We went around the pile of debris, through the narrow entrance beside the wall, and into the second chamber. It was about ten by eight feet, and its roof was also pocked by holes that let in light. But these holes were smaller, and they changed the pitch of the wind noise. The shriek rose to a high, keening whistle.
On the floor, a stocky man lay on his back, his open eyes staring up at the holes where the wind screamed past. His hair looked dark and wet, and his face was as pale as a block of salt except for a large bruise under his left eye. His mouth was slack. He was wearing a dark Navy pea jacket, dark trousers, and mud-black boots. His bare, empty hands were curled into claws at his sides.
Pop and I stared down at him for a long moment, neither of us speaking.
At first, I didn’t recognize the man because he looked so different from how he had looked the day before. But then I focused on the bruise under his eye, and I knew who he was. My gut lurched.
Right behind me, the Cutthroat said, “Back of his head’s bashed in.”
Startled, I spun around, fists up.
The Cutthroat’s knife shot up from its sheath to within two inches of my nose.
Then Pop’s hand appeared between the blade and my face.
“Easy, boys,” Pop said. “I’m the camp editor. You don’t want your names in the paper.”
I lowered my fists.
“Sorry,” I said. I was breathing hard, but trying to sound like I wasn’t. “It was just a reflex.”
The Cutthroat lowered his knife as well, but more slowly.
“Now I recognize you,” he said, peering at me intently. “You boxed yesterday. And you were on Attu. Okay, mine was just a reflex, too.”
I still didn’t know him, but that still didn’t mean anything. The Cutthroats hadn’t stayed in any one place very long when I had seen them at all. And some of them had worn their fur-lined hoods all the time.
Pop took his hand away, and then all three of us looked down at the body. I opened my mouth to speak, but suddenly had no voice. Neither Pop nor the Cutthroat seemed to notice.
“He’s Navy,” Pop said. “Or merchant marine. A young man, like all the rest of you.” Pop’s voice, although loud enough to be heard over the wind, had a slight tremble.
“Don’t worry about it, old-timer,” the Cutthroat said. “He’s just another dead guy now. Seen plenty of those.”
Pop got down on one knee beside the body. “Not on this island,” he said. “Other than sporadic casualties generated by bad bomber landings, Adak has been relatively death-free.” He gingerly touched the dead man’s face and tilted it to one side far enough to expose the back of the head. The skull had been crushed by a large rock that was still underneath. The dark stuff on the rock looked like what Pop had coughed up earlier.
Feeling sick, I turned away and stared at the Cutthroat. I tried to read his face, the way I might try to read an opponent’s in a boxing match. I’d been told that you could tell what another fighter was about to do, and sometimes even what he was only thinking about doing, just from the expression on his face.
The Cutthroat gave me a scowl.
“Don’t look at me, kid,” he said. “I would’ve done a better job than that.”
Pop opened the dead man’s coat, exposing a blue Navy work shirt. I could see his hands shaking slightly as he did it. “I believe you,” he said. “Whatever happened here was sloppy. It may even have been an accident.” He opened the coat far enough to expose the right shoulder. “No insignia. He was just a seaman.” He opened the shirt collar. “No dog tags, either.”
Then he reached into the large, deep coat pockets, first the left, then the right. He came up from the right pocket clutching something.
Pop held it up in a shaft of gray light from one of the ceiling holes.
It was a huge, dark-brown feather, maybe fourteen inches long. It was bent in the middle.
“That bird,” Pop said, “is turning out to be nothing but trouble.”
VII
We left the body where it was and went back into the larger room. The wind was still furious overhead, so we were stuck there for the time being. Pop and I sat back down against the wall at the far end, and the Cutthroat lounged on the earthen shelf along the long wall to our right.
Pop didn’t look so good. He was pale, and he coughed now and then. I think he was trying to pretend that the dead man hadn’t bothered him. He had probably seen death before, but not the way the Cutthroat and I had.
Still, this was different. In battle, death is expected. Back at camp, when the battlefields have moved elsewhere, it’s something else. So I was a little shook up myself.
The Cutthroat didn’t seem bothered at all. His mind was already on other things.
“This goddamn williwaw might take that eagle away,” he said. “If it does, I won’t get my feathers. I should have come in the other way, like you guys did. I saw you there with it, but then I felt the wind coming. I didn’t think you two were gonna make it here.”
“Neither did we,” Pop said. “But if you want an eagle feather, you can have the one I took from that young man.” He reached for his jacket pocket.
The Cutthroat made a dismissive gesture. “That one’s bent in the middle. It’s no good to me. The power’s bent now, too.”
“What sort of power do you get from feathers?” I asked. I immediately regretted it.
The Cutthroat gave me a look too dark to even rise to the level of contempt. “None of your fucking business. In fact, I’m wondering what you and your damn lieutenant colonel wanted with the eagle in the first place.”
Pop coughed. “The private and I wanted nothing to do with it at all. But the lieutenant colonel seems to be curious about who killed it, gutted it, and staked it out like that. He incorrectly assumed I could help him discover that information.”
The Cutthroat sat up straight. “Somebody killed it on purpose?”
“That’s what it looks like,” Pop said. “Couldn’t you see it from over here?”
The Cutthroat’s brow furrowed. “I just saw you two, and the eagle’s wings, and then the wind hit me before I could come any closer. You say somebody pulled out its guts?”
“Yes.” Pop’s color was getting better. “And staked it to the earth with nails. Does that mean anything to you?”
The Cutthroat scowled. “Yeah, it means that somebody’s a fucking son of a bitch. I ain’t heard of nothing like that before.” He scratched his sparse beard. “Unless maybe a shaman from a mainland tribe was here, trying to do some kind of magic.”
Pop leaned toward the Cutthroat. His eyes were bright. “Why would killing an eagle be magic?”
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 jumping 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. B
ut 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.”
Weird Detectives Page 8