Stone Cross

by Marc Cameron

  “Sorry about that,” he said for the benefit of other runners who filed past. “These old legs get away from me sometimes.” He gushed like they were buds. “Man, you’re fast. Another ten strides and I think you would’ve pulled away from me.”

  Green Shorts cursed under his breath, rubbing his shoulder as he limped to the edge of the field where the three college girls waited for him. Two of them smiled at Cutter, which seemed to irk the kid more than the stumble.

  The twins were engrossed in an argument over their football and had missed it all. Constance stared straight ahead as she jogged past.

  Mim trotted up, panting, giving Cutter a wary side-eye. She wasn’t overweight, but she wasn’t used to running, or dealing with the stress of watching her brother-in-law pull the neck off a careless turd.

  “You’re gonna put someone’s eye out with that pointy moral compass of yours,” she said. “Ethan warned me you could be a hothead.”

  “Is that right?”

  They started walking again. “So did Grumpy.”

  Cutter followed, giving an honest laugh. “That’s rich, considering Grumpy had more scars on his knuckles than most people have knuckles.”

  Mim put a hand on his elbow as they walked. “You’ve been in Alaska, what, ten months?”

  “About.”

  “And in that time, you’ve done nothing but listen to our problems. That’s a lot of sin-eating, if you know what I mean.”

  “I’m fine,” Cutter said.

  “Not so sure about that,” Mim said. “I’m a mom, remember. Ethan said you used to get so angry as a kid you would forget to breathe.”

  “I grew out of that.”

  “Did you, Arliss? I’ve known you since we were sixteen years old. You went off to Afghanistan a tough but basically happy guy. Ever since you came back, you’ve been this ticking bomb.”

  “Honestly, Mim,” he said, “I am fine. I just don’t put up with bullshit.”

  She glanced up. The sadness in her eyes should have crushed her, but it didn’t. “There’s always going to be bullshit, Arliss. The earth is basically just one big spinning ball of it. It’s all around us. You have got to let it roll off. The way I see it, we have two more laps to give you time to cool down. We can walk in silence, or you can trust that I care about you the way you care about me.”

  Cutter doubted she felt the same way he did. Not by a long shot. If there was anyone he wanted to tell, it was Mim.

  “There was someone I should have saved,” he said, his throat so tight he had to swallow hard to force the words out, “. . . and I didn’t. I won’t let that happen again—”

  The twins ran up from the sidelines, tugging on the tail of Cutter’s sweatshirt.

  “Uncle Arliss,” they said in unison.

  Matthew shouldered a little closer than his brother. “Will there be some more stuff to cut for the cowboy chili pie?”

  “Matt and me want to use the knives again.”

  “Knives?” Cutter said, grateful for the interruption. He glanced at Mim and then back at the boys. “I guess you can cut up some onions if you’re game for that kind of work.”

  “Let us be men!” the boys said.

  “You bet,” Cutter said, coughing a little to regain his composure. “There’s always stuff that needs to be cut.”

  DAY THREE

  CHAPTER 11

  Vitus Paul came across the tracks in the snow when he was five minutes from the lodge. He was soaked and chilled to the bone from spending three hours digging his Honda out of a tundra bog. At first he thought his mind was playing tricks on him.

  The terrain was in that middle time between liquid and solid. He’d been out all night bouncing his Honda over frozen hummocks before his luck ran out and he got stuck. Digging out the ATV kept him warm for a time, along with munching on some salmon strips, but it wasn’t good to be wet and cold. He’d flooded his bunny boots, then simply dumped out the water and put them back on. The oversize things some people called Mickey Mouse boots looked goofy, but they were essential out here in the winter. His feet were now the only thing on him that was warm. He kept to the river after he got himself unstuck, riding just inside the spruce and cottonwood forest beside the bank. There was always a good trail along the water, well-worn by thousands of years of animals and the hunters that had gone before.

