Run Cold

by Ed Ifkovic

  “To track Jack Mabie?” From Noah.

  “I didn’t know if he was still alive. I spent years chasing rumors of the man. Once, I heard of an outlaw named Jack in Kodiak. A summer there, searching. Not the man. I never forgot that evil face, the maniacal laugh. Everything about him. And Sam Pilot, backing him up. The Indian without a soul. Vacations from this dump—I wandered. Juneau. Nome. I almost gave up, but then suddenly there it was in The Gold.” He laughed a long time. “There it was. The man was in town. Loud, drunk. Cocky.”

  “And so you killed him?” Hank asked.

  “No challenge.”

  “But Sam realized…”

  “The way the Indian sat here that night. He just stared across the lounge. It gave me the willies. His eyes on me—feverish, hot—eerie. Like he seen a ghost. I knew that he knew then. Another drunk. Staggering in the night. Easy.”

  “Sonia.” Again Hank’s plaintive word, stretched out. Noah caught his eye.

  “Sonia was a damn snoop. She questioned me over and over. Annoying. Why was Sam Pilot sitting in the lounge? What did he say to me? Then I came into work early, when May was on duty, and there was Sonia, sitting in back with her, chatting. She picked up my family picture, peering at it, then at me. A day later she asked if I heard of a murder in Fort Yukon. No, I said. I never went north of Fairbanks. But the lie sounded stupid, and after that she watched me. I caught her talking to the manager, asking to look over guest lists, even employee applications. I think he said no, but who knows? Foolishly, I’d written that I was born in Eagle. Years back—no matter then. Then she was nervous around me, and I knew she suspected. But she had no way of knowing for sure. One night, headed out from my rooms down the street, I saw her in the shadows, watching, watching. I knew.”

  “And you had to kill her, too.”

  Exasperated. “What choice did I have? Christ! Decades of waiting, hoping, praying, all to end with exposure?” A fake laugh. “I don’t think so.”

  “But how?” Noah asked.

  “Her note to Miss Ferber. I was off taking a towel to a guest and when I got back Silas Taylor said Sonia’d stopped in, left a note for Miss Ferber. He joked that she added something. He said she was happy to see him. Him, she stressed. Not me, I guess. In the middle of the night I opened the note and saw the line—‘I can connect the dots.’ I knew. She added that polite ‘please’ at the end.” He tilted his head and snarled. “I added the bit about not telling Noah. Blame him. Because I already knew what I had to do.”

  “Blame an innocent soul.” Paul’s words were fiery.

  “A morning run to the trading post by the airport. A red parka, some cheap tourist emblems. An old cane I owned for years. A call to The Gold changing the time to meet Miss Ferber. I knew she’d be at the school till nine. I hear everything.”

  “Convenient,” I said. “I wondered why you chose my room.”

  A sickly grin. “So close to home, as they say. Convenient, indeed. When she arrived, I lied—said you’d called from your room. Go up now. She was hesitant, uncomfortable with me, but as she rifled through some papers in her purse, I scooted out the back door of the back room, hustled up the rear staircase, let myself into the room. In seconds she knocked.”

  “But she must have been surprised?”

  “To put it mildly.” A harsh laugh. “It gave me time to pull her in, smash her in the head, then beat her with the cane.”

  Irina screamed, grabbed Hank’s hand.

  Teddy ignored her. “Then I washed off traces of blood in a hurry, stuffed her papers into my vest—she’d outlined her case against me, in fact—cracked open the door. I waited until a guest came out of a room and I put on the parka—I’d actually hidden the parka and cane in Miss Ferber’s room an hour before—and then, hood up, limped down the back stairwell. Back into my little space.”

  “My God.” Irina started sobbing.

  “And then waited for the hoopla to begin.” He spun around, then back, glaring at me. “In the middle of the night I dropped the cane in an alley. I burned her papers in my fireplace.” He grinned. “Evidence.” He pointed at Noah. “I almost got him, too.”

  At that moment Clint returned, Chief of Police Rawlins next to him. Both men stood quietly in the doorway, the lawman with his hands folded over his chest. Clint caught my eye and cocked his head. He mouthed the words: You’re welcome, Edna.

