White Sky, Black Ice

by Stan Jones

  Active looked at the pilot. "The raven is the only animal that laughs. That's what the aanas say, Cowboy."

  CHAPTER 5

  Thursday Evening, Katy Creek

  THE SHORT ARCTIC DAY was dying in a spray of salmon and rose on the southwest horizon when he heard the snowmachine coming. He looked around as the buzz got louder, but couldn't tell the direction. He walked rapidly into the indigo shadows of the spruce grove, leaving his evidence kit open on the snow beside the Yamaha. He removed his right glove, unsnapped the holster of the .357, and waited. The buzz stopped coming from everywhere and came only from the north.

  Soon the noise became a light bouncing down the trail through the twilight. Active pulled the .357 from its holster and held it behind his right hip. Somewhere in an undisciplined corner of his mind, he noticed that the grip of the revolver was very cold and hoped that this would be over soon, so he could put the gun back in its holster and the glove back on his freezing right hand.

  The light stopped behind Aaron Stone's Yamaha and the other machine sputtered into silence. The driver, visible now that the headlight was off, had a rifle slung across his back. He stood up on the running boards, stared for a long time at Aaron Stone, then looked straight at Active in the spruces.

  "It's all right, Mr. Active," the driver called out. "You don't need to shoot me. My grandson send me to tell you that Cowboy not coming back tonight and you can stay at my cabin."

  Active holstered the gun, put his glove on, and stepped out of the grove, trying to think what to say first. Finally, he took off the glove again and extended his hand to the driver, a small old Inupiaq with a trace of mustache and chin whiskers. "Nathan Active," he said.

  "I'm Amos Wilson." The old man pulled off an elbow-length fur mitten, letting it dangle from a cord looped around his neck, and shook Active's hand. "Harold send me message on Kay-Snow, say you're stuck out here by yourself, I should come get you. He don't say why, but he tell me not to be surprised about anything I find. I guess this what he mean." He looked at the corpse on the Yamaha. "Did Aaron shoot himself?"

  "We're not allowed to talk about our investigations," Active said. "I'm sorry." The old man looked quickly at him, then away.

  "You said Harold told you I was here?" Active asked. "Who's Harold?"

  "Harold Wilson, my grandson," Wilson said. "I guess he have another name they use sometimes, but I always call him Harold."

  It dawned on Active. "Kinnuk Wilson is your grandson?"

  The old man looked aside, then down at the snow between the toes of his caribou mukluks. "I always call him Harold."

  "But Kinnuk sent you? How did he know where I was?"

  The old man was silent for a long time. "I always call him Harold."

  Active shrugged. "Harold sent you? How did he know where I was?" he repeated.

  "I guess that Cowboy tell my grandson and he remember I come here last night. Harold's message on Kay-Snow say you're at Qaqsrauq Lake. That what we call this place, qaqsrauq. You know what is, qaqsrauq

  Active shook his head. "My Inupiaq isn't very good. A bird of some kind?"

  "Qaqsrauq is loon. Loons live here in summer, so we call it Qaqsrauq Lake. I don't think white man map have name for it."

  "You came up last night?" Active asked.

  "About four o'clock this morning. When ice is thick from cold."

  "Did you see anything . . . about this?" Active nodded toward the corpse.

  "No, I go to my cabin, sleep little while, then go north when it get light. I never come this way until Harold send me message about you."

  "No other snowmachines came or went?"

  "No, just mine."

  "Any airplanes?"

  "I see that Cowboy's Super Cub couple times, think maybe he's caribou hunting, but I guess he's bring you," Wilson said. "That's only one."

  "Can you tow Aaron back to your cabin?"

  "I guess so," Wilson said. "But plane can't land there, so we have to bring him back in morning when Cowboy pick you up."

  "Let's leave him here then," Active said.

  "We could put this over him." Wilson pulled a canvas snowmachine cover from a wooden box lashed to the rear of his own sled.

  The old man looked away while Active tied the cover over Aaron Stone. Then the trooper stepped onto the runners at the tail of the sled. Wilson started the snowgo, swung around in a big circle, and headed back up the trail.

