by Stan Jones
Outside the church, he paused in thought for a long moment, then headed the Suburban north up Second Street. Nelda’s place was six houses south of the hospital. As he knocked, he wondered again why she was the only person he could discuss the bullet dream with. All he knew was, it had something to do with questions and advice.
The one time he had tried to discuss it with Lucy, there had been a barrage of questions, a shower of advice. How long had he been having the dream? How often? Who was the person holding the gun? Was it her? Did he want to get counseling? Maybe he should take some time off work. Go visit his adoptive parents in Anchorage and stay in his old room for a while.
He had frozen in the spotlight of her love, the blaze of her anxiety, and then she had told Martha, his birth mother, about it, and he had had to repeat the ordeal the next time he went to Martha’s house for Sunday dinner. He was even less able to discuss the dream with Martha Active Johnson, the most terrifying woman on earth, and she had ended up as hurt, frustrated, and scared as Lucy.
Still, their unanimous recommendation of counseling didn’t seem like such a bad idea. Except he didn’t want it on his record. No cop in his right mind wanted anything in his personnel records about mental problems. Nothing that would make the brass think he was cracking up, or might in the future.
Then, not long after the first bullet dream, Active had been sent to a village on the Isignaq River to bring in a man named Grover Weldon on his third domestic-violence arrest in a year. Unlike the other two times, this time the wife beater drew a newly hired magistrate who happened to be a middle-aged no-bullshit Inupiat woman named Charlene Plunkett. Zinc-haired Charlene Plunkett had taken one look at Grover Weldon, said he was sick inside, and ordered him to see a tribal doctor named Nelda Qivits. That was—what—six, seven months ago? And Grover had stayed out of trouble, as far as Active knew.
Anyway, “sick inside.” That had resonated. And the next time Active had a bullet dream, he found himself knocking on Nelda Qivits’s door. The thing was, Nelda rarely asked a question about the bullet dream or offered advice. She never reacted to anything he said about the dream, but somehow it worked. She would chatter away like any old aana, swapping idle gossip till he found himself talking about what was on his mind. Afterward, he felt better and the dream didn’t come for a while.
Now, however, he had had it twice in three days, so here he was at Nelda’s door again. She opened it finally, stared into his eyes for a long time, and said, “Come on in, naluaqmiiyaaq, I’ll make sourdock tea. Good thing you came, look like.” She switched off the TV and hobbled into her tiny kitchen.
He followed her in and watched from the dining table as she filled a saucepan with water, threw in some of the sourdock root reputed among the aanas to cure almost anything, and turned on the heat. The bitter smell of the stuff filled the room as she came to the table and sat across from him. “You had that dream again, ah?”
He nodded. “Two days ago and again this morning, the same each time. And I’m thinking about it more when I’m awake.”
He told her about the figure coming through the door with the knife or whatever it was, about his own fruitless efforts to shoot the assailant.
“Maybe it wasn’t a knife this time?”
“Maybe not. I couldn’t tell.”
“Harpoon maybe,” she said. “Tea’s ready.”
Active thought it over while she went to the stove, filled two cups, and returned. That sounded right, a harpoon. So right that he got nervous thinking about it, felt his breathing accelerate. But was it memory, or suggestion?
“It could have been a harpoon,” he said. “And I think he stabbed me this time. Except the phone rang right at that moment and Lucy poked me with the antenna. So I don’t know.”
“Same harpoon kill old Victor, maybe.”
He looked into the old lady’s headlight glasses, a new wave of shocked recognition washing over him. And then, before he could work out the feeling any further, he found himself telling her what he knew of the story, how in some way Victor Solomon’s murder seemed to be connected to Uncle Frosty, who seemed to be a false prophet named Natchiq.
She nodded and looked into her cup, which was empty. “Seem like I hear a little bit about Natchiq when I’m young girl, but I can’t remember it now.”
He lifted his eyebrows.
“You’ll find out for yourself, ah?”
“Except I’m too late for Victor Solomon.”
