A Fine and Bitter Snow

by Dana Stabenow

  But this time, this one time, he had been hasty, rough, and reckless, frantic to get at her, ridden by a red devil of lust that whipped him on and over the edge into madness. This time, he had displayed all the refinement and sophistication of a moose in rut. This time, he still had most of his clothes on.

  So much for control. So much for finesse. Ah, shit.

  He summoned the strength from somewhere and raised his head to look down at her. Her eyes were closed, her neat cap of hair a tangled dark halo. Her lips were swollen and parted as she gulped in air. A pulse beat frantically at the base of her throat, and he couldn’t resist—he had to bend his head and settle his mouth over it, sucking at the warm, throbbing lifeblood beneath the skin. He could hear her breathing. He could feel her hands on his back, the sting of the scratches she’d left there. She radiated heat like a furnace. He could smell her, the aroma that to him was redolent of a cold draft beer after a long, hot day, a piece of Auntie Vi’s fry bread, Bobby’s special caribou steaks, quick-fried in hot oil and then baked in a wine and cream sauce, a shot of Ruthe’s framboise—every good thing to eat and drink he’d ever had in his life, that’s what Kate Shugak smelled like to Jim Chopin. Her pulse beat against his tongue and he wanted to eat her alive. For the first time, he understood the eroticism underlying the story of Dracula, and the unexpected thought made him laugh low in his throat.

  He felt her lashes flutter, and he looked up, to see her eyes open.

  “Hey,” he said, gentling his voice.

  She didn’t say anything, and that scared him.

  “I’m sorry I was so rough.” He traced a finger down her cheek. There was blood. It was his, from his temple, where she’d connected with the box. It didn’t seem to matter much now. “Did I hurt you?”

  “No,” she said, her voice a thread of sound.

  “Good.” He lowered his head and kissed her slowly, deeply, thoroughly, feeling himself begin to harden inside her again. Jesus, he thought, not again, no way, not this quick. Not since I was fifteen anyway. He was more than willing to go with it, though, until he felt her hand against his chest, pushing, and raised his head again. “What?”

  “No,” she said again, and pushed him off her to wriggle free. She caught him unawares and he rolled into the coffee table, catching the back of his head on a corner.

  “Ouch! Damn it!” He grabbed the back of his head. “Didn’t we do this already?”

  She didn’t apologize, just reached for her clothes and skinnied into them as fast as she could.

  “Kate.” She didn’t answer. “Kate,” he said, rising to his feet. He’d lost his tie, one shoulder seam of his shirt was ripped, and he had to grab at his pants before they fell down. “What’s wrong?”

  She gave him a hunted look. “Nothing’s wrong. I have to go is all. Where’s my other shoe?”

  “Kate.” He reached for her and she stepped quickly out of range. “Wait.”

  “No. This can’t happen.”

  “Why not?” he said, starting to get angry again and trying to tamp it down. He’d just had the most exciting sexual experience of his life and now the cause of it was about to walk out the door. He didn’t like it. He didn’t like it one little bit. “And I’m pretty sure it already did.”

  “It was a mistake.” She swallowed and shoved the hair out of her face. “I shouldn’t have thrown the box at you. I—I shouldn’t have done a lot of things. I—I’m sorry, I have to go.”

  “Like hell!” He reached for her again and would have caught her if he hadn’t stumbled over her other shoe.

  “Oh, good,” she said, and scooped it up. Gal hissed from the loft, to which she had retreated when the shooting war began. Kate retrieved her and tucked her inside her parka.

  “Kate, don’t go!”

  The slam of the door was her reply. The cabin shook beneath the weight of her hasty steps on the stairs. Her snow machine roared into life a moment later, followed by a surprised yip, probably from Mutt.

  “Shit!” Jim said. His left eye had crusted over so that he could barely see out of it. “Shit,” he repeated. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  He cleaned himself up as best he could, checking his reflection in the little mirror on the kitchen wall. Yeah, he was going to have a shiner. His shoulder was sore, too. He thought at first it was from where she had hit him with the dictionary, until he investigated and saw the teeth marks. He didn’t even remember her biting him.

