Spoils of the dead

by Dana Stabenow

  She followed the dirt road from Pile Bay over the mountain pass to Williamsport on Cook Inlet, mostly because she had heard stories for years of death-defying transits over that road. She had herself never seen it, so she dropped down until she was about eye level with a pickup that looked way too small to be hauling a fifty-foot fishing boat on a trailer up a track barely wide enough for the wheel base of both vehicles. It made her glad she was traversing the pass by air. Even more so when that track was halfway up a dizzyingly sheer mountainside with nothing between the edge of the road and the abyss and oblivion.

  She climbed back up to cruising altitude and flew on. Over the headphones she heard sporadic communications from various pilots in the area, picking up and dropping off guests at fishing lodges, spotters looking for late schools of silvers, a bunch of hunters en route to harvest their share of the Nelchina caribou herd. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game had increased the hunting season by ten days as the latest estimates had the population of the Nelchina herd at fifty thousand plus, which was about twenty thousand over what the area could sustain. Wy had flown aerial surveys for the ADFG and she had seen up close and personal what happened when herds over-grazed their ranges. Malnutrition and starvation weren’t pretty in any species.

  Iliamna Bay passed beneath, a long stretch of gold on blue. She banked left at North Head and maintained a heading just off shore for the circumference of Iniskin Island, with Iniskin Bay and Oil Bay passing in review. For a few heart-stopping moments all four stratovolcanoes lined up on either side, a stalwart line of ice and granite. Douglas, seven thousand feet; Augustine, forty-one hundred feet, an island volcano, an almost perfect white cone floating in a dark blue sea; Iliamna, ten thousand feet; and Redoubt, also ten thousand feet. Spurr, eleven thousand feet and the fifth in line on the west side of Cook Inlet and nearest to Anchorage, was visible, too, if much less spectacular in appearance after its peak-altering eruption in 1953. They formed the northern thrust of the Aleutian Range, a two-thousand mile arc of mountains beginning at Lake Chakachamna west of Anchorage and ending with the Rat Islands at the tail end of the Aleutians. This was the northernmost arc of the Ring of Fire. These five mountains would be her guideposts to the south and west for the foreseeable future.

  The fact most prominent regarding these mountains—What was the collective noun for volcanoes? An eruption? —was that they were all active and in the habit of sending ash high in the air and hundreds of miles in every direction, rendering a severe hazard to aviation. She eyed Augustine attentively as she approached it but it seemed calm today. On her left Iliamna showed steam from two vents, as did a single vent on the west side of Mt. Redoubt north of it. South of Augustine, Douglas bestrode Cape Douglas, a protrusion of the Katmai National Park. Katmai was where the tourists who could afford it flew in to watch bears and where the Apollo astronauts had trained for survival, although NASA would have had to work awfully hard to put a capsule down that far off course.

  “The shoulders of giants,” she said out loud, and indeed the massifs seemed to be holding up the blue dome of the sky itself.

  She followed the long, wide gravel beaches of the west side of Cook Inlet north, pausing at Silver Salmon Creek to circle around a pair of grizzlies digging for clams in the mud left by the outgoing tide, skirting the inner shore of Chisik Island to fly part way up Tuxedni Bay just so she could say she had stared Redoubt in the face, then doubling back to bank left over Squarehead Cove and Redoubt Point.

  At Harriet Point she banked right and flew out over the vast blue expanse of Cook Inlet, her new home.

  Four

  Monday, September 2, Labor Day

  LIAM WAS A SINGLE MALT SCOTCH MAN BUT on his way out of the brewery he bought a growler of Firebreak Lager to support a fellow local. He stowed it in the cooler behind the driver’s seat of the Silverado and stood for a moment, irresolute. He should go home and finish unpacking. Although he had made the bed, which was the most important thing. It was his sincere hope that the bed would desperately require clean sheets in the morning.

