The Great Alone

by Janet Dailey

  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.”

  “She always was a hard woman to satisfy.” Even with the high cost of living in Alaska, Wylie suspected the Blomquists had managed to save a tidy sum out of the high wages Jan Blomquist had earned during the war and postwar boom. But the story was typical. Few who came to take advantage of the high-paying jobs ever stayed once they’d made their money. They came, made their money, and left with it to buy some retirement home in the Lower Forty-eight.

  “I’m glad I was here almost long enough to see Alaska become a state, though,” Lisa said.

  “Yes.” He realized that Steve might return at any minute, and he didn’t want to see him, not this time—this last time. “Well, I … I’d better hunt up my family. Good-bye, Lisa, and good luck.” He didn’t trust himself to touch her, not even to shake hands, so he gave her a vague one-fingered salute and began backing away.

  “Good-bye, Wylie.” As he turned away, he heard her add, “I’ll miss you.” But he pretended he hadn’t heard and walked blindly into the crowd.

  He let himself become lost in the noise and mass of people, paying no attention to where he was going or who was around him as he tried to shake off the ache for something he couldn’t have. Sometimes he wondered if Anita didn’t have it easier. At least Big Jim was dead, leaving her with nothing but memories. For him, Lisa existed in the flesh, still out of reach but very much alive. Now that she was leaving, she’d be out of his sight—maybe even out of his mind—but he doubted that he’d ever get her out of his heart. Maybe that’s the way it always was with the one a person loved and lost, always making a person wonder, What if?

  Suddenly he saw Anita standing almost directly in front of him, facing the fire. His parents were there, too. They’d brought a lawn chair for his grandmother Glory to sit in, but she was standing beside it, still very active for her age. Mikey stood next to Anita and gazed round-eyed at the giant bonfire, enthralled by the leaping flames. At fifteen, he was nearly as tall as Anita, but functionally he had the mind of a six-year-old. He could dress himself and tie his shoes now. He knew his name and address. All those little accomplishments were milestones in his life.

  Dana, Wylie’s thirteen-year-old daughter, was standing off to one side of the family, giggling with a girlfriend. It was difficult to say which of them she resembled most, since her black hair, dark eyes, and strong features came from both of them, but she was more outgoing than both of them put together. She had on a pair of blue jeans and one of his old shirts. It was the “real cool” way to dress, or maybe it was “hip.” Wylie had trouble keeping up with all her slang words. She was really just a tomboy making the awkward transition to a young woman. Sometimes he wondered whether the transformation would ever take place. Not that he minded. He enjoyed having someone to take hunting and fishing with him, even if sometimes he felt as if he needed a translator.

  His attention swung back to Anita. Her black hair was softly curled by a permanent wave. The dress she wore was simple and attractive, not nearly as expensive as Lisa’s. The flying business was good, but not that good. And Anita hadn’t retained her youthful figure the way Lisa had. Some padding had been added to her waist and hips over the years. But she was a good woman. And they’d had a damned good marriage. In some ways, they were perfectly suited to each other. Whatever passion might be lacking in their marriage, they more than made up for it with the deep respect and genuine affection they shared.

  Wylie felt calm inside again as he walked up behind her and put his arm around her. “You found us!” Anita exclaimed after an initial start of surprise. “Did you see the note I left you?”
/>   “Yes, but I was beginning to think I’d never find you in this crowd.”

  “I know. Isn’t it exciting? We’ve finally won statehood after all these years.”

  “And it’s been a good many years, too,” Glory inserted. “I remember when Judge Wickersham proposed admitting Alaska into the Union back in 1912 or maybe it was 1911. Of course, he wasn’t a judge then. He was a delegate to Congress. He did manage to make us a territory that time.”

  “I told Dana to be sure and remember everything that happened today,” Anita said, flushed with the excitement of the occasion. “It’s an event she can tell her grandchildren about.”

  “Well, I can tell ours that I was at four thousand feet, flying over the Tanana River when I picked up a radio transmission from Fairbanks saying that Alaska was now the forty-ninth state. I admit I did a little rocking of the wings.” Wylie smiled. “I might have tried a victory roll if I’d been sure there was nothing breakable in the crates I was hauling.”

  A large piece of lumber at the top of the blazing fire collapsed in a shower of sparks. Mikey clapped his hands in excitement and started to move closer to the bonfire. Anita caught his arm as a string of firecrackers tossed into the blaze went off.

  “I want to see, Mom.” He pulled away from her, trying to get loose.

  “It’s too hot. You’ll get burned. Just stay here by me.” She grabbed him firmly and pulled him back, but he was getting almost too big for her to manhandle.

  “I wanta go.” But he quickly forgot his disappointment to watch the roaring blaze.

  “He is so fascinated by the fire.” Anita warily kept an eye on him.

  “He reminds me of Ace when he was four years old,” Glory declared. “Half of Nome was on fire, and there he was, watching from the window of our house, clapping his hands and laughing with glee every time one of the gasoline barrels blew and shot flames up in the air.”

  “That was a long time ago, Mother.” Affectionately Ace put his arm around her slim shoulders.

  “Yes, it was.” But she started remembering back to that crazy summer in Nome when people had poured onto the beaches by the thousands—fortune seekers all of them, whether they were prospectors, peddlers, gamblers, pickpockets, swindlers, prostitutes, or would-be kings. Looking back, Glory could see more clearly the jealousy, resentment, greed, and even hatred that had warped the lives of so many people. This land and its riches seemed to have a way of bringing out the worst and best in people.

