Susan pulled more bits of her head together. She looked out the side window of the Jeep, somehow the door closed tight beside her, the old Naskeag woman sitting in the driver’s seat pouring another mug of good hot coffee, sipping from one side almost in a ceremony before offering the other to Susan, the girl over by Susan’s Dodge scrawling graffiti with one finger in the road-salt and grime of the trunk lid. Looked like a word in some language Susan didn’t know, couldn’t even pronounce, too many consonants in a row.
The girl, Alice, added A.H. underneath, as if her initials carried weight. She picked up skis, picked up poles, opened the back hatch of the Jeep and put them inside. Closed the hatch, got into the back seat, buckled her seatbelt, settled headphones on her ears, eyes closed, head started nodding with the beat of whatever music flowed there. Just another zoned-out teenager.
The Jeep was rolling, such a gentle start that Susan hadn’t felt it, her mug of coffee barely showing a ripple. She checked her own seatbelt. Buckled, shoulder strap and all, she hadn’t felt that happen. She felt weird. Out of it. This wasn’t like her, this shock, this fainting. She’d made it through finding Bitch dead in the trailer, not this bad. Puked, yes, but that was the mess, the blood, the stink. She still felt light-headed, sitting down, spaced out and watching herself from a point somewhere up around the windshield visor.
Something in the coffee? No, Aunt Jean had drunk from the same Thermos. And why was she calling that old woman “Aunt Jean” in her head? No kind of relative, not unless you went back to the Bering Strait land bridge and the last ice age and the proto-Amerinds following the mastodons.
Naskeags called elders “Aunt” and “Uncle” regardless of relation, as titles of respect. Maybe her thoughts were just fitting into the culture. Protective coloration. Aunt Jean drove carefully, not the slowness of an old driver confused by traffic but a seasoned speed watching out for ruts and potholes, moving left and right with gentle skill that saw well ahead and planned, no skids, smooth shifts, manual transmission and clutch but no jerks, no crunching gears.
The Jeep rode well, might have rusty hinges and dings and dents under all the road dirt, but the shocks and springs seemed new. The engine purred with the steady power of a big V-8 with a recent tune-up and clean filters. This car looked like a rolling wreck, but ran like a Mercedes. Dollar signs, again, hidden dollars. Protective coloration. What kind of scam were these Indians running?
And then Susan remembered her mother, remembered the horror of the phone call at college, moving in a daze of shock and mourning like she was feeling now, the closed-coffin funeral with maybe five people attending. Remembered going through her mother’s slum apartment in this same kind of dissociated fog after that ugly little robbery-murder in the third-rate “Chinese” restaurant where she’d worked, and finding five thousand dollars inside an old mayonnaise jar here, three thousand tucked behind a stack of Goodwill sweaters on the closet shelf there, other cash in other places, all the money hidden from decades of skipping meals and buying Salvation Army clothes and never trusting banks. Never spend a nickel if you don’t have to.
Notes tucked in with the cash, reminders—“For Susan school.”
Maybe these Indians thought the same way. If you don’t look like you have money, nobody will rob you. Right? Just look how far that reasoning had gotten Mom. But her scrimping had carried Susan through the last three years of grad school.
They pulled out onto the paved highway, sooner than she expected, they hadn’t been driving that fast, and Susan wondered if she’d blacked out again. She glanced across at the instruments. Speedometer read somewhere above sixty, she couldn’t tell exactly what because of parallax, but the ride felt and sounded like maybe thirty, thirty-five in the Dart. Dollar signs. The old woman nodded at her and patted the dashboard like you’d thank a good horse by patting its neck after a winning run, as if she’d read Susan’s thoughts. Good car.
And then she reached across and laid her hand on Susan’s leg, one of those strong honest Grandmother hands. “The spirits have touched you. Oui, Eagle has touched you. Do not be surprised if the world seems strange to you, do not be surprised if your body reacts in strange ways. Time may pass differently for you for a while. You may feel as if you no longer fit inside your bones. A day, two days, to find your balance, your place, who knows? For some, the world never seems the same again. They are too weak to meet the spirits.”
