A Night Too Dark

by Dana Stabenow

  Park Air erupted back into life, Bobby’s voice sounding disgruntled. “—there’s Jimmy Moonin on his tricycle, although I don’t know what the hell he’s got on his head. Some kind of pad—Oh.” Kate later learned that seven-year-old Jimmy had appropriated one of his mother’s Kotex pads and wrapped it around one eye. In the interests of verisimilitude he’d stained it with a liberal application of red food coloring, but that was not known by the people watching the parade.

  Bobby rallied. “Kid’s got a hell of an arm on him, look at him field that Hershey bar! Way to go, Jimmy! Bernie Koslowski’s gonna be looking serious at you when it comes time to recruit for the basketball team! I’m thinking point guard!”

  Bobby’s voice dropped to the low rumble that sounded like a Harley hog in neutral. A long time ago Kate had had the pleasure of hearing that rumble up close and personal, and she couldn’t stop a nostalgic shiver at the memory.

  “A positive rain of Hershey bars out of the back of the Suulutaq dump truck, flung personally by mine superintendent Vern Truax in company with attendant nymphs. Vern tells me he’s let the nonessential employees off the chain for the day, which explains today’s record crowd. Just another show of goodwill on the part of Vern and the Suulutaq Mine, and I know we all—ouch! Goddammit, Dinah!”

  Dinah’s voice came over the airwaves loud and clear, if more distant from the mike than Bobby’s. “The Suulutaq dump truck isn’t the only float in the parade.”

  Kate looked at the radio. No one listening could have mistaken the edge in Dinah’s voice.

  “Well, pardon fucking me!”

  “Pardonfuckingme!” Katya said.

  There was a growl and a squeal and a squawk and this time Park Air went off the air for good.

  Just as well. The Grosdidiers would be bringing up the rear in their mustard yellow Silverado, Vern Truax would throw the last candy bar, and everyone would adjourn to the potluck barbecue at the gym, the games and races for the kids, and the Red Run Roust-abouts playing garage band rock and roll until midnight, when there would be fireworks detonated from the Grosdidier brothers’ dock. It would still be light out, so mostly people would see clouds of smoke drifting across the river in the half-light of a sun that was teetering its way around the horizon, but that was okay. Nobody expected anything different, and everyone enjoyed whining about it afterward.

  She wondered if there was a chance of Jim getting back in time for a swim before they turned in for the night, and smiled to herself at the prospect.

  For the moment she leaned back, closed her eyes, and wallowed in an Alaskan summer. Her enjoyment was all the richer because it was so unaccustomed. At this very moment she should have been counting fish on the deck of the Freya in Alaganik Bay, one boat to starboard, another to port, both crews pitching an unending silver cascade of red salmon over the gunnels and if she was lucky into the hold. Half a dozen more boats would be waiting their turn to deliver and more pulling their nets to get in line. Old Sam would be in the galley, writing out fish tickets and cursing fishermen and tender summaries and Fish and Game catch reports with a fine impartiality.

  Instead, she had coerced Old Sam into hiring Petey Jeppsen in her place. Old Sam did not take kindly to newbies stumbling around his old wooden tub, tripping over head buckets and deck boards and mooring lines and incapable of telling a humpy from a dog, but after the requisite amount of grumbling, he took Petey on. When she shouted him down, he took on Phyllis Lestinkof as well. “Turning the Freya into a goddamn orphanage,” Old Sam said, but in about seven and a half months Phyllis was going to need every dime she could lay her hands on, and she knew her way around a drifter so deckhand on a fish tender wouldn’t be that big a learning curve.

  Meanwhile, Kate remained on her homestead and attended to her garden, reveling in the vibrant plant life, the warm temperatures, the hours she had to potter around doing long-delayed chores, or read a book. Or lie back on her rock and enjoy the sun on her face.

  Above all, there was the blissful solitude. Actual hours, connected one to the other, sometimes stretching into entire days during which she didn’t have to so much as say hello to anyone. No disentangling Park rats’ messy lives, no cleaning up auntie-made messes, no fighting over the goddamn Suulutaq Mine. Peace was what she had, a rare and perfect—

  A polite cough. “Excuse me.”

