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

by The Singing Of The Dead(lit)

  told me."

  The grin vanished, and his grip on Katya must have tightened because she

  uttered an inarticulate protest. "Sorry, Katya," he said, horrified, and

  resettled her. With an heroic effort Bobby managed to restrain himself

  from snatching his child to his bosom.

  Johnny looked at Jim, making an obvious effort to stay calm, to keep his

  voice level, above all to present the appearance of someone who was old

  enough to determine his own destiny. Kate was glad he was holding Katya.

  "Like Kate says, my mother took me to Arizona. I went along at first

  because I was-" his eyes flicked at Kate and away again "-well, because

  I was upset about Dad." His lips thinned. "Mom went back to Alaska as

  soon as she dumped me off. Grandma's okay, but she lives in a retirement

  community, and they're all mad because she's got a kid living with her.

  She didn't want me with her, and I didn't want to be there. I toughed it

  out as long as I could. I tried, I really did, Mr. Chopin, but I didn't

  like her, I hated Arizona, and I missed Alaska, and I just wanted to

  come home. So I left."

  "You ran away from home," Jim said.

  "I left," Johnny said stubbornly. "I left to come home." He looked at

  first surprised and then pleased at his own words. "She caught me the

  first two times, but the third time I made it all the way back. I came

  to the Park, to

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  Kate's, and I'm not leaving. I don't care what she says or does or what

  the law says I have to do, I'm not going back to Arizona!" His voice

  rose in spite of himself.

  "Uh-huh," Jim said thoughtfully. "You can't stick it out till you're

  sixteen? That's, what, two more years?"

  Johnny shook his head, a mulish and mutinous expression on his face.

  "Can't and won't."

  Jim looked at Kate. "So you been hiding him?"

  "Yeah."

  He looked at Ethan. "And you been helping."

  Ethan grinned at Johnny. "Yeah."

  "Shit, Jim," Bobby said, "if it comes to that, the whole Park's in on it."

  They waited.

  "As a matter of law," Jim said, "and as an officer of the court, I am

  required to return Johnny to his mother, who is his legal guardian."

  Johnny flushed red up to the roots of his hair, opened his mouth,

  encountered Kate's level gaze, and shut it again.

  "Are you thinking of pursuing legal guardianship?" Jim asked Kate.

  "Yes," she said.

  "Don't," he said. "All that does is tell his mother where he is. You'll

  have to produce him in any court battle, and you'll lose."

  "I won't go," Johnny said.

  "She already knows he's here," Dinah said.

  "Yeah, but she didn't find him."

  "And she'll be back," Bobby said. "That bitch has got teeth if I ever

  saw them; she's got them sunk into this."

  "She doesn't care about me," Johnny said fiercely. "She doesn't care

  where I live. She just doesn't want me anywhere near Kate. Not even in

  the same state."

  That pretty much summed up Kate's feeling on the matter.

  "My dad loved Kate," Johnny said, looking at Kate. She

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  met his eyes. "My dad loved Kate, and my mom hated her for it. She wants

  me away from her."

  Kate couldn't speak. Jim looked at the expression on her face and away

  again, quickly.

  "I'm sorry, Kate," Johnny said.

  "I know," she said. "It's all right, Johnny."

  He opened his mouth as if to say more, and she shook her head, trying to

  smile. "It's all right," she said again. "It's okay. I understand."

  There was a brief silence. Kate thought of the copy machine she had

  found when she had burgled Jane's residence in Muldoon, what was it, two

  years ago now. She'd figured then that Jane, who worked for the federal

  government in a department that allocated bids, had secretly been

  bringing bids home, copying them, and selling them to competitors. She

  could go to Anchorage, investigate, prove it.

  She looked at Johnny, sitting on Bobby and Dinah's couch with a lapful

  of Katya.

  No, she couldn't.

  "It's a big Park," Bobby said. "We'll keep an eye out, make George watch

  for incoming moms. For the moment, best he stay with Ethan. She knows

  where Kate lives now."

  "Works for me," Ethan said. "Okay with you, kid?"

  Johnny nodded, face taut with hope.

  "If George spots her coming, we'll shuttle Johnny around some. He can

  stay here, at Auntie Vi's; Bernie'll be glad to take him in for a while.

