professional of intensive and lengthy experience, was able to pinpoint
the exact moment when realization dawned.
Also because she said, "Oh fuck, no."
"She knows the Park," Jim said. "Who she isn't related to she's drinking
buddies with." He thought of Amanda and Chick, Bobby and Dinah, Bernie.
Old Sam, the quintessential Alaskan old fart, Auntie Vi, the
quintessential Alaskan old fartette. Dan O'Brien, the only national-park
ranger in Alaska to survive the change of federal administrations and
win the affection if not the actual respect of Park rats. George Perry
the air taxi pilot, next to whom Jim had stood
16
on that airstrip south of Denali last September. He banished that memory
the next instant, or told himself he had. "If she was a drinking kind of
woman, that is."
"Not her."
"She's probably related to Anne, come to that."
Darlene's voice rose. "Not her, Jim."
He was surprised at her vehemence. "Who else?" he said. "She's a
teetotaler. She a local. She's a Native. She has a reputation-"
"Oh yeah, she's got a reputation, all right, a well- deserved one."
"Took the words right out of my mouth." Curious, the curse of any good
cop, he went fishing. "You sound like you know her."
She opened her mouth, met his eyes, and closed it again. "I knew her,"
she said at last.
He waited hopefully. No weapon in the cop's arsenal worked better than
the expectant silence.
"We went to school together."
He raised his eyebrows. "I didn't know you were from Niniltna."
"In Fairbanks. UAF."
He gave a neutral kind of grunt, and waited again. In the ensuing stony
silence, he wondered why the feud. If one person hating a second person
who, so far as Jim knew, was indifferent to the first person's
existence, could be called a feud. Did Kate crib from Darlene's test?
Wear Darlene's favorite sweater without permission? Steal Darlene's
boyfriend? It irritated him that he would like to know, to add to his
fund of Kate Shugak lore. Said irritation moved him to say, "Just a
suggestion."
"A bad one," she snapped.
"No," he said, suddenly weary. "Just a suggestion."
17
Sit still," Dinah said, yanking Kate's head around by a fistful of hair.
"Ouch!" Kate, wedged into Katya's high chair, muttered something beneath
her breath.
"Stop whining," Dinah said, no sympathy in face or voice. "It wasn't my
idea to give you a crew cut."
"It's not a crew cut."
"It might as well be. Why don't you let it grow out again?"
Trooper Chopper Jim Chopin, watching from where he leaned against the
wall with his arms folded, saw a shadow pass across Kate's face.
Kate looked up and met his eyes. She felt cold metal slide between her
nape and her hair, heard the crunch of shears. Her skin prickled. "I
like it short," she said.
Something in her voice kept Dinah from pursuing the subject. "Well, if
you're going to keep it this short, you're going to need a trim once a
month. If you're going to get a trim once a month, you have to sit still
for it." Dinah paused, hand holding scissors the way Van Gogh might have
held his brush in a pause between stars, and looked Kate over with a
critical frown.
"You look like you're putting the final touches to a masterpiece that's
going to sell to Bill Gates," Jim said, echoing Kate's thought in a
manner she found more than a little eerie. "It's just a haircut."
Dinah extended the scissors. "You want to give it a try?"
18
He held up both hands, palms out. "No way. I like living."
"Then put a lid on it."
"Yes, ma'am." Jim shifted, and Kate saw the gleam of a shield. As usual,
Jim was immaculately turned out in the blue-and-gold uniform of his
service. As usual, he looked like a recruitment poster. Not as usual,
his presence sent a definite ripple of unease up her spine. She looked away.
A pillar ran through the center of the house, around which a built-in
counter supported a variety of electronic gadgets, including radios,
VCRs, tape decks, a turntable, monitors both television and computer,
music in vinyl, cassette, and CD format, and boxes of parts and tools.
It should have been a mess, but it was very well organized, with hooks
on the pillar to hang the tools from and sets of Rubbermaid drawers
beneath the counter to store parts in. Lines to the satellite dish and
the antennas mounted on the one-hundred-twelve-foot tower outside snaked
up the pillar and disappeared through the roof.
At the console in the center of this mess, Bobby flicked a few switches.
There was some kind of electronic whine and into the mike Bobby said,
"Okay, folks, it's show time. Bobby's all talk, all the time, when it
isn't all music all the time, one and only Park Air. Coming to you live
once a month, or whenever I feel like broadcasting a little pirate air.
