Breakup

by Dana Stabenow

  Mrs. Baker was standing next to the couch, staring down at the hole in it. Evidently she’d missed it the previous morning. She looked up to see Kate watching her, decided it would be a breach of good manners to ask and moved to the other leg of the couch to sit down, a little heavily, as if all this might have been just a little too much, finally. “Goodness,” she said at last. “Amanda dear, you never told us how exciting life is in Alaska.”

  “It isn’t always like this, Mother,” Mandy said, but her voice was weak, and Mrs. Baker looked about as convinced as Mutt had when Kate called her into the clearing.

  Mandy combed fingers through her damp hair. “We’d better get the rest of those supplies down the trail before it gets dark.”

  It took the four of them three trips, by which time the jet engine was gone. Stewman and the rest of the team remained behind for an hour or so, locating, photographing, cataloging and bagging any scrap of metal they had missed in the previous search that Kate could not immediately identify or claim, all under Mutt’s bleak and intimidating eye. Kate gave her a piece of beef jerky in reward, and something about the sight of those large, sharp teeth ripping into the strip of meat made the investigators work faster.

  The pickup looked even more flattened without the engine than it had with it. Kate resolutely turned her back on the mortal remains. Mr. Baker, chatting again with Bickford, beckoned her over. “Well, Ms. Shugak,” he said in his best lord-of-the-manor air, “I believe you know Mr. Bickford of Earlybird Air Freight.”

  “We’ve met,” Kate said, without enthusiasm.

  “Splendid,” Mr. Baker said jovially. “We’ve just been discussing your little, er, dilemma, in regard to compensation for this, er, unfortunate accident.”

  Kate opened her mouth to inform both of them that she didn’t regard the situation as a “little, er, dilemma,” but something in Mr. Baker’s gaze stopped her. “Have you?” she said slowly.

  Mr. Baker, hands in his pockets, rocked back on his heels and smiled at Bickford, who smiled back, a little sickly, Kate thought.

  “Mr. Bickford and I have found much to discuss,” Mr. Baker said, even more jovially. “It seems I am acquainted with his employer.” He beamed at the two of them.

  “His employer?” Kate said, drawing a blank.

  “Yes indeed. Patrick O’Donnell and I are old friends. We manage to get in a game of squash whenever he’s in town, and he’s been out to the house for dinner quite often. A charming man.”

  “Who is that, dear?” Mrs. Baker came out of the cabin dusting fastidiously at her hands.

  “Patrick O’Donnell, Margery,” her husband replied. “You remember. The chief executive officer of Earlybird Air Freight.”

  “Why, of course,” she said. She slid an arm through her husband’s and bestowed a smile on the Earlybird man that was cordial without in any way encouraging overfamiliarity. “And how is dear Patrick?”

  Bickford’s expression indicated that he had about as much to do with dear Patrick as the parish priest did with the pope, but he struggled gamely to keep up. “The last I heard, he was fine, ma’am. He spends most of his time at corporate headquarters in New York, of course.”

  “Of course,” Mrs. Baker agreed. “Will he be coming up to oversee this fuss, do you think?”

  Bickford tried not to look appalled at the thought. “I don’t think so, ma’am.” He hastened to add, “I’m sure that he is in constant communication with the Anchorage office, however.”

  “A pity,” she said. “It would be so nice to see dear Patrick again.”

  Mr. Baker patted her hand consolingly. The hand was adorned with a diamond solitaire the size of Plymouth Rock. Bickford noticed, and tried not to goggle. “I was just telling Mr. Bickford, dear, that I know Patrick would wish that every effort be made to redress this dreadful situation. No one hates litigation more than he does, and I’m sure Ms. Shugak would agree that there is nothing to be gained by action that would be most distressing for all concerned.” He raised an expectant eyebrow in Kate’s direction.

  “Oh, of course,” Kate said in a faint voice, mostly because it seemed to be required of her. Litigation? Like with lawyers? Lawyers cost money, and at this moment the one-pound Darigold butter can on the table in the cabin held less than two hundred bucks, and that much only until she filed her taxes. Mandy was watching from the doorstep of the cabin, a slight smile that was hard to read on her face.

