by Stan Jones
Active paused to think whether this would fit any square pegs into round holes. “Pete Wise was gay?”
“I probably shouldn’t have said that. All I know is, he never try with me!”
“Of course you should have told me. Whoever killed him…no matter why…So, he didn’t have any real buddies, either”
“Not that I ever heard of.
“If he was gay, that would make sense. I mean in a town this little, how many guys like that can there be?”
“I could go see Aana Pauline, maybe.”
“How is it I always end up having you talk to Aana Pauline?”
Lucy grinned. “Same like always. She’s an old lady. Them old ladies know everything that happens. I’ll call her.” She picked up her phone, then dropped it and pointed at the clock on the wall. “She’s over at the senior center playing snerts with them other old ladies. I bet she knows everything about Pete Wise already. You wanna go talk to her?”
Active shook his head.
“You’re still afraid of her, ah?”
“Of course not. I have other leads to pursue. And I think you could get more out of her. My Inupiaq’s still not very good.”
“Her English is.”
“I’m your boss and I’m directing you to go.”
“You’re afraid of Aana Pauline because you know she’ll say you should be with me instead of Gracie. That’s why you don’t want to go.”
Active was silent.
“Ah-hah.” Lucy paused a little longer to see if he would muster a rejoinder. He didn’t. “All right, I’ll talk to her, Mister Big Brave Chief of Public Safety. She’ll probably want a ride in your police truck if she has any information. If you’re not too scared to let her in the truck.”
“I’m not scared. I told you.”
“With the flasher and siren on.”
Active groaned. “Whatever she wants. If she can tell us something useful about Pete Wise.”
Lucy rose and pulled on her parka. “What you gonna do anyway? What other leads you pursuing?”
“I’m going to try to find somebody who actually knows something and won’t ask me for a ride or a night in jail.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Tuesday, April 15
ACTIVE HAD JUST started his truck when the radio scratched to life.
“Hey, boss,” said the voice of Alan Long. “We just got a call somebody might have found our snowgo.”
“Huh. Anybody we know?”
“Anthony Childers?” Long said.
“Anthony wants two nights in jail? Usually he just wants one of our patches when he brings in a tip. Which is usually worthless.”
“I dunno,” Long said.
“All right, where is it?”
“Bottom of the bluff under the new cemetery.”
“I’ll meet you there.”
Active switched to his Yamaha and drove across the lagoon back of Chukchi to the foot of the bluff, where Long and Childers waited on the seats of their own snowgos.
Active killed his engine and Anthony pointed out his find. Only handlebars and the remains of a shattered windshield were visible.
“Arii, Anthony, you’re wasting my time. Look at the snow on it. I bet this snowgo was here all winter. Maybe a lot of winters.”
“I dunno,” Anthony said. “It could be from blow-in today.”
Anthony was a chipmunk-cheeked kid possessed of buck teeth, an amiable goofiness, and a great enthusiasm for all things police-related. Active almost asked why he wanted the nights in jail, but decided he lacked the time for the story, which, like most Chukchi stories, no doubt had more meanders, cutoffs, and eddies than the Isignaq, but, unlike the river, never came to an end.
Active dismounted and thrashed through the willows and drifts to the snowgo. There he kicked and brushed away enough snow to determine the machine was ancient, rusted, and devoid of front skis. He turned on Anthony.
Anthony shrugged.
“Shouldn’t you be in school?” Active asked.
“Arii, I dunno,” Anthony said. “I was just—”
“Get going or I’ll put you in my jail for a week, not two nights,” Active said.
“But that Kay-Chuck say—”
Active glared and pulled the handcuffs from his belt.
“Arii,” Anthony said again as he mounted his snowgo. “Nobody ever thank me when I try help.” He cranked up and zoomed off.
MARTHA ACTIVE JOHNSON looked up and that familiar sunrise of a smile spread across her face when he knocked on the frame of the open door to the office from which she ran the teacher’s aide program for the Chukchi Borough School District.
