by Ed Ifkovic
Millie looked confused, but seemed to be thinking. I waited. She stared at the wall. Then, in a loud, clear voice, “Don’t let him hide.”
“What?”
“Don’t let him disappear.” She smiled. “It’s easy for us sometimes. We go back to places where we understand the rules.”
I said hurriedly, “Millie, please. I don’t understand. Where is that?”
“Not in Fairbanks.”
“But where?” Helpless.
“In the snow where you are alone.”
She left the room.
I sat mulling over Millie’s cryptic words, and then, my mind racing, I walked around the room, stopping in front of a bookcase. Numbly, I leafed through a book on Hank’s shelf and settled back into my chair. I’d chosen one of Ernest Gruening’s tomes on Alaska and saw it was heavily marked up with (I assumed) Hank’s annotations, marginal comments like:
…A flurry of black ink in the margins.
Someone tapped me on the shoulder. I woke with a start. Irina was smiling. “Edna, you dozed off.”
I shook the cobwebs out of my head. “Alaskans like their rooms overheated.”
“Come dine with us.”
I had no idea why I was asked to be at the mournful supper, but immediately I regretted it. Sitting with Irina and Hank at the long mahogany table, candle-lit, I watched as Paul walked in, tardy, mumbling an excuse about some valedictory with an old college buddy from the University of Alaska who’d arrived late to pay his respects. No one answered him, and he slid into a seat and fumbled with the napkin. Four of us seated there, uncomfortable.
Millie served a supper of pot roast, boiled potatoes, a salad of stewed tomatoes, and lots of coffee, at least for me.
“A nice service.” Irina’s voice was louder than I expected.
Hank looked up. “What?”
She cleared her throat. “The day—a nice service.”
For a while Irina chatted about unseasonably cold March weather, about a planned trip to Sitka to visit relatives, about a letter from a distant cousin in Nome. Telegrams from everyone, a flood of them: Ernest Gruening and Bob Bartlett in Washington. Walter Hinkle. Eleanor Roosevelt, surprisingly. James Cagney. Even Carl Lomen, an arch-statehood foe from Nome, who sent a heartfelt wire. Irina turned to me. “He’s the Reindeer King”—a remark that confused me. Wildly, I thought—Isn’t that Santa Claus? And I almost said that out loud, though immediately I thought better of it. It seemed almost a monologue, Irene’s reverie, though I interjected appropriate vocal responses. Paul quietly picked at his food and looked ready to flee.
Finally, out of the blue, Irina concluded, “Life will never be the same for us, I’m afraid.” But her voice was strong, as though she were fashioning a vow.
Hank muttered, “The heart has been cut out of this family.”
An awful silence in the room.
“What?” his wife asked.
“Something died long ago.”
Paul, snippy, “Why do you say that?”
Irina spoke energetically. “We are a family, Hank. We can’t forget that. Because we lost Sonia…”
Hank cut in, “We didn’t lose Sonia, Irina. She was taken away from us.”
She snapped back, “You know what I mean.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Hank snarled, his eyes glassy.
Paul looked at his father. “What does that mean?”
Irina was frowning. “You’re not making much sense, Hank.”
Hank banged his fist on the table. “Well, thank you.”
I blundered into the storm. “Maybe we shouldn’t…”
Hank sat back, closed his eyes. When he opened them, he reached for his glass, downed his whiskey.
Irina muttered, “We have something. We have a family, Hank. What do you think you’re looking at?”
Hank sank into his chair. “I guess so.” His smile was lazy, a waking man’s. “I suppose so. But, you know, I woke up this morning and lay in bed and I thought: What a hole in our lives. Sonia was such a…presence.” He paused. “I vacillate from that to”—a long pause, frightful—“Noah. Noah West. It’s hard to say his name. One story. The other. Both. I don’t know.”
Paul pleaded, “God, Dad, come on.”
Hank narrowed his eyes. “I think, somehow someone…you know, she pushed the wrong button, probed somewhere, asked someone the wrong question. Alienated people with money to lose. She told everyone she was on the hunt for two murderers. That scared people. At the church today I saw Preston Strange and Jeremy Nunne. At Sonia’s funeral. Why were they there?”
