The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2012 Edition

by Fowler, Karen Joy

  The Cutthroat’s hand came down to rest on the hilt of his knife. It made me nervous.

  “The people along the Yukon tell a story about eagles,” the Cutthroat said. “It’s the kind of story you white people like to hear us savages tell. I even told it to some officers one night on Attu. Took their minds off the fact that they were getting a lot of kids killed. Got a promise of six beers for it. They paid up, too.” He gave Pop a pointed look.

  Pop gave a thin smile. “I don’t have any beer at hand. Will you take an IOU?”

  The Cutthroat answered Pop’s smile with a humorless grin. “Don’t be surprised when I collect.” He leaned forward. “Okay. Long ago, a pair of giant eagles made their nest at the summit of a volcano. I’m talking about eagles nine, ten times the size of the ones we got now. They’d catch full-grown whales and bring them back to feed their young. And sometimes, if they couldn’t find whales, they’d swoop down on a village and take away a few human beings. This went on for many years, with the giant eagles raising a new brood of young every year. These young would go off to make nests on other volcanoes and attack other villages.”

  Pop took a Zippo and a pack of Camels from a jacket pocket. “So they were spreading out like the Germans and Japanese.”

  The Cutthroat nodded. “Yeah, I guess so. Anyway, one day, one of the original eagles, the father eagle, was out hunting and couldn’t find any reindeer or whales or nothing. So the father eagle said, fuck it, the babies are hungry. And he swooped down and took a woman who was outside her house. Carried her back to the volcano, tore her limb from limb, ripped out her guts, and fed her to his giant eaglets.”

  The pitch of the wind outside dropped, and the Cutthroat paused and listened. Pop lit a cigarette and then offered the pack to me and the Cutthroat. The Cutthroat accepted, but I declined. I’d promised my mother I wouldn’t smoke.

  The wind shrieked higher again as Pop lit the Cutthroat’s cigarette, and then the Cutthroat went on.

  “But this poor woman happened to be the wife of the greatest hunter of the village,” he said, exhaling smoke. “And when the hunter returned and was told what had happened, he went into a rage. He took his bow and his arrows, and even though everyone told him he was a fool, he climbed the volcano.”

  “Most truly brave men are fools,” Pop said. He gestured toward me with his cigarette. I didn’t know why.

  “I wouldn’t know,” the Cutthroat said. “In the Scouts, we try to be sneaky instead of brave. Works out better. Anyway, when the hunter got to the eagles’ nest, he found six baby eagles, each one three times the size of a full-grown eagle today. They were surrounded by broken kayaks, whale ribs, and human bones. The hunter knew that some of those bones belonged to his wife, and that these eaglets had eaten her. So he shot an arrow into each of them, through their eyes, and they fell over dead. Then he heard a loud cry in the sky, which was the giant mother eagle returning. He shot her under the wing just as she was about to grab him, and then he shot her through the eyes. She tumbled off the mountain, and that was it for her. Then there was another loud cry, which was the father eagle—”

  “And of course the hunter killed the father eagle as well,” Pop said.

  The Cutthroat glared. “Who’s telling this fucking legend, old man? No, the hunter didn’t kill the goddamn father eagle. The eagle dived at him again and again, and each time the hunter put an arrow into a different part of its body. But he never hit the father eagle in the eye. So, finally, pierced with arrows all over, and his whole family dead, the giant eagle flew away into the northern sky, and neither he nor any of his kind were ever seen again. But the eagles of today are said to be the descendants of those who had flown away in earlier times.” The Cutthroat gave a loud belch. “At least, that’s the story.”

  Pop leaned back again, looking up at the holes in the roof and blowing smoke toward them. “It’s not bad,” he said. “Not much suspense, though. I’m not sure it’s worth six beers.”

  “I don’t give a damn what you think it’s worth,” the Cutthroat said, tapping ash from his cigarette. “It ain’t my story anyway. My mother heard it a long time ago from some Inuits on the mainland, and she told it to me when I was a kid. But we’re Unangan. Not Eskimo.”

  “So you think an Eskimo might have killed this eagle too?” Pop asked. “Staked it to the ground, gutted it?”

