by John Straley
The flight to Stellar takes about an hour by jet. They serve hot pretzels and drinks. Across from me sat a young business couple. The man wore a Harris tweed jacket and gray slacks. The woman wore a tan silk blouse with a scarf and a blue flannel skirt. They both had on leather Top-Siders and maroon parkas. They each ordered white wine and then conversed about some papers the man took out of his leather valise. Behind them, an Eskimo couple sat with their screaming baby. They were both wearing flannel shirts and nylon windbreakers. The man held the screaming child up in front of his grinning face and sang to it. The baby was in flannel pajamas and its hair shone in the light of the reading lamp, frizzing out like the down of a young goose. The father sang softly in Yupik. The stewardess suggested that he give the baby something to suck on, explaining the difference in air pressure on the inner ears could cause pain. She said this once too often and too loud. The father smiled politely and kept singing. The professional couple glanced backward in annoyance and moved their heads closer together to confer.
I had two pretzels and a glass of Jack Daniel’s and after I finished reading I stared out the window. We were flying northwest over the mountains toward the delta country of the Kuskokwim. Outside, I could see the snow-covered outline of a mountain peak, and to the north of that peak I could faintly see a flickering light, perhaps a campfire. The temperature on the ground was zero degrees Fahrenheit and the temperature outside the airplane window was minus fifty degrees.
Alvin Hawkes had been a healthy young man. He had been injured once by accident when a tractor slipped off the jacks but had suffered no major illnesses. He did have a problem with motion sickness for which he took medication while working for Victor. There were several notations about this motion sickness because the medication he got, including what he was taking during the last week of Louis’s life, had the side effect of blurring his vision and causing a ringing in his ears. Yet elsewhere those symptoms were attributed not to medication but to “anxiety.”
I also found that, according to the official measurement, when he entered prison, he was five feet eight and weighed 150 pounds. Louis Victor was six foot three and he’d weighed 212.
It was 8:00 P.M. when we landed in Stellar. It was fourteen degrees, which was cold for this time of year, even in Stellar.
The baggage area was small and sparse. There were ten of us waiting under the tin roof. I wasn’t waiting for luggage but to see if I could recognize anyone. A Yupik Eskimo man in an insulated jumpsuit began to throw the luggage off the carts but no one made a move until he started unloading the cases of beer and whiskey. Then people started toward him with purpose.
A man wearing gray wool pants and an old army parka with a wolf ruff came up to me.
“Hello, Cecil.”
He smiled and we shook hands ceremoniously. The last time I had seen Edward he had been the translator in a civil case against a bootlegger. The attorney had wanted to find a Yupik word for rapist. There is no precise word, but we came up with an appropriate phrase that satisfied both the court and the witnesses. We lost the case and Edward and I had spent several days in a hunting camp to compensate ourselves for our loss.
Edward looked well. The strength in his body pointed toward the ground. His posture was straight and solid, eyes clear and handshake firm. The rumors were true—he was sober. His handshake, his walk, and even his tone of voice made me think he had been sober for a while. And there was something wary in him. Or at least this was something new that I thought I saw. A barrier. Some mistrust or unwillingness to let down his guard. He knew I wasn’t sober, or wouldn’t be soon. It was awkward, so instead of spending time on the pleasantries, I went right on.
“Edward, do you know Hannah Elder? She works for the Department of Social Services. She moved here about six months ago.”
“She’s pretty. You know her?”
“Old friend. Do you know where she lives?”
His eyes were laughing and he scratched his head in a parody of someone who was slow-witted.
“No, I don’t think I do.”
He laughed and motioned me to carry my bag to the outside. I began to feel a thaw.
“But maybe I can find it. I was supposed to meet my cousin. He owes me money. He didn’t fly in. So I’ll take you there.”
We stepped outside to get into his truck. Even in the dark you can tell the country is flat, just by the way the wind blows—strong in your ears and in your bones, but without the accompaniment of trees or ocean. It’s just a flat bluster that first hits your ears. When coming from Southeastern my instinct is to stand on my tiptoes to get a good look around. At first, the delta looks empty but it holds hidden surprises revealed by just the slightest changes in elevation. Like a sleight-of-hand artist, the tundra distracts you in the distance, then pulls a coin out from behind your ear.
We drove past the jail and the hospital, both large concrete structures with low profiles to the wind. There were street lights in the parking lot that spread lonely circular pools of light onto the snow.
Edward told me about his family, how one girl was a cheerleader for the wrestling team, how the boys were all doing well in school. He told me the hunting seemed to be getting worse and that he didn’t know if it was because of the weather or because of his age. He told me all of these things but I had to ask him about them all specifically. He was happy to reply but didn’t want to impose his stories on me without an invitation. He invited me to stay with him at his house if he couldn’t find where Hannah lived.
We drove out along the edge of the river and finally on one of the high banks we stopped at a small house that stood alone. It had a steeply pitched roof and a window on each side of the door. It looked as if it had been designed from a child’s drawing. The light from a window spilled like milk out onto the river.
“I’m pretty sure this is her house. Looks like her stuff.”