  Teddy spotted the lawman, but turned back to us. “I don’t care, you see. I got what I wanted. I dedicated my life to one pursuit. One only. A life driven by revenge.” He shook his fist at the ceiling and laughed out loud. “I did what I wanted. I got what I wanted. No other purpose. Accomplished. Done. The final page of my book. Do with me as you will. My father sleeps easily in his grave.”

  Chief of Police Rawlins moved forward.

  Teddy saluted him, his voice awful and fierce and echoey. “And tonight I will have the most peaceful sleep I’ve had since I was a little boy in Fort Yukon. I may even dream.” His eyes moistened and he bowed at me, then at Noah. “Perchance to dream.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  “A sad story,” Noah muttered as he sat having coffee with Clint and me. “Sonia, Jack, and Sam. The power of obsession.”

  I sighed. “Deep-seated vengeance.” I looked at my watch. In two hours I’d be on a Pan Am flight to Seattle, then on to New York.

  Noah was drumming his fingers on the table. He’d hardly touched his coffee. “I keep waiting for Sonia to tap me on the shoulder. To ask me to go to a movie.”

  “You have to make a decision,” I told him.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean…Hank, Irina. After Teddy was arrested, Hank reached out to you in the lounge. He was trying to say he’d made a mistake.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “And?”

  A heartbeat. “I have lot of thinking to do.”

  “But you gotta give him a break,” Clint said, reaching across the table and taking Noah’s hand. “He made a mistake.”

  Noah rolled his tongue into the corner of his cheek. “Yes, he did.”

  “But you’re not ready yet. Right?”

  “I don’t know what I’m ready for. You know, lying in bed last night I realized that I’m not mad at Hank anymore. His grief made him…irrational. And, I suppose, in time we’ll talk again. But something has shifted in me. It had to. A lifetime of trust and love and…and believing. I learned something about him…”

  “He ain’t that man,” Clint said hotly. “He’s the father grieving for a dead girl.”

  Noah, sharply, “And what about me, Clint? I was like a son to him. What about me?”

  Clint didn’t answer.

  “You say you’re not angry, but you sound it.” I stared into his face.

  A long pause, then he smiled. “I suppose I am, still. But I talked to my grandfather last night, and I admit his words got to me…made me back off my anger.” He sighed. “At least a little bit.”

  “What did he say?”

  He looked at me. “It’s not what he said. It’s his silences that talk to me.”

  Clint grinned. “Something I’d expect you to say.”

  “Indians are inscrutable.” Noah grinned. “Hollywood has taught us that.”

  “And mostly a pain in the ass,” Clint said. “You forget that I was married to an Athabascan many years ago.”

  Clint excused himself, headed to the bathroom, and I saw him wince as he stood, and for a second he lost his breath, stumbled. Noah and I watched him walk away. I stared after him, shaking my head.

  “Clint’s dying,” I said slowly. “You know that, don’t you, Noah?”

  He nodded. “I know. We all know. But he doesn’t want to talk about it.”

  “What’s gonna happen?”

  Noah glanced toward the bathroom. “Clint’s like most Alaskans, the
old pioneers—as independent as can be, fiercely so. He once told me he won’t be put into the Frontier Home, all those craggy old men sitting all day, playing cards, complaining about the food, the fact that no one comes to visit, wandering off at night to Omar’s to get plastered. He wants to stay in his cabin. Or hang out in the Nordale. That’s the way he wants to die…on his own terms, puttering around. Probably while chopping firewood.”

  “When he dies, an era ends.”

  “It ends a little every day, as the old sourdoughs die. Clint’s one of the last.”

  Clint tottered back, sat down. “Talking about me?”

  “Yes,” Noah admitted. “We were saying you’re one of the old pioneers.”

  Clint’s voice rose. “Ain’t gonna put me in the Frontier Death Camp, is you?”

  “Wouldn’t think of it,” Noah said.

  I changed the subject. “I heard that Tessa is near death. Another stroke.” I sipped coffee. “And Paul has left Fairbanks,” I said quietly.

  Noah nodded. “Yeah, packed his bags and headed to the Lower Forty-eight.”

  “I think Hank and Irina hope he’ll come to his senses and come back home.”

  “Paul called his mother from Seattle, she told me,” I added. “He said he crossed paths with Jeremy Nunne on the streets, who told him Preston won’t talk to him now. Jeremy’s headed back to Ohio, to the family home—to forge his own life. He’s sworn off Alaska—and Preston’s empire.”

