Inevitably Chris Storm was drawn into this haphazard project. She found herself repeatedly acting the role of bridesmaid at the wedding of two people she never before had laid eyes on. The pattern of the weddings almost always was the same. Bridie conferred with the scared and inarticulate young bridegroom. He sat in her makeshift office, his young face serious and strained. He had been confronted, stunningly, with the fact that the girl from North Dakota or Michigan or Alabama was coming up to Alaska to live with him forever after, amen. This he had asked her to do, but now, confronted with the reality, his mind rejected fact. Whoever he was, he thought of the other young men like himself—at the Air Base or on the Construction Job or a student at Baranof College—married now, living in a crowded company house or a two-room rental or even a trailer, the girl seemed forever to be doing the washing and wheeling the baby and complaining about the cost of food and looking shapeless with the next baby coming. Gone, he realized in a desperately quiet panic, were the hours when you could lie on your bunk, reading and smoking or just looking up at the ceiling, or sleeping; the nights down on the Strip, close to one of the girls, or listening to Gamboge, that yellow boy entertainer, who sang fit to bust your heart.

“Now,” Bridie would say, and he tried to listen as he sat there at her desk side, “now you want to get her a nice corsage, I’d say one orchid is better than a whole bunch of other flowers, they just love ’em. I’ll order it for you if you want me to.”

“Say, I wish you would, ma’am.”

“Seven dollars at Gresen’s Florists, Matty’ll fix it up for me with ribbon to match, and fern and all, it looks like a million dollars. You got the ring?”

He looked stricken. “Gosh, no! I forgot. I’ll get it now.”

“That’s all right. Wait till she gets here. They love to pick their own wedding ring. Besides, size.”

Chris was sixteen when first she found herself taking part in these somewhat touching festivities. Usually the bride arrived in Alaska unaccompanied, and the bridegroom, himself a comparative newcomer, had no backlog of young feminine relatives or friends sturdy enough to act as attendant on the flustered girl. Certainly his local girls were more likely to be resentful toward the occasion, rather than helpful.

“Snort McHugh told me you’re going to be married.”

“Uh, yeah.”

“When?”

“Well, she’s coming on the noon plane Tuesday, we’re planning for that afternoon, or Wednesday morning if I can find a place for her to stay Tuesday night.”

“That’s lovely. Specially as you never even told me you were engaged.”

“We weren’t—that is, exactly. I didn’t think she’d ever make it here. So far, and all. And different. And her folks aren’t crazy about the idea. She just took off and came. Or will.”