Stabenow, Dana - Shugak 11 - The Singing Of The Dead

by The Singing Of The Dead(lit)

  she thought her heart would break beneath the pain.

  It didn't, of course. Men have died, and worms have eaten them, but not

  for love. Kate kept breathing in and breathing out; she kept waking

  early every morning and moving like she had a purpose through every day;

  she'd even taken on a job in her own field again, and sometimes, if a

  good-looking man twanged the heart that had once been the personal

  property of Jack Morgan, why, Jack Morgan himself would be the first to

  say, "Forward motion, girl, that's all that counts."

  Warm hands settled on her shoulders and squeezed once. She looked up,

  and then had to look down, because the hands belonged to Bobby, seated

  in his chair, not the ghost whose blue eyes she had for a foolish moment

  expected to meet.

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  "Okay?" Bobby said.

  She blinked away tears she hadn't known were there. "Okay," she said,

  and she pretty much was, except for crying in public, a thing she would

  rather die than do.

  He bought her some time by asking Jim Chopin, "What happened to the guy

  at the gym?"

  "Parka Man? He's in jail, where I'm probably going to be able to keep

  him forever, since he refuses to lawyer up. Says the justice system in

  this country is a sham and a joke run by niggers and kikes and spies and

  slopes who look out for their own by putting the screws to all those

  pure-as-the-driven-snow white folks out there, and he'll go to jail as a

  martyr before he allows it to make a mockery of his cause."

  "Speaking as one of the niggers, albeit one who stays as far away as

  possible from the justice system," Bobby said, "what is his cause, exactly?"

  "Exactly? I'm not sure," Jim said, creasing his brow in an elaborate and

  failed attempt to act like he really cared. "White supremacy seems a

  little conservative for the brand of separatism he's preaching. I think

  you're supposed swim back to Africa, just for starters."

  "I've got news for him, I'm not even gonna roll back to Tennessee."

  Bobby grinned at Dinah, who laughed.

  "Anyway, he took it upon himself as an upstanding white folk to

  discourage Anne's candidacy. He's not entirely stupid; he could read the

  polls, like all of us he knew she had a good chance to get in."

  "So he started writing her letters," Ethan said.

  Jim nodded. "Yeah, we found the stationery and the envelopes and the

  pens up to his cabin."

  "What about the last letter?" Kate said.

  "Like we figured," Jim said. "The lab came back today with the results.

  Darlene wrote it."

  "She admit it?"

  "No. Unlike Mr. Duane Mason, who is eschewing the

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  American legal system in all its forms, Darlene Turner Shelikof has

  engaged herself an attorney, who has advised her to say nuffin to nobody."

  "Who's her attorney?" Kate said.

  Jim cocked an eyebrow, and the grin came out, cutting a finned and

  sinuous wake. "Guess."

  She sat back, all thought of Jack and tears forgotten for the moment.

  "Oh man, tell me you're kidding!"

  "What?" Ethan said, looking from one to the other, his expression

  indicating to anyone who was looking that he didn't particularly care

  for the fact that Jim and Kate understood each other so well. Dinah

  smiled down at the table.

  Jim was nodding. "None other than good old Eddie P. himself."

  Kate shook her head, marveling. "Man, I don't hardly believe this."

  "I don't know," Dinah said. "It's all a part of the same story, isn't

  it? Turner and Seese-and Heiman, the not-so- silent partner-start a bank

  a hundred years ago. They marry-and murder-and have children and

  flourish, and their families grow along with the territory and then the

  state. One of Seese's descendants becomes a lawyer, one of Turner's

  becomes a political operator, one of Heiman's becomes a legislator. One

  of them becomes a murderer herself. Full circle. It's Oedipus. It's

  Hamlet. It's the Duchess of doggone Malfi." She stared off into space

  with dreamy eyes. "It's going to make for a great documentary, though. I

  figure two hours, or maybe even a miniseries."

  "I knew the call to momhood wouldn't last long," Bobby said, heaving a

  sigh. Katya mumbled again, and he was at her side like a shot.

  "The inquest on Angel Beecham was adjourned with a verdict of foul play

  by a perpetrator or perpetrators unknown," Kate said. "Matthew Turner's

  name is never mentioned. This case is still open, Jim."

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  "Not now, it's not."

