Poppy went through the stack again, and when he shook out the magazines, two letters dropped from between their pages. One was a thick, lavender envelope addressed by hand to:
Mr. Adam Prophecy
Stubborn Mountain Mine
General Delivery
McHardy, AK 99562
It was from a Susan Krae, who lived in Soldotna and whose every written word ended in a curlicue. Adam had never spoken of a Susan Krae from Soldotna or of any girl from anyplace. Poppy sniffed the envelope. At least there was no perfume.
The other was a plain white business envelope with a Forever Liberty Bell stamp and an Anchorage postmark. It had been cancelled on the twentieth of Eleventhmonth, which meant it had taken a couple of weeks to arrive. In contrast to the lavender envelope, it was so thin it didn’t seem to contain anything at all. It was addressed to him, and he recognized at once NJB’s handwriting.
But when Poppy slit the envelope and peered inside, it was indeed empty. Had NJB addressed and sealed the envelope and forgotten to include any contents? Or was an empty envelope after a month of silence supposed to be some kind of message?
Then he noticed writing on the inside of the envelope itself. He tore it open and found a number with seven digits: 62-13-44-5. No word of explanation, just the number. It didn’t look like an address or phone number or GPS or anything else he could think of. Illumination was deferred.
Poppy checked the envelope a final time for any other contents or marks or clues. Nada. So he tore a scrap with the number and put it into his wallet.
THE SULZER HOUSE was a grand old log structure that had been built in 1910 and added to every decade until it resembled several separate houses all jumbled together. Inside was a warren of mismatched hallways and darkened rooms that reeked of pets, cigarettes, cooking grease, and, above all, paint thinner. The main part of the house was heated by an old, cast iron wood stove in the living room. That was where grizzled men and women were congregating in puddles of shed coats, hats, and gloves.
These were the neighbors from far and wide: from the settlements of Caldecott and Larkspur Peak, from Round Lake on McHardy Road, Dan Creek, and Fourthmonth Creek. For some of these people, Mail Day was the only day they saw any reason to seek out other living people. And not necessarily to interact with them but to watch them from a safe distance while balancing styrofoam cups and pie plates on their knees. When you lived beyond the beyond, just showing up counted for a lot.
Others of them tried to burn off their cabin fever with small talk. Of these, Kelly Cobweal led the charge. The owner/manager of the McHardy Hotel and Saloon, a husband and father, hunter, pilot, and carpenter, Cobweal was also a community leader. And ever since the Prophecys’ armed standoff with the park service a couple of summers ago, Cobweal had treated Poppy like a celebrity. When he saw him enter the room, he waved him over to join his group. But Poppy didn’t attend Mail Day to be sucked into some nudnik’s orbit.
“Pastor!” Cobweal called. “You’ll want to hear this. There’s proof the Democrats stole the election.” But Poppy ignored him and continued to the refreshments table where he was disappointed to find the three aluminum pie tins already empty but for crumbs and lurid, blue streaks.
No big loss, actually.
Once upon a time, or so the legend went, Virginia Sulzer made world-class pies. She and Edward managed to pick enough wild blueberries in late summer on the backside of Eureka Ridge to serve real fruit pies to Mail Day guests for most of the following year. But now, several decades, spinal injuries, and six surgical procedures later, she simply scooped blueberry-infused goo out of restaurant-sized cans into box-store frozen crusts and called it pie.
Like most things in the fallen world, the idea of Virginia’s Blueberry Pies far exceeded their reality. Only Father God’s word can stand the acid test of reality because only His word is reality. Amen.
Poppy spied a soon-to-be-vacant seat in the corner next to the extension cord and power strip. Its current occupant, a lost-looking fellow who was successfully keeping to himself, got up to use the toilet or something. He put his half empty styrofoam cup on the seat to —what? — reserve it?
As Poppy Prophecy went to claim the seat, his way was blocked by a woman, and it took him a moment to remember who she was, Barbara Jean de Saul.
“Hey, Prophecy,” Barbara Jean said. “How are you? How are all of those beautiful babies of yours?”
