by Janet Dailey
“I know he does.” Anita smiled.
“Maybe this won’t sound right, but …” He paused, trying to find the words that would make what he was about to say not sound stupid. “Neither of us has anyone except family. The man you loved is dead, and the girl I loved married someone else. I think we get along pretty good together. Jim is something we have in common. Maybe it’s a lousy reason for two people to get married, but … I guess that’s what I’m proposing. Mikey here needs a father, and you could use a man around to look after things. Course, the Army still has first claim on me, but I am available on a part-time basis to start out.”
He kept talking because she wasn’t saying anything. She wasn’t even looking at him. She wiped her hands down the sides of her pants. “Wylie, I’m not sure your parents would like the idea of you marrying me. Jim’s parents were really upset when he told them about me. I don’t want to cause any problems between you and your family. I—”
Wylie stopped her. “Why don’t you and Mikey fly back with me this afternoon and meet my family? You don’t have to make any commitment. Afterwards, if you still think it’s a bad idea, we’ll drop it.”
She hesitated, then nodded cautiously. “Okay.”
The meeting went better than even Wylie had expected. It turned out that his mother had asked Billy Ray and Matty to dinner that night, providing Anita with an opportunity to see the way they were treated. He’d already told his parents a little about Anita’s situation, and they knew how close he’d been to Big Jim. When he introduced them, he indicated that the trip was an opportunity for Anita to do some shopping and didn’t hint there was anything more to it than that.
Later that evening after his mother had gone upstairs to help Anita put Mikey to bed and Matty had stepped outside to see how much longer Billy Ray and his father were going to be tinkering with the car, Wylie sat alone in the living room with his grandmother, listening to the radio. He watched her slip a cigarette into an ivory holder, then light it.
“What do you think of Anita, Grandma Glory?”
“She’s a pleasant, intelligent girl,” she answered readily. “It’s easy to see why your friend was so taken with her.”
“What if I said we are considering getting married?”
“Are you?” Her expression never changed.
“I’ve suggested it,” Wylie admitted.
“Is it because of Lisa?”
“No. It’s because of Jim, although I admit if Lisa hadn’t gotten married, I probably wouldn’t be asking Anita. But like you told me, it’s time to start over—for Anita, too.”
“There will be some who won’t accept her. You know that,” she said and rolled the tip of her cigarette in the ashtray. “In the old days, it was different here. What you were or what you’d done in the past didn’t matter so much. Now we’re more civilized. That makes certain people feel superior to others in some way.”
“That’s their problem.”
“Perhaps. But you must be prepared to deal with it.”
“I think I am.”
“So do I,” Glory said, then smiled. “I just wanted to hear you say it.”
“Anita’s concerned about how Mom and Dad will accept her.”
“Your father isn’t going to think a single thing about it. However, if the choice was your mother’s, I don’t think she would pick Anita to be your wife. Mothers always want more for their children. They’re rarely happy with their children’s choice for a mate. But I doubt that she’ll ever let you or Anita see that.”
“And you, Grandma?”
“Pain, happiness, sorrow, and contentment—you’re going to experience all those feelings. It will never be all one or all another. I’ve lived my life without regrets. That’s the one wish I’ve always had for you and your father—and all the people I love.” She studied the ivory holder of her cigarette. “In all the years we were married, Deacon never told me what to do or how to behave. He let me decide for myself and accepted whatever I chose without judging. It was perhaps the greatest gift he ever gave me. That’s the way I’ve tried to be with you and Ace. If Anita is your choice for a wife, Wylie, then she’s mine as well.”
“She’s my choice, but I’m not sure yet whether she agrees.”
Matty’s return to the room ended the conversation. Minutes after she came back, his mother and Anita came downstairs. Dressed in a plain blouse and skirt, Anita somehow looked more womanly to him—and more vulnerable.
“Did you get Mikey to sleep?” he asked.
