A Cold War

by Alan Russell

  “Why?”

  “In May of 2014, two Alaska State Troopers were shot dead in Tanana while investigating a supposed dispute over a couch. It’s a close-knit community of only a few hundred people, so everyone knows everyone. Some of the villagers might not like the idea of a local cozying up to a cop.”

  “You given any more thought to contacting Donnelly’s guy?”

  “I don’t like doing an end run around the troopers,” said Hamilton, but then added, “I did get his name and number, though.”

  “You going to call?”

  “I suppose it couldn’t hurt.”

  “I’d like to be in on the meeting.”

  “He’s probably not going to want to talk to a civilian. He might not even want to talk to me.”

  “Tell him my wife was abducted just like Nina Granville was. Tell him I have some unique insights into this case.”

  “If he agrees to talk to me, I’ll see if I can get you an invite.”

  “Thanks,” said Martin, and then added, “One more thing. Any idea when I’m going to get my wife’s jewelry back?”

  “Call Anchorage PD. As far as I know, it’s in their possession, unless it was passed on to AST.”

  “Keep me in the loop.”

  As if Martin was giving him much choice in that matter, thought Hamilton, but he wasn’t given the opportunity of saying that or anything else. Martin had already hung up.

  The cop looked up the number for Sergeant Cody Wood, Donnelly’s man in Alaska, but before dialing his number, he began wondering about something else.

  Hamilton put aside Wood’s number and decided there was someone else he needed to call first. And then he’d stop by Once in a Blue Moose and see if they had any nice roses or flowers for his wife.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The fire in the cooking stove generated just enough heat to be felt throughout the cabin, making the room not quite an icebox. Nina was glad to be able to remove a few layers of clothing and enjoy the relative warmth. Baer didn’t ask her to help with dinner, and she was content to let him cook up the goose and duck meat. She watched as he threw a handful of fat into a large frying pan and then seasoned the bird with salt and pepper. In lieu of rice or potatoes, he tossed some of his hardtack into the pan. The hard biscuits began to soften as they soaked up the juices and fat.

  The aroma from the game birds made Nina all the hungrier. It hadn’t been that long ago that such a smell would have repulsed her. Food had never seemed important to her before, but then she’d never had to doubt where her next meal was coming from. In New York she’d always stocked her work desk with protein bars, which served as lunch when she was too busy to eat. But the idea of food had changed for her. It was no longer a vehicle to see Terrence or her friends. It was life.

  Of late, Nina had noticed that her senses seemed to be heightened. Her primordial instincts seemed to be kicking in, which would explain her being able to see, smell, and hear as she never had before. At the moment, though, she wished her hearing weren’t so acute. Baer was doing his singsong chant again, reciting that strange poem he was so fixated on. It was like a horror movie. You would promise yourself not to watch the scary scene, but then find yourself unable to turn away. The poem drew her in that way.

  “The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,

  But the queerest they ever did see

  Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge

  I cremated Sam McGee.”

  “What poem is that?” she asked.

  Baer didn’t answer for several seconds. Nina knew if she hadn’t interrupted him, he would have recited the poem in its entirety. It was almost as if he fell into a trance during its telling.

  “It’s ‘The Cremation of Sam McGee,’” he finally said.

  “Who wrote it?”

  “Robert Service,” he said. “I suppose he wasn’t a poet you studied at Harvard.”

  Nina didn’t correct him to say that she’d gone to Smith. Nor did she tell Baer that he was probably right about her college not having taught the poetry of this Robert Service. Her alma mater had its standards, and doggerel wouldn’t count as poetry worthy of study.

  “I’ve never heard of him.”

  “Harvard failed you.”

  Terrence had gone to Harvard. She was willing to bet her fiancé had never heard of Robert Service or his poem, either. Baer was looking at her, awaiting her response. Nina regretted having engaged him in conversation and said nothing.

  “The poem speaks to the north. You think I give a shit about a Grecian urn?”