I offered to pay Edward for gas but he chuckled. It was a tinkling sound and he covered his mouth so it seemed to come from his hand. He stuffed the money back into my jacket pocket while we were both sitting in the front seat of the truck.
“Can I call you if I need a ride?” He shrugged and shook his head as he put the truck in reverse.
I heaved my shoulder against the truck door and stepped out onto the creaking snow. He drove away. The wind sucked up the sound of the motor and he seemed to be gone very quickly. I didn’t quite know what I was doing standing in the road getting colder and colder. I hadn’t intended to try to see her when I asked Edward about Hannah, but I didn’t struggle when he started taking me to her.
No one in the world will tell you that arriving unexpectedly at the door of someone who used to love you is a wise thing to do. No living person would recommend it. Especially when it’s fourteen degrees on the lower Kuskokwim.
She came to the door. The light from a small reading lamp inside backlit her shoulder-length blond hair, but the porch light cast an even glow on her face. All of this in the darkness and wind of the delta. An emptiness stirred in my chest as she focused her eyes on me. She wore a purple sweater with a yellow ribbon laced around the neck. I almost laughed to see her still so beautiful.
After a moment she exhaled.
“Oh God … what are you doing here?” But she was smiling. I felt that maybe I would still see spring.
“I’m working a case. I needed to come up here.”
We walked into her living room. One of Chopin’s nocturnes was playing from the speakers of her small tape player. It was the one with the change that she liked so much: the whole notes changing key in the middle of a phrase. The walls had cheap paneling that buckled on the seams. The room smelled vaguely like stove oil and smoked fish. There was a Yupik loon mask hanging above her table, the long neck curving toward the ceiling with carved figures circling it on the ends of slender rods. The figures, small carved fish and the faces of otters, danced in the heat that rose from the oil stove. There was a reproduction of a Morris Graves sea bird hanging opposit
e it. The table had one chair. There was a futon with a sleeping bag rolled in the corner. A narrow loft looked down on us.
“Two questions. Are you in trouble? And are you still drinking?”
“Someone would like to kill me. In fact, they shot Todd trying, but I don’t think that they will follow me up here. And yes, I’m still drinking. But I’m not sure that the two are directly related this time.”
She sat in the chair. “Todd? What have you done to Todd?”
She cupped her chin in her hands, rocking back and forth. “What have you done?”
“Listen … will you listen, Goddamn it. I’m to blame for a lot of things and I’m willing to accept the responsibility for them if I have to. I’m to blame for the things I said on the night you left. If you want to throw me out for that you’d be right to. But not Todd…. You don’t know a fucking thing about it, and you’re ready to pass judgment. So don’t… You don’t …”
My jaw was set and I couldn’t bring myself to look at her, afraid of what might come bubbling up.
I looked out the window. There was snow on the banks of the river, and ice flowed slowly in the broad current. On the plane I had heard that it was raining in Sitka. Sometimes I feel it’s been raining since I was a little boy. Tonight the moon was throwing shadows off the smallest tufts of grass that stuck up through the snow. A cloud passed in front of the moon and the shadows lightened.
“You like it here, Han? Better than Southeastern?”
“It’s different. It’s cold, like another country.”
She stood beside me looking out the window.
“Does the cold get into your bones like the rain does? Sometimes I think the rain is like grief that I have to endure.”
I looked at my feet. She rubbed her palm between my shoulder blades.
“That’s not the rain, Cecil. That’s grief. Let’s have something to eat.”
She cooked two caribou steaks and some boiled cabbage and cheese. I made a salad. She was very excited about a ripe avocado that was bruised and small.
This is a strange country. The world along the river was preparing for the twilight of winter. Somewhere to the north, there were bears digging into burrows on hillsides, rolling in the smells of caribou and moose grease. There were ptarmigan squatting behind small hummocks out of the wind, whales drifting above the shoals of great underwater canyons. But nowhere would there be anything as peculiar as this little weary avocado, which had probably been raised in sandy soil near the Mexican border, then picked, packed, trucked, barged, flown, trucked again, displayed, purchased, brought home and peeled to be put in our salad, which we would eat with a mouthful of caribou steak.
Hannah drank water and I had iced tea. I saw long-necked bottles of beer in the refrigerator but none were offered.
“You’ve got another case. You’re making money? You seem to be successful now. But the thing I can’t understand, Cecil—” She took a bite of her steak. She had a particular way of holding her fork in her fist like a gavel. She pointed it at me. “Everybody knows that all the rules agreed to by groups of men favor the most aggressive and most talented men. So how can you succeed? You’re neither aggressive nor talented.”
“But”—and here I sipped my iced tea to match her theatrical pauses—“I’m great in bed and have no fear of death.”
“Is that why it was Todd who got shot?”
Playfulness would not help me. “Todd got shot because someone is trying to keep me from looking into Louis Victor’s death.”
“Louis Victor? I thought that was settled long ago.”
“Apparently not.”
