Tundra Kill

by Stan Jones

  Active jerked up, saw a pond of green slush across the trail, and put his hand on the door handle. Roland had his cup to his lips as Pudu cried out. Roland lowered the cup, cut his wheel, fishtailed around the overflow, and resumed his progress downstream, all with no coffee spilled. He looked over at Pudu with a grin.

  “You thought we was going in, ah?”

  “I never,” Pudu said.

  “Maybe somebody’s been down there at Juneau with them naluaqmiuts too much, ah?

  “Maybe so, I guess.” Pudu raised his camera and focused on the governor as she gazed into the fog. “Ah, Mom?”

  “How’s trapping this winter, Roland?” Mercer asked. Active leaned his head back again and drifted off as the driver and the governor fell deep into a discussion of the unfair and unfathomable process by which fur buyers set prices.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Sunday, April 13

  ROLAND’S RUT-RIDER GOT them safely into Isignaq at mid-morning on Sunday, but Cowboy was still waiting out the fog in Shelukshuk Canyon when night fell.

  The governor and Pudu spent the rest of the morning following the Isignaq 400 via Kay-Chuck’s live coverage from the finish line.

  Brad Mercer indeed led the pack down Beach Street, which prompted a call of congratulation from the governor on a phone in the principal’s office at the school, as Isignaq, like the rest of the villages along the river, was without cell service.

  Active waited with Pudu at a desk in the administrative area outside the principal’s office as Mercer went through the ritual with her husband and promised to call Kay-Chuck for an interview about the race.

  Then she was silent as, Active gathered, the First Mate asked a question. When she answered, her voice had a slight edge. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “I’ll be there when I get there. I am not taking a snowgo.”

  More silence.

  “I’m sure this will break up by tomorrow and…” She noticed Active and Pudu outside, eased up to the office door, winked, and closed it.

  Active smiled. Every marriage had its secrets, he supposed. If it weren’t for the universal compulsion to keep up appearances, civilization would no doubt collapse like a snowhouse in the sun.

  Mercer spent the rest of the day squeezing in as many of the things from her original village schedule as time allowed. She made it to the school Inupiat Spirit assembly, cut the ribbon on the new village health clinic, and bade Active farewell at the door to the home of Reverend Waldron, where she and Pudu were to savor a muktuk-based dinner and spend the night.

  With the First Body safe in the care of the reverend and his family, Active made it to the village store just before closing. He picked up some pilot bread, squeeze cheese, beef jerky, plastic cutlery, and bottled water, as you never knew about a village water system. Then he made his way to the new clinic, downed his plastic-wrapped banquet and stretched himself out on an examination table in his snowgo suit with his parka for a blanket.

  By dawn Monday, the sky was starting to thin, and by mid-morning was clear, as if the ice fog of two days earlier had never happened. Rodney Hamilton, Lienhofer’s Isignaq agent, caught up with them at the village store to let them know that Cowboy was on his way.

  Mercer wrapped up her purchase of a set of nesting birch bark baskets made in the village—no politician would dare pass through without doing so—and the agent hauled them to the runway in his pickup. Mercer rode in front, while Active and Pudu took the bed with the luggage and the birch baskets.

  “Arii, my mom, ah?” Pudu lifted his eyebrows.

  Active gave this some thought. “I work for her,” he said finally.

  “Ah-hah,” Pudu said.

  “At the moment,” Active said after more thought.

  Cowboy pulled up to the Lienhofer hut and shut down the ladies’ model. He helped them in with their stuff, they climbed in, and were in sight of Chukchi in its lambent bed of snow and sea ice by ten-thirty.

  They touched down and Mercer nudged him as Cowboy stopped the 207 at the Lienhofer hanger. “Thanks, Nathan. Quite a trip, huh?”

  “Goes with, I guess. This is the Arctic.”

  “Indeed.”

  “So, ah, will you be—”

  “Needing you again today? I don’t think so, not till the musher’s banquet tonight. I’m sure my folks and the girls have all been terrified, so I think we need some family time, plus I really should get on the phone to Juneau to make sure all’s quiet on the political front, plus Brad and I have some business to take care of this afternoon, plus Fox News wants a Skype interview, plus I have to keep an eye on Pudu while he edits our video, and…oh, I won’t drag you through it all. But no doubt you also…?”

