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