force her lips to form the shape of his name.
“No sign of Norm. Just the plane.”
“How soon can you be at Lake Hood?”
“What?”
“Meet me at the plane in an hour.”
“Aw…Chelly,” he entreated her with her childhood name. “Let them—”
Sharply, “No. I want to see.”
“There’s nothing of—”
“There’s the plane…whatever was left.”
“It’s been over six months…all winter.”
“Six months and thirteen days—a hundred and ninety-five. I’m going. Come if you like.”
“All right. All right. But wait till this afternoon. Okay? Let me get the exact location. Do it right.”
“One o’clock.”
“Yeah. Okay. I’ll meet you there, but—”
“Thank you.”
At five minutes to one he was waiting when she pulled into the parking space beside the small storage shed near her plane. Sitting on his heels by the edge of Lake Hood, a leather jacket beside him on the thin, new grass, he watched through a pair of expensive reflective sunglasses as she closed and locked the car door and walked toward him carrying a blue flight bag. Rising, he flipped away a half-smoked cigarette and took off the glasses…a tall man with a handsome, narrow face that lacked signs of humor, and watchful eyes that mirrored the water colors of the lake. Her Cessna 206 rocked slightly on its floats as he rested a hand on its tail.
A casual observer might not have immediately noted the faint family resemblance in the color of their eyes and shape of the wide brows, for in most other ways they were dissimilar. Six inches shorter, her otherwise slim frame was just a touch generous through breasts, hips, and thighs. Thick cinnamon hair, cut for convenience and combed back, was lightly threaded with gray, giving it a frosted appearance, in contrast to her younger brother’s dark brown waves.
She came to a halt, looking up at him. “Thanks, Ed.”
He frowned. “They don’t want you flying out there, Chelle.”
“They? Who exactly are they? I’m going, Ed. They have no right to deny me permission in open airspace. What have they done all winter?”
“Easy. They are the state troopers, after all, and they have every legal right. They don’t want you there now. You can go later, if you still want to.”
“Bullshit!”
“No. A good idea. Wake up. I’m not sure I want to be in the air with you in this frame of mind. Let them do the work, sis. Give it up. You don’t really want to go out there, and neither do I. Come on.”
Abruptly, she swung away, opened the door to the storage shed, retrieved and yanked on a pair of hip waders. Walking out on the left-hand float of the plane, she unlocked the door, angrily tossed in the blue bag, and began a preflight check.
“I do and I will,” she snapped. “I told you…come if you like…but I’m going, with or without you, little brother. And if you don’t tell me where they are, I’ll search those lakes one by one till I find the right one.” Continuing her preparation, she took a hand pump and worked to remove any water that might have collected in the compartments of the floats.
“Then let me do the flying,” he suggested. “I can do that, you know. I’ll go if you let me fly.”
The glance she gave him as she shook her head indicated this was not a new issue. “You know the answer to that.”
“You’re too damn picky.”
“Picky? This plane is mine, Ed. I worked hard for it—still do. What happened when I loaned you my car? Two thousand in repairs.”
He kicked at a rock in disgust. “One minor accident that wasn’t my fault…”
“A two-thousand-dollar accident is not minor, Ed. You promised you wouldn’t drink. Whose fault was the DWI you got?”
“That’s not fair. You’re not being reasonable. I can fly this plane. I’m licensed.”
“This plane is my living, not a hobby I can afford to lose. No, Ed. No. You can’t fly my plane. Forget it.”
“You can be a real…” he started, then turned sulky. “Whatever. I don’t think we should go out there.”
He took a step toward her.
“Don’t try to stop me, Ed. What can they do, arrest me? You do know where it is, right?”
His expression told her he did. He glanced down, then out over the water, avoiding her eyes in obvious discomfort.
“What? What is it?” Stepping back onto the bank, she stood directly in front of him, looking up to search his face intently. “You’re not telling me something. What?”
He shifted from one foot to the other and threw back his head to blow a puff of air at the sky. “Whu-u-h. Shit.” Giving up, he faced her, irritation drawing two vertical lines between his brows.
“They could arrest you…and me for bringing you, sis,” he told her. “It’s not so simple. They didn’t find Norm, but there’s…ah…a body in the passenger seat of the plane. Someone was flying with him. A woman.”
She caught her breath.
