by Marc Cameron
January couldn’t remember Dreadlock’s name, but she was all too familiar with the Hispanic woman. She’d thought Carmen Delgado was her friend. She’d seemed nice enough when she first came to Craig, before the production’s full-scale invasion six weeks earlier.
Being new herself, January had tried to be welcoming and invited Delgado for breakfast down at the Dockside Café. Carmen had repaid the courtesy once the show was up and running by painting January as a man-stealing siren who traveled the waters that surrounded Prince of Wales Island in her converted fishing boat, stealing the hearts of local men when she wasn’t pursuing her day job of studying killer whales. Of course the network couldn’t actually say it was January. What they could do was show shaky footage of Tide Dancer with her name blurred. They blurred January’s face as well, but the Fishwives were more than happy to make veiled inferences that led even some of the townspeople who knew her to buy into the sordid stories. Bright Jonas was convinced that January had set her siren song on her husband, Fitz—which was a joke. Any man who would get within fifty feet of a scold like Bright Jonas needed to have his head examined. January had no time for that kind of baggage.
Focused as she was on the departing FISHWIVES! idiots, January didn’t hear footfalls until the young Haida girl made it almost all the way down the dock.
“Hey there, Cassandra,” January called out when she finally saw her. She stepped back from the rear gate to allow the twelve-year-old girl enough space to board. She knew Cassandra wouldn’t answer back. January wasn’t sure if she couldn’t, or just wouldn’t talk, but supposed there had been some sort of terrible trauma in her past.
Cassandra Brown appeared to understand everything going on around her better than most twelve-year-olds. In a culture where parents taught their kids the value of being quiet early in life, she got along fine without talking. A look or pantomime worked plenty well enough to make her intentions known. As she got to know the girl, January couldn’t help but think the world might be a better place if everyone kept a few more of their words to themselves.
Cassandra’s hair was full and black, hanging well past the collar of a light blue fleece jacket. Like many of the Native families on the island, she was poor. January had seen her house—small and in need of repair, but her mother kept her tattered clothes laundered and well mended. Her patched and faded jeans were tucked into a pair of cheap rubber boots.
Once on the boat, Cassandra put her hands to her face as if she were taking a photograph. Each time January returned from her trips to film and document the pod of eleven resident orcas, the Haida girl stopped by for a visit, studying the photos for hours and making pencil sketches in a worn spiral notebook she carried with her everywhere. She’d taken to carrying her own small video camera—a loaner from the FISHWIVES! production crew who were always looking for more footage, even from novices.
January ducked inside the cabin to grab her digital camera and, after Cassandra took a seat well away from the side of the boat, cued up the most recent photos from her trip around the island. Havoc curled up on a deck cushion beside the girl, head on her leg so he could look at the photos along with her. There were hundreds and Cassandra would study each one in detail. She’d be there awhile.
January didn’t mind. She liked the kid’s company. Her plan was to make dinner and then hitch a ride into town to grab some quick provisions at the AC store—short for Alaska Commercial—while her laundry washed. There was a storm blowing in from the Pacific and the orca were headed up the west side, to the bays where they liked to hang out when the weather kicked up. She’d spend only one night in the harbor doing the tedious but necessary crap people did in harbors, and then head right back out. She wanted to anchor in a protected cove near where she suspected the whales would be, before this low-pressure system pushed in and the seas kicked up. The last thing she wanted to do was get stuck in town with all the FISHWIVES! people getting up in her face. There were plenty of great folks in Craig, but January found she preferred the company of wind and ocean to just about anyone anywhere.
As if to prove her wrong, Linda Roundy gave a shrill whistle from the parking lot above the docks. Carrying a bag in each hand, she made her way down the metal gangway grate and along the dock to turn down the last float toward Tide Dancer. Linda was a teacher—like January had been in her former life—so they had a lot in common.
“Hey,” January said, waving her friend aboard.
“I brought a calzone from Papa’s. We can split it if you want.”
