Singing of the Dead

by Dana Stabenow

  “That’s more like it.”

  His grin faded. “Okay, that was then. Seventeen years ago, I was just a kid being led around by my dick. Today I’m older, and maybe a little smarter. You want to give this another shot?”

  It was his turn to wait. “Kate?”

  She opened her mouth, and closed it again. “I don’t—Jack was—I’m not—” She gave her head a tiny shake, annoyed with her inability to say what she felt, to give him an answer.

  “I admit,” he said, “this whole Kate-and-Jack thing. It’s intimidating as hell. I only saw you guys together a couple of times, but when I did it was like you were reading each other’s minds. Margaret and I—well, it was nothing like that with Margaret. Maybe I’m jealous.”

  He watched her for a long moment, and she waited for him to go back inside the house. Instead he bent his head, taking his time, giving her a chance to step away.

  She didn’t.

  On the other side of the window, Jim Chopin stood, watching, as his hands clenched into slow, heavy fists.

  Epitaph

  Fairbanks

  Unkempt, neglected, forgotten, abandoned to the privations of elements and time. Markers made from rounds of wood sliced from a downed tree, splitting with age and decay so that the words carved upon them are hardly legible.

  Each successive autumn another untended drift of leaf and bracken falls; the white picket fence has long disintegrated; a clump of diamond willow suffers from the attention of every wandering moose; the mounds of the dead have been overtaken by the wild rose and the devil’s club. Black hairs from a passing bear stick in the sap of a living spruce tree’s trunk where he has rubbed against it, more than once. The sunshine caresses equally the golden leaves of the aspen and the deep red stalks of the fireweed, as both stir slightly in the merest breath of a wind that as yet carries no hint of the winter soon to come.

  The sound of an engine is heard, stops, a door opens, closes, footsteps approach. Grass yellow from age and a dry summer crackles underfoot. The chickadees cease their song, and wait, and watch.

  A woman picks her way through the trees, a beast with yellow eyes and silver fur pacing at her side. They stop at the edge of what is no longer a clearing. The woman’s shoulders slump in momentary defeat as she looks around at the crowded trees, the thickness of the brush, the height of the grass that obscures what lies beneath.

  Her shoulders straighten. Stepping with care, she seeks out each remaining marker, one by one, pulling the foliage away so as to see what there is left to read. Her short cap of hair gleams raven’s wing black in the light; the rich nut brown of her skin takes on an added glow of exertion from the warmth of the day, a deeper color from the heat of the sun. Her companion sits, motionless and silent at the edge of the clearing, ears flickering to follow each sound, alert, vigilant, patient. A magpie comes scolding into the clearing and, seeing them, departs at once. The three ravens roosting high above in the cottonwood keep their own counsel.

  The edges of the words have been eaten away by weather and insects, but some may still be read by those who take the trouble to seek them out. “Valentine Carlyle, Faithful Servant and Friend, born Glasgow, Scotland, 1882, died Fairbanks, Alaska . . . ” year illegible. “John O’Henry,” or is it O’Malley, “Bachelor, Miner, born 1893, died 1920, Jeremiah 17:17,” or it might be 19:19. “George Washington Smith, born Savannah, Georgia 1837, died Fairbanks, Alaska 1917, The Secret of Freedom a Brave Heart.”

  The sun travels across the circle of blue sky and into the tops of the trees, and the shadows they cast outline a marker unnoticed before, a marker placed beneath a rose bush that has flourished to command its corner of this undisciplined garden. It is different from the other, wilder roses, as a last bloom testifies in hanging its heavy head to shed blood-red petals on the upturned faces of tiny blue flowers carpeting the mound beneath. The sweet perfume is a caress of the skin, a lure to the senses.

  The woman kneels before the marker, a round slice of spruce trunk with bits of bark still clinging to its sides; the face planed and sanded smooth once, warped now, split; the letters and numbers rotted through almost to the other side, but they were well executed to begin with, and the slab is by comparison to its fellows easy to decipher. Many words, of this life much to say. “Here lies Leonie Angelique Josephine Beauchamp Halvorsen, born Melun, France 1875, died Niniltna, Alaska 1915.”