  The Cutthroat frowned. “Like I said, I ain’t heard of anything quite like that. But I ain’t heard of a lot of things. Some of those shamans might still hold a grudge against eagles. People can stay mad about crap like that for five, six hundred years. Or maybe some guy just thought if he killed an eagle, he could take its power. And then he could be a better hunter, or fisherman, or warrior. I’ve heard of that. And you white people like stuff like that, too. I’ll toss that in for free.”

  Pop was giving the Cutthroat a steady gaze. “But you’re saying it wouldn’t have been you who killed the eagle. Or anyone else Unangan.”

  The Cutthroat shook his head. “Doubt it. Sometimes the eagles show us where the fish are. And sometimes we toss ’em a few in return. We get along all right.”

  Pop nodded, sat back against the earthen wall, and closed his eyes. He took a long pull on his cigarette. “I’ve been all over the post, both Armytown and Navytown, many times. But I’ve seen very few Aleuts or Eskimos. So just from the odds, I doubt that a native is our eagle-killer.”

  As much as I hated saying anything at all in front of the Cutthroat, I couldn’t keep my mouth shut anymore. Pop was infuriating me.

  “There’s a dead man over there!” I yelled, pointing at the section of collapsed roof. “Who cares about the eagle now?”

  Pop opened his eyes and regarded me through a smoky haze.

  “Actually, I don’t care much,” he said. “But because of that dead man, the eagle has become slightly more interesting.”

  “Why?” I asked, still furious. “Just because he had a feather in his pocket? That doesn’t mean anything. He might have found it.”

  Pop’s eyebrows rose. “I don’t think so. He and the eagle have both been dead less than a day. So the coincidental timing, plus the feather in his pocket, suggests a connection. Either he killed the eagle, and then had an unfortunate accident . . . ”

  He fixed his gaze on the Cutthroat again.

  “ . . . or whoever did kill the eagle, or helped him kill it, may have then killed him as well.”

  The Cutthroat ground out his cigarette butt. “I told you guys before. It wasn’t me.”

  “And I still believe you,” Pop said. “I’m just wondering if you might have any idea who it may have been.”

  “Nope,” the Cutthroat said. There was no hesitation.

  Pop leaned back against the wall again and looked up at the holes in the roof.

  “I don’t have any idea either,” Pop said. “But I think you were right about one thing.”

  “Huh?” the Cutthroat said. “What’s that?”

  “Whoever it was, he’s a fucking son of a bitch.”

  The wind seemed to scream louder in response.

  VIII

  The williwaw finally slacked off a little after noon, leaving only blustery gusts. The three of us stirred ourselves on stiff joints and muscles and rose from our places in the main room of the ulax.

  Pop and the Cutthroat had both dozed after finishing their cigarettes, but I had stayed wide awake. I knew who the dead man was. But I hadn’t told Pop yet for fear that the Cutthroat would hear me.

  That was because, while I didn’t recognize this particular Cutthroat, I knew who he was, too. On Attu, the Alaska Scouts had saved my life and the lives of dozens of my buddies, but they hadn’t done it by being kind and gentle souls. They had done it by being cruel and ruthless to our enemies.

  And I knew that a man couldn’t just turn that off once it wasn’t needed anymore. I knew that for a cold fact.

  I boosted Pop up through the hole in the roof where we’d dropped in, and then I followed by j
umping from the raised earthen shelf at the side of the room, grabbing a whalebone roof support, and pulling myself through.

  I joined Pop on the hillock just beside the ulax, blinking against the wind, and then looked back and saw the Cutthroat already standing behind me. It was as if he had levitated.

  “So this thing here is not our fucking problem,” the Cutthroat said, speaking over the wind. “We all agree on that.”

  Pop nodded. “That’s the body of a Navy man. So the private and I will tell the boys at the Navy checkpoint to come have a look. And if they ask our names, or if they know who I am, I’ll be able to handle them. They’re twenty-year-olds who’ve pulled checkpoint duty at the base of an extinct volcano. So they aren’t going to be the brightest minds in our war effort.”

  I didn’t like what Pop was saying. But for the time being, I kept my mouth shut.

