Village of the Ghost Bears

by Stan Jones

The door opened, and Active sensed Long behind him.

  “This is Officer Long,” Active said. “Yes, he’s with me.”

  “Hiya, Pingo,” Long said. “How ya been?”

  Kivalina stared over Active’s shoulder at Long with no sign of recognition, then refocused on Active. “No, not him. That qavvik—he come with you?”

  “There’s no one else,” Active said. “Just Officer Long.”

  “You never come with that qavvik?”

  Apparently, Kivalina was crazy, perhaps crazy enough to have set the Rec Center fire. If he wanted to talk about a wolverine, perhaps that was the best way to get him going.

  “What qavvik?” Active asked. “The one that killed your sister?”

  Kivalina lifted his eyebrows.

  “And now it’s trying to kill you?”

  Kivalina lifted his eyebrows again. “He try burn me up in that Rec Center.”

  “The wolverine set the Rec Center on fire?”

  “Ah-hah.”

  “And that’s how you burned your arm?”

  Kivalina rubbed the red skin around his elbow. “Ah-hah.”

  “And that’s how Tom Gage got burned?”

  “Ah-hah, he got burned too, all right, except he never get out.”

  “And you were staying with him in Chukchi?”

  Another eyebrow-raise.

  “Some people are thinking maybe you’re the qavvik that burned up the Rec Center and killed Tom Gage.”

  “Somebody say that?”

  “What if they did?”

  “They’re lying. I never

  “They’re lying. I never do it. I’m not no qavvik.”

  “The qavvik’s not around, so you don’t have to be afraid. Now tell me about when the Rec Center burned and you got out.”

  Kivalina struggled shakily to his feet and leaned against the mirror, blood dripping from his nose. He glanced at his crotch. “Look like I piss myself. How that happened?”

  “You don’t remember?”

  “Remember what?”

  Active shook his head and looked at Long, who rolled his eyes. Active turned back to Kivalina. “You sit at the table there, and Officer Long will get you some dry clothes.”

  Active turned to Long, who raised his eyebrows and slipped out the door. Active took a seat at the table. Kivalina righted his chair and seated himself across from Active, then jumped up as if it was no fun sitting in the sodden coveralls. He sat down again on the edge of the chair.

  “Look,” Active said. “We were talking about that fire in Chukchi.”

  “Ah-hah.”

  “You can have a lawyer here when we talk if you want.”

  “Yeah, they tell me that when I’m arrested, all right.”

  “Or you don’t have to talk at all if you don’t want to.”

  Pingo looked puzzled. “Why I don’t want to?”

  Active shook his head and plowed through the rest of the Miranda warning, one element at a time. When he was finished, he wasn’t sure Kivalina had understood any of it, but it would have to do.

  “All right.” Active cleared his throat. “You said the qavvik burned the Rec Center?”

  “I say that?”

  Active lifted his eyebrows.

  “Well, it’s true. He try burn me up, all right.”

  “And who is this qavvik?”

  “You know him already.”

  “I know him? How do you know that?”

  Kivalina looked away.

  “Can you tell me his name?”

  Kivalina squinted in refusal. “I can’t say it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Too scare.”

  “Why would he want to burn the Rec Center?”

  “He can do that if we try kill him, ah?”

  “You and your sister tried to kill him? That’s why he killed her and why he’s trying to kill you?”

  “My sister try kill him? She never tell me that.”

  Active frowned and rubbed his chin. Pingo Kivalina had the attention span of a flea. How to keep him on track? If there was a track.

  “How you know my sister?” Kivalina asked. “I never remember you being around Budzie. You got the great weather in you?”

  Active sighed and climbed on for the ride. “The great weather?”

  “Budzie always say that what she’s looking for, a man with the great weather inside him.”

  “What did she mean by that?”

  “She have this song she always sing.” Kivalina’s face softened and looked suddenly feminine. When he sang, his voice was a woman’s, and Active found the hair prickling on the back of his neck:

  The great sea

  has sent me adrift,

  it moves me

  like a weed in the great river,

  Earth and the great weather

  move me,

  have carried me away

  and move my inward parts with joy.