  In a few minutes, he pulled up in front of a cabin that, like Aaron Stone's, stood on a bank above Katy Creek. He left the Arctic Cat idling, its headlight shining into a window, and disappeared through the door. Active could see him moving about inside, holding a camp lantern up to the headlight's beam, pumping air into the pressure tank, inspecting its wick.

  Active studied the dome-shaped little dwelling. Except for the stovepipe poking through the roof and the door and window, it was made of sod, squares of tundra laid like bricks.

  The lantern came on inside. Wilson came out and shut off the Arctic Cat. "I call it my beaver house," he said.

  They went in. Wilson pulled some pilot bread and a can of beef stew from a shelf under his camp stove. "I'm sorry I never catch any caribou yet," he said. "We have to eat white man food. Did you see the herd when you're up with Cowboy today?"

  "No," Active said, seating himself on a steel cot against one wall of the cabin. "Just a few singles and small bands."

  "Well, maybe I will find some tomorrow." Wilson put the stew in a pan and lit the camp stove. "You mind if we listen to radio, Mr. Active? I think it's time for 'Chapel of the Air.' "

  Active, already munching pilot bread, nodded. The program was famous all over the north half of Alaska, as much a staple of Bush life as mosquitoes or satellite TV. Wilson clicked on a big battery-powered Zenith Transoceanic that stood on the counter near the hissing camp stove. An antenna wire ran up the wall behind it and through the roof.

  ". . . but first we have this message from the president of Chukchi Region Inc.," the KSNO announcer said.

  "Hello, this is Tom Werner," said a new voice. "I'm talking to you to ask you to vote yes in a few days when we have our election to ban the sale of liquor in Chukchi. When I was drinking, I could not be a good father, a good husband, a good hunter, a good worker for our corporation, or a good Inupiaq. I don't drink now, and I'm still not perfect, but I'm better than I was and my family is happier. Now that we have the Gray Wolf mine to provide our young people with jobs, they don't have to leave us to find work. But we need to make Chukchi a better place for them to live and raise the next generation. We can do that by banning the sale of liquor when we vote on Tuesday. We don't need any more suicides taking our young ones away. This liquor is like an innukaknaaluk, killing off our culture, and we have to stop it. My Inupiaq is not very good so now my wife, Mae Werner, will talk to you in our language."

  A woman came on and spoke in Inupiaq. From what Active could make out, she repeated what her husband had said, then talked of her own experiences as the wife of a drinker. Her fluent Inupiaq was like music, even though most of it got past him.

  When she finished, a blizzard howled from the radio. Then a door slammed and cut off the sound of the wind. "Come in, friend," drawled the Reverend Jaron Palmer. "Welcome. Welcome to 'Chapel of the Air.' "

  Active still wore his parka and snowmachine suit. Wilson's lantern and camp stove hissed, the wood stove in the corner crackled. He leaned back against the wall of the cabin and listened to the reverend.

  "Have you ever had your eyes opened?" Palmer was asking. "That's what happened to John Newton, the man who wrote our first hymn tonight. He was an English sailor in the dark days of the slave trade and he was on his way home from Africa when a terrible storm came up, the worst storm this expert sailor had ever seen."

  Reverend Palmer paused and the blizzard became just audible again. But now it sounded like a storm at sea.

  "Now John Newton was a man who laughed at God," the drawl went on. "Yes he did! He thought he didn'
t need God. He drank and he blasphemed and he knew the very flesh in which he trafficked! Yes, he did, he lay with helpless slave women while they were shackled in the hold of his evil ship!"

  Now the storm was so loud the reverend had to shout to make himself heard.

  "But that day in the tempest, John Newton's pride and his scorn stood for nothing. No, they stood for nothing and he cried out in his terror, 'The Lord have mercy on us!'"

  The reverend was silent as the wind howled from the radio, then faded.

  "And God put out his hand and he stilled that wind and he calmed that fevered sea," the reverend said. "Yes, he did! The ship was saved. And John Newton turned away from his old habits. He became a minister and he fought the slave trade. And many years later, he wrote this wonderful song about his salvation that the Nuliakuk Singers are going to perform for us tonight. Yes, he did!"

  Active closed his eyes as the Native voices took up "Amazing Grace." The day in the cold with the dead man had drained him. How pleasant it was to be inside again, and to be warm.