  I looked at my watch and said to Noah, “And what about you, Noah West?”

  Noah stared back at me, a lopsided boyish grin on his face, almost mischievous, a boy caught in the cookie jar.

  “I’m going home,” he said. “I’m leaving Fairbanks.”

  “To stay with your grandfather?”

  “For the summer.” He breathed in. “Edna, I’m leaving this all behind. For now. I’m not going forever, but for a while. I got some catching up to do with myself.” He grinned. “I’m a Qwich’in Thoreau, although, I admit, a pale, less reflective sort. I got to spend some time alone. This is not a place I recognize anymore. I walk the streets here and feel like a stranger.”

  “Well, you’ve been betrayed.” My voice cracked. “So you will live with your grandfather?”

  “No.” Noah tilted his head, smiled. “No. Well, this summer, yes, as I said. In the old days we didn’t live in cabins like now. We were nomadic, following seasons and the caribou. Winters on the traplines. So I want to live in that small cabin I have out on the Yukon Flats. By myself. This coming winter.”

  My heart sank. “The place you showed me in the plane?”

  He nodded. “Yes.”

  “But there’s nothing around it but tundra, vast and vacant and…”

  “That’s the idea.”

  “So small,” I said, nervous.

  “You build small cabins because they’re easier to heat. Half of it is underground for insulation. One window so I can see the wolves and grizzlies coming to call. I want to trap animals. In the winter their pelts are thick and luxurious, you know. Clint knows that.” Clint nodded. “I don’t want to be around people.”

  “But I’m going to worry about you,” I told him. “Out there. In the cold. People disappear in Alaska. You told me that. I can’t get the idea out of my head.”

  He was smiling at me. “They do. I know. But one of the things I got to deal with…finally…is my father disappearing. My father and me. Even Maria and me. My lovely sister. All those years I refused to think about her life. I need to work on my life with her. I need to make her a part of our grandfather’s life again.”

  I wagged a finger at him. “Become a real brother to her, Noah.”

  “Yes.” He nodded.

  “But if you go away…” I paused. “I’ll worry.”

  “I promise you’ll hear from me.”

  I started to say something but stopped.

  “I won’t forget you,” he said.

  “How will I know you’re safe? Especially if you’re hidden in a cabin?”

  His eyes brightened. “I’ll surprise you someday. You’ll pick up your phone and…”

  “I’ll wait for that call, Noah. Then I’ll know you’re okay.”

  “Promise.”

  “I just did.”

  Epilogue

  The morning doorman at my apartment house seems ready to say something, so I hurry by. Despite the starch-pressed gray uniform with the gaudy Prussian epaulets on his wide shoulders, there is always something rough-hewn about James. His face looks bronzed, enormously wrinkled, a man more at home on a Wyoming cattle range than in the subdued but still ostentatious entrance of a posh East Side doorman building. As I stroll by him, this first day of July, very early, a scorching day, he tips his hat dutifully and says a ritualistic, “Good morning, Miss Ferber.”

  My fingertips gingerly smoothing the lace trim of my collar, I walk past. But hearing him clear his throat, I hasten my admittedly ancient step away from the building. My morning walk, up Park Avenue, over to Fifth or, sometimes, living wildly, down Lexington, a mile and a half, sometimes more, rain or sun or ice or war or Manhattan pestilence, and then back to Molly Hennessey’s sumptuous breakfast, the morning mail.

  But today I’m exhilarated and feel giddily triumphant, though I’ve said nothing to Molly this morning. And I know why. At a news kiosk on Lexington, just before I turn back toward Park Avenue, I glance at The New York Times, pinned on the rack:

  ALASKA ADMITTED AS 49th STATE.

  July 1, 1958.

  I had nothing to do with this, truly, but I find myself chuckling: well, maybe just a little. After all, I wrote Ice Palace, my fervent novel about Alaska and the pro-statehood movement there, published four months ago, in March. Fairbanks read it, and Anchorage and Juneau. And the impassioned Alaskan women—mainly women, I know—fired off letters to Congress, to newspapers, promoting statehood.

  Without my planning it, I’d written a front-page novel, newsworthy and talked of.