I cleared the table. I had been sitting on a crate and I moved it back to the corner. Then I started doing the dishes. I filled her in on everything I knew about Louis Victor and Alvin Hawkes and Todd’s shooting. I left out the part about Emanuel being in the hotel because I didn’t want her to change her opinion of my aggressiveness.
Hannah dried. I finished washing and began to wipe the counters and the stove top. The aluminum grease traps under the burners were thick with scum. I took off the grates and washed them. I had to ask for a steel wool pad.
“So what’s in Stellar?” she asked.
She reached up high in the cupboard and put away the salad bowl. I saw the rounded curve of her stomach as her sweater lifted up.
“The Victor family used to live here, and I heard that they had some problems back then. I want to find out about them. Maybe you can help. I might need some Social Service records.”
“Cecil, if the problems you’re talking about involve domestic violence or sexual assault you know I won’t help you. Those are protected documents.”
“Okay, I know, but could you at least look at them? Just read them yourself. If there’s something there, something that might help, will you tell me?”
She started slowly shaking her head as if the desire to do so was welling up from her feet.
“You want to know if there’s a history of abuse or sexual assault in the family? You want me to reveal all the nasty details?”
“Hannah, I’m holding myself back from saying ‘It’s a nasty business.’”
“Good!”
She grabbed one of the grease traps out of my hand.
“I’ll read the reports but I won’t tell you anything that was said in confidence. Cecil … I can’t. I know you have a commitment to the pursuit of your own flaky version of the truth….”
“… And to finding out who shot Toddy and to saving my own ass….”
“Right … and that’s what you have to do. But I have equally strong feelings about my commitment. It’s something I take seriously. What do you take seriously?”
“Is this going to be a sermon? Do I get a pamphlet along with it?”
“No, it’s not.”
She looked at me with an expression devoid of playfulness or respect.
“I feel like I compromised a lot during my life with you. I compromised my whole notion of what courage and commitment should be. I’m not going to get sucked into your shifting standards of what justice is anymore. I’m not going to compromise anything anymore just for the sake of this visit.”
“Is it too much of a compromise if you read the files on the Victors and Robbinses, and tell me if there is anything there, anything that could enlighten me on why someone wants me whacked?”
“I told you what I’d do. And I’ll do that for Toddy, and to get you out of Stellar.”
Her hands were shaking slightly. She grabbed another grease trap from my hand.
“You know, I never asked you to wash these…damn… things.”
She pulled the plug in my soapy water. Her fingers were slippery and warm. I dried my hands on a dish towel that was looped through the handle of the refrigerator, then I unzipped my bag and took out the folder I had picked up from Sy Brown’s receptionist.
“I’m not trying to rub your nose in it, Hannah, but look at these photographs. It’s an eighteen-year-old girl who was supposed to be a witness in the Hawkes trial.”
I took out the photographs and stood next to her by the sink.
“It’s De De Robbins. The police in Bellingham say she drowned herself because she was pregnant with the child of a married boyfriend. And maybe that’s pretty upsetting in Bellingham. But look closely at the photos.”
Hannah looked carefully at the pictures, and as I spoke she looked at my face. Her eyebrows were arched in a sad question. Her eyes focused as if she were looking into a deep pool.
I showed her the autopsy shots and some of the police photos. De De lying on the planking of the dock, her arm and shoulder bent back and underneath her torso in a manner no living person could tolerate. Her pants unbuttoned. Her shirt torn. Hannah flipped past those and looked at the autopsy photos. She took deep breaths.
“What’s the matter with her arms and her chest?”
“She tried to climb out of the water. She grabbed on to a piling that was covered with barnacles and mussels. She m
ust have struggled to get out. I’ve seen that before with drunks who fall off a dock.”
Hannah frowned.
“But look at this one. Look carefully at the wound on top of her forehead.”
“She could have banged her head struggling, couldn’t she?”
I held the photograph to the light and we put our heads together. “Look at the curve of the wound and look at the little dots in the middle, set back from the edge. That’s a heel mark.”
“You’re very clinical about this.” She looked up at me with disgust.
“You have been away a long time. What use is my grief to her now?”
“She left a suicide note?”
“She left a note that said she was scared and depressed. She said she wanted to die. Depressed people get murdered sometimes, too.”
“Why didn’t the police pick up on this—the head wound and all? I mean, Cecil, you’re not exactly a criminology genius.”
“I guess the obvious thing to say is they aren’t either. But, Hannah, you know cops. They’re busy. They’ve got rights to break up and accidents to go to. They never wanted this to be a murder. And a head wound is not that uncommon in a drowning. It’s just a little thing that, added to the others, makes it look … weird. Cops don’t have much time for weird.”
“It seems that you have plenty. Who would want her dead? Who was there?”
“I don’t know. I don’t … know.”
“So where does your not knowing lead you? Are you making any progress or not?”
“God, you’re snotty. I don’t think that she killed herself, okay? I think someone didn’t want her to testify. I think Alvin Hawkes was meant to go down hard and someone was afraid that the self-defense claim might fly, and wanted to insure that it wouldn’t. Hannah, I think that the same person killed Louis Victor, and then De De Robbins. A person is walking around someplace who has nothing to lose by killing again.”