  Kate came bolt upright at the same moment Mutt leaped to her feet. They both looked in the direction of the voice. Mutt growled. Kate felt like it.

  She shaded her eyes against the sun. “Who—Oh. Holly, Holly Haynes, right? Suulutaq geologist?”

  “Right.” The other woman came forward, a tentative smile on her face, and they shook hands. Kate hadn’t seen her since the case of the disappearing miner the month before. “Sorry to bother you. You looked pretty comfortable.” She looked at Mutt, who was still growling.

  “Mutt.”

  Mutt held the growl for a few seconds more before shutting it down, just so Kate would know it was her own idea. Truth was, she was as embarrassed as Kate. It had been a long time since either one of them had allowed anyone to sneak up on them.

  “I didn’t hear your car,” Kate said.

  Haynes made a vague gesture behind her. “I wasn’t sure I had the right place, so I parked at the turnoff and walked in.”

  Kate nodded and promised herself that whoever had given Haynes directions to her homestead would pay for it one day. It wasn’t like she hated the very sight of Suulutaq’s staff geologist, but Kate did not approve of people dropping by uninvited. Besides, she had the uneasy feeling that her holiday had just been, if not ruined, say then shortened by press of business, and duty.

  Contrary to conventional wisdom, it was not good to be queen.

  She led the way back to the house. There she offered Haynes her choice of coffee or Diet 7UP and a plate of chocolate chip cookies. It was as far as she was prepared to go in hospitality, and she hoped it would discourage Haynes from a long visit. Mutt had followed them as far as the deck, and through the living room windows Kate had a clear view of her sprawled in the sun. Kate wished she were there with her. “How are things out at the mine?” she said, and thought, Me making polite conversation. Just shoot me now.

  Haynes finished one cookie and reached for another. “Fine. Drill baby drill.”

  Kate smiled in spite of herself. “Found the limits of the deposit yet?”

  Haynes, mouth full, shook her head. “Every time we think we’ve got to the edge, the edge moves out from under us.”

  Kate gave a wise nod like she knew something about gold mining, when all she really knew was that all gold miners were nuts. She didn’t know if that extended to gold miners who pulled it out of the ground in commercial quantities, but she wouldn’t bet against it. “So, that must make you happy,” she said.

  “It makes Global Harvest happy,” Haynes said. “I’m just doing my job.”

  Haynes was devouring the plate of cookies as if she wasn’t expecting to eat ever again. She was thin to the point of gauntness, something that hadn’t registered on Kate at their first meeting, which gave Haynes the hollow-eyed look of either an insomniac or a fanatic. “Not a job after your own heart?” Kate said.

  Haynes paused in the act of reaching for a fifth cookie, met Kate’s eyes, and seemed to recollect herself. “Oh yes. I love geology, I never wanted to study or work at anything else. It’s just—”

  “Yes?” Kate said, when Haynes hesitated.

  Haynes shrugged. “I just don’t know if the world needs another gold mine.”

  “It’s a pretty useful metal,” Kate said.

  Haynes shrugged again. “Jewelry.”

  “A good conductor of electricity, too,” Kate said.

  “Embroidery thread,” Haynes said, wincing around a bite of cookie.

  “Reflects electromagnetic radiation,” Kate said, “they use it on satellites, and astronauts’ space suits, and airplanes.” An inner voice did wonder who she was trying to convince.


  Haynes polished off the last cookie, licked her forefinger, and used it to pick the plate clean of crumbs. “I know.”

  “What would you rather be mining, and why aren’t you?” Kate had no time at all for anyone who worked at a job they didn’t like.

  Haynes looked up at that. “Oh, I love my job. Especially the travel. I get to go all over the world, places I’d never get to on my own. Russia, China, Peru, Madagascar. A couple of times we were the first Americans the people we met had ever seen.”

  Kate had heard avowals with more conviction, but then Haynes wouldn’t be the first person talking herself into believing that she didn’t hate her job. Hard to bite the hand that feeds you, and Global Harvest fed very well indeed.

  Haynes brushed her hands, gulped down the rest of her drink, and sat up straight in her chair, folding her hands on the table in front of her. “The cookies were great, thanks.”