“Nathan! My baby! Come in here!”
But she didn’t wait for him to come in. She jumped up, swept across the office and threw a major hug on him before he could twist away.
Not that he tried too hard. He liked Martha’s hugs now. “Good to see you, aaka.”
She pushed back to arm’s length and gave him the eye. “You look pretty good. That Gracie must be feeding you right, ah?”
“Well enough, I suppose.”
Martha’s expression darkened a little. “What’s this I hear about you and the governor? You scratch her neck in that tent up there on the Isignaq? You better watch out for her. She is not a nice woman.” Martha shot a quick glance into the hallway. “But don’t tell her I said that, ah? She controls a lot of our school budget.”
“Everybody’s budget,” Active said. “But, no, I didn’t scratch her neck. She—”
“But your brother showed me that Internet video. Everybody’s talking about it.”
“Don’t believe everything on the Internet. In fact, you shouldn’t believe anything on the Internet unless it comes from an official source.”
“Like what?”
“Like the chief of the Chukchi Borough Public Safety Department, for example. That’s me and I’m telling you I did not scratch the governor’s neck. She did it herself getting out of her sleeping bag.”
“Ah-hah.” Martha waited in silence.
Did a smile play at the corners of her mouth? “Aaka.”
“She’s pretty, ah? And you’re a man.”
“Yes, but not a stupid man. A careful man. You don’t have to tell me she’s trouble.” He shot a quick glance over his shoulder to see if anyone in the hallway had heard, then stepped inside and closed the door. “Besides, I’ve got Grace. What man would ask for more?”
“How’s Gracie doing? I haven’t seen her for a couple weeks, maybe.”
“Same as ever.” He waved a hand with a gesture intended to sweep in Grace Palmer’s past, present, and future. “You know, she’s working on her program for the women’s shelters, she’s getting ready to move over to my place, she’s—”
“She’s still seeing that Nelda Qivits?”
“Yes, she’s still seeing Nelda Qivits.”
Martha smiled. “That’s good. Early days ago, that Nelda would be an angatquq, but the good kind. Try help everybody.”
“Grace likes their talks a lot. I think they really help.”
Martha paused. Active braced himself.
“And the quiyuk? You two—”
“Aaka.”
“Arii. Early days ago, Eskimo boys talk to their aakas about everything.”
“Not quiyuk, I’m pretty sure.”
Martha grinned. “Maybe not.” Then she paused with a look that signaled it was time to say what he wanted.
“So what do you know about Pete Wise?”
“Oh, yeah, what a terrible accident.” She caught his expression and tilted her head. “Ah?”
He shrugged. “We’re pretty sure.”
“Humph. Not all sure?”
“I never say nothing.” He grinned.
“Now you sound like you’re from here.”
“Maybe I am a little bit, now. But what about Pete Wise? He was in school here in Chukchi for a while, ah? After he came down from Walker?”
Martha’s gaze drifted
towards the street outside as she reflected. “I never hear too much about Pete, I guess. Me and my teacher aides, we mostly work with the littler kids and he was already in high school when he came down here. So we never have him in our classes.” She wouldn’t meet his eyes.
“But?”
“Ah, I don’t want to say nothing I don’t know. Let me get somebody.” She picked up her phone and punched a button. “Could you send Arlene to my office for a minute?”
They waited for Arlene. Martha caught Active up on the chances that Sonny would make the basketball team next year, which, in Martha’s opinion, would be all right if he stuck with his computer classes, in which he seemed to be some kind of genius and actually mentored the other kids.
“I know,” Active said. “He works on our computers and he helps Grace with hers all the time.”
Martha beamed. “Yeah, lotta other places around here let him do it, too.”
“Maybe he’ll even start charging them for it someday.”
“Nah, he just like to do it and he get credit at school, that’s enough for now. I’m just glad he’s gettin’ away from them snowgos a little bit. We don’t need no sledneck in this family. All they do is, they wreck up their machines racing and waste a lotta money and go deaf from the noise. Maybe break their neck, too.” She shook her head.
