The Mountains Bow Down

by Sibella Giorello

  Bundling up the plants like babies, Claire hurried them over to my cabin. “Don’t touch the crystals,” she called out. “I’m coming back for them.”

  Once she was in the other room, I whispered to my aunt, “Please tell me the steward changed the sheets today.”

  Her eyes were still moist, but my aunt’s plump face dimpled with a smile. “Raleigh Ann Harmon, under all that toughness you really are a very sweet girl.”

  Sleep refused to come.

  It wasn’t because of the Parrotheads next door, who did indeed party all night. And it wasn’t because of Claire, whose snoring drilled through the wall like a jackhammer. I couldn’t even blame my aunt, who talked in her sleep. She talked nonsense but said it all with great urgency so it was impossible not to listen.

  I tossed and turned, then finally pulled back the curtains on the window above the bed. The sky was liquid amethyst, washing over the narrow channel, heavenly hues over the snowcapped mountains.

  Sitting up, I pulled on my sweats and stepped into the hall.

  My watch read 12:16 am.

  I walked down to the atrium where a grand piano lingered on the marble floor, its ebony beauty awaiting tomorrow’s new song. The elevator was also empty and carried me directly down to Deck Four, and when the medical clinic’s automatic doors whooshed open, the nurse who glanced up from the round desk had wide-set blue eyes and corn-silk blond hair. Apparently Nurse Stephanie had returned to her coven for the night.

  I introduced myself, then said, “My mom’s in here, Nadine Harmon.” I nodded at the darkened room across from the desk.

  “I’m Shannon.” She extended her hand. “And I’m sorry to tell you this, but the doctor said you’re not . . . we’re not . . .” She was too nice to finish the statement.

  I nodded. “I was just wondering if I could stay in the next room, if it’s empty?”

  Her frown notched the skin between her wide eyes. “The rooms are only for patients.”

  I imagined Claire, snoring in my bed. “I feel sick,” I told her.

  “Fever?”

  “Could be. But definitely nausea.”

  She snapped some paper into a clipboard. “Follow me.”

  In the room next to my mom’s I lay down on the bed, feeling the vinyl mattress cover under the sheets. The nurse placed two fingers on the inside of my wrist, then stared at her watch.

  “Your pulse is remarkably slow,” she said.

  “I might pass out.”

  “That’s just what I was thinking.” She smiled and wrote something on the form. “We can’t be too careful. There’s a bad flu going around.”

  She finished quickly, then left me alone. Except for the nightlight over the emergency call button, the room was dark. The clinic’s antiseptic odors began to fade, but I could hear faint intermittent beeps coming from the room across the way, where the elderly man lay with his wife by his side. Closer, I listened as the nurse’s shoes squeaked into my mom’s room.

  No words were spoken. None. The drugs kept her dreaming, or maybe she had nightmares. Nightmares about me. I held my wrist to the emergency light. Twenty minutes to 1:00 AM. In five hours the ship would dock in Skagway. A long day was ahead, as Jack pointed out. I turned on my side, drawing several deep breaths. I willed myself to sleep.

  But those thoughts kept coming. And behind them, they dragged condemnation.

  I lied.

  I cheated and broke my code of ethics.

  I broke the Bureau’s rules.

  I was a bad fiancée. Maybe the worst.

  In the night while everyone slept, my flaws rose up glaring and raw, refusing to leave me alone. Defeating me. At times like this, I almost understood why my aunt worshiped the earth. Human beings were filthy creatures. Filled with weaknesses and ugly imperfections, committing stupid and selfish and evil mistakes. But those polished crystals stood shining, their pristine beauty unchanging and solid. Something visibly greater. The rocks and the mountains, this ocean with its wind; I had felt the pull of their gravity.

  But as I tugged the blanket to my chin, I could hear my dad’s advice, whispering in my ears.

  Get to the source, Raleigh.

