by Breakup(lit)
"One day, maybe two."
"How long before I'm reimbursed?"
"You'll have to take that up with the Earlybird representative."
"Which one is he?"
He pointed at a skinny man with a thin, harried face standing on the
other side of the wreckage. "The name's Kevin Bickford. He's Earlybird's
director of operations for the state."
"Thanks," Kate said, and walked around the wreckage to tap Bickford on
the shoulder. He turned and stared at her uncomprehendingly.
"Kate Shugak, Mr. Bickford." He looked blank, and she added pointedly,
"This is my homestead your jet engine just trashed."
He cringed inside his oversize parka, reminding her of nothing so much
as a parky squirrel diving down the nearest hole. He even looked a
little like a parky squirrel, with small, bright eyes set close on
either side of an insignificant little nose that didn't look as if it
could suck in enough oxygen to keep a gnat alive. His teeth, bared in a
failed attempt at an ingratiating smile, were little and white, with the
exception of the front two, which were big and buck. "Mr. Bickford, as
far as I'm concerned, this could not have happened at
25 a worse time. I need my truck. When will I be reimbursed for the
damage done by your engine?"
He couldn't hide his look of surprise, and Kate wondered sourly if he
thought broken gutturals would have been more appropriate to her brown
skin, black braids and Bush lifestyle.
Bickford cleared his throat nervously. Kate raised her brows and waited.
His gaze fell on the scar at her throat and widened.
"Holy-"
"About restitution, Mr. Bickford," Kate said.
He flushed and his eyes slid past her guiltily. "Well, Ms. Shageluk-"
"Shugak," she said, patiently for her. "SHOOgack."
"Of course." His smile was weak. It matched his chin. "Well, Ms.
Shungnak." Close, but no cigar. Kate left it for another day. "I don't
rightly know when you can expect restitution. We have to assess the
damage first, of course. Get an estimate on the replacement value of
your truck, that sort of thing."
"Including delivery here," she said.
"Of course, of course," he said hurriedly.
"And not forgetting the collateral damage done to the tools in the garage."
"No," he said obediently.
"Or the interior of my cabin, and the contents therein, not to mention
the roof."
"Certainly not."
What the hell. "And the meat cache."
He took it without a blink. "Of course."
"Fine," she said. "I'll start a list. One more thing."
Relieved that it was only one more thing, he said almost eagerly, "Yes?"
"I don't want a check."
He blinked. "No check?"
"No. Cash. Nothing bigger than a hundred, please. Fifties if you can
manage it." Cash because the nearest bank was Ahtna,
26 and fifties because it was next to impossible to get change for a
hundred in the Bush during breakup anywhere except maybe the Roadhouse.
Everybody was broke, even Bernie, who let customers drink on tab until
they made their first set of the year.
She saw no need to explain herself to Bickford, who looked a little
dazed by the request, but such was the force of her personality that he
found himself mumbling agreement.
The go team went about its business, locating, identifying and
cataloging the various pieces off the engine around the clearing and
marking their location on a map they had drawn of the site five minutes
after they had arrived. Other than requesting, very politely, that she
touch nothing, they hadn't bothered Kate much. Except for the
photographer, whose flash had to be about ready to wear out. Kate would
be seeing spots for the rest of the week.
She left Mutt to supervise the debris collection process from a post
next to the woodpile and went back to her cabin. The interior looked as
if the second chinook of the year had passed directly through it, books
and canned goods and cassette tapes alternating with glass shards and
wood splinters all over the floor. She couldn't even put on any music to
drown out the sounds of the people outside because one of the turbine
blades had skewered the cassette deck, an electronic shish kebab. Not
that there was anything to play after the piece off the engine squashed
most of her tapes.
A can of stewed tomatoes looked like breakfast, and she dumped it into a
bowl and ate to the accompaniment of a low hum of conversation and an
occasional clang of metal from the yard. She did her best to ignore
both, but as she was scraping the bottom of the bowl, rain began to
patter on the roof, and through the hole onto the couch and the box of
crushed tapes beneath it. She heaved a sigh, went out to the garage,
located the ladder among the wreckage and set it up against the eaves of
the cabin.
