A grave denied (29 page)

“ ‘Remorse is the ultimate in self-abuse,” “ Jim said.

“Who said that?”

“Travis McGee.”

She couldn’t help the grin. “And a better detective than you or I’ll ever be, Chopin.”

“One of your greater twentieth-century philosophers,” he agreed. “You know what they say about hindsight.”

He was trying to comfort her in that ham-handed way men do, and she was a little touched. “It’s okay, really. But Bobby, at the very least, needs to say good-bye. From what Jeffrey says, it doesn’t sound like he’s got a lot of time left to get it done.”

“Not your problem,” he said tentatively.

She fixed him with a steady look. “Like hell it isn’t. What kind of friend am I if I see him in trouble and I don’t try to help?”

“Depends on if he wants you to, I would think.”

“And you would think wrong.”

“Okay,” he said, “obviously not an argument I’m destined to win. Besides, I think you’re probably right. There’ll be an unsaid good-bye hanging out there until the end of his life if he doesn’t.”

“If it was your father?” Kate said.

“I’d go home, make my obeisance. I don’t know that my father would notice, but I’d be doing it more for me than for him anyway.”

And Kate had thought her relationship with her grandmother was complicated. Men and their fathers raised an appreciation of the word dysfunctional to a whole new level.

For a long time she’d felt suffocated by Emaa’s expectations. The bloodlines that tied her to the Park were tenacious to the point of strangulation. You can’t choose your relatives, as the old saw went, but she wondered now, why not? Why not walk away, as Bobby had, and build your own from scratch in a place where no one knew you and you had no history? Why not start a family the same way, from the ground up, gathering together people you liked and respected and learned to cherish? What was so awful goddamned special about blood, anyway?

“Kate,” Jim said, waving a hand in front of her face.

“Huh?” She recollected herself. “Oh. Sorry. What?”

“Want to take a look at the site?”

He was referring to the acre of ground next to the Niniltna Native Association building that the state had acquired at an almost but not quite extortionate price, upon which the ground was even then being prepared for Jim’s new post.

“Sure.” She’d stayed as far away from the whole trooper post thing as she could get all winter long, but Jim was going to be in a good position to throw work her way. The homestead was hers outright, along with the buildings and tools and vehicles. She owed no one any money, and she’d always been able to feed and clothe herself off the money she made from odd jobs in the Park, from fishing to mining to guiding. But she had Johnny to think of now, and the memory of Jane’s words. J
won’t pay you a dime in child support.
Personal angle aside, she had good cause to stay on Trooper Chopin’s good side.

The trouble was, she had a sinking feeling she wasn’t going to be able to leave out the personal angle anytime soon. Kate Shugak’s life’s work was spent searching for truth, and it was therefore folly for her to ignore a home truth staring her in the face. Something was going on between her and the big trooper. She didn’t know what, exactly, and she didn’t know if it was bad or good, but it was past time she admitted it was there.

She followed the white Chevy Crew Cab up the hill and parked behind it. They walked across the road and looked at the site, which to his faint surprise showed signs of industry in the form of a completed cinder block foundation. “All you need is some lumber and the framers,” Kate said, “and you’ll have yourself a post.” She looked at him. “Know where you’re going to live yet?”

“Figured I’d build.”

“Got your eye on some land?”

“I talked to Billy, and Ruthe. She says she might carve off a slice along the river edge of John Letourneau’s place for me. So long as it reverts back to the Kanuyaq Land Trust upon my death.”

Kate grinned. “I love Ruthe Bauman. You always know where you stand with Ruthe.”

“Yeah, dead last,” he said, laughing a little. “Way behind the land, that’s for damn sure.”

“You going to do it?”

He shrugged. “It’s a prime piece of land, great view, all cleared and ready. It’d amount to taking out a lifetime lease, with no buildup of equity. But hell, I’ll have all I need on retirement. Yeah, I’ll probably take her up on it.” His eyes glinted. “Build me a comfy little house where I can entertain.”

“Or not,” she said.

“Not an option,” he said, and smiled.

“What?” she said.

The smile widened. She’d never trusted that grin; it always made her think of the first pass of gray fins in deep blue water.

“What?” she said again.

