The Great Alone (113 page)

Faced with the possibility of a long war, the War Department had decided they had better determine the potential at Pet 4. Geological studies of the North Slope were to be made and test wells drilled. While a permanent base camp was being built at the Eskimo village of Barrow, the northernmost point on the continent, to handle the incoming drilling equipment, men, and supplies, Wylie went with the geologists to a site on the Colville River some eighty miles from a place called Umiat.

Erosion had cut away a part of a hill, creating a bluff. Oil dripped from the exposed sedimentary layers and polluted the river. The geologists swarmed all over the bluff, examining the exposed strata and using them as a blueprint to understand the rock layers that formed the North Slope.

During the Arctic summer, the sun never set for thirty-six straight days. The tundra’s brown vegetation that was swept with snow and freezing winds in the long winter burgeoned with life. A brilliant, multicolored array of wildflowers burst into bloom to carpet the land and provide fodder for the herds of caribou. Hundreds of species of birds came by the thousands to nest in the area and feast on the black clouds of mosquitoes and gnats that swarmed over the tundra. For the geologist party, head nets were the only protection from the hungry insects, but there were times when they were so thick on the protective netting that Wylie couldn’t see out. Birds soon flocked to the camp just to gobble up the mosquitoes.

Full-scale drilling operations were scheduled to begin the following year—1945. That winter, Billy Ray died after suffering a massive heart attack while shoveling snow. Wylie managed to make it home for his funeral. When he reported back to duty , he found himself assigned to a party of Scouts whose task it was to survey a pipeline route from Barrow to Fairbanks.

The war was winding down in Europe. Hitler’s defeat appeared to be a matter of months. But there was no such optimism in the Pacific. By now, thousands of soldiers and Marines had heard the dreaded cry “Banzai” and learned that the Japanese soldier preferred death over defeat.

The route of the proposed pipeline ran right through the heart of the Brooks Range, the formidable and forbidding barrier mountains that separated the North Slope from the interior of Alaska. Wylie had flown over their jagged peaks before, but from the ground they were even more awesome. It quickly became apparent to him why they put the “wild” in “wilderness.” The violent upheaval of brown rock and boulders created a terrain of incomparable, cruel beauty.

In the middle of August, in the Brooks Range, the news reached him that American planes had dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Two days after that, the Russians had finally declared war on Japan. The Soviet armies were invading Japanese-occupied Manchuria. For Wylie, there was more good news—of a personal nature. He was a father. Anita had given birth to a baby girl.

On August 15, 1945, Japan surrendered, although the official ceremony didn’t take place until September 2. The war, at last, was over. By the end of September, Wylie was home and held his two-month-old baby daughter, Dana Marie Cole, in his arms for the first time.

But the joy of his homecoming was short-lived. Matty, in her early seventies now, took ill. Glory told him that since Billy Ray died, Matty hadn’t been well. In less than a month, she joined him.

At the gravesite, Wylie stood beside his grandmother. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears, her posture erect, her shoulders squared and straight. Yet she looked brittle to him, like a fragile porcelain figurine that needed careful handling or it would shatter. She had shunned the wearing of black, insisting Matty wouldn’t have wanted it. The coat she wore against the autumn chill was ten years behind the fashion, the wool material a shade of bright rust and trimmed with a wide, thick gray fox collar. The brisk wind constantly stirred the ruff, creating an ever-changing pattern of furrows in the thick hairs and blowing them against her jaw and cheek, but she never seemed to notice.

After the services concluded, the family lingered at the gravesite to speak to the handful of Matty’s friends who had attended. Once Wylie saw his grandmother dab at her eyes with a lace handkerchief. Then his father came up and gently took her by the arm to guide her to the car. Wylie followed with his mother. Anita hadn’t come to the cemetery. She had decided it wasn’t wise to bring either their infant daughter or Mikey to the services, and there was no one outside the family to care for them.