  “Yep, I’m sure there’s something between a three-alarm fire and a train wreck on my desk by now, so I should probably shovel away the top few layers today if at all possible. And Lucy Brophy’s supposed to take me through the accounting system. Oh, yeah, and I have to look at the applications to replace her while she’s on maternity leave. So, I, yeah, definitely—”

  “Good, then, let’s both go take care of business and I’ll see you at the banquet.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Tuesday, April 15

  ACTIVE DID A mental head count as he rolled up to the Mercer home on Beach Street the next morning. Just Suka and the First Mate if the kids were at her parents’ place. Otherwise, Pudu and the three daughters he hadn’t yet met would also be climbing in or on. Six Mercers in all for the ride the airport.

  But he could take only four in the cab with him—three in the back seat and one in front. That left the truck bed for the other two, who presumably would be Pudu and the First Mate.

  Not legal, strictly speaking, but who was going to arrest him? He was the law south of the Brooks Range and north of the Yukon River, pretty much. Plus he would have the governor on board.

  But, when the Mercers marched out with their duffle, the head count was only two.

  “No kids?” Active asked the First Mate as they tossed bags into the bed. He was burly for an Inupiaq, probably from the white half of his genes. He had an agreeable face, lightly stubbled and a little weathered from his time on the trail. Ruggedly handsome, the celebrity magazines usually called him. Tundrabunny had even once offered to let the First Mate “ride my runners anytime.”

  “Nope,” he said. “This way they’re not switching schools all the time. And they can be around their friends. That kinda stuff is really important to girls, I guess. Especially the friends. For Pudu, it’s huntin’, fishin’, and basketball. I had to fight Helen on it because she always wants them around her—especially Pudu—but I knew Juneau wouldn’t work for them.”

  “But you yourself don’t mind it much?”

  The First Mate shot a glance at the governor and grinned a little. “She’s got something I need. Even after all these years.”

  Active let it pass. “So what do you do with yourself down there in Juneau?”

  “Handle constituent calls for Helen if they’re from Natives, sometimes, but mostly I just wish we were up here. Not much country for an Eskimo with the big trees and all that rain. But I’m back and forth a lot, what with doing my two weeks on and two off at the mine. So I spend a few days here at either end of my shift. I can keep in touch with the kids and run the dogs some and do a little huntin’ and fishin’ myself.”

  Active headed for the driver’s door, then noticed the governor still at the front passenger door. She frowned and shot him a glance from the corner of her eye. Once again, he had forgotten the chauffeur part of his bodyguard duties.

  “Sorry, Suka,” he said as he assisted her into the cab. “Where are my manners?”

  “You’ve probably been in Chukchi too long. Don’t forget, I have an opening in Anchorage.”

  He said nothing, but went to his side of the truck and climbed in.

  “Grace feeling better this morning?” the governor asked as he switched on the engine.

  “I haven’t had a chan
ce to talk to her. She was still in bed when I left.”

  Mercer lifted her chin and touched the bandages on her neck. “I hope it wasn’t these.”

  “I’m sure it wasn’t, Suka. Grace knows better than to believe gossip. Especially from the Internet.”

  “I hope so. We’ll need to get Pudu at my folks’ place. I want to get some more video before I leave.”

  He headed for the house and the morning sun hit the cab for the first time. It picked out a bruise over one of Mercer’s eyes, with maybe trace of dried blood on it.

  Come to think of it, the First Mate had looked a little haggard as they hoisted in the bags. Maybe the Mercers had done some catching up? Maybe they liked it rough?

  He checked himself and shook his head. Why did his thoughts always drift that way in Mercer’s presence?

  But mention the injury or not? She was a woman, so she undoubtedly knew about it already. If not, if she’d dressed in a hurry or something, she’d show up for her flight with a bruise and a scab. People would notice and somebody would get a video then it would be all over the Internet, just like the scratches. What if the poster mentioned he was with her at the airport?