Lately, I've been feeling like it a lot. That's right, it's election
season again, god help us. In less than two months we elect a new
president and reelect our congressman-for- life. And with me tonight is
one of the candidates for the office of state senator from District 41.
Yes, all you Park rats and ratettes, that's your very own election
district. Remember, if you don't vote, you can't bitch, and what's a
democracy without bitching?" He adjusted the fuzzy black microphone
hanging from the articulated metal arm. "Anne Gordaoff, how the hell are
you?"
"I'm fine, Bobby. Thanks for having me on the show."
19
"Couldn't hardly not, seeing as how you're going up against my boy, Pete
Heiman. What's wrong with him? He's been in, what, two terms now? What
can you do that he can't do better with the benefit of experience and
seniority?"
Anne Gordaoff smiled. "Gee, Bobby, according to you, everybody who isn't
one of the good old boys ought to just fold their tents and steal away
by dark of night."
Anne Gordaoff's campaign manager stood two feet away, a sheaf of
paperwork cradled in one arm, a pencil tucked behind one ear and another
in her hand, alert, attentive, following every word of the discussion as
if it were being broadcast live on 60 Minutes.
"Not in this lifetime," Kate said.
"Quit muttering," Dinah said. A judicious snip, one more, and she stood
back with the air of Hercules finishing up his twelfth labor. Kate, no
less relieved, extricated herself from the high chair and removed the
dishcloth from round her neck.
Dinah put the shears away and scooped up her daughter in the same
motion, a plump little coffee-with-cream- colored toddler with tight
black curls and a broad, merry grin exactly like her father's. Little of
Dinah's ethereal blondness had been reproduced in her daughter, if you
didn't count the blue, blue eyes. Kate tried to remember what she'd
learned about recessive genes in high school biology, and failed. Didn't
matter; whatever the ingredients, the result was superb.
"Kate," Jim said.
"Not in this lifeti
me," she repeated, watching Dinah and Katya blow
bubbles at each other, an oasis of tranquility in the crowded, noisy house.
"Her boss needs help. Your kind of help."
"Let her hire a rent-a-cop."
"You know the Park the way a rent-a-cop from Anchorage never would."
20
"You sleeping with her, Jim? You afraid you're going to lose your latest
main squeeze?"
He looked at this short, lithe woman with the golden skin, the eyes like
hazel almonds, the neat cap of shining black hair, and the old white
scar across her throat, and felt an unfamiliar sensation rise up in his
chest. He investigated. Anger. Fury, maybe. Might even have been rage.
"No," he said, his voice clipped. "I'm not sleeping with her."
"Sorry," Kate said, not sounding sorry at all. "Given past history, it
was a logical assumption."
Darlene must have heard her, or at least the tone of Kate's voice had
registered, because she raised her head to look at Kate. Their gazes met
and held, identical impassive stares that gave nothing away to curious
onlookers, of which there were more than one.
Darlene looked away first. "Not in this lifetime," Kate said for the
third time. "Dinah, you got any coffee made?"
"Sure."
The immense A-frame on the bank of Squaw Candy Creek was lit up like a
Christmas tree, and cars and trucks spilled over from the yard across
the little wooden bridge and down both sides of the creek. Inside, the
kitchen table had been extended with sawhorses and a piece of plywood,
the whole covered by a series of disposable tablecloths in a garish
red-and-blue plaid pattern.
Bobby didn't like doors so there were only two: one to the outside and
one to the bathroom. Both were wider than normal doors, and the
countertops and tables were low to the ground, as was all the furniture,
all the better for someone who'd lost both legs below the knee in
Vietnam and who now relied on a wheelchair for locomotion. Well, two,
actually, a new racing model for when he was sober and a twenty-year-old
clunker for when he was hungover.
"How are you, Kate?" Dinah said, keen eyes examining Kate for signs of
wear and tear. Katya fussed and Dinah gave her a carrot to gnaw on.
21
"I'm okay, Dinah," Kate said, a little wearily. "Really, I'm okay." The
inspection continued in silence, with the addition of one upwardly
mobile eyebrow. "All right," she said. "I miss him, is that what you
want to hear? I miss him like hell. I'll always miss him. But almost the
last thing he said to me was that life goes on."
