The Great Alone (95 page)

Unless—the thought suddenly occurred to her—he didn’t have any more morphine here. Lately he’d had to take it more often and in larger dosages. She knew he’d become totally dependent on it. She remembered the piano player in Nome and how sick he’d gotten and how much pain he’d been in that time his supply of the drug had run out.

She hurried into their bedroom and went through the drawer where Deacon had always hidden his morphine. It wasn’t there. She looked in the rest of the drawers and anyplace else she could think, but didn’t find any.

Now she was worried and frightened. In his condition, Deacon could become violently ill at any time—the way the piano player had. And the last place he should be was out in that freezing fog. She left the bedroom and hurried to the wall telephone in the parlor. She lifted the receiver and listened to make sure the line was clear, then turned the crank handle.

“Hello, Millie,” she said as soon as the local operator came on the line. “This is Mrs. Cole. Will you please ring the saloon?”

“I sure will. By the way, Helen Chalmers had her baby last night. Another boy. They so wanted a girl this time. After four boys, I can’t blame them. Oh, and old man Devereaux slipped and fell and broke his hip.”

“How awful,” she murmured automatically, silently wishing the woman would shut up.

“It’s ringing, Mrs. Cole, but I’m not getting any answer.”

“Let it ring. Papa Tom might be in the back.” Papa Tom was the janitor Deacon had hired to clean up the place after the saloon closed. He lived in one of the back rooms.

“Hel-lo?”

“Papa Tom.” Glory gripped the long mouthpiece of the telephone and leaned closer to speak directly into it. “This is Mrs. Cole. Deacon just left here a few minutes ago. He’s on his way to the saloon. Would you have him ring me as soon as he arrives there?”

“Ya want him to call ya?”

“Yes. The very minute he arrives. It’s important, Papa Tom. Will you tell him?”

“Yeah. That all?”

“Yes. Thank you.” She returned the receiver to its hook and rang off.

A half hour later, she still hadn’t heard from him. She rang the saloon again, and Papa Tom assured her he hadn’t arrived or he would have given Deacon the message. Afraid of waiting longer, she told Matty of her concern, and Matty agreed it would be wise to send her husband, Billy Ray, out to look for Deacon. In the meantime, Glory called various places along the way where Deacon might have stopped. But no one had seen him.

That night, a search party of neighbors found Deacon’s body. He had frozen to death, they said, but Glory knew the morphine had killed him as surely as the cold.

Those following months after Deacon’s death were the hardest Glory had ever had to face, even though Ace and Matty were always nearby to offer comfort. She had never guessed it was possible to miss a person so much. Deacon had always been there. She realized that he’d never asked anything of her, except to marry him. Other than that, she had been totally free to do what she wanted and never had to be concerned whether she had his approval.

On a hot Sunday in July, Glory stooped down beside his tombstone and laid a bouquet of forget-me-nots on his grave. Straightening, she gazed through the black net of her veil at the inscription etched into the stone: beloved husband—robert “deacon” cole. A sentiment that was so true it brought tears to her eyes.

A pesky black fly buzzed around her face, seeking an opening in the protective net. As she brushed it aside with her hand, Glory noticed the black gloves and the black sleeve of her tunic dress. Once she had sworn never to wear a dark, drab color again. But for Deacon she had donned the black of mourning.

“He wouldn’t have liked me in this color,” she said to Matty.

“No, he surely wouldn’t. He liked it best when you wore bright, pretty things.”

“Yes.” The black dress absorbed the sun’s heat and added to the oppressive warmth that seemed about to suffocate her. “It’s time to start over, I think.”

“Yes.”

She breathed in deeply and released a sigh. “I’ve decided to sell the boardinghouse.”

“What will you do?” Matty looked at her in surprise.

“Make a new start. It’s time to move on. If Deacon were here, that’s what he’d say.”

“Where will you go?”