January put a hand to her chest and batted her lashes in mock emotion—though a calzone from Papa’s Pizza didn’t require much of an act. “You are the best friend ever, Linda,” she said.
January stepped inside the cabin long enough to grab a handful of paper towels, a bottle of wine, and a root beer for Cassandra. The three of them sat and watched the sunset while they ate. The moon was going to be big tonight, but it had yet to rise, leaving nothing but the light from the wheelhouse window to illuminate the deck. January liked it and so did Cassandra. The Haida girl had eaten her piece of calzone and was now working on what was left of January’s. Cassandra ate a lot, but the calzones from Papa’s were big.
“Can I ask you a question?” Linda asked once she’d run out of all the latest school gossip.
January handed Havoc a piece of pepperoni. She liked Linda, but hated it when people did that. Ask the question or don’t. Don’t ask to ask.
Linda looked back and forth as if divulging secret launch codes, then glanced at Cassandra and seemed to think better of it. “Walk forward with me a minute,” she whispered.
“Okay.” January carried the paper towel with her piece of calzone with her, following her friend down the narrow side deck past the wheelhouse to the bow.
Linda stood by the anchor roller, holding on to the top rail with both hands as she gazed across the harbor and up at Mount Sunna Hae—or Sunny Hay, depending on which map you looked at. The mountain wasn’t incredibly tall, but a good deal of winter snow still lingered at the bald top.
January knew Linda well enough to see she was gathering up her words. She prodded. “What’s the matter?”
Linda turned, still holding the rail. “Can you feel it?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I don’t know,” Linda said. “It just feels like something awful is happening on this island.”
January smirked. “Like that shitty television show?”
“I’m serious.” Linda shook her head. “Millie Burkett has gone missing.”
“Probably out with some friends,” January said. “She’ll turn up.”
“It’s no secret that you don’t like her very much,” Linda said.
January scoffed. “She’s what? Fifteen? Sixteen? I reserve the powers of my wrath for the adults who work on FISHWIVES!”
“And they deserve it,” Linda said. “But I know Millie’s one of the ones helping spread the stories in town about you and Fitz Jonas.”
“Like I said, she’s just a kid.”
“Maybe.” Linda nodded. “But I’m worried about her. I’m telling you, Jan, there’s something dark going on here. Something . . . evil . . .” Her voice trailed off.
January whistled the theme from The Twilight Zone. “Like the Kushtaka . . . ?”
Linda laughed. “More like my ex-husband. I know, I’m starting to sound like a crackpot. But nobody’s seen Millie since early yesterday. That’s forever on this island. It just feels like something is . . . I don’t know . . . broken.”
January stared at the black surface of the water, looking at what was left of her reflection in the failing light. “I know broken.”
“Well, I gotta tell you,” Linda said. “Whatever it is, it’s giving me the creeps. I think I’ll drive Cassandra home.”
A muffled woof drew January’s attention to the stern rail and she turned in time to see the Haida girl making her way up the dock toward the darkness of the parking lot.
“Looks like she left without you,” January said.
“Dammit,” Linda said. “Now I gotta drive home all by myself.”
CHAPTER 13
MIM WALKED BAREFOOT ACROSS THE CONCRETE FLOOR OF THE two-car garage. Surrounded by a border of floor to ceiling metal shelves, double rows of blue plastic totes ran the length from door to furnace.
“That’s Ethan’s hunting stuff along the wall,” Mim said. “Sorry it’s so cluttered.”
Following her lead, Cutter left his shoes in the house. He had plenty of his own outdoor gear, but it was suited for the coastal marshes and beaches of his home state. Insulated rubber boots got about as much use in Florida as his boogie board would get in Alaska.
“It’s full,” Cutter said. “But it’s also crazy organized. Puts any garage I ever had to shame.”
Mim laughed. “I know, right? The garage was Ethan’s domain—the product of the twisted mind of an engineer. You should have seen the place before the kids and I started to trash it.”
