Singing of the Dead

by Dana Stabenow

  “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.”

  “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 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 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 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’s 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 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 b
eat 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.”

  “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 told me.”

  The grin vanished, and his grip on Katya must have tightened because she uttered an inarticulate protest. “Sorry, Katya,” he said, horrified, and resettled her. With an heroic effort Bobby managed to restrain himself from snatching his child to his bosom.

  Johnny looked at Jim, making an obvious effort to stay calm, to keep his voice level, above all to present the appearance of someone who was old enough to determine his own destiny. Kate was glad he was holding Katya.

  “Like Kate says, my mother took me to Arizona. I went along at first because I was—” his eyes flicked at Kate and away again “—well, because I was upset about Dad.” His lips thinned. “Mom went back to Alaska as soon as she dumped me off. Grandma’s okay, but she lives in a retirement community, and they’re all mad because she’s got a kid living with her. She didn’t want me with her, and I didn’t want to be there. I toughed it out as long as I could. I tried, I really did, Mr. Chopin, but I didn’t like her, I hated Arizona, and I missed Alaska, and I just wanted to come home. So I left.”

  “You ran away from home,” Jim said.

  “I left,” Johnny said stubbornly. “I left to come home.” He looked at first surprised and then pleased at his own words. “She caught me the first two times, but the third time I made it all the way back. I came to the Park, to Kate’s, and I’m not leaving. I don’t care what she says or does or what the law says I have to do, I’m not going back to Arizona!” His voice rose in spite of himself.

  “Uh—huh,” Jim said thoughtfully. “You can’t stick it out till you’re sixteen? That’s, what, two more years?”

  Johnny shook his head, a mulish and mutinous expression on his face. “Can’t and won’t.”

  Jim looked at Kate. “So you been hiding him?”

  “Yeah.”

  He looked at Ethan. “And you been helping.”

  Ethan grinned at Johnny. “Yeah.”

  “Shit, Jim,” Bobby said, “if it comes to that, the whole Park’s in on it.”

  They waited.

  “As a matter of law,” Jim said, “and as an officer of the court, I am required to return Johnny to his mother, who is his legal guardian.”

  Johnny flushed red up to the roots of his hair, opened his mouth, encountered Kate’s level gaze, and shut it again.

  “Are you thinking of pursuing legal guardianship?” Jim asked Kate.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Don’t,” he said. “All that does is tell his mother where he is. You’ll have to produce him in any court battle, and you’ll lose.”

  “I won’t go,” Johnny said.

  “She already knows he’s here,” Dinah said.

  “Yeah, but she didn’t find him.”

  “And she’ll be back,” Bobby said. “That bitch has got teeth if I ever saw them; she’s got them sunk into this.”

  “She doesn’t care about me,” Johnny said fiercely. “She doesn’t care where I live. She just doesn’t want me anywhere near Kate. Not even in the same state.”

  That pretty much summed up Kate’s feeling on the matter.

  “My dad loved Kate,” Johnny said, looking at Kate. She met his eyes. “My dad loved Kate, and my mom hated her for it. She wants me away from her.”

  Kate couldn’t speak. Jim looked at the expression on her face and away again, quickly.

  “I’m sorry, Kate,” Johnny said.

  “I know,” she said. “It’s all right, Johnny.”

  He opened his mouth as if to say more, and she shook her head, trying to smile. “It’s all right,” she said again. “It’s okay. I understand.”

  There was a brief silence. Kate thought of the copy machine she had found when she had burgled Jane’s residence in Muldoon, what was it, two years ago now. She’d figured then that Jane, who worked for the federal government in a department that allocated bids, had secretly been bringing bids home, copying them, and selling them to competitors. She could go to Anchorage, investigate, prove it.

  She looked at Johnny, sitting on Bobby and Dinah’s couch with a lapful of Katya.

  No, she couldn’t.

  “It’s a big Park,” Bobby said. “We’ll keep an eye out, make George watch for incoming moms. For the moment, best he stay with Ethan. She knows where Kate lives now.”

  “Works for me,” Ethan said. “Okay with you, kid?”

  Johnny nodded, face taut with hope.

  “If George spots her coming, we’ll shuttle Johnny around some. He can stay here, at Auntie Vi’s; Bernie’ll be glad to take him in for a while. Old Sam. Demetri. Billy and Annie Mike are running a boarding house for every stray kid in the Park now as it is, one more and Annie’s cup runneth over.” Bobby looked around and demanded, “I mean, how long can Jane Morgan keep this up? I’m assuming she’s not independently wealthy; she’s got a job she has to go to. She can’t be out here all the time, and in two years Johnny will be sixteen and on his own, if he so chooses.”

  “I do,” Johnny said.

  “What if Jane shows up at the school?” Kate said.

  “I don’t have to go to school,” Johnny said.

  “Dream on, kid,” Dinah said.

  Johnny, who Kate had only just discovered had an enormous crush on Dinah, blushed at being directly addressed by his dream woman.

  “Same thing,” Ethan said. “If George spots her coming, he gets to the school himself or sends someone ahead to get Johnny out and gone.” He added, “Who’s teaching up to the school nowadays?”

  “It’s a pretty good group,” Dinah said. “There’s even one local, Billy Mike’s oldest girl, who brought her degree home. She’s teaching fourth and fifth grades.”

  “And Bernie’s up there all the time coaching,” Bobby said.

  Kate looked at Jim. “What happens if she gets through us?”

  “I give her the slip and get back the fastest way I can,” Johnny said promptly.

  Jim looked from Kate to Johnny and back again.

  “Don’t let her get through you,” he said.

  They were snowed in but nobody minded, and there were enough sleeping bags to go around. Bobby built up the fire and retired to the big bed in the back, where he could be heard making lecherous noises in Dinah’s direction. She giggled and told him to behave, and he did, mostly. Johnny, sleeping the unt
roubled and dreamless sleep of those who have absolute faith in their friends, lay curled in a corner with his head on Mutt’s flank.

  Kate went out on the porch to breathe deeply of cold, fresh air. She moved to the top step, out from under the eaves. Snow melted beneath her bare feet, searing her soles with cold fire. It fell on her upturned face, cool, melting kisses that seemed to sink beneath her skin and become part of the blood moving slowly and steadily through her veins.

  The door opened, and she looked up to meet Ethan’s eyes. He pulled the door shut behind him and walked forward. In silence, he took her hand and pulled her up to the porch. In silence, he took her place on the top step, which put his head on a level with hers. They were so close that she could feel the heat of his body.

  “So the kid stays with me?”

  Asked and answered, she thought, but replied, “For now.”

  “Fine by me.” He raised a hand to smooth her eyebrows, tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, trace the line of her lips. She watched him through lashes heavy with snow. “At school, that thing with Darlene.”

  She waited.

  “It didn’t mean anything. She saw that you wanted me, so she wanted me, too. That was Darlene all over.”

  “So it was all Darlene’s fault?”

  “Oh hell,” Ethan said, disgusted. “You just won’t let me lie, will you.”

  It was a rhetorical question, and Kate’s only answer was the tiny smile at the corners of her mouth.

  He grinned. “The truth was, I was hornier than a bull moose in rut,” he said, “and I wasn’t having any luck with you. She came to my room and offered it up, and I wasn’t about to turn it down.”