A little more than three hundred miles away in the vicinity of Anchorage, the sky was clear and electric blue. Jack Whittaker soared across it, gloriously alone and happy to be so. His plane, a sturdy little Piper Super Cub, wheeled through the air like a strange albatross. With the efficiency of a predator it caught the wind and dived through the air, no movement without purpose, no energy wasted. Jack was the soul within the Super Cub's frame, singing his joy at the limitless freedom of flight. There was no sky bluer than at the top of the world. It shone, luminous as no gem could ever be and no paint or photograph could ever replicate. It was a living, unreal color that sang like lightning through Jack's soul. He lived to be a part of it.

It was just a routine flight, for all that any flight at all pleased Jack. He took this route every other Thursday delivering mail and packages to the tiny settlements that ringed the furthest fringe of Anchorage's awareness. But Jack relished any chance to be in the air, routine as it might be. There was only one place in this world he felt truly free, and it was here, as far apart from the rolling tundra and mountains below as he could get without joining the space program.

He was nearing his destination and already coasting. He'd shorted himself on fuel in order to meet his weight limit. His plane was heavily modified and stripped down to bare bones for carrying capacity, but any bush pilot could tell you that was never enough. Jack made up the difference by carrying less fuel than he actually needed to make the trip and just coasting for the tail end. It was dangerous, of course. If he needed to make course adjustments or miscalculated anything he was dead. But that was every day and every decision out here. It was part of the thrill and part of living. You did whatever you had to keep flying.

Jack landed in Tahltan with an empty tank, putting down in a rough gravel clearing that was the closest the tiny community had to an airstrip. The gravel strip was surrounded by a good buffer of clear ground, currently thickly blanketed in deep snow and bordered on two sides by tall stands of black spruce. The evergreens, dark limbed and shaggy like shambling green monsters, stood sentinel on the edge of the small town's single road, sheltering it and the air strip from the worst of the icy wind. In their shadow cowered a line of older wooden buildings and newer corrugated metal ones that constituted downtown Tahltan. About a hundred residences were scattered around it for the next few miles, most within easy walking distance. A few far flung for those who preferred their privacy, far from the roads and accessible only by sled or snowmobile. What looked like half the town was waiting to help him unload, a motley assortment of heavily bundled men and women, a few teens and children. His bi-weekly visits were the most exciting thing that happened in the tiny settlement. The population was less than two hundred families, mostly Alaskan native, subsistence fishing and hunting on the edge of the bush. What they couldn't get for themselves Jack brought them.

“That was a close one, Jack!”

Howard Nagley, the closest thing Tahltan had to a leader, met Jack as he was climbing out of the cockpit, the wind pulling at his short dark hair. Jack turned the collar of his gray coat up against it, already habitually reaching for a cigarette, forgetting once again that he'd quit a few months before. He fished a package of toothpicks out instead. Howard was a short, dark skinned man of near sixty, his face as weathered and craggy as a mountainside. At the rear of the plane men were already lifting down packages, distributing things, and talking loudly and cheerfully about what they'd ordered.

“You came down awfully fast there,” Howard said. “You should be more careful. It wouldn't just be you in trouble if you end up in pieces on some mountainside.”

“You know me,” Jack said with a cavalier grin, setting a toothpick between his lips to sooth the craving for a cigarette that was less a need for nicotine than a nervous habit at this point. “I live in the moment.”

“Lucky you,” Howard laughed a little, looking down at the clipboard in his hand. “I have to live two weeks in the future. I have the list for the next delivery.”

Jack accepted the clipboard and scanned it with interest, chewing on the end of the toothpick. Most of the list was the standard perishables and staples, plus a few personal indulgences for the people.

“Is that an armchair?” Jack said with a frown, pointing at an item hidden among the normal food order near the bottom.

“One of those with the flip-up foot rest,” Howard confirmed a little bashfully. “Frank's birthday is coming up and we thought we'd get him a surprise.”