  Old Sam. Demetri. Billy and Annie Mike are running a boarding house for

  every stray kid in the Park now as it is, one more and Annie's cup

  runneth over." Bobby looked around and demanded, "I mean, how long can

  Jane Morgan keep this up? I'm assuming she's not independently wealthy;

  she's got a job she has to go to. She can't be out here all the time,

  and in two years Johnny will be sixteen and on his own, if he so chooses."

  "I do," Johnny said.

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  "What if Jane shows up at the school?" Kate said.

  "I don't have to go to school," Johnny said.

  "Dream on, kid," Dinah said.

  Johnny, who Kate had only just discovered had an enormous crash on

  Dinah, blushed at being directly addressed by his dream woman.

  "Same thing," Ethan said. "If George spots her coming, he gets to the

  school himself or sends someone ahead to get Johnny out and gone." He

  added, "Who's teaching up to the school nowadays?"

  "It's a pretty good group," Dinah said. 'There's even one local, Billy

  Mike's oldest girl, who brought her degree home. She's teaching fourth

  and fifth grades."

  "And Bernie's up there all the time coaching," Bobby said.

  Kate looked at Jim. "What happens if she gets through us?"

  "I give her the slip and get back the fastest way I can," Johnny said

  promptly.

  Jim looked from Kate to Johnny and back again.

  "Don't let her get through you," he said.

  They were snowed in but nobody minded, and there were enough sleeping

  bags to go around. Bobby built up the fire and retired to the big bed in

  the back, where he could be heard making lecherous noises in Dinah's

  direction. She giggled and told him to behave, and he did, mostly.

  Johnny, sleeping the untroubled and dreamless sleep of those who have

  absolute faith in their friends, lay curled in a corner with his head on

  Mutt's flank.

  Kate went out on the porch to breathe deeply of cold, fresh air. She

  moved to the top step, out from under the eaves. Snow melted beneath her

  bare feet, searing her soles with cold fire. It fell on her upturned

  face, cool, melting kisses that seemed to sink beneath her skin and become

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  part of the blood moving slowly and steadily through her veins.

  The door opened, and she looked up to meet Ethan's eyes. He pulled the

  door shut behind him and walked forward. In silence, he took her hand

  and pulled her up to the porch. In silence, he took her place on the top

  step, which put his head on a level with hers. They were so close that

  she could feel the heat of his body.

  "So the kid stays with me?"
>
  Asked and answered, she thought, but replied, "For now."

  "Fine by me." He raised a hand to smooth her eyebrows, tuck a strand of

  hair behind her ear, trace the line of her lips. She watched him through

  lashes heavy with snow. "At school, that thing with Darlene."

  She waited.

  "It didn't mean anything. She saw that you wanted me, so she wanted me,

  too. That was Darlene all over."

  "So it was all Darlene's fault?"

  "Oh hell," Ethan said, disgusted. "You just won't let me lie, will you."

  It was a rhetorical question, and Kate's only answer was the tiny smile

  at the corners of her mouth.

  He grinned. "The truth was, I was hornier than a bull moose in rut," he

  said, "and I wasn't having any luck with you. She came to my room and

  offered it up, and I wasn't about to turn it down."

  "That's more like it."

  His grin faded. "Okay, that was then. Seventeen years ago, I was just a

  kid being led around by my dick. Today I'm older, and maybe a little

  smarter. You want to give this another shot?"

  It was his turn to wait. "Kate?"

  She opened her mouth, and closed it again. "I don't- Jack was-I'm not-"

  She gave her head a tiny shake,

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  annoyed with her inability to say what she felt, to give him an answer.

  "I admit," he said, "this whole Kate-and-Jack thing. It's intimidating

  as hell. I only saw you guys together a couple of times, but when I did

  it was like you were reading each other's minds. Margaret and I-well, it

  was nothing like that with Margaret. Maybe I'm jealous."

  He watched her for a long moment, and she waited for him to go back

  inside the house. Instead he bent his head, taking his time, giving her

  a chance to step away.

  She didn't.

  On the other side of the window, Jim Chopin stood, watching, as his

  hands clenched into slow, heavy fists.

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  Epitaph

  Fairbanks

  Unkempt, neglected, forgotten, abandoned to the privations of elements

  and time. Markers made from rounds of wood sliced from a downed tree,

  splitting with age and decay so that the words carved upon them are

  hardly legible.

