by Breakup(lit)
was happening she gave a snort of laughter. Mutt, on self-appointed
sentry duty, looked around,
8 ears cocked inquiringly. "It's all right, girl," Kate said, still
laughing, albeit somewhat shakily. "Breakup's making your roomie a
little needy, is all."
The ears remained cocked, as if to say, So what else is new? or maybe,
Get in line. Kate laughed again, and then pulled herself together. There
was work to do. Priority one was a truck tune-up. She'd left the supply
run to Ahtna until too late to take the snow machine.
The truck was an '84 Isuzu diesel with 150,000 miles on it that still
got twenty-six miles per gallon on the straight stretch of former
railroad roadbed between Kate's homestead and the village of Niniltna.
She had high hopes of it going another hundred and fifty thousand, until
either she or the truck died of old age. She sorted through the toolbox
for a wrench, pausing when something halfway between a pig squeal and a
jackass bray wafted into the clearing on a stray breeze. It wasn't the
female this time. Probably the grizzly male one mountain over. Probably
the father of the two cubs. She reached down to feel for the 12-gauge
and found it right where she'd left it, leaning against the front bumper.
By ten a.m. she had pulled the battery and put it on the trickle
charger, drained the water out of the fuel filters, checked the oil,
checked the coolant in the radiator, checked the tire pressure all
around and investigated the possibility of porcupines in the fan belt.
Porcupines were pests damn near as bad as bears, born troublemakers;
they would go for anything rubber for the salt in it-the fan belt, the
tires, once Kate had seen a porcupine chewing through the track of a
Nodwell tractor.
During the tune-up she managed to acquire a metal splinter under the
nail of her right forefinger that looked about a quarter of an inch long
and felt as if it ran all the way up to her elbow. She startled Mutt out
of her nap with a loud oath and went into the cabin to perform emergency
surgery. She daubed the resulting gash with antiseptic, and tried to
remember the last time she'd had a tetanus shot. Niniltna had no health
clinic. Each year the public health nurse came through with an
immunization card for
9 every student in Niniltna Public School, kindergarten through twelfth
grade, but once you graduated, you were on your own. If Kate needed a
tetanus shot, she'd have to drive to Ahtna. Convenient, if that was the
right word, since she had to drive to Ahtna for supplies anyway.
The whistle of the kettle interrupted her reverie. A cup of hot cocoa
sounded like heaven on earth. Unfortunately, she'd used up her last can
of milk the week before, and this morning's coffee had been the end of
the Starbucks Christmas blend, which she bought five pounds at a time,
when she had money in December. She rummaged around for something else,
surfacing eventually with an elderly box of Lemon Zinger. There was some
honey left. Hallelujah. She spooned it into the thick white porcelain
mug with a heavy hand. The resulting brew was tangy and sweet and
scalded her insides.
It was noon and she was hungry, but she'd forgotten to get any meat out
of the cache the night before. She added more honey to her tea and put
Jimmy Buffett on the tape deck, forgetting how dangerous Jimmy was to
listen to during breakup. Kate, too, wanted to go beyond the end, find
one particular harbor, be somewhere over China, take another road, any
road, especially today, preferably to a place where there were no bears.
It was an act of self-defense when she replaced Jimmy with Cyndi Lauper.
Girls just wanna have fun. Which of course brought Jack Morgan back to
mind with an immediacy that set her teeth on edge. She changed Cyndi
Lauper for Les Miserables, sat down on the couch and leaned back with a
contented sigh. Mutt, who had overseen the operation with a critical
eye, flopped down with an equally contented sigh.
Fifteen minutes later Kate jerked awake, the now cool tea sloshing over
the side of the heavy white porcelain mug onto her hand and knee. Mutt
was on her feet, nose to the door, a steady, rumbling growl issuing from
deep in her chest.
"Oh shit," Kate said, and got to her feet.
The .30-06 slid comfortably into her hands, and she flicked off
10 the safety and took a step back as she opened the door. "Stay," she
told Mutt, whose growl had grown in volume.
There was a bear in the yard, and to add insult to injury, it wasn't the
sow she'd encountered that morning, it wasn't even the boar from the
next mountain over. This was an entirely new neighbor, a youngster, two,
three years maybe, and small, no more than three hundred pounds and
change. His brown coat was long and thick and shining from six months of
doing nothing but growing it out underground.