She squeezed Susan’s leg. “I think for you this will be a blessing, not a curse. Oui, you are a strong one.”
And they drove on, cruising the state highway with all its twists and potholes and frost heaves like it was the interstate, and a state trooper passed them going the other way, passed this Jeep going at least twenty over the limit on a bad road, and the cop touched his brakes as if he was going to turn and pull them over but then drove on without turning. Hidden power. The cop knew this car and didn’t question it. That spoke of more than money, more than Naskeag influence in Sunrise County politics. What was this woman, this Aunt Jean?
“Doctor Tranh?”
Susan shook herself out of her thoughts, turned to the old woman, and saw anger on that old lined brown face.
“Doctor Tranh, you should come and stay at my house. You will be safe there. Those men, they have attacked you twice already. Oui, they may attack you again. They would not dare come to my house.”
Susan blinked, then shook her head. It was an automatic response, like pushing a button, she started building her walls again. She’d learned that trust hurt. Granny Tranh, her father, her mother—everyone she dared to trust had vanished from her life. She had to make her own way. She could only trust herself.
Tracy’s came up on the right, the damned racist truck stop, Gook-hater city, and they pulled in, pulled up in front of one of the garage bay doors out back. Susan tensed, remembering hostile eyes. Maybe that half-wit Dottie wasn’t working this shift, maybe the deputy had had his little talk with his uncle that owned the place. Sunrise County was full of insiders, family, with Susan on the outside.
They sat. They waited, engine idling, Aunt Jean sure that whatever she waited for would come to her, that calm power again. And a people-door opened down between two of those overhead garage bay doors, and a man walked out wiping his hands on a work rag. Aunt Jean rolled down her window against the squeaks and groans of rust—hadn’t wasted any money on luxuries there.
The man nodded, eyes flicking to Susan across the front seat. Dark eyes, in a medium-dark face, another Naskeag ’skin or at least a ’breed. Racist names, if they could use them, so could Susan.
“Aunt Jean.”
“Charlie. That new truck Tracy bought, the tilt-bed with the winch. Can you take that down the fire road to Eagle Roost?”
He glanced up at the sky. “The transporter? Yeah, if I leave right now. Weather should hold long enough.”
“Go there. You will find a blue Dodge Dart, four tires slashed. Bring it back, replace the tires, new steel radials, good brand, all-weather tread. New spare to match. Spin balance. Then bring the car out to the fish and game trailer, you know where that is. Send the bill to the corporation. My name on it. You will need the keys.”
And she turned to Susan, hand out, that old strong gnarled Grandmother hand that Susan could trust, and Susan found herself handing over her car keys. The man took them with something a hair short of a salute, just like he’d taken that string of precise orders from Aunt Jean. He turned to go, no questions. This woman ran a tight ship, whatever the ship was.
Aunt Jean chewed on her lip, then spoke again. “Charlie?”
He turned back.
“Check that car over, front and back and sideways, oui? Full inspection. Make sure the goddamn scumbags did not do anything more than cut the fucking tires.”
He nodded, no sign of surprise at the crude language that seemed so out of character for the matriarch. But those few words told Susan that Aunt Jean seethed behind her calm wrinkled face. Something more was involved here, so
mething more than an insult to the tribe, and that rage was supposed to send a message through the woods and waters of Sunrise County. Susan just couldn’t read the words, like that graffiti scrawled on her car. She didn’t know the language.
Aunt Jean waved the man off, get moving, no further orders. Instead, she wound up the window, grunting with effort, the crank groaning back in sympathy. She turned in the seat.
“Alice?”
The kid sat back there, headphones on, eyes closed, head nodding to the beat of whatever music throbbed in her ears. Aunt Jean reached over the seat, grunting again, her age and bulk making the move into a major effort. She pulled the headphones off.
“Alice Haskell! Pay attention!”
The kid blinked her eyes open, sullen, chewing that wad of gum in a way that spoke teenage rebellion in any language. “Yeah?”
“You will teach Doctor Tranh to shoot.”
“Jeez. Do I gotta?”
“Mind your tongue. Or the House will choose your sister instead of you. Doctor Tranh is a woman. She is in danger. You will help her. Is this clear enough?”
