“He’s a survivor,” said Elizabeth, and for a moment Lana thought she meant Jay.
“He’s probably got his feet up in Elmendorf,” said Elizabeth heartily, “chewing the fat with some other hotshot pilot. Probably writing you a letter this minute. Oh Lordy, will you look at that now!” It was a Marine sergeant, stepping out of a Humvee, the driver making a U-turn so the vehicle was facing back toward the town as the sergeant driver approached the two nurses.
“My,” said Elizabeth huskily. “I’d sure like to mother him.”
“Elizabeth!” said Lana as the sergeant kept walking toward them.
“Yes, ma’am,” Elizabeth continued, unabashed. “He could ‘spect my plumbin’ any day. Mind you, he’d have to say, ‘Please, ma’am — pretty please.’ “
“Hussy!” said Lana.
“That’s me — Boston Boobs. You lookin’ for me, Sergeant?”
“Ah — ah yes, ma’am. You Lieutenant Brentwood?”
“I am,” said Lana.
“Ma’am,” said the sergeant, snapping a salute. “They said you were heading over to Stormy’s.”
“Yes.”
There was an awkward silence, and all Lana could hear was the spitting of the Humvee’s exhaust, its long, bluish white curl trailing up behind the truck then suddenly disappearing in the pristine night air.
“Ma’am…” The sergeant saluted again and gave her the brown-widow envelope. It was stiff with cold. She couldn’t open it with her mittens, and Elizabeth did it for her but didn’t read it. Despite her almost legendary self-control Lana was crying, the tears freezing her cheeks.
“Can we give you a lift, ma’am?”
Lana looked at Elizabeth. She needed help. Elizabeth told the sergeant to forget Stormy’s, to return them to the base. Then halfway back she thought perhaps they should have gone to Stormy’s after all. Do something. Anything. She didn’t know. They returned to the base.
“Thank you, Sergeant,” said Elizabeth, noting the man’s name patch: Dukowski. Ah.
Inside the Quonset hut, Lana was collecting herself, surprised at how poorly she’d handled it. “Good grief,” she sobbed to Elizabeth, “I deal with this every week on the wards. I mean I used to—”
Elizabeth handed her a mug of coffee that Lana held between her knees for warmth. She began rocking gently back and forth like an old woman, and it bothered Elizabeth more than when Lana had first read the fax. “Hell, honey,” Elizabeth tried to assure her, “never the same till it hits you.”
“No,” said Lana. “No, it isn’t.”
“Now you listen to me, Lana. That dumb old fax says ‘MIA.’ That doesn’t mean… Well, if he’s MIA, he could be on the ice pack up there. Better’n in the drink.” Elizabeth looked up at the curved ceiling of the Quonset hut. No matter that it wasn’t a ward — everything smelled of antiseptic. “Man, I never thought I’d be thanking God it was winter.”
“I — don’t understand,” said Lana.
“Well, summertime they’d be in the water. Freezin’ water. They stand a better chance out there on the ice.”
“They?” Lana was confused.
“Two guys in a Tomcat, Lana.”
“Oh.”
“I know all about Tomcats, honey,” said Elizabeth smiling. “I like ’em!”
Lana tried to be cheerful in kind but everything about her, the darkness about the Quonset hut, the smells of the hospital, of fresh coffee brewing, oppressed her — the very air suddenly too heavy and the forlorn howl of the Arctic wind soul-crushing. Other nurses — nurses who had lost loved ones — said it was the not knowing that was the worst, not knowing for sure whether they were alive or dead, but Lana felt no such yearning for a definite answer. So long as they weren’t certain definite knowns there was hope that Frank had been rescued — or, as Elizabeth had said, was on the ice waiting to be rescued.
What frightened her most was that now, when she wanted desperately to remember every detail of her and Frank’s intimacy, of his strength and gentleness when they made love, she couldn’t see him clearly in her mind’s eye. It had happened before, at moments when it seemed that she had wanted him too much. Jay La Roche’s face, on the other hand, was so clear, his jealousy and hate so palpable, it was as if he were a presence in the room, with his contemptuous smile of victory, his eyes coke-sniffing bright and alive.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Not one of the two thousand men in the two ANGES— Alaska National Guard Eskimo Scouts — believed that the four-foot-diameter, eight-hundred-mile-long pipeline that snaked its way from Prudhoe Bay on Alaska’s North Slope through the majestic Brooks Mountains, over the Yukon River and down to Valdez on Alaska’s south coast, could be adequately protected. Neither did Joe Mell.
Joe wasn’t in the Eskimo Scouts, and Mell wasn’t his real name, but white men could never get Athabascan names right, so he called himself “Mell.” “Fucking Eskimo,” was what one of the whites had called him. Joe never forgot it, along with all the other insults. “All right,” he said, taking another suck of Southern Comfort, looking down morosely at his snow-shoes — he’d made them the traditional way, from birch, and used caribou rawhide for the lacing — so the pink noses thought he was a dumb Eskimo. All they saw was a native with no teeth left and a rubbery smile.
He took another drag at the Southern Comfort. What did they know? Pink nose big shots from the oil companies down south, coming up with their prefabricated houses to give to all the natives. “No problem, pops!” they’d said. “You just stick ‘em together.” Yeah — well the pink noses didn’t think he knew about Bethel town, far to the southwest, where the Kuskokwim River flows into the Bering Sea. The big shots had guys put all the prefabricated huts up in the summer, but come the winter they all started to crack and buckle. Joe took another belt of the Southern Comfort, swallowed, and grinned. Sod houses were still the best — had a soul. They knew the Arctic winds and ice. Sod houses didn’t fight the weather like the white man. Sod houses let their earth give a little here and there, and the wind understood. No crazy stiff doors either — only sealskin storm entrances that started way back from the house in the earth and angled up to keep out the snow. All white men weren’t bad, though. Or stupid. One, from the other side of the ice bridge— the other big country — had paid him in the Cold War. A lot of money and booze, with a promise of much more if the Hot War broke out. Joe was to break the long silver snake. It wasn’t a big pipe. All you had to do was wait for the next blizzard so there’d be no tracks found after and wrap a belt of hide about the four-foot-diameter pipe with the white package attached to the belt. You pushed the white button and you had five minutes — plenty of time to get away, even in deep snow, the man said. Then the rest of the money — U.S. dollars — would come. And whose country was it anyway? When some pink noses bought Alaska, the rest of the pink noses booed them, said it wasn’t worth anything. So how come the pink noses had come up in the thousands? It sure didn’t belong to the native people anymore. The pink noses from across the strait weren’t much better. They stopped the Eskimo people from walking across the ice to meet their cousins and took everybody off the big island because some big pink nose secret had been going on there. One of the pink noses from across the strait said one of their sailors, called “Bering,” discovered Alaska. Joe had known it was there all the time. Another thing he knew: the pipeline didn’t belong here. It was like a scar on the land, as if a beautiful chukchee woman had taken her k/k — blubber knife — and slashed it across her face. It was a desecration. But if you put the strap on the silver snake, would the fire despoil the land?