Breakup

by Dana Stabenow

  The tourists from Pennsylvania were easy to spot. They sat at a table by themselves, attired in matching plaid polyester pantsuits. Matching Pittsburgh Steelers windbreakers hung over the backs of their chairs, matching potbellies pushed at their shirts, and matching befuddled smiles spread across their faces as they took in Life in the Alaskan Bush, a point-and-shoot camera at the ready on the table in front of them, right next to a dog-eared copy of the Milepost, Everytourist’s all-purpose, super-duper utility guide to Alaska. In spite of herself Kate thought they looked kind of cute.

  The air smelled of stale beer, roll-your-owns of old tobacco and older marijuana, and wet wool. Eau de breakup.

  Kate broke trail to the bar, where Bernie was pouring out drinks with all eight hands. He was a long, gaunt man with a receding hairline in front and a ponytail that reached to his waist in back to make up for it. He looked like an aging hippie only because he was one.

  Bernie Koslowski was Chicago-born and Midwest-bred and all flower child. He had been mugged by Daley’s finest at the 1968 Democratic convention, had danced in the mud at Woodstock in 1969 and had merrily burned his draft card on the steps of the Capitol in Washington, D.C., in 1970, whereupon Attorney General John Mitchell, unamused, had had Bernie and three thousand other demonstrators thrown behind a chicken-wire fence on the Mall, in direct violation of their Fourth Amendment rights. Bernie took it personally. Upon release, he walked by the White House to flip Nixon the bird and hauled ass for Canada, eventually migrating into Alaska through the Yukon Territories, working construction on the TransAlaska Pipeline. He retired from the pipeline to buy the Roadhouse in 1975. If the Roadhouse wasn’t connected by road to the TransAlaska Pipeline’s right-of-way, there were other means of transportation an ingenious and thirsty pipeliner could and did promote, including, one glorious day two years before, a D-9 Caterpillar tractor. Business boomed.

  Bernie’s father, who never let anyone forget he had gone ashore with the first wave at Anzio, had struck Bernie’s name from the family Bible and forbidden mention of it in his presence. His mother and sisters sent him surreptitious care packages every year at Christmas, filled with water filters, Swiss Army knives and waterproof compasses ordered from the REI catalog. From time to time they would inquire solicitously as to the state of his health, since blubber couldn’t be all that nutritious as a dietary staple, and did his Eskimo friends live in igloos? Bernie had never met an Eskimo in his life, or seen an igloo, and since whales had been put on the endangered species list, muktuk was in short supply, and Aleuts ate seal muktuk anyway. Or the ones he knew did.

  One of his Aleut friends who ate seal muktuk jerked her head toward the other end of the bar, where Bobby Clark was, as usual, sitting at the center of a lot of laughter and rude comment. “Life of the party,” Bernie said. “How you been, Kate?”

  “Don’t ask.”

  “All right,” Bernie said agreeably, and poured Kate a Coke without waiting for an order. “Where’s Mutt?”

  “Guarding the homestead from the federal government.”

  “What?” There was restive movement behind Kate, and Bernie said, “May I help you?”

  “Bernie, this is Mr. and Mrs. Baker. Mandy’s parents.”

  Bernie broke into a smile that lit the deceptively mournful lines of his face with warmth and humor. “Of course. Mr. and Mrs. Baker. I’ve heard Mandy talk about you.” With the diplomatic dexterity of a career bartender, he refrained from repeating precisely what he’d heard Mandy say. “It’s nice to meet you. May I pour you a drink?”

  “I wish you would,” said Mrs. Baker with feeling.

  “You certainly may,” said Mr. Baker at the same time, with even more feeling.

  Bernie glanced at Kate, and was intrigued by the suddenly wooden expression on her face, although true to form he made no comment. “Fine. What would you like?”

  The Bakers eyed the assortment of bottles crammed into the shelves on the wall behind the bar. Mr. Baker spotted a tall green bottle and pointed. “Is that Glenlivet?”

  “It certainly is.”

  “I’ll have some,” Mr. Baker said, in a manner that brooked no contradiction. “Dear? Dear?”

  Mrs. Baker’s gaze was fixed and staring. Bernie turned to see what she was looking at.