  Well, his uniform was going to require some serious rehab. “Not to mention my life,” he said out loud. He sighed heavily and began to clean up, stacking the papers back beneath the dictionary, righting the table, picking up the papers that had scattered from the tin lockbox.

  One caught his attention, a thick piece of parchment beginning to turn yellow with age. He read it twice, disbelieving his eyes, and a third time, just to be sure.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said blankly. He stared around the room as if he’d never seen it before. He read the piece of paper again. Was this a joke? This had to be a joke. “Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ.”

  The door opened. Dandy Mike peeped in. “Is it safe to come in now? It’s freezing out here.”

  “What?” Jim remembered Dandy poking his head in the door in the middle of his very own personal firestorm. “Oh. Yeah. Sure. Hey.”

  “Hey yourself.” Dandy sidled inside and cast a wary look around. He seemed surprised at the relative order that reigned inside the little cabin. “I saw Kate leaving, so I figured it was safe to come up.”

  Oh no. “Were you outside all this time?”

  Dandy’s eyes slid away. “No. Well, kinda. Well, okay, yeah, I was. What was she so mad about anyway?”

  Dandy Mike was, Jim’s own activities in that field notwithstanding, the biggest rounder in the Park. He knew women. There was nothing wrong with his hearing, either. Jim repressed a sigh. It’d be all over the Park before sunset, which on this day was less than an hour away. One more thing for Kate to be pissed about.

  Although, now that he thought about it…Jim felt a smile spread slowly across his face. If word got at least as far as Ethan Int-Hout, that would be okay with him.

  “Jim?” Dandy said.

  “What are you doing here anyway, Dandy?”

  “Who, me? Oh, I don’t know, I heard you were in town, and I figured you’d be up here, and, you know, I was first on the scene, so I…” His voice trailed off when he noticed Jim’s stare. “Well, I wondered if you could use some help is all. I can see you had help, so I’ll go.”

  “Dandy.”

  Dandy stopped, his hand on the door.

  “What’s up?”

  Dandy turned, pulling off his knit cap and examining the brim as if his soul depended on an even rib stitch. “I hear you’re moving your post to the Park.”

  Oh, hell. Billy Mike hadn’t waited to spread the word, and who would he tell but his own son? His own chronically out-of-work son. “News travels fast.”

  “Yeah. So I was wondering…”

  “Wondering what?”

  Dandy shifted his weight. “Well, if maybe you’d be hiring. Like, I don’t know, an assistant.”

  Jim was momentarily dumbfounded. “You want a job?” he said, heavily stressing the first and last words.

  Dandy flushed. “Well, I might. Maybe. I guess. Yes.” He shifted his feet. “I’m thinking about getting married, and—”

  Jim stared at him. “I beg your pardon?” Dandy started to speak, but Jim waved him to silence. There was nothing wrong with Jim’s hearing, either. “Never mind, I don’t think I’ll still be standing if I hear it twice.”

  He took a long look at the floor, vaguely surprised that there wasn’t a charred outline of his and Kate’s bodies marking the spot. He still wasn’t sure he hadn’t died and gone to heaven right there.

  “I’ve got some calls to make. Let’s head back into town.”

  7

  Kate had given a potlatch for her grandmother. This would be her second, and she felt rel
atively experienced. The place—the gym—was set and the principal was declining rent. “Even if their, er, lifestyle wasn’t one that we would want to set up as an example for the children,” she told Kate, and since the woman hadn’t been in the Park even a year and was totally clueless, Kate forbore to snarl.

  There had to be a lot of food, but everyone would bring a dish, so all Kate had to do was make sure there was pop and that it was cold. George had promised to fill up a plane and would only charge for freight. She had coerced the senior class into filling half a dozen coolers with snow.

  There ought to be gifts to give away, things that would remind the guests of Dina. That was more difficult, especially since Ruthe was still hanging on to life by a thread in the Chief William Memorial Hospital in Ahtna, and Kate did not know which of Dina’s possessions Ruthe would want to keep.