They waited some more.
Active studied the framed five-by-seven on her desk showing a teenage Martha, smiling gamely and holding a bundle of blankets, beside a beaming Ed and Carmen Wilhite, on the day she passed him over to his adoptive parents. Why did she display that picture? he wondered. It had to be painful for her, and she was always apologizing for giving him up. He had tried to tell her it was OK, now, it had worked out fine, and here he was back in Chukchi for the foreseeable future. But she kept apologizing and kept the picture out, alongside another of her with current family.
Active focused on what Martha was saying, which was a report on the latest hunting adventures of Sonny’s father and Active’s stepfather, Leroy Johnson. He had, it seemed, knocked over a dozen or so caribou on the Katonak Flats north of Chukchi, where the animals coming through in spring migration were lots and fat. But his snowgo had broken down and he was camped on the trail awaiting the parts he had ordered by a passerby.
“Oh, yeah, Leroy send down a caribou for us with that Henry Walter this morning. You and Gracie and Nita should come over for caribou stew tonight, ah?”
“Actually, we’re going out to Leroy’s sheefish camp tonight.”
Martha opened her mouth.
“But don’t ask me if there’s any quiyuk involved.”
“Arii,” Martha said. Her gaze shifted to the doorway. He turned to see a middle-aged Eskimo woman in cafeteria whites. She had braids, good cheekbones and a kindly look.
Martha waved her into a chair near the desk. “Nathan, this Arlene. Arlene, you know my son Nathan, ah?”
“Pretty much everybody know your little naluaqmiiyaaq baby, all right.” She grinned. Martha grinned.
Active grinned back, having resolved to bear with good grace his Eskimo name, which meant “almost white.” In Chukchi, where teasing was as much a part of life as wind, ice, snow, and forty below, he would forever be naluaqmiiyaaq because of his time in Anchorage and his urban ways.
Martha’s expression turned serious. “Nathan, he, ah, he’s trying to find out about Pete Wise because…” She turned to Active, a plea in her eyes.
“It’s for our investigation of the hit-and-run accident,” Active said. “We need a little background on him.”
“And you’re from Walker like Pete, ah?” Martha said.
Arlene shot Active a look, then gazed at Martha, who raised her eyebrows.
“What kinda background?”
“What did they say about him up there in Walker?”
“I always never like to talk about gossip, all right.” Arlene adopted a pious expression and studied her hands.
There was a silence. Active pulled out his notebook and pen, so as to put on a little pressure, but not too much, while he pondered the likelihood that any female, anywhere, at any time in the history of the human race, had ever not been interested in gossip. Or male, for that matter.
“Some people said he had a married girlfriend maybe,” Arlene said. “But mostly there was talk he didn’t like girls at all. But I never listen to either one.” The expression reappeared.
“I might have heard something about that,” Active said. Arlene relaxed a little. “And this is official police business.”
“Ah-hah.”
“So, what else did they say about him up there?”
“Well, Pete Wise seem kinda normal, even fool around with girls maybe a little, till he’s about tenth grade, then he pull inside himself, never talk to nobody hardly. His parents start to worry he’s on that trail to qiviktuq and…”
Arlene’s story stumbled to a halt. He puzzled over the word. Arlene pulled out a Kleenex.
“Suicide,” Martha said. “Arlene’s brother went on that trail and she don’t like to talk about it.”
Arlene dabbed her eyes.
“We don’t have to,” Active said. “Because Pete Wise obviously didn’t—”
Arlene coughed and cleared her throat. “No, he never go that way. He leave Walker, come down here for basketball and live with his grandparents, finish high school, go down to the university at Kenai by Anchorage, play basketball there, too, get his degree, come back up here and pretty soon he’s got that alcoholism job.”
“Does he—did he still live with his grandparents?”
“No, they get too old and move back up to Walker to live with their kids. Pete was live by himself down here.”
“You ever see him much, since you’re from Walker like him?”