Irina bit her lip. “For God’s sake, Hank. In times like these people show respect in a town like this.”
“My daughter is dead.” He spat out the words, then teared up.
“For Christ’s sake, Dad.” Paul crumbled a piece of bread, pieces falling onto the table.
Hank shook his head. “I drive myself crazy. I can’t help it. I look at the people and I think: Who did this to my girl? Did you? Did you? Did I do something that led to it? Could I have stopped it? And then I look around for Noah West, expecting him to be in church. A part of me wanted him there, not because I wanted to hurt him, but because he’s always been around us. He’s always been there when we needed him. Then I think: But maybe he murdered Sonia…” Paul grunted, rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, I know, but I can’t get that image of him leaving Edna’s room out of my head.”
“Hank, you do realize that Noah was purposely set up, don’t you?” I said quietly. “Someone waited to leave my room, so that there’d be a witness. That parka…”
“Yes, I do,” Hank admitted. “Of course. That’s obvious, but it doesn’t help. But she told him goodbye. Go away. The day before.”
Paul muttered, “Do we have to have this conversation now?”
Irina reached across the table and touched his arm. “Paul, enough, for God’s sake.”
Hank wasn’t even listening to them. “You know why I can’t get Noah out of my head? I’ll tell you. It’s not just the witness who saw Noah—or someone like Noah. And that remark on the note to Edna—‘Don’t tell Noah.’ But I lay in bed that night and I remembered something Sonia said to me. I’d forgotten something else she said the day before. We were sitting in the Gold Nugget having coffee, our afternoon ritual. She said when she told Noah she wanted…you know, to be apart, he said, ‘This time I think you’re serious.’ And she said a real hurt came into his eyes. She said it scared her—that bad. ‘I’m gonna have to hurt him real bad,’ she said.”
Irina protested, “Scared for him, Hank. Not of him.”
“I know, I know. But I can’t help it.”
Paul, in a hollow voice, “Did you tell this to Chief Rawlins?”
“Of course.”
“Great,” Paul said sarcastically. “You’re trying to put a noose around his neck.”
Hank spoke in a barely audible voice. “Maybe it belongs there.”
Shutting his eyes, Hank seemed to tire of the meal and the conversation. His fingers gripped the whiskey glass, but then he pushed it away. Paul fidgeted, shoved his plate away and lit a cigarette, sat back with his arms folded over his chest. Irina sat stiff-backed, hands on the table, glaring at her husband. Hank, the dominant leader of the household, now appeared to have lost his energy. Whenever I’d thought about him before, I considered a robust man, hearty, backslapping, boisterous. A man who liked control, impatient with contrariness, a man who blustered his way into millions and power, a frontier titan.
Curious, this sea change in Irina. She was the obedient wife in the shadows who spoke in whispers, the quiet cheerleader behind her quarterback husband. Now, bizarrely, there seemed a switching of souls: Hank, lifeless, negative, a man whose brio had vanished, a man whose wilderness energy was no more. And Irina was like a piece of ice-cold glass, iron-rod spine,
in control, as though she figured any salvation in this family had to begin with her.
Irina was talking about the cousins, then about Tessa Strange. I hadn’t been listening. “What did you say about Tessa?”
Irina glanced at the sullen Hank. “Tessa sent a note in the morning. To Hank and me. It was beautiful, really, a few sentences that I thought nice, a real understanding of our loss.”
Hank looked up, but said nothing.
Paul seemed irritated. “You didn’t tell me she’d sent a note.”
Hank glowered at his son.
I tried to change the subject. “Hank, did you finish going through Sonia’s papers in her apartment?”
“Yes.”
“Nothing helpful?”
“Nothing that relates to the murder.”
“Did you tell Chief Rawlins?” Irina asked. “I mean, they did want to go over everything themselves…”
“Yeah, he and his men also went through them.”
“And?”
“Nothing. As expected.” Then a long pause. “Before they got there…I burned her journal.”