  "We don't have any evidence. Everybody's dead, and you better believe

  Eddie P. won't let Darlene do any talking."

  He shrugged. Wasn't his case. He'd closed his case.

  "I suppose the cover-up was inevitable," Kate said, "given the

  good-old-boy mentality of the time and Matthew Turner's standing in the

  community. His bank was the one that stepped in after Barnette's failed

  and pretty much saved everyone's financial bacon. Cecily Turner hosted

  President Harding to tea. They named a town after him, for god's sake."

  She added, "Of course his son blew it by marrying a Native, but what the

  hell, you can't have everything."

  Jim laughed out loud.

  "Where is she?" Dinah said. "Angel, I mean. Where is she buried?"

  "From what Paula's research shows, she was buried here at first, but

  later her son had her body moved to Fairbanks. He lived there; I guess

  he wanted her nearby." She shook her head, marveling. "What a waste.

  What a goddamned waste. I mean, who cares? Who cares what the founding

  mothers of our fair state did to get here, to stay here? What else was

  there to do for a woman back then? Wife, mother, maid, that was it. You

  were born, you got married, you had a bunch of kids first because there

  wasn't any way not to and second because the kids were your social

  security, and then you died, usually way too young, most of the time in

  childbirth. What did you do if you were a woman and you didn't want that?

  "Jesus!" she said in sudden realization. "They couldn't even vote!"

  She looked at Dinah, at Bobby, cradling Katya, at Jim and Ethan. "And

  what is there in one woman's stepping outside that mold and making a

  living the best way she knew how, what is there in that to be ashamed of

  today? It wasn't like Lily MacGregor's hands were lily white. She

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  was Angel's landlord. If I had a good-time girl in my family history,

  I'd shout it from the rooftops."

  Jim's smile was slow, warm, understanding. It made her uncomfortable.

  "Yeah," he said. "You would at that. And you're right. Today is all that

  matters."

  "What? What are you talking about?"

  "Today is all that matters," he repeated. "Yesterday's gone, it's

  history. Who knows what shows up tomorrow."

  He looked across the table at her, unsmiling, no attitude, almost a

  stranger. "Today, here, now. That's all that counts."

  Ethan frowned.

  Later, when Katya had been fed and rocked back to sleep, when the table

  had been cleared, the leftovers put away, and the dishes washed, they

  gathered on couches and chairs in front of the
big stone fireplace. It

  was snowing outside, big fat flakes drifting down to pile themselves

  into broad, deep drifts. It was a sight Kate saw at the beginning of

  every new season, but was always astonished by the complete and total

  change achieved in utter, perfect silence. Trucks would be put away and

  snow machines brought out. Rakes would be hung up in favor of shovels.

  Moose and caribou would replace salmon on tables. Drift nets would go

  into net lofts, and traps would come out to be mended. People would

  sleep late, and eat too much, and read more, and in many cases drink

  more, and quarrel more often with their roommates, lovers, and wives,

  and mark days off on their calendars, counting down to the winter

  solstice, when once again the sun would begin its six-month climb back

  into the sky.

  "I saw Anne in Ahtna," Jim said, over coffee and Kahlua. "She's still

  campaigning."

  "Think she's got any kind of a chance?" Dinah said.

  Kate shrugged. "This is Alaska. We've got legislators

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  who use state funds to screw their mistresses in Denver, and get

  reelected by a landslide."

  "What's a little murder here and there on the campaign trail?" Bobby

  agreed. "Pete Heiman shouldn't get cocky."

  Kate thought back to the last speech she had heard Anne give.

  "The buzz phrase for the Nineties was 'taking responsibility,' " Anne

  Gordaoff had said in a strong voice that was clear to everyone in the

  senior citizens' center in Ahtna, even those leaning up against the back

  wall to gossip in low tones.

  "We were all supposed to take responsibility for our actions, stop

  passing the buck." Her voice carried well.

  "So then when Alaska Natives try to take responsibility, to assume

  sovereign rights over their tribal lands and villages and homes, what

  does the legislature do but appropriate five hundred thousand of our

  state monies to fight us in the courts? What does the governor of the

  state do?" She waited a beat for what was becoming the chorus of this

  campaign tour.

  "Tell us!"

  "Say it, Anne!"

  "Yeah, tell us!"