  The Cutthroat nodded. “All right, then.” He turned away and started down the slope.

  “We have a jeep,” Pop called after him.

  The Cutthroat didn’t even glance back. So Pop looked at me and shrugged, and he and I started back the way we had come. A few seconds later, when I looked down the slope again, the Cutthroat had vanished.

  When we reached the spot where the dead eagle had been staked, I thought for a moment that we had headed in the wrong direction. But then I saw the rocks I’d used as markers, so I knew we were where I thought we were. The eagle was simply gone. So were the nails. So was my canteen.

  “The Scout was right,” Pop said. “The wind took it.”

  If I tried, I could make out some darkish spots on the bare patch of ground where the bird had been staked, and when I looked up the slope I thought I could see a few distant, scattered feathers. But the eagle itself was somewhere far away now. Maybe the ocean. Maybe even Attu.

  “This is a good thing,” Pop said, continuing on toward the jeep. “Now when you tell the lieutenant colonel that the eagle was gone, you can do so in good conscience. Or good enough. It’s certainly gone now. That fact should get me back to my newspaper until he thinks of some other way to torment me.”

  He looked at me and smiled with those horrible false teeth, as if I should feel happy about the way things had turned out. But I wasn’t feeling too happy about much of anything.

  “What about the man in the lodge?” I asked.

  Pop frowned. “We’re going to report him to the Navy.”

  “I know that,” I said. “But what should I tell the colonel?”

  Pop stopped walking and put his hand on my shoulder.

  “Listen, son,” he said. His eyes were steady and serious. “I’m not joking about this. Are you listening?”

  I gave a short nod.

  “All right.” Pop sucked in a deep breath through his mouth and let it out through his nose. “When you see the lieutenant colonel, don’t mention the dead man. You brought me up here to show me the eagle, as ordered, and it was gone. That’s all. Do you understand?”

  I understood. But I didn’t like it.

  “It’s not right,” I said.

  Pop dropped his hand and gave me a look as if I’d slapped him. “Not right? How much more ‘right’ would the whole truth be? For one thing, there’s no way of knowing how the eagle got into the state it was in. So there’s no way to give the lieutenant colonel that information. But now it’s gone, which means that problem is gone as well.”

  “You know I don’t mean the eagle,” I said.

  Now Pop’s eyes became more than serious. They became grim.

  “Yes, we discovered a dead man,” he said. “And the gutted eagle nearby, plus the feather in the dead man’s pocket, raise some questions. But they’re questions we can’t answer. The simplest explanation? The sailor’s death was an accident. He came up here, either alone or with comrades, got drunk, and hit his head when he passed out. But even if it was manslaughter or murder, he was Navy, and the guilty party is probably Navy as well. So we’re telling the Navy. After that, it’s out of our hands. Besides, Private, what do you suppose the lieutenant colonel would do if you did tell him about it?”

  I didn’t answer. I just stared back at Pop’s grim eyes.

  “I’ll tell you what he’d do,” Pop said. “He’d question us repeatedly. He’d make us trek back up here with M.P.’s. He’d order us to fill out reports in triplicate. He’d force me to run a speculative and sensational story in The Adakian, even though it’s a Navy matter and affects our boys not at all. And then he’d question us again and make us fill out more reports. And all for what? What would the upshot be?”

  I knew the answer. “The upshot,” I said, “would be that the man would still be dead. And it would still be a Navy matter.”

  Pop pointed a finger at me. “Correct. And telling the lieutenant colonel wouldn’t have made any difference at all.”

  I glanced back toward the ulax.

  “It’s still not right,” I said.

  The cold grimness in Pop’s eyes softened. “There’s nothing about a young man’s death that’s right. Especially when it was for nothing. But a lot of young men have died in this war, and some of those died for nothing, too. So the only thing to do is simply what you know must be done, and nothing more. Because trying to do more would be adding meaninglessness to meaninglessness.” He stuck his hands into his jacket pockets. “And in this case, what we must do is tell the Navy. Period.”

  Then he started toward the jeep again. But I didn’t follow.

  “That won’t be the end of it,” I called after him.

