by Ed Ifkovic
“Why do you like it?”
“I already told you, Edna. Some of the best damn food in town.” He grinned. “Why else would I drag you here?”
And he was right, as it turned out. I asked for a menu, was told there was none. What was served was what the cook—Johnny Miner’s wife—concocted that night, take it or leave it. And what was served, I noted, was heaped upon the table, gigantic portions slipping off the edges of the chipped, stained plates. I viewed it all with righteous disdain, but Clint dug in like a hungry wolf, and I, starved, gingerly sampled something at the edge of my dish that didn’t look life-threatening. It was delicious. “What is it?”
“Just a wild duck fried up in a spider’s web frying pan, splattered with a thick huckleberry sauce. Nothing fancy. What you’re nibbling at is a little reindeer hash, done with duck eggs.” He laughed. “Duck everywhere on your dish. Johnny must have had the shotgun out this morning.”
I no longer believed Clint’s recitations. I simply assumed it was a roast chicken, probably bought at the local Piggly Wiggly down the street. But certainly savory—done just right, skin crispy and peppery, the meat juicy and rich. We didn’t talk, and the waitress, a sullen high-school girl in a dirty smock, hovered nearby, ready to whisk the crockery away. For dessert there was a wild cranberry cobbler, light and airy, slightly tart, undercut by the wetness of the brown-crusted cake. I sighed, sat back.
“I told you you’d go for it,” Clint said.
Over cups of tea I filled Clint in on Tessa’s strange conversation. “She wants Noah guilty.”
“But why you, Edna?”
I shrugged. “She knows I’m Noah’s advocate. Maybe she was trying to convince me.”
“And take the suspicion off of Preston.”
Clint was lighting his pipe. He grunted.
“And she brought up Sonia’s line on her note to me—‘Don’t tell Noah.’”
He fumed. “Yeah, that sticks in my craw, too.”
“What was she up to?”
A young couple sat down at the table next to us, noisy, a little drunk. Clint turned, frowned, and I saw his face tighten. Even I started. Noah West’s pretty sister, Maria, was laughing too loudly, and, throwing back her head, she spotted us. She stopped, glanced at the man she was with. For a moment she looked uncertain, but yelled out, “Clint Bullock, you old coot. And…I’ve met you. I met you with Noah. You’re the lady from Outside.”
“Edna Ferber.”
“The writer,” she said. I nodded. “You’re writing something, Noah said.”
Maria was sloppily drunk. So was the young man with her, who seemed unable to follow the threads of the meager conversation, his head sailing back and forth until, spent, he stopped, looked for a waitress.
Maria was dressed in a faded blue dress, a decade out of fashion, with shoulder pads and polka-dot collar. A canteen girl from the last war, some Arctic Andrews Sister. The dress was ill-fitting, too snug at the shoulders, and there was a tear in a sleeve. Worse, when Maria grinned at me, she showed a smear of brilliant scarlet lipstick on her front teeth. Under the stark overhead light her makeup, foolishly applied, seemed garish, a young woman’s copying of a look she’d spotted, say, in a Lana Turner movie at the Lacey Street Movies or, perhaps, in the glossy pages of Photoplay or Modern Screen. Whatever the source, it suggested a bar girl, and at the moment, a tipsy one. The waitress came to her table and she ordered a couple of beers. The man she was with, bellowing after the waitress, called for food. He wanted reindeer steak, but the waitress, shaking her head, said, “Stan, come on, you know you gotta eat what Lila makes in the kitchen.” She laughed and took off.
“This is Stan,” Maria said to us. She reached out and poked him in the shoulder.
Surprisingly, Stan stood up, walked to our table and vigorously shook our hands. An unsteady half-bow. “Stan Stepkowski. Newark.”
“New Jersey?” I asked.
“Yeah, born and bred. Raised on pirogies and a whole lot of boiled cabbage.” Again, the gallant if failed half-bow. He toppled back down into his chair, stretched out his long legs.
I found myself liking him, this big buffoon of a man, not fat but broad and sturdy, a thick barrel chest, with a crew cut that still revealed an arguably very blond head. He flashed dusty pale blue eyes in a wide freckled face. A hill of a man, in flannel and denim.