“Jeez.” The kid nodded, face still sullen. She looked up from under her eyebrows. “You shoot better’n me.”
“Better than I. And not anymore. You have young eyes. You have young hands that do not shake. You like to make loud noises. Take that anger out on beer cans. They will not swat you on the ear hard enough that all your hair flies off.”
The kid ducked back into the far corner of the seat, out of range. Susan stared from one brown face to the other, blinking with shock. From what she’d seen, Naskeags never lifted a hand against their children.
And some House would choose? The world was turning strange around her.
How the hell did Aunt Jean know I can’t shoot? Was it that obvious?
X
Dennis stoked up the fire in the parlor stove, forcing winter back out through the gatehouse walls. The rest of the eccentric building remained ice-box cold and hibernating. He could have lived out here on the edge of civilization instead of making a winter den deep inside the old boathouse, but he liked to keep that mile of slogging through the snowdrifts between him and the rest of the human race. He didn’t like the human race.
He shrugged out of his parka and hung it up on the old Victorian coat rack in the hall, all carved leaves and ribbon garlands in dark walnut and equally-dark tarnished brass hooks and an age-spotted mirror to check the angle of your hat before you went out in public. The room felt warm enough for visitors now, hospitality-at-arm’s-length Ghost Point style, dust covers off the chairs and Aladdin kerosene lamps with frosted globes throwing yellow light into the shadowy corners because he’d had the power shut off since October. Power off, water lines drained and antifreeze in the sink traps and the toilets, windows shuttered inside and out. Batten down the hatches for winter.
He shook the steaming kettle again, weighing, enough water there for three, four cups of coffee. Or tea, or cocoa. Whatever, he had the makings, including three or four species of alcohol if the old woman asked for a little kicker in her mug. He didn’t know what his visitors would take, but human protocol said he had to make the offer.
Humans. He didn’t think much of that species, taken as a whole. That Marine lieutenant was a representative sample, riding a power trip that cut him free from common decency and the US Constitution. Searching a home without a warrant, in the name of “security.” And Dennis had heard the news from Rick, scuzz-bag poachers killing Doctor Tranh’s dog as a warning. She might be a royal pain, but that didn’t justify torturing her dog.
Given a free choice, he’d delete at least half the human race. He wasn’t sure at this point which half she’d be in. Two kinds of people in the world—those who make life easier for each other, and those who make it harder. That second group seems to outnumber the first by a large margin, and she’s showing all the earmarks of a card-carrying member of the Harder Party.
On the other hand, she skis like a bird. Someone who moves that well can’t be all bad. And she loves animals. All that crap she handed me, it was about good care for the critters.
Tires crunched the snow outside, the purr of a well-tuned engine died, followed by the groan of rusty car door hinges. Dennis grimaced. It had to be that Naskeag “Aunt,” a big nervous-maker. Even thinking about her made him twitch. Jeanne Haskell, “Aunt Jean” to probably half of Sunrise County, she’d wandered in and out of his childhood but he hadn’t seen her in maybe ten years. Before ’Nam, anyway. He’d heard so many stories . . . .
He wiped the frown off his face and the sweat from his palms and stepped back into the central hall, opening the door before she knocked. Front door, not the kitchen door into the mudroom and garage, Maine country life has a protocol for these things. Side door meant ordinary daily life. The front door meant important—the preacher’s visit, the doctor, the wedding, the funeral.
Or the Naskeag “Aunt.”
She looked placid, short and round, a sagging brown face with a lot of smile wrinkles framed by thinning white hair now rather than the thick glossy black he remembered, the kind of face that handed you gingersnaps so hot from the oven that they scorched your fingertips and tongue, but that façade didn’t fool Dennis. The Naskeags ran a matriarchy. The old women ruled their world, and this old woman reportedly ruled the old women, Boss of Bosses, in the Mafia sense. And rumor said, just that ruthless if she decided she had to be.
She nodded at him, no introduction needed, clumped up the front steps, stomped snow off her boots on the mat, and turned into the parlor as if she’d been here just last week. A kid followed her, brown skin, short, denim pants and jacket totally unsuited to Maine winter, wad of chewing gum in her cheek, transistor radio in hand and headphones still hanging on her neck.
