Nine Days North

At seven in the morning on the last Wednesday in September, Shagawa Lake lay flat and gray under a skin of mist, and the only sound on the whole north shore of Ely was a man swearing quietly at a fuel drum.

Elias found him at the end of a long wooden dock that ran out from a boathouse painted the color of old mustard. A hand-lettered sign on the boathouse said ARNESON AIR SERVICE, and under it, smaller, FLOATPLANE CHARTERS — FLY-IN FISHING — SINCE 1988. At the end of the dock, riding low on two long aluminum floats, sat the plane: a squat, high-winged, round-nosed thing painted yellow and dark green, with a big radial engine in its blunt nose and a canoe lashed upside down along the struts between the float and the belly. It looked like something from an old photograph. It looked, to be honest, like something that should have been in a museum.

"Nineteen fifty-seven," said the man at the fuel drum, without looking round. "De Havilland Beaver. Built in Toronto. She's older than me, near enough, and flies better than I walk." He gave the drum's hand pump another furious crank. "You'll be Lorna's new hire. For closing up the lodge."

"I will."

"Del Arneson." He straightened, and wiped his hand on his coveralls, and held it out. He was sixty or so, lean and weathered, with a gray crewcut and a gray mustache and the pale, crinkled, far-looking eyes of a man who had spent most of his life squinting at weather. His grip was hard and brief. "Lorna says you've done some camping. Down in the state parks, she says."

"Some."

"Well, it's a start." Del looked at Elias with an assessing squint, taking in the boots, the duffel bag, the city haircut, and apparently reserving judgment. "Ashigan Lake Lodge is about seventy air miles north and east of here, the long way round, which is the way I'm supposed to go, on account of the wilderness in between. Hour and a quarter. Lorna's got six cabins, a main lodge, a sauna, forty boats and a dock that all has to come out of the water before freeze-up, and a generator that's older than this plane and meaner. You'll earn your wage." He went back to the pump. "We'll be off by eight if this drum ever gives up its fuel."

The drum stood on the dock beside the float, a fifty-five-gallon steel barrel with a hand pump screwed into its bung and a long hose running up to a filler cap on top of the wing root, where a ladder leaned against the fuselage. Del cranked. Somewhere up in the wing a tank gurgled.

At the landward end of the dock, sitting on a green backpack with her knees drawn up and her hands in the pouch of a gray hooded sweatshirt that said TOWER-SOUDAN AGATES across the front, a girl of about sixteen was watching all this with an expression of patient, private amusement.

"That's Maya," said Del. "Maya Oskey. Rides with me every fall out to her grandmother's place on Ashigan. Rose Oskey's got a cabin on the east shore, outside the wilderness line. Traps it in the winter. I drop Maya off on the way to Lorna's." He cranked. "No charge. Rose feeds me fry bread and tells me I fly too low."

The girl lifted one hand from the sweatshirt pouch in a small wave, and put it back.

"Hi," she said.