LITMIR.BIZ

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place on Sunday too. School is enough.”

      “You mean our neighbors?” John pointed out the window. His voice was even and calm.

      “Yeah, yeah. Our neighbors, your neighbors. You just want to go listen to the radio with Frederik. No one cut off your feet. You can go anytime.” Anne Girl put the kettle on the stove. She wiped her hands on her shirt and stared thoughtfully at John’s backside. His back was a washer board, straight and uneven. She could see the bumpy knobs of his spine as he bent down to hug Ellen.

      “At least you aren’t dead this time,” she muttered.

      “I bet you I won’t be dead next time too,” John answered. “If I am, I won’t ask about Sunday School . . . maybe.”

      She could feel the grin in his voice. It was contagious, and Anne Girl tried to hold onto her anger like it was her last berry. He always did that, made her momentarily forget why she was mad.

      “How long you going to be here before you have to fly out again?” she asked.

      John kissed Ellen on the forehead and whispered in her ear. “I brought you something from Dillingham. Go play outside for a while, and you can have it tonight after dinner.”

      Ellen glanced at her mom to see if she heard before running out the door. But Anne Girl was elbow deep in the kitchen. She was loud as she took out pots and pans from the shelves and banged them against the counter.

      “When you flying again?” Anne Girl repeated. She needed to know how much time she had until her nights became long again. Their separations tugged on her and made sleep impossible. Even Ali cia had asked if she was well and needed a maqi to cleanse herself. She never wanted to be the kind of woman who waited for her man to return to her, but it seemed that’s all that John left her to do. And while he could pick up where they left off, Anne Girl had to quell the anger that had risen in his absence.

      “How long would you like for me to be here? I can be here forever.”

      Anne Girl knocked a pot of water onto the floor and stared at him. The water pooled toward the direction of the door. “John, how long?”

      “A couple of days if the weather holds up,” John said, as he picked up the pot and reached for a towel.

      “Good, I’m gonna need some wood for the smokehouse. You can get some when you’re not doing nothing.”

      “Come here, you. Don’t get yourself all worked up about it. I’ll get all the wood you need.”

      Although Anne Girl tried to dodge him, John pulled her close and wrapped his arms around her. “All the wood you need and more.”

      Anne Girl let herself relax and buried her nose in his chest. She inhaled and could practically taste the mixture of engine oil and sweat coated on his shirt. She inhaled again and again until she realized she was shuddering.

      Seven

      “Ampi. Come now, Ellen. You’re too slow,” Anne Girl said, and she walked down the beach to check on the smoked fish. She turned around to see Ellen dragging her feet in the gravel and occasionally picking up rocks as she walked. She would roll the rock in her hand before tossing it ahead of her. Anne Girl clicked her tongue and wondered if this girl would be like her father. No doubt Ellen was on her way to resembling him, with long arms and a sense of idleness no one should have. Yes, Ellen was John right down to her toes. “Clumsy,” Marulia would say.

      The thought brought a smile upon her face as images of her mother seemed to appear like lingering morning dreams when she was on the beach. Once her blood began to move and take in the salty air, her mother’s words always came to mind. She pictured all the times they picked fish in the skiff and how after her mom became weak, she would bend like a sharp angle over the cork line until her nose practically touched the wooden corks as if she were smelling them. Somehow it seemed that the dead woman wouldn’t leave her alone. And now as she looked out toward the bay, toward the deceivingly calm water, Anne Girl wondered what these images were supposed to mean. After all this time, she was beginning to believe that maybe she had forgotten to burn something. She stopped and waited for Ellen to catch up.

      “Mama, I am walking fast. Why you running?” Ellen answered when she finally approached her mother. “Always running here and there.”

      Ruffling Ellen’s hair, Anne Girl conceded. “Ha, you haven’t seen me running. Now the little people. They run so fast that we can’t see them. But if you ever see one, then you’ll be taken away to where they live forever.”

      “Why?”

      “Because they’ll be angry that you saw them and might give away their secrets.”

      “Nuh-uh.”

      “Yeah. That’s why the Sams’ kid disappeared, before you were born though. But they go the church all the time, thinking he’ll come back from the little people. He won’t though.”

      Nancy and Gil Sam became religious when their son disappeared one summer while hunting caribou. Parents told their children that it was a carayak or maybe even a little person that took him away, even after they found his partially eaten body in a bear cache. But of all the villagers in Nushagak, the Sams were the most faithful. Some said that Frederik promised that their son would make it to Heaven if they prayed hard enough. Others clicked their tongues and muttered, “Akleng, they must hurt still yet.”

      A thin trail of smoke filtered through the door crack and air vent as they approached the smokehouse, and Anne Girl chastised herself for forgetting to plug the door seam with a cloth. The smokehouse was old, blackened by years of smoking and the occasional flood that rusted the tin walls. When her mother died, Anne Girl had thought about asking John to build one closer to their home, but somehow she could not give this one up. She liked the idea of smoking her fish in the same black walls where her mother had smoked her own strips. Anywhere else, and the fish would likely overheat and cook instead.

      “Stand back now and don’t breathe in the smoke. Go get some driftwood to get this fire back started—small, dry pieces.”

      Ellen shrugged at the thought of gathering wood. “Let’s look for the little people,” Ellen said. Her eyes were good, she knew. One time in the fall she saw a ptarmigan on the tundra when even her mom couldn’t see its brown stripes.

      “Enough now of the little people. I’m gonna need some leaves too—dry ones!”

      Anne Girl ducked through the door and was immediately greeted by warm, dry air smelling of sweet alder trees. Most of the smoke had cleared, and she knelt low on the ground until the rest of the smoke had moved out. It was a chore, checking the fish every few hours and making sure that the fire wasn’t burning or cooking the strips, but Anne Girl loved the rhythm. She pulled off the fire pit lid to find that she hadn’t made it in time. The smoke had promised a fire, but there was nothing but dying embers.

      “Usuuq. Get me some of those pieces leaning against the building over there. Small ones. That’s a girl.”

      Ellen brought two pieces of wood and crouched next to the opening. “Smoke’s gone. I’m coming in now.”

      “Not yet. Give me some more, some with leaves on them. You need to keep gathering wood,” Anne Girl answered. She stood up and inspected the fish. It was still too early. The flesh of the fish was still bright pink. Not until the meat was dark red and dripping with grease would they be ready.

      She had hoped that they would be ready in time for next week’s potlatch, which the village was holding at the community hall. All were invited, including those from the cannery, and all were expected to attend and bring their favorite meal. There would be pateq bones, caribou stew, seal oil, strips, akutaq, and Spam from those who could afford canned food. Anne Girl thought that maybe she would bring some fish strips. Hers weren’t too salty, just right. Otherwise, John would want to fly to Dillingham and get canned soup that made her stomach swell larger than a sea otter. Anne Girl pinched a piece of the

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