Everything To Prove. Nadia Nichols

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      “MY FATHER NEVER said nothin’ to me about anything,” an overweight and balding Bob Stuck said seven hours later, standing outside the door of his one-bay garage in Moose Creek in the watery spring sunshine. Six rusted trucks cluttered the small yard and another took up the garage. He sported a gold hoop in his left ear, a diamond stud in his right and his hands were black with grease. “He was never home. Always off chasing poachers and fish hogs and women. That was more important to him than raising a son.” He spat as if talking about his father put a bad taste in his mouth.

      “Did he have any close friends that you know of? Anyone he might have talked to about that plane crash?” Libby asked.

      “Most of ’em are dead now. But Lana’s still alive. She lives over on the Chena. She and Charlie shacked up together about ten years back. She took care of him better than he deserved, cooked for him, cleaned his cabin, washed his clothes and waited up nights till he came home from the bars. Then he had that stroke and the hospital put him in the old folks’ home. She wanted the doctors to let him come back home. She ranted and raved in the hospital, made a big scene, said she could take care of him better than any nursing home.” Bob shook his head. “Yeah, she might remember something. She don’t talk to me, but she might talk to you.” He gave her a baleful stare from red-veined eyes. “You’re Indian, ain’t you?”

      LANA PAUL LIVED IN an old cabin sitting on sill logs that had rotted into the riverbank over the years, giving the building a decided tilt toward the water. When Libby parked her rental car next to the dilapidated wreck of an old Ford truck, the cabin door opened and a stout older woman with a bright blue kerchief tied over her head peered out.

      “Lana?” Libby said, climbing out of the car. “I’m Libby Wilson. I’d like to talk to you about Charlie Stuck.”

      The black eyes glittered with suspicion. “Charlie’s dead. They locked him away in a place full of old people and bad smells and he died.”

      “I know that, and I’m sorry. But I want to talk to you about what he did, about his job as a warden. I think he might have known something about my father’s death. My father was Connor Libby. He lived in a lodge on Evening Lake.”

      “Charlie might have known something, maybe, but I don’t,” she said, and the door of the old cabin banged shut. Libby stood for a few moments in the drab detritus of mud season, listening to the Chena rush past and wondering why the cabin hadn’t been swept away by floodwaters years ago. She was turning to leave when the door opened and the woman leaned out, giving her a sharp look.

      “You got any tobacco?” she said. “I got papers but no tobacco.”

      “I can bring you some,” Libby replied.

      The woman nodded and the door closed again. Libby drove into Fairbanks and at the big grocery store she bought rolling papers and tobacco. She also bought a cooked rotisserie chicken and a tub of coleslaw from the deli, half a dozen freshly baked biscuits and cookies and two bottles of wine, one red, one white. When she returned to the cabin the door opened immediately and Lana Paul ushered her inside. The interior was surprisingly neat and clean, in stark contrast to the muddy, cluttered yard. Libby set the bag of groceries on the Formica table and took out the contents. “I picked up some food, too, in case you hadn’t eaten supper yet,” she said, handing the foil-wrapped package of tobacco to the woman.

      Lana took it from her with gnarled, eager hands. “I remembered something while you were gone,” she said, unwrapping the package. She sat down in an old wooden rocker near the woodstove, which threw a welcome warmth to the room. “I remembered how Charlie talked when he came home from the bars. Sometimes, he would talk about his past.” She was filling a paper with tobacco as she spoke, and rolled it with swift, practiced dexterity. “I remember a story he told me about a boy with eyes like yours and a three-legged dog. They lived on Evening Lake.”

      Libby froze in the act of setting the chicken on the table. “That was my father.”

      “Charlie told me this story.” Lana reached for a wooden match in an old canning jar on the table and scratched it to life on the top of the woodstove. She lit the thin cigarette and inhaled with an expression of reverent content, smoke wreathing her deeply wrinkled face and sharp eyes. “The boy came home from a place faraway and brought a three-legged dog with him.”

      “He came back from the war in Vietnam with a dog he called HoChi,” Libby said, sinking into a chair and staring transfixed at the old woman. “The dog’s hind leg had been blown off by a land mine that killed three soldiers.”

      “This boy fell in love with a young girl from a village on the Koyukyuk,” Lana continued.

      “My mother,” Libby said, her heart hammering with hope that Lana would say something that would help her find her father.

      Lana pushed her feet against the floor and made the old rocker move back and forth as she smoked her cigarette. A floorboard creaked in time to the movement. “They were going to be married, but the boy was killed on his wedding day.”

      Libby waited for several long minutes while a big water pot hissed atop the woodstove and the old woman rocked and the warm, delectable aroma of spit-roasted chicken filled the little cabin. “Is that all he said?” she finally asked.

      “Charlie was drunk,” Lana mused, rocking. “He was sad. He walked back and forth and said he wished he found the boy’s plane. He said he always wondered about the plane.”

      Libby leaned forward in her chair. “What do you think he meant by that?”

      Lana shrugged. “I think he wondered why the plane crashed.” She looked toward the food Libby had placed on the table. “Boy, that chicken smells good.”

      Libby got up, found two plates in a drain rack on the sideboard and a sharp knife in a kitchen drawer. She carved up the chicken and heaped generous portions onto both plates. She hadn’t eaten anything since the can of cold beans the night before, and she was hungry. She put two biscuits on each plate, divided the coleslaw into two green mounds, then found eating utensils in another drawer and placed them on the table. Lana threw the stub of her cigarette into the woodstove while Libby opened the bottle of red wine and poured two glasses. They sat at the table together and ate in silence. The food was good and the warmth of the woodstove a welcome radiance in the cooling evening. Sagging into the earth and leaning toward the river, the weathered old cabin gave Libby a sense of peace.

      The old woman cleaned her plate. She ate deliberately, as if trying to memorize each mouthful of food. She drank her wine and Libby refilled her glass. Lana kept her attention on the meal until it was finished, and then returned to her rocker and rolled another cigarette and lit it as she had the first.

      “Charlie said the young girl was very beautiful, and he didn’t know why the old man didn’t like her.”

      “The old man? You mean Daniel Frey?”

      Lana nodded. “The rich man who lived on the lake and didn’t like Indians.”

      Libby gathered up the plates and silverware and carried them to the sink. She poured hot water from the pot on the stove into the dishpan and added a squirt of detergent from the plastic bottle on the sideboard. There was a small window set into the wall above the sink and Libby could look out at the river rushing past as she washed. It made her a little dizzy. When the dishes were done she wiped off the table and draped the dishcloth over the faucet. “Did Charlie ever mention that the young village girl had a child?”

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