The pilot had also brought in a bundle of magazines, Newsweek s and Time s and Smithsonian s and Cosmopolitan s, and Rebecca had been moved nearly to tears. The pilot, a leggy woman in jeans with dark blond hair stuffed carelessly through the back of a Chevron baseball cap, could not quite conceal her sympathy. Rebecca, who had her pride, pulled herself together enough to express her thanks, wished the fishermen luck and helped push the tail of the plane around, yet another skill she had acquired this summer. The Cessna blew dust into her eyes as the engines revved up for takeoff, but she stood where she was, watching as it barely cleared the birch trees at the end of the rudimentary little airstrip with the uphill grade and the surface made of rocks rubbed smooth from a hundred years of tumbling in Nenevok Creek. The engine roared a protest in the thin mountain air as the pilot hauled on the yoke and the plane slipped through the minuscule space between Mounts Pistok and Atshichlut. Rebecca had tears in her eyes from more than the dust.

And now here it was, September 1, a Wednesday. On September 6, Labor Day by the calendar but Christmas, New Years and her birthday all rolled into one for Rebecca, Nushagak Air Taxi was scheduled to fly into the Nenevok Creek airstrip and pick up Mark and Rebecca and fly them back to Newenham, where they would board an Alaska Airlines 737 (until this summer the smallest plane Rebecca had been on). In a little over an hour, they would land in Anchorage. Nina was meeting them, with orders to have in hand at the gate a grande cup of the day from Kaladi Brothers, with half-and-half and a packet of Equal already stirred in. Rebecca could almost taste it, and looked up from the watchband she was beading for her grandmother to the calendar on the wall, as if by doing so she could make the days, the hours, the minutes go faster. Dinner at Villa Nova, she thought, or maybe Simons, or Yamato Ya, or Thai Kitchen. She was so sick of salmon. She was a good cook, but there were only so many ways to prepare fish, and she had tried them all.

Maybe a trip to the Alaska State Fair in Palmer, she thought, examining her palette and selecting a number 11 seed bead in lime green. Rain or shine, the fair was always crowded over the Labor Day weekend, kids standing in line for their last Octopus ride before school started, serious, tight-lipped women examining the crafts building for blue ribbons, cowboys roping calves in the arena, lumbermen rolling logs in the pond, Roscoes Skyline Restaurant selling the best barbecued ribs this side of Texas on the Red Path. But no, Roscoe had forsaken the fair for the Sears Mall, and for that matter, Labor Day was the last day of the fair, wasnt it? She used to know these things. Fine, they could stop at Roscoes at the Sears Mall on the way home. Rebeccas mouth watered at the thought.