Gravity

Late in the afternoon Simon took a shower and then sat in the musty and ragged easy chair by a window watching the sun sink behind the town's buildings, most of them less tall than his four-story wood-frame hotel. Beyond was the bay and its scattering of small islands, jutting rocks bristling with a few stunted conifers. He was not hungry and was waiting for a man named Parker to call. The flight from Anchorage in a small charter plane with two other passengers and a shipment of packages had been bumpy, and he had nearly been airsick. Some gulls flew out toward an island, pumping hard as if they had to get there before light failed. He understood now why his cousin Damon had written that he only came to this town, Unalakleet, to sleep and eat between jobs that let him do what he liked best—flying into the wilderness, landing in places where few people, if any, had ever been, dealing with rough weather or eccentric clients, rather than this hard-bitten town where the attempt to maintain a community only made the bleak landscape more apparent. "No matter how stark and raw the wilderness, it has no pretensions other than to be exactly what it is—full of its own life even if inhospitable to man," he had written. Not at all Simon's world, but he had rarely felt that he had much in common with his cousin.

Some thick pink-edged clouds rising from the horizon caught the last glimmer of sunlight. A dark lid was closing over the sky. He had not bothered to unpack his suitcase, did not want to do more than extract bare necessities. He hoped to leave as soon as possible and had not wanted to come at all. This was his aunt's doing. After a few minutes with her and Uncle Maury in the living room of their condominium in Boston, she had taken him to the kitchen.

"I don't think your uncle understands much anymore, but I don't want to talk in front of him in case he does. You've got to go, Simon. I have to know."

Simon could see through the door to the living room. Maury lay inert on the recliner, tubes from his nose running across his chest to the oxygen tank beside him. He hardly seemed to breathe.

"You can see for yourself, Simon. He couldn't go, and I have to be with him all the time. If that's Damon's plane they think they found, and he's in it, I need to know, but not his father. If you call to tell us, don't say anything to him over the phone. Tell me. They think the next stroke will take him, and it could come anytime. Better he goes without knowing."

Simon wanted to find any possible excuse, but he had none. These were the people who had provided a home for him after his own parents died, helped him through college, welcomed him whenever he chose to return. But, even though Maury was his mother's brother, neither could explain how they had been born into the same family, and that sibling strangeness had become even more apparent to Simon when he moved in with his aunt, uncle, and their son, Damon. In Simon's childhood, Damon, five years older, was the exemplary family member—track star, valedictorian, graduating cum laude, and admitted to Stanford. Simon's father had often said, "Keep your eye on Cousin Damon. He'll show you the way." Simon had taken that advice seriously, and one afternoon when he and his parents were visiting Damon's home, Simon snuck into his cousin's room and tried on his track shoes. He had been caught standing in front of the mirror with one hand on his hip as Damon often posed after a race, talking out of the corner of his mouth in a voice that took on his cousin's deep and chiseled syllables. He turned to see the adults laughing quietly. But Damon stepped into...