  And nothing else, except—yes, lower down on the slab there are more words, hidden where the stiff dry grass has grown so thick. The woman pulls the marker from the ground with great care, for fear it will break in her hands. The tenacious roots cling, and the marker falls to pieces anyway and must be put together like the puzzle it is.

  She carries them one at a time to where a last ray of sunlight illuminates a small patch of grass, still green and cropped close by the Arctic hare peering at her from beneath a hemlock. The light disappears into the letters shaped long ago by a loving hand. The remnants of white paint help draw them forth from the shade into the bold statement of a life.

  HERE LIES

  LEONIE ANGELIQUE JOSEPHINE BEAUCHAMP HALVORSEN

  BORN MELUN, FRANCE 1875

  DIED NINILTNA, ALASKA I915

  BELOVED WIFE OF SAM HALVORSEN

  BELOVED MOTHER OF PERCY HALVORSEN

  BELOVED GRANDMOTHER OF LEONIE HALVORSEN GORDAOFF

  AND ANGELIQUE HALVORSEN SHUGAK

  And in letters smallest of all, placed where they are least likely to be noticed once the slab is in the ground, unless you know they are there and look for them, are the words

  A Darling Girl

  High up in the bough of a tree a bird, smaller than all the rest, trills out three pure, clear notes on a descending scale.

  The woman raises her face into the last rays of the setting sun, and she smiles.

  PREVIEW

  Read on for the first chapter of

  Battle lines are drawn as the government prepares to drill for oil in a nearby wildlife preserve. As the tension rises, an old-timer is murdered and another stabbed and left for dead. Kate finds herself in the middle of a war…

  1

  Mutt leapt to the seat of the snow machine as Kate thumbed the throttle and together they roared twenty-five miles over unplowed road to Niniltna, four miles past the village to the ghost town of Kanuyaq, and up the rutted, icy path to the Step. There, Kate dismounted, postholed through the snow to the door of the Park Service’s headquarters, marched down the hall to Dan O’Brian’s office, walked in without knocking, sat down without invitation, and said, “Now then. Would you mind repeating to me exactly what you told Ethan Int-Hout this morning?”

  “Hi, Kate,” Dan said, the startled look fading from his face. “Nice to see you, too.”

  Hard on Kate’s heels, Mutt barked, one syllable, short, sharp, demanding. “All right already, nice to see you, too.” He pulled open a drawer, extracted a slice of homemade moose jerky, and tossed it. Mutt caught it on the fly, and lay down, taking up most of the rest of the square feet of Dan’s office, looking marginally appeased.

  Kate was anything but. “Well?”

  “I’m too green for them, Kate.”

  Kate’s spine was very straight and very stiff. “Too green for whom, exactly?”

  “The new administration.” Dan waved a hand at the map of Alaska on the wall behind him. “They want to drill in ANWR. I’m on record as not thinking it’s the best idea the federal government has ever had, and now everyone’s mad at me, from City Hall in Kaktovik to the Department of the Interior in Washington, D.C. You should see some of the E-mails I’ve been getting. Like to melt down the computer.” He ran a hand through a thick thatch of stiff red hair that was beginning to recede at his temples, then rubbed both hands over a square face with open blue eyes and a lot of freckles that refused to fade. “I’ve never wanted to be anything but what I am, a park ranger in Alaska. But hell, I don’t know. The secretary won’t even listen to her own employees. They want to drill. And the
y’re looking at Iqaluk, too.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Her voice had gone soft, marred only by the growling sound caused by the scar on her throat. Mutt stopped chewing and pricked up her very tall gray ears and fixed Kate with wide yellow eyes.

  He flapped a hand. “Nothing to get worried about, at least not yet.”

  “I’m always worried about Iqaluk,” Kate said.

  “I know.”

  “So you’ve been fired?”