  Nina was surprised that Baer was even able to make that reference. It wouldn’t do for her to underestimate him. He presented himself as lacking in book smarts, but he wasn’t ignorant. No, he was cunning and all too observant. It would be at her peril if she forgot that about her enemy.

  “The poem is about one man’s death,” said Baer, “and another man’s making good on a vow. Didn’t Shakespeare write about those kinds of things?”

  “But this Sam McGee dies,” said Nina, “and then he’s cremated, and in the middle of his ostensibly being burned to ashes, he requests the door be closed so as to keep the cold out.”

  “You ever cremate anyone?”

  Nina’s head recoiled in surprise: “Of course not.”

  “It’s not as easy as you’d think.”

  “You’ve cremated someone?”

  “Three people,” he said.

  “Or three and a third,” he added enigmatically.

  “How did that come about?”

  “They died.”

  “Who died?”

  “Why are you so fired up to know?”

  Baer seemed proud of his pun, or maybe he was just using it to try to deflect her questions.

  “I don’t think most people in this world have cremated one person,” she said, “let alone three and a third.”

  Baer added some fuel to the stove fire and took his time before replying. “The first person was my mother,” he said.

  “Your mother?”

  “Father wasn’t pleased when she skipped out without telling him.”

  “He killed her?”

  “She took a bad fall, he said.”

  “How terrible that must have been for you.”

  “It was her choice to take off. It was her choice to abandon her own flesh and blood.”

  Those sounded like his father’s words, thought Nina. “How old were you?”

  “Eight, I suppose.”

  “I am sorry.”

  “I wasn’t the one who was cremated.”

  Nina wasn’t so sure.

  “It’s not easy to build a pyre that does the job,” he said. “I helped my father pile up wood waist-high, but that still wasn’t enough. For a body to burn to ashes, you need a blazing heat that lasts for hours. The fuel ran out before she did, but it was so hot we couldn’t approach anywhere near to where her body was, so we had to toss the logs from ten, twelve feet away. It’s not a pleasant sound when a log strikes charred flesh and bone. It’s like the hollow cracking of a rotted branch, but worse.”

  “What about the other cremations?”

  He took his time before answering. “The first Mrs. Baer and the second Mrs. Baer both burned at the stake, even though neither was a witch.”

  “How did they die?”

  “The first Mrs. Baer drowned, or it seemed that way. She fell into the river and didn’t care enough to pull herself out. And the second Mrs. Baer . . .”

  He thought about it for a few moments before making his pronouncement. “I guess she died of a broken heart more than anything else.”

  “What was it that broke her heart?”

  “Dwelling in the past,” he said. “That’s something I don’t do.”

  Baer glared at her, and she retreated from his look. I’m sorry, Sister, thought Nina. There had been a part of her holding out hope that Elese had somehow survived. It was silly, of course, but she hadn’t wanted to accept the reality of
Elese’s death. She didn’t know how Elese had died, but it was true enough that she had died of a broken heart. With Denali’s death the light had gone out of her life. Without her son to look after, she’d been willing to risk everything to escape.

  I’m sorry you didn’t make it, thought Nina in silent prayer.

  Baer was humming the tune he used with his poem. It was almost a cadence. Even without words it was easy to recognize.

  “Is your Sam McGee poem set in Alaska?” Nina asked.

  Baer stopped his humming and shook his head. “Service wrote about Canada, but the far north is the far north. Lake Labarge is not more than seven hundred miles from here.”

  “You’ve been there?”

  “Once,” he said. “It’s off the Yukon River near Whitehorse. I visited in July, but the water was still colder than a witch’s tit. They say it never warms up.”

  “Then why would anyone live there, or here, for that matter? The only reason Sam McGee came to the far north was to try and strike it rich. But he hated the cold here. Like him I’d rather be in Plum Orchard, Tennessee, or just about anywhere else.”

  “It’s Plumtree, Tennessee,” he said. “And I guess you’re shit out of luck.”