“Yes.” She still wasn’t very talkative in the presence of his family, but she appeared more relaxed and less defensive than she’d been earlier.
“I got that old teddy bear of yours out of the closet. Mikey latched onto it like it was gold,” Trudy said, laughing. “He was asleep in minutes.”
“I’m afraid he isn’t going to give it up very willingly,” Anita said.
“That’s all right. Teddy bears shouldn’t sit in closets when there’s a child around who will love them. Mikey can keep him,” Wylie said.
“Would anybody like some coffee?” Trudy asked. “I already have some made in the kitchen.”
Ace walked in just then, still wringing his freshly scrubbed hands. “Sounds good to me.”
“Me, too,” Billy Ray chimed in, a step behind him.
“Please, let me get it for you, Mrs. Cole,” Anita volunteered.
His mother hesitated, then smiled. “All right. The cups are in the right-hand cupboard—”
“Never mind, Mom,” Wylie interrupted. “I’ll give her a hand.” He followed Anita into the kitchen and got the cups from the cupboard, then leaned sideways against the counter to watch while she filled them with coffee. “What do you think of my family?”
“They’re very nice.” Her smile came quickly, then faded just as quickly. She set the coffeepot on the counter and turned to him, her dark eyes earnestly searching his. “Wylie, are you sure you want to marry me? I mean, it’s not just me. It’s Mikey. He’s never going to be a normal boy. He’s always going to need care. I don’t think you’re aware of how much responsibility you’re taking on.”
“No more than what you were prepared to shoulder alone,” he reminded her. “I considered all that before I ever suggested marriage to you. Believe it or not, I think I know what I’m doing.”
She shook her head, the gesture a mixture of vague amusement and amazement. “I think I know why Jim liked you so much.”
“Is that a yes or a no?”
“Yes. If you still want me and Mikey, I’ll marry you.”
Hesitantly, Wylie bent toward her, then paused inches away and lifted her chin with his fingertips. He kissed her with tentative pressure and felt the uncertainty in her response.
Yet the first kiss made the second one easier. Each of them had a wealth of love to give and a need to share it with someone. It was going to be all right.
They kept the wedding simple, with only the family in attendance, then returned to the cabin for a few days to pack Anita and Mikey’s things and move them to Anchorage so his family could look after them while Wylie was gone. With the housing shortage that existed, they accepted Glory’s offer to let Anita and Mikey stay in the small one-room apartment in the rear of the boardinghouse that had been Chou Ling’s. The old Chinese cook had passed away the previous spring, and the new cook already had a place to live. The solution seemed ideal, since it not only gave Anita and Mikey a place to stay, but it also meant Anita could help Matty with the work at the boardinghouse and earn some extra money. The prices for everything in Alaska were high, but at least the Territory wasn’t under the rationing program that had been instituted in the Lower Forty-eight.
Wylie reported back to duty, fully recovered from his wound. With the Japanese pushed out of the Aleutians and losing ground elsewhere in the Pacific, the threat to Alaska appeared over. There was talk for a while that the Chain would be used as a staging area for an invasion of the northern Japanese islands of the Kurile
s sometime in June of 1944, but Russia still hadn’t declared war on Japan. With the Kamchatka Peninsula so close to Japan, Russian cooperation was needed. The plans were put on the shelf until Russia joined the war in the Pacific.
That spring, the Alaska Scouts were assigned to new duties that would put to use their combined extensive knowledge of the territory. Wylie and several other Scouts were sent to the Arctic desert of the far north. Initially Wylie accompanied a team of geologists sent to the area by the War Department to explore the large area of land, roughly the size of Indiana, that had been set aside back in 1923 as Naval Petroleum Reserve No. 4—Pet 4 they called it. As far back as 1886, oil seepages had been reported in the area. An exploration in the 1920s confirmed the existence of an oil-bearing area of unknown volume and the federal government had reserved the land for future needs.
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.