  On a small shelf by itself perched a clear, square-sided bottle half filled with golden liquid. It was what was lying on the bottom of the bottle that had caught Mrs. Baker’s fascinated attention, and Kate smothered a grin as Bernie said with elaborate nonchalance, “Oh, that. That used to be tequila. Now it’s Middle Finger.” Mrs. Baker’s eyes widened but before Bernie could launch himself on the saga of the unprepared climber who had lost three fingers to frostbite climbing Angqaq Mountain, one of which now reposed at the bottom of the bottle in question, Kate said, “Bernie, these folks have already been through one bear attack, one plane crash and one attempted murder today. Just pour them some booze, okay?”

  Drinks in hand, they moved down the bar, gravitating naturally toward the spot generating the most noise. Bobby was accompanied by a wraithlike blonde who caught sight of Kate before he did. “Hey, Kate.”

  “How you doing, Dinah?”

  “Fine,” the blonde said, smiling, blue eyes dreamy. “Incredible. Wonderful. Sublime.”

  Impressed, Kate said, “Must have been one hell of a winter.”

  The dreamy smile widened. “You have no idea.”

  Dinah Cookman was a twenty-two-year-old strawberry blonde who, upon graduation from Columbia the previous spring with a degree in photojournalism, had armed herself with a video camera and a pale blue 1969 Ford Econoline van and driven north to Alaska, determined to make her name with a breakthrough celluloid essay on life in the Alaskan bush. By the time she got to Tok she had run out of gas money and stopped off to pick mushrooms to sell to cash buyers from Outside, and also to meet Bobby and Kate, but especially Bobby. Under their expert tutelage, especially Bobby’s, she was fast redeeming her cheechako status. This afternoon, for almost the first time since Kate had known her, she was without her video camera. She looked unnatural, almost naked, without it.

  The black man with the impressive shoulders put his wheelchair into a 180. “Goddam! Shugak! Long time no see!” A long arm hauled her into a comprehensive embrace, a hard kiss and a not so brotherly pat on the ass. “How was your winter?”

  “Not as good as yours, apparently,” she said, returning the embrace and the kiss and letting the pat go by without comment. No one else could have patted Kate Shugak’s ass in public and gotten away with it, not even Jack Morgan, and the people around the group regarded him with no little awe.

  Bobby peered behind Kate. “And you are?”

  “Bobby, Dinah, I’d like to introduce Mr. and Mrs. Baker. Mandy’s parents.”

  “The snobs from Nob Hill?” Bobby said, not so sotto voce.

  “No, the snobs from Beacon Hill,” Kate said under her breath. “Behave.” More loudly she said, “Mr. and Mrs. Baker, these are some more of Mandy’s friends. Bobby Clark, he’s the NOAA observer for the Park, uh, that’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. And this is Dinah Cookman, Bobby’s roommate and a photojournalist.”

  “Documentary filmmaker,” Dinah said, the old her surfacing for a moment before the rosy haze enveloped her once more.

  Kate regarded Dinah with a wary eye. “I beg her pardon, documentary filmmaker. And you’ve met Bernie Koslowski. He owns the joint.”

  Everybody shook hands. “Where’s Mandy?” Bernie said.

  “She’s back at the lodge. I, ah, volunteered to give the folks the grand tour.” Nobody believed it, but nobody was brave enough to say so.

  “You want a table?” Bernie said.

  “You got one?”

  “Always got one for you,” he said. “Judy!”

  “Yo!” A short, wiry woman in jeans and T-shirt whose fringe of thin brown hair was stuck to her forehead with sweat peered at them from behind thick round glasses that made
her look like an inquiring insect.

  “Save that table for me!”

  She stuck up a thumb, and was lifting an overloaded tray without apparent effort by the time Mr. and Mrs. Baker, Kate, Bobby, Dinah and Bernie reached her. There weren’t enough chairs, which Bernie rectified by snitching several from nearby tables while their occupants were on the dance floor. “I’m on break,” Bernie told Judy.

  “Up yours,” she replied with a grin. She shoved her oversize glasses up the bridge of her nose and shot off to answer a cry for more beer.

  Bernie shook his head. “That Judy, she only knows two speeds, fast and stop. So, Mr. and Mrs. Baker, how are you finding Alaska so far?”

  “Quite stimulating,” Mr. Baker replied without missing a beat.