"Jack is dead," Jim had said. "You aren't." She did not look over her
shoulder to see if he had heard her. "I'm home now." She looked at Dinah
and tried to smile. "It would help a great deal if my friends didn't
treat me like I'm about to break."
"You were."
"I'm not now."
Dinah, a slender blonde who was about as white as Bobby was black,
seemed to make up her mind. "Fine," she said. "Hey, kid."
Johnny appeared at her elbow to regard the spread on the extended table
with wide eyes. There was caribou sausage, smoked fish, moose steaks,
deer stew, blood stew, mulligan stew, fry bread, zucchini bread,
homemade bread, cranberry bread, date nut bread, banana bread, raisin
bread, macaroni salad, carrot salad, potato salad, three-bean salad,
pickles dill and sweet, olives black and green, cubed cheeses cheddar
and jack, chocolate cake, pineapple upside- down cake, apple and cherry
and Boston cream pies. And that was just on the table. It didn't include
the counters full of chips and dips overflowing into the living room.
"Help yourself," Dinah said, and Johnny said "You bet," and picked up a
paper plate and a plastic fork to wade in with the infinite appetite of
the fourteen-year old.
"Okay, let's get a little serious," Kate heard Bobby say, and turned to
watch.
"All right," Anne Gordaoff said, who never looked anything less than.
"I have a friend, Mary Ellen. She's Native."
Mary Ellen Chignik, Kate thought, a Native rights
22
activist who spent more time in Juneau picketing than the legislature
did in session. She lived and breathed confrontation.
"She's this amazing woman, really smart, really informed, knows a lot
about Native culture and history."
Knows a lot about Athabascan culture and history, Kate thought.
"We were at the Roadhouse a while back. She was talking about the Black
Death, an influenza epidemic that was brought to Alaska by gold miners
and reduced the Native population on the Y-K Delta literally by one-third."
"Yes."
'Turns out the Black Death Mary Ellen's talking about hit in 1919. I
said, "Mary Ellen, that was the influenza pandemic that hit the whole
planet after World War I. Over twenty-one million people died, not just
Alaskans." Bobby paused. "She was angry with me. This is a smart woman,
well-educated, a leader. But she didn't want to hear that the Black
Death hit everywhere, all over the planet. The Black Death was personal.
The Black Death was brought to her tribe by Anglos, just one of many
instances of white wrongdoing in Alaska. That's the way she was told it,
that's the way she sees it, and that's the way she's going to tell it to
her children."
After a moment of dead air, Anne said, "What's your question, Bobby?"
"Hell, I don't know," he said, frowning. "I guess, why? Why was that her
reaction? And why was she angry when I told her the truth about the
Black Death?"
Maybe it was the late hour. Maybe Anne Gordaoff had had a long day and a
longer week, and the campaign trail was taking its toll. Maybe she had
been infected with Park Air's no-bullshit policy and made a snap
decision to abandon discretion. Whatever the reason, her answer was
blunt. "Political correctness sucks."
Everybody blinked, including Bobby. "Excuse me?"
23
"Family pride is going to kill all of us if we're not careful."
The A-frame's large single room was crowded with Park residents, from
Old Sam Dementieff to Billy Mike to Mac Devlin to Aunties Vi and Joy to
Dan O'Brian. Even Bernie Koslowski was there, turning the Roadhouse over
to the inmates for the evening. Native, white, fisherman, ranger,
homesteader, miner, hunter, trapper, they were all listening to Anne
Gordaoff. Behind her, Darlene looked, for a change, indecisive, as if
she couldn't decide whether to interrupt or let her candidate rip. In
the end, it was obvious that Anne was on a tear and there was no
stopping her, and Darlene was smart enough not to try.
"For a long time," Anne said, leaning forward and fixing Bobby with an
intense gaze, as if she were talking only to him but pitching her voice
so that everyone could hear, "for hundreds of years, the Alaska Natives
and the Native Americans were subject races, subject to the will of a
more powerful nation. Then, along about the Sixties, America woke up to
the fact that the Native American population had dropped to less than,
what, I think it
was something like a hundredth of what it had been
before Columbus hauled his ass across the pond, and suddenly everybody's
wringing their hands and bemoaning their brown brothers' fate, damning
Americans for the closet Nazis they were, and elevating the Native to
Stabenow, Dana - Shugak 11 - The Singing Of The Dead Page 3