“What?” From Paul.
“And some bits and pieces of her life at The Gold,” he said. “I burned them.” He drew his lips into a thin line. “I don’t care. Nothing to do with the murder. I didn’t want the public reading about her personal life.”
“Do the police know you did this?” I asked, unhappy. “And how do you know? You could have missed something.”
“Dad, do you know how wrong all this is?” Paul said.
He frowned. “No.” A pause. “And you’re not gonna tell them.”
Paul narrowed his eyes.
“Did she talk about Noah West?”
Hank refused to answer, but there was a sidelong glance, a slight thrust of his head, that told me he was not being truthful. He’d discovered something. I was convinced of it. There had to be more to his easy condemnation of Noah West—there had to be! If so, why burn them? Why not give them to the police? That was logical…
“What bits and pieces?” I asked quietly.
He shook his head back and forth. “Nothing. Scraps of paper. Nonsense.”
“Dad.”
“Stop it,” Hank yelled. Then softer, “I want to mourn my daughter.” He closed his eyes.
No one spoke as Millie came in to clear away the dishes.
Chapter Seventeen
As I walked to Noah’s cabin to meet him for lunch, I spotted Clint, also headed there, and we fell in together. “I thought I’d drop in. I’m worried about him,” he told me.
When Noah opened his door, he seemed surprised to see us both together. “Good.” A pause. “The three of us can have lunch.”
Noah moved quickly around his small room, grabbing his parka, gloves, scarf. A lot of clutter in his cabin, I noted, but clutter I condoned—stacks of books on the floor, on a table, even on the sofa, and an uneven stack of newspapers, The Gold, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, even Jessen’s Weekly. A well-read man, and I liked that. But he seemed in a hurry to leave the rooms. Antsy, he kept up a flow of chatter.
I put my hand on his sleeve as he pulled on his parka. “Slow down, Noah.”
He looked at me and blinked wildly. It was as though I’d turned off a switch because the Noah who walked outside with us was a different man, taciturn and withdrawn. I didn’t know what to make of it. When I called his name, he paused in his stride, turned to me, and the look on his face was of a startled schoolboy, called to task for some antic.
“Are you all right?”
He nodded. “Cabin fever.” A quiet laugh. “From someone who actually lives in a cabin.” But there was no humor in his voice.
As we walked, I noticed his limp seemed more pronounced, as though he’d not stretched his limbs for days. I watched him closely. And as we settled at a table at Mimi’s, we struggled for words, then finally gave up. Again Noah ordered for us and slapped down a pile of silver dollars on the table—at the beginning of the meal. What was he telling us? I wondered. Homemade bread, thick and crusty, with smoked salmon. Sweet, teeth-numbing blueberry fudge for dessert.
We ate in silence, Noah famished, chomping on the food, rushing through it. Nervously, I watched him.
“Your note surprised me,” I began. “About meeting you today.”
He looked sheepish. “I was feeling guilty about my silence—hiding away. I do that sometimes, you know. I hide from friends.” He waved his hand across the crowded room where now I was conscious of Indian eyes on us, steely, protective. “Outside of here, you are my connection to that world.”
I remembered what Hank’s housekeeper said. “Why do you hide away?”
He wiped his mouth with a napkin, looked down at his empty plate. “It helps me check in with myself.”
Clint was clicking his tongue, though he never took his eyes off Noah’s face.
“But you don’t want to…disappear.”
He gave me a weak smile. “In Alaska people disappear. Right, Clint?” The old sourdough nodded. “In the dark night of winter, out on the glassy crevasses and glaciers and tundra, people head out and don’t come back. Planes vanish. Hikers become ghosts. Alaskans accept that. Every family has people who’ve disappeared. Certainly every Indian or Eskimo family…”
“And you?”
He ignored me. “Plane crashes, wild animals, a sudden gale, an ice storm, and you’re a memory. But, you know, the Athabascans—at least the Qwich’in folk I love—are used to isolation. That’s all I mean, Edna. We live alone on the trap-lines in isolated cabins in winter, enduring the long brutal cold. It’s our nature. It’s not a bad thing, such disappearances. When we need to deal with something serious, we pull away, hide in the spruce groves under the shadows thrown by the walls of ice. A good thing, most times, but it can be dangerous.”