  They ate dinner without exchanging any words. Nina wondered if she’d made a mistake being honest with him. Silence would probably have been the better way to go. She should have just endured his reciting that awful poem. He’d gone back to it while doing the dishes. His words had driven Nina into her cage, where she’d unsuccessfully covered her ears.

  “Till I came to the marge of Lake Labarge, and a derelict there lay;

  It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was called the Alice May.

  And I looked at it, and I thought a bit, and I looked at my frozen chum;

  Then ‘Here,’ said I, with a sudden cry, ‘is my cre-ma-tor-eum.’”

  Nina wondered what a “marge” was. She thought it could mean the shore or the outskirts, but couldn’t be sure from the context of the poem. And had a boat named the Alice May really sunk in the lake?

  He continued his reciting. It was almost like he was saying a prayer, with the words not as important as his utterances of faith.

  She fell asleep to his droning.

  Nina slept through the night and awakened in the morning to the sounds of Baer moving around the cabin. For once she hadn’t had to face up to one of his hated nocturnal visits. Resisting his advances would have meant suffering another beating or strangling. Even if there was no choice in the matter, she hadn’t yet reached the point where she could let herself be tacitly complicit in his raping her. It was false pride, she knew, and didn’t do her any good. What was even worse was that he seemed to enjoy her struggles.

  Whatever spared her rape was a good thing. Baer seemed to be in a hurry. In the semidarkness she watched him making circular loops out of wire. Each of the loops was nine or ten inches in diameter. It almost looked as if he was making hangman’s nooses.

  “Are those snares you’re making?” asked Nina.

  He nodded. “In case you can’t feel it, there was a cold snap last night. All the streams and shallows iced up. I need to visit a few beaver lodges this morning.”

  “You’re going to set traps?”

  “Snare poles,” he said. “You put them under the ice along the beaver run.”

  “Will I be coming along?”

  He shook his head. “I got a later start than I would have liked. That’s what happens when you eat too much. I slept like the dead.”

  Nina wasn’t sure if she liked the idea of being left behind or not. As much as Baer’s absence appealed to her, the only way she could better plan her escape was by familiarizing herself with the surrounding landscape. And observing Baer’s survival skills in action could only help her getting away.

  “Why not let me tag along?” Nina asked.

  “Because you’ll slow me up,” he said.

  “Will you at least let me out of my cage to go to the bathroom?” she asked.

  Baer thought about it for a moment, shrugged, and then unlocked the door to her holding pen. Nina kept her eyes on him as she scrambled out of the cell. She’d slept under several fur and down-filled blankets, and without their warmth she began to shiver. Still, she was glad to be free of her cage.

  When Nina stepped outside the cabin, the cold made her turn around and return for a blanket. She wrapped herself up in a handmade down comforter and then faced the chill air for the second time, following the path to the outhouse. There was enough light that she could see the way, but not enough to see very far around her. Gusting wind rattled trees and made Nina jump, fearing potential predators.

  “Welcome to my morning pee,” whispered Nina. “As if the possibility of freezing to death isn’t worrisome enough, I also have to be wary of some wild animal sneaking up on me.”

  Nina stomped along as loudly as she could, hoping her noises might scare off any animal within listening range. With the light of day, she could see the outhouse more clearly, but that didn’t make it any more appealing. Outhouses, Nina was sure, were a male invention. Comfort was not part of the construction equation. As she sat down, she noticed there was some give to the plywoodlike shelving.

  “And now I have another fear,” said Nina. “Death by crapper.”

  She propped herself up with both of her hands so that she was elevated over the hole. It might have been a silly reassurance, and Nina knew it had to look ridiculous, but positioning herself that way lessened her fear of falling in. Of course, making like a gymnast working the pommel horse was no way to take a pee.

  At least I don’t have to worry about my dismount, she thought.