  Kate choked over her Coke and Bobby demanded details. They took news of the bear attack philosophically, pitying victim and survivor alike without shock or horror. “Dumb to go up there unarmed this time of year,” Bobby said, which summed up the general consensus. George’s ground loop was received with glee, Cindy’s ambush with applause. When they stopped laughing, Kate said, “Yeah, right, hilarious,” but she noticed that Mandy’s parents were looking much more mellow. Probably the Glenlivet. Whatever worked.

  Bernie had been in on the ground floor of Dan O’Brian’s hot pursuit of the two Great White Hunters, so the denouement was well received, but it was the story of the 747 engine almost falling on her cabin that got by far the most acclamation. “Jesus, Kate,” Bobby said, wiping away tears of mirth, “that’s got to be the best story yet. You’re getting better and better at lying in your old age.” He started to laugh again. “I knew I was a good teacher, but damn, I didn’t know I was that good.”

  “It’s true,” she insisted.

  “Yeah, right, and the Nimitz just rammed my boat dock,” he said, and everybody laughed again.

  “She really is telling the truth,” Mr. Baker murmured, but no one was listening.

  “Is that what all that air traffic was this morning?” Bernie said.

  “Yes,” Kate said. “The NTSB and the FAA descended on my place at about five.”

  Bobby’s beer was arrested halfway between table and mouth. “Air traffic?”

  “Yeah,” Bernie said. “Didn’t you hear it? Sounded like the U.S. Air Force was staging an invasion from the Niniltna strip. Early,” he added with bitter emphasis. The Roadhouse didn’t close until two in the morning, and Bernie usually didn’t hit the sack until three-thirty or four o’clock. He was not a morning person.

  Bobby looked at Kate. “It really is true? The engine off a 747 really did land in your front yard?”

  “Not fifty feet from my front door,” Kate said ruefully. Mr. and Mrs. Baker nodded in solemn agreement. Kate noticed their glasses were nearly empty. So did Bernie, and he signaled Judy for a refill.

  Bobby stared at her. “Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ,” he said finally. “Now that’s what I call breakup.”

  The door opened and Mac Devlin came in. He spotted Bobby and bulled his way through the crowd to the table. Kate was sitting a little in back of Bernie and he didn’t notice her at first. “Bobby, is it true what I heard? Did a plane crash on Kate Shugak’s homestead?”

  Bobby raised his eyebrows, not averse to making a good story even better. “Why, I do believe it did, Mac.”

  Mac Devlin was a short, barrel-shaped man with a red face and redder hair that stood up straight in the standard ex-marine’s crew cut. “Jesus! I hear over a hundred people got killed.”

  Kate leaned farther back into Bernie’s shadow, and obligingly he leaned forward on his elbows, the better to keep her hidden. The Bush Telegraph had never been known for its strict adherence to the facts, and it appeared that today it had been working overtime. Bobby was thoroughly enjoying himself, and no one at the table gave him or Kate away. “At least.”

  “Jesus!” Mac Devlin said again. “I heard Kate was hurt, too.”

  “Intensive care at Providence in Anchorage,” Bobby said.

  “Serious,” Bernie said solemnly.

  “Critical,” Dinah said, getting into the act.

  “Near death,” Bobby said, shaking his head mournfully. Dinah wiped away a tear. Bernie gave a heartfelt sigh. Mr. and Mrs. Baker drank single malt and kept their mouths shut, going up another notch in Mandy’s friends’ opinion poll.

  Mac Devlin thought for a moment. “Listen,” he said, dropping his voice to a confidential murmur, “you don’t happen to know who Kate’s heirs are, do you?”

  “I don’t believe so,” Bobby said gravely. “I’m not sure she had any.”

  “Other than us,” Dinah said, and slid her hand into the crook of Bobby’s arm.

  “Because then I could approach them about subsurface mineral rights on her homestead,” Mac said.

  Kate felt Bernie shake next to her, and a responding laugh bubbled up to the back of her throat. She pinched his arm in warning. He pinched her back.

  Bobby almost forgot his part. “I’ve got to hand it to you, Mac, you never give up.”

  Mac’s ruddy skin became even ruddier. “Because you know I’ve been after Kate for the mineral rights to that ridge above the creek back of her cabin ever since I came into the Park.”

  Dinah eyed him, enthralled by his every word. “What do you think is there?”