Barbara Jean was an unassuming woman in her mid-forties who one fine spring day three years ago abandoned her family and career as a home spa salesperson in Houston, Texas. She longed to travel to Nepal where she thought she’d be able to slow down and “figure things out.” But circumstances brought her to Cordova, Alaska, instead where she learned to slime salmon and pack roe in a cannery. Three years on, she was still figuring things out. In the meantime, she rented a restored house in McHardy.
“My beautiful babies are magnifying the glory and love of their Creator,” Poppy replied. “What about yours? How are your beautiful babies?”
Barbara Jean had three, all boys, ages five, eight, and ten the day she walked out on them and her husband.
“Just wonderful,” she replied proudly. “They’re growing up so smart and strong.”
“How can you know that when you haven’t seen them in three years?”
“Oh, I see them all the time. We Skype with their dad a couple times a week.”
He hadn’t thought of that. You could do that these days, even in McHardy.
Barbara Jean took his silence for confusion. “Skype is like a video chat feature on my cell phone.”
“I know what it is!” Poppy snapped. “What I’m saying is no amount of Skype can make you a good mother.”
“Oh, Mr. Prophecy,” Barbara Jean said. “It’s always such a pleasure to run into you. Tell Mama P hi for me, and the kiddies. I pray for you guys all the time.”
POPPY PROPHECY REMOVED the styrofoam cup and draped his parka over the chair. All of the electrical outlets were in use charging phones and tablets. He had to remove one to plug in his own phone. When he turned his phone on, it went through its merry little dance of life: looking up, hooking up, and syncing up all its many indispensable services. The strong mobile signal in town was the only good thing Obama ever did.
What irked Poppy about Barbara Jean’s presumption of his ignorance of the internet was how nearly right she was. Three years ago, he was a techno-ignoramus and proud of it. He’d seen plenty of computers in his time but had never touched one himself. Never felt the need. As far as he was concerned, the internet was a tool of Satan, which was why his family avoided it. But Poppy’s moral compass had swung 180 degrees on the matter. What had happened to cause such a change of heart? In a word, he had met Not Jeff Bridges.
Which was why NJB’s protracted silence (except for a cypher on a scrap of paper) was so vexing. What if, in those years of friendly association, NJB had actually been secretly gathering the strings of Poppy’s undoing? What if he had cleaned them out? Not that the Prophecys had a fortune to their name. A couple hundred dollars was all there was when last he checked his account. So as soon as his Samsung finished plugging itself into the world, Poppy logged into his credit union. Well, it was not what he had feared. The opposite, in fact. Their online Christmas sales had been through the roof, and several brick-and-mortar vendors had paid off their balances. The current balance in his account was $4,082.76, praise Elder Brother Jesus. Praise His holy name. Amen.
POPPY PROPHECY PUT the mystery of NJB’s disappearance aside and spent the next hour hunched over, oblivious to his surroundings, with his Arctic overalls draped around his knees in his phone-based office, taking care of business. The only reason he attended Mail Day was because of Ed’s free electricity. When next he looked up, Dell Bunyan’s melancholic face was hanging before him like the full moon in the night sky.
“Mr. Prophecy,” Bunyan said with a smile that did little to brighten his expression. Maybe the muscles in his fac
e were wired to sag that way and weren’t a reliable gauge of his mood. Poppy doubted that was the case. Bunyan’s muscles were all right; it was his morose soul that was showing through.
“Bunyan,” Poppy replied. Bunyan offered him his cold, fat, soft hand to squeeze or shake or do something with. But Poppy had long ago stopped clasping hands with other people, unless it was to seal a deal, and he let Bunyan’s hand hang in front of him until Bunyan had the good sense to put it away.
“Say, Prophecy,” Bunyan went on, “I was wondering.” He was always wondering about one thing or another. “We’re next door neighbors. You know that you and the family are more than welcome to attend Sunday service with us.” It was the same offer Bunyan made every time they met. Poppy usually replied that he would pray on it. McHardy was a town that lacked a single gas station, convenience store, laundromat, public utility, or official post office. Yet it boasted of three distinct Protestant sects. They were active even during the depopulated winter months, when the congregation of any one of them would triple or quadruple in size the moment the Prophecy family walked through its chapel doors (not that they ever would).