  Kate made a deprecating noise, and waited.

  “Vern gave most of the nonessential personnel the day off and brought us into town on George’s Otter. He wanted me to drop by and, well, touch base, so to speak, with the chair of the board of the Niniltna Native Association. Which would be you.”

  She smiled. Kate smiled back. Both smiles lacked conviction.

  “I didn’t want to come,” Haynes said, “it being a holiday and all.”

  And being uninvited and all, Kate thought.

  “But Vern insisted. He—We want to assure you that you’re welcome out at the mine at any time, that there is no question you have that we won’t answer. We know there are plenty of people in the Park who aren’t necessarily overjoyed about the mine going in here. Vern wants you to know that we’re prepared to be completely transparent about the operation.”

  She picked up her glass, forgetting that she’d already drained it, and sucked at the one or two remaining drops. She declined Kate’s honor-bound offer of another. “Vern wants you to know that you’re our first call when something happens at the site.”

  “You can tell Vern I appreciate that,” Kate said.

  Conversation wandered around a little after that, from the computer installation just begun at the school to the ongoing talks with three different communications companies vying with one another to provide cell phone access to the Park. At one point, Haynes said, “Sergeant Chopin told us that the body in the woods was confirmed as Dewayne Gammons.”

  Whatever misgivings Kate had had over the gentleman who had walked into the Park to make of himself a bear’s breakfast, they had waned over the intervening month, to the point that it took her a moment to place the name. “Oh yeah,” she said, “the blood matched the employee record. What with the note and his girlfriend and his co-workers saying he was depressed, the coroner came back with suicide.”

  “He had a girlfriend?”

  “Yeah, maybe not girlfriend,” Kate said, “but I got the feeling it might have been if he hadn’t gone into the woods. But I suppose if he’d had any real feeling for her he wouldn’t have gone into the woods in the first place.” She shook her head. “I don’t know, I guess it’s one of the more environmentally friendly ways to off yourself.”

  “Was the, what, the un-girlfriend very upset?”

  Kate looked at her. “You know, for a workforce of only a hundred you people sure don’t talk to each other a lot.”

  Haynes looked startled. “What do you mean?”

  “You didn’t even know who Gammons was when Sergeant Chopin asked you about him.” Haynes looked blank, and Kate reminded her. “At the café the day his body was found.”

  Haynes shifted in her seat and looked defensive. “The work’s pretty intense, especially when they’re pulling five core samples out of the ground every day. Rick Allen was the only worker who wasn’t staff who I had a lot to do with.”

  “He ‘was’? What, you lose another employee?”

  Haynes grimaced. “We lose some with every paycheck. Attrition is always a problem on a job like this. Working out in the middle of nowhere isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. It’ll get better when we go into production and the camp gets bigger, more amenities, a movie theater, a swimming pool.”

  Kate remembered Lyda saying more or less the same thing. “Did the mine notify Gammons’s next of kin?”

  “He didn’t have any,” Haynes said.

  Kate stared at her. “None?”

  “He didn’t put an emergency contact on his employee form.” Kate already knew that from Lyda Blue. “Lyda called his high school and the principal barely remembered him, much less his parents. She called his voc ed school and they barely remembered Gammons, either. Vern and I talked it over and decided we’d done as much as we could. Maybe someone will come looking.”

  Kate wondered what it would be like to have no one looking for you if you disappeared. “How’s Lyda doing?”

  Haynes looked surprised. “Fine. One of the best exec assistants I’ve ever worked with, smart, takes the initiative, never makes the same mistake twice. Why?” Then in sudden realization, “Lyda was Gammons’s girlfriend?”

  Kate raised a hand. “Not quite girlfriend, but she was upset at his death. And don’t hassle her about it.”

  “Of course not,” Haynes said. “I’m just surprised. I didn’t realize they were close.”

  No reason you should, Kate thought, you don’t appear to have known Gammons even existed.

  Out on the deck Mutt stretched out and gave a voluptuous groan.

  “Who’s your second call?” Kate said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You say we’re Suulutaq’s first call. I was just wondering who your second call was. The boss in Anchorage, maybe?”

