LITMIR.BIZ

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of wine, one red, one white. When she returned to the cabin the door opened immediately and Lana Paul ushered her inside. The interior was surprisingly neat and clean, in stark contrast to the muddy, cluttered yard. Libby set the bag of groceries on the Formica table and took out the contents. “I picked up some food, too, in case you hadn’t eaten supper yet,” she said, handing the foil-wrapped package of tobacco to the woman.

      Lana took it from her with gnarled, eager hands. “I remembered something while you were gone,” she said, unwrapping the package. She sat down in an old wooden rocker near the woodstove, which threw a welcome warmth to the room. “I remembered how Charlie talked when he came home from the bars. Sometimes, he would talk about his past.” She was filling a paper with tobacco as she spoke, and rolled it with swift, practiced dexterity. “I remember a story he told me about a boy with eyes like yours and a three-legged dog. They lived on Evening Lake.”

      Libby froze in the act of setting the chicken on the table. “That was my father.”

      “Charlie told me this story.” Lana reached for a wooden match in an old canning jar on the table and scratched it to life on the top of the woodstove. She lit the thin cigarette and inhaled with an expression of reverent content, smoke wreathing her deeply wrinkled face and sharp eyes. “The boy came home from a place faraway and brought a three-legged dog with him.”

      “He came back from the war in Vietnam with a dog he called HoChi,” Libby said, sinking into a chair and staring transfixed at the old woman. “The dog’s hind leg had been blown off by a land mine that killed three soldiers.”

      “This boy fell in love with a young girl from a village on the Koyukyuk,” Lana continued.

      “My mother,” Libby said, her heart hammering with hope that Lana would say something that would help her find her father.

      Lana pushed her feet against the floor and made the old rocker move back and forth as she smoked her cigarette. A floorboard creaked in time to the movement. “They were going to be married, but the boy was killed on his wedding day.”

      Libby waited for several long minutes while a big water pot hissed atop the woodstove and the old woman rocked and the warm, delectable aroma of spit-roasted chicken filled the little cabin. “Is that all he said?” she finally asked.

      “Charlie was drunk,” Lana mused, rocking. “He was sad. He walked back and forth and said he wished he found the boy’s plane. He said he always wondered about the plane.”

      Libby leaned forward in her chair. “What do you think he meant by that?”

      Lana shrugged. “I think he wondered why the plane crashed.” She looked toward the food Libby had placed on the table. “Boy, that chicken smells good.”

      Libby got up, found two plates in a drain rack on the sideboard and a sharp knife in a kitchen drawer. She carved up the chicken and heaped generous portions onto both plates. She hadn’t eaten anything since the can of cold beans the night before, and she was hungry. She put two biscuits on each plate, divided the coleslaw into two green mounds, then found eating utensils in another drawer and placed them on the table. Lana threw the stub of her cigarette into the woodstove while Libby opened the bottle of red wine and poured two glasses. They sat at the table together and ate in silence. The food was good and the warmth of the woodstove a welcome radiance in the cooling evening. Sagging into the earth and leaning toward the river, the weathered old cabin gave Libby a sense of peace.

      The old woman cleaned her plate. She ate deliberately, as if trying to memorize each mouthful of food. She drank her wine and Libby refilled her glass. Lana kept her attention on the meal until it was finished, and then returned to her rocker and rolled another cigarette and lit it as she had the first.

      “Charlie said the young girl was very beautiful, and he didn’t know why the old man didn’t like her.”

      “The old man? You mean Daniel Frey?”

      Lana nodded. “The rich man who lived on the lake and didn’t like Indians.”

      Libby gathered up the plates and silverware and carried them to the sink. She poured hot water from the pot on the stove into the dishpan and added a squirt of detergent from the plastic bottle on the sideboard. There was a small window set into the wall above the sink and Libby could look out at the river rushing past as she washed. It made her a little dizzy. When the dishes were done she wiped off the table and draped the dishcloth over the faucet. “Did Charlie ever mention that the young village girl had a child?”

      The old woman shook her head, but as Libby was leaving, Lana pushed out of her chair. “Take this with you,” she said, reaching onto a shelf and lifting down an old tattered leather-bound journal. “It belonged to Charlie. He scribbled in it ever since I knew him. It was important to him, but his son don’t want it and it don’t do me no good. I can’t read.”

      THERE WERE SEVERAL STORES in Fairbanks that Libby visited after stopping at the warden service’s office to get a copy of Charlie Stuck’s report and before flying to the village the following morning. She bought a pretty dress for her mother, bright with the colors of spring, and outfitted herself for a few weeks in the bush. She had no idea how long it would take for her to accomplish her mission, so she erred on the side of caution with the clothing. Warm long underwear, thick wool socks, serious field boots, a parka that would turn the worst weather, iron-cloth pants, several pairs of warm gloves and a good fleece hat. She packed all of it into a duffel bag in her hotel room near the airport and lastly, before checking out, took one last and very long hot shower, knowing that the amenities in the Alaskan bush wouldn’t be nearly as luxurious as these.

      The flight from Fairbanks to Umiak took two hours, giving her time to reread the photocopy of Charlie Stuck’s official statement regarding the search for Connor Libby’s plane. The report was disappointing. It mentioned the daily weather, the specific grid patterns flown, the pontoons found in the Evening River, and concluded with the assumption that the plane had crashed near the outlet in very deep water. No hidden clues and nothing that Libby didn’t already know.

      Next, she started on Charlie’s journal. She’d already scanned the dates. The entries began four years after the plane crash, but Libby read every single one, hoping he’d make some reference to the crash and the subsequent search, perhaps reflect some of his own theories on what might have happened in a retrospective entry. It was slow reading because Charlie Stuck had terrible handwriting which deteriorated steadily over time. The entire journal spanned almost twenty years, the entries being very brief. A sentence, maybe two. Sometimes months would pass without an entry. The journal read like a warden’s trophy log.

      Caught R. Drew red-handed with twelve over the limit, gave him maximum fine, bastard deserved it.

      There were also entries on the state of wildlife.

      Moose population down fourth year in a row. Hunters are crying wolf. I’m sure it’s poaching. Wolves and moose have always coexisted. Increasing human population and hunting pressure are new on the scene, and where there are humans, there is poaching. No stopping it.

      Libby decided she liked the way Charlie Stuck thought. She pored laboriously over his entries until, finally, she read one that was totally out of context, and the words jumped out at her, causing her to sit up in her seat and bend over the journal.

      Two weeks late to Lana’s due to crash landing the plane in a white-out, bending the prop and being stranded until villagers found me south of the Dome, but she asked no questions. She waits the way that girl Marie waited. Still wonder what became of C. Libby but think my instincts are right about D. Frey. Why didn’t he go to the wedding? (This was underlined twice.) I know

      Frey had something to do with that crash. Wish I could have found that plane. Wish others would have listened to my theory, but money talks loudest and always has.

      Libby read the passage several times, her heartbeat racing, dizzied by the words. Charlie Stuck had believed that Frey had something to do with her father’s death! The rest of the journal revealed nothing relevant to Connor Libby, but that one passage gave her hope that maybe, once the plane

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