Nelda studied his eyes some more. “No problem with quiyuk, ah?” She gathered the cups and went to the stove for a refill, once again giving him time to think things over.
Active tensed up at this question. It was one of the few questions Nelda would ask him, and she asked it every time. And it was the one question he wished she wouldn’t ask.
Not that it wasn’t logical. You didn’t need to be Sigmund Freud to see the implications of the bullet dream. So far, there was no problem with quiyuk between him and Lucy, at least not much. It was just that he was afraid that thinking about the possibility of a problem, and talking about the possibility, would, in fact, bring on the problem, so he was starting to avoid quiyuk, which Lucy was starting to figure out. Now he wished Nelda would just shut up about it. But how to say that to a seventy-something aana?
What he said to her was, “I don’t know. Maybe.”
She cackled. “Well, you sharpen up your harpoon, try it out on that Lucy girl’s muktuk, ah?” She raised her cup and drank the sourdock tea, eyes huge and bright and merry through the headlight glasses.
Not for the first time, he found himself rendered speechless by Nelda’s earthiness. He tried not to be surprised by anything that came out of an aana’s mouth, but Nelda always found a way.
By the time he thanked her and got out onto the street again, though, he was grinning a little. He supposed Inupiaq had as many metaphors and euphemisms for sex as English did, and this was no doubt another one. Or maybe Nelda had coined it on the spot. But—harpooning the muktuk? He laughed out loud.
That was the way it was with what Nelda said. First, you were shocked. Then it was funny. Eventually, though, you had to face the fact that it actually meant something.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
HE FOUND LUCY AT the Dispatch console in the public safety building, highlighting passages in an accounting text. She wore white Levi’s and a white sweater today, and looked dazzling as usual.
“Got a minute?”
She didn’t look up. Today’s bullet dream had come just before dawn, leading to another fight before breakfast.
“Still mad, huh?”
Finally she raised her gaze from the book. “Still shutting me out?”
“I’d let you in if I could. But I . . .”
She closed the textbook and looked him in the eye. “But?”
“I can’t explain it. Someday, maybe I’ll get my mind around it and be able to talk about it. But not now.”
“Except with Nelda Qivits.”
He sighed. “I’m sorry.”
“But not sorry enough to talk about it.”
“Not sorry enough to apologize again, that’s for damned sure.” His voice was louder than he’d intended, and the words were out before he could stop them. “You’ve had two or three apologies already and that’s all you get for one bullet dream. The only question is, are you go—” He finally forced his mouth shut, shocked by his own rage and his self-indulgence in letting it out. And by the crushed look on her face.
“Now I really am sorry,” he said. “That was completely out of line.”
She turned away and touched her eyes, then faced him again with a shrug. “Maybe someday.”
“I’m trying, I really am.”
“I know that, somewhere inside, I think. I’ll try, too.”
He glanced around and, seeing no one near, kissed her quickly, picking up a slight taste of salt from compressed and unresponsive lips.
“Thank you,” she said with a stiff nod. “How did we get started
down that road again, anyway?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “It certainly wasn’t what I came to talk about.”
“Which was?”
It took him a moment to recall. “Did you ever hear any stories about a couple of old angatquqs named Natchiq and Saganiq?”
She thought for moment, then shook her head. “Don’t think so. You want me to ask Aana Pauline?”
He nodded and she slipped on her headset, then punched in her grandmother’s number on the Dispatch console. He listened as she asked Pauline Generous about the two shamans.
Finally Lucy slipped the headset off one ear and looked at him. “She says she’s heard the names a couple of times from some of the old people around here, but doesn’t really know much about them.”
Lucy concentrated on her headset for a few seconds, then looked at him again. “She was raised in the Nome area and they never talked about Saganiq and Natchiq down there. And Pauline never got back up here to Chukchi till she was a grown woman, so she wasn’t around when the people who knew them might have still been alive. But she’s on her way to the Senior Center, so she said maybe she’ll ask around over there.”
