Kate waited. Enduring. Jack said, "They found him in the doorway of a downtown store Sunday morning."
Kate's expression didn't change. "Exposure?" Jack nodded. "Drunk?"
"Two-point-one."
A muscle twitched next to Kate's mouth. "Nobody saw him?" Jack said deliberately, "If they did, they figured he was just another drunk in a doorway."
"Of course they did." She paused. "What was his name?"
"Emil Johannson."
She was silent for a moment, and then surprised him with the ghost of a laugh. "Emil Johannson. A good Yupik name."
Outside on the street, she pulled the little otter from her pocket.
Jack stood next to her, waiting patiently, watching her fingers gently caress the little paws, the thick curve of the tail. "You want to hear something funny, Jack? When Jerry started telling me how they got the stuff off the Slope, I assumed he was talking about the artifacts. I wasn't even thinking about the dope, I could have cared less if every Sloper snorted a pound of cocaine a day and two pounds on Sunday. All I could see was that old man and his box of ivory, ready to trade it in on a fifth of Windsor Canadian."
"What are you going to do with it?"
"The ivory?"
"Yes."
The little otter looked up at her from behind inquisitive whiskers. "I don't know yet."
His coal-black eyes gleamed brightly in the sun. The spring breeze ruffled through his ivory fur.
And then she did.
Two days later she was in her grandmother's kitchen in Niniltna.
Afternoon sun poured through the windows in a steady, unceasing stream, gilding the worn linoleum, turning the bulk of the squat oil stove into a brooding graven image, back lighting Ekaterina's head so that Kate couldn't read her features. "I've come for a favor, emaa," she said, and named it.
The old woman was silent for a long time. "How did he die?" she asked finally.
"It doesn't matter now," Kate said wearily. "He's dead."
Another pause. "What was his name?"
"Emil Johannson. Do you know any Johannsons from St. Lawrence?"
"I might."
Kate gave the box a little shove. "This belongs to them, then. Will you return it?"
The silence stretched out between them. Kate counted dust motes shimmering in the air. At last the old woman stirred. "Why did you do it, Katya?"
Kate made no pretense of misunderstanding. She gave a faint shrug. "I wanted to see the Slope." With some acerbity Ekaterina said, "I've been trying to get you up to the kivgiq in Barrow for three years."
The corners of Kate's mouth creased. "Maybe I'll go now." She paused, thinking of Cindy Sovalik. She would like to see the old woman again, to talk with her. There was much to learn, there. "I wanted to see Prudhoe.
I wanted to see what all the shouting was about. Oil pays for our electricity, hell, it paid for the town's generating plant, for the school." She paused. "I wanted to see the monster up close and personal."
"And now that you have?" "It has a human face, emaa," Kate said. "And the project itself is impressive as hell. Not as impressive as the Kanuyaq Copper Mine, I grant you, they humped their equipment in over mountains and rivers and glaciers on their backs. No haul road, no airport for them. But Prudhoe is impressive. And they have done a good job. I don't know that they would have done as good a job if the government and the environmentalists hadn't been breathing down their necks every step of the way, but for whatever reason, they did do a good job."
"And now?"
"And now? The job is done. I am home." Kate looked across the kitchen table at her grandmother, age and wisdom and authority carved into her face with every line. She had to make Ekaterina understand.
"This isn't an apology, emaa. I'm not sorry I went." Kate took a deep breath. "I am sorry I hurt you." She had to struggle to get the next words out. "Please forgive me."
When it came, the old woman's voice was low and soft, as soft and vulnerable as ever Kate had heard it in her life. "Do you know how much it hurt me, Katya, after your father died, when you chose to live with Abel, instead of me?" "I do now," Kate said gently. "Emaa. Who was it who told me, you don't own the land, the land owns you? I couldn't leave it. I couldn't." To her horror, Kate felt her breath catch on a sob. She fought for control.
"You were all I had left of them."
"When they died, the land was all I had left of me," Kate said. "It still is."
Ekaterina raised her head and looked at Kate. "I'm not sure I understand that." "Oh, emaa," Kate said, her ruined voice caught on a shaken laugh,
"you don't have to. You just have to accept it."
Unable to hold her grandmother's gaze, Kate looked beyond the sunlight to the dozens of framed family pictures lining the wall. She and her father and her mother were there somewhere, a picture she knew so well she didn't have to get up and look for it, a picture she had memorized and knew every shape and shadow of by heart. Her mother seated on the floor of the cabin, laughing, fighting off the eager advances of a large gray husky mix that bore a distinct resemblance to Mutt. The husky ridden by a baby girl in diapers with dark tangled hair. Her father leaning on one elbow to one side, his face split wide in a huge grin.
Yes, she knew the picture, and yes, she knew it was there. Hung to the right of one of Martin at his naming potlatch. To the left of Axenia's graduation picture. Above Luba and Barney's wedding portrait. Below the one of Niniltna High School's 1990 varsity basketball team, four of the starting five of which were Ekaterina's direct descendants, grinning around their Class C state championship trophy.
"I'll make cocoa," her grandmother said, the words startling Kate out of her absorption.
The two women stared at each other across the table. Her voice husky, Kate said, "Remember, I like it lumpy." A smile whispered across Ekaterina's brown, seamed face. "I remember."
Ponderously, she rose to her feet and put the teakettle on the stove.
The truck pulled into the clearing and Kate let the engine die. "Home," she said with a sigh, and relaxed against the seat. Mutt indicated a wish to exit the truck in no uncertain terms and Kate opened her door.
Mutt flattened her ears, gathered her muscles together and took Kate and the steering wheel in a single, smooth graceful leap, disappearing into the bushes with barely a rustle.
Kate looked closer. Those bushes were budding. Tomorrow she would go down by the creek and look for pussy willows. And maybe the next day she would get out needle and twine and mend her dip net. The ice was almost gone from the Kanuyaq River in front of her grandmother's house.
Who knew? The day after she might be eating one of those reckless and impetuous salmon that never did get the time of year to swim upstream quite right in their genes.
A lump of snow dissolved and coalesced with other drops and ran to the end of a branch. With a soft plop it dropped to the ground. It had snowed while they had been gone, but it had thawed again, too, and the shallow drifts were melting like powdered sugar in the spring sun. The smell of wet earth filled her nostrils. The air was soft on her cheek.
In the distance she heard the anticipatory chuckle of water over stone.
An eagle screamed a taunting challenge far away, receiving only the low, roguish croak of a raven in reply.
Peace.
Dana Stabenow is the author of the Kate Shugak mystery series--A Cold Day for Murder, A Fatal Thaw, Dead in the Water, A Cold-Blooded Business, Play with Fire, Blood Will Tell, Breakup, Killing Grounds, and Hunter's Moon--each of which brings to life a different aspect of the Alaskan experience. She lives in Anchorage, Alaska.
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Stabenow, Dana - Shugak 04 - A Cold Blooded Business Page 24