  Anne smiled. "He directs the attorney general of the state of Alaska to

  sue us all the way to the Supreme Court!"

  "Boo!"

  "Hiss!"

  "Aw, screw'm!"

  "I ask you, what are these people so afraid of?" She paused. "And what

  about subsistence?"

  Into the gathering silence the candidate had lowered her voice, causing

  people to lean forward in their seats, straining to catch her words.

  Even the gossips in the back stopped to listen.

  "The sportsmen's fishing groups, the commercial fishing companies, what

  do they want? State control of the

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  fisheries. Why? Because they're for-profit operations. We-" she thumped

  her chest "-we fish to feed our families!" She pointed over their heads

  to the two doors, propped open to let in the breeze blowing off the

  Kanuyaq River, a tributary rich with salmon, twisting and turning

  hundreds of miles from its delta on Prince William Sound to its source

  deep in the heart of the Quilak Mountains.

  "We use the river in customary and traditional ways," she said, more

  loudly this time, and loud was the roar that acknowledged recognition of

  those two hot-button words incorporated into Title VIII of the Alaska

  National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980. "We are Natives! We

  have been fishing these waters for thousands of years! And what does the

  Alaska legislature say about that?" She dropped her voice again,

  commanding instant silence.

  "They won't let us vote!"

  Another roar.

  "You know why?" Anne said, managing to be heard without shouting, a neat

  trick. "I'll tell you why, because they know the vote will go against

  them! Those white men in Juneau, they know the state wants rural

  preference! Those white men in Juneau, they know we'll vote to let us

  fish! Those white men in Juneau, they've taken too much money from those

  white men in Seattle to back down now!"

  Anne Gordaoff had stood, hands folded in demure contrast to her

  rabble-rousing words, translator at the right edge of the stage,

  microphone and face in shadow, quick to fill Gordaoff pauses with the

  Athabascan and Aleut equivalents, her consonants and gutturals swift and

  precise and timed to be out of the way when Gordaoff spoke again.

  "It's our basic human right to control our own affairs," she told them.

  "It's our basic civil right to hunt and fish as our grandfathers and

  grandmothers hunted and fished.

  "It's two weeks till the election," Gordaoff said. "When the time comes,

  I ask you to go to the polls, right here in

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  the Ahtna High School gym, and cast your vote for me. Your interests,

  your concerns, will be my interests and my concerns in Juneau." She had

  smiled, raising her chin and giving them the full wattage.

  "They already are," Gordaoff said in a softer voice. "I am your

  daughter. I am your sister. I am your auntie. I am your mother. I will

  go to Juneau, and I will speak with your voice."

  She bowed her head, and a whisper of applause grew to a rumble and then

  another roar, and she smiled again and bowed herself off the stage. A

  woman who had been standing stage left beat her hands together,

  encouraging the audience to keep it ,up until Gordaoff was down on the

  floor among them, shaking hands and accepting hugs and greeting nearly

  everyone by name. They didn't know that her campaign manager was

  presently a guest of the state of Alaska, and if they did know, they

  didn't care. She was one of their own.

  No, Kate thought now, Pete Heimen had best not rest on his laurels, not yet.

  A log cracked and broke in the fireplace, breaking the silence. Kate

  looked at Johnny.

  He was sitting on the couch between Bobby and Dinah, holding Katya in

  his lap. She seemed to have fallen in love with him at first sight, and

  when she woke up, demanded his attention. She got it, too; Johnny was

  either one of those rare young men who liked babies or who had just

  taken a liking to this baby in particular. They talked to each other,

  Johnny in English and Katya in baby talk, appearing to understand each

  other with no difficulty. It made Kate dread all the more the coming

  council of war.

  She looked at Jim. "You're here in an advisory capacity only."

  "Understood," he said.

  "It would be better if you weren't here, but we need you, so you are."

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  "Consider me invisible."

  She took a deep breath. "You've met Johnny Morgan."

  "I have."

  "You've met his mother."

  His face didn't change but his voice did. "I have." Johnny looked at him

  and grinned.

  "Johnny Morgan is fourteen. His parents were divorced when he was

  twelve. His father had custody. When his father died, custody reverted

  to his mother, and his mother took him to live with her mother in

  Arizona. As you know, Johnny, Jim is a state trooper. Tell him what you