Midnight Come Again

by Dana Stabenow

  “Yes.”

  “And you left the Park.”

  “That day.” She looked up, and her eyes were haunted with the memory of those last days, the Quilaks closing in, the silence getting louder and louder. “I’ve always run home to the Park. This was the first time I ever had to run away from it.”

  They stood in silence, until Mutt nudged Jim with her head. He knelt down and put an arm around her neck. “Good girl,” he said, looking into her wise eyes, her loyal face. “Good girl, Mutt.”

  She let him have it with the tongue again, all over his face and all of his ears and neck she could reach. Mutt didn’t hold back. When she liked, she liked.

  He let her go and rose to his feet again. He picked up his duffel. “Jack is dead, Kate,” he said. “You aren’t. Come home. You’ve got people there who need you.”

  At the door he stopped to look back at her, dark head bent beneath the sunshine streaming in through the window.

  He went back then, and put his arms around her. She didn’t resist, merely rested against him.

  He kissed her brow.

  He kissed her cheek.

  He kissed her mouth, a sweet, tender kiss that went on a little too long for his comfort.

  He raised his head, traced the line of her neat cap of hair. “Good-bye, Kate.”

  She looked up at him with grave eyes. “Good-bye, Jim.”

  He brushed her chin with a knuckle, turning it into a caress, and let her go. He patted Mutt on the head, picked up his duffel again and went out the door of the bunkhouse they had shared for the last time.

  On the walk to the terminal he thought again of his first sight of her at the gold camp the previous fall; torn, bleeding, the body of her lover in her arms, unwilling, no, unable to let him go. He heard again the sound of that muted wail, a distilled grief drifting up into the air like smoke.

  When had anyone ever loved him that much?

  “Don’t forget,” Stephanie said.

  Kate looked around the girl’s room, at the airplane models hanging from the ceiling, at the textbooks crowding the shelves. “I won’t forget.”

  “Don’t forget,” the girl repeated.

  She sounded more forceful to Kate’s ears than she ever had before, and when Kate looked closely she thought she saw tears in the girl’s eyes. She went down on one knee next to Stephanie’s chair. “Stephanie, listen to me. I try really hard not to make promises I can’t keep. I promise, when the time comes, I will help you to do what you want. If you need me, all you have to do is write or call. I’ll be here in Bering for a while yet, but I gave you my address and my friend’s phone number, didn’t I? Good. He can always reach me, and I can be back here in a day.” She said it again. “All you have to do is write, or call.”

  Stephanie kept her eyes lowered. She was not a touchy-feely kind of kid, so Kate made no effort to embrace her. She stood up. “Alice Chevak was my friend. Her daughter, Stephanie Chevak, is my friend.”

  Stephanie looked up, startled. Kate’s voice had rung in the little room like the big bell in a tower.

  Kate, grave, inclined her head in a small, formal bow.

  Somewhat clumsily, Stephanie rose to her feet and returned it, small face solemn and intent.

  They clasped hands and shook, formally.

  “You’ll be all right?” Kate said.

  “I will be all right,” Stephanie said, still formal. She sat down again, and bent over her book.

  “Good.” Kate hesitated. “There is a man, a pilot. His name is Jacob Baird.”

  A peculiar kind of listening stillness came over Stephanie. Kate waited.

  “The fat man,” the girl said at last. “With all the planes.”

  “That’s the guy. He’s in the hospital. He’ll be okay, but he’s stuck there for a while. He might like a visitor, someone who can speak his language.” She gestured at the model of the Super Cub sitting on the bed. “Another pilot.”

  The back of Stephanie’s head was unresponsive.

  Either she would or she wouldn’t. Kate thought she would, and turned to go.

  “Arrivederci,” Stephanie said suddenly.

  Kate looked at her.

  “That’s Italian for good-bye.”

  Kate nodded, not trusting her voice to speak, and left the room.

  On the porch, Ray said, “Why did you come here without your name, Katya? Were you ashamed of it?”

  “No!” she said.

  She was startled by her own vehemence. “No,” she said more calmly. “Not ashamed.” She leaned against the railing, staring toward the town and the river beyond. “Sick of it, maybe.” She thought, and added in a lower voice, “Soul sick.”

  She turned to look at him. “What did you do when Emaa died? How did you manage?”

  His smile was slow and sweet. “How did you?”

  She thought of his words as the Alaska Airlines 737 rose up into the sky over Bering and banked east, the first leg of her journey home. I can’t be sad, Jack, she’d told him, that cold winter day in the Park, when they’d scattered Emaa’s ashes up and down the Kanuyaq River. She’s with me, right here, right now.

  She’s in every rock and tree in the Park. She’s in the water we drink. She’s in the air we breathe.

  She’ll be in every flake of snow that falls, all the winter long.

  She’ll come up the river with the first salmon in the spring.

  She’ll be on board every seiner that puts out to sea in the summer.

  She’ll be on the foothills with the berrypickers in the fall.

  She’ll always be here. I can’t be sad she’s gone, when she never left in the first place.