  Glory gazed at all the unfamiliar faces around the giant bonfire and recalled the days when she had been the center of attention wherever she went. Her family were the only ones who took any notice of her now. To the rest, she was just a decrepit old woman. None of them would ever guess that she had once been Glory St. Clair. Then she laughed under her breath, realizing they’d probably never even heard of Glory St. Clair.

  “What’s so funny, Mother Cole?”

  “I was just thinking about something that happened a long time ago.” Glory suspected that Trudy thought it had become a habit of hers. “Do you remember when we helped clear this park so Anchorage could have an airfield. Wylie, you were just a little tyke then. The whole town declared a holiday and turned out to help. We had a bonfire that night, too.”

  “It was some airstrip, wasn’t it?” Ace chuckled. “There was a road running right through it. Of course, in those days, there weren’t very many cars to worry about.”

  “I’m glad they made it into a park,” Trudy said.

  “It’s all changed so much.” Glory waved her age-spotted hand at the skyline of the city, the bracelet around her wrist jingling faintly. “Look at all those tall buildings. On a clear day, I used to be able to see Mount McKinley from the back door of my cabin. Now there’s a five-story office building blocking my view.”

  Nearly all of the construction had been done within the last twelve years, a result of the cold war with Russia, which caused the Department of Defense to engage in a massive buildup and modernization of military installations in Alaska.

  “I keep telling you, Mother Cole, that you really should move in with us. There’s certainly enough room in our new house and we have a spectacular view of Cook Inlet and the mountains, including McKinley.” Trudy was proud of the retirement home they’d built in the new housing development on a bluff overlooking Cook Inlet, called Turnagain-by-the-Sea. “And it’s so peaceful. I’d think you’d want to get away from the hustle and bustle of downtown.”

  “I happen to like the hustle and bustle, as you call it. And I am not yet so old that I can’t take care of myself.”

  Ace had heard the argument between his wife and mother too many times to pay any attention to it. “We can’t say Alaska’s been forgotten any more, not with the millions and millions of dollars the Defense Department has spent here.”

  “But how much of it stayed?” Glory challenged. “Most of the contractors, equipment, and workers came from the outside. They spent some here and took the rest home, without paying any taxes. During the gold rush, they think seven hundred and fifty million dollars was taken out of Alaska. That doesn’t count the millions in copper the Morgans and Guggenheims took out of the Kennecott operation. A great part of our wealth was taken from us, and we couldn’t even tax those doing it until 1949.”

  “I read in the paper that Alaska Salmon Industry, out of Seattle, managed to keep the fisheries out of our control in the statehood bill,” Ace said, then grinned. “But I think that oil strike they made last year in the Kenai Peninsula south of here will more than make up for it. The geologist who kicked the tree and said ‘Drill here’—the Chamber of Commerce took his boot and had it plated with gold. Can you imagine that?”

  “I remember when I was up on the Arctic slope, north of the Brooks Range back in ’forty-four and ’forty-five. It was really something to see that green oil tinged with red dripping out of the sands of the bluffs.” Wylie absently rubbed Anita’s shoulder as the talk of oil turned his thoughts back. “I understand some oil companies have geologist teams up there looking it over now that the Navy pulled their drilling teams out of the area back in ’fifty-three. With this oil strike in the Kenai, a lot of the major companies are taking a real serious look at Alaska. I think they’re certain there’s more to be found.”

  Oil. They called it black gold, Glory recalled, and gold always started a fever. The symptoms of it were always the same—the claim jumping and lot jumping, the suits and receiverships, all the grabbing and pushing, the hordes of people and piles of equipment. She wondered if she had the energy to go through another boom. Booms were for young people.

  “Grandma Glory.” Dana sauntered over to join them, her hands thrust in the back pockets of her jeans. “Is it true that you were once a dance-hall girl in Nome?”

  “How old are you?” Glory didn’t blink an eye.

  “Thirteen.”

  “When you get a little older, I’ll answer your question and tell you all about it,” she replied.

  “Then you can tell us, Dana.” Wylie winked.

  “But Grandma Glory, you’re already old. You might not be alive by the time I’m older,” Dana protested.

  “Dana, what a thing to say!” Anita declared in sharp reproval.

  “The child has a valid point,” Glory insisted. “Lord knows, I am old. But don’t worry, Dana, I have every intention of living to be a hundred.”

  EPILOGUE

  Anchorage

  March 1974

  Glory Cole survived the Good Friday earthquake on March 27, 1964—the one that rocked Alaska and destroyed so much of Anchorage. She lived to read about the huge oil strike at Prudhoe Bay on the North Slope of Alaska and experienced the initial boom as other oil companies, drilling crews, suppliers, construction workers, prostitutes, and related fortune seekers converged on Alaska to take part in the oil rush. She observed all the bitter wrangling over the proposed pipeline—the injunctions and lawsuits that were filed, the hatred that grew toward the conservationists
, the prejudice that surfaced toward Alaskan natives, the greed and the struggle for something better.

  On the very day authorization was given for the construction of the pipeline from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez—four years short of her hundredth birthday—Glory Cole died quietly, peacefully in her sleep, surrounded by all the members of her family. She died as she had lived—with no regrets and no looking back.

  Ace claimed that she hadn’t really died, that she’d simply moved on to a new place to start over.

  About the Author

  JANET DAILEY is America’s best-selling female author, with more than 100 million of her books in print. She has written scores of popular novels, among them the best-selling Silver Wings, Santiago Blue and, recently, The Glory Game. She lives with her husband in Branson, Missouri.