A Deeper Sleep
Page 8
Dan stabbed a green portion north-northwest of Niniltna with an accusatory forefinger. “They rented a goddamn bulldozer from that well-known tree hugger, Mac Devlin—who has been laughing it up all over the goddamn Park ever since—and cleared four miles’—four fucking miles!—worth of road through a previously pristine section of a federally created, publicly funded national park. In the process they knocked down a section of spruce trees wasn’t one of which was less than a hundred years old and crossed Salmon Creek a dozen times or more. I don’t have to remind you that Salmon Creek is one of the main tributaries of that area, do I? Or that it’s prime spawning ground for Kanuyaq River reds?”
“No,” Kate said.
“Or that it’s so healthy, the beaver population has finally come back enough that it’s harvestable?” He flung himself into his chair, which rolled backward to crash into the wall. “I got notice of the sale, Kate, and I did my by-God duty, I hired a surveyor—at public expense—to run tape and set markers to show the new owners exactly and precisely where the boundaries of their land were. And they go and start building their goddamn house right on the western property line! They’ve got forty fucking acres, for crissake! They don’t need to be hanging the ass end of their fucking cabin into the Park!”
He held up one hand and began to tick items off on his fingers. “I wrote to them when they first got here, and they refused any mail with a Park Service return address on it.” Tick. “They could have filed a request for legal access with the service. They didn’t bother, they just Catted right on through.” Tick. “They’ve got an airstrip they won’t use because none of them’s a pilot and they say George is too expensive.” Tick.
He clenched his hands and glared at Kate. “I won’t be calmed down here, Kate.”
“Okay,” Kate said.
“I won’t be soothed, placated, or mollified.”
“Understood.”
“I want to bust heads, is what I want to do, but I won’t, because the federal government pays me not to.”
“Good.”
“But I’m pissed off and I see no reason not to be!”
“Me, either,” she said devoutly.
“After they got done with their road, they started blading trails for their goddamn four-wheelers and their fucking snow machines! Jesus! There’s such a thing as the public interest, Kate!”
“You betcha.”
“They don’t own the Park, we all do!”
“Yes indeedy.”
“Supposing I took a Cat into Volcanoes National Park on the Big Island and started plowing up lava right, left, and center for the foundation of my new six-room ocean-view house?”
“Madame Pele would be seriously pissed.”
“How about you and me, we take a rig out to Old Faithful and start drilling pipe to tap some of that geothermal energy just going to waste?”
“Hell of an idea.”
Mutt wandered in, a length of pepperoni hanging out of her mouth, took in the situation, and wandered back out again.
“Or I’ll tell you what, my grandmother’s got a house on the downslope of the western side of Shenandoah. How about I push in a little right of way for her so she can hike up to the Appalachian Trail whenever she wants? Be good for her, get her heart started in the morning, and hey, who’s going to complain about a little old lady getting her exercise?”
“Hardly anyone,” Kate said, and checked the clock.
“The public interest does not suffer at the hands of private convenience, Kate!”
“It shouldn’t,” Kate said. “Dan?”
“What?”
“I’ve got a court order evicting the Smiths from their property, until such time as it is determined that they have clear title to it.”
He stared at her, uncomprehending, but at least she had stemmed the tide. “What?”
Patiently, she repeated herself.
Halfway through, he interrupted her. “They won’t
go.”
“Dan—”
“They won’t go, Kate,” he said, his voice rising again. “Short of bringing in Smythe the Smoother Mover and a SWAT team, you’re not going to get them to comply with a court order.”
Kate looked at him. He stared back at her.
Mutt, attracted by the lowering of the decibel level, reappeared and looked at them hopefully, her tail sweeping the air in expectant arcs.
“Okay, fine.” Dan reached for his jacket. “This I want to see for myself.”