  Vitus had seen no game yet on his journey, but he had come across a ton of caribou and moose tracks. There were lots of scrapes, where the big bulls had ripped up vegetation and peeled the bark on birch trees higher than Vitus’s head. He saw wolf sign too, lots of it. Paw prints as big as his hand overlaying the spade-like moose tracks or the more circular prints like two half-moons left by caribou. Yellow snow showed where the wolves had left messages to mark their territory. Vitus estimated eight or nine adults and a couple of teenagers. Where there were caribou and moose, there was always something to eat them, be it man or bear or wolf. It was the way of things. Being food was their job.

  Vitus could tell the cold was robbing him of his wits. If he did not stand in front of a hot fire soon, he would end up being food for tulukaruq—the raven. The lodge was close. They would have a fire going there. Lucky for him, Ms. Aften had asked him to stop in and check on her friend. Visitors were few and far between out here, so most didn’t need a reason to drop by for a visit. Vitus was glad he had one though. He’d never given anyone cause so far as he knew, but a lot of people didn’t trust him. Not because of anything he’d ever done, but because of his cousin. Vitus could kind of understand. He didn’t like the guy either. But, hey, you couldn’t pick who God gave you as a cousin.

  His mind wandered back down to the tracks and his eyes followed. Getting warm could wait for a minute or two. First, he wanted to study the ground.

  Some gussuks—especially the new teachers—were scared shitless of wolves. Vitus had been around wolves his whole life. He respected them, knew they were capable of killing a grown man if they were sick, or brave, or hungry enough. If it got really cold before the snow got deep, the caribou and moose found it easier to get away. That’s when wolves got dangerous, not so much to people, but they would damn sure sneak into the village and snatch a dog, sometimes right off the chain. His people hunted wolves. That made them wary of humans, which meant Vitus didn’t have to be scared.

  Wolves weren’t the problem here. Not today.

  Shivering and covered with mud, he got off the Honda to get a better look. These tracks did not belong to anything he’d seen before. Half covered in driven snow, they looked human, only much, much larger. Vitus shot a glance behind him, suddenly feeling more like prey than predator. The wind moaned in the trees. Birds chirped. Red squirrels chattered. If there was anything out there, they would have let him know. Lots of people in the village were talking about Arulataq—He Who Makes a Bellowing Cry. The name was scary enough. Vitus had never seen the Hairy Man, but he’d sat by the stove lots of nights, eating frozen fish dipped in seal oil, listening to his father’s stories. Much like the yeti or bigfoot, Western Alaska’s Arulataq was over nine feet tall, with arms that dragged the ground, thick fur, and a stench you could smell for miles. Vitus’s father had come across the Hairy Man years before when he was out hunting. Twice. And he still went back out by himself, which proved how brave he was.

  Low clouds left the early morning light flat and gray, like the skin of a long-dead salmon. Vitus got back on the Honda and backed it up so the headlight cast shadows across the best tracks, highlighting the ridges and lines to help him get a complete story. He unslung his rifle and dismounted again, squatting in the trail to take a picture with his phone. His hands shook so badly with cold he had to brace the phone against his leg to keep it still. Careful not to disturb the snow, he put his own boot beside the best track to offer some scale. This one was twice as wide and half again as long as his size ten bunny boot, which was already huge. He used a mitten to gently fan away the snow like his father had taught him—his breath would have melted it if
he’d tried to blow it away. Tiny crystals of hoarfrost covered the interior of the track. Taking the recent weather into account, Vitus guessed it was maybe two days old. That made him feel a little better. Whoever . . . or whatever had made these tracks was long gone . . . Probably . . . He glanced behind him again. The prints headed north, toward some rocky hills, the kind of place where the Hairy Man was supposed to live. That was just fine with Vitus. Go home, Arulataq. Be happy, so long as you aren’t here, standing in your tracks. I have no wish to see you.

  Vitus snugged the soggy army surplus coat tighter around his neck and climbed back aboard his Honda. It would be fully light soon. Chaga Lodge was just ahead, a good thing too because he was getting seriously cold. Maybe they would give him some hot grub to warm his stomach.

  He didn’t know if he was more frightened or relieved when the mysterious tracks vanished at the edge of the river. The ice was too thin to support a snowshoe hare, let alone a Hairy Man. Vitus rode on, relaxed in the knowledge that the Arulataq had gone into the water a day or two before, when there had been no ice.

