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Stabenow, Dana - Shugak 11 - The Singing Of The Dead

Page 15

by The Singing Of The Dead(lit)


  one she had never bothered to break once she left Anchorage. There was

  the usual assortment of people wanting to fall in love for the night, a

  man bundled in a down parka too hot to wear inside, and-she backed up a

  couple of faces. Tom Gordaoff was bellied up to the bar with his arm

  around the shoulders of a girl who looked like she ought to have been

  carded at the door and turned away. They clicked glasses and drank,

  after which Tom leaned in for a long, slow wet one, his body crowding

  hers against the bar, one knee forcing her legs apart. Her hands settled

  on his hips, pulling him in. Perhaps not that young after all, Kate

  thought, and left them to it.

  Her dinner partner was writing in her notebook, hasty scribbles that

  Kate, usually a good upside-down reader, couldn't decipher. She wondered

  if she and Mutt were going down into literature as the woman with the

  wolf. The other woman looked up to see her watching, and colored.

  114

  "Sorry. I have to write the ideas down as they come to me or I'll lose

  them."

  "You must go through a lot of notebooks," Kate said. This one looked

  like it was on its last legs, held together by two enormous rubber bands.

  "I buy them in bulk on Costco runs into Anchorage. I've got one

  everywhere, on the kitchen counter, in the bathroom, next to my bed. And

  two or three pens each. You never know when you're going to run out of ink."

  Kate didn't usually waste a lot of time on strangers, so she surprised

  herself by asking, ?tell me about this book you're writing."

  The woman's big brown eyes brightened, making her look like a

  ten-year-old. She had about her that childlike quality of instant,

  innocent enthusiasm, although she had to be in her mid-to-late forties.

  "It's an historical novel about Alaska, featuring three generations of

  women. One comes up with the stampeders during the Gold Rush, her

  daughter is an Army nurse who flies medivacs to the Aleutians during

  World War II, and her daughter is a roustabout on the North Slope during

  the oil boom." She hesitated. "It's sort of a history of the last

  hundred years of Alaska, seen through their eyes." She hesitated again.

  "They kind of are Alaska, if you know what I mean."

  Kate nodded.

  "Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?"

  "You can ask," Kate said.

  "Are you Native?"

  Kate laughed. "Like you couldn't tell."

  The other woman blushed. "I'm sorry, that was rude."

  Kate shrugged. "Asked and answered. I'm Native. Aleut, mostly. Why?"

  "Aleut? Was your family evacuated out of the Aleutians during the war?"

  Kate nodded. Paula's eyes gleamed. "Wow. So now the family lives in

  Niniltna."

  115

  "All over the Park, some in Prince William Sound, a lot of us in Anchorage."

  "Do you think" The woman paused.

  "What?"

  "I wanted Natives in my book, but I'm having a hard time getting a

  handle on what they've been doing in Alaska during the past hundred

  years. I mean before ANCSA. I mean original source material from actual

  Natives. All the records are written by whites. Even the records of

  Castner's Cutthroats. It's irritating as hell."

  "No Alaska tribe had a written language. The Native tradition is oral.

  And given the way many of them were treated, there were a lot of

  mixed-race kids who didn't admit to their Native blood if it didn't show

  on their faces, so a lot of the oral tradition was lost." It was Kate's

  turn to hesitate. What the hell. "My father served under Castner."

  "No kidding!"

  "No kidding."

  "God. Did he go ashore at Attu?" Kate nodded. "God," Paula said again,

  with reverence. "I've read about that. The Japanese didn't give ground

  easy."

  "Nope."

  "Is he still around, your dad?"

  "No."

  "I'm sorry," the other woman said automatically, although it was obvious

  that she was sorrier not to be able to interview Stephan Shugak than she

  was for Kate's loss. She looked up and caught Kate's eye. She flushed

  again. "Truly, I am sorry."

  "It's okay. It was a long time ago."

  "It still hurts, though," the other woman said, and when Kate's

  expression changed, repeated, "I'm sorry. There's nothing worse than

  unsolicited sympathy."

  "No, there isn't, but it's still okay," Kate said, and was

  116

  surprised to find that it was true. Sympathy for something other than

  Jack's death was almost a relief.