Wylie drove while his parents sat in the back seat. His grandmother sat in front with him. She barely spoke, merely gazed out the window at the passing scenery. Wylie doubted that she saw any of it, but he was wrong.

“It’s all changed so in the last few years,” she murmured. “Buildings and houses springing up everywhere like the weeds in my aunt’s vegetable patch back in Sitka. There are streets now that I’ve never even seen before.”

“It’s not a town any more. It’s a city,” Ace replied from the back seat. “There were four thousand here in ’thirty-nine. Now they’re saying the population of Anchorage is around forty thousand.”

“Yes.” Glory sighed heavily. “It isn’t fair that Matty had to die now after the territorial legislature just passed that new law prohibiting segregation. There were so many stores that Matty longed to enter, just to browse through the merchandise. She never had the chance.”

“It was a stupid practice to begin with,” Trudy declared. “It’s time they abolished it.”

“I know. I wish they’d take all those signs that hung in the windows saying ‘No Natives Allowed’ and ‘Coloreds Need Not Apply’ and build a big fire with them. So many feelings were hurt by them.” A quiet anger vibrated through Glory’s voice. “Whenever I saw those signs in front, I hated to go in those places, especially when Matty had to wait for me outside. What fun we would have had going into those stores today.” She ended on a sad note and lapsed into silence.

A week later, Glory called and asked Wylie to come over to the boardinghouse. After he’d been discharged, he’d rented one of the houses his grandmother owned and moved his small family into it. With all the confusion of coming home, moving, and Matty’s death, he hadn’t had time to look for a job. Mostly he’d been helping his father out at the flying service.

Glory barely gave him a chance to sit down before she announced, “I’ve decided to close down the boardinghouse. With both Matty and Chou Ling gone, it’s not the same any more. I’m too old to run this place myself.”

“You’re not old, Grandma Glory.”

“You were two years old when you first called me grandma. That was what? Twenty-two years ago? Well, I didn’t feel old then, but today I do,” she said decisively. “But old or not, it’s time for me to change and begin a new life.”

“What do you plan to do? Sell out?” He didn’t try to talk her out of the decision. He’d learned long ago that once she made up her mind about something, that was it. She forged straight ahead and never looked back. “Where will you live? Are you planning to move in with the folks?”

“No, I’m not so old that I can’t look after myself,” she chided. “Do you remember that four-room log cabin I own? Well, the present tenants are moving out. That will be my new home. But I don’t intend to sell this place. Although with property being as high as it is, I probably should. What I plan to do is convert the boardinghouse into small apartments.” She handed him a sheet of paper that had a rough sketch of the proposed layout. “I thought you might be able to oversee the remodeling work for me. I don’t feel up to the task of arguing with carpenters and plumbers.”

“If that’s what you want.”

“That’s what I want.”

“How will you keep busy? I can’t imagine you doing nothing,” Wylie said.

“Now you sound like Deacon.” She laughed. “Between managing my various properties and playing with my great-grandchildren, I expect I’ll keep adequately busy. And this spring I intend to plant a large flower garden, the likes of which Anchorage has never seen. I’ve always planned to have one. Now I’m going to do it. And mind you, there won’t be a single vegetable anywhere in sight. It’ll be strictly flowers.”

Wylie spent the bulk of that winter moving his grandmother to her new home, selling the excess household goods, furniture, and linens, and remodeling the boardinghouse. All the new apartments were rented by the time the last strip of wallpaper was hung. That spring, Glory planted her flowers over the entire front yard of the rustic log cabin.

CHAPTER LXI

Anchorage

June 30, 1958

Wylie threaded his way through the thousands of celebrants who had jammed into Delaney Park, locally known as the Park Strip. Now and then he stopped and scanned the crowd, trying to locate his family among the horde of people. He’d been en route to Anchorage late that afternoon on a routine cargo flight when the radio had crackled with the news.