  Kate had flown to Ahtna two days before, to sit vigil next to Ruthe, a figure swathed in bandages, hooked up to enough machines to launch a space shuttle. One was breathing for her. The doctor, who was personally acquainted with Kate Shugak’s built-in bullshit detector, was very frank. “We’ve done all we can. It’s up to her now.”

  So Kate settled into an uncomfortable armchair and read out loud for two hours, parts of Travels with Charley, The Monkey Wrench Gang, and even a few entries out of Alaska’s Wilderness Medicines. She thought Ruthe had given a tiny smile when she read the entry on devil’s club, but it could have been her imagination.

  Her shift ended and Chick’s began. He had a nice mellow baritone and sang a pretty good folk song. Kate listened at the door to a few lines of “The Unfortunate Miss Bailey” before Mandy materialized in front of her with cups of coffee. They sat together in the lounge. “You headed back home?” Mandy said. She was a rangy woman with short, prematurely graying hair and skin weathered by long days in the Arctic sun.

  Kate nodded. “I’ve got the potlatch to get ready for.”

  “Yeah. We’ll be back for that.”

  Kate looked at Ruthe lying in the bed, unmoving. “Is the whole Park coming to Ahtna in shifts?”

  “Kind of looks like it. Auntie Joy was with her when we got here, but then, she lives right down the road.” In Alaskan terms, “right down the road” meaning within seventy miles. “I think people are just showing up. Dan O’Brian said he’d bring a copy of d-2 and read it to her.”

  “That’ll bring her back,” Kate said, and both women smiled.

  “What’s this I hear about Dan being forced to retire?”

  Kate shook her head. “Not going to happen. I sicked Auntie Vi on it.”

  “Well, if anyone can get the job done.”

  “Yeah. Did I hear correctly—that he was standing over the bodies when Dandy walked in?” Mandy continued.

  “Yeah. He’d stopped by to ask them for help with his job.”

  “Wow.” Mandy expelled a breath. “He must have almost walked in on whoever did it.”

  “I wish he had.” Mandy was avoiding Kate’s eyes. Now Kate remembered how Dandy Mike had stared at her, openmouthed, as she had rushed by on her way to her snow machine. “What?”

  Mandy shrugged uncomfortably. “Dandy’s been saying some stuff.”

  Kate’s shoulders tensed. “About me and Jim Chopin?” she said, keeping her voice even.

  “Yeah. At Dina and Ruthe’s cabin. He said you were fighting.”

  Kate stared. “What?”

  “He said you were fighting. Well, he said you were using Jim for target practice. And I saw Jim at the post office in Niniltna yesterday; he’s got a shiner. A beauty.”

  “He does?”

  Mandy smiled. “Yes. He does.”

  Kate felt herself relaxing. “Oh. Ah. Well.”

  “Why’d you hit him?”

  “Because he deserved it,” Kate said swiftly, if inaccurately.

  “What, did he try to make a move?”

  Kate didn’t know what to say without giving her self away. Mandy had been too close a friend for too long. Fortunately for Kate, Mandy decided to answer herself. “Like he never did that before.”

  “Right,” Kate said. “Did you mush into Ahtna?”

  Mandy shook her head. “No.” She was still curious. She’d never heard of Jim Chopin pressing unwanted advances on anyone. He’d never had to—most women crumbled at the first long look, the first smile that said, I know you. Let me show you how well. And Mandy did know Kate Shugak better than most. Enough to know when the NO TRESPASSING sign was out. “No place to kennel the dogs.”

  “Who’s taking care of them while you’re gone?”

  “Didn’t he tell you?”

  “No,” Kate said, “no, he didn’t tell me anything.” She caught Mandy’s look and said, “I’m sorry. “Who?”

  “Johnny. Johnny’s stopping by on his way to and from school to take care of the dogs.”

  “No kidding. He know what he’s doing?”

  Mandy reflected. “More or less.”

  “You paying him?”

  “More or less. He wants to learn to mush.”

  “He wants to learn everything,” Kate said.

  They smiled at each other. The little lost boy, did he but know it, was lost no more.

  On Saturday, before the potlatch, Kate went back up to the Step. Dan was sitting behind his desk. “Hey, Kate.”

