Yes, he said, though Flavian was displeased, wanted him to keep painting canvases that could be sold and, please, Jamie, please, don’t burn any more, at least not without showing them to Flavian first.
But Jamie had liked the idea of painting something rooted to one place, something solid. He closed up his mountain cabin, shaved his beard, returned to his home country. After he’d finished the mural in Bellingham, the WPA had sent him to Orcas Island to paint a mural in a post office. Now, in the first weeks of 1939, he is on a train, going to meet Marian in Vancouver. Their reunion is long overdue, but she didn’t want to cross back into the United States proper. Not yet. He wears a black overcoat and a gray worsted suit, finds himself eager to revisit the city he’d fled in a panic.
Marian had fit two auxiliary fuel tanks into her plane’s cargo hold and taken three days to fly from Valdez, with four stops. She’d kept mostly to the continent’s shoreline, snowy peaks to her left. She felt mostly the simultaneous focus and boredom of an uneventful flight, though she’d had to wait out some weather and, a few times, under the steady grind of her engine, she’d thought she heard the phantom skipping and coughing of Barclay’s Stearman.
When she’d arrived at the hotel, the man at reception had given her clothes a long, censorious looking-over, but she’d lifted her chin and held out her money （grease under her fingernails）。 She’d arranged with Jamie that he would choose a hotel but she’d pay for their rooms. She’d insisted. He has little money, and she’s doing all right. In the hotel she’d taken a bath and tried to tidy herself, but there was only so much that could be done, only so much she was willing to do. Even if she’d wanted to wear a dress, she no longer owns one. She has a lipstick but no other makeup. Her face is densely freckled, her hair chopped and mangled as always. She’d put on a clean shirt and trousers, wiped her boots with a hotel towel, smoothed her hair, pinched her cheeks. She wants Jamie to look at her and see a seasoned bush pilot, to see, somehow, six years of survival in rough country and to be impressed by the fight of it but also to believe her competence is so total that every challenge has been met with ease and aplomb. So she’d armored herself in boots and trousers and shearling jacket but with some regret, as she also wants him to think his sister beautiful. She hopes she won’t seem too strange.
He is standing near the fireplace in the lobby, his hands in his pockets, and he turns toward the stairs as she walks down. He doesn’t seem startled, only happy. She is the one who’s surprised. He is a grown man, though of course he is. Like her, he is still very blond and freckled, but his hair is expertly cut and stylishly oiled. Even in the small motion of turning to greet her, he’d given off a new self-contained ease. “Are you always so dapper?” she asks as he hugs her, patting her bearishly on the back.
“Only when I want to impress someone.” He holds her at arm’s length. “You’re still not interested in blending in.”
“Will I embarrass you?”
He offers his arm. “Never.”
They walk to dinner, their long strides matching. They are a little stilted with each other at first, uncertain how best to carve into the years that have passed. They talk about Wallace, about the house and what they ought to do with it. Jamie, they eventually agree, will go to Missoula to sell it, find a place to store what should be kept （Addison’s books and souvenirs, Wallace’s paintings） and sell the rest. Old Fiddler has died, but he’ll find homes for the dogs still around. Neither imagines ever living in Missoula again. Jamie insists war will indeed come, gets a righteous pleasure from predicting catastrophe even though, in his heart, he can’t quite believe people would be so foolish. Even someone like Hitler—how can he want another war? How can anyone want it? Jamie is puzzled by the fundamental concept, the idea that people must kill one another in staggering numbers until someone somewhere somehow decides they should stop.
Marian has no answers. Her world is so uncrowded she can’t fathom enough people getting together to have a war. The idea of battle seems puny and futile against the inhuman enormity of the north.
They eat at a chop suey place Jamie knows, a dim, narrow room with bottle-green booths and hanging lamps. The waitress brings beer and cups of egg soup, but Jamie leaves his spoon in the saucer. He says, “Have you heard about Barclay?”
Marian looks up. “Has he been released?”
“He was.” Jamie hesitates. “But there’s something else.” He pauses again, clears his throat, says, “Barclay is dead.”