  My passion for geology started young, with the first rock found in the backyard garden. I spent hours gazing at picture books and reading about the great catastrophic forces that created the monumental landscapes. Earthquakes and floods and meteors. Minerals and rocks. By college I’d fallen in deep with crystal axes and atomic attractions and all that stunning order and symmetry. Intoxicating to think about it. So intoxicating that one day my dad felt compelled to remind me that it would all disappear. Every rock, every hill, each stitch of order. One day the oceans would rise and the mountains bow down, and every last speck of this cherished earth would be forced to recognize true power and true majesty.

  My dad didn’t want me fooled.

  Get to the source, Raleigh.

  Pulling the blanket over my head, I realized the most stunning part of it all. The same God who created these breathtaking landscapes listened to me now. My confession of fear. My surrender of pride, all pretense of holiness gone.

  My dad was my adoptive father, and the greatest man I’ve ever known. But he was gone. And he was never coming back. That was fact.

  But another father adopted me and sent his own to pay my ransom. Here under the covers, I called out his name.

  I called out his name. And he heard me.

  And he caught every tear.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  When I opened my eyes, Nurse Stephanie’s face hovered inches from my nose.

  “You don’t look sick to me,” she said.

  I pushed myself up in bed.

  “What do you think this is, a hotel? You’re going to get charged for taking this room.”

  Swinging my legs off the bed, I stared at my socks. My shoes were nowhere in sight.

  “These beds are for sick people.”

  As soon as my feet hit the floor, she yanked the blanket off the bed. I shuffled out of the room.

  Standing by the empty desk, I stared into my mom’s room. Nurse Stephanie continued to gripe and strip away my presence as I walked over to her bed. Her slack mouth drooled on the pillow and disheveled black curls covered half her face. The other half was exposed, displaying scratches like enflamed war paint.

  Dear God. What have I done?

  “Raleigh?”

  I spun around.

  Aunt Charlotte, her chartreuse caftan crowned with a green turban. Her face was wrinkled from sleep, and baffled. “What are you doing here?”

  I looked down at the bed. My mother didn’t even stir at the sound of our voices.

  “I stayed down here.” I nodded to the room next door, where Hurricane Stephanie continued to storm. “I couldn’t sleep.”

  “Last night? But I didn’t hear you leave.”

  I nodded again, glancing at my watch: 5:07 am. “Isn’t this a little early for you?”

  “I wanted to check on her before the day got away from me. Sandy needs all new crystals.” The caftan shuddered with her sigh.

  I didn’t want to ask. Really, I didn’t. But she was my mother’s only available visitor. “He needs all new crystals because . . . ?”

  “Because he found a new director and now the chemistry among the cast is completely different. Larrah’s in a dither over it.”

  “Does that take long, changing the stones?”

  “With these people? It could take all day.”

  Before I could point out the obvious—there was only one day left on the cruise—Nurse Stephanie swarmed into the room. Her eyes bugged.

  “Get out.” She pointed at the door.

  “I was just leaving.”

  “Good, sign your release.”

  I scrawled my name across the document’s bottom line. First name chosen by my mother for the city in North Carolina. Last name bestowed by my adopted father. But the signature looked foreign, as if it belonged to somebody else.
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  Somebody who, unlike me, was worthy of both.

  My hair still wet from the shower, I met Geert at the gangway. It was ten minutes before 6:00 AM and passengers were already lined up at the exit. Geert waved me around the computer, staffed this morning by Fiona, the Irish girl interviewed in Ramazan and Serif’s cabin. She glanced at me, then quickly looked away. Letty was nowhere to be seen.

  At the bottom of the ramp, Geert reached into the black canvas bag and returned the Glock 22 to its delighted rightful owner.

  I slid the gun into my fanny pack. “Did Letty tell you anything more?”

  “Yah. Serif doesn’t know what happened, she said. Now Letty is gone for good. But we are still watching him. And he’ll be gone for good when we reach Seattle.” His eyes moved toward my small pack. “Do not cause more trouble in Skagway.”

  “I hardly ever shoot people,” I said.

  “Ach.” He turned to watch a police cruiser pulling into the dock’s parking area. Two Alaska State patrol officers got out.

  “What’s this about?” I asked.

  “I need my men back.” His mustache twitched. “The director wants his lawyer. Let him call from the Skagway jail. I called the troopers about the drugs.”