The hole was about a foot and a half in diameter. The good news was that
it appeared to have missed all the rafters. Kate went
27 back to the garage, started the generator, plugged in the power saw,
mercifully intact, and cut a piece of plywood to fit the outside and a
piece of Sheetrock to fit the inside and scrounged up enough pink
insulation to stuff in between. Caulking, tar paper and shingles
followed. A quantity of Spackle later and the job was done, except for
painting. Kate had a dreary suspicion that she'd have to paint the
entire inside of the roof to make it match, but that was for tomorrow,
when the Spackle had dried.
O joy, Of rapture, it was time for lunch. A can of retried beans heated
up and seasoned with garlic powder and oregano was better than cold
stewed tomatoes. She cleaned up the kitchen, tossing the ventilated
canned goods and restoring the rest to the shelves above and below the
counter, adding as she did so to the grocery list, which was beginning
to resemble the provisional logistics for D-Day.
After that it was time to start a list of everything Earlybird was going
to replace whether they wanted to or not. She started with the tape deck
and Ae box of tapes beneath the couch. The list was over fifty titles
before she was done.
She moved on to the books, where the news was even worse. The copy of
The Wind in the Willows with the wonderful Michael Hague illustrations
had been pierced through the center, stabbed to the heart, a fatal
wound. Next to it, Louise Erdrich's Tracks had the cover peeled back
like an onion. "Goddammit," she said, and started another list.
Halfway down it came the sound of raised voices from the yard. They got
louder. She marched over to the door and yanked it open, ready to kick ass.
The go team were clustered in a group in the center of the clearing,
around two of their own, a man and a woman. Stewman, his back to the
cabin, heard the door open and turned.
She glared at him. "What's with all the noise?"
He glanced back at the group. "We've, ah, we've run into a little, uh,
well, I guess you could call it a snag." He tried to smile but it didn't
take.
28 The woman, a slender redh
ead with freckles, looked as if she was
going to throw up. The man next to her, the albino blond, looked
terrified. Kate took a step forward. "What's going on?"
Stewman glanced back around the circle, and back at Kate. "We, uh, well,
we found a body."
Kate stared at him. "I beg your pardon?'
He shoved back his cap to scratch his head, and resettled it firmly.
"There's usually a pattern to the way debris scatters in an incident
like this one. I sent Selina and Brandon"- he indicated the terrified
man and the nauseous woman -"out to canvass." He paused. "They found a
body instead."
"They found a what?"
"A dead body," John Stewman said for the third time. He had regained his
composure and he was patient and apologetic but firm. "The body of a
dead man." He glanced back at Selina and Brandon. "I gather it's not in
the best of shape."
Kate stared at him. He wasn't joking. She sat down heavily upon the
doorstep. Mutt, concerned, deserted her post near the woodpile and
trotted forward to nose at her cheek. Kate put an arm around her neck
and rested her forehead against the thick gray fur. "You're not kidding,
are you," she said into Mutt's ruff.
"No."
"Why me?" Kate said.
"If not you, who?" Stewman said brightly. "If not now, when?" She raised
her head to look at him. Just look. He sobered. "Sorry."
"Where?" she said, mostly just to be saying something. Ex-DA's
investigator on automatic.
Stewman pulled off his cap again and smoothed back his shaggy mane of
hair, a nervous habit. "About three miles that way." He pointed roughly
southwest, away from the Yukon Territory and toward Valdez.
The Earlybird man said apprehensively, "How did he die? Did you see any
parts off the engine nearby?"
Stewman raised an eyebrow and said sardonically, "Don't worry, Bickford,
this guy's been there longer than last night."
29 Brandon shuddered his agreement. Selina made a stifled sound and
clapped her hand over her mouth. She staggered off a few steps and lost
her lunch on the ground right next to the snow machine.
"Did you send for the trooper?" Kate said.
Stewman held up a two-way radio. "We called it in on Channel 9. Talked
to somebody in Niniltna, a ham operator-"
"Bobby Clark."
He nodded. "That's the guy. He said he'd call the trooper in Tok."
"Good," Kate said without enthusiasm. Just what she needed, on today of
all days, a smartass trooper with the mating instincts of a tomcat and
the come-on repertoire of Casanova. A thought occurred. "You said three
miles? That way?" She pointed.