  Kivalina was silent for a time, then was a man when he spoke again. “You move her inward parts with joy? That what she mean by a man with the great weather inside him. She always look for that man.”

  “I never knew your sister.”

  “Nobody really know her but me. We’re twins, ah?”

  Active lifted his eyebrows. “I heard that.”

  “But our aaka never know she got two of us in there. After Budzie come out, she think she’s all done, then I pop out too. Like a pingo, what she always tell people. So everybody always call me Pingo.” Kivalina smiled, and his face took on a distant look.

  “Tell me more about your sister.”

  “Ah-hah,” Kivalina said. “When we’re little, we have our own language. Nobody else can’t talk it, only us. You know what our aaka call it?”

  Active shook his head.

  “Twinupiaq, ah-hee-hee.”

  Kivalina paused, waiting for Active’s response. Active smiled dutifully and, he hoped, encouragingly.

  “You ever have a twin, Mr.—what your name again?”

  “Active. Nathan Active.”

  “You ever have a twin, Mr. Nathan?”

  Active was about to correct Kivalina, then decided against it. “No, I only have a half-brother.”

  “When we’re little kids in Cape Goodwin, that’s when we talk it, Twinupiaq.”

  Active nodded, trying to think of a way to snap Kivalina back to the present again. “Are you sure it was the qavvik that killed Budzie? I heard she died in a plane crash.”

  “Hah!” Kivalina snorted. “It was that qavvik, all right. She tell me.”

  “She told you? How could she do that if she was dead?”

  “I hear Dad-Dad barking while I’m asleep, then I dream I’m awake and she’s there and she say, ‘We never katak in that plane.’ Then I know that qavvik kill her, all right. That’s why we go up there.”

  “Dad-Dad? Your father was bark—who’s Dad-Dad?”

  “That’s our dog. Budzie’s and mine. Dad-Dad is dead, too.”

  “Ah. So your sister came around with your dog?”

  “Ah-hah, she come around while I’m dreaming, say, ‘We never katak in that plane.’ Then I know that qavvik kill her, all right. Her and Dad-Dad. That’s why we go up there.”

  “You went up there?”

  Kivalina lifted his eyebrows yes.

  “You went up to where the qavvik killed her?”

  Kivalina lifted his eyebrows again. “Ah-hah, that place they call Driftwood, where they never katak in that qavvik’s plane.”

  Driftwood? It took Active a moment to remember. Driftwood was the oil-company airstrip Cowboy had identified as their best hope in the event of an engine failure in the Brooks Range. But why would Pingo Kivalina go where his sister had died? And how?

  “You went to—” Active paused at the sound of the door opening behind him. Alan Long stepped in with a pair of the orange jail coveralls under his arm.

  “Here ya go, Pingo.” Long dropped the coveralls onto the table in front of Kivalina.

  K
ivalina put a hand on the jailwear and looked at the two officers. “I have to do it with you guys in here?”

  “We’ll give you some privacy.” Active motioned for Long to follow him out of the room.

  Through the mirror, they watched as Kivalina peeled off the coveralls with the stain at the crotch and tossed them into a corner. He looked down at his boxers, then stripped them off, exposing the scrawniest butt Active had ever seen.

  “Look at that,” Long said. “A real Eskimo, all right.”

  Active looked. “What?”

  “He’s got the blue spot. See, right there over his left cheek?”

  Now Active saw it. A kidney-shaped patch the color of a faded ink stain in the small of Kivalina’s back. “That makes him a real Eskimo?”

  Long raised his eyebrows. “The doctors call ’em Mongolian spots. We call ’em Eskimo spots. I have one in the same place. Don’t you?”

  “Not there,” Active said after a moment’s reflection. “But I’ve got a blue birthmark under one arm. That count?”

  Long raised his eyebrows again. “It does if it’s blue, I think.”

  Kivalina had pulled on the fresh coveralls and was now attempting to sit back down at the table. But he overturned his chair and had to set it upright.

  “What do you think?” Long asked. “Crazy?”

  Active chewed his lip and studied their suspect, who had slid down in the chair and was leaning his head back, in apparent preparation for a nap. “Evidently.”

