Nothing gold can stay by Dana Stabenow Read Free Book Online Page A

the only time the mining camp got direct sunlight was between the hours of ten and two. It might as well be December. There was even snow packed into various hollows on the north-facing slopes of the peaks.
    It had not been a fun summer. Not only was there no electricity, there was no running water, and the plumbing consisted of a teetery outhouse with bear hair stuck to the outside where the local grizzlies had come to scratch. With the advent of salmon up Nenevok Creek, the bears had come for more than scratching their backs. And if there werent bears, there were moose, mama moose with babies and attitude. One day a porcupine had wandered into the outhouse and frightened her outside. Mark had come running at the sound of her shrieks and roared with laughter at the sight of her hobbling around with her pants down around her ankles.
    Mark had bought her a.357, which nearly knocked her flat the first time shed shot it, and she wore it faithfully whenever she stepped out the door, but guns made her nervous and she preferred to remain inside, beading and knitting by the soft glow of the kerosene lamp. Mark had gotten a little tight-lipped when she had run out of kerosene for the second time, but that nice woman pilot with Nushagak Air Taxi had dropped off two five-gallon cans on a trip from Newenham to the fishing lodge at Outuchiwenet Mountain. The three Danish fly fishermen on board had taken one look at Rebecca and tried to persuade the pilot to leave them there, too. They spoke little English, but Rebecca, starved for conversation in any language, had been reluctant to let them go.
    The pilot had also brought in a bundle of magazines,
Newsweek
s and
Time
s and
Smithsonian
s and
Cosmopolitan
s, and Rebecca had been moved nearly to tears. The pilot, a leggy woman in jeans with dark blond hair stuffed carelessly through the back of a Chevron baseball cap, could not quite conceal her sympathy. Rebecca, who had her pride, pulled herself together enough to express her thanks, wished the fishermen luck and helped push the tail of the plane around, yet another skill she had acquired this summer. The Cessna blew dust into her eyes as the engines revved up for takeoff, but she stood where she was, watching as it barely cleared the birch trees at the end of the rudimentary little airstrip with the uphill grade and the surface made of rocks rubbed smooth from a hundred years of tumbling in Nenevok Creek. The engine roared a protest in the thin mountain air as the pilot hauled on the yoke and the plane slipped through the minuscule space between Mounts Pistok and Atshichlut. Rebecca had tears in her eyes from more than the dust.
    And now here it was, September 1, a Wednesday. On September 6, Labor Day by the calendar but Christmas, New Years and her birthday all rolled into one for Rebecca, Nushagak Air Taxi was scheduled to fly into the Nenevok Creek airstrip and pick up Mark and Rebecca and fly them back to Newenham, where they would board an Alaska Airlines 737 (until this summer the smallest plane Rebecca had been on). In a little over an hour, they would land in Anchorage. Nina was meeting them, with orders to have in hand at the gate a grande cup of the day from Kaladi Brothers, with half-and-half and a packet of Equal already stirred in. Rebecca could almost taste it, and looked up from the watchband she was beading for her grandmother to the calendar on the wall, as if by doing so she could make the days, the hours, the minutes go faster. Dinner at Villa Nova, she thought, or maybe Simons, or Yamato Ya, or Thai Kitchen. She was so sick of salmon. She was a good cook, but there were only so many ways to prepare fish, and she had tried them all.
    Maybe a trip to the Alaska State Fair in Palmer, she thought, examining her palette and selecting a number 11 seed bead in lime green. Rain or shine, the fair was always crowded over the Labor Day weekend, kids standing in line for their last Octopus ride before school started, serious,