Better to rest by Dana Stabenow Read Free Book Online Page A

feed.
    “So Im not seeing any plane wreckage, Liam said, almost relieved. “They might have been shining us on.
    Wy felt the prickle at the back of her neck again and tried to zip up her jacket, but the zipper was as far up as it would go. The face of the glacier glittered in the cold, clear light, fractured and chasmed and impenetrable. Bushes and grasses had implanted themselves at the sides of the face wherever a handful of dirt had collected in a hollow of rock. Even
    “Hey, she said. “Blueberries.
    They were large, as big as the first knuckle of her little finger, and frozen. They melted in her mouth like candy, sweet and tangy.
    Blueberries. Shed loved them as a child, loved picking them, loved the rich blue stain they left on her hands and lips and tongue, loved the tart, tangy taste that exploded in her mouth when she bit down. She could hide herself away in the bushes taller then than she was, and sit with a pail in her lap and pick and eat and pick and eat, and not come out again until the strident voice of her foster mother called her out. And sometimes not even then; sometimes she thought that if she could just fall asleep in the blueberry patch, when she woke up her real mother and father would be there, all love and smiles and welcome home, Wyanet.
    An eagle flew overhead, for a moment blocking the sun, aware of their presence but indifferent to them, and she started, staring down at the handful of berries. “Liam! Come have some berries! Theyre She stopped.
    Hidden until shed been drawn to the berries, hidden almost completely behind a pile of ice-encrusted gravel overgrown with diamond willow, was a large patch of gray. As she approached, it resolved itself into a fragment of airplane fuselage. The edges were ragged and worn, the gray paint streaked and faded.
    “No tail numbers, Wy said out loud. It wasnt much more than a foot across and she lifted it easily. “Ill be go to hell.
    His footsteps came to a halt behind her and she felt him look over her shoulder. “What is it?
    “World War Two, she said.
    “What about it? He caught on. “Oh, you think
    “I could be wrong, Liam, but I think this is a piece off an old C-47.
    “Whats a C-47?
    “Its the cargo equivalent of a DC-3. When he continued to look blank, she said, “Liam, I cant believe how little you know about flying and still manage to live in Alaska. The DC-3 was the first economically successful commercial airliner. The C-47 was the military application, a cargo and troop transport. Parachuters bailed out of them during the invasion of Normandy, for crying out loud. Mudhole Smith built Cordova Airlines around them. At the end of World War Two, when we knew we had the war won, the plant in Georgia started converting the cargo plane into the passenger plane, and Alaska Airlines puddle-jumped one all the way across the continent to Anchorage in May 1945 and started flying passengers. She looked at him and said incredulously, “Do you mean to say youve never been in one?
    “I dont know, he said, trying hard not to sound defensive. “I never pay any attention to the plane Im in, Wy; you know that. All I care about is that they stay up in the air long enough to get me where Im going.
    She shook her head. “Man.
    “Besides, thats just a little piece. How can you be so sure itswell, it was a DC-3?
    “A C-47, she said. “It was a military plane. The color alone tells us that.
    “How longs it been here? When did it crash?
    “We need to find something with numbers on it. Wy began foraging, climbing over boulders, pulling brush to one side only to have it pull free and slap her in the face. “Ouch. Damn it.
    “John said they found the arm next to a big chunk of quartz. He walked upslope, crunching through a surface trickle of water frozen into a thin, rapidly melting crust. It had spent the summer running off the end of a slab of ice the size of Wys house, with man-high holes melted through it. “There. He clambered over the ice, pieces