  “There’s a lot of schizophrenia in Cape Goodwin,” Long said. “You know, they say it’s famous for—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know,” Active said. “Everybody knows. And maybe they’re right, at least in Pingo’s case. He keeps talking about this qavvik who’s to blame for everything. The qavvik killed his sister. The qavvik killed their dog. The qavvik set the Rec Center on fire. Pingo even tried to kill the qavvik, he says.”

  “You think the qavvik is Pingo’s other self?”

  Active shrugged. “It seems to fit. Pingo did get burned in the fire. Maybe that’s how he tried to kill the qavvik.”

  Long shuddered as he looked at Kivalina through the mirror. “And got all of those other people instead.”

  Active was silent for a long time. “Maybe we can punch through it somehow, maybe talk to the qavvik himself.”

  “How?”

  “Maybe Budzie’s our lever.”

  “The sister?”

  Active nodded. “She seems to have been a kind of mother figure to him. Every thread eventually leads back to her.”

  Long rubbed his chin and lifted his eyebrows. “You’re right. But how do we use her? She died what, over a year ago?”

  Kivalina was tapping his long, dirty fingernails on the tabletop and looking around the room. He seemed suddenly more alert, less hung over, the nap forgotten.

  “You ever hear the exact name of the spot where she was killed?”

  Long thought for a moment, then squinted the negative. “Doesn’t seem like it, no.”

  “Pingo says it was at Driftwood.”

  “That old strip on the Utukok?”

  “Uh-huh. Pingo says a wolverine killed his sister at Driftwood,” Active said. “Not a crash, but a wolverine. And then he went up there. Pingo and somebody else.” And then he went up there. Pingo and somebody “He say who the somebody else was?”

  Active shook his head.

  Long shrugged. “Driftwood, huh? Could be, I guess. Guys with airplanes go up there sometimes to hunt caribou. The herds come through there on their way south in late summer, early fall. But how would Budzie—”

  “Tom Gage!”

  “Sure,” Long said. “He was a pilot and—”

  “Shit, maybe he’s the qavvik Pingo keeps raving about. There’s a crash, Budzie dies, Pingo blames Gage, and here we are.”

  Long frowned. “But why would Pingo go up there afterward?”

  “Maybe he just had to see the spot,” Active said. “Touch it. Take a memento back. Maybe talk to her. She and the dog apparently came to him in a dream and she told him there was no crash. Maybe he wanted to camp out up there, see if she’d put in a personal appearance.”

  They turned and studied Kivalina, who had risen and was pacing the room.

  “If you’re Pingo Kivalina, it probably makes perfect sense to barbecue eight or ten people alive to get the guy who killed your twin sister,” Active said. “And he was staying with Gage—”

  “He told you that?”

  Active nodded. “So he could have taken a wire twister.”

  “Sounds right,” Long said. “But how do we get through to him?”

  They studied Kivalina some more. “Look,” Active said at last, “you go to North Slope Public Safety; talk to the investigator on the crash; go through their files. We need everything they have. Especially pictures. The more graphic the better.”

  “And what are you going to do?”

  Active chewed his lip again. He needed the details of Budzie’s crash before confronting Kivalina again, but it didn’t seem like a good idea to leave him on his own for very long. He was still pacing and had begun shaking a finger in the air, as if lecturing an invisible audience. Was he rehearsing his story before trying it on Active? Or was he about to go over the cliff completely?

  “I guess I should try to keep him talking,” Active said. “Just get back as soon as you can.”

  Long nodded and started for the door of the observation room.

  “Oh,” Active said. “And take those, would you?” He pointed through the glass at the soiled coveralls piled in the corner of the interrogation room.

  “Arii!” Long said. But he walked into the room with Active and left with the malodorous apparel.

  Kivalina, who had halted the lecture when they came in, was now huddled in a corner, his eyes skittering around the room.

  “Come back to the table,” Active said. “Come on. No one will hurt you.”

  Kivalina walked over and perched on the edge of the chair opposite Active, coiled like a spring.

  Active sighed inwardly and tried to think how to get him talking again. But not about the crash, not now. Now they needed a neutral subject.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “I HEARD THERE’S A lot of polar bears in Cape Goodwin,” Active said finally.