  Even over the sound of the jet engines, a faint, anguished howl could be heard from beneath their feet. The other passengers exchanged irritated and amused expressions, but they might as well settle in for the long haul. The back seat of a Cessna was one thing. The cargo hold of a 737 was quite another. Mutt would make her displeasure known all the way to Anchorage.

  Kate smiled as the foothills of the Kuskokwim Mountains rose up beneath them, the beginnings of the Alaska Range. If they followed it as it curved around the southern half of the state, the range would lead them unwaveringly to the Quilak Mountains.

  And home.

  And memories of Abel, and Emaa, and Alice.

  And Jack.

  Companion to me in every place.

  17

  …weightless I

  soaring with it shall be for you

  Light bright shining

  —Bright Shining

  It was late when they landed at the airstrip in Niniltna, almost evening, almost August. George gave her a ride home and a promise to keep her return to himself, “For tonight, at least,” he’d added, giving her a hard look. “There are some people who’ve been worried about you. Who’ll need to know you’re back safe.”

  “I know. Thanks, George.”

  She shut the door of his van and stepped back so he could make a U-turn. It hadn’t rained in a long time; the dust of his passing hung over the old gravel railroad roadbed long after he was gone.

  She looked down and saw a railroad spike, rusted a dull orange but still a spike, one of those used to hold together the Kanuyaq and Northwestern Railroad track, some seventy years before. Lucky George hadn’t picked it up in one of his tires. People did, still, every now and then.

  She’d spent the rest of July in Bering, running Baird Air until Baird was back on his feet. She handed in her notice then, over his vociferous protests. He’d even offered her a share in the business. She’d stayed on long enough to train her replacement, a bright, eager eighteen-year-old boy, fresh out of high school with, after one summer on the Kuskokwim, no wish to take up fishing as a permanent way of earning a living. He was the son of a cousin of Ray’s, and Ray had vouched for him. Baird had grudgingly allowed as how the boy wasn’t a total idiot and a complete waste of time, which Kate correctly deduced to mean that Baird had found himself an employee with more t
han just a pulse going for him.

  The spike was warm from the sun and heavy in her hand. She stuck it in her pocket and hoisted her pack over one shoulder. She took her time going down the path, stopping to pick a handful of salmonberries here, a raspberry there. Mutt plunged into the brush, scattering ptarmigan in one direction and spruce hens in another before leaping back out on the path to run mad circles around Kate, laughing up at her human with her tongue lolling out.

  Birds called in the trees, a bull moose with a full, velvety rack munched his way unconcernedly through a stand of diamond willow, and she could hear the gurgling of the creek in the distance. It sounded pretty tame, but then it was late in the season. The mountains would be reluctant to give up the last of the runoff, snowmelt from the narrowest valleys and the deepest crevices that only the longest days of the highest sun could reach.

  “Maybe I’ll go for a swim,” she said out loud.

  A single, joyous three-note call sounded from the branches of the spruce tree on her right. There was a quick flutter of wings as she turned quickly to look up, but all she saw was the tip of a branch bouncing gently up and down.

  She smiled. “I’m home, Emaa. I’m home.”

  Mutt shot out from the brush again and shouldered deliberately into her, knocking her on her butt before disappearing again down the path at a mad gallop.

  Kate lay on her back for a moment, staring up at the blue sky, stunned.

  Mutt came charging back, skidded to a halt three feet from Kate, leaned down on her forepaws and stuck her butt up in the air, tail wagging furiously back and forth. Big yellow eyes pleaded for fun.

  “Hey,” Kate said, getting to her feet.

  Mutt barked, a short, sharp, happy sound.

  A surge of well-being swept through her, and she didn’t even feel guilty about it. She was alive, the sun was shining and her dog wanted to play. “Hey, you!”

  Kate dumped her pack and gave chase. It was tag-you’re-it all the way down the path, until Kate tackled Mutt with a low dive and they rolled into the clearing in a tangle of arms and legs and ferocious mock snarling.

  Mutt sensed it first, of course. She shook off Kate like she was brushing away a mosquito and stood on tiptoe on all four paws, looking toward the cabin, ears up, nose testing the air.

  “What?” The questioning growl had Kate on her feet, hands loose and ready. “What is it, girl?”

  She turned to the cabin and saw him.

  A boy stood in the open door, a thin boy, maybe twelve, maybe thirteen, already taller than Kate, with the promise of future bulk in the width of his shoulders and the length of his limbs. He had his mother’s tow-colored hair.

  He had his father’s deep blue eyes.

  Kate tried to speak, and failed. She licked her lips, and tried again.

  “Johnny?”

  MIDNIGHT COME AGAIN

  Copyright © 2000 by Dana Stabenow.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

  All chapter headings are lines from poems from Mary TallMountain’s The Light on the Tent Wall, reprinted with permission of the American Indian Studies Center, UCLA, copyright Regents of the University of California.

  ISBN: 978-0-312-97876-1

  St. Martin’s Paperbacks are published by St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.