“You're gonna have to get that by train,” Jack said, shaking his head and handing the clipboard back. “It's too much weight.”

“What if we cut some of the sundries?” Howard insisted as Jack slipped past him and started walking toward the Roadhouse, the only restaurant in town. “I'm sure no one would mind holding off to get Frank his birthday present in time.”

“You know I would do it if I could,” Jack told him with a shrug. “It's just not possible. I'm already flying with half the fuel I should be just to get here with your usual order. I'm not made for flying furniture.”

“Ah, damn,” Howard said with a sigh of resignation. “Well, I figured it was worth a try. I guess we'll give him the receipt for the chair and the train will deliver it eventually.”

Jack paused in front of the Roadhouse door, chewing on his toothpick.

“Listen,” he said. “I can't do it. But Otis back at base has a Cessna that could maybe manage it. I'll talk to him about making a special run out here. Frank's birthday is on the sixteenth, right?”

“Right.” Howard smiled broadly, delighted. “You're a damn saint, Jack Whittaker.”

“Sure I am,” Jack said with a chuckle, and started to open the Roadhouse door.

“Oh, one more thing!” Howard said reaching into his coat and pulling out an aluminum tin of the sort sold around the holidays full of flavorless shortbread cookies. A Rockwellian Christmas scene was painted on the raised metal of the lid, all red and green and gold, laughing children and New England houses wreathed in lights and garlands. Jack took it with a puzzled expression.

“It's fudge,” Howard explained. “Marna made it. Asked me to give it to you. It's rocky road. She said you'd like that.”

Jack felt his heart sink as he looked down at the mass produced cheerfulness of the scene on the tin lid. Father building a snowman, kids throwing snowballs, carolers coming down the street. Mother in the golden lit doorway, calling them in to dinner.

“She shouldn't have,” he said, and meant it, trying to hand the tin back. Howard refused it, holding his hands up, palms out, like he was innocent of the grim feelings the gaily colored tin carried with it.

“She wanted you to have it,” Howard insisted. “She's grateful.”

“If she were grateful she'd stop this,” Jack pointed out. “She's just making sure I don't forget.”

“If you'd just talk to her—” Howard huffed in irritation. “You brought her son home to her!”

“Not soon enough,” Jack muttered, and tucked the tin into his bag. “I'll take it, all right? Tell her I took it.”

“I will,” Howard sighed. “Everything will be unpacked and we'll have your plane refueled within an hour.”

“Take your time,” Jack said with a nod. “I'm getting lunch. And Howard?”

Howard had been turning away, looking troubled.

“Thank you.”

Howard smiled a little and waved goodbye as he trudged off through the snow. Jack slipped into the warm shelter of the Roadhouse. The largest building in town and one of the oldest, it was still not much to write home about. The tables were made of the same wood as the walls, all culled from the forests that still stood around the town. The lights, yellow tinged sulfuric, shadowed more than they illuminated. It could be a cheerful place when full. But when mostly empty, as now, forlorn classic country playing distant and tinny from the exposed beams of the vaulted ceilings, it was a morose little dive made for drinking alone.

Jack sat down at his usual booth, the table varnished to a shine from years of use, and ordered himself a stout beer to go with his sandwich. The face of Marna Cunningham and her son haunted him, and the tin of fudge felt like a ton of bricks weighing his bag down. He chewed absently on the toothpick and contemplated the surface of the table, smooth as a worry-stone.

“You sure you want this before you go up again?”

The waitress, also the barkeep, the owner and principle chef, slid his sandwich and his beer onto the table. She was a handsome woman, strong jawed and sturdy, named Jolene. There was nothing delicate about Jolene, but neither was she unpleasant to look at. Southern sensibilities would have wanted her thinner and frailer and less bold, would have stripped the visible muscle from her arms and back and put her in a flowered dress to match her red hair. Jack would have been heartbroken to see her so reduced. Jolene was a woman who could conquer giants and crush skulls between her thighs.