  “So I feel that, really, for the best interests of all concerned, a prompt, just settlement would be most beneficial. I’m sure Patrick would agree, aren’t you, dear?”

  “Certainly,” said Mrs. Baker. “He would be most upset at anything less.”

  “Where do you bank, Ms. Shugak?” Mr. Baker said.

  Kate stared at him with the fascination usually exhibited by a deer frozen in the headlights of an oncoming car. “Ah—”

  “Yes?” Mr. Baker prompted.

  “I really would prefer cash,” she said, trying like hell not to sound apologetic and failing miserably.

  “Cash?” Both of Mr. Baker’s eyebrows went up. “Are you accustomed to keeping that amount of currency on hand?”

  After a beat, Kate said, “How much—currency—are we talking about?”

  “We were discussing an amount in the area of fifty thousand.”

  “Fifty thousand?” Kate’s voice went up into a squeak, which what with scar tissue and a naturally low register was quite a feat. Mandy hid a grin. Kate cleared her throat and tried again. “Fifty thousand? Dollars?”

  The eyebrows were still up, and Mr. Baker said blandly, “I believe so.” He glanced at the Earlybird man for confirmation. Bickford gave a glum nod. “Of course, if there was some question—”

  “No,” Kate said, getting her voice back under control. “No indeed.” She acquired a little blandness herself and sent some of it Bickford’s way in a wide, bright smile. He looked even more glum. “I might be able to stretch fifty thousand to cover the damages.”

  Bickford cast a disparaging eye around the sixty-year-old homestead, including outhouse with ventilated door, cabin with patched roof, trashed garage, smashed cache, speared snow machine and squashed but obviously aged truck, and visibly restrained a disbelieving snort.

  “Excellent,” Mr. Baker said, and gave Bickford a warm, approving smile, beneath which Kate, now that she was looking for it, could clearly discern the feral grin. “There’s no hurry, of course. Ms. Shugak will be happy to take delivery of her settlement—tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow would be fine,” Kate said happily.

  Mr. Baker extended a regal hand. “I’ll be speaking to Patrick soon, Mr. Bickford, and I won’t forget to mention how very helpful you have been.”

  “Thanks,” Bickford muttered, and slunk off in the wake of the departing NTSB crew. Stewman came over to say goodbye, but Mutt, who had yet to forgive any of them for the bear repellent, wouldn’t let him get within speaking distance of Kate, and he was reduced to waving a dismal goodbye. The Tom Sawyer grin was in abeyance. Kate, dollar signs dancing in front of her eyes, wouldn’t have seen it anyway.

  When the last of them had vanished up the trail, Kate regained enough sangfroid to look Mr. and Mrs. Baker over with a speculative eye. “Just how well do you know dear Patrick?”

  Mr. Baker affected an elegant shudder. “Only too well. He sits on the board of my bank. A corporate genius, but—”

  “He’s a ruffian,” Mrs. Baker said, with a slight but nevertheless distinctly disdainful lift of her upper lip. “He actually drinks his soup from the bowl at table.”

  So do I, Kate thought, but decided it politic not to say so. Instead, she said, “I think it’s time you called me Kate.”

  “Why, thank you, Kate,” Mr. Baker said, with a warm smile from which all presence of jungle had been banished. For the moment. “My name is Richard.”

  “And I am Margery,” his wife said, and in her smile this time there was no repeat of the peer-to-peasant demeanor that had wit
hered the speech on Bickford’s tongue.

  “Richard, Margery, would you and your daughter care to join me for a late lunch?”

  “That sounds lovely, Kate. Thank you.”

  Kate stood to one side and let them precede her. “I should have known,” she told Mandy once the couple was inside.

  “Known what?”

  “That your parents would be all right.”

  Mandy flushed a painful red right up to the roots of her hair. “Up yours.”

  “Bite me,” Kate replied amiably, turning.

  Mandy put a hand on her arm. “Listen, Kate? Thanks. Thanks a lot.”

  “For what?”