  They sat in silence. The moon was high in the sky now, and through the

  window some of the brighter stars could be seen, Rigel, Betelgeuse. Kate

  craned her neck to see if the Pleiades were in sight. They were, keeping

  always and ever just out of Orion's reach. An exquisite torture devised

  by the goddess of the hunt, one of whose followers Orion had raped. Kate

  wouldn't have minded Artemis sitting on the parole board when a few of

  the people she'd arrested came before them. No get out Of jail free

  cards for them. She pointed at the notebook. "What was your big idea?"

  Paula hesitated. "I don't know. Sometimes ideas sound kind of dumb when

  you say them out loud. Especially mine."

  "Try me. I promise not to laugh."

  Paula gave her a long look, glanced down at Mutt, gnawing on a T-bone

  with a blissful expression, and decided Kate was trustworthy. "I do a

  lot of research. Just recently I found a story about a woman who was

  murdered in Niniltna back in 1915, a woman they called the Angel,? one

  of the good-time girls who came up with the stampeders to mine the gold

  miners in the Yukon, and who came down to mine the copper miners along

  the Kanuyaq afterward." She grinned. "You talk about Natives not wanting

  to admit the past, you should try to get some Anglo whose family has

  been in Alaska more than three generations to admit to having a

  good-time girl in theirs."

  "I remember hearing a little about that. A lot of the women who worked

  the Fairbanks Line wound up marrying into respectable society, or what

  passed for it back then, didn't they?"

  "You better believe it," Paula said, punctuating her statement with her

  pen. "Some of them had the guts and determination to climb the Chilkoot

  Trail and brave the Jake

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  Bennett rapids right next to the men, and went on to marry some of the

  founding members of the state, and their grandchildren and

  great-grandchildren are in public office and are running some of the

  biggest businesses around the state today."

  She leaned forward, her eyes bright with discovery. "You know what? I

  think my Gold Rush grandmother just became a dance-hall girl who was

  selling some on the side."

  "I'll buy your book," Kate said. "And I'll read it, too." Paula flushed.

  "Thank you," she said, ducking her head. "I mean, really. Thanks."

  118

  Kate walked back to her room thinking that it was a shame that

  interludes and conversations like that one were few and far between. On

  the other hand, maybe one that good was what gave the job meaning. That

  and her pa
ycheck, which was beginning to swell her bank balance to

  comfortable proportions. She was thinking about calling an attorney,

  maybe the one Jack had used in his fight for custody. Kate had never met

  her, but the way Jack had described her made her think of a pit bull.

  She would need a pit bull to go up against Jane.

  Deep in thought, she walked right into Doug as he was coming out of

  Darlene's room. "Oh. Sorry."

  He caught her by the shoulders in an automatic gesture. "That's okay."

  Mutt snapped at him, a short sound, not loud, but the meeting of teeth

  was audible. He released Kate and stepped back.

  She got a good look at him then, and saw that his shirt had been re

  buttoned wrong, that while his jeans were zipped his snap was undone,

  his feet were bare, and his usually perfectly combed head of gray hair

  was tousled, as if someone had been hanging on to it recently with both

  hands. He held a towel in one hand.

  "Lose your way to the bathroom?" Kate said.

  He didn't even look embarrassed. "I guess."

  She snorted. Mutt, taking her cue, gave a soft growl.

  119

  They watched him pad down the hall to the communal bathroom.

  As a matter of security, she knew that Doug and Anne's room was the only

  one among the campaign staff that had its own bathroom.

  Well, she was only there to look after the candidate's physical safety.

  She let herself into her own room and shucked out of her clothes and

  into an oversized T-shirt that hit her about mid-thigh, with a brightly

  colored parrot celebrating Jimmy Buffett's Y2K party on the front. As

  she was about to climb into bed, there was a knock at the door. She

  opened it and found Doug standing there. "You lost again?" she said.

  "I just-let me talk to you for a minute, okay?"

  She didn't want to be caught talking to the candidate's husband in her

  nightshirt after midnight, so against her better judgment she let him

  in. She didn't invite him to sit down but he did anyway, on the bed she

  had been ready to climb into, a violation of her personal space that she

  fully appreciated. Mutt didn't like it, either, but Kate made a gesture

  with her hand and Mutt lay back, chin on her paws, yellow eyes fixed

  unblinkingly on Doug.

  "What do you want, Doug? It's been a long day, and I'd like to get some

  sleep."