  As if she’d heard him his phone buzzed with an incoming text from Wy, in which she ETA’d him that she was about ninety minutes out, followed by two emojis, a heart and a flame. His heart skipped a beat, because of course it did. Liam Campbell was that greatest of all clichés, a man truly, madly, deeply in love with his wife, and he didn’t care who knew it. What’s more, he was loved just as much in return, and he didn’t care who knew that, either. He could feel his swagger coming on just climbing into the truck and he was positively cocky turning the key. Even if he was laughing at himself just a little bit as he did so. Ninety long minutes, he thought, as the engine idled. How far up the bay had Erik said his dig was?

  A shadow passed between him and the sun and he almost felt rather than heard the susurration of wings. He looked up. It was only an eagle, wing tips feathering the air, white head and tail almost erased against the pale blue of the sky. The likeness to Blue Jay Jefferson was even more pronounced. Not a raven, though, so all was well.

  He put Brad Paisley on the speakers, turned up the volume, and drove back across the causeway that separated the lake and the tidal estuary, where he turned right on the road that led east out of town. Imaginatively named East Bay Road, he noticed. In spite of there being a hundred times the number of road miles and five times the population of Newenham, he had the feeling it wasn’t going to be all that difficult to find his way around Blewestown and environs.

  Near to town, the road was paved with large shoulders, a center turn lane and, if his eyes did not deceive him, an actual bike trail, on both sides no less. About five miles out it intersected with another road that led back around to the airport, named, in another excess of creativity, Airport Road. After that the road devolved into a narrow corridor of mixed residential and business, with the trees crowding in on both sides, especially thicket after thicket of alder and a lot of dead or dying evergreens. The spruce bark beetle was still single-mindedly pursuing its determination to eat every last spruce tree in North America, made manifest here by stand after stand of spruces that had died and turned from deep, dense green to dull, tattered brown. East Bay Road was one lightning strike away from a raging forest fire that could wipe out everything from here to town, and Liam wondered why the dead trees weren’t being cleared. He rounded a corner and saw a crew with a cherry picker taking down one such stand as he passed by, a tall, once-proud tree crashing down in a small cloud of dead needles shaken loose by the impact.

  He watched his odometer and at about twenty miles out, after a deep dive into a ravine carved by a small creek crossed by a very old wooden bridge and a switchbacked climb up the other side, he found a driveway on the right. The street sign had been knocked into the ditch but he could make out the letters. Glacier View. He looked across the Bay, where an enormous glacier, all swirling white and blue and gray and black ridges, curved down between two mountains to preen over its reflection in the still water beneath. Glacier view, indeed.

  The driveway was so steep it almost disappeared in front of him, a single lane dirt road that followed the narrow creek he had crossed. He passed several smaller driveways to the left and right. Just before the driveway ended there was another driveway off to the right. This driveway was in infinitely better condition, wide enough for two cars to pass and maintained to an excellence seen only on the other side of the Alaska-Canada border. It turned after fifteen feet, losing itself in the alders clustered thickly on either side, but there was a large roof with a handsome rock chimney looming up over the foliage.

  Past the driveway the lane became even steeper with ruts that went so deep Liam feared even the Silverado would high center. After two switchbacks thrown in just to slow down the traffic, the dirt road mercifully ended in a small turnaround about a hundred feet off the beach. The beater Erik Berglund had been driving was parked far too close to the edge. A weathered post indicated where there might be a trail down, if one were suicidally inclined. />
  Well. God hates a coward. He parked and got out. He stood for a moment, looking out at the Bay. The blue expanse seemed to stretch out even farther the more he looked at it, though he knew it was only twenty-five miles wide and forty miles long. Distance over water, like sound, was deceiving. The fact that he was law and order for everything he saw that wasn’t muni meant he’d be flying a lot. Joy.

  He walked over to the post stuck in the dirt. Sure enough, it indicated the top of what could only in jest be called a trail. Pushki, that tall, noxious Alaskan weed whose juice could blister the skin right off your body, crowded a steep gravel slide interrupted by needle-sharp black rock outcroppings and ending in a small but murderous ridge of that same rock thrusting out onto the beach itself. For a brief moment Liam debated just how badly he wanted to see Erik’s dig. He sighed and shrugged. He was here, Wy wasn’t due in for another hour. What the hell.