  It was well after ten in the morning by the time he reached the lodge. The grounds were dead quiet. No tracks in the fresh dusting of snow. That was odd. Everyone should have been up, working on all the things that needed to get done before freeze-up. Vitus switched off the Honda and sat there shivering, the rifle still across his lap, listening for signs of life. It wasn’t polite to go around yelling at someone else’s house—or yelling anywhere for that matter—but he was lapsing into hypothermia. He needed a fire. He needed warm food. Bad.

  He passed the meat shed on the way to the lodge. The idiots had left the screen door wide open, banging in the breeze. He trudged by on stiff, cold-soaked legs, hoping the white lady might have heard him approach. Maybe she was getting up right now to make him some hot soup.

  He moved to shut the screen door. No point in leaving it—

  Blood. A lot of blood.

  His mind was thick, foggy from the chill, and it took him a moment to make sense of the design on the floor. Concentric circles, drawn in blood. What the hell? The young Eskimo backpedaled, tripping over his own feet as he scrambled up the hill to pound on the lodge door. The giant tracks had spooked him, no joke. The cold was playing tricks on his brain. He needed to talk to another human being, hear someone tell him he wasn’t going crazy—even if they were mad at him for waking them up—but there didn’t seem to be anyone at home.

  CHAPTER 12

  Alaska Airlines flight 43 approached Bethel from the south in buffeting winds and spitting snow. It was a little before noon. The lights of the city of Bethel—”Paris on the Kuskokwim,” according to the Michael Faubion song—shone anemically through the fog and snow on haphazard streets along the meandering left bank of an oxbow slough. Small tributaries wormed their way off the main river. Countless lakes pocked the landscape. Since he was new to Alaska in general and the bush in particular, Cutter spent the one-hour flight reading articles about the area on his phone.

  With just north of six thousand residents and seventy taxis, Bethel, the ninth largest city in Alaska, was large enough to serve as bush hub for fifty-six much smaller surrounding villages. It reminded Cutter of a frontier town in the old Western movies he used to watch with Ethan and Grumpy. Dusty, on the verge of becoming something, but still a long way from anywhere.

  Bethel boasted a hospital, a high school, multiple churches, and numerous restaurants that sold everything you could want to eat so long as you wanted Korean, Korean/Chinese, Korean/Japanese—or Subway. There were two decent-sized grocery stores (though not enough competition to drive down grocery prices) and a people’s learning center called the Yuut Elitnaurviat, where adult students earned certifications to be commercial truck drivers, dental assistants, or village health aides. It also had a prison. The sale of alcohol was illegal, so there were no bars. Mouthwash and Nyquil were kept behind the counter at the grocery stores. Drunks, however, were not exactly unheard of. People who wanted to drink could usually find a way.

  Markham rode in first class with his law clerk, an earnest-looking young man named Brett Grinder, with a buzz cut and goatee. Cutter and Teariki had seats in economy, along with an attorney named Ken Ewing, who represented the Native corporation, and a young woman named Tina Paisley, who looked fresh out of law school. She represented the city of Stone Cross in the arbitration.

  Passengers disembarked down a set of air stairs exposed to the weather. In this case, a miserable mix of snow and rain. Lola called it “snain.”

  “My Polynesian blood will never get used to this crap,” she said, lugging her heavy pack down the metal air stairs behind Cutter.

  “You keep saying that,” Cutter observed. “Maybe Alaska wasn’t the best choice of offices.”

  “Now, boss.” Lola gave him a wink. “You trying to get rid of your Jiminy Cricket? Because considering our mission, I’m thinking I’ll have to step in and save you at least twenty times in the next two days.”

  Cutter spun his hand around the top of his head and then made a fist, indicating that he was now in a cone of silence and Lola wasn’t allowed to speak to him.

  She ignored it, and he didn’t care. It was as close as he came to being playful.