Tucked into the far corner was a neat workbench with a well-organized Peg-Board of hand tools. One of the two overhead lightbulbs was burned out, giving the place a dim and dusty feel. Like many garages in Alaska, this one was packed full of so much outdoor gear, there was little room for a vehicle—not counting the Arctic Cat ATV that sat dusty and forlorn in the corner beside the water heater. This gear, however, was organized and labeled as if by a librarian.
Mim had changed out of her scrubs and into a pair of well-worn jeans and a garnet Florida State sweatshirt. “Virtually everything in here was his,” she said, sliding one of many large blue Rubbermaid plastic totes off a metal shelf. She popped open the lid to take a peek at its contents.
“This one has what looks like backpacks and duffel bags,” she said. “Ethan was a big lover of backpacks.” She held up the lid to show Ethan’s slanted, draftsmanlike handwriting in permanent marker. “BAGS,” it said. Mim’s eyes suddenly lit up.
“Oh, my gosh, Arliss,” she said, her voice bordering on giddy. She held up a net bag full of small brown conches and assorted other shells. “Look at this. Remember hunting for these when we were kids?”
“I do,” Cutter said, but kept any more thoughts to himself. Mim had to know it was a rough memory for him. They’d talked about it, just before she and Ethan had married—but never since—and especially not now that he was gone.
She dropped the shells back in the tote. “Need any backpacks?”
“I’m good on packs,” Cutter said. “What I really need are some rubber boots.”
Arms crossed, finger to her lips, Mim perused the tubs until she found one that was marked “FOOTWEAR.”
“Don’t forget,” she said. “Ethan organized this with his engineer’s mind.” She held up a pair of black swim fins and grinned. “Footwear . . . I would have put these with scuba gear but, hey, what do I know. Anyway, take whatever you need. I’m sure he would have wanted that. I should have gotten rid of it already, but I keep telling myself the boys might want it someday. That’s crazy, right? He always had this dream of taking them both on a big kayaking trip on some river up north. . . .” She stopped, swallowing back the grief. “I’m sorry. You’d think eighteen months would be long enough for me to pull myself together, a little at least, but I still can’t seem to make it through a night without crying myself to sleep.”
“It’s okay,” Cutter said. “Nobody’s going to blame you for mourning your husband. Least of all me.”
“I just . . .” She looked at the ground, as if she was afraid he might see something in her eyes. “Sometimes it all seems so futile. . . .”
“Mim . . .” Cutter was rarely at a loss for words, but he wasn’t much good at consolation either.
“Don’t worry,” Mim said. “I’m not contemplating suicide or anything. I don’t have to. The world is already doing a bang-up job of crushing the shit out of me.”
“You have an incredible family,” Cutter said. “Don’t forget that.”
“You mean my two beautiful boys and the evil she-wolf who won’t come out of her room?”
“Hurt hits us all in different ways,” Cutter says.
“Is that a Grumpy-ism?”
“Nope,” Cutter said. “Just the way it is. Anyhow, it’s good you want the boys to have some of their dad’s things. I carry Grumpy’s duty gun every day.”
“Oh, believe me, I know you do.” Mim chuckled and looked at her toes. He followed her eyes there to the startlingly red polish, then looked away before she noticed. “It bugged the heck out of Ethan that you got Grumpy’s pistol . . . among other things.”
“If our granddad would have been an engineer he’d have given Ethan his . . . whatever it is that engineers use every day. I just happened to follow his footsteps into law enforcement.”
“I’m sure that’s true,” Mim said. She gave Cutter a soft smile. “You’re so much alike, you and Grumpy. Ethan knew that. It killed him, but he knew it.” Her eyes dropped to her feet again, her naked big toe tracing an invisible line on the concrete floor. “You really do favor him. Your grandpa, I mean.”
“Because I don’t smile?”
“That’s not true,” Mim said. “I saw you smile once . . . back in 1998.” Her eyes sparkled with a sudden memory. “You know the first time I ever met your grandfather?”