  I didn’t want to lose Webb this way, but Jack and I couldn’t guard him and pursue the rest of the case. As for Geert, the FBI had no jurisdiction over him, and I understood his concern. While his men guarded Webb, they weren’t providing security for the rest of the ship. When Geert turned to speak to the officers, I raced for the airport.

  A time-traveler’s dream, Skagway seemed lifted straight from the 1890s gold rush. The painted wood facades lined up along boardwalks whose planks creaked under my feet. There was even a marker pinpointing the exact spot where the scoundrel Soapy Smith was shot dead, killed for stealing other people’s pokes of gold. As if continuing the Wild West theme, Skagway’s geography reminded me of a broken arrow pointing north from the channel. Two steep mountains funneled wind off the water, and this morning gray clouds were being pushed into the valley. The sun was a faint halo trying to burn through, and when I reached the airport on the edge of town, the orange wind socks blew parallel to the ground.

  The landing strip was empty.

  A mile of tarmac stretched along the base of one mountain. In the middle was a small building, no bigger than a nursery school. The terminal, if you could call it that. But the door was locked. No air traffic tower. No radio transmitters. The airport was a dozen or so empty Cubs and Cessnas and prop planes, resting on a gravel shoulder, their guy-wires anchoring the wings against the fierce wind. I glanced at my watch, 6:13 am.

  Marvin Larsen’s groggy voice confirmed my second worry: I woke up the guy who had helped.

  “I’m really sorry to wake you, Marvin,” I said feebly into my cell phone.

  “Oh, hey.” He perked up. “Did you find Chad?”

  “Who?”

  “The pilot. Chad.”

  “I’m standing at the Skagway airport, Marvin. Nobody’s here. What time did he leave Seattle?”

  “Yesterday. He took off from Paine Field. You don’t see a darkblue four-seater with Ski to Heaven painted on the door?”

  “Is that a joke?”

  “No. He flies people to the glaciers, when he’s not working as an air marshal.”

  I gazed down the long tarmac. The wind in my face made my eyes water. No blue planes. “There’s not even a control tower.”

  “That’s what I was trying to telling you. Skagway is officially the busiest uncontrolled airport in North America.” He said it as though this was a lifelong destination of mine.

  “It’s not looking particularly busy this morning. In fact, it looks dead.”

  “How’s the wind?”

  I stared at the shaking guy-wires. “Blowing, hard.”

  “That’s why he’s not there. Wait for the wind to drop.”

  “Marvin, how well do you know this guy?”

  “Don’t go there, Raleigh. He’s one of our best air marshals.”

  I didn’t care if he was the director of the CIA; he wasn’t here and neither was the bracelet. And if that piece of jewelry was worth what I thought it was, this pilot might decide to turn south and live like a king in Paraguay. And without the bracelet, I lost all my leverage with Geert to search the cabins. To find that stupid jewelry box. “The ship pulls out of here in eight hours. Is there a way to contact this guy?”

  “He’ll be there,” Marvin said. “But this is the thing about flying in Alaska. It’s more like combat duty. With that weather, your number can come up any day. Only the very best pilots live to old age.”

  “How old is this guy?”

  “Sixty-two. Stick to the airport.”

  Unlike the cliff-hanging houses in Juneau and Ketchikan, Skagway’s buildings were spread across a flat-bottomed basket, with the streets as level as Kansas. At the Sweet Tooth Cafe, I ate a hearty omelet and drank enough coffee to inflict a heart attack while staring out the window at the sky above the airport.

  By 7:20, the tourists were streaming in through the bell-ringing door and the waitress was giving me the eye. I left a big tip, then wandered down Broadway. The pedestrians walking down the boardwalks created a sound like horses crossing a covered bridge— wooden and hollow. The shopping bags swiped against my legs and backpacks landed punches every time another tourist whirled around to exclaim, “Hey, lookit that!” Although the stores sold many of the same things as stores in Ketchikan and Juneau—Ulu knives, mukluks, gold nuggets, and T-shirts for “High School Moose-icals”—the jewelry stores made a point of reminding shoppers that Skagway was the “last chance” to buy “real Alaska jade and gold.” And alexandrite—a semiprecious gem that changed color depending on the light. Much like the stones in that missing bracelet.