The kid tilted her head to one side, eyes and lips narrowed in perpetual teenaged scowl. “Hoka hey, white man. You wasted your time coming out. We’ll have to walk back in so Aunt Jean can case the joint.”
Aunt Jean turned back, that placid face now frowning and showing steel behind it. “Alice Haskell, you can be a rude teenager on your own time. You are on business now, oui? You are the face of our People. Any stranger deserves honor, until he proves otherwise. This man deserves more than most.”
The girl glared back at her. “More than most? What has he done for our People?”
“Do not waste my time with stupid questions. Vraiment, I grow too old for that. You know the answer—he fought to protect our People. He walks on a plastic foot now, gave flesh and blood and bone guarding you. Bronze Star, Silver Star, Purple Heart, other medals, you know this. You owe him honor. You owe all warriors honor. Show it.”
The old woman turned and nodded to Dennis. “Our People owe you much honor, oui, whether that war was foolishness or not. My ignorant niece must learn many things. Among other things, she must learn that your pride makes you come out to greet us. You refuse to be a cripple. That also deserves honor. Not contempt.”
Dennis remembered her French accent. She came from the New Brunswick side of the Naskeags, the French-speaking backwoods side, rather than the coast. He didn’t know how or why she’d ended up ruling her U.S. cousins. Mysteries—Sunrise County served up too damn many mysteries.
The kid stared at the floor under her feet, shaking her head and mumbling under her breath.
“Speak up, child.”
“I’m sorry.”
She didn’t look sorry, but Dennis nodded anyway. Teenagers, you took what you could get and called it good. Came with the territory. He’d probably been just as bad at that age.
“Would you like coffee or tea?”
“Alice may be foolish, but she is correct in one thing. We will have to go in and see the place where Bear danced for you, smell the tracks where the Swimmer of Dark Waters took your deer. We have brought snowshoes, oui. But we will stop and follow ritual with you. Tea would be nice. I see you have the water hot already.”
“Darjeeling, Earl Grey, J
asmine, or I have some Lapsang Souchong?”
“Ahhh. Lapsang Souchong, oui. Strong and smoky, I think we could offer that to the spirits instead of burning tobacco. It is good. I think better with that flavor on my tongue. Alice? Darjeeling?”
The kid nodded.
“You have to tolerate Alice. She is my heir and must learn things, but she is in the middle of discovering whether she likes boys or girls. Hormones turn her brain to mush, and that makes her difficult.”
Aunt Jean paused and cocked her head, studying the girl like some kind of alien specimen. “If she offends you beyond limit, you have my permission to give her a black eye or bloody nose. Do not break anything, please, but she needs to learn that rude behavior has consequences. Painful consequences.”
He stared at the girl, wondering if Aunt Jean was serious. Alice glared back. She reminded him of the three-legged bobcat—still wild and dangerous, tolerating Dennis as an equal who must stay outside that private zone of claws and fangs. The girl had the same feral look in her eyes. He felt his body language change, his stare shifting off her face, his shoulders and hips and hands turning loose and non-threatening, the whole posture he used in calming injured animals.
“Would you like some tea?” He used the same soft comfortable tone, no stress, that he used with the critters.
“Darjeeling, please.”
She’d relaxed enough for that ‘please.’ Dennis didn’t know what he did, but apparently it worked on teenagers as well as other . . . animals. He caught a look from Aunt Jean, studying him, appraising. She nodded, as if she’d checked something off on a mental list.
Honor. The old witch offered me honor. I wonder if she understands what that means to me, what it would mean to all of us who served in that ’Nam FUBAR. We just did what our tribal elders told us to do.
He chewed on that thought while he puttered with the tea, filling tea-balls with the loose Lapsang Souchong, taking out a bag of the Darjeeling, splashing hot water into antique Haviland china cups even in the gatehouse for the servants and visitors. The smoky aroma of the tea blended with wood smoke from the stove to cover the stale must and dust of a house left empty ten months of the year.
Ghost Point Page 11