Unlike the picturesque log church with the log steeple on the Caldecott River, Bunyan’s chapel doubled as his family’s living room. Instead of stained glass windows, the walls were bedecked with musty, old bearskin rugs. There were grizzly and black bears alike, with their toothy heads still attached. These were the trophies his five sons had collected over the years. Shooting a bear seemed to be a right of passage in that household and a source of pride for its patriarch.
“I want you to stop asking me to come to your services, Bunyan,” Poppy said in his best good-neighborly voice.
“I don’t mean to pester you, but you said you’d pray on it, and I was wondering how that turned out.”
“Well, I did pray on it. Several times in fact. And the Holy Spirit told me not to risk my children’s spiritual welfare by exposing them to scriptural falsehoods.”
“Falsehoods?” Bunyan said, choking on the word. “That’s strong language, friend. We’re likely to have disagreements of interpretation, but falsehoods? If you don’t mind, please educate me. Tell me a falsehood I preach.”
“You preach pre-millennial dispensationalism.”
“And that’s a problem?”
“It is when you preach that the Rapture comes before the Tribulation.”
“And you don’t?”
“Of course not. Anyone who thinks that the faithful will rapture out of harm’s way and that only unbelievers will be left behind to suffer seven years of bloodshed and torture under the heel of the Antichrist is a complete fool. It’s too easy. It’s lazy, wishful thinking. The hard truth is that the souls of each of us will be forged in the fires of the greatest battle that the Earth will ever see. Only then will those who still believe in our Savior’s blood be raised to glory. Otherwise, what’s the point?”
Bunyan’s face sagged even more. “That’s certainly one point of view,” he said. Tears were welling in his eyes, and the sight of them further annoyed Poppy. “Then let me run something else by you, Prophecy,” Bunyan continued.
That was the pastor’s MO. He’d latch on to you with some insane request and then proceed to moist-eye you into submission.
“I was wondering if some of your girls would like to come over sometime to play with Scarlett.”
Without a moment of hesitation, Poppy said, “No. It’s out of the question.”
His neighbor didn’t seem surprised. “I hear you and respect your decision,” he said. By now the wells of his eyes were full to overflowing, and Poppy wanted to smack him to make him stop. What kind of character flaw was it that drove a man to snivel so?
“How about — ” the man went on heedlessly. “No, before I ask, let me just tell you about her recent triumph. She took her first bear, a blond grizz. Big fella. She shot it last fall outside Cantwell and is having it tanned.”
She? She who? Poppy was too busy trying not to watch the tears dripping from Bunyan’s nose to pay attention to the conversation. The only she in the Bunyan household he was aware of was the wife, or late wife. She had died long before the Prophecys came to McHardy. What was her name? She had been killed in an auto accident while the family was on vacation in Hawaii. In the meantime, the five Bunyan sons had all grown up and gone off to college or war.
“It was her first kill,” Bunyan went on. “I was so proud. But here’s the thing. With the boys, we always had a full house to celebrate as each got his bear. Now it’s just me and her. And I’m afraid I’m just too boring for her. So I was wondering . . .”
“Who are you talking about?”
“Scarlett.”
“Who’s Scarlett?”
“My daughter. My youngest. She’s here somewhere.” He blew his nose into a blueberry-stained napkin. “Anyway, it seems to me you have a girl or three about her age out there. Since you’d rather not let your girls come to my house, how about, if she wasn’t a burden, I was wondering if Scarlett could come over to your place sometime to play or bake or do whatever it is that thirteen-year-old girls do. Oh, there she is.” The pastor’s gaze found the girl across the room standing next to the hallway door.
So that was Scarlett. A little slip of a thing in a deep burgundy dress. Unlike the Prophecy girls, who were all either blond or brunette, Scarlett had black hair. Obsidian black. It was cut short and styled in a pageboy, which was further evidence, if any more were needed, of Pastor Bunyan’s unfitness to preach to others. Worse, though the girl wore a skirt, it barely reached her knees. Plus, she was wearing blue jeans under the skirt. Talk about confusing the genders. She looked like the sort of girl a father didn’t want influencing his own daughters.