"More or less. Selina and Brandon said it was pretty rough going. My
guess is it's closer rather than farther away."
What with one thing and another, it had been a very long twenty-four
hours, even for breakup. Not one but two close encounters of the ursine
kind, a jet engine falling out of the sky to smash flat her primary
means of summer transportation, a hole in the roof and, oh yes, let us
not forget, income tax.
And now, on top of everything else, a body. "You know what?" Kate said
brightly. "If you found the body three miles that way, it isn't on my
homestead, so it's not my problem." She got to her feet and dusted her
hands. "It's not my problem," she repeated firmly, willing herself to
believe it. "You can leave, and you can take your pieces of engine and
your bodies and your go team with you." She looked at Bickford. "Now."
Stewman had the audacity to laugh out loud. "Is this what they call the
bum's rush?"
"Off," she said to Bickford, pointing in the general direction of Seattle.
Bickford had donned a too-big gimme cap whose brim came down to the end
of his nose. It had a patch with a red-and-white jet on a robin's egg
blue background and a border reading "Around
30 the Clock, Around the World." The name Earlybird Air Freight was
inscribed on the bill. He snatched the cap off to wring it between his
hands. "I'm sorry, Ms. Shungnak," he said, searching desperately for
understanding, forgiveness and even a trace of fellow feeling in Kate's
stony expression, "but I'm afraid it'll be a while before we get the
equipment in here to do that." He nodded at Kate's squashed truck and
the engine on top of it. "Sucker weighs more than four tons."
Four tons? Eight thousand pounds? A shiver ran down Kate's spine as she
realized again just how close the world had come to losing her. For some
reason it made her even angrier and she rallied, her chin coming up and
taking aim. "I don't give a shit about any problems you might have,
Bickford. You're in the air freight business. Find a Here or a
helicopter and fly it out, or mush it out on a dogsled, or haul it out
on a horse-drawn cart." Her voice rose. "I don't give a good goddam how
you do it. I want you people off my land. You got that?" She rose to her
feet. "You're trespassing. I want you off my land." She fumbled behind
her for the door handle.
"Ms. Shungnak, please, be reasonable. We can't-"
"Git!" she said. "Don't even fly over here anymore!" As she turned to go
back inside the cabin, Mutt spoiled her grand exit with an anxious
whine. "What!" Kate said furiously. "What now!"
Mutt had her ears cocked, and she was looking east. At least this time
it couldn't be a jet engine falling off; jet engines didn't fall
horizontally. It was something, though, because, now that Kate had
stopped yelling they could all hear an approaching sound like a herd of
elephants crashing through the underbrush. A sec- I and later and the
herd of elephants smashed through into the I clearing and resolved
itself into a bull moose, young, his antlers mere beginning spikes.
This barely had time to register, as he was moving like he was up
against Secretariat in the Kentucky Derby, a flat-out, no-holds barred,
down-the-straightaway gallop. He pounded through the clearing and people
leapt out of the way and into trees, with the!
31 sole exception of the Earlybird man, who appeared to possess no
self-protective instincts whatsoever. The moose ran right over the top
of him and charged out the other side of the clearing, crashing through
the underbrush with a fine disregard for the scenery.
Kate put one foot out to see if Bickford was all right-she didn't want
him damaged before she had the cash in hand-and in the next instant drew
it back smartly. The race was not limited to a single contestant. No
indeed, hard on the heels of the bull moose was a grizzly bear, the same
cache-robbing youngster Kate had run off the day before. She opened her
mouth to shout a warning but there was no need, g-men diving for cover
for the second time in as many minutes. She reached for the rifle over
the door, but there was no need for that, either, as she had just enough
time to see the harried expression on his face before the bear ran
straight across the clearing and on through the brush, taking the trail
the moose had broken for him.
Three bear encounters in two days was almost enemy
action, and Kate was
inclined to be indignant. So was Mutt, who took off in pursuit, barking
excitedly.
"Mutt!" Kate yelled.
Mutt skidded to a halt, and was giving Kate a reproachful look as the
bear's backside disappeared, when the sound of gas engines going flat