“Dangerous?”
“Because sometimes it’s tempting not to return.”
I was confused by his words, unhappy. “Return to what?”
“This.” He pointed out the window at the busy street. “I mean Fairbanks. Or Anchorage. Nome. Towns out there. The more Athabascans move away from ancient lands and into white man’s cities, the more our power is taken away. We lose our spirit. You know, I’ve been thinking about that for the last couple days, as I hid in my cabin. The only way to survive is to keep that power.” He tapped his chest. “Inside.”
“I don’t want you to disappear.” For a second I choked up, and turned away.
“It’s not a choice sometimes.” He sighed. “I know the Dené need to integrate with whites to survive—this is the world we inherited—but we have to keep our past intact, our touchstone to those herds of caribou roaming across the taiga. Or the grizzled elder of the village sitting alone for a long, long winter in a wilderness cabin. Solitary confinement makes white people go mad,” he grinned, “but for Athabascans it’s a way of talking intelligently to yourself.”
“I don’t like your use of the word ‘dangerous.’”
He laughed. “I don’t mean to scare you. The fact of the matter is that most souls find a balance. Don’t worry about me…”
I was nosy. “Who in your family disappeared?”
Clint cleared his throat. “A long time ago, Edna.”
I got the message, and was quiet.
Noah said, “Come with me now, Edna. I have to stop in at the tribal office. Some of the militants don’t cater to white folks, but they know Clint, and he’s one of us.” Clint beamed. “And, Edna, everyone knows who you are. You have the seal of approval from Noah West, poster boy.”
Noah needed to pick up some legal papers at a small hall a few streets over, a general store with a gritty bar attached, a smoky pool hall, clanging pinball machines, and in the rear a long, narrow room filled with folding tables and mismatched chairs. At first I assumed the roo
m was empty, but from a side room I heard off-key singing, an old woman’s voice, cracking and scratchy.
“Aunt Lucy,” Noah called out and the singing stopped. An ancient woman, tiny and bony, appeared, wiping her hands on a towel. Dressed in a plain cotton smock bleached as white as her abundant hair, the woman rocked as she walked. When she saw Noah, she smiled broadly—she had almost no teeth—but then narrowed her eyes as she focused on Clint and me. Then, blinking, she recognized Clint and nodded at him, said something in staccato Qwich’in, and he nodded back, even said a few words. Noah introduced me.
“Oh, my boy, I know who she is. The famous Outsider.”
“The story of my life.” I bowed, smiling.
Noah introduced me to Lucy Children, the great-grandmother of the Dené. The People. “Leastwise,” he grinned, “the Fort Yukon branch.”
For a few minutes Noah bustled around, showing me Lucy’s homemade crafts sold at the tourist shops in the hotels. A ceremonial mask made of caribou fur and bone. Beaded floral barrettes, splashes of clashing color, fashioned from moose hide and seed beads. The old, gnarled fingers still moved deftly through tough hide, he said—years of tanning hides and harvesting king salmon from the fish wheels. Her fingers reaching into a cabinet, Lucy presented me with a gift: a sun-catcher made of caribou skin and beads dyed yellow from ground wolf moss. Flushed, I said I would send her one of my books.
“I can’t read no English.”
We sat there while Noah leafed through the papers he’d retrieved from an inner office. Clint chatted with Lucy like old friends, their fragmented talk a haphazard mix of Qwich’in and crude English.
When we were ready to leave, Lucy leaned into me. “I understands that your heart beats alongside Noah’s.”
“What?” Surprised.
“I understands you helps save our boy from the wolves.”
Clint grinned. “The mukluk telegraph, Edna. News walks through Alaska.”
Flustered, I mumbled, “Who said I have any power…?”
The old woman got too close to me, her face a mask of deep wrinkles, and I stared into her old cloudy eyes. “You don’t have to tell me. Your eyes do. And the way you look at Noah.”