Dan rode with Kate, maintaining a righteously I- warned- you-and-you-refused-to-listen-upon-your-own-head-be-it attitude from Step to town. From Niniltna proper, it was a very few miles farther, past abandoned cabins with peeling log walls, asphalt roofs missing shingles and tar paper beginning to molt, doors hanging crookedly from the slash of grizzly claws. “These are on Park land, right?” Kate said.
Dan gave a curt nod.
“You ought to clean them up.”
He glared at her. “We would have burned them down if the owners hadn’t tied up the Park Service in court with the same litigation the Smiths are using to gum up the works right now.”
As they passed the turnoff to Mac Devlin’s Nabesna Mines, he actually growled out loud. Kate maintained a prudent silence. Mutt licked Dan’s cheek. “Knock it off, Mutt,” Dan said, giving her an irritable shove.
Mutt, unaccustomed to and offended by this kind of cavalier treatment, turned her back on him, not an easy thing to do even in the large cab of Kate’s pickup.
Moments passed. “Oh hell,” Dan said. “I’m sorry, Mutt.”
She forgave him instantly, of course. Kate noticed that no such apology was forthcoming to herself.
At Dan’s direction, Kate turned onto a trail not hardly wide enough for the pickup. Spruce limbs swept the cab clean of snow, and alder branches scraped at the windows. “There,” Dan said, pointing.
Kate could hardly have missed it: a gaping wound in the trees exactly the width of the blade of a D-6 Caterpillar tractor. The drop-off from the track they were on to the beginning of the Cat trail was precipitous. The pickup bottomed out, and for a moment Kate was worried they were high-centered, but they crept forward. She had to yank on the wheel to avoid getting tangled up in the exposed roots of a toppled spruce. They lurched over a section of creek that was more mud than ice—Dan growled again—and then she swerved to avoid a bull moose quietly snacking on a diamond willow. He flicked one ear as they missed his rump by inches.
“Looks good, doesn’t he,” Kate said, who was never able to look at a moose without imagining it butchered and wrapped and stored in her cache. Or nowadays, her freezer. My freezer, she thought, my freezer, my freezer, my freezer, and then another downed spruce leapt out of the surrounding forest and she focused her attention on her driving.
It took an hour to drive the four miles, bumping over frost heaves and rudimentary creek crossings and averting collisions with three more moose who appeared to think the Smiths had cleared this path specifically to better their access to browse, and Kate was thinking that a mile every fifteen minutes was pretty good time. They emerged at last into a clearing, half natural and half Cat-made. The trail had risen steadily over the past half hour, and the clearing sat on a balding knoll with a spectacular view of the high, wide gravel moraine of the Suulutaq Glacier and the eastern horizon, where the Quilaks loitered with intent.
The sun played hide-and-seek behind large clumps of cumulus clouds, and a soft breeze kissed their cheeks as they got out of the pickup and walked forward to greet the group of people assembling on a ground-level deck that wrapped around the house on three sides. The deck looked comparatively finished next to the skeleton of the square cabin going up behind it. The canvas stretched over the frame was weighted down with ropes tied off to rocks. The foundation of the cabin looked solid and substantial, and all four walls were four logs up. The logs looked freshly felled and peeled. Kate heard Dan’s teeth grinding together, and refrained from expressing any admiration of the
unquestionable craftsmanship on display. They might be wearing rose-colored glasses, but the Smiths could see through them well enough to build, and build well. With or without power tools.
“Ranger O’Brien,” the eldest man said in a voice that could lead cavalry charges.
Dan inclined his head and said stiffly, “Mr. Smith.”
“Call me Father. Everyone does.” He looked at Kate. “And who might this be?”
“This is Kate Shugak, Mr. Smith. Kate, Mr. Smith.”
Kate’s hand disappeared into an enormous sinewy fist and she was bowed over with a grace that would befit the court of Queen Elizabeth II. “How do you do, Kate. Do you live in the Park? A neighbor, perhaps?”
“I live in the Park, yes. I have a homestead about thirty-five miles away, as the crow flies.”
He smiled benignly. “In the Park that’s practically next door. Come, meet my family.”
