A meteor streaked across the sky, another, followed by a third. What day was it? That’s right, October 21st, the first day of the Orionid meteor shower. One day she wanted to be Outside in August during the Perseid meteor shower, maybe Colorado, high up in the Rockies, to see John Denver’s “raining fire in the sky.” Meteor showers were invisible in Alaska in the summertime; the days were too long.
Moses had been quiet for a long time, when his expressed intent in coming here had been to give her grief. “What’s wrong, uncle?” she said, using the honorific earned by every elder the length and breadth of the YK Delta just for outliving their contemporaries.
He raised his head and stared out across the river. “You asked me about your father.”
Wy forgot to breathe.
His voice was dry and without expression. “His father ran out on him before he was out of diapers, and his mother did the best she could, but the booze got hold of her and she wasn’t much use after that. Still, he was a cute little bugger, and smart, too. He managed to make it all the way through high school, supported them both working deckhand, and could have had a full-time job with just about anybody when he graduated. But he wanted to work the big boats, Alaska Steam, the ferries.”
Moses paused for tea, and Wy discovered her hands had clenched around her mug. She unclamped them, one finger at a time, cautious not to make it obvious, terrified that even the smallest movement would distract him, change his mind.
“He worked for a couple of years, saving his money, and he was all set to go to school in Seattle when he fell in love.”
Her mother.
“I have never seen any two people more in love in my life,” Moses said, sounding almost judicial in tone. “They were crazy for each other, dancing the night away at the bars, necking in his truck out at the end of River Road, holding hands so they couldn’t hardly get through a door when they needed to.” He shook his head, and in the softest voice she’d ever heard him use, said, “No. That’s not how I mean it to sound. That’s not how it was. They were in love, girl. Head-over-heels, fly-me-to-the-moon, I-only-wanna-be-with-you love. You understand?”
Her throat tight, she managed to say, “Yes.”
“Thought you might.”
She waited as long as she could. “What happened?”
He shrugged. “What usually happens when two people fall in love? They got married.”
“Was she pregnant?”
“What? No. They didn’t have to get married; they wanted to. He told her all his plans, and she was all for it, so they were careful not to let anything happen to get in the way. They needed a place to live, though, so he used up his savings to buy them a little house, and he went back to work deckhanding, saving up enough to get the both of them Outside and him to school. She was miserable with him out on the water most of the time, but she handled it. Got herself a job down to the cannery on the slimer. Then she got herself an idea, and the next time he was in town and they had come up for air-”
His dry tone made her smile involuntarily.
“-she tells him. They could apply for a loan. They’d just opened up a local branch of an Anchorage bank, and he was a local boy with a good reputation. No reason somebody wouldn’t lend him money. So they did.”
You really are a master of the dramatic pause, you miserable old son of a bitch, she thought, not a respectful way even to think of one’s elder and teacher. She was determined this time not to ask, but she didn’t last thirty seconds. “What happened? Did the bank turn them down?”
“No.” He shook his head and laughed, not a nice laugh. “No, the bank didn’t turn them down. It would have been better if they had.”
“Uncle! What happened?”
“The bank manager told them she would have to sign the loan because she was the responsible member of the marriage.”
She stared at him, again trying to make out his face in the dark. “Why?”
“She was white.”
“What?”
“She was white, Caucasian, Polish-German-Scotch-Irish-English. A round-eye. A gussuk. Daughter to the BIA teacher couple in Icky. Think they were from Indiana, or some such.”
Wy closed her eyes and bowed her head. “And he was native.”
“Yupik as you and me. More. Myself, I think that was the beginning of the end. Oh, they went out to Seattle, and he came back with his certificate, and he got on the big boats. I imagine most of the big boats had mostly white crews and they weren’t easy on him. He started drinking, and they started fighting. In the middle of all this, she gets pregnant.”
“With me.”
“With you. He ran off, Wy. Maybe he was just following the sterling example set by his own father. Maybe he just couldn’t watch the world be mean to a child of his. I don’t know. One day he was there; the next he was gone.”
“What did my mother do?”
“She had you and farmed you out to your father’s sister. Not the best thing she could have done, in the circumstances.”
Wy remembered what little she could of her first years on earth, and bile rose up in her throat. No. Not the best thing.
“And then she left.”
“Do you know where she is?”
He hunched a shoulder.
“What about my father? Do you know where he is?”
“Your father’s dead, Wy.”
She drew in a sharp breath.
“He quit drinking and eventually moved up to master on the Alaska ferry system. He divorced your mom and remarried. He had three kids by his second wife.”
“I have half brothers and sisters?”
“Yeah.”
“Where are they?”
“Outside somewhere. I don’t know exactly where.”
“Would someone in Icky know?”
“Probably. Whether they’ll tell you…” He shrugged.
The red buoy at the mouth of the river winked on and off, on and off. Red right returning. On the very edge of the horizon she thought she could see the lights of a boat, too far away to see if it was coming up the river or passing it by. A meteor streaked across the sky. She took a long, shaky breath. “Thanks for telling me, uncle.”
He grunted.
“Why now?” she said. “Why didn’t you tell me all this when I first moved back to Newenham? You must have known from the beginning who I was, and who my father was. You knew I wanted to know. Why didn’t you tell me?”
Another long silence, during which she got the impression, unusual in the extreme, that Moses was picking out the right words to use. “I hoped I wouldn’t have to,” he said finally.
She stared at him, trying to decipher his expression in the dark. “ ‘Wouldn’t have to’? I don’t understand.”
“Remember last month, when you launched that two-bit kite into a gale-force wind to come after that boy of yours?”
Now she was angry. “Don’t try to change the subject, old man.” And then she added, “And sixty-eight Kilo isn’t a kite.”
“I’m not changing the subject,” he said, his voice flat. “Do you remember?”
“Of course I remember. I nearly wrecked the plane, which would have taken out half my equipment inventory.” And Liam had been with her.
“What made you do it, girl?” He sounded only curious, but she knew him well enough to know that, for Moses, curiosity alone was never a reason to do anything. “Gale-force winds, abrupt temperature changes, snow changing to sleet changing to hail changing to rain. It wasn’t VFR; hell, it wasn’t even good enough to be IFR. It was a National Weather Service wet dream. So what made you do it?”
“I…” She tried to think. “Jim and Jo had figured out that somebody was leaving bodies in a line leading to Old Man Creek. I knew Tim was there. I knew you and Bill and Amelia were there. I didn’t think about it much, I just-”