Cutter did, but he found himself wanting to hear her tell the story, really any story, but this one would do. “Tell me,” he said. He took a pair of brown Xtratuf rubber boots out of the tote and sat down cross-legged on the concrete floor with the boots in his lap to listen.
She sat beside him, leaning against the stacked totes. “Ethan drove me out to Stump Pass Beach to look for shells,” she said. “Remember? Grumpy tied up his patrol boat at the state dock there on the east side of the key. Anyway, up to that point, I’d only heard stories about him from y’all. Ethan warned me we might run into him.”
“And you did.”
“Oh, yeah,” Mim said. “We came up that little path from the beach to the parking lot down by the restrooms—and there was Grumpy. He had your revolver pointed straight at this hippy dude who was lying facedown in the sand. He had another guy bent over the hood of a parked car. I guess he walked up on them while they were doing some smash-and-grabs in the parking lot. The guy bent over the car tried to fight, but you can imagine how that went over.”
“I imagine there was a lot of crying,” Cutter said, picturing the way his grandfather had taught him to do business with outlaws.
“And some pretty colorful language too,” Mim said. She smiled and shook her head, remembering. “‘Watch your ass, miss.’ Those were the first words Grumpy Cutter ever spoke to me. When he found out I was Ethan’s girlfriend, he handcuffed his bandits, gave me the once-over, and then shook my hand. I’ll never forget how he had this little tear of that other guy’s blood running down his cheek. I thought I’d never met anyone so cool.”
“And you never will,” Cutter said.
Mim shook her head and looked straight at him. “Maybe so,” she sighed. “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course,” Cutter said, bracing himself.
“Why did you go away and join the army? Grumpy told me more than once he would’ve paid for college for both of you boys.”
Cutter sighed. He could have said there hadn’t been anything left for him in Port Charlotte, but he didn’t go there. “Guess I just craved adventure.”
“And I hated you for it,” Mim said, staring into the corner of the garage. She sniffed back tears as she spoke.
“You did?”
“Not hated, really.” She corrected herself. “Resented. Remember that story Grumpy used to tell about the painting of the sailing ship?”
“Nope.”
“Well,” Mim said, “it seems there was this poor woman whose husband was lost at sea, so she kept a painting of his ship in her house to remind her three sons of the dangers associated with such things. Of course they looked at the stupid
painting every day—and all went to sea when they grew up.”
“Of course they did,” Cutter said, wondering where this was going.
“I never wanted that to happen to my kids,” Mim said. “You went off to find adventure with the military, motorcycles, and gunfights. I married the ‘safe’ Cutter brother who goes to college and becomes an engineer—probably the most boringly safe job on the planet—and he gets blown to hell. . . .”
Cutter put a hand on her arm.
“I’m not sure what brought that on,” Mim said. She ran a finger down the back of his hand, finding a bruise on his knuckle he didn’t even know he had.
“Bad day today?” she asked.
“Adventurous day.” He left his hand where it was, hoping she might take her time examining it for more bruises. “Even though I left my motorcycle back in Florida.”
“Bring it on,” Mim said. “If there’s one thing I learned, it’s that life happens. The boys might as well learn that while they’re young. At least one of them is bound to grow up like you—a perfect example that Ethan carried a dormant Grumpy gene. You went through a lot over there, didn’t you? In Afghanistan, I mean. I see it every time I look in your eyes.”
The question caught him off guard. “I thought we were talking about you.”
Mim just stared at him. “Grumpy told Ethan that something must have happened that you weren’t telling us. I heard them talking about it right after you came home. He said you were ‘war weary.’ ”
“I was, I suppose.”
“Then why do you keep on fighting?”
Cutter sighed. “Different kind of fight.”
“Really?”
“No.” Cutter pulled his hand away as if she might find one of his secrets there. “Seriously, I came here to take care of you and the kids, not be taken care of.”
“We’re family,” Mim said. “This is what family does.”
Cutter closed his eyes, trying to think of something to say. The last thing he wanted to do was talk about Afghanistan. So he didn’t.
“Do you still miss Florida?” he asked.