Stabenow, Dana - Shugak 05 - Play With Fire

by Play

  "Who won't last?"

  "The Jesus freakers. The born-agains. The Bible thumpers. Remember the Russian Orthodox priests when they came and told us we didn't have to pay taxes to the Czar if we went to their church? Remember the missionaries when they came and forbade us to dance? Where are they now?" He answered his own question. "They're gone, all of them, and we still dance at the pot latches We still carve our totems and bead our shirts. We outlasted the priests. We outlasted the missionaries.

  They're all gone and we're still here. We'll outlast these bastards, too."

  "Oh Russell, Russell," Sally whispered. "I will pray for you, that God will forgive you that blasphemy."

  He stood up and for a moment Kate thought he was going to strike his wife. And then she thought he might take a swing at her. An angry red ran up under his skin, his eyes narrowed and his right hand curled into a fist and rose a foot or so in the air. He trembled with the desire to hit, to strike out blindly, she could see it in his eyes, and she stiffened. Next to her Bobby gripped his wheels, as if to roll between them. Dinah put one hand on his shoulder, and he stilled.

  They stared at each other.

  The fist unclenched and fell to his side. "We'll outlast them," Russell said, tired now. "They'll be gone, and we'll still be here."

  Kate's shoulders slumped, the anger draining out of her in her turn.

  "Maybe you're right," she said, her voice the barest thread of sound.

  "But it doesn't make Daniel Seabolt any less dead."

  They were back at camp before anyone spoke. "What are we going to do?"

  Dinah said in a subdued voice, standing next to the fire pit and looking around at the campsite as if she'd never seen it before.

  "Nothing," Kate said.

  Dinah stared at her. "Nothing? They killed him, Kate. They killed him, as sure as if they'd held a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. We have to do something." "What?" Bobby said.

  "Call the trooper," she said hotly. "Have him arrest them. Try them for murder."

  "Just because they told us about it don't mean they'll tell the trooper.

  Russell won't. You heard him. His wife. His kids. His neighbors. His home." "Bobby's right," Kate said softly. She felt tired and old.

  "Nothing for us to do now but pack up and go home."

  "The sooner the better," Bobby agreed grimly, "before those yahoos get ideas in their heads about coming up here and finishing us off for good." "But--" Dinah said.

  "But nothing," Bobby said, his voice still grim. "Welcome to Alaska.

  You said it yourself. Nature red in tooth and claw."

  "I meant animals," Dinah said in a small voice.

  "What do you call us?" He looked at Kate. "You knew, didn't you."

  "I saw a mosquito bite the kid on the arm. He swelled up like a poisoned pup. He told me his dad was even worse."

  "And something like that would be known in the family."

  "Yes."

  "He would have known. Daniel. When they did it to him."

  "Yes."

  There was silence. Dinah said, the words wrenched out of her, "Can you imagine what it was like, his last moments--"

  "Yes," Kate said shortly, "we can imagine."

  Moving together in unspoken accord they broke camp, washing the mushroom buckets out in the cold, clear water of the creek, sacking up the last of the garbage and stowing it in the back of Kate's truck, rolling the sleeping bags, taking down the tents.

  Dinah found her paperback copy of the Bible and stood frowning down at the fine print. "Here it is."

  "What?"

  She read, "

  "But let judgement run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream."

  " She closed the book.

  "Amos," Bobby said. "Chapter 5, verse 24."

  Kate stared at Dinah, who looked solemnly back, and then she remembered.

  "So somebody did come looking for him."

  Dinah gave a somber nod. "And they even put up a tombstone, of sorts."

  "What?" Bobby said. Dinah told him of the sign they had found, tacked to a nearby tree, the day they had stumbled across Daniel Seabolt's body.

  To their surprise, Bobby's face turned dark red. The muscles in his neck bulged. He looked as if he were about to explode.

  Kate looked at Dinah, who spread her hands and looked confused and a little frightened. "Bobby. What is it? What's wrong?"

  "Those bastards." His jaw muscles worked. "It's a verse Martin Luther King used a lot," he said tightly. "I think he said it at the Lincoln Memorial that day in August. "Let judgement run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream." It's even on the Civil Rights Monument in Montgomery." Fury got the better of him again and he hit the arm of his chair with enough force to make him bounce up off the seat.