  It was already freezing, and it was early fall. She didn’t want to think about the polar winter that was coming. Nina wondered if any backside had ever frozen to an outhouse. That might even be worse than a tongue to the flagpole. She didn’t think about it for long because the wind, finding its way through the structure’s many cracks, chilled her exposed flesh. She finished up as quickly as her bladder would allow and hurried back to the cabin.

  Baer was ready to leave. He’d constructed a sling over his shoulder to carry all of his snares. There was a fur draped around his waist that was a combination holster and construction belt. In addition to his gun, he carried an ax, a knife, and wire-cutter pliers. Today he’d chosen a rifle over a shotgun.

  “Hurry it up,” he said, gesturing with his head to her holding pen. “There’s some duck in there for you.”

  “If you don’t lock me up, I could do some cleaning.”

  “You can clean up after I get back. Now get inside.”

  Nina crawled into her cell, and he locked the door behind her.

  “Are you taking the dogs?” she asked.

  “One of them.”

  “How about leaving the others in the cabin with me?”

  “That wouldn’t be very smart.”

  “And why is that?”

  “There are two kinds of bear. The one kind runs off when it hears dogs barking. And the other kind doesn’t hear barking as much as it hears the sound of a dinner bell.”

  Nina thought of the dogs chained up to their metal-drum houses.

  “That’s happened before?” she asked.

  “Why else would I tell you that rooming with dogs is a bad idea?”

  As Baer walked out of the cabin, Nina found herself with yet something else to worry about.

  She waited until she was sure Baer was far away from the cabin before digging out the secreted journal. Better to be safe than sorry—her mother had always gone around saying that. Nina thought of her family. Usually she went home for Thanksgiving. Her parents and brother were probably wondering if she was alive. It seemed almost unreal that she was so far away from them and there was no way for her to get word to them. She felt like a prisoner of war denied communication with the outside world.

  I am still alive, she thought. I am still fighting. I haven’t given up
.

  She retrieved Elese’s book. Her secret sister had been imprisoned for much longer than she had. Both of them had been raped and abused by the same man, and although Elese had suffered unimaginable loss, she had still reached out to Nina.

  Today Nina found comfort in the last few pages, personalized with drawings and stories. Elese had remembered Denali in a series of etchings. One drawing showed Denali’s wide, innocent eyes staring out at the world. In another he sucked at his mother’s breast. And there was a picture of him atop a bearskin rug.

  These are all that remain of her son, thought Nina. This is all that is left of him.

  Elese had also drawn an ink etching of her husband with the identification of “Greg.” He was closely eyeing what appeared to be a rock. She’d added an entry that read, It grieves me to think I have left Greg in limbo. I was his anchor, he told me. How adrift he must be!

  One of Elese’s more unusual entries she’d titled “Scaring a Monster.”

  I’m not sure if Baer’s distrust and hatred of women has to do with his mother or his upbringing, but it makes him the monster he is. There is a part of him that is afraid of women, even though I’m sure he would say that is ridiculous. He likes to call women “witches” (and worse). I get this sense he fears women and their “dark” magic.

  During our honeymoon at sea, the anthropologist on our cruise ship gave a lecture where she said that the Native women used to sing and whistle to the northern lights so as to entice them to come closer.

  The first time I saw the aurora borealis, I did just that. I whistled and sang and danced. The monster did not like that. It made him uneasy. I think I somehow tapped into that old sisterhood, and my voice seemed to become a chorus.

  He tried to hide how uncomfortable I made him feel. He said I was acting as if I’d lost my mind, and he tried to speak over my singing and whistling. Then he pretended that he’d had enough of my “nonsense” and went inside.

  Who says you can’t scare a monster?

  The bottom half of the page was taken up with a drawing. Even without color and with only the inking of her pen, Elese’s picture reminded Nina of Van Gogh’s Starry Night. It was the swirls and the stars, she decided. Elese’s version of the northern lights pulsated even on paper that had once served as the label of a large can. One of Nina’s favorite things about the picture was the absence of the monster. He wasn’t even there in dark spirit.