“Chelly…I’m sorry. But you can’t say I didn’t warn you…lots of times. They don’t know who it is, or aren’t saying, but she’s bee
n there all winter. They’re investigating and they don’t want anything disturbed till they get done. Please, Chelle,” he almost whined.
She hardly heard. “A woman?” she breathed. “I want to know what woman he would take flying without telling me. Who? There was no one on the charter list.”
“Lake Hood Tower? Cessna four five nine six uniform—south shore Spenard—with Information Charlie. Taxi for a west?”
“Cessna four five nine six uniform. Lake Hood Tower. Taxi for a west.”
“Nine six uniform. Taxiing for a west.”
Mechanically, through stiff lips, Rochelle Lewis initiated the communications procedure that would allow her Cessna 206 into the air from the water of Lake Hood, just north of Anchorage International Airport’s runways for domestic and international jets. The shores of the long, narrow lake—the busiest small plane facility in the United States—were crowded with individual spaces for float planes that came and went constantly on two east-west channels of water, divided by an island. Toward the northwest end of the lake, conveniently located around docks, were the planes of numerous private services for flight-seeing, hunting and fishing charters—a marina for aircraft. There, a virtual air force of planes whisked a never-ending supply of Alaskans, tourists, and gear to remote locations unreachable by road, from luxurious lodges to bare survival camps. They might put a local fisherman down on a sandbar or a tiny pond in the midst of the wilderness for a day’s or a week’s angling, ferry rafters or kayakers to the banks of a wild river, or hikers to mountain slopes.
Beyond the water, on tarmac, hundreds of other small planes on wheels were parked, row after row, which made their arrivals and departures from a nearby strip. Through the summer months wheels and floats were de rigueur, but when cold weather came, freezing the lake and burying runways in snow, pilots were forced to either park their planes for the winter or convert them on to skis.
Rochelle ran quickly through a check of the instrument panel and throttled up to move away from the bank. A mother duck, followed closely by a ragged line of early ducklings, paddled frantically away from the huge, threatening thing that thundered in their direction. Instinctively, Chelle swung out far enough to allow them passage to the shore and left the fuzzy yellow babies safely bobbing like bathtub toys in the gentle wake of the slow-moving aircraft. Ed, silently watched their escape from his seat on the passenger side of the cockpit, acutely aware of and irritated by his sister’s pain and confusion, and with his inability to alleviate or talk her out of it.
“Lake Hood Tower? Nine six uniform—ready to go west. I’ll be departing north—Point McKenzie.”
“Hood Tower. Nine six uniform. Cleared for takeoff west.”
“Nine six uniform on the slide.”
The radio crackled and the rising roar of the engine removed any possibility of conversation, letting Ed off the hook for the moment. Moving into position midlake, Rochelle powered up and began her takeoff, increasing speed over the water, till, suddenly, smoothly, the Cessna was airborne and rising in a long, slow curve to the north.
Falling away below, the whole city of Anchorage came into view, nestled against the Chugach Range to the east, filling a triangle between the mountains and the Y formed by Knik and Turnagain arms that divided Cook Inlet. The bluffs of Earthquake Park passed under them, a line of demarcation between land and the waters of Knik Inlet, northernmost of the two. The tide was out, exposing miles of shallow, muddy flats that challenged, and at times, all but denied freighters and tour ships access to the Port of Anchorage. Even at high tide, it was necessary for some to anchor out and lighter cargo and passengers to the docks, with their limited space. Flat-bottomed barges and ships with shallow draft had better luck, but entering both the inlets was further complicated by wicked bore tides with strong currents that surged regularly through the channels.
Ed ventured a look at his sister, but she concentrated steadily on flying out of controlled airspace, attentive to the chatter from the tower and other planes through the headphones that hugged her ears. As her eyes automatically swept the sky for other aircraft, however, her lower lip was caught between her teeth, a hint of tension beyond her usual concentration. A second set of headphones lay atop the instrument panel in front of him, but he left them there, reluctant to start a conversation. They did not agree on the circumstances of Norm’s absence. She would talk to him when she was ready; she was tenaciously introspective, always finding it difficult to accept assistance or advice of any kind. The uncertain winter had been hard on her, he knew, for she would not let go, always so stubbornly determined to take care of herself—and, not for the first time, he wondered what had made her seem to assume some kind of blame for her husband’s disappearance. He knew he could wait it out, but lately she had shut him out of her life, along with everyone else. He turned back to the window to watch the northern shore of Knik Arm slide under them, and they were back over land again.