“Arii, I try all right. His aaka ask me. But he still keep to himself down here, won’t even come over to have muktuk with my family and me when we get it from my cousin up in Cape Goodwin.”
“Not even for muktuk,” Active marveled.
The two women looked at each other and shook their heads in astonishment at the idea of an Inupiaq man passing up a nice chunk of boiled bowhead whale skin with an inch or two of fat still on. “Not even if it’s fresh!” Arlene said.
“Did you ever hear of him having a, um, a special friend here in Chukchi?”
Arlene squinted the Eskimo no. “I never hear of him going around with nobody, never see him with nobody, hardly. Live by himself, hunt by himself, run dogs by himself, do everything by himself.” She paused to dab her eyes again. “Maybe he’s the loneliest man in Chukchi, ah?”
“Maybe so.” Active looked at his notebook, then wrote “lonely” in it.
Arlene shot a burst of Inupiaq at Martha, too fast for him to catch more than a word or two, maybe “rabbit” and “sick.”
Martha raised her eyebrows at Arlene, then turned to Active. “Maybe you need a haircut, ah?”
What was this about? “Nita usually cuts it. She likes to do it.”
“Maybe you should try that Arctic Hair, ah?”
“The Arctic Hair? You mean the…” He made the connection and folded his notebook. “Chukchi has a gay hairdresser?”
“Aren’t they all like that if they’re men?” Martha said. “Otherwise they call theirselfs a barber, ah?”
“But Chukchi has a gay hairdresser? How do I not know this?”
“Maybe because Milton Sipary never get in no trouble? He probably have to be pretty careful. Some of these slednecks we got now, they don’t like no agnauraq, what they call it if a man don’t want women. Early days ago, them old-timers never get in other people’s business so much.”
Arlene seconded the proposition with a vigorous nod. “Ah-hah. And that Milton is a pretty good boy anyway. Remember, he was in the Army, then he work at Anchorage long time, come back here to take care of his mother when she get real sick?”
“Oh, yeah,” Martha said. “Arii, I forgot about that. And then she die but h
e get sick himself, now he’s still here.”
“I heard he got that lung cancer,” Arlene said.
Active brushed his hand over his scalp and tried to get the conversation back on track. “I don’t need a haircut. I could just go talk to Milton.”
The two women looked at each other and frowned. “Maybe not,” Martha said.
“Maybe too scare,” Arlene said.
“But I’ll say it’s police business.”
The women turned looks of pity on him. “Then he’s really scare,” Arlene said. “Never say nothing.”
“OK, OK, I’ll get a haircut.”
“Wait, I don’t know if Milton’s open any more,” Martha said. “He’s been pretty sick, all right.”
“Well, should I—”
“You could try check if he’ll give you a haircut,” Arlene said. “Maybe he will.”
“Thanks, Arlene. Quyaana.”
Arlene lifted her eyebrows with a nod.
Active rose and moved toward the door. “And thank you, aaka. Arigaa.”
He was out the door too fast for Martha to hug him, and with a “We’ll bring you some sheefish.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Tuesday, April 15
IN THE CHEVY, Active pulled a scrawny Chukchi phone book from the console, looked up the number, and dialed his cell phone.
“Arctic Hair,” said an exhausted voice.
“I was wondering if I could get a haircut today?”
“I was just about to close up—”
“Maybe just a trim?”
“You could come over, I guess. Maybe I could do a trim.”
The connection went dead before Active could ask how to get there. Should he call back? Maybe not. He barely had his foot in the door, judging from the sound of Milton Sipary’s voice.
But where was Arctic Hair? He’d driven past it a hundred times, he could see it in his mind’s eye, but it was sunk in his memory as part of the Chukchiscape, undifferentiated as the rest of it. Maybe he’d been around too long. Maybe he’d missed too many planes to ever get out now.
He opened the phone book again. “Third Avenue,” the listing said. No number, just the street, but that was enough. His memory brought it up—a little old cottage, the kind of place some people still called an Eskimo house.