“Stan is my boyfriend.” Maria slurred her words.
Stan winked at her.
“You live in Fairbanks?” I asked him.
“I’m at the Ladd Air Force base outside of town. Career man, I am. I fought in Germany, final days of the war, flew over Germany with the last of the bombing. A sight you never forget, ma’am. Now I’m in exile in this here Alaska, which they keep telling me is part of the U.S. of A., but I don’t believe it.”
I noticed Clint had gotten quiet during the exchange, glaring at the ebullient Stan Stepkowski, but avoiding eye contact with Maria, who was giggling and playfully tapping the young man in the chest.
Finally Clint said, loudly, “Maria, you do know Noah is in trouble?”
For a second Maria looked wild-eyed, glancing at Stan, then back at Clint. “Yeah, I know.” A stark, deadened voice.
“They think he murdered Sonia.”
“He didn’t do it.” Flat out, fierce. She glanced at Stan who looked baffled at the shift in conversation.
“How do you know?” I asked her.
She waited a long time, running her tongue over her lips. “Noah’s up-and-up, always.”
Stan was leaning into her, stroking her neck. She tried to brush him away.
“But…” Clint was livid.
“Look.” Maria shook herself free of Stan. “Stop it, Stan.” She glanced toward the bar. “I love Noah but, you know, he don’t know how to play the game.” She paused, glanced at Stan, lowering her voice. “With white people.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I mean, you don’t go to the schools. Their schools. Then go after rich women, the—you know, that life. And then, you know, you don’t start mouthing crap about Indian injustice and Athabascan legend and stuff. No one wants to hear that. If you’re gonna be in that world, you gotta…like…smile and…” She shook her head as she looked at Stan, a fake smile on her face. “You smile.” She looked back at us. A boozy hiccough escaped her throat. “Never mind. Noah is my little brother. I love him. Nobody ain’t more important to me. But I can’t make no sense out of him. Never could. I always looked out for him, no matter what. And he can’t make no sense out of me. Never could. But he…you know…he got a problem with my life. My life.”
“Sam Pilot was staying with you,” I said.
“Yeah. Blood.”
“Did he ever tell you anything? His thoughts…I mean, Noah thinks he was murdered. So do I.”
Maria looked scared. “This is real crazy.”
“Is it?” Clint asked.
“He was a drunk—damn drunk.”
“What about Jack Mabie?”
“I didn’t know him.”
“Did Sam talk about him? After all, he was staying with you.”
“Something was bothering him.” She held up her hand as she watched me closely. “I don’t want to think about it,” she mumbled, her slurred words running together. But suddenly she looked nervous, stealing a glance at Stan. “It don’t make no sense to me.” She sucked in her breath. “When Noah was a small boy, we was walking around Fort Yukon, our cabin, you know, and some white guy up there had shot this white ptarmigan, like just for the hell of it, blew it to bits in front of us, leaving the carcass there to rot on the banks of the Yukon. He didn’t do it for food or nothing. And Noah starts to bawl like a little baby, and he’s digging a hole in the ice with a stick to cover the bird. That’s Noah. I mean, he was always a nutty little kid.” She shook her head. “I don’t want t
o talk about this no more. Stan and me wanna have a good time. He has to be back in a couple hours.” She turned away.
I persisted. “What was bothering Sam?”
She shrugged. “Dunno. I told you.” A panicky look. “Come on, Stan. We ain’t staying here.”
She left the table, and Stan, baffled, waved dumbly at us and rushed out after her.
Driving back to the Nordale, Clint confided, “She loves Noah, you know. She does, Edna. They only got each other. But she don’t want too much to do with him. Him and his la-di-dah law degree and his fiery letters to the editors about the Gwich’in language, the injustice to the Dené.”
“Tell me about her.”
He sighed. “If you look at her, you know her, Edna. That girl wears her life on her face. She’s been in and out of Fairbanks since she was a teenage girl. Had a real tough life back then. Trouble. Lots of it. A pretty girl, but she fell into the seamy life here. The Row. Back when the area was behind an eleven-foot fence with a gate, and the girls sat in their cribs and waited for men. She used to be one of the hookers at the roadhouses. That’s how she lived. The only life she knew back then. Drifted into it.”