Across the room, Scarlett became aware of the men’s attention and ducked self-consciously into the hallway.
The Holy Spirit chose that moment to whisper a name in Poppy’s ear — Mary. Yes, that was the dead wife’s name. And even though Poppy had never met the woman, he said, “I see the resemblance. She looks just like her mother.”
“You think?” Bunyan said, a little surprised.
“Yes. Especially her eyes. When I saw her standing there by the door, for a moment I thought I was looking at Mary. For just a second I forgot that Mary was cruelly crushed and mangled under an automobile bumper, and I thought that she had come to Mail Day with you.”
Now the floodgates opened wide, and Bunyan’s tears cascaded down his cheeks.
“Too bad the Father called Mary home when He did,” Poppy said. “After she sends all her sons off to start their own lives and finally has time to devote to her only daughter. It seems so unfair.”
“I know,” Bunyan blubbered. “It does.”
“And the girl being at that age — twelve you said? — when she needs her mama now more than ever. I mean, she’s becoming a woman. What do you know about becoming a woman?”
“Nothing! I know nothing.”
Poppy stood and offered Bunyan his chair. The man all but collapsed into it, but Poppy didn’t ease up on him yet. “Just think of how proud Mary would have been of Scarlett for getting her first grizz. What a celebration she would have organized.” Dell Bunyan hunched forward in the chair and buried his head in his hands.
WITH BUSINESS CHORES done and Bunyan vanquished, Poppy decided it was time to leave. But first he needed to talk to Ed. The north end of the cavernous log room was the studio and the source of the paint thinner vapors. About twenty years ago, Ed had removed most of the north wall and replaced it with two, side-by-side bay windows. Each bay was crowned with a plexiglass domed skylight. A solid studio easel stood in each bay, and clamped to each easel were four, large, tin goldpans.
The northern view outside the windows was well worth Ed’s effort. It was a remarkable panorama even to jaded Alaska eyes. To the east ran Eureka Ridge, the location of Caldecott and the copper bonanza. To the west were the wooded slopes of Larkspur Mountain. And in between yawned the broad Cal
decott Glacier, a ribbon of ice thirty miles long (48 km) that rose twelve thousand feet (3700 m) to the snowy half-dome of Mt. Blackfriar, an extinct volcano.
The bay windows were two unblinking eyes. In one of them, Ginny slouched on a tall-backed, vinyl barstool and smoked and painted as she chatted with her guests, Barbara Jean and a couple of other McHardy biddies. Ginny’s specialty was painting backgrounds with oils, and she worked on four goldpans simultaneously. Each background she painted was different, but no matter if it depicted a forested hillside or a cloudy alpine majesty or the blue-green face of recently sheered glacial ice, it came from some piece of the scene outside her window. Altogether, Ginny had an inventory of about forty good, ready-made compositions that she had been painting in all lights and all weather for decades.
When she noticed Poppy, she said, “Did the old fool tell you about the road yet?”
“He said there was news.”
“Edward,” she called to her husband in the other bay, “tell Father Progeny about the road.”
Ed Sulzer was perched on his own barstool, smoking Kools to her Camels, and attending to his own congress of dunces. Each of the four goldpans clamped to his easel contained a finished variation of Ginny’s forty stock backgrounds. It was Ed’s job to add middle- and foreground elements to them. Today he was painting the same rustic log cabin in a variety of settings: in deep woods, on a high mountain bluff, in a snowy valley, next to a raging stream. The cabins usually had a twist of white woodsmoke coming out of their stack, and sometimes the windows were illuminated from within by golden lamplight. No matter what scene Ginny threw at him, Ed could drop the log cabin into it somewhere.
Ed also liked to include a man’s figure in the composition. A tiny man chopping wood next to the cabin, maybe. A gold prospector on snowshoes climbing a distant ridge, a musher driving a team of huskies by moonlight.
They both signed their names to the finished pans, which sold well in gift shops around the state.
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