He had managed to bump into the cache, with the result that it was now
on the verge of total collapse, so that the frozen meat inside had
shifted enough to force open the door. Half a dozen packages littered
the ground beneath, and a seventh was at present being finished off with
a single gulp, two layers of butcher paper over two layers of Saran wrap
and all. He lifted his lip in their direction and attacked another package.
Kneeing Mutt, who had expressed a sincere wish to rid the homestead of
its uninvited guest and all his kin, back inside, Kate jacked a round
into the .30-06's chamber. "Get out of here!" she yelled. "Go on! Git,
you big pest, before I turn you into a rug!" Mutt raised her voice in
agreement, sounding considerably more threatening.
The bear stood up on his hind legs and waved his claws, snarling. His
mom had taught him that much before she booted him out, and it worked
pretty well on other mammals and most humans. Kate shot a round into the
ground in front of him. The bear let out a shriek of fear and dropped
forward on all four legs, in the process bumping once more into the cache.
"Oh hell," Kate said.
The much-abused knock-kneed leg folded like a pleat in an accordion and
the other three legs couldn't stand the strain and the cache began a
graceful tilt forward, during which the rest of the meat store fell out
and rained down on the grizzly's head-a roast, a package of ptarmigan
breasts, another roast, a package of mooseburger, five pounds of caribou
ribs. The bewildered grizzly
11 gave a bellow of consternation and bolted like lightning into the east.
A bear in high gear is a sight to evoke awe and admiration, and Kate
would undoubtedly have experienced both those emotions but for one
thing. The open door of the garage was in the bear's way. His right
shoulder clipped it in passing and it ripped easily from its hinges,
whirled merrily around on one corner and flopped down with a squishy
splat as the grizzly, barely checking, crashed through a stand of alders
and was gone.
Kate looked from the garage door lying flat on the ground to the cache
crumpled up on the opposite side of the yard and sat down ha
rd on the
doorstep, the rifle clutched in her hands, waiting for her heart rate to
drop below 200.
"Breakup" she said.
12
One bear encounter per life was one too many. Two in the space of eight
hours seemed, at the very least, excessive.
Still, any number of bears in one's life was preferable to what waited
for her on the kitchen table, a task she'd been putting off for three
months, a task she could no longer delay.
That evening she took a deep breath, got out her self-control and
marched over to the kitchen table, where the booklet entitled
"Instructions for Form 1040" waited for her with a superior smirk on its
government-issue face.
An hour later she felt as she always did on this day at this time of the
year, frustrated and angry and convinced she was destined to spend the
rest of her life in a federal prison in Illinois run by Ida Lupino.
"Income," as usual, was proving to be a problem.
13 On page 15 of the booklet the IRS had provided a helpful guide to
just what kind of income must be reported. Earned income was easy; her
brief but intense employment with RPetCo at Prudhoe Bay the previous
year had pulled in $17,500 in fees and expenses. That went on line , no
problem there. There was the mushroom money from last June as well, but
it had been paid in cash and Kate decided what the IRS didn't know
wouldn't hurt them, or her, either.
She tried to remember where the $17,500 was now. A big chunk of it had
gone for Axenia's classes at UAA, although now that Axenia was married
her husband would be taking over his wife's bills. She didn't approve of
Axenia's choice of husband but at least he'd gotten rich at the
government trough and would relieve her of the burden of Axenia's school
fees. Or so Kate sincerely hoped.
Too much of it had gone for that damn dress-up outfit for that party in
Anchorage last winter. The outfit was hanging in Jack's closet in town,
encased in plastic, and if she had anything to say about it, never to be
worn again. She still begrudged every dime.
Of course, once she'd put it on, Jack Morgan's chief object in life
became a determination to get her out of it as quickly as possible, not
necessarily the worst finale to a forced march through Nordstrom's. She
smiled to herself, and then made an effort and pulled her wayward
imagination back to the subject at hand. Most of what was left of the
Slope income had financed Emaa's potlatch. The rest was in the one-pound
Darigold butter can on the table in front of her.
Kate still wasn't sure if her grandmother had had legal title to the
Niniltna house on the river, but whether she did or not Martha Barnes
and her children lived there now, and possession was nine- tenths of the
law. She decided the IRS didn't need to know about that, either.