  That felt good so he did it again. He looked up in time to see them exchange a wary glance and made a visible effort to tone it down.

  He was only partially successful. "I'm sorry, I ... " He tried to shrug off the tension in his shoulders. "I don't know, in this context, that particular verse just seems so--"

  "Blasphemous?" Dinah suggested.

  "Sacrilegious?" Kate suggested.

  "Fanatical?"

  "Egotistical?"

  "Profane?"

  "Insane?"

  There was a brief, tense silence. "Yeah." Bobby inhaled and blew out a big breath. "Yeah. All of the above." Dinah said, voice somber, "Even the devil can quote scripture for his purpose."

  Winklebleck was right. Will always had the last word.

  Dinah pocketed the Bible and they worked together to collapse and pack Bobby's tent. The last aluminum rod went into the stuff sack. Kate sat back on her heels and pulled the drawstring tight, and suddenly, uninvited, unwelcome, Daniel Sea bolt's last moments came back to her, running, running, running, every man's hand against him, every door closed to him, feeling the sting of a thousand thousand bites, running, running, running, breath short and labored, skin scraped and torn, and then, mercifully, darkness and death.

  She found she had to hold herself upright with one hand on the trunk of a tree. "I hate this," she said violently, "I feel so helpless, so impotent. I hate this."

  Bobby, having regained his poise, tucked the remnants of the package of Fig Newtons into the cooler. When he was done, he gave Kate an appraising look. "Your problem is you're a little in love with him."

  "Who?" Dinah said.

  "Daniel Seabolt."

  Kate opened her mouth to deny it, met Bobby's hard brown gaze, and closed it again. It was true. Daniel Seabolt had loved his wife and his son. He'd been a born teacher, a profession Kate revered. He'd even loved his father enough to stay when his father had stolen his son's allegiance. He'd had enough family loyalty not to involve anyone else in their personal, private fight, and had fought back on his own terms, with his own tools. Loving, loyal, intelligent, he'd been an admirable man, and now he was gone.

  She didn't even know what he looked like. She'd never seen so much as a wallet photo of him. Matthew had never offered, and there had been none in sight when she visited Seabolt.

  Maybe love wasn't the right word. Maybe it was only that she mourned the passing of a good man.

  Somebody had to.

  "There are twenty-seven known species of mosquitoes in Alaska, did I tell you that?" Dinah said, looking out across the valley. "They've been known to kill dogs, they even go for bears, for the eyes and the nose because the bear's pelt is so thick, and the mucous membranes swell up and the bear dies of asphyxiation."

  "That's an apocryphal story," Bobby said.

  "Then why is it in my book?" Dinah demanded.

  "The better to suck you in with, my dear."

  "I bet the Native Americans who live out here wouldn't say that," she said, determined to defend her illusions to the death. "I bet it has, too, happened."

  They both looked at Kate, hands clenched on the straps of her pack, eyes staring at nothing.

  "
You know, Kate," Bobby said, locking the lid of the cooler down, "it's like the song says."

  She blinked, shook her head and looked at him, confused. "What?"

  "Sometimes you're the windshield." He reached for his jacket.

  "Sometimes you're the bug."

  The wry smile on his face clearly invited a similar response. She didn't have one left in her, but there was really nothing more here for them to do, and she knew it. Dinah had picked up the last two crates of Bobby's essential back-country supplies and was already starting down the hill.

  Bobby lifted the cooler into his lap and paused, watching her. Mutt stood at the edge of the clearing, yellow eyes expectant, straining for home.

  She rose to her feet, shouldered her pack and picked up the tent bag.

  The little glade, stripped of their belongings, looked empty and a little forlorn. The sun was teasing the horizon, just brushing the tops of the trees with pale fingers, gilding the surface of the Kanuyaq and its thousand tributaries, outlining only the very tips of violet peaks.

  As heart stopping as the view was, she knew a sudden, intense longing for her own roof, her own trees, her own creek, her own mountains, her own sky.

  "All right then," she said.

  "Scrape me off and take me home."

  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.