Shaman Pass (2 page)

CHAPTER TWO

UNCLE FROSTY HAD ARRIVED by air on another windy, milk-skied morning three days earlier, while Nathan Active was being teased in timeless Eskimo fashion about his new snowmachine.

“So you decided on the Yamaha.” Jim Silver strolled around the machine in question and stopped at the handlebars. His parka was open as usual, his paunch bulging out between the flaps. Unlike Active, Silver never seemed to feel the cold. He rolled back the gauntlets covering the Yamaha’s handlebars and whistled in mock admiration. “Heated grips, ah?
Yoi!
You’ll be so warm on the trail.”

It was Silver’s lapse into Village English, the “
yoi!
” in particular, that warned Active he was in trouble. “
Yoi!
” meant “So lucky!” or “So nice!” but carried an undertone of the sly Inupiat ridicule of which Silver, though white, had become a master during his long years in Chukchi.

Active wriggled his toes in the cold and tried to work out a defense. “The heated grips were included. I didn’t order them,” he said at last.

“Uh-huh.” Silver took another turn around the Yamaha, then stepped back a pace, his face split by a huge, malicious grin. “But why the ladies’ model?”

Active said a silent “Fuck!” and an audible “Yeah, right.” He huddled a little deeper into his parka against the wind scraping across the Chukchi airport, and against whatever it was that Silver was about to spring on him.

Silver touched the Yamaha’s cowling with a gloved hand. “I’m not saying it’s not a lovely shade of purple, because it is.”

Active waited in misery, his breath coming in visible puffs. The wind lashed the long guard hairs on the wolf fur of his parka ruff into his mouth. He huffed them out.

“It’s just that around here . . .” Silver paused, as if pondering how to administer the kill shot as humanely as possible. “Well, around here, purple is a ladies’ color and anything purple is known as a ladies’ model. Purple four-wheeler, purple pickup, purple boat, purple airplane, purple snowgo, that’s a ladies’ machine in Chukchi. I thought you’d know that.”

Silver left his orbit around the Yamaha and sat down on it, facing the rear. “Nice soft seat, too.” He leaned back, rested his head on the handlebars, and sighed, then looked at Active. “Usually, the dealers have to mark down the purple ones before they can move ’em. Hector didn’t by any chance give you a special deal on it, did he?”

Active gave Silver the finger—a gloved finger.

Silver smiled and wagged his head. “Thought so. But I take this as a good sign. Even with a discount, a new snowmachine is a major financial commitment for you, Nathan, cheap as you are. You’ve decided to stay in Chukchi after all, I take it?”

“No, I just need something to get around on till my transfer comes through. I’ll sell it when I go.”

Silver smiled again. “Uh-huh.” Then he sat up and swiveled around to stare east along the main runway of Chukchi’s airport. “I think I hear him.”

Active peered east through the haze that came with a springtime west wind, and finally picked up the rumble of old-fashioned propeller engines. Then he spotted the Arctic Air Cargo DC-6. It was just a speck over the tundra east of the gravel spit that contained Chukchi and its straggling dirt streets and mostly unpainted wooden houses. He pointed across the lagoon. “That him?”

Silver nodded. “Yep, Uncle Frosty’s finally here, looks like.”

Three handlers came out of the Arctic Air Cargo office. One climbed on a forklift and hit the starter. The engine turned over a few times, then caught, coughing and grumbling in the cold.

The other two walked over to the purple Yamaha, boots crunching on the snow that covered the tarmac. “Hey, Billy, Horace,” Silver said as the ancient freighter labored toward the runway.

Horace, the older of the two, looked at Active’s snow-machine, then at Active, then away, a slight smile on his lips.

“Horace is too polite to say anything,” Silver whispered to Active. “Your older Eskimos are like that. Very gracious.”

Active knew that, and Silver knew he knew it. He didn’t say anything.

Billy, on the other hand, was young and, Active judged, only half-Eskimo at most.

“That Hector stick you with a ladies’ model, ah? Too bad.” Billy grimaced in mock sympathy. “Somebody sell my uncle one of them once. He get so mad when he find out what purple mean, he take that snowgo out on the ice and shoot it, just leave it there.”

Billy turned to study the approaching DC-6 for a few moments, then swung back to Active. “I feel bad, though,
naluaqmiiyaaq
like you getting stuck with ladies’ model. Maybe I’ll swap you my old Polaris, give your Yamaha to my girlfriend, ah? She really like purple.” He pointed at a battered relic parked outside the chain-link fence surrounding the tarmac.

Half the Polaris’s windscreen was gone, and the seat was so patched with silver duct tape that none of the original Naugahyde was visible. Two red bungee cords held down the engine cowling.

Horace smiled again and Silver chuckled.

As the tires on the DC-6 chirped onto the runway, Active reflected on the injustice of still being known after all this time as the village
naluaqmiiyaaq
—the Inupiaq word for an Eskimo who tried to be like a white man.

Sure, he had been raised in Anchorage. But he had been born in Chukchi and was, in fact, a full-blooded Inupiaq. He had been taken out of the village at the age of eighteen months when his adoptive parents, two white schoolteachers, had burned out on the Bush and decided to give Alaska’s largest city a try.

True, he was back in Chukchi only because his bosses at the Alaska State Troopers had posted him there for his first assignment. And sure, he would be on a plane home to Anchorage the moment the troopers gave him a transfer. But it had been two years now. How long before he stopped being the
naluaqmiiyaaq
?