  “Um, Suka?”

  She turned his way. He touched the same spot over his own eye. “Do you—”

  “Oh, crap, I forgot!” She twisted the rear view mirror around for a look, then got out her phone to use the selfie camera and fished in her purse for makeup and a tissue. “I am such a klutz! But you knew that, right?”

  She talked as she dabbed the blood spot and worked with her makeup kit. “I was pulling bags out of the closet this morning while I was talking on this damn thing and one of them fell off the shelf and hit me right in the face which I hope will teach me I should never multitask but I doubt it!”

  Faster than Active would have thought possible, the bruise vanished. She put away the phone and makeup. “Unlike the heroic scratches I got in Cowboy’s tent in the line of duty, this was just plain stupid. Which is why God made concealer, right?”

  “Right,” he said, though he had never heard of concealer before.

  Pudu came out when he pulled up in front of the grandparents’ house. Helen moved to the left rear seat as usual, and Pudu took right front to capture her in profile as she rolled through the streets of her home town.

  Active saw the Mercers through security, returned Pudu to his grandparents, and was tempted to put in a couple of hours at the office to postpone the inevitable. Then he decided it was pointless.

  Helen Mercer might be gone, but not so the problem of Grace Palmer. The same Grace Palmer who had refused to attend last night’s Isignaq 400 Musher’s Banquet with him, so furious over the scratches on the First Neck that he had elected to hole up at their new place for the night in hopes she’d cool off after sleeping on it. The question was, had she? She wasn’t answering the phone.

  When he pulled the crew cab to a stop in front of her house, empty paint cans on the front steps were the only evidence of the whirlwind of renovation that had swept through in in the past few days. The conversion to the Chukchi Regional Women’s Shelter must be almost done.

  Active let himself in and wrinkled his nose at the paint fumes.

  “Grace?”

  “Up here,” she shouted from the second floor.

  “Be there in a sec. I’m going to open a window and air the place out a little.” The house was quieter than usual, he noticed. “Nita at school?”

  “Yep. And eating at the cafeteria, not here—they’re having fish sticks and tater tots, her all-time favorite. We’ve got the place to ourselves today.”

  Place to themselves? Why would she mention that, he wondered as he wrenched at the window over the kitchen sink. He was about to shout the question upstairs when he heard Grace’s footsteps coming down. She brushed past on her way to the refrigerator, leaving him lost in the scent of lavender. Then he noticed she was wearing one of his old Trooper uniform shirts, unbuttoned, and not much else. So that was what the Nita thing was all about. Maybe they would make it work this time? Daytime, nighttime, any time was fine with him. But how about Grace?

  He moved to the refrigerator and had just laid hands on that wonderful swell of hips when the work phone in his pocket went off. He pulled it out to dismiss the call, then saw the number, rolled his eyes, and stepped back, a hand raised in supplication.

  “Hello, Governor, I’m fine, thanks, everything OK? Oh, sorry. Of course, I remember, ah, Suka, is everything OK?”

  Now Grace rolled her eyes. She bent over to retrieve a can of Diet Pepsi from the refrigerator and he realized that “not much else” didn’t quite capture her state of undress. Grace was wearing the old Trooper shirt and nothing else. He averted his eyes so as to be able track what the governor was saying.

  “I’m sorry, what?…Actually, it was kind of an adventure…yes, you’re right, cell service would have been nice up there…what? Cell towers?…I’m sure it could be done, but the cost of those remote tow—run it through the public safety budget? So, yeah, there’ll be some administrative overhead, of course. What?… OK, a supplemental appropriation would be great…OK, sure, and thanks, uh, Suka.”

  Grace eased up behind him and slipped her hands into his trouser pockets. He jumped.

  “Uh, listen, Suka.” His throat tightened and it was hard to get words out. “Can I call you back? Dispatch is calling. Apparently something has come up…yes, thanks again, all right, sure, call me when you land in Juneau.”

  “So it’s ‘Suka’ now?” Grace was in front of him, an eyebrow cocked. The work shirt had swung open, but not far enough, not yet.