  “Ah-hah,” Pingo said. “Used to.”

  “Used to? The bears don’t come into the village now?”

  “Not so much since that nanuq eat my cousin Ossie Barton few years ago.”

  “I heard that. He got it with a knife before it killed him?”

  Kivalina raised his eyebrows. “He was a tough guy, that Ossie. After he’s kill, we start hunting them more, all right, try keep them away from town. Village council even have a bounty from their bingo game and Rippies for a while. Then the government hear about it, make ’em stop.”

  “Mm-hmm. The white people Outside like polar bears.”

  Kivalina raised his eyebrows. “Me and Budzie never quit, though. We always like to be out on the ice hunting, even if there’s no bounty.”

  “Your sister was a polar bear hunter?”

  “I thought you never meet her. How you know she hunt nanuqs?”

  Active, nonplused, tried to think of something to say. Evidently Kivalina’s attention span was shrinking again. “Everybody talked about it,” he answered finally.

  “Ah-hah,” Kivalina said. “She’s pretty famous hunter, all right. Me and her and Dad-Dad and Susie, we always hunt them nanuqs.”

  “Dad-Dad and Susie?”

  “You know about them already? They’re good dogs, ah?”

  “Susie was a dog too?”

  “I thought you know about them.”

  “I might have heard about them.” Active shifted in his chair. The demented conversation was clouding his mind. He felt like he needed a nap.

  “Dad-Dad, she’s the best dog in Cape Goodwin, all right. Big, strong, fast dog.”

  “Dad-Dad was a fem
ale?” Active felt like a recorder, playing back whatever Kivalina said.

  “Ah-hah,” Kivalina said with a lift of the eyebrows. “Budzie name her that because she’s born right after our dad die. Budzie think maybe he’ll come back in that pup little bit. That’s why she name her Dad-Dad. You know what?”

  “What?”

  “When we’re out on the ice, I never see that Dad-Dad asleep same time as Budzie. If Budzie’s awake, then Dad-Dad might take a nap. But if Budzie go to sleep, somehow Dad-Dad will know and she’ll wake up, keep watch.” Kivalina sat up straight, widened his eyes, and stretched his neck, presumably to portray a dog on alert. “That Dad-Dad, she’s Budzie’s dog. Won’t hardly have nothing to do with nobody else, not even me. But I got Susie, all right. You ever hunt nanuq, Mr. Nathan?”

  Active shook his head in a largely futile attempt to clear it. “And Susie. Susie was a male?”

  Kivalina recoiled with an indignant look. “Where you hear that? Susie was Dad-Dad’s sister. She’s not no male!”

  “Right,” Active said. “I must have gotten her mixed up with another dog.”

  “Ah-hah,” Kivalina said. “Susie isn’t no male, that’s for sure.”

  “I’m sure she’s not.”

  “You ever hunt nanuq, Mr. Nathan?”

  “No, I don’t think they have them around Chukchi.”

  “Not so much,” Kivalina agreed. “All those white people you got in Chukchi scare ’em away, I guess. We used to get lot of them around Cape Goodwin till Ossie Barton get eat up, though. You heard about that?”

  Active decided it would be pointless to remind Kivalina they had already discussed this. “Yes, I think I heard of that.”

  “That’s when Budzie and me start hunting them a lot. You ever hunt them, Mr. Nathan?”

  Active, sensing the conversation heading for an endless loop, just said, “Mmmm.”

  “It’s pretty easy with dogs, all right, at least when there’s not so many leads open and you can use a snowgo. Not so easy if there’s leads. Then you gotta use your dog team and take an umiaq to get across them leads.”

  “Mmm,” Active said again.

  “But with snowgos it’s easy. See, we just leave some old meats few miles out on the ice, maybe it’s a seal we catch or some real old whale meats, too stinky to eat no more. Then in about a day or two, we go back out there on our snowgos to see if there’s any bears. If nanuq is there, or if there’s any tracks around, we chase ’im on the snowgos till he’s kinda tire, can’t run so fast any more. Then we stop, and them dogs jump off the snowgos and get the bear for us.”