“This dance we do,” he said. “See Kate. See Kate run. See Jim chase Kate. We going to get tired of this anytime soon?”

It was kind of silly, now she came to think of it. “Habit, I guess,” she said.

“My problem is I’m competing with a ghost,” Jim said.

She stiffened. “I beg your pardon?”

“It’s true,” he said, almost in despair, or as close to it as proper macho feeling would permit. “Tell me something. Isn’t there one thing Jack did that drove you insane? Did he flush spit between his teeth instead of floss? Did he fart in public? Did he sing outside the shower? Anything?”

She thought about it, really hard, for a few moments. Finally, she said, “He couldn’t drive a stick shift.”

“What?”

“He couldn’t drive a stick shift to save his life,” she said. “First gear, we’d jerk down the street like the car had Parkinson’s.”

Jim started to smile.

“Second gear, the jolt would throw me against the seat belt so hard I’d bruise my breastbone. Getting into third was a little easier, although he always went there before he had enough revs and we’d slow way down and everybody in back of us would honk. And he never, not once did he ever find reverse on the first try.”

Jim was grinning now.

It was odd, but she had the feeling that Jack was grinning right along with him. Kate was not usually a creature of impulse, but then she’d hate to be called predictable, either. She stepped forward and was pleased to see that the shark’s grin had faded. “What?” he said, not without apprehension.

She stood on tiptoe and slid a hand around his neck, enjoying the surprise in his eyes. With her other hand she pulled off his cap and tossed it behind her. “Shut up and kiss me,” she said.

He did, to such purpose that neither of them heard the vehicle pull to a stop behind them.

“Excuse me,” Billy Mike said apologetically, “but really, guys. You might want to take it indoors.”

They looked over his shoulder and found the entire staff of the Niniltna Native Association crowded into Billy’s Ford Explorer, faces peering inquisitively out the windows. Auntie Joy even waved.

Monday, May 12

The RV’s okay, I guess. It’s got a shower, but since the pump burned down with the cabin we have to haul water up from the creek. I never want a shower that bad, but Kate’s awful picky that way. Man.

The RV isn’t level, either. I’m sleeping in the bunk over the steering wheel and this morning I woke up mashed against the far wall. All you have to do is inhale and the whole thing shakes.

But it’s got a roof. Plus it’s free.

I don’t know if Kate has enough money to build a new cabin. I know Dad had an insurance policy and I was the beneficiary, but Kate would never let a dime of that go for anything here. I bet we could sell the town house in Anchorage and use that money for anything we wanted here, but she won’t touch that, either. And I’m not even going to college. Man. Women.

As long as I live I will never forget Kate facing down Mom across that table. Kate is—she’s—I don’t know how to describe her. I remember Dad said once, “Trust me, kid, it’s always better to have Kate Shugak on your side than on somebody else’s.” Boy, was he right. She always knows the right thing to do, and then she does it. How many people are like that? She even scares me sometimes, she’s so fearless. And smart. And beautiful.

Jim Chopin thinks so, too. I can’t tell if she likes him, too, or not. I hope not. He’s not good enough for her. Nobody is.

There are a bunch of snowshoe hares living on the other side of the creek behind the big stand of cottonwoods.
Lepus americanus,
according to the ADF&G Wildlife Notebook. They can grow up to twenty inches long and get as big as four pounds. I was up early this morning (Kate was tossing and turning and the whole RV was shaking so I couldn’t sleep) and I went outside to write in my journal and I could see them from where I was sitting on the rock. There’s an open space that is kind of sandy and they were running around and into each other and chasing each other and I think their tails. This afternoon after school I went to Dinah’s and looked them up on the Internet and the notebook says they’re most active at dusk and dawn. I’ll say. If Mutt had been there she wouldn’t have to eat again for weeks. The Wildlife Notebook says that the hare is a primary food source of the lynx. Man, I’d love to see a lynx. It also says that the hare competes with the moose for forage. I’d love to see a snowshoe hare go up against a moose for a willow twig, too.

I told Kate about how crazy they were acting and I asked her if they maybe had hydrophobia or something. She laughed and said no. I think she’s spent a lot of time on that rock herself, watching the bunny rabbits go berserk.