  He was standing on the seawall along Beach. Street on a cool, gray spring day. The current swept past Chukchi thick with ice, the outfall of the Katonak and Isignaq rivers as breakup came on. The ice hissed and tinkled as the floes ground together.

  George Clinton and Aaron Stone walked by. They looked at him briefly, smiled, looked at each other, and jumped into the current only a few feet from where he stood.

  "Stop," he shouted. Hejumped in after them.

  To his surprise, the water felt warm. And despite his clothing, he could move through it easily.

  As the three of them rushed toward the open sea, he tried to swim to George Clinton and Aaron Stone. But the current was too strong. It whirled the three of them farther and farther apart, until Active could barely distinguish the two dead men's heads from the sleek, black heads of the seals swimming among the floes. "George! Mr. Stone!" he called.

  "It's all right, Mr. Active," they shouted in unison, smiling and waving understandingly. Their voices were tiny in the distance. "It's all right."

  "George! Mr. Stone!" he called again. But now he had lost them completely in the ice.

  "Are you all right, Mr. Active?"

  He awoke with a start, breathing hard.

  "You were talking in your sleep," Amos Wilson said. He studied the trooper for a moment, as if waiting for him to describe the dream. "We could eat," he said finally. "The food is ready."

  They ate pilot bread and stew and drank Tang and listened quietly as the Reverend Palmer finished his sermon.

  "I'm almost out of water, Mr. Active," Wilson said. "Not even enough left to wash these dishes. I have to go get ice out of Katy Creek so it will melt tonight or we will not have coffee in the morning. You can go to sleep if you want."

  "No, I'll come with you if it's all right," Active said. "Maybe I could help."

  They went out of the cabin and Active breathed deeply in the cold air as Wilson loaded the sled for their expedition. It was full night now, stars glittering, a small high moon bathing the snowscape in dime-colored light.

  Wilson started the Arctic Cat, Active climbed on the runners of the sled again, and they bounced down the bank to the bed of Katy Creek. Active threw back his parka hood and slid the zipper to the middle of his chest, letting the frozen air burn away the last traces of his dream.

  Wilson drove down the creek a few hundred yards and stopped on a bend where the ice was bare. "Wind always blow snow away here," he said.

  He spread a blue plastic tarp on the bed of the sled, then walked out onto the ice with an ax in his hand, studying the moonlit surface as he went. Finally, he dropped to his knees. Active knelt beside him. The ice looked to be two or three feet thick and was webbed with pressure cracks.

  Wilson found a place where two of the largest cracks formed a V. About eighteen inches from the crotch of the V, he chopped a cross-crack with his ax. Now the V was a triangle. The old man worked the legs of the triangle with his ax, and in almost no time a chunk of ice eight inches thick was free in the hole. Wilson hit it in the middle with his ax, breaking it into smaller pieces they could grip and pull out of the hole.

  "You could carry it to the sled," Wilson said.

  Active, happy to have an assignment, zipped his parka up and trudged back and forth with armfuls of ice while Wilson worked his ax. At last, Wilson stopped and looked at the ice chunks on the tarp. "That's enough," he said.

  He closed the edges of the tarp over the ice, then lashed the bundle down with rope from the jockey box at the rear of the sled. He sat on the seat of the Arctic Cat and lit a cigarette. "When I'm young, I never need to rest," Wilson said. "Now I do."

  Active sat on the front of the sled and leaned against the bundle of ice, pleasantly warm from his loading duties. "When Tom Werner was on the radio, he used a word I don't know. Innuka . . . innuka . . ."

  "Innukaknaaluk?"

  "That's it. What does it mean?"

  "Oh, it's just a word from them old Eskimo stories," Wilson said. He was silent and Active thought he didn't want to explain. But then he started up again. "It mean man-who-always-kill-people. But I guess Tom Werner mean bottle-who-always-kill-people, ah?"

  "I guess." Active unzipped his parka, flipped it open, and laid his head back on the ice. Overhead, lambent curtains of aurora billowed in the solar wind. "In the stories, what happens to the man who always kills people?"

  "Usually some orphan will come to the village and they have big fight."

  "And the orphan kills him?"

  "Not at first. Innukaknaaluk is very strong. First few times they grab each other, look like he will throw orphan on sharp rock and kill him. But orphan always twist away. Last time, orphan throw innukaknaaluk on his own rock and kill him."