  The Alaska Airlines terminal was packed shoulder to shoulder with people greeting loved ones and visitors. Outbound passengers lined up along the back wall, filing through the single security checkpoint to board the flight. A state plane was supposed to take Cutter and the rest of the group on the short flight upriver to Stone Cross. He’d expected a state trooper to meet them for transport to the hangar. Markham didn’t want the marshals underfoot, but he sure didn’t mind when Cutter made a call to the Alaska State Troopers post to make sure everything was on track. The clerk said the lieutenant had gotten tied up but was on his way.

  “That’s the way it is in the bush,” the attorney named Ewing said. “I’ve spent the better part of an hour sitting on my bag at some lonely airstrip waiting because my contact had snow-machine trouble. Still, I just love it. Come out here every time I get a chance.” He turned to his female opponent. “How about you, Ms. Presley?”

  “Paisley,” she said. “Not Presley.”

  “I expect he knew that already,” Cutter said, loud enough for everyone to hear. “A man as smart as Mr. Ewing surely has an entire oppo-file. He’s just hoping to put you on your back foot early in the game.”

  Paisley canted her head, squinting slightly. “My back foot?”

  “A fighting term,” Lola said. “Means to put you on the defensive.”

  Ewing gave the deputies a sneering grin but turned back to Paisley. “So have you been out before?”

  “Only once,” she said. “But I’m eager to learn.”

  “Let me give you a little advice,” Ewing said, as much for Cutter’s benefit as Paisley’s. “Things are different out here. It’s important to know when to go along to get along. I know an AST sergeant who gives each new trooper a long list of realities when they’re assigned away from the road system. He calls it knocking the pavement out of their mouths.”

  “Sounds like a real charmer,” Cutter said, eyeing Mr. Ewing like a piece of meat.

  The attorney, accustomed to debate and verbal confrontation, plowed ahead with Ms. Paisley. “Have you ever heard the story of the eider duck?”

  She shook her head.

  Ewing clapped his hands. “It’s my favorite story. Eider ducks play a significant role in the subsistence lifestyle for Alaska Natives in the Arctic. Duck meat, duck fat, duck feathers . . . Anyway, the government in its infinite wisdom decided that the eider duck should only be hunted during a specific season, not when the Iñupiat hunters traditionally caught them. A few years after Alaska gained statehood, a young Iñupiat man from a village way to the north on the Chukchi Sea killed an eider duck out of season and was promptly cited by the trooper on duty. The next day, the young man killed another duck. The trooper gave him a second citation, and warned
him that he would be arrested if he repeated the offense. Of course, the young Iñupiat killed another eider duck and was promptly jailed to wait for the traveling judge.”

  Markham stood nearby, waiting for his bags, obviously listening, especially now that there was a fellow member of the bench in the story.

  Ewing continued. “The day for the trial finally arrived. The trooper picked the judge up from the airstrip and took him to the school where the gymnasium would serve as the makeshift courtroom. The trial was big news in the village and every man, woman, and child lined up outside the school to either watch or serve on the jury. And as they filed inside, every last one of them left a dead eider duck in a pile beside the door.”

  Lola smirked. “What happened?”

  “From what I hear,” Ewing said, “the trooper took the judge home and fed him a piece of his wife’s lemon pie before taking him back to his plane. The Iñupiat hunter was released. And bush justice was served, along with lots of fatty eider duck soup.”

  “Justice is justice,” Markham said. “There is no ‘bush justice.’ ”

  “I’m sure that’s true, Your Honor,” Ewing said. “But I’ve always liked the story.”

  A tall man wearing a blue Stetson campaign hat and a dark Tuffy jacket over his blue Alaska State Troopers uniform came into the terminal. The hat was wet and dusted with snow. He caught Cutter’s eye, waving a gloved hand. Cutter nodded and the trooper worked his way through the crowd.

  “Lieutenant Tim Warr,” he said, pulling off a glove to shake hands with Cutter. “I apologize for being late. Things got a little crazy this morning . . . Well, it’s always crazy here.”

  “No worries,” Lola said, shaking the lieutenant’s hand after Cutter. She’d tried a long-distance relationship with a trooper stationed on Prince of Wales Island for a couple of months, and always looked a little starry-eyed at the sight of the blue Smokey Bear hat. “We don’t even have our luggage yet.”