Midnight come again by Dana Stabenow Page B

actually went down for a few hours. The horizon stretched on forever, unsettling to a man used to mountains taking up more than their share of sky. He passed a small clump of alders, a lone diamond willow. The rest of the landscape was covered in tall grass, where it wasn't a lake or a marsh, or a stream draining one into the other, or both into the Kuskokwim. What was that illness when you were afraid to go outside your own home? He remembered reading a story once about a woman who hadn't left her house in twentyone years. They'd given it a name, interviewed doctors, sounded Greek--agoraphobic, that was it. Why agoraphobic? The Agora was an area of shops in Athens dating back to classical times. He'd traveled in Europe the summer after he'd graduated from college, a gift from his parents, relieved that their son had made it through school without their having to pick up child support as an additional expense. He remembered the women of Greece fondly. One minute you were looking at a statue carved two thousand years before, the next you saw the model for it strolling down the street with that marvelous Hellenic arrogance that says, "We were building the Parthenon when you were chipping out arrowheads and don't you forget it." Greek women brought that arrogance to bed with them, where it said, "Okay, show me what you got, I dare you." Jim dared every chance that came his way.
    Yes, there was something special about the women of Greece, something extra, a bonus. Of course, there were more than a few Alaskan women you could say that about, too. He immediately thought of the five-foot package of dynamite back at the airport, and tripped over a rock thrown up by the gravel fill of the roadbed. He caught himself and swore. A goose, species unidentified but about the size of a Stearson, exploded out of a hummock of grass two feet to his right, honking angrily. When Jim got his heart restarted, he moved on.

    Slowly but steadily, he left the hum and bustle of the municipal airport behind, and so it was with annoyance that he heard the buzz of something airborne nearby. He saw the plane soon after he heard it; small, single-engine, a Cub, he thought, although the engine sounded thin and tinny. It was red with white letters, and as he watched, it climbed, stalled, dipped a wing, dropped into a brief spin, leveled out and gained speed to climb again.

    Jim disapproved. There wasn't enough light at night for acrobatics, not even in Bering in July. There was a pilot who was just sitting up and begging for a crash.

    The Cub banked right and dipped below the tops of another cluster of alder trees nestled into a bend in the road. Jim quickened his step, rounded the trees and saw that he'd been right, the plane was on a short final to the gravel road that looked more like a controlled crash than a landing. It bounced twice, hard, before giving an almost perceptible shrug and settling down on the ground, rolling out to a stop, not five feet from his toes.
    He looked down at the plane. It was a Cub, all right, but the wingspan was only three feet wingtip to wingtip.
    "I'll be damned," he said. It was a model aircraft with a working engine, ailerons, rudder, rolling tires that were miniature tundra tires if he was not mistaken, the whole nine yards. If it were life-sized and it was September, he could have climbed in and headed out in search of caribou. He crouched down to examine it more closely, astonished by the accuracy of the detail.

    Hasty feet thudded up the road, and he looked up to see a girl approaching at a trot, a control box clutched in one fist. Eyes wide, out of breath, she skidded to a halt on the loose gravel ten feet away.

    They stared at each other. "Hello," Jim said finally.

    She said nothing.

    Jim nodded at the Cub. "Nice plane."

    Silence.

    Jim squatted on his haunches, elbows on his knees, hands dangling, and did his best to look harmless. "You build it?" He dusted off his best smile.
    She moved forward a step, pulled