We came down through the clouds over the Chugach Mountains, and the whole world turned white and then blue. I had never seen mountains like that, jagged and enormous, hung with snow in the middle of September. My window seat gave me a view of a long gray inlet, a city on a plain, and a ribbon of road. I held my purse with both hands. In the other hand, the boarding pass of Marvin from March, folded small. The name under his on the pass was Nathan Ahtna.
In the terminal, I stood in the shop that sold saltwater taffy and stared at the box. Then I paid for it, for no reason, and walked out to the curb. A tall young man was leaning against a gray pickup truck, in a Carhartt jacket, with black hair and a quiet face. He looked about nineteen. When he saw me, he straightened up like a soldier. I had called the number on the boarding pass from the plane, a woman had answered, and she had said only, “Mrs. Dahl. Nathan will meet you at baggage.” He walked toward me slowly. His hands were open at his sides.
“Mrs. Dahl,” he said. His voice was gentle. “I am Nathan. Marvin told me about you for eleven years. He said you were the finest cook in Nebraska.” I stared at him. I did not know if I wished to slap him or hug him. He took off his cap. “I would like to explain, if you let me. My mother is at the house. She made a salmon dinner. She said if you would not come to dinner, I should drive you to your hotel and let you be.” I said I would see the house.
The house was a small blue one at the edge of Anchorage, near a creek, with a yard full of wind chimes. His mother stood on the porch in a wool sweater, a woman of fifty or so, with a long gray braid and deep, tired eyes. Her name was Dena Ahtna. She did not smile. She came down the steps and took both my hands in hers and said, “I have wanted to meet you for eleven years. I have been afraid of it for eleven years.” Then she led me in.
A debt of the heart can take eleven years of monthly flights to pay, and the man who pays it may never be able to say it aloud.
In 2014, Dena told me over the table, her husband Joe worked for a pipeline contractor, doing weld inspections in the field. Marvin was on the same job, selling pumps. On a cold morning in March, a fitting failed. A line burst, and Marvin was knocked into a trench. Joe Ahtna, who was forty years old, jumped in after him, pushed Marvin up the bank, and was struck by the second surge. Joe died on the way to the hospital. Marvin had a broken leg and a concussion. The company called it an unavoidable accident and paid a small settlement. Dena received nothing.
Marvin came to the funeral. He sat at the back of the church in a borrowed jacket and did not say a word. Then he came to the house, on a snowy night, with a check for ten thousand dollars that was most of what he had saved. Dena sent him away. She told him she did not want his money. But she told him he could come back and see Nathan, who was eight years old and had not spoken since the funeral. Marvin returned the next month. And the next. He took Nathan fishing. He took him to school meetings. He taught him to read a blueprint. He did it for eleven years.
I thought of the saltwater taffy. I thought of the two nights a month in Denver, which were really two nights in Anchorage, and the lie. I asked why he never told me. Dena folded her hands. “He told me he would,” she said. “He told me once a year. But he was ashamed, Colleen. He thought you would say he was a fool. He did not want you to look at him and see a man who failed to save a friend. He thought you would see only the lie.”
I looked at Nathan. He was sitting on the couch with his elbows on his knees. He had the way of Marvin of rubbing one thumb across the other. He said quietly, “I am studying civil engineering at the University of Alaska. Marvin paid half my tuition and refused to let me say thanks. He said it was not charity. He said it was a promise to my dad.” He reached under the couch and took out a shoebox of photographs. In every one, Marvin was smiling.
I sat there in that little blue house with a plate of salmon in front of me, and a young man I had never met calling my husband by his name. I should have been angry. Part of me was. But when I looked at the face of the boy, I could see exactly what Marvin had seen, a child who needed someone. I thought of all the Octobers we had spent in the dialysis center, when he never complained, and I realized he had been paying a different kind of bill the whole time.
I stayed three days. We scattered some of the ashes of Marvin at the mouth of the creek, the three of us, in a cold rain, with the wind chimes ringing. Nathan has visited Omaha twice since, and my daughters have come to love him. Every September, I fly to Anchorage on the same flight, in the window seat, with a box of saltwater taffy for Dena. Nathan meets me at baggage. He still stands up straight like a soldier. And he still calls me, with great care, Mrs. Dahl, until I tell him to call me Colleen.