  “I think it’s where the silver vein that played out in the Lost Wife Mine reappears.” Mac’s chest puffed out. “I can show you the maps, and the geologic charts.”

  “Gee,” Dinah told Bobby, all earnest persuasion, “maybe we ought to let him take a look.”

  Kate leaned forward into visual range and raised her voice. “Like hell. I’ve seen what Mac can do with that D-6 of his. He could move all hundred and sixty of my acres five miles west if he was of a mind to.” She met Mac’s astounded gaze and smiled. “Thanks, Mac, but no thanks. I’ll pass.”

  Mac’s jaw dropped, and the table erupted into laughter. He regained enough self-control to curse them all roundly and bulled off in the direction of the bar.

  Still laughing, Bobby said, “There might be silver in them thar hills, Kate. Aren’t you even a little excited at the prospect?”

  “Oh,” she said politely, “you think I don’t get enough excitement out at the homestead already?”

  “Lay off, Bobby,” Dinah said. “Not everybody’s in the market to moil for gold.”

  “I’ll moil it for her,” Bobby said promptly.

  “Thanks anyway,” Kate said. “I don’t think so.”

  “Are you sure you’re really okay, Kate?” Dinah said, sobering. “Sounds like one hell of a close call to me.”

  “It was, but I’m fine.”

  “And may be richer for the experience,” Bobby said, lifting his beer in a toast.

  “I’d better be,” she said gloomily. “The damn thing flattened my truck.”

  “Not old Ichiban?” Dinah said in dismay.

  “Stewart?” Bernie said suddenly. “Did you say Mark Stewart? Kind of looks like Robert Redford, only with black hair?”

  Kate blinked at him, lost for a moment. “Who?”

  “The guy whose wife got eaten by the bear,” Bernie said.

  “Sounds like a book by John Straley,” an irrepressible Bobby observed.

  Bernie ignored him and persevered. “Does Stewart look kind of, I don’t know, not Redfordy exactly, but, I guess, sort of deliberately movie star–ish? Lean, black hair?”

  She paused with her glass halfway to her lips. Now that she thought about it, she couldn’t remember the color of Stewart’s hair, the jolt of awareness when their eyes met obscuring everything else. She had been trained to observe, and she couldn’t come up with something as basic as a physical description. And she had at one time called herself an investigator. She was even more disgusted with herself.

  “Jesus, Bernie,” Bobby said, unknowingly coming to her rescue, “you sound like you’re in love with the guy.”

  Bernie shot him the finger, a
nd Kate was able to say with a laugh, “Now, now, gentlemen. I happen to know the proprietor of this establishment, and he frowns on fisticuffs. Yes, Bernie,” she said, turning to him, “that sounds like the guy. Why?”

  “They were in here last night.”

  “‘They’?” Bobby said. “You mean the widower and the deceased?”

  “Yeah,” Bernie said. “They were really lovey-dovey.” He paused, and added, “Or at least he was. She didn’t look like she was all that excited to me.”

  Bobby made a rude noise. “Wishful thinking.”

  “Hey,” Bernie said, wounded. “I’m a married man.”

  Kate was distracted by a burst of noise from the television screen, where a little old Native man was being roughed up by a bunch of big ugly oil field workers in what passed in Hollywood for a bar in the Bush, which was about as accurate as the rig fire scene. Steven Seagal entered the frame. Old Sam Dementieff, who was twice as old and twice as decrepit as the little old Native man on the television screen, raised up a thin, twittering voice. “Oh, please, Mr. Big Strong White Man, save poor, weak, drunk little me from the Big Bad White Guys!” Obediently, Seagal did, with the requisite amounts of testosterone and karate. “Oh, thank you, thank you, Mr. Big Strong White Man!” Old Sam cried. “You saved me! You shall be made a member of my tribe! Forever after you shall be known among us by your secret tribal name, Biggest White Prick!”

  Chuckling, Kate turned back to the table.

  “He’s a big-time Anchorage contractor,” Bernie was saying. “He built the Roadhouse for me. Back when we were both just starting out. He cut his expenses to the bone, I’ll say that for him, but he sure was hard on employees. He paid them ten bucks an hour—for Bush work, no less—and made’em sleep in tents. Oh, and he refused to hire a cook.”

  “What’d they eat?”

  Bernie grinned. “Surplus MREs.”

  “No fucking way!” Bobby roared in outrage.