  Back at my apartment building I pause on the sidewalk, spotting James rushing to open the door for me.

  “Miss Ferber,” James says, the sleepy eyes in the grizzly face.

  “James.” I stroll past him.

  He clears his throat, unsure. “Miss Ferber,” he says again, louder. I turn back. “I just learned that you wrote that book on Alaska. The super just mentioned it—gave me his copy. I didn’t know…”

  “What didn’t you know?”

  “Miss Ferber, I was in Alaska for four years.”

  That stops me. “Really?”

  “The war years. Afterwards. Went up there late in ’42. Soon I was working for the U.S. Army, building the Alcan Highway, you know, from Dawson to just outside Fairbanks. I drove up in an old pickup, looking for work. When it was over I was in Fairbanks, a rough-and-tumble town, let me tell you.”

  “I know Fairbanks.”

  “I know it, too,” he says emphatically. “Alaska got to me.” He slips off a glove and holds up a hand, and I notice two of his fingers missing. “Frostbite. Fifty below in the winter.” He pauses, makes eye contact. “Alaska got into my soul.”

  “Then why are you here?” I stare back into the rough sandpaper face.

  “My wife was here. And I got real lonely.” He chuckles. “But she wasn’t so lonely, I guess. When I got back here, she left me for someone else.”

  “But you could have gone back to Alaska.” I take a step away.

  He stares at me a long time. “No, I was afraid to.”

  That gives me pause. “What?”

  He runs his tongue over his lips. “Lonely in New York is one thing. Lonely there is dangerous. I lived in a cabin five miles outside Fairbanks, through a long winter.” He whispers. “In Alaska people fall in love with loneliness. They disappear into the snow and ice.”

 
That startles me. People fall in love with loneliness. A horrible line, that, but not new to me. Those vacant-eyed men who hid from the world among grizzly bears, wild blueberries, caribou on the taiga, the crushing ice of the Yukon, under the surrealistic Northern Lights.

  As the elevator rises to my floor, I think of Noah. In my apartment I sit in the kitchen and say nothing while Molly puts coffee in front of me, and then buttery and crispy waffles, with tangy blueberry syrup sent from Alaska by Irina Petrievich. A gift. I push the plate away. People fall in love with loneliness.

  Since I left Alaska, I’ve had two notes from Noah, only two brief notes, spirited, lovely. But then silence.

  Now, the rumble of excitement about statehood, I feel the Earth move beneath my feet. Noah, the mukluk grapevine. Call me.

  So it colors my afternoon on a day that should be a celebration. All afternoon the phone rings, the telegrams delivered. Edna Ferber, as front-page news. Katharine Hepburn, in Hollywood, sends a telegram: ALASKA AND EDNA. LOVE AT FIRST FROSTBITE. I smile. Dick and Dorothy Rodgers, out of town: EDNA DEAR YOU’RE FORCING US TO BUY A NEW FLAG. WE’VE HAD THE OTHER SINCE ARIZONA WAS ADMITTED IN 1912. And Kitty Carlyle Hart, touring in the Midwest: DEAR EDNA YOU DO KNOW HOW TO MAKE A STATE (MENT). Clever, witty punsters, nutty, these friends of mine.

  All afternoon I mumble, Thank you thank you thank you. I mean none of it.

  I can’t get my mind away from some tiny rickety cabin out on the desolate Yukon Flats, miles and miles and miles from anything…from anybody. And a young man, maybe…

  I accept a call from Ernest Gruening, Alaska’s Territorial senator, and now, most likely, Alaska’s first state senator. He reaches me late afternoon, after a day of no work at my typewriter. He implores me to fly to Washington. I say no. He wants me to fly back to Alaska. I say no. He rattles on and on about my Ice Palace being instrumental in priming the pump—his quaint term, though I grimace—in getting Americans on Alaska’s side, on letting the world beyond Alaska—the Outside—understand the pernicious workings of the Seattle-based salmon industry, the mining and transportation monopolies. “You did it, Miss Ferber,” he says, formal, as always, with me. He even gloats that some are calling Ice Palace the “Uncle Tom’s Cabin of Alaska statehood,” something that makes little sense to me. When he finally hangs up, I sit there, phone still cradled to my ear, the dial tone humming. I stare at the clock.