“That’s why Noah is crazy?”
“Yeah, mostly. She’s older now, hooks up with lonely Air Force men. Like this Joe Palooka fellow. It lasts a while, they buy her nice things, make promises to her that even she don’t believe, sometimes they beat her up, which she expects, and then she’s running around with a new guy. Same story over and over. Gets more desperate year after year.”
“This Stan…he seems decent.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. All men are decent when you first meet them, Edna.” Clint shook his head. “She likes blond and big and nothing that looks like he was bred on caribou steak and salmon candy. Now and then she slips back into the bar scene, you know, a working girl. Mostly she works at the drug store in Indian Village. She drinks too much. Lots of Indians do. End of story.”
“It’s amazing how much she and Noah look alike.”
“Yeah.” Clint nodded. “Two kids with great looks. She uses her looks to get silver dollars.”
“And Noah?”
“I don’t think he owns a mirror.”
The Jeep chugged to a stop and I peered out into the night. Clint had stopped in front of Noah’s cabin. He pointed. We stared at the dark cabin. I saw one light on in the front, a shade-less window, but the rest of the place was pitch-black. As we sat there, Noah—I assumed it was Noah—moved across the room, paused by the front window. Did he spot the Jeep idling there, heater blasting, headlights probing the fierce night air? But the figure disappeared, and then there was nothing but the block of solid yellow. I felt like a voyeur. Yet it was overwhelmingly compelling, sitting there. Doubtless Maria was back at the roadhouse, sloppy in the arms of that bulky military man. Here Noah, her brother, stood in his bright, square room. Suddenly the yellow light disappeared, and the house was gone, disappeared into the heavy darkness of the night.
I felt a chill pass through me. I shivered. “Take me back to the hotel,” I demanded of Clint, touching his sleeve. He put the Jeep in gear, but it stalled, sputtered. He started it again, but I panicked, my voice high. “Take me back, Clint. I don’t want to be here.”
Chapter Sixteen
All of Fairbanks, it seemed, packed St. Matthew’s Episcopalian Church for Sonia’s funeral. It was a day of impenetrable ice fog, the dense air thick with fuzzy, mottled light from the car headlights. Cars inched along, a ghost train, and once inside the church, people seemed drugged. Even the aisles were filled with standing black-clad mourners.
I disliked attending the services, though I knew I had no choice. I also had no black dress, so my dark gray wool skirt and creamy white frilly blouse had to suffice. I disliked all funerals, always had. They reminded me of war, of nightmare, of dying. And these days it was my own demise that I thought of. Not that I feared death—it was perhaps preferable to lunch with some New Yorkers I knew—but I didn’t like the idea that others would survive me. I fully expected a nasty obituary. My enemies would do me dirt. That fellow at the Saturday Review, that bilious critic who routinely skewered my novels. And, lamentably, my sister Fannie, older, but rangy and venomous. No, Fannie would have to go first.
Such were my vagrant thoughts as I sat, demurely and unobtrusively, in a back pew, my mind far away and unable to focus on the flower-draped coffin in front of the altar. The words of the minister, singsong and hypnotic, lulled the hot chapel, and an old man, two pews over, was snoring so loudly a woman on his left had a fit of giggles.
I surveyed the crowd of mourners and caught Clint’s eye, giving him a slight nod. To my surprise, Clint was dressed in a suit. Used to his shabby wool shirts, denim, mukluks, and ragged parkas, I was wide-eyed at his lime-green, wide-lapelled suit, something I imagined Xavier Cugat might employ in conducting his marvelous band. Clint nodded at me, and, conscious of his incongruous attire, pinched the collar of his suit and grinned. I smiled wanly.
I looked for Noah. He wasn’t in the chapel, but I suspected he wouldn’t be, of course. That bothered me. He was the one who should have been there.