He’d never intended to get into the family flying business. It had simply happened. The summer after he’d gotten out of the service, his father had been injured in a plane crash. Wylie had filled in for him—temporarily. He was still there, gradually running more and more of the company’s operation.

A half hour ago, he’d landed at Merrill Field and seen the seven-inch-high headlines in the
Anchorage Times,
confirming the news in two words: “we’re in.” He’d fought his way through the bumper-to-bumper traffic of horn-honking cars to his house, found the note Anita had left for him, and hurried on foot over to the Park Strip to join the celebration of Alaska’s statehood.

After six days of debate, the Senate had finally passed the bill at eight o’clock in the evening, Washington, D.C., time, that would allow Alaska to become a state. Now it was only a matter of two thirds of the states ratifying the bill. And the ratification was already assured. Everywhere cars honked, sirens wailed, and church bells rang with the news. In the park a bonfire roared, flames leaping high, fueled by fifty tons of lumber, forty-nine of those tons honoring Alaska as the forty-ninth state in the Union. The extra ton was for Hawaii, a gesture of optimism for its statehood battle.

Again, Wylie paused, trying to identify Anita or his parents among the sea of faces. He thought he recognized Dana’s dark head amidst a group of young people on the far side of the blazing fire. He started to work his way around for a closer look. A serpentine chain of dancers blocked him.

“Wylie.”

He heard his name above all the noisy jubilation around him. He stopped, already recognizing the familiar voice as he turned in its direction. Lisa stood several yards away, wearing some simple blue dress that looked both casual and elegant. Or maybe it merely looked expensive, he decided.

It had been a while since he’d seen her, usually at church, and he’d been too busy lately to attend regularly. But her husband and two sons had always been with her and he’d been surrounded by his family. Now she stood alone. There was no one between them.

Slowly he crossed the space, taking the time to notice all the little details that he hadn’t dared study before. If it was possible, she had grown more beautiful. He’d never pretended to himself that he’d forgotten her. He hadn’t—any more than Anita had forgotten Big Jim.

“Hello.” Her voice had a breathless edge to it.

“Hello.” He smiled.

“It’s been a while since I’ve seen you,” she said.

“I was just thinking the same thing.” Then he pulled his thoughts back from the wayward direction they were taking, and glanced around. “I was trying to find my family. They’re all supposed to be here somewhere. You haven’t seen them, have you?”

“No, but a person can get lost easily in this crowd. Steve’s off looking for the boys now. One minute they were here with us and in the next they were gone. They’re worse than Rudy and Erik ever were.” She laughed nervously. “This is quite a celebration.”

“It is.”

“It’s hard to believe Alaska will be a state now. It doesn’t seem so long ago that I was climbing off the train with my family here at Anchorage on a frontier adventure—and my brothers were mistaking you for their first live Indian.”

“I have to admit it doesn’t seem very long ago that I showed you and your mother the house my grandmother had for rent.” For a poignant instant, Wylie felt the years in between dissolve. He had an urge to suggest that maybe they could take in a movie some Saturday night as he had then, but he didn’t.

A wistful expression flickered across her face. “It may not seem very long to either of us, but I have two teenaged boys to prove it.”

“My daughter is thirteen now, too.”

“I’m glad I had this chance to see you again before we left, Wylie.” She tried to smile, but there was sadness in it, maybe even a little regret.

Then he realized what she’d said and frowned. “You’re leaving?”

“Yes.” She made an attempt at brightness. “Steve has been transferred back to the company’s main office in San Francisco. Some junior vice president is taking over the branch office here in Anchorage. The general consensus is that the construction boom is pretty well over in Alaska, at least for a while.”

“So you’ll be living in the Lower Forty-eight from now on.” For some reason, the phrase came to him: “They always leave,” but he couldn’t remember where he’d heard it before.

“Yes. My parents are excited about it. You know they moved back in ’fifty-two. Mother finally got her way,” she added wryly. “Of course she’s been complaining because they live so far away she doesn’t get to see her two grandsons as often as she’d like.”