  “I’m not sure. All I know is, Mother and Dad have really relaxed. This morning they were talking to Chick like he’s a human being instead of something out of an old Western movie.” She paused, and added, unable to conceal her surprise, “They’ve even been talking to me like I’m a grown-up instead of a ten-year-old. I don’t know what you did—”

  “I didn’t do anything,” Kate said honestly. “I didn’t, Mandy.” She added, “Unless you count nearly getting them eaten by a bear, almost getting them in a plane wreck and—” Almost too late she remembered Mandy didn’t know about the firefight and swallowed the rest of her sentence. “Well. They won’t go home complaining of an uneventful visit.”

  Mandy grinned. “Maybe that’s what did it.”

  “Whatever. Anyway, if I helped, I’m glad. They’re good people.”

  Mandy smiled, the slight smile she’d had as she watched her father go to work on Kevin Bickford. “He’s something, my old man.”

  “Your old lady’s not half bad herself.”

  “No,” Mandy admitted. “She’s not.”

  “And together they make one hell of a team.”

  “Yes,” Mandy said slowly, and smiled. “They do.”

  The lines of Mandy’s face had relaxed, and the anxious look in her eyes was gone. She looked ten years younger. Kate said, “Mandy, were you afraid they’d talk you into going home with them?”

  The other woman, hands in her pockets, studied the ground and thought about it for a moment. “I guess I was,” she said slowly. “I guess I actually was.” She looked up at Kate and laughed. “What an idiot. Thanks, Kate.”

  “We do family therapy.” Kate had held out her hand, palm up. “That’ll be five cents.”

  Mandy made a production of digging a nickel out of her pocket, and then demanded a receipt for tax purposes.

  Balance restored, they went inside, and were just sitting down to tuna fish sandwiches (with mayonnaise, diced white onions and sweet pickles on white bread, Kate’s specialty) when from the clearing Mutt gave a sharp, warning bark.

  Kate’s newfound sense of harmony with the universe shattered. “Oh Christ, and what fresh hell is this?”

  “And she reads Dorothy Parker,” Mandy told her parents smugly.

  Margery sniffed. “A vulgar woman.”

  Richard grinned. “You only say that because she insulted you at tea that day in New York.”

  “She insulted everyone, from what I hear,” Mandy said, biting into her sandwich.

  “You knew her?” Kate said, gaping. “You knew Dorothy Parker?” Mutt barked again. “Dammit,” she said impatiently and crossed the room to wrench open the door. “Oh shit.”

  It was Billy Mike, coming down the trail as if the hounds of hell were at his heels, his round face flushed, his barrel-shaped chest heaving, his usually neatly combed hair standing up in tufts all over his head.

  In a low voice Kate said a very bad word.

  Her tribal chairman slid to a halt in front of her door. “What?” she snapped. Her tone of voice was inappropriate for speaking to an elder. She knew it and didn’t care.

  He knew it and took no notice. “It’s Cindy and Ben Bingley.”

  Kate stiffened. “What about them?”

  He gulped for air. “She’s got him held hostage at their house.”

  “Their house? Their house in Niniltna?”

  He nodded, panting.

  Kate stared at him. “You drove fifty miles during breakup to tell me that? What the hell am I supposed to do about it? Chopper Jim’s up to the mine, checking out that bear attack. Call him in.”

  He shook his head violently. “She says she’ll only talk to you. She’s got a rifle, Kate. Billy’s hunting rifle.”

  Kate thought of the scene at the airstrip the previous afternoon. “So what’s the big deal? Maybe she’ll shoot him, maybe she won’t. And if she does shoot him, maybe she’ll miss. She did yesterday. Either way, it’s no big loss.” She turned to go back inside. “You want some coffee and sandwiches?”

  Billy’s voice was panicked. “Kate! She said she wanted to talk to you! Nobody else, only you! You’ve got to do something, you have to!”

  Kate’s outward indifference fooled no one, least of all herself. Her eyes closed and for a moment, for just one precious moment, she pretended she wasn’t Ekaterina Moonin Shugak’s granddaughter and anointed heir. The same vacuum that had yawned at her feet at the previous year’s Alaska Federation of Natives convention yawned again, an ever-deepening chasm of obligation and responsibility that threatened to suck her in and rob her of her autonomy, her privacy, her solitude, her independence, everything that was important to her.

  More important than family? Emaa’s voice said in her head. More important than your tribe? For shame, Katya. For shame.

  Damn you, old woman, she thought furiously, stay out of my head.