  She surveyed him critically as she took a seat. “You don’t look as peaked as you did the last time I saw you. The bruise is fading.”

  “Yeah.” He rubbed his head. “That Dandy throws a mean door.”

  Kate laughed and tossed him a bag. “Here, couple pieces of Auntie Vi’s fry bread. They’re cold, but you can nuke ’em.”

  “Marry me,” Dan said, and took her advice and popped them in the microwave. “Almost as good as right out of the pan,” he managed to say around a mouthful. “If you won’t marry me, I’m trying for Auntie Vi.”

  “Have you heard anything?”

  “About the job? I’m still suspended.”

  “I notice you’re also still here.”

  “Yeah,” he said, and grinned. It did her heart good to see it. “I got a couple of calls—none from my boss—saying I should stick it out and make ’em fire me. The thing is, Kate…”

  “What?”

  He brushed crumbs from his shirt. “The Park Service subsists on a budget set every two years by Congress, just like every other government bureaucracy. The funds within that bureaucracy are allocated, allegedly, on a case-per-case basis, according to greatest need. Unless there are specific congressional requirements that set aside particular funding for any given project, the money goes into a general operating budget. And that budget is overseen by the secretary of the interior, who handpicks his or her staff members, one of whom is my boss. The secretary, you will note, is a political appointee, who serves at the whim of the president, a president who can fire his or her ass.”

  “I got it, Dan. I think I had it before I sat down.”

  “Yeah, well, I just don’t want the Park to suffer because the secretary or one of her minions doesn’t happen to like the chief ranger. And hell, it’s not like I wouldn’t want my own people in charge if I were taking over.” He brooded. “Ah hell. I figure whatever happens, I’ll deal with it.”

  “Good attitude. In the meantime, what’s going on?”

  “What’s going on is that all the bears are asleep, the moose are bedded down by the rivers, conserving energy, and the Kanuyaq caribou will start getting thinned down”—he looked at the calendar—“in four days, which will considerably relieve my mind. Other than that, there isn’t much going on. Have to start going through applications for summer hires. Shovel some snow off the roof.”

  “You lonely up here all by yourself?”

  He shrugged. “No.” His grin was sly this time. “Course, I’m not up here all by myself all the time.”

  Kate rolled her eyes. “Right. What was I thinking. How’s Christie?”

  “Perfect.” But he didn’t look as
smug as he ought to have when he said it.

  “Trouble in paradise?” she said lightly.

  He crumpled the paper bag and tossed it in the trash. Then the in box needed straightening. “No,” he said. “No trouble.”

  Okay. “See you at the potluck?”

  His brow lightened. “I’ll be down.”

  “Good. Because you know the fry bread was just an appetizer.”

  It got a smile out of him, but Kate worried about him all the way down from the Step.

  It beat worrying about herself.

  She opened the doors to the gymnasium at precisely 12:00 P.M., and people began to stream inside. Dandy Mike had come early and helped her set up the long tables that lined the front of the cafeteria window. Fortunately, he also knew the secret to making the bleachers come out of the wall, because Kate certainly didn’t. The coolers were beneath the tables, loaded with six different kinds of pop. The tabletops were soon obscured beneath a layer of meat loaf, macaroni and cheese, blood stew, cinnamon rolls, seventeen different kinds of fruit bread as well as innumerable loaves of homemade white bread, caribou ribs, moose roast, and the last silver of someone’s fishing season, rescued from the cache and roasted whole. There were enormous bowls of mashed potatoes and boiled carrots, along with bean salad, macaroni salad, fruit salad, carrot salad, and five different kinds of coleslaw. There were sheet cakes and layer cakes, pumpkin, apple, and cherry pies, brownies, angel bars, and homemade butterscotch candy. They’d done Dina proud.

  Kate kept up with the napkins and the plastic flatware while exchanging greetings with the people filling their plates on the other side of the table. Knots of people gathered on the bleachers, and more people streamed in, then more, and the hum of conversation became first a din and then a roar. It wasn’t long before the little kids found the basketball closet and began practicing free throws at the opposite end of the court.