  "Then what happens to the orphan?"

  "Then the people take him in. Maybe he'll marry village girl and live there. Have kids, go hunting. Not be so poor and lonely anymore."

  The old man smoked in silence. Active got off the sled and walked out onto Katy Creek. He squatted to study the crater Wilson had made in the ice.

  "You think it's too late for my grandson, Mr. Active?" Wilson called from behind him. "You think Harold will . . . will..."

  Amos Wilson's voice trailed off, as if he was picturing Kinnuk Wilson in Aaron Stone's place on the sled in the spruce copse.

  "I don't know, Mr. Wilson." Active stood up and turned toward the sled. "I feel there's a lot of good in him."

  "Thank you, Mr. Active," Wilson said after another long silence.

  CHAPTER 6

  Friday Morning, Chukchi

  "WHO KILLED HIM, NATHAN?"

  Active slammed the doors of the ambulance. Blue smoke rolled from its tailpipe and rose into the air as it pulled away from Lienhofer Aviation's Cessna 206 and headed up Third Street for the hospital.

  "Who was it, Nathan?"

  Now he turned at the sound of the familiar high voice. "What are you doing here, Kinnuk?"

  "That Cowboy say he'll bring you this morning. I decide to come around."

  "And see what you could find out?"

  Wilson didn't speak, but he raised his eyebrows in the Inupiat equivalent of a nod.

  "So what makes you think somebody killed Aaron Stone?"

  "That Cowboy say ..."

  "Did Cowboy see it with his own eyes?"

  "No, but..."

  "That Cowboy says lots of things. Do you believe them all?"

  "No, but..."

  "Then you should listen to what I say," Active said. It was obviously time to muddy up the gossip river a little. "And I say we won't know what killed Aaron until we ship him to Anchorage for an autopsy."

  Cowboy Decker fired up the Cessna 206. The propeller kicked snow and grit and a Butterfinger wrapper past them. They turned their backs and hunched their shoulders as the pilot taxied the plane away, toward the Lienhofer hangar.

  "There was no evidence of foul play at the scene," Active said as the storm su
bsided. "You know what that means?"

  "Sure, it mean he kill himself," Wilson said. "Kay-Snow always say there's no evidence of foul play when somebody kill theirself."

  "Yeah, I guess they do," Active said. He climbed into the Suburban and rolled down the window. "You need a ride?"

  Wilson nodded, walked around to the passenger door, and slid in.

  Active pulled away from the airport. "Where you headed?"

  "The Dreamland," Wilson said. "I'm out of Olys."

  "I have to talk to Clara Stone. Do you know where she lives?"

  "Sure," Wilson said. "It's that house on Beach Street with all the caribou heads."

  "Yeah, I've seen it. I guess Aaron was quite a hunter."

  "I guess," Wilson said. "Before he work at Gray Wolf, he hunt caribou for money. Thirty-five dollars, he bring you whole carcass. I think he do all right, except he give lots away to old people."

  They bounced along in silence for a while. "Thanks for sending your grandfather to get me from Qaqsrauq Lake," Active said finally. "How did you know I was there?"

  "When I'm little, my grandfather always take me up there to Katy Creek. Yesterday when I catch ride with that Cowboy, he tell me where you find Aaron Stone. It sound like Qaqsrauq Lake to me."

  "Pretty smart. Maybe you should spend less time at the Dreamland and more time using that smart head of yours."

  Wilson was silent.

  Active stopped the Suburban in front of the Dreamland. Two drunks sat on the deck in front, sharing a bottle in a brown paper bag. "Your grandfather loves you a lot."

  "I know," Wilson said. "He take care of me when Dad go to prison for shooting Mom." He climbed out and sat down beside the drunks. One of them handed him the bag.

  Active parked the Suburban in front of Aaron Stone's house, got out, and studied the trophies lining the eaves above the tarpapered walls.

  Or were they an advertisement? Antlered caribou heads stared down like gargoyles. Some looked ancient, the skulls stripped of flesh by maggots and ravens and polished white by weather. Peeling strips of fur hung from others. Still others looked almost alive. The fur was intact and the eyes gleamed dully behind half-closed lids.