Ekaterina's possessions had been distributed among family and friends at
the potlatch. So far as Kate knew, Ekaterina had never had a bank
account. For that matter, Kate didn't think her grandmother had ever
applied for a Social Security number. She'd never
14 had to pay for much; no family member or friend ever came to her
house not bearing gifts. Kate had found seven hundred dollars in small
bills and change in the butter can the twin of Kate's sitting on Emaa's
kitchen table, a moose hindquarter hanging out back, a chest freezer
stuffed with salmon in the round, ptarmigan breasts frozen a dozen per
Ziploc bag and enough caribou to keep the entire village in stew for a
week in the upright freezer next to it. The pantry had yielded up ten
cases of salmon, plain and smoked and kippered, case lots of canned
goods and pilot bread, a case of homemade nagoonberry jelly, another of
strawberry jam, a fifty- pound sack of potatoes, a fifty-pound sack of
onions and two fifty- pound sacks of flour. In the closet hung flowered
house dresses, worn Levi's and half a dozen kuspuks, richly embroidered
and trimmed with fur, all gifts from loving and/or grateful family,
friends, tribal members and shareholders. Money and food both had gone
to the potlatch, the kuspuks to female relatives of the right size, and
now Kate was wondering if she'd inherited all of it and if she had, if
she was supposed to pay taxes on it.
She decided the IRS would never know.
Farm income, now. Would that mean the potatoes Mandy grew and sacked and
traded with Kate for salmon to feed Mandy's dogs? Or would that be farm
income for Mandy and barter income for her? But it wasn't income if it
was an even trade, was it? Kate consulted the booklet. Bartering income
was defined as "fair market value of goods or services you received in
return for your services."
What the hell was that supposed to mean? Salmon weren't services.
Potatoes weren't services, either. They were probably goods, though. How
much did potatoes cost nowadays? She had no idea. She never bought
potatoes, she either grew them herself or traded with Mandy for them.
She wondered if there was some way the IRS could find out about that.
She wondered how Mandy had filled out her IRS form, if she had included
Kate's salmon as income from barter.
The vision of the federal prison in Illinois faded, to be replaced by
one of a chain gang in Mississippi, bossed by Strother Martin.
15 She made herself another cup of tea and dosed it liberally with the
last of the honey. She sat back down at the table and drew a pad and
pencil to her and started making out a grocery list, paperwork that was
more her speed, but then Kate had always had a tendency to think with
her stomach. Coffee, flour, butter, salt, seasonings, milk, canned
goods, she was out of everything.
Breakup. If she could just go to sleep at the end of February and wake
up on Memorial Day, the truck running and the cupboards full-and taxes
filed-life would be so much easier.
She dawdled over the list until the sun had gone down and it was time to
light the lamps. She drew out the task as long as she could, checking
the fuel, trimming the wicks, polishing the chimneys until they shone
like crystal. When she was finished, the interior of the cabin was
filled with a warm and welcoming golden glow. She stood admiring it for
a while, and her thoughts wandered to her next-door neighbor. She
wondered if Mandy's parents had arrived on schedule. She wondered if Mr.
and Mrs. Baker had tax problems. Probably not. They probably had a fleet
of tax attorneys on retainer. Them that has, gets.
The distant whine of a jet engine broke the silence. Probably an F-14 on
maneuvers from Elmendorf or Eielson. Even on a remote site in the
Alaskan bush, you couldn't get away from the sonuvabitchin' feds. The
reminder drove her back to the kitchen table, before they parachuted an
IRS auditor down into her front yard.
She had just resumed her seat when Mutt, dozing next to the stove, woke
up with a snort and lunged to her feet.
Startled, Kate said, "What's wrong, girl? What's going on?"
Mutt made a troubled sound halfway between a growl and a whimper. Her
rangy body tense, she stood with her head cocked, ears up, yellow eyes
narrowed, attention fixed on something Kate could neither hear nor see.
Kate didn't like it, not one little bit. Very carefully, she put her
pencil down and rose to her feet. "What's wrong, girl?"
A second half-growl, half-whine was her only answer. It was a sound
unlike anything else Kate had ever heard from Mutt, and a
16 prickle of unease rippled up her spine. She walked to the window.
Through it, the yard looked much as she had left it, a half-circle of
buildings surrounding a clearing with a small, filthy red-and- white
truck with a homemade toolbox in the back, a snow machine, a collapsed
cache and a scattered woodpile, all well illuminated in that maddening
half-light of an Arctic spring evening when the sun was down but not
out. A breeze toyed with the tops of the trees, and far above cumulus
clouds scudded across the sky, attesting to much stronger winds at the
higher elevations.
"What is it, girl?" Kate said softly. "What do you hear? Did that baby