He had laughed and loved her out of her fear. God, she was beautiful, his wife. He couldn’t see her even in jeans and T-shirt without wanting to rip them off and wallow in her, inhaling her, burying himself in her.
He’d never been quite sure how he had managed to win her. Looking like she did, Rebecca had had men lining up three deep wherever she went. He had beat them all to the gate, by god.
He tilted the pan and let the rest of the water drain out. There were a few specks of color, nothing more. He rinsed out the pan and looked upstream. There was an outcropping of large rocks at the first bend that he had been slowly, steadily zeroing in on. If he hadn’t run out of summer he would have discovered the big one, the pocket where the heavier gold had settled as it was being washed downstream. No mere dust there, he was sure, but nuggets the size of peanuts, nuggets by the pound, never mind the ounce. One more summer and he would hit pay dirt. Why couldn’t she understand that?
Bewilderment was giving way to resentment. She was his wife. She had promised before God and man to love, honor and obey him. He hadn’t insisted on the traditional words; she had. In his turn, he had promised to provide for her, to endow her with all his worldly goods. His worldly goods were about to increase in a big way. Under the next rock or around the next bend, the gold beckoned him on, promising wealth and riches beyond his wildest imaginings and, evidently, her comprehension.
Gold. Number 79 on the periodic table. He’d panned his first gold at the Alaska State Fair two years before. He hadn’t wanted to go, but Rebecca had beaded some artsy-craftsy thing into a small brass ring and entered into one of the competitions, and she’d dragged him along for the judging. He had wandered off and discovered a long trough with water circulating through it. The water was very dirty.
“Like to try your hand?”
He looked up and saw a man twice his age, half his weight and a foot shorter than he was peering at him through Coke-bottle lenses. “At what?”
The man had handed him a battered gold pan that looked as if it had come across the Chilkoot Pass in 1899, and that was when he’d first realized he’d stopped in front of the Alaska Mining Association booth.
He’d filled the pan with dirt and water and swirled it around. The man showed him how to tilt it so the water ran out and the dirt settled in a half-moon at the bottom. He dipped more water and dirt, swirled out more water and dirt, wetting his sleeves to the elbow, soaking the front of his shirt and jeans, repeating the motion again and again until there, in a few grains of sand, there it was, a single tiny perfect flake of gold, gleaming up at him, beaming up at him.
He’d looked up and the man had grinned at him. “Nothing like it, is there?”
No, he thought now, looking down at the pan in his hands. Nothing.
Fine. He set his jaw. They’d never had a bump in the marriage before, but all marriages had them. They’d ride it out. Anchorage wasn’t much of a proving ground, all the modern luxuries, the modern conveniences. Out here, a man was tested.
A woman, too.
His resentment began to fade. Hell, it wasn’t her fault she’d never hauled water from the creek, or chopped wood for a fire to keep her warm. It would take time for her to get used to the life, that was all. Maybe he had enough time before the hard frost set in to dig a new hole, move the outhouse closer to the cabin. That’d probably make a big difference.
He looked at the rock upstream, a shard of quartz sparkling at him with a come-hither look in its eye. The sun was well behind one of the mountains by now, and getting to it earlier every day. Not enough daylight left to fetch the pry bar. For a moment he was sorry he hadn’t taken on someone to help, someone who might know more about mining than he did, but he dismissed the thought almost at once. At least that was one thing he didn’t have to worry about out here, no men to vie for Rebecca’s attention. Out here, he had her all to himself. Days hunting gold, nights sleeping with Rebecca. Although they never got all that much sleep. Last night, for example. He shrugged his shoulders, and the marks still stung.
Why couldn’t it be enough for her, too?
He put away his equipment in the shed and hung the hip waders to dry. The smell of salmon frying and rice boiling greeted him as he opened the door. He brightened. Good. She must be over her mad. He’d known it wouldn’t take long.
He pulled the door closed behind him, and without turning around from the counter, she said, “I don’t care what you do, Mark, but I’m flying out of here with Wyanet Chouinard on Monday.” She flipped the salmon steaks onto a plate and put it on the table. “Supper’s ready. Sit down and eat.”
He sat automatically. “But, Rebecca-”
She brought the rice, the soy sauce and the salad, already dressed. “No, Mark,” she said, and whatever he had been going to say was stopped dead by the firm decision in her voice. “I have done everything you’ve asked me to. I quit my job when I didn’t want to, I turned over our home to a house sitter I didn’t know, I left behind my friends-”
“I sold it,” he said, looking at his plate.
“-and family and-what?”
“I sold the house.”
Silence. He looked up to see her fork suspended in midair, her blue eyes staring at him unblinking. “Before we left in May, I sold the house.”
More silence. Compelled to fill it, he said, “I sold it to Jeff Kline. He always liked it, and you know he’ll take good care of it. You don’t have to worry about our stuff, I paid a mover to pack it up and put it into storage. We’ll have it shipped out here after I add on a couple of rooms to the cabin.”
He looked up and her eyes were fixed on his face but she was looking more through him than at him. “Rebecca?” He took her hand. She let it lie in his, limp, lifeless, unresponsive.
“How could you sell it?” she said finally.
He misunderstood. “It was in my name. It was my house before we were married. We never did get it changed over.”
“No,” she said, her voice coming more strongly. “Howcould you?”
He couldn’t quite meet her eyes, couldn’t quite face that wounded look. “Just give it a chance, Rebecca, okay? We’ll be together and that’s all that really matters, isn’t it?” He took a deep breath and made the supreme sacrifice. “And maybe we can have that kid you’re always bugging me about. Great place to raise kids, isn’t it? No drugs on the street corner, no crazy people shooting up the high schools, no television to monitor. You could teach him, home-school him, you know, and I could teach him everything else. You’ll like it, Rebecca, you’ll-”
She stood up, pulling her hand free.
“Rebecca? Honey?”
Her eyes darted around the room, looking at the thin mattress of the cot they’d slept on for the last three months, the corners of the room filling with darkness five minutes earlier this evening than the evening before, the stained and torn linoleum covering the floor, the battered counter that served as kitchen, laundry and bathroom, the rough, peeling surfaces of the uninsulated logs.
There was a look on her face that he didn’t like. “Rebecca, I know it hasn’t come as easily to you as it has to me, but-”
She pushed back her chair and walked around him to the door. She flung it wide, and he heard the splash of the neighborhood grizzly as he went into the creek for supper.
Rebecca stood on the doorstep for a long time, but she never stepped outside.
Kagati Lake, September 1
An hour later they had the body bagged and in the plane, and the rolls of film out of the camera and carefully labeled. The prints Prince had lifted were in an envelope, also labeled. The family was gathered around the kitchen table, a fire in the fireplace shared by both kitchen and living room, and all the lanterns in the house lit. Leonard had insisted on cooking everyone a meal, fried salmon steaks, salad from the garden out back and boiled potatoes, also from the garden out back. Simple food, well cooked, it tasted of dust in Liam’s mouth and he knew from Wy’s expression that she felt the same. Prince cleaned her plate and asked for seconds.