Lucy thanked her grandmother and disconnected the call. “Maybe your mother would know somebody who knows about them. Working at the school like that, she meets the elders when they come in for Inupiat culture classes.”
Active stared at her for a moment. Usually Lucy and his mother were immovable rivals. Neither would ever suggest he spend time in the other’s company, not ordinarily. Perhaps the bullet dream had brought them together. An alliance of the excluded.
“Thanks,” he said. “I’ll give it a try.”
He scanned the area again, then leaned over for another kiss. This time her lips were soft and full, seeming hungry for his, and her tongue flicked briefly against his own. She returned her attention to the accounting text with the tiniest of smiles as he said goodbye and headed for the door in a state of mild agitation.
MARTHA ACTIVE JOHNSON WAS sliding a tray along the serving line at the Chukchi High School cafeteria when he found her. “Got a minute?”
She beamed. “For you, sweetie? Always! Get a tray and we’ll eat in my office, ah?”
As he pulled a tray from the stack at the end of the counter, he marveled again at his birth mother’s youthfulness. Instinct told him a grown man should have a mother who looked a little gray, a little pudgy, like Carmen, his adoptive mother in Anchorage.
Not Martha. Martha had been only fifteen when he was born and was just now moving into her midforties. But she didn’t look even that. No sign of middle-age fat, black hair still glossy, smooth-faced except for the laugh lines around her mouth and sparkling black eyes.
They loaded up with meat loaf, mashed potatoes, green beans, applesauce in tiny plastic cups, and half-pints of milk in cardboard pyramids, then he followed her through the halls to her office. TEACHER AIDE COORDINATOR, a sign said on the door. Another one, in multicolored letters, said, GO HUSKIETTES! STATE 2A!
She put her tray on her desk blotter and cleared a space on the opposite side for him. He put down his tray, pulled up an ugly orange plastic chair, and applied himself to the meal. The food tasted better than he expected, especially the green beans. Maybe cafeterias had changed since his school days. Or maybe Chukchi High just treated its students better than Bartlett High in Anchorage had.
Martha speared a chunk of meat loaf with her fork, rolled it in the mashed potatoes, and popped it into her mouth. She grinned as she swallowed. “You came to tell me how much you miss me and what a great mom I am, ah?”
Active grinned back. “I’m moderately fond of you and you’re an adequate mother, up to a point.”
“Arii!” she said. “A woman who doesn’t want a broken heart should never have any kids. Just dogs.” She sucked some milk from her carton. “So, what you want? Did your washer at the bachelor cabin break again?”
“No, no, it’s not laundry this time, Aaka. It’s work.”
Her eyes turned serious. “Oh. You never find out who kill old Victor Solomon yet, ah? I thought it was that crazy Calvin Maiyumerak.”
He shook his head. “Probably not. But that’s what I came about.”
“You think it was one of our students?” She looked alarmed.
He waved a hand in dismissal. “No, no, of course not. But I need to know about a couple of old-time angatquqs, Natchiq and Saganiq. Did you ever hear of them?”
She was silent a few moments, frowning. “Seem like—yes, I think your grandfather talk about them sometimes when I’m little girl.”
“Jacob knows about them?”
“Seem like it, all right. But what do they have to do with Victor getting killed?”
“I don’t know yet. But apparently Victor was the grandson of one of them, Saganiq. What did Jacob say about them?”
She frowned again, then shrugged in frustration. “I can’t remember. In them days, I didn’t want to hear any Eskimo stuff. I was ashamed to be Eskimo. I wanted to be white.”
The conversation was taking an alarming turn toward the confessional. “Do you think he still remembers those old stories?” Active said. “I could go visit him at the Senior Center.”
“Probably,” Martha said. “His mind is still pretty sharp, at least about the old days. He just forgot his English after his stroke is all.”
“I know. I’ll need someone to translate. I can’t keep up with his Inupiaq.”
She misted up. “I can’t translate for you. He won’t see me.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t like to say.”
“Aaka, I need to know this.”
She wiped her eyes with a corner of the napkin from the cafeteria tray. “It’s because of you, partly. And Leroy.”