  He made a wry mouth. “Not exactly. Invited to take early retirement is more like it.” He sighed, and said again, “I don’t know, Kate. At least Clinton and Gore had a clue about the environment, or pretended they did. This guy, Jesus.” He thrust his chair back and stood up to wander over to the window to stare at the snow piled up to the top of the frame. “I don’t know,” he said, turning back. “Maybe it’s time. I don’t know that I can work with these people for four years, and maybe eight. I’ve got twenty-three years in. And hell, maybe they’re right. Maybe it’s time for a change of management. Not to mention point of view, because I sure as shit am out of fashion this year. Maybe I do need to move on, buy myself a little cabin on a couple acres, find me one of your cousins, settle in, settle down.”

  “Yeah, and maybe I need to shoot myself in the head,” Kate said, “but it might kill me, so I guess I won’t.”

  He grinned, although it seemed perfunctory.

  “Whom did you talk to? Who asked you to quit?”

  “Dean Wellington. The head guy in Anchorage. I’m not the only one. They’re making a clean sweep, Kate, right through the ranks.”

  “Whom are they going to replace you with? ‘Pro-development’ and ‘park ranger’ don’t exactly go together in the same sentence.”

  He shrugged. “If it was me, I’d replace me with a kid fresh out of college, inexperienced, malleable, easy to lead.”

  “Someone who will do what they’re told without asking any of those annoying little questions like ‘What are the adverse effects of a massive oil spill on a biome?’ Without doing things like counting the bear population to see if there should or shouldn’t be a hunt that fall?”

  The grin had faded, and Dan looked tired and, for the first time since she’d known him, every one of his forty-nine years. “When’s the last time you had a vacation?” she asked.

  He rubbed his face again. “I was Outside in October.” He dropped his hands and looked at her. “Family reunion.”

  She snorted. “That’s not a vacation; that’s indentured service. I mean a real vacation, white sand, blue sea, drinks with little paper umbrellas in them, served by somebody in a sarong.”

  “Gee, I don’t know, that’d be about the same time you were there.”

  “I don’t vacation,” Kate said, “I hibernate. When?” He didn’t answer. “Do me a favor, Dan. Don’t say yes or no to your boss. Take some time off, and let me work an angle or two.”

  “Why?”

  “Oh, for crissake.” Kate stood up. Mutt gulped the last of her jerky and bounced to her feet, tail waving slightly. “I’m not going to sit around here and pander to your ego. Get out of town.”

  A genuine smile broke out this time. “That’s good, since pandering to my ego isn’t your best thing. I’m not going to get out of town, though, even though I am now officially terrified to say so.”

  “And why not?”

  “I’ve got a girl.”

  “So what else is new?”

  “No, Kate, I mean really. I’ve got a girl.”

  She estimated the wattage of the glow on his face. “Why, Daniel Patrick O’Brian, as I live and breathe. Are you, by any chance, in love?”

  He laughed. He might even have blushed. “Argghh, the L word—don’t scare me like that.”

  “Are you?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t want to leave her, though.”

  “Who is she?”

  “She’s waiting tables at the Roadhouse. She’s great, Kate. I’ve never met anyone like her. She loves the outdoors, she loves the wildlife, she hikes and mountain-bikes, and she’s a good cross-country skier. She wants to learn how to climb and maybe take on Big Bump with me next summer. She’s gorgeous, too.” He paused. “I’ve got at least twenty years on her. I’ve been afraid to ask her how old she is. I don’t know what she sees in me.”

  “Yeah,” Kate said. “Don’t worry. I do.”

  He grinned, a little sheepish. “I’m heading out to the Roadhouse this afternoon. I’ll introduce you. And buy you a drink?”

  “Sold. See you there.” She stopped to survey him from the door. Reassured by the sparkle in his eyes and the reappearance of the dimples in his cheeks, she turned and left, Mutt at her heels, flourishing her graceful plume of a tail like a pennant of friendship.

  His smile lingered after they were gone. He had been feeling besieged, and if he was not mistaken, he had just received a delegation from the relieving force.

  Well. If his friends—it appeared he did have some after all—were going to fight for him, he could do no less.

  His smile widened. And he knew just who to recruit for the front lines. He stood up and reached for his parka.