  He inched forward, almost immediately lost whatever traction he started out with, and began to slide. He hit the first outcropping of rock, tripped, barely caught himself before what would have been a truly epic face plant, skittered over the gravel rolling beneath his soles, hit the second outcropping, and flailed his arms trying to regain his balance. Failing, his feet slid out from beneath him and he sat down hard on the trail, which wasn’t any kinder to his jeans than it had been to the soles of his shoes. He might have yelled. He certainly didn’t scream like a little girl. He slid down the rest of the way on his butt, working up enough velocity that he only narrowly avoided impaling himself on a sliver of rock extended invitingly from the ridge that protruded onto the beach.

  He climbed gingerly to his feet. Bones intact, only a few scrapes and bruises. Nothing that Wy couldn’t kiss all better. He hoped no one had been photographing his ignominious descent with a cell phone. Although it would certainly have been quite the clickbait.

  “Hey! Liam!”

  He looked around.

  “Up here!”

  The creek he’d crossed ended in a stream that spread out over the beach in a wide fan. On the trail side time or tide had carved a cave into the rock, leaving a more or less level bit of shelf behind. Erik Berglund’s head poked out from the flap of a white canvas tent. He was grinning. “You believe in making an entrance, don’t you?”

  Liam investigated the seat of his jeans. The fabric might be a little thinner that it had been at the top of the trail, but fortunately denim was tough stuff. “It was a little more exciting than I had anticipated. You ought to post a warning sign.”

  “I could, but what would be the fun in that?” He waved. “Come on up.”

  Liam looked at the steep tumble of rocks, which to his eyes looked freshly spewed from a volcano, and sighed again, but it was nothing compared to the trail and shortly he was standing next to Erik at the door of the tent.

  Three sides were rolled up halfway. The fourth side faced the cave and was rolled up all the way to the top and securely fastened with twine. There were fold-out tables, a folding stool, and various bits of paperwork, including a roughly drawn map, pinned to the canvas just beneath the roof. A foam bed was folded in thirds, topped by a rolled sleeping bag and a small duffel.

  Erik followed his eyes. “Sometimes I bunk down here.”

  Liam, thinking of the access trail, could see why. The tent was big enough for Liam to stand up in, which as a tall man he appreciated.

  “Welcome to my lair,” Erik said with another wave of his hand. “Depending on who you talk to around here, I’m bringing truth and justice back to this part of the world, or I’m figuring out how to end resource extraction in the entire state. Which of course means an end to the world as we know it.”

  “Wow. You must be powerful.”

  Erik laughed. “You and I have no idea.”

  “So, not a dig, but a cave.”

  Erik nodded. “Yeah, I found the cave and explored. There is a natural shelf inside on the right, high up. It looks and feels planed to me, which could have been either deliberate or caused by usage. Either way it supports my thesis. Another thing?” He turned and pointed. “You see the way the rocks on the top of the spur look a little flatter and smoother than normal?”

  Liam followed Erik’s finger. “I guess?”

  “Trust me, it’s there.” Berglund dropped his arm. “This is the only significant spur of rock on this side of the Bay north of the Spit. I think the old folks, the Alaska Natives who made a living out of the Bay before we white folks were born or thought of, used this site as a small harbor to access the interior of the Kenai Peninsula.”

  Liam digested this in silence for a moment. “Why not just use the Spit?”

  “There wasn’t any harbor on it back in the day, and therefore no shelter from the big storms, not if they wanted to leave their boats there while they were trading in the interior. There isn’t much shelter on the Spit now, come to that. Next big quake and whoosh. But here, they would have had the Spit as a barrier between them and the big swells and the high winds.” He turned and faced the cliff and pointed upward, although they couldn’t see anything through the roof of the tent. “I think this trail is a lot older than everyone thinks today. There’s a creek, a small one, that zigs and zags all the way up and over the bluff.”