  He turned and glared at me. His white hair whipped in the wind.

  “Why not?” he shouted.

  I jerked a thumb backward. “Because I gave him that bruise on his face.”

  Pop stood there staring at me for a long moment, his stick-thin body swaying. I didn’t think he understood.

  “That’s the guy I whipped in the ring yesterday,” I said.

  Pop just stared at me for a few more seconds. Then he took his right hand from his pocket and moved as if to adjust his glasses. But he stopped when he saw that he was holding the bent eagle feather he’d found on the dead man.

  I saw his thin lips move under his mustache. If he was speaking aloud, it was too quietly for me to hear him over the wind. But I saw the words.

  “Nothing but trouble,” he said again.

  IX

  This time, I stayed in the jeep while Pop talked with the Navy boys at the checkpoint. He had said things would go better if I let him handle it. I thought they might give him a bad time, since that had been their inclination with me that morning. But Pop had given a weak laugh when I’d mentioned that. He assured me it wasn’t going to be a problem.

  It took twenty minutes or more. But eventually Pop came back to the jeep. Through the shack’s open doorway, I could see one of the Navy men get on the horn and start talking to someone.

  “Let’s go,” Pop said.

  I still didn’t feel right. I had known the dead man, even if it had only been for a few minutes in a boxing ring. And although I had seen what had happened to the back of his head, and I knew that it had to have happened right there where we’d found him, I couldn’t shake the notion that my clobbering him had somehow led to his death.

  Pop nudged my shoulder. “I said, let’s go. We may have to answer a few questions for whoever investigates, but the odds are against it. Those boys told me that the ulax we found is well known to their comrades as an unapproved recreation hut. They’ve never even heard of Army personnel using it. So this really is a Navy matter.”

  I didn’t respond. Instead I just started the jeep, which clattered and roared as I drove us back down to camp. I didn’t try to talk to Pop on the way. I didn’t even look at him.

  He didn’t say anything more to me, either, until I had stopped the jeep on Main Street near the base of the boardwalk that led up the hill to the Adakian hut. I didn’t mean to shut off the engine, but it died on me anyway.

  “You can go on back
to work,” I said, staring down Main Street at the long rows of Quonset huts interspersed with the occasional slapdash wood-frame building . . . at all the men trudging this way and that through the July mud . . . at the wires on the telephone poles as they hummed and swayed . . . and at the black ravens crisscrossing the gray air over all of it. I still wouldn’t look at Pop. “I’ll tell the colonel the eagle was a bust, like you said.”

  Pop coughed a few times. “What about the dead man?” he asked then. “Are you going to mention him, or are you going to take my advice and leave it to the Navy?”

  Now, finally, I looked at him. What I saw was a scrawny, tired-looking old man. He might have been fifty, but he looked at least eighty to me. And I wanted to dislike him more than I did. I wanted to hate him.

  “I’m going to tell him I found the body,” I said. “But I’ll leave you out of it. And I’ll leave the Cutthroat out of it too, since that’s what we said we’d do. I’ll just say that I spotted the lodge and went to have a look, but you were feeling sick and headed back to the jeep instead. I’ll tell him I found the dead guy and told you about it, but you never saw him. And that we went down and told the Navy.”

  Pop’s eyebrows pinched together. “Not good enough. With a story like that, he’ll want to play detective. So he’ll try to involve me regardless.”

  I shrugged. “That’s the best I can do. I found a dead man while I was doing a chore for the colonel, and I have to tell him. Especially since he arranged for me to fight that same guy. So even if the Navy handles it, he’ll still hear about it. And once he knows where they found him, and when, he’ll ask me about it. So I have to tell him. It’ll be worse later, if I don’t.”

  Pop bit his lip, and I saw his false teeth shift when he did it. He pushed them back in place with his thumb. Then he stared off down Main Street the way I just had.

  “Ever since this morning, I’ve been puzzled,” he said in a low voice. “How is it that a lieutenant colonel is using a private as an aide, anyway? Officers over the rank of captain don’t usually associate with G.I.’s lower than sergeant major. Unless the lower-ranking G.I. has other uses. As I do.”