Only two more weeks of school. Yay. I asked Van if she could remember anything more about Len Dreyer but she clammed up on me. I wonder if Kate missed something up at his cabin. We’ve been finding stuff around here that didn’t burn all the way up, even some books that were in the loft and only smell like smoke, you can still read them and everything.

Somebody ought to go look.

₁₅

It was a big RV, a Winnebago, with a bunk over the cab and a double bed in back. There was a toilet, sink, and shower in the bathroom, a refrigerator beneath the counter, a propane stove, a small sink with running water, and a fixed table between two padded booths that would let down into a third bed if they needed it.

That was the good news. The bad news was that the window next to the table looked out on the charred ruin that had been her cabin.

It was Tuesday morning and Johnny had just headed out to school on Kate’s four-wheeler, after a spirited attempt to talk her into letting him take the pickup. “You’re fourteen,” she’d told him. “I’m just guessing on this, but I think the state would like you to wait a couple of years before you start riding around alone in my truck.”

“Roger Corley drives his father’s truck to school,” Johnny said pugnaciously.

In a perverse way she was enjoying the argument. Now that he had seen her fight dirty for him, now that he knew she was going to stick by him, he was testing her the way any ordinary teenager pushed the envelope with the most convenient adult. “One, you aren’t Roger Corley. Two, I’m not Ken Corley. Three, the Corleys live half a mile from the school, not twenty-five miles. Four, you’re fourteen. You haven’t even got your permit yet.”

“But-”

“No,” she said, and smiled. She’d watched friends who were parents deal with adolescents, and it appeared to her that in these kinds of situations a cheerful, uncomplicated, and definitive “no” had the most chance of success.

It worked, this time anyway. He sulked all the way out to the four-wheeler and yanked on the helmet she insisted he wear. She noticed he took a spare. Probably for Vanessa Cox. She wondered how the girl was getting along with the Hagbergs. Well, she looked clean, even if her clothes were Early American Depression, and well fed, even if Johnny did say that Vanessa ate a lot of PB&J. Telma might be dotty but she was still capable of adequate childcare. Still, Kate made a mental note to invite Vanessa over on a Saturday when she would be making her justly famous moose stew.

Except, of course, that she had no pots and pans left, no spices, and no canned goods with which to cook a meal. The RV had camping gear, suitable for freeze-dried food bought in foil envelopes from REI, but not much else. She looked down at the list she was making. Pots and pans. Dishes. She wondered if anyone even made the heavy ceramic fisherman’s mugs anymore. Flatware. Utensils.

Music. Her tape player was a lump of melted plastic, and her tapes were literally toast. She’d rescued the rifle, the guitar, and
the
photo album, but her books, oh, her books. Gone, almost all of them, gone. She’d stopped briefly into Twice Told Tales Saturday afternoon and grabbed up a bag full of books, but they wouldn’t last her long. A lot of the science fiction, like F.M. Busby’s Bran and Rissa series and Zenna Henderson’s People stories, was long out of print. Not to mention
Little Fuzzy, Rite of Passage,
and anything written by Georgette Heyer. Rachel thought that the Heinlein juveniles were still available and had promised to start looking in Anchorage and on the Internet for those and other tides, but some of Kate’s books had been with her since she’d discovered recreational reading in college, and she didn’t know if they could be replaced.

Still. Thanks to the kindness of their friends, they weren’t homeless, they weren’t hungry, and they weren’t by any means destitute. They had clothes, courtesy of Dinah’s computer and the United States Postal Service. Her tools and vehicles were unharmed. The good weather was holding, fair and dry. She supposed she should get a shovel out of the garage and start digging out the rubble and pegging out a floor plan for a new foundation. She’d never built a house before, and she was a lot better with engines than she was with cabinetry, but there was no way she could afford to hire a contractor out of Ahtna or Anchorage, and since Len Dreyer’s death there was no one else in the Park. She supposed she could rent Mac Devlin’s D-6 and just push the remains on out to her dump in the woods, but the trail to the dump was just wide enough for a four-wheeler in summer and a snow machine in winter and a blade would take out a lot of the trees on either side. She hated the thought of widening the path and taking out trees for no good reason.