Father Smith was tall and burly, with a full beard and hair to match. Both reached past his waist in streams of pure and abundant white. His eyes were a bright, vivid blue. He wore jeans, a plaid shirt, red suspenders, and Sorels, topped by a leather fedora that looked halfway between an Australian bush hat and something Hoss Cartwright would wear. He had the tip of a peacock feather stuck in the hatband. Mother Smith was shorter and lacked the beard but was in every other way similar.
The children, boys and girls, looked like clones of their parents. They were brought forward to be introduced in order, alphabetical and as near as Kate could tell chronological, as Abigail, Benjamin, Chloe, David, Ezra, Felix, Gabriel, Hannah, Imrah, Janoah, Keren, Lod, Moses, Nathan, Obadiah, Phebe, and Quartus. Abigail looked to be in her early twenties, Quartus about kindergarten age, and Mother Smith not nearly so tired as she ought to be.
A movement caught the corner of her eye, and she turned her head to see what it was. Dan noticed her sudden stillness immediately. “Kate?” He followed her gaze to the man standing in the doorway of the framed-in cabin. “Oh. Oh holy shit.” This last was said beneath his breath but earned a reproving glance from Father Smith nonetheless.
Kate moved forward. The crowd of milling children parted instinctively, something in the carriage of her head and shoulders parting them the way Moses had the Red Sea.
Louis Deem’s smile was as lazy and charming as ever. “Kate.” The gold incisor glinted as his lips pulled back.
Kate’s voice cracked like a whip. “What are you doing here?”
The eldest girl—Allison? No, Abigail—Abigail came up to stand next to Louis, and before Kate’s disbelieving and appalled eyes he draped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her next to him. Abigail, a slender brunette with melting brown eyes and creamy, translucent skin, looked up at him adoringly, and in reward he dropped a light kiss on her nose. “You’ve met my fiancee.”
“Fiancee?” Kate tried to say, but the word came out in a high squeak.
Louis dropped his voice to a confidential murmur pitched to be heard all over the clearing. “It wouldn’t have worked with us, Kate.”
Kate gaped at him.
“I’m sorry,” he said soberly, “but Abigail has shown me the way to the Lord. I’m home with her in a way that I never could have been with you.”
He actually reached out and patted her shoulder, and she was so stunned, she actually let him. “You’ll find someone else, Kate.” He smiled down at Abigail. “You’ll see.”
Mutt suffered no such confusion and snapped at Louis’s hand. He snatched it back and Kate, coming back to her senses, was pleased to hear a muttered oath, quickly stifled.
“That dog is dangerous,” Abigail said in some alarm, and drew Louis back a step.
He pulled her against him. “It’s all right.” He smiled again at Kate, having regained his mask. “She didn’t lay a glove on me.”
Dan came trotting up behind Kate. She felt a hand grasp her arm, a voice say, “Kate, come on.”
She shook her elbow free. “Do you know who this is?” she said to Abigail. “He eats little girls like you for breakfast. Also lunch and dinner. You don’t want to marry this man.” She wheeled and looked at Father Smith. “You do not want your daughter marrying this man.” She heard her voice rising and could do nothing to stop it. “You do not want this man marrying into your family.”
The family Smith was standing in a semicircle, watching, the children wide-eyed, Mother Smith serene, Father Smith avuncular. Two of the younger girls, Chloe and Hannah—or was it Phebe?—hunched their shoulders, drew together, and held tightly to each other’s hands, fixing Kate with enormous eyes.
“Now, now,” Father Smith said soothingly, “we know all about that business with that unfortunate young woman, but Louis was acquitted of any wrongdoing. He has been very frank about the mistakes he has made, but he has truly repented, and who are we to condemn what the law and the Lord have not? Louis wants to get on with his life, and he has chosen to begin again with Abigail.” He hesitated, and said, “And forgive me, but. .. there seems to be some self-interest in your warnings toward my daughter, Kate. Louis is right, you know. I understand your disappointment, but there will be someone else for you.”