“You ever met a bush pilot who flies sober?” Jack asked over the rim of his glass.

“Just seems like an unnecessary risk to me,” she said with a shrug. “Flying around here is dangerous enough without being drunk behind the wheel.”

“Flying around here is too dangerous to do without it,” Jack claimed. When Jolene looked unconvinced he insisted. “It helps.”

“You brought me what I asked for?” Jolene asked, changing the subject.

“They're unpacking the new inventory for the store now.”

“Not that.”

He finished a long drink of his beer first, teasing her, then reached into his bag and pulled out a long, narrow package for her.

“Rush delivered,” he said. “Don't want to think about how much you paid for that.”

Jolene took the package eagerly, tearing off the brown paper wrapping from the brightly colored box below as she fell into the seat across from him.

“It was worth it,” she declared and, opening the box, lifted out a perfect, pale pink macaroon. She sighed when she saw it, and took her time with the first bite, relishing it.

“Always thought you were too tough for that kind of thing,” Jack commented.

“Being tough and liking nice things ain't mutually exclusive,” Jolene declared, hugging the box protectively to her chest. “But thank you, Jack. You're a saint.”

“So they tell me,” Jack replied, focused on his sandwich.

“Did you hear the news out of Anchorage?” Jolene asked, nibbling on another of her macaroons.

“When I bother to listen,” Jack said, “I usually hear it before you.”

“A rescue mission went badly wrong apparently,” Jolene persisted. “Some idiot tried to ski Mount St. Elias again, and then the rescue plane got tossed. Anyone you know?”

Jack chewed long and ponderously before answering.

“Nope.”

“I figured you might have the latest on it,” Jolene pushed harder. “That being your specialty and all.”

“Used to be,” Jack corrected her quickly. “I fly cargo now.”

“But still,” Jolene insisted. “You must have known the pilot.”

“Not all bush pilots know each other, Jolene,” Jack told her. “And I doubt a rescue headed for Elias would hire a pilot from my company. We're too far out.”

Jolene huffed and leaned back against the fake leather cushion of the booth.

“You know there's already a critical shortage of gossip in this part of the world,” she said. “Least you could do is try to keep your ear to the ground for us.”

“I'd rather keep my ear far off the ground, thank you,” Jack replied. “If I wanted to be constantly abreast of other people's business I wouldn't have moved to the most sparsely populated state in the union.”

“You know, you act real mysterious,” Jolene said. “But I bet deep down you're actually a real bore, you know that?”

“You got me,” Jack said, briefly raising his hands in surrender before returning to his sandwich.

Jolene was quiet for a moment, contemplating her macaroons.

“So when are you going to take me to dinner?” she asked casually. “It's been a couple years already. I'd say it's about time.”

“Can't do it,” Jack replied calmly. “Problem is I'm too damn shy.”

“Bullshit you are,” Jolene snorted.

“You're very intimidating, Jolene.”

“A grizzly with a shotgun couldn't intimidate you.”

“You got me again,” Jack confessed with dry sarcasm. “I'm working my way through every other woman in Alaska first.”

Jolene rolled her eyes.

“You know, you could take this just a little more seriously.”

“Give me one of those fancy cookies and I'll consider it.”

Jolene snatched her macaroons away from his reaching fingers. She stood with a huff, straightening her apron.

“You ever get your head on straight, Jack Whittaker,” she said. “You know where to find me.”

She swept away, leaving Jack alone to contemplate the terrible irony of that statement.

Once he finished eating he headed back out to his plane, which had been unloaded and refueled as promised. He checked over the whole thing himself once, tightening straps on the new cargo and ensuring nothing had been damaged in the landing. Then he took off. A few of the people in town came to wave goodbye and he waved back as he took off. He had a full tank now and a much lighter load. Just a few crates of fish, elk hide, and seal skin, things the people of Tahltan wanted sold in Anchorage. It would be a quick, easy flight back to base. Just him and the sky, and the cheerful aluminum tin in his bag, reminding him of his sins.