  He nodded to the left and Liam saw water trickling out of a gap in the cliff. “The driveway follows it down.”

  Erik nodded. “I haven’t walked all of it but what I’ve seen so far suggests a foot trail that follows the creek and climbs all the way up and over the back bluff. From there they could have traveled to portages across Tustumena and Skilak Lakes and on to trade with the tribes in Kenai and Soldotna.”

  Liam scratched his head. “Why not just take their boats around? The Alutiiq were seriously good at long distance rowing. Baranov used them to get around.”

  “Ah, but if they went around they’d miss trading with all the people along the way.”

  Liam shrugged. “It’s a theory.”

  Erik laughed, unoffended. “I’m buying a drone to take pictures from the air. Next summer I’m walking the trail until I lose it or it loses me. There are traditional trails all over Alaska. The Chilkoot and the Iditarod are the most famous but they aren’t the only ones. You know the old Iditarod starts in Seward, right?”

  Seward was on the eastern side of the Peninsula and considerably farther north. “Yes.”

  “I don’t want to theorize ahead of my data, but I’m hoping this trail connected with that one and I’m hoping to find proof of it.”

  “How far back do you think this trail goes?”

  “How far back did the first Alaska Natives get here?”

  “That’s a long time for a trail to last.”

  “Trails don’t just disappear. They get overgrown and flooded out, but they never completely disappear. Look at the Roman roads.”

  Liam looked toward the trail. “Not exactly Roman engineering, there.”

  “Trails don’t just disappear,” Erik said again. “If it’s there, I’ll find it.”

  “What happens if you do?”

  “I used to work for UNESCO. If I can find enough to prove my theory, I can start agitating for them to consider making the trail a World Heritage Site.”

  Liam was impressed and showed it. “You mean like the Grand Canyon?”

  “More like Taos Pueblo or Mesa Verde. Man-made.”

  Liam looked out at the drill rig parked in plain view, and wondered what RPetCo thought about Erik Berglund’s ideas.

  “You ever seen a dig site before?”

  “One.”

  “Really?” Erik looked and sounded surprised. There probably weren’t many people who responded to that question in the affirmative. “Where?”

  “Outside Newenham.”

  “A Yupiq site? I don’t—oh. Des McLynn?”

  Liam nodded. The archeological community in Alaska couldn’t be so large they wouldn’t all know or at least know about each other.

  “What an asshole.”
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br />   “Agreed.”

  “What were you doing there?”

  “Investigating.” Liam waited. This was always the turning point in meeting new people. A lot of cops called those they were sworn to serve and protect “civilians.” He preferred “neighbors” himself, but he’d found that he’d had to prove himself in every community in which he’d served, and that his job lost him a lot of friends from the moment they became aware of his profession.

  “That’s right, Blue Jay called you a trooper.”

  Liam nodded.

  “Wait a minute,” Erik said. “Newenham. You’re that guy. The Storyknife Killer.”

  There were many ways Liam could have answered but he settled on, “Yes.”

  Erik shook his head. “Murder by archeological artifact. That’s not a headline you see every day.” He jerked his head. “You want to see what I’ve got going on here?”

  Liam relaxed. “Why I defied death getting down here. You said at Jeff’s that you thought human habitation went back farther in the Bay than is generally understood.”

  Erik snorted. “Yeah, mostly because archeologists just don’t fucking listen.”

  “Listen to whom?”

  “The people who lived here first, for starters.”

  “Alaska Natives, you mean?”

  “The Sugpiaq locally. Aleuts or Alutiiq they’re better known by, but their own name is Sugpiaq. And then the Russians showed up and of course that’s where all the history books start.” He shook his head. “Littera scripta manet.” He saw Liam’s blank look. “The written word survives. It’s pretty much the only thing that does. Why we get Homer forced down our throats in high school.”

  “I remember,” Liam said, with feeling. “So, you’re saying because the Sugpiaq didn’t have a written language—”

  “Exactly.”

  “So there’s no written record there was a trail but—”

  “Exactly,” Erik said again, beaming.