  On the way back down the mountain, Kate thought of all the things she could have said in answer to Dan’s question. That he’d been the chief ranger for the Park for eighteen years, after working his way up the Park Service’s food chain fighting alligators in Florida and volcanoes in Hawaii. That Park rats knew him and trusted him as no Alaskan trusted a federal park ranger anywhere else in the state. That moose and bears both brown and black wandered regularly through her yard, and that a herd of caribou migrated regularly over the plateau, and that no one in the Park who knew how to shoot or any of their families and friends had ever gone hungry on Dan O’Brian’s watch.

  That Dan O’Brian had managed, sometimes single-handedly, to maintain healthy populations of every species of wildlife from the parka squirrel below ground to the bald eagle above, and had managed to do it while maintaining the good opinion of park rats Native and nonnative, sourdough and cheechako, subsistence hunter and big-game hunter, subsistence fisher and sports fisher and commercial fisher alike, and that he had managed to do it without being shot, or hardly ever shot at, was a remarkable achievement. If some wet-behind-the-ears, fresh-out-of-college kid wired through his belly button to the current administration took over, the Park would begin to deteriorate, and the population of the wildlife would only be the beginning. Mac Devlin would roll out his D-9 and start flattening mountains and damming rivers with the debris in his search for new veins of gold. Dick Nickel would start chartering sports fishers by the 737 into the village airstrip. John Letourneau would start bringing in European big-game hunters by the 747, if he didn’t already. Dan O’Brian was just a finger in the dike, but he had it stuck in a pretty vital hole.

  Besides, if he left, she’d miss him.

  She stopped in Niniltna to talk to Auntie Vi, who listened in bright-eyed silence, her head cocked to one side like a bird’s. “I’ll start calling,” she said, and displayed a cell phone with pride. It was lime green and transparent.

  Kate recoiled, as if someone had offered her a diamondback rattlesnake. “Uh, great, Auntie. I’m going to talk to Billy now. And I might go to Anchorage.”

  “You know somebody there?”

  “I can get to know them.”

  Auntie Vi grinned, and the evil in that grin kept Kate warm all the way to the Niniltna Native Association offices. Billy looked up when she walked into his office. “Ah, and here I was just inches from a clean getaway,” he said.

  Kate was known in the Park and, indeed, across the state of Alaska for many things. One of them wasn’t finesse. “You hear about Dan O’Brian?”

  “No.”

  She told him. As a clincher, she added, “Dan says the feds are interested in selling exploration leases in Iqaluk, too, Billy. We need him.”

  Billy frowned but said nothing.

  Kate was incredulous. “Don’t
tell me you want to let them drill in Iqaluk!”

  “It’d mean jobs, Kate.”

  “None for us! Nobody here knows how to drill for oil!”

  “They could be trained. We could get the feds to make it a condition of the leases.”

  A hot reply trembled on the tip of her tongue. From somewhere, she found the strength to repress it. “Then,” she said, with tight control, “you’d better make sure that we’ve got the ear of the top spokesman for the feds in this Park.”

  He frowned. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Do you want to have to break in a new ranger? Somebody who’s going to go around burning out squatters, even if they’ve been squatting for twenty years? Somebody who doesn’t know a moose from a caribou and won’t look the other way when somebody shoots one to feed his kids after the season is closed? Somebody who’ll let all the fish go up the river because the lobbyist for the sports fishers has a bigger bullhorn and a fatter wallet than the lobbyist for the commercial fisher?” She paused and took a deep breath. “I’ll fight against any kind of development in Iqaluk, Billy, barring the logging leases we’ve already signed, but if you decide you want to go after subsurface mineral development and you get your way, it’s better for all of us to deal with Dan, someone who knows us and knows our ways, than some yahoo with a diploma so new, the ink isn’t dry on it yet. At least Dan listens to what the elders have to say about the history of salmon runs. The seals are coming back to the Sound today because he did.” She paused again. “You know you don’t want to have to break in somebody new.”

  “Well,” Billy said, a defensive look on his round moon face. There was only one right answer, and they both knew what it was. “No.”

  “All right, then. Call everyone you know in Juneau and then start in on D.C. NNA’s got a lobbyist, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes.”