“They’re building a new town on the Cook Inlet where the railroad has its construction camp. They’re calling it Anchorage. If Ace and I are going to start a new life, it might as well be in a new town.” She reached out and took hold of Matty’s hand. “Will you and Billy Ray come with us?”

“We are family. Family should stay together.”

CHAPTER LI

Anchorage, Alaska

May 25, 1923

Glory raked the small pile of chopped underbrush onto the larger stack and paused to catch her breath. She wasn’t used to hard physical labor, and turning forty-five years old didn’t make the work any easier. Still, it was more fun than work. She looked down the long field at the swarm of people laboring as hard as she was.

Not far from her, men with shovels stepped back from the tree stump they’d been digging and watched while another volunteer fastened a chain around the stump and attached it to the tail brace of his harnessed team of horses. A tractor chugged by her, dragging another tree stump by a chain. As the driver waved to her, Glory recognized her son, Ace, and waved back. Whenever there was a choice between horses and horsepower, he always chose the latter, so she wasn’t surprised to see him operating the tractor.

Everywhere she looked, people were at work, the men unearthing tree stumps and chopping out the undergrowth, the women and children raking the brush into piles, all of them swarming over the sixteen-acre tract. It was a scene of confusion and industry—noisy with the roaring chug of tractors, the snorting neighs of horses, the hacking chops of axes, the ordering shouts of men, and the shrieking laughter of children. There was an underlying excitement that, to Glory, was reminiscent of another time and another place.

“Do you know what this reminds me of, Trudy?” she said to her new daughter-in-law.

“What’s that, Mother Cole?”

Glory wasn’t sure how much she liked being called that. It made her feel so old. But she knew Trudy used the term out of affection and respect. She smiled at the girl Ace had married three years ago. The daughter of a construction worker on the railroad, Gertrude “Trudy” Hannighan had moved from Seattle with her family four years ago. The day Ace had met her, he’d come home and told Glory that he’d found the girl he wanted to marry.

Glory found nothing wrong with his choice. Trudy was an intelligent, outgoing girl who was absolutely convinced there was nothing Ace couldn’t do. Sometimes Glory thought that if her son suggested he and Trudy should go to the moon, Trudy would start packing that very minute.

Trudy was an attractive girl with even features and a ready smile. Her short dark hair was cut in a bob—the latest style on the outside. Taller than average, she had a sturdy look to her that Glory liked. A dark-haired, dark-eyed two-year-old boy came toddling up to her on chubby legs and threw his arms around Trudy’s legs. Her son—Glory’s grandson Wylie Deacon Cole. A grandmother—Glory wasn’t sure she felt
that
old.

“What does this remind you of, Mother Cole?” Trudy prompted again and swung her young son up into her arms.

Glory looked back at the scene. “Nome. That summer after they discovered gold on the beach and people were scurrying everywhere. The noise and confusion of it.” She altered her grip on the rake handle to let the top rest against her shoulder. In doing so, Glory felt the soreness of a beginning blister in her palm. She glanced down at her work-gloved hand, letting go of the rake to open it, and laughed softly. “And the blisters.”

“You prospected for gold, too?”

“Oh, yes, I caught the gold fever just like everyone else.”

“It must have been exciting being there when all that was going on.”

“Yes. That summer of 1900 was insanity,” she mused, then shook her head wryly. “So is this. Will you look at all of us out here clearing land for an airport? I can’t figure out why, when there aren’t any airplanes in Anchorage.”

“There never will be if we don’t have a place where they can land. Ace says that someday aviation will open up Alaska the way railroads never can. It’s the way of the future.”

“I’ve heard him say that.” At least a thousand times, Glory was sure.

Her son had become fascinated by these flying machines during the war years, devouring any and all accounts of the aerial dogfights over the skies of Europe and the World War I aces who fought in them. Last year, his fascination had become an obsession when he saw his first airplane—some old craft that landed on the water. Glory thought Ace had referred to it as a Boeing amphibian. Ever since then, his dream had been to learn to fly. It didn’t trouble him at all that the Boeing amphibian was presently at the bottom of Cook Inlet after an attempted takeoff failed.