  I glanced at the sky again. No messianic plane appeared. It was only that blustering wind, pushing clouds as if they were late for a good storm.

  I spent the next hour walking from one end of Skagway to the other. From the white-capped water and cruise ships, to the railroad tracks leading into Canada, the historic train route that took miners into the Yukon for a gold rush that died almost as soon as it began.

  And still no plane. I stood outside the hardware store, staring at the display in the picture window and deciding that if I got fired for taking those gems from the jewelry box, I could go work in a hardware store. Shopping for clothes was my idea of purgatory, but places like this were heavenly. I could see fishing nets cloaking the ceiling next to suspended kayaks and life rafts and a dusty floor with rows of smart knives and odd gadgets and the doohickeys only found in hardware stores, like the window display of salmon bait made from sex pheromones and fear pheromones—fish smells to excite predators—a stink “taken naturally from injured fish.”

  Hardware store heaven.

  I turned and scanned the sky. What if I went inside for just one minute . . . but something caught my eye.

  And it wasn’t a plane.

  Vinnie Pinnetta pushed through the tourists on the boardwalk. His urgency matched the wind, but he stopped beside a blond girl standing outside a jewelry store. The girl wore an 1890s costume, the ruffled skirt short to look like extravagant panties and a leather halter around her neck. The halter helped her hold up a large tray that displayed gold jewelry.

  Vinnie stepped into the store.

  I crossed the street. People streamed past the store’s open door and I could see only bits of Vinnie’s looming frame. He seemed to lean over a glass counter, speaking to someone. But he turned suddenly, staring out the door. I darted to the right.

  The girl at the door gave me a smile. “You know what would look great on you? This.” She picked up a gold necklace from her tray. “If you go in, they have one you can try on.”

  I didn’t even look at the thing. “Great. Thanks.”

  She beamed like twenty-four karats, waving me inside. But when I stepped over the threshold, an electronic eye beeped.
I froze.

  Vinnie didn’t turn around. Neither did the man behind the counter. He was small, compact, and held a jeweler’s loupe to his right eye.

  Leaping toward me, a salesman called out, “How can I help you?”

  I turned my head, shielding my face, but once again Vinnie was fixed on whatever the small man held in his hands. The salesman continued to prance toward me, looking like a blade of grass in a thin green suit that bagged at the knees. Keeping my voice down, I told him the girl outside showed me a necklace.

  “Wonderful, wonderful!” He stuck out his hand, the grip soft as a child’s. “I’m Marcus and we have many delightful accompanying pieces.” Marcus hopped behind the counter opposite Vinnie and the jeweler. “Some really spectacular sets. And imagine when you tell people that you got it in Alaska!”

  He unlocked the counter’s back and slid open the door. I glanced once over my shoulder. Both men continued to lean over the object.

  “And where are you from?” Marcus asked.

  I didn’t answer, hoping he would shut up. But he asked again.

  “Virginia,” I whispered.

  “Virginia!” Marcus started naming every city he could think of. “Vienna? Norfolk?”

  I shook my head.

  “Chesapeake?”

  When I turned around, Vinnie was bent low, speaking into the ear of the small man. When he straightened, the jeweler’s face rose with him. He looked surprised. And I saw the object in his tiny hands.

  A bright blue stone.

  “We have same-as-cash twelve-month financing,” Marcus said. “You can be wearing this in Virginia as soon as you get home.”

  Vinnie turned toward Marcus’s prattle. I pivoted, dropping my chin so my hair would cover my face. After a moment, I picked up a hand mirror on the counter and held it to one side. In the reflection, the mansard brow shadowed his eyes. But his head was moving furtively, checking the front door and the jeweler.

  “Hell-lo?” Marcus was holding up a gold necklace, waiting for me.

  Since Vinnie’s back was toward us, I pivoted again and lifted my hair. Marcus clasped the necklace and I watched the jeweler shift the blue stone back and forth, the facets sparkling under the display lights.