Chelle, aware of his scrutiny, kept her attention focused ahead of the plane. She was actually feeling less tense than she had before takeoff. All it took was being airborne and some of the cares and stresses of her other, ground-based life seemed to slide away with the wind over the wings, allowing her to slip into the freedom and peace of the sky. The world below grew small and insignificant, with its confusion and clamor. Engine noise faded from consciousness, became a consistent, white sound, and there was the smooth, floating sensation of flight. What she loved more than anything were the solo flights, times alone in the air. Then she felt whole and in complete control of her immediate environment, responsible for and dependent on no one but herself.
“Hood Tower? Nine six uniform. Point McKenzie—frequency change?”
“Roger, nine six uniform. Frequency change approved. Good day.”
A line of electrical towers marched in a straight line across miles of the Susitna Flats below them, carrying power to Anchorage from Beluga, farther west along the inlet, generated with natural gas from the wells in the field that lay there. Crossing over the line took them out of the airport’s controlled area and into open airspace. Chelle swung the plane west into a heading that would take them just south of the gently rounded slopes of Mount Susitna.
The mountain dominated the horizon, clearly visible across Cook Inlet from Anchorage, a silhouette against the sky. Easily recognized and familiar, it was a welcome landmark to the people of the largest city in the state: a somnolent giant reclining passively, slumbering its way into legend.
According to stories, a race of giants once lived among the majestic mountains and rivers of what would become Alaska. They were well favored, but the fairest of them was Nakatla, a woman as good as she was beautiful, who was much loved by her people. She had a tall and handsome lover, Kudan, who adored her and was never separated from her until one day an evil tribe brought war across the great mountains to this peaceful race of people.
Kudan, though reluctant to leave Nakatla, was one of several young men chosen as a peace delegation to meet with the warlike invaders. He left her to await his return at their trysting place, a slender pool of water that lay in a valley high on a nearby mountain. As she wept and waited there, she fell into a deep sleep and was not aware when news came that the young men, including Kudan, had been ambushed and slain. When the other women came to tell her, they found her peacefully dreaming of her lover and, filled with pity, begged their gods to let her sleep forever.
There Nakatla still reclined, a giant lady, covered in winter with a blanket of snow spread by the gods, and, in summer, clothed in green and brown shades of vegetation. Her hair seemed to flow down the southern slope, forming a long ridge that was called Ch’chihi Ken by the early Dena’ina people of the area, meaning “ridge where we cry,” for in the past they would go there, where they could look down on their land below and mourn their ancestors. The legend was now largely forgotten, and most called the mountain Susitna, but those who appreciated the story called her the Sleeping Lady.
As Rochell
e flew over the flatland toward the great mountain, she remembered how often during the last months she had wished she could just go to sleep like Nakatla and escape the pain from the loss of her husband. After the first few frantic, desperate days and weeks, it had seemed all winter as if she was half-asleep. Now she felt shocked awake.
She swallowed hard around a sour lump in her throat and felt her stomach twist in a knot of anxiety. What would she find at that small lake where the plane had been located? Why was Norm not with the wreckage? Where was he? Impatient, she wanted to be there, to know, to see for herself, yet felt herself also wishing she could turn and run away, fly off into some other place—some other life—where none of this was happening, or had happened.
Glancing across at her brother, Ed, she found him looking at her with a frown, and was suddenly aware that her face was wet with silent, unrealized tears. Roughly, she swiped at her cheeks with one sleeve of the jacket she wore, then clung tightly for a second to the hand he laid wordlessly on her knee before she straightened, swiftly inspected the sky around them for other aircraft, increased her airspeed slightly, and guided her plane over Ch’chihi Ken, the long southern ridge of the Sleeping Lady’s hair.
2
ALASKA STATE TROOPER SERGEANT ALEX JENSEN scowled in resigned displeasure as he watched the Cessna 206 circle in the east and set down to taxi across the waters of the long, narrow lake toward the plane in which he had arrived two hours earlier.
“Hell,” he said to trooper pilot, Ben Caswell, “she’s coming in all right. That’s Lewis’s wife, Rochelle. Damn it. I thought they told her brother to keep her away from here.”
Caswell nodded, thoughtfully, as the floats of the Cessna came to rest against the bank next to those of his smaller Maule M-4. “There’s a passenger, so he’s probably with her. But I don’t remember her as the type to take orders meekly, even from her brother…especially since he’s younger.”