After the service ended, friends gathered at Hank and Irina’s home, and the housekeeper Millie dutifully offered coffee and cake, though I noticed most of the men headed for the sideboard for drinks. A man I didn’t know saw me watching and asked if I wanted a rye-and-ginger highball. I took nothing. When Paul passed by me, I touched his arm. “Paul, tell me, why wasn’t Noah West at the service?”
He looked surprised. “He probably knew every eye would be on him. Accusing eyes, hostile. Would you want that?”
“Of course not. But he must have wanted to come, no?”
“He sent flowers.”
“Which ones were they?”
Paul sucked in his cheeks and shook his head. “The ones you didn’t see. My father wouldn’t allow them in the chapel.”
“Oh, Paul, he still believes…”
Paul leaned in, and I saw how tired he looked, how red his eyes were. “My father’s always been a stubborn man, Miss Ferber. A whole part of him knows it’s all foolish, that Noah West is innocent, was obviously set up, but another part locked onto that idea of Noah leaving that hotel room, blood staining his cane. It’s like he can’t shake himself free of an idea he knows isn’t true.”
“How sad.” I looked around the room. “How very sad.” Hank stood among a cluster of men, one of them with a comforting hand on his shoulder.
“Not so much sad as…pathetic. Really, Miss Ferber. It’s tiresome, really, this…” He made a clicking sound. “What the hell.” He walked away.
Weary, I sat in an armchair in a corner, quiet, hands folded in my lap, watching people move up to Irina and Hank, mumble a few consoling words and then slide away, a curious and beautiful rhythm I marveled at, this civilized ebb and flow of regard and sympathy. But I still wondered about Noah—bothered, even annoyed. My question to Paul had been purposeful because I wanted to gauge the temper of the family. I hadn’t seen Noah in two days, not since that late-night glimpse of the solitary man in the cabin window, and that abrupt shutting of his light. The dark cabin. That image stayed with me, nagged at me.
But this morning, leaving for the funeral, I’d found a brief note in my mailbox in the lobby, a few words that oddly comforted then alarmed me.
Tomorrow—back into the world.
On the day of Sonia’s funeral, he’d be hiding out, the outlaw in his cabin.
The afternoon dragged on. As folks began straggling away, hand-shaking and hugging, I gathered my purse, adjusted my pearls, and prepared to say goodbye. I’d said nothing to anyone, other than those few words to Paul and a thank you to Millie who offered me tea, and, given my imperious demeanor as I sat in the blue velvet wing chair, no one had dared approach me. But as I sought out Irina, I watched her leave a small cluster of
women and approach me, take my hand.
“Don’t leave, Edna. We haven’t spoken. I’ve been trying to get to you. Please stay for an early supper. Just the family.”
“I’m not family.”
Irina squinted. “I’d like you to stay. Hank needs people he likes around him now.”
I tried to soften my voice. “I’m not sure Hank would want me at the supper table, Irina. I’m Noah West’s advocate. Frankly.”
She tightened her grip on my hand. “I’m asking you to stay.”
I nodded. All right.
So I lingered in the den, my hands idly leafing through a dog-eared Look magazine as the guests straggled out and the house grew quiet. At one point Millie walked in and quietly, stone-faced, placed a pot of tea on a silver tray at my elbow, nodded, and started to leave. I called her back. “Millie, how long have you worked for Hank and Irina?”
The Indian woman seemed hesitant but smiled. “Twenty years, maybe. Since I was a young girl.”
“Were you born in Fort Yukon?”
“No, in Eagle, nearby.” She started to back away.
“You know Noah?”
“Of course.”
“You like him?”
“Everybody likes him.”
“Are you bothered by the accusations of murder?”
Millie fidgeted, looked back to the doorway. “You do not know the Dené,” she whispered.
“I’m making you uncomfortable. I’m sorry.”
Millie turned, then seemed to change her mind. “Noah took my brother’s case when they said he took stuff from the store he worked at. It was a lie. And Noah tells them that.”
“And what happened?”
She glanced toward the door. “And Noah, he takes no money for it. Not a penny. My brother is out of work for months, with seven kids. In a two-room cabin.” Then, her voice rising, strong, “That’s Noah.”
“How can we help Noah, then? Help me.”