Somehow, Glory knew he’d never be content until he’d flown himself. It worried her sometimes. Mostly because she was afraid it would be these airplanes that would lure him into leaving Alaska for the States so he could learn to fly.

In the States, business was booming, but Alaska’s economy was in a slump. Since the end of the war, there had been a sharp decrease in world demand for its principal exports—salmon and copper. Most of the time, the boardinghouse Glory had built in Anchorage was only half full, providing her with just enough income to meet her expenses. She wouldn’t have had even that if the Alaska Railroad hadn’t made Anchorage its headquarters and the base for its repair shops, where her son worked. And two of the six houses she owned were vacant, with no hope of finding anyone to rent them. Ace and Trudy lived in one of the remaining four, and Matty and Billy Ray in another. But Glory still had a little money saved, and she was able to make a living, although it was hardly what she had once earned. But those were other days, other times—another life. She had no regrets. If she had it to do over again, there was nothing she would change.

Ace came by on the tractor again and stopped, then shouted above the engine’s vibrating chug, “You won’t get anything done leaning on those rakes. Get back to work!” He grinned and set the tractor in motion again.

By day’s end, the airfield was cleared. To celebrate the town’s feat, a bonfire was built and everybody feasted on wieners and washed them down with coffee or lemonade.

A little more than a year later, Glory sat in the rear seat of her three-year-old Model T Ford with her young grandson, Wylie, beside her. Her son, Ace, was behind the wheel talking excitedly to his wife, Trudy, about his favorite subjects—flying and airplanes—as they bounced along the rutted road to the Anchorage airfield. His fascination had become an all-consuming passion. He talked about little else.

Ace could, and did, talk for hours on the scientific principles of aviation. Every conversation was sprinkled with aeronautical terms such as “lift,” “drag,” “stabilizers,” and “airfoils.” But his excitement really began to build whenever he started talking about the potential benefits aviation could bring to Alaska. The territory was huge, with few of its towns linked by overland routes. To reach Nome, from Anchorage, a person had to travel by ship, or take the train to Fairbanks, then a riverboat on the Yukon, and still be short of his destination at the end of that. And such trips were only possible in the summer. In the winter, travel was by dogsled. Eight months of the year, all mail went to Nome by dogsled.

But airplanes didn’t need roads carved through miles of rugged terrain or tracks laid or bridges built. An airplane could fly over all the swollen creeks or snow-choked passes. A trip that would take better than a week by dogsled or horse-drawn vehicle, a plane could make in a day. And Ace was quick to point out that Alaska sat smack in the middle of the great circle route from the United States to the Far East. Soon mail and goods would be sent by air, making the trip in a fraction of the time it would take a ship to cross the Pacific. According to him, Alaska was going to be the crossroads of the world.

As they approached the homemade field, Ace slowed the Model T and pulled it off on the shoulder of the dirt road. Ace didn’t wait for the engine to cease its sputtering before climbing out of the car. As he lifted Wylie out of the back seat, his attention was already focused on the airplane at the end of the field preparing for a takeoff. Absently he helped Glory out of the car.

“There it is,” he declared with the excitement of a child at Christmas. “It’s a Hisso-powered Standard.”

The airplane had been shipped by steamer from the States to Seward, then came by rail to Anchorage. Ever since it had arrived at the railroad yard, Ace had spent every spare moment he could watching the pilot, Noel Wien, and his mechanic, William Yunker, assemble the plane. He was still upset that he’d missed being there when the plane was taken up for a test flight.

Glory watched with a mixture of skepticism and apprehension as the plane came charging down the field, picking up speed. No matter how many times Ace explained it to her, she didn’t understand how such a machine could get off the ground. But just as it drew level with them, its wheels left the ground. The plane was airborne. It roared by them, steadily widening the distance from the ground.