  Haynes, thrown off her game, said, “Well, I … well, of course, we—”

  She was spared further inarticulation by the arrival of a vehicle in the clearing. Kate stood up to look out the window. “Ah. Here’s another one of your First Callers.”

  She went outside, trailed by a still stuttering Haynes, as the powder blue Ford Explorer, driven with dash and style, slid to a halt not quite eighteen inches away from the foot of the stairs. A diminutive octogenarian hopped out with a spryness that belied her years. “Katya!”

  “Hi, Auntie Vi,” Kate said.

  Mutt, through long experience wary of whatever mood Auntie Vi might be in, remained at Kate’s side.

  Shorter than Kate and thicker through the middle, Auntie Vi had bright button eyes of a piercing brown, a tousled bob of hair in which not a strand of gray dared show its face, and skin the color and smoothness of a walnut shell. “Ha, Katya,” she said again, moderating her tone as Haynes moved into her sights and she realized they had an audience. She bent an accusing stare on Kate, aggravated at this thwarting of her natural inclination.

  “Hello again, Vi,” Haynes said. To Kate she said, “Vern and I are both spending the night in town.”

  Kate wondered if they’d taken adjoining rooms.

  Her thought was immediately confounded when Haynes added, “Vern’s wife flew in for the weekend.”

  Kate raised her eyebrows. “Really? Nice for them both.”

  “Yes.” But Haynes’s jawline looked taut. She was able to hold Kate’s gaze for only a few seconds before she said in a false, bright tone, “Is that what you call a cache? I’ve never seen a real one before.” She walked to the edge of the clearing to examine the little house on peeled-log stilts with a wholly unmerited attention to detail.

  Auntie Vi took the opportunity to say in a tone that approximated a hiss, “Board meeting next week. You be there?”

  Kate repressed the shudder along her flesh. “Actually, it’s not until week after next, but yes, I’ll be there, Auntie.”

  Auntie Vi looked hard at Kate. “Why not you down Alaganik way with Old Sam?”

  “I decided to spend a summer at home for a change.”

  Auntie Vi dismissed this with a wave of her hand. “But you be in town for board meeting.”

  “Yes, Aun
tie,” Kate said. “I. Will. Be. There.”

  “Demetri say he might maybe be up to lodge. So maybe he not there either.”

  “Yes, Auntie,” Kate said. “That’s why we made the board larger, so we’d still have a quorum when some of the board members are absent.”

  Auntie Vi snorted. It was a trademark expression, and one eloquent of feeling. “You make. Not we.”

  This was not true. In January on Kate’s recommendation the Association shareholders had voted to expand the board from five members to nine. Afterward, Annie Mike orchestrated a one-time-only write-in campaign to fill the four new seats. They were announced at the April board meeting and in letters that went out to every shareholder. When Kate looked at the names, she almost wished the amendment to the bylaws had failed. Her only consolation was that Auntie Vi didn’t like them any better than Kate did. Only one of the four, Herbie Topkok, lived in the Park. Einar Carlson was from Cordova, Ulanie Anahonak from Tok, and Marlene Colberg from Kanuyaq Center.

  “We had to open it up to people who didn’t live in the Park, Auntie,” Kate said. “We’d never have been able to fill nine seats otherwise. And they are shareholders.” She looked at Auntie Vi and her smile was ever so sweet. “You could have run for a seat on the board yourself, Auntie.”

  Auntie Vi snorted again, and threw in another glare for good measure. They both knew that Auntie Vi was a behind-the-scenes kind of gal. She wanted to pull strings, all right, but only in the background, where no one could see.

  Kate had a feeling that the board meeting was only a red herring. Auntie Vi proved her right when she looked over her shoulder at Haynes, who was still rapt in contemplation of the cache, and said, in a lower voice, “You let those kids go to work at mine!”

  “Yes,” Kate said. Mutt looked up, the wag of her tail slowing. “Yes, I did. You could even say I encouraged them. They wanted to work, which I consider a minor miracle in sixteen-year-olds, and this was hands down the best opportunity going. You got a problem with that?”

  It came out a little more in-your-face than Kate had meant, and it only fanned the flames. Auntie Vi forgot their audience, opened her mouth, and prepared to wax even more eloquent.