  "Look," he said, "I don't know what you thought you saw, but-"

  "I know exactly what I saw," Kate said. "I'm a grownup; you don't have

  to pretty it up for me. In fact, please don't waste my time trying."

  "I wouldn't want you to-I'd hate to think you'd-"

  "What? Tell Anne? That's not my job."

  "It's just that-"

  "Doug, give it a rest and let me get to bed. If Anne can't keep you in

  her bed, it's not my business to tell her so."

  "It's not that," he said.

  Kate sighed. He was determined to tell her what it was.

  120

  "It's just that-Anne's kind of hard to live up to, you know?"

  Kate maintained an unhelpful and she hoped unfriendly silence.

  "Sometimes a man needs a little warmth, a little affection."

  Kate yawned.

  "Before the campaign all she had time for was her patients. And before

  that she only had time for the kids. Now she hasn't got time for anybody

  but those people in District 41 old enough to vote who haven't already

  signed onto her campaign."

  "I see," Kate said.

  "You do?" he said. He sounded plaintive without being self-pitying,

  wistful for those wonderful days when Anne had had time for him,

  reluctant but willing to sacrifice their relationship for the greater

  good of the community, only a man seeking some comfort in the trying

  days and weeks ahead.

  Kate hoped she wouldn't vomit. "You have made it all very clear. Your

  wife doesn't understand you, and her campaign manager does. Go back to

  your own room now, please."

  He was good, he stayed in character, he kept the sad expression of the

  chronically misunderstood in place all the way to the door, where he

  paused to rest a hand on Kate's shoulder. "Thanks for listening."

  She shrugged. His hand wouldn't move, and he was standing very close to

  her. "Doug," she said, "in spite of your incredible sex appeal, I am

  going to give you two seconds to get out of this room. Then either I'm

  going to take you apart, or I'm going to cede that pleasure to Mutt. I

  promise you, either way, it will be painful."

  His smile was sorrowful as she took her place in the ranks of the legion

  of women who didn't understand him, and, finally, he left.

  121

  After that, she couldn't get to sleep. She understood, all right, better

  than either Doug or Darlene would like her to, she'd bet money on that.

  Doug was a rounder; she'd spotted that the minute she'd met him.

  Darlene, on the other hand, wanted her candidate elected and would do

  anything to make that happen, including sleep with the candidate's

  husband to keep the adultery in the family. Better than having him cat

  around among the constituency. Although he was probably doing that, too,

  a rounder rounded, that's what rounders do. She thought of Jim Chopin.

  She tossed and turned and cursed Doug and Darlene equally, and wondered

  if Tracy knew. Kate didn't know much about politics but even she could

  see this was a campaign nightmare in the making.

  She wondered if Anne knew. If she did, she also knew how to keep her

  feelings hidden. Or maybe she just didn't care. Maybe part of what Doug

  said was true; maybe Anne didn't have time for anyone but her would-be

  constituents.

  Tony, bless his heart, in the interests of modernizing the Ahtna Lodge,

  had installed televisions in each room. With any luck there would be an

  old movie on. Instead she got a new one, with some guy running around

  peeling other people's faces off his own and blowing up things right,

  left, and center. It bored her in three minutes, and she turned it off

  and reached for the latest of many books that had accompanied her on the

  tour with Anne Gordaoff, the story of a Southern Baptist minister who

  hauled his wife and four daughters to the Congo in the fifties and

  proceeded to offend every single local custom that he possibly could and

  whose wife and daughters, naturally, suffered most for it. It reminded

  Kate of Pastor Seabolt and his son, Daniel, and his grandson, Matthew.

  She wondered, as she often did, how Matthew was doing, and felt again,

  as she always did, guilt that she had not been able to help him. It was

  an evocative book, all right, rich with personality and description,

  122

  and Kate only dozed off because she hadn't had any real sleep in two nights.

  She was wakened by a knock at the door. She groaned and rolled over to

  look at the clock on the night stand. Two- thirty in the morning. "Go

  away," she said loudly, testing the need of whomever was waiting on the

  other side of the door.

  The knock came again.

  "Hell," she said, and climbed out of bed to pull on her jeans. Mutt was

  already at the door, her nose pressed to the crack, and Kate kept the

 
; chain on when she opened it. "What?"

  It was Darlene. Her hair was wet and hung in strings around her white

 

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