  Active grinned. “Her choice, not mine. And she wants to put cell towers along the Isignaq.”

  “Seriously.”

  He nodded. “No doubt so she can tweet live and direct from the wilderness the next time her plane goes down. I’m sure the cost of remote towers will be astronomical, but she’s gonna say it’s a public safety issue and run it through my budget, so all’s well. She even suggested we bump up our cut for administrative overhead by a couple points and put the gravy into the village crisis centers. All good, right?”

  “Very good.” She didn’t sound sincere.

  “She’s a woman of boundless energy,” he said in a cautious tone. “Like a bouncing football, sometimes.”

  “Sounds like a case of pibloktoq to me.”

  He frowned. “Pibloktoq, that’s, ah…what is that?”

  “Arctic hysteria.” The quicksilver eyes sparkled, then paused in concentration. “Let’s see, I believe the exact wording is, a dissociative episode characterized by extreme excitement of up to thirty minutes, followed by convulsive seizures and coma lasting up to half a day.”

  He grinned, not surprised something so obscure should have stuck to that brain of hers. “Frenzy, convulsions, and half-day comas? This would be observed primarily in the female of the species, I’m guessing?”

  She grinned back. “Exactly. Especially gorgeous female governors who fly around the Arctic wilderness with hunky young cops.”

  “This particular governor has a hunky young husband who races sled dogs and is very large and fit. So I doubt she’d be interested. And you know I wouldn’t, long as she doesn’t mess with my budget.”

  “The hell I do.” The quicksilver in her eyes was gone, replaced by fire.

  What switch had he flipped, and how?

  “You spend the night in a tent with her, guarding that so-called body of hers, she comes out with scratches on her neck, and Tundrabunny is all over the Internet about how you—what was it she said?—canoodled with America’s most gorgeous governor in a tent actually called the Arctic Oven.”

  “What was I supposed to do? She scratched herself and she made Pudu tape it and put it on YouTube and now—”

  “And now I walk down here all tarted up like this and the next thing I know you’re on the phone with her and it’s ‘Suka’ this and ‘Suka’ that? What is she, in your contacts now?”
<
br />   “She is the gov—”

  “Yes, she is, and it seems like she’s got you on a mighty short leash.”

  “She controls over half my budget, not to mention the appropriation for your crisis shelters. What am I supp—”

  “Maybe that’s what you like, huh? The woman on top? Handcuffs and a blindfold?”

  “What’s gotten into you? You’re not—” He leaned over to check her breath. She pushed him back so hard he stumbled against the sink.

  “No, I’m not drinking. I just can’t give you what you need, so you’re out collecting it from our hot little governor with benefits. I hear there’s nothing she likes better than serving her male constituents!”

  “You know I’m not like that.”

  “You’re a normal man with normal appetites. Of course you’re tired of hand jobs.” He winced at the desperation in her voice. “Let’s get this over with.”

  She pulled open the shirt and pushed out her breasts and they were too much for him. He brushed the nipples with his palms, felt them swell, then pulled her to him and crushed his lips against hers. She reached up and sank her nails into his scalp. He groaned and slid his tongue into her warm, wet mouth. She responded for a second and the word “Finally!” came into his head and he boosted her onto the counter and fumbled with his belt buckle. Then it was over. She went rigid in his arms. He let her go and eased back a little.

  “Just do it. I have to get past this.”

  “I can’t, not like this. It’s not in me.”

  “Just take me! Get me drunk. Something, anything. Help me undo what Jason did. Pretend I’m her if you have to.”

  Pretend she was Helen Mercer? My God, was it possible she could read his mind?

  He shook off the picture of Mercer in the Trooper shirt and pulled Grace in and wrapped her in a bear hug. “Stop that.” He softened his voice. “Stop it now.”

  Somehow, that un-flipped the switch. She relaxed like a swaddled infant.

  “Sorry, baby,” she sobbed into his neck. “I’m scared I’m never going to get there. It’s like I’m out on an ice floe and I can see the shore but I just can’t make the jump to normal. Go. Find someone else. A man can’t live without sex.”