  She opened her eyes and found the elder Bakers regarding her with curiosity, and Mandy with more than a little sympathy. Kate was going into town, and they both knew it.

  She swore once beneath her breath. “All right, Billy,” she said shortly. “I’ll follow you in.”

  “Good,” Billy said, although he didn’t look convinced. He pointed over his shoulder in the vague direction of the road. “I’ll just—I’ll get my car.”

  “Fine.”

  Mandy smothered a smile.

  “Right,” Billy said. He backed up a few steps. Kate did not follow him. He paused to point over his other shoulder. “My car. I’ll wait for you. I’ll just—I’ll follow you in.”

  “You do that,” Kate said evenly.

  Twelve

  THE BINGLEYS LIVED FIVE MILES outside Niniltna, in a subdivision of a dozen houses whose construction had been subsidized by a low-interest loan program offered by the Niniltna Native Association in conjunction with the FHA. It was a pity the loan didn’t extend to road maintenance, because there was a pothole the size of a lunar crater at the turnoff. There was no going around it, and Kate, calling curses down on Billy Mike’s head, set her teeth and geared down. Mutt braced her front paws on the dash and dug in her claws. They climbed the opposite side of the pothole to emerge bumper to bumper with Billy’s Honda Civic Wagovan.

  Billy’s wasn’t the only vehicle present, and all of the front-row seats had long since been filled. Dandy Mike was there with Karen Kompkoff, his GMC long-bed Turbo Diesel V8 backed around so they could snuggle together in a sleeping bag in the bed and not miss any of the show. Auntie Vi, never one to miss an opportunity to make a buck, was selling Velveeta-topped pizza for a dollar a slice out of her second car, a brand-new Ford Aerostar, evidently too new to rent out to the NTSB. Old Sam Dementieff had Cab Calloway turned up to 9 on his tape player and both windows on his Dodge pickup wide open so no one would miss the beneficial effects of “Minnie the Moocher.” Sergei Moonin moved from group to group, freely taking bets on whether Ben Bingley would survive the day.

  Kate expected to see the Pace Arrow from Pennsylvania roll up at any moment. Too bad Mandy had talked her parents into spending what was left of the day at the lodge.

  The sun, low in the southwest, cast a benevolent glow over the scene, which lacked only steel drums for a calypso carnival. Jimmy Buffett would have felt right at home. “I hate breakup,” Kate muttered, but by then she had said it so many times
it sounded too clichéd to be true.

  Billy Mike came puffing up and yanked open Kate’s door. Since she’d been in the process of opening it herself, he yanked her halfway out of the truck and she barely managed to catch herself before sprawling face forward into the mud. As it was, she went to her hands and knees with a solid splat.

  Mutt peered at her over the side of the seat.

  “Jesus, Kate,” Billy said, staring down at her with a horrified expression. “I’m sorry. Let me help you up.”

  “No.” Kate held up one filthy hand to ward him off. She sounded amazingly calm. “Mandy usually keeps a roll of paper towels behind the driver’s seat. Will you check for me?”

  Billy, terrified by her apparent tranquillity, scrambled around and found the towels and a plastic container of Wet Ones. Kate cleaned herself off, with Billy bleating distressed little apologies every few seconds.

  “Billy.”

  “Yes, Kate.”

  “Enough.” She looked at him; she even smiled. There was absolutely nothing in her expression to make him take a step back, yet take a step back he did. She stuffed the dirty towels into the plastic sack hanging from the ashtray knob and shut the door of the truck. “All right. Tell me what you know.”

  “Deidre—their oldest—came running over to my house with the other two kids in tow,” Billy said rapidly. “They told my wife that Cindy had Ben at gunpoint and was threatening to shoot him if he didn’t fork over the rest of the dividend money.”

  “I thought he blew it all in Ahtna.”

  “I think he did, and I think Cindy knows he did, but you know, Kate, I don’t think Cindy cares.” Billy’s face worked. “The wife called me up to the office, so I came down here and tried to talk to Cindy. She ran me off with that .30-30 of his.”

  “Is it loaded?”

  “I didn’t ask her,” Billy said indignantly, “and I sure as hell didn’t wait around long enough for her to show me!”

  “When’d she ask for me?”