  Each successive autumn another untended drift of leaf and bracken falls;

  the white picket fence has long disintegrated; a clump of diamond willow

  suffers from the attention of every wandering moose; the mounds of the

  dead have been overtaken by the wild rose and the devil's club. Black

  hairs from a passing bear stick in the sap of a living spruce tree's

  trunk where he has rubbed against it, more than once. The sunshine

  caresses equally the golden leaves of the aspen and the deep red stalks

  of the fireweed, as both stir slightly in the merest breath of a wind

  that as yet carries no hint of the winter soon to come.

  The sound of an engine is heard, stops, a door opens, closes, footsteps

  approach. Grass yellow from age and a dry summer crackles underfoot. The

  chickadees cease their song, and wait, and watch.

  A woman picks her way through the trees, a beast with yellow eyes and

  silver fur pacing at her side. They stop at the edge of what is no

  longer a clearing. The woman's shoulders slump in momentary defeat as

  she looks around at the crowded trees, the thickness of the brush, the

  height of the grass that obscures what lies beneath.

  Her shoulders straighten. Stepping with care, she seeks

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  mil cadi remaining marker, one by one, pulling the foliage away so as to

  see what there is left to read. Her short cap of hair gleams raven's

  wing black in the light; the rich nut brown of her skin takes on an

  added glow of exertion from the warmth of the day, a deeper color from

  the heat of the sun. Her companion sits, motionless and silent at the

  edge of the clearing, ears flickering to follow each sound, alert,

  vigilant, patient. A magpie comes scolding into the clearing and, seeing

  them, departs at once. The three ravens roosting high above in the

  cottonwood keep their own counsel.

  The edges of the words have been eaten away by weather and insects, but

  some may still be read by those who take the trouble to seek them out.

  "Valentine Carlyle, Faithful Servant and Friend, born Glasgow, Scotland,

  1882, died Fairbanks, Alaska ..." year illegible. "John O'Henry," or is

  it O'Malley, "Bachelor, Miner, born 1893, died 1920, Jeremiah 17:17," or

  it might be 19:19. "George Washington Smith, born Savannah, Georgia

  1837, died Fairbanks, Alaska 1917, The Secret of Freedom a Brave Heart."

  The sun travels across the circle of blue sky and into the tops of the

  trees, and the shadows they cast outline a marker unnoticed before, a

  marker placed beneath a rose bush that has flourished to command its

  corner of this undisciplined garden. It is different from the other,

  wilder roses, as a last bloom testifies in hanging its heavy head to

  shed blood-red petals on the upturned faces of tiny blue flowers

  carpeting the mound beneath. The sweet perfume is a caress of the skin,

  a lure to the senses.

  The woman kneels before the marker, a round slice of spruce trunk with

  bits of bark still clinging to its sides; the face planed and sanded

  smooth once, warped now, split; the letters and numbers rotted through

  almost to the other side, but they were well executed to begin with, and

  the slab is by comparison to its fellows easy to decipher. Many words,

  of this life much to say. "Here lies Leonie Angelique

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  Josephine Beauchamp Halvorsen, born Melun, France 1875, died Niniltna,

  Alaska 1915."

  And nothing else, except-yes, lower down on the slab there are more

  words, hidden where the stiff dry grass has grown so thick. The woman

  pulls the marker from the ground with great care, for fear it will break

  in her hands. The tenacious roots cling, and the marker falls to pieces

  anyway and must be put together like the puzzle it is.

  She carries them one at a time to where a last ray of sunlight

  illuminates a small patch of grass, still green and cropped close by the

  Arctic hare peering at her from beneath a hemlock. The light disappears

  into the letters shaped long ago by a loving hand. The remnants of white

  paint help draw them forth from the shade into the bold statement of a life.

  HERE LIES LEONIE ANGELIQUE JOSEPHINE BEAUCHAMP HALVORSEN

  BORN MELUN, FRANCE 1875

  DIED NINILTNA, ALASKA 1915

  BELOVED WIFE OF SAM HALVORSEN

  BELOVED MOTHER OF PERCY HALVORSEN

  BELOVED GRANDMOTHER OF LEONIE HALVORSEN GORDAOFF AND ANGELIQUE HALVORSEN

  SHUGAK

  And in letters smallest of all, placed where they are least likely to be

  noticed once the slab is in the ground, unless you know they are there

  and look for them, are the words

  A Darling Girl

  High up in the bough of a tree a bird, smaller than all the rest, trills