“There has been,” Kate said, “several times, and trust me, none of them was named Louis Deem.”
But Louis had in a few choice words effectively destroyed any credibility Kate might have had with the Smiths. She looked at Abigail’s mother. “Mrs. Smith? Surely you cannot accept this man into your family after everything he has done? I know you’re new to the Park, but ask anyone, they’ll tell you. This is not a man. This is a monster.”
Abigail jerked beneath a suddenly tightened grip.
“It’s Mother Smith,” the woman said gently, and even went so far as to wag an admonitory finger. “Judge not, lest ye be judged.”
“Judge me however the hell you want, feel free,” Kate said. “Just know that if your daughter marries Louis Deem, you might as well start digging her grave. Louis’s probably getting tired of digging them himself, seeing as how he’s up to three now.”
Louis’s smile looked like it was taking a little more effort. “When he starts hitting you,” Kate told Abigail, “and he will, leave him. He lands the first blow, you walk out the door.” Kate looked back at Louis. “Because he won’t stop with hitting. He never does.”
She looked around at the circle of faces and couldn’t bear to stay there another minute. She turned.
“Uh, Kate,” Dan said, shifting from foot to foot. Like any other Park rat, he knew the long and bloody history of Louis Deem, but while Kate’s priorities were all about the people, his were all about the land.
“What?” she said, biting off the word.
He jerked his head at Father Smith. “Aren’t you going to serve him with the, you know, the thing?”
She stared at him, and then remembered. “Oh. Right.” She pulled a document from her pocket and slapped it against Father Smith’s chest. His hand came up automatically to catch it before it fell. “You are hereby notified by the state of Alaska that your title to this property is in question. You are ordered to vacate it until such time as clear title is established in a court of law. Have a nice day.”
He’ll kill her,” Kate told Jim.
“Probably,” Jim said.
His calm reply infuriated her. “He’ll marry her, he’ll steal everything of the Smiths’ that isn’t nailed down, and then she won’t get the crease right when she irons his jeans, and he’ll kill her for it.”
“You really think Louis Deem irons his jeans?”
“This isn’t funny, Jim!” Kate took a hasty turn around his office. Mutt, wisely, was keeping to her neutral corner. Mutt tended to stick with what worked.
“No.” Jim shook his head. “It isn’t funny, but I can’t do anything, Kate, and you know it.”
“Yeah, you have to let him kill her before you can do anything.”
Jim opened his mouth to defend himself. Fortunately, Kate was on a tear, so it wasn’t necessary.
“Who,” Jim said, attempting to exercise a preemptive strike, “insists that it was not rape, that she and Louis are madly in love and are going to live happily ever after. She’s half right. They do marry. They don’t live happily ever after.”
“Louis does,” Kate said. “Jessie, on the other hand, dies six months later in a fall through the ice when she’s fetching water from the creek out back of Louis’s cabin. The inquest rules it death by misadventure, although they never could come up with an explanation for the lump on the back of her head. Particularly when she was found facedown in the creek.”
“Who was the coroner on that case?”
“Magistrate Matthew Nelson.”
“Oh yeah. I remember now. Meltdown Matt. He retired soon after.”
“I’m pretty sure the state insisted on it,” Kate said. “And then we have little Ruthie Moonin, Louis’s second wife. She lasted longer than Jessie, almost a year, until Louis’s truck fell on her when she was changing his tire. He never did explain why she was changing the tire and he wasn’t, but the trooper—”
“Harry Milner.”
“Trooper Milner couldn’t find just cause and had to let it go. That’s where our Louis got his homestead. It belonged to Ruthie’s parents, and she was an only child.”
“He kill them, too?”
“No,” she said, reluctant to admit to even a negative virtue to Louis Deem. “Not that he wouldn’t have, but they were dead by then. Ruthie was an orphan, and sole heir. Why do you think he married her?”