Leroy Johnson was Martha’s husband, Active’s stepfather, technically speaking, and the father of Active’s teenage half-brother, Sonny.
“Leroy and me? Why?”
“Your Ataata Jacob never like naluaqmiuts, Nathan. He think they ruin our country up here with their airplanes and booze and welfare. So he’s mad when I give you away to Ed and Carmen, because they’re white, then he’s mad again when I marry Leroy, because Leroy’s white. Finally he just stop talking to me. Won’t look at me if I go in there or anything.”
He should have known this, he realized, but somehow he hadn’t. He had seen Jacob Active a couple of times when his adoptive parents took him to Chukchi in largely unsuccessful efforts to keep him in touch with his roots. And he had visited the old man twice since being posted to Chukchi two years earlier. The visits were awkward and ceremonial, because of the language barrier raised by his grandfather’s stroke.
And Martha had always hovered in the background during these visits. He had never seen the two exchange as much as a word, in English or Inupiaq.
“Did he stop talking to you around the time he had his stroke, by any chance?”
“Yeah, I guess. But—”
“The same time he forgot how to speak English?”
She nodded.
“Well, maybe it’s just the stroke that makes him act this way. A stroke can change an old person.”
His mother looked doubtful as she toyed with a piece of meat loaf. “I don’t know. He was pretty mad about it, even before the stroke.”
There was a long silence. Then Martha applied the napkin to her eyes again and looked at him. “Sometimes I’m afraid you’re kind of like him, how you’re always mad at me about adopting you out.”
Active now found himself misting up. She was so isolated. Disowned by her father, her mother long dead, and blessed with him for a son, a son who couldn’t forgive her, couldn’t help her convince herself she had done the right thing in signing him over to Ed and Carmen. He rubbed his brow and sighed. How did she manage to remain so happy so much of the time? “I’m not mad, Aaka. It’s just that I, well—”
“I knew I was too young and wild to take care of you and you turned out all right, ah
?”
“I know you did your best.” He leaned forward and touched her hand.
Her eyes narrowed and she studied his face. “You’re still having that dream, ah?”
He wrinkled his nose in the Inupiat squint of dismay and negation, and said nothing.
She sighed and dropped the napkin on her plate. “Anyway, I know you need a translator if you will talk to your ataata. How about that Lucy girl? Doesn’t she translate for the court sometimes?”
Active nodded, masking his surprise. Now Martha was suggesting he spend time with Lucy. They must both be terribly worried about him.
ACTIVE RETURNED to the public safety building and found Lucy still in the Dispatch booth. “You know my grandfather?” he asked.
“Little bit,” Lucy said. “When I was a girl, he’d come to school for Inupiat culture class and tell Eskimo stories or talk about whaling or sealing or how to keep alive on the ice. Why?”
“Martha says he knows about Natchiq and Saganiq. But I can’t keep up with his Inupiaq. She suggested you could translate for me.”
“Martha said that?” Lucy looked as surprised as he had been.
He lifted his eyebrows and said, “I know.”
Lucy frowned. “Jacob doesn’t speak English? He used to speak it pretty well, at least Village English, when he came to our classes. Otherwise most of the kids couldn’t have understood half of what he said.”
“He forgot his English when he had his stroke. That’s what Martha says.”
“Sure, I guess I can do it,” Lucy said. “Give me a minute to find somebody to take over here.” She turned and was saying,”Daphne, could you . . .” as she vanished through the door at the back of the Dispatch booth.
She returned with her parka and they started out as Lucy’s replacement, an Inupiat girl who looked like a teenager, slid into the chair at the Dispatch console.
“This could be awkward,” Active said as he steered the Suburban toward the Senior Citizens’ Cultural Center, which lay on the shore of the lagoon behind the village. The west wind that had closed the lead and driven the whalers off the ice the day before was still rolling in, driving wisps and eddies of snow before it, whipping clothes on the lines in backyards, and hunching the shoulders of the few walkers on the streets.
