“You don't have a home phone, Moses,” Jim Earl said, but the interruption was a feeble one and was ignored with the disdain it deserved.
“-I ain't ever gonna have caller ID so I can see who's calling me on one, and”-Moses wound up for a big finish-“if someone ever calls me and I get a beep to tell me someone's waiting to talk to me on another line, I'm letting them fucking WAIT!”
He marched to the door, opened it, went into a pitcher's windup and launched the cell phone into low earth orbit. “FUCK the twenty-first century!”
There was a startled squawk and a flurry of indignant croaks and clicks before the door shut. Moses dusted his hands and climbed back up on his stool. “May I have a beer, please?”
Bill's smile was radiant. “Certainly.” She got him a beer. This time it made to Moses in the bottle. He drank it down in one long swallow. “May I have a refill, please?”
Bill had been waiting to do just that. “Certainly.” She brought another bottle to him. Moses showed no inclination to drink this one dry right away, too, so she sat down again.
The door opened and Moses looked over his shoulder. “Oh, shit.” He raised his voice. “I told you, not today!”
Malcolm Dorris came up behind him, his hat in his hands. His expression was apologetic but determined. “Uncle, I need to know now. Please.”
Moses buried his nose in his beer and didn't reply. Nobody said anything for a minute or two. Malcolm waited. He was a stocky young man, maybe eighteen, maybe nineteen, with clear skin and neat black hair. He'd laid on the aftershave a little heavy that morning, and the strong smell of English Leather interfered with the far more seductive aroma of deep-fried grease.
Liam frowned and nudged Moses with his elbow. “What's he want?”
Moses rolled his eyes and held his bottle out to Bill. “The answer.”
“What was the question?”
Moses huffed out an impatient breath. “His father wants him to stay home and fish and hunt and keep to the old ways. Malcolm wants to go away to school.”
“And the question?”
Moses drank from his new beer. “Should he go?”
“Oh.” Bill pored over her map. Malcolm waited. Moses drank beer. The smell of English Leather got stronger. “Well? Should he?”
Moses slammed down his glass. “How the hell should I know?”
“Because you always do, uncle,” Malcolm said.
“Go,” said Bill, not looking up from her map. “It doesn't take the resident shaman to figure that out. Go to school. Learn a trade for when the runs are bad. Like last summer. Like this summer. Maybe like next summer.”
Malcolm hesitated. “It's tough, uncle. I'm a Yupik in a white world.”
Moses said nothing.
“I'm a woman in a man's world,” Bill said. This time she looked up, her stare so piercing Liam saw the boy flinch away from it. “I need all the edges I can get. You're Yupik in a white man's world. You need all the edges you can get, too. Go to school.”
“Oh for crissake, go to fucking school,” Moses shouted.
It was enough. “Thank you, uncle,” Malcolm murmured, and backed out of the building.
“Don't ever be a Native,” Moses told them. “Have you ever wanted to be a Native?” he demanded of Bill.
“God, no,” Bill said.
“Why not?” Liam said.
Bill took her time replying, polishing a couple of glasses with a bar rag and lining them up at attention. “I'm the laziest person on earth. I don't want to have to work that hard to get up to go.”
Moses gave a short bark of laughter.
“Somebody explain,” Liam said.
Bill picked up a glass that didn't need it and started polishing. “What do you see when you look at me, Liam?”
A brief but mighty struggle kept Liam's eyes from dropping to her breasts, today enfolded in the loving embrace of a T-shirt touting Jimmy Buffett'sBanana Windtour.
Moses growled. Liam felt the heat rising up the back of his neck.
“After that,” Bill said dryly.
“Magistrate,” Liam said. “Barkeep.”
“No,” she said. “First off, before everything else, I'm white. I'm as white as you can get without bleach. Before I'm a woman, before I'm a bartender, before I'm a magistrate, before I'm a goddamn Alaskan, I'm white. And because I'm white, I wasbornat go. I don't have to work my ass off just to get that far.”
“And Malcolm does,” Liam said to Moses.
Moses raised his glass in a toast. “I may have to change my estimation of your intelligence, boy.”
“Gee, thanks.”
Bill wasn't done. “People look at boys like Malcolm, they see Native and think Fourth Avenue. Outside, they'd look at you and see a nigger. In South Africa they'd see a kaffer; in India, a Muslim; in Pakistan, a Hindu. The color of your skin isn't an asset, it's something you have to overcome.” She gave the glass a final rub and held it up to admire the sparkle. “Whereas I, because my ancestors were so kind as to spend the last two thousand years terrorizing the people of color of this world into submission and servitude and too often downright slavery…” She shrugged, and repeated, “I was born at go.” She set the glass down and looked at Moses. “Only place in the world for a lazy person.”
She looked at Liam. “What's the charge on Larsgaard?”
“Who? Oh. Flight to avoid prosecution,” Liam said.
“Prosecution for what?”
“Mass murder,” Liam said, and Moses erupted again.
“Goddamn it, you are the worst I ever saw for jumping to conclusions! A son owes his father, goddamn it!”
Which reminded Liam that he had to get back to the post and call his father's office in Florida.
Moses stared at him. “He's no different that any other stick-uphis-ass officer I ever ran across in the service, and I wasn't talking about your father, anyway.”
In spite of himself, Liam felt his dander rise, enough to blot out Moses' last words. “He's a career officer,” he said, careful to keep any hint of defense out of his tone. “They are very…”
“Proper,” Bill suggested, and he gave a grateful nod.
Moses snorted. “ ‘Proper.’ Yeah, right. If you can't stick to the point, boy, you've gone as far as you'll go in your service.”
Liam stood up. “Moses, I never know what the hell the point is when I'm around you, and I'm not sure I want to go anywhere in my service anymore.” He tossed some bills on the bar. “Thanks for lunch, Bill. I'll be back in for dinner this evening, with my stick-up-his-ass dad.”
“See you then,” she said, unperturbed.
He walked toward the door, and behind him Moses said to Bill, “Malcolm won't ever come home, you know.
“He goes to school, he's gone for good.”
“Doctors are lousy pilots,” Wy said. “Pisspoor, actually. They don't listen worth shit. You can't tell them anything, they're used to doing the telling. Guy says he's a doctor, he's not driving my plane and I ain't riding in his.”
Tim committed this to memory, and handed her a socket wrench.
“Thanks.” Wy tightened down the nut, wiped her hands on the legs of her overalls and closed the cowling before descending the stepladder perched at the nose of the Cub.
“How about troopers?” Tim said.
Wy looked at him, and he grinned. “Yeah, okay, smarty,” she said, “it was fine, she didn't hurt our baby any.”
“She better not've.” Tim sounded cocky and threatening and very proprietary as he put the wrench back in the red upright toolbox.
Wy eyed his back for a moment. “You want to learn?”
He looked around. “Learn what?”
She hooked a thumb at the plane. “You want to learn to fly?”
He stood straight up, the toolbox drawer left open. “Learn to fly?” His voice scaled up and ended on a squeak of disbelief.
“Yeah.”
He stared from her to the plane and back again. He looked dazzled. “You'd teach me?”