It was at that moment the right retort came to him like a gift from some ancient god of Eskimo teasing. He looked at Billy. “If your girlfriend likes purple, maybe I’ll give it to her myself,” Active said. “Ah?” He lifted his eyebrows with a grin that said, “Your move.”

This time Silver laughed out loud and even Horace chuckled. Billy got a thoughtful expression on his face, then frowned and walked over to stand beside the forklift. Horace walked over, too, and shouted something to Billy that sounded like, “That
naluaqmiiyaaq
act like a real Eskimo sometimes, ah?” But Active couldn’t be sure, over the cough of the idling forklift.

“What brings you out on a day like this anyhow?” Silver asked Active as the DC-6 taxied in. “I thought Uncle Frosty was going straight to the tribal museum, no fuss, no muss. How did the troopers get involved?”

Active grimaced. “Beats me. All I know is, the state has to sign some kind of receipt and disclaimer of interest, then turn Uncle Frosty over to the museum to make it all legal and keep the Smithsonian happy. And somebody in Juneau apparently decided the troopers were the right agency to do it. We got a letter from the attorney general saying to meet Uncle Frosty and sign the papers, so here I am. In about five minutes, Uncle Frosty will be Malcolm Anirak’s problem.” He pointed at a red Ford pulling up to the chain-link beside Billy’s snowgo. A magnetic sign on the pickup’s door said CHUKCHI TRIBAL COUNCIL.

The DC-6 braked in front of Arctic Air Cargo and the four big propellers shuddered to a halt. The cargo door swung up to disclose a crate with SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION stenciled on the side. The forklift rolled toward the plane, forks rising as it went.

Roger Kennelly, the newsman for KCHK, Chukchi’s public radio station—known as Kay-Chuck—pulled up to the fence on a four-wheeler and rushed onto the tarmac. As the driver got his forks under the crate, Kennelly pulled a camera from his backpack and began shooting pictures, presumably for his side job as stringer for the weekly
Chukchi Bay Times.

“How about you?” Active asked Silver. “Does the city have to sign for Uncle Frosty, too?”

“Nah, I’m just here to make sure the Inupiat Republican Army doesn’t do anything any crazier than usual.” Silver jerked his thumb at a skinny, intense-looking Inupiaq in mirror sunglasses climbing off a snowmachine just outside the fencing. The cold didn’t seem to bother him, either. He wasn’t even wearing a parka, just a snowmachine suit, a headband around his ears, and gloves that looked too thin for the weather. And his snowmachine looked too old for heated grips. The machine, a trail-worn Ski-Doo, was a fraternal twin to Billy’s Polaris. The dogsled hitched on behind was a ramshackle collection of splintered hickory spliced into continuing service with driftwood, wire, scrap lumber, and duct tape.

“Ah, the famous Calvin Maiyumerak,” Active said.

Silver nodded with a wry grin.

Maiyumerak spotted the two lawmen, raised his right fist in a power salute, then went to the dogsled and pulled a picket sign from under a blue tarp held down with bungee cords. FREE UNCLE FROSTY! the sign said in red Magic Marker lettering. Maiyumerak put it on his shoulder and headed for Malcolm Anirak’s pickup.

“Oh, shit, I gotta keep those two apart.” Silver, moving fast for a man of his bulk, galloped out of the gate in the chain-link fence and reached the pickup just as Maiyumerak rapped his sign on the pickup’s roof over Anirak’s window. Active headed over to watch.

“Free Uncle Frosty!” Maiyumerak shouted at the window of the pickup, which was so frosted over that Anirak could barely be seen inside as he pounded the horn and motioned for Silver to do something. Maiyumerak whacked the truck with his sign again. Anirak jumped out.

Silver arrived just in time to step between them. He grabbed Maiyumerak’s sign in one hand, his collar in the other, and backed him up two steps. “Calvin, what did I tell you about this?” the police chief was saying as Active reached the fence.

Anirak slammed the pickup door and examined the roof over the window. “He scratched my paint!” Anirak said.

Kennelly panted up, stuffing the camera into his backpack and pulling out a tape recorder. He slung it over his shoulder on a strap, and held a microphone between Silver and Maiyumerak. Silver swatted the microphone aside. “Christ, Roger, how many times have I told you not to put that thing in my face?”

Kennelly stuck it back into the space between the two, but farther from Silver. “This is a public facility. I have a right to record these activities,” he said. Silver sighed and looked tired. But he didn’t swat the microphone again.

Kennelly was white, very young, very serious, and, Active feared, might be in Chukchi to save the Inupiat from Western civilization. He was devoid of humor, with one remarkable, near-brilliant exception: He had, as far as Active knew, coined the name “Uncle Frosty” for the unidentified Inupiat mummy the Smithsonian was shipping to Chukchi. At any rate, the first time Active had heard it was when Kennelly used it during a call-in show on Kay-Chuck. Kennelly had somehow tapped into the cheerful fatalism with which the Inupiat seemed to arm themselves against the perplexities of life, and the nickname had caught on instantly. From then on, the Smithsonian mummy was Uncle Frosty.

Silver turned his attention back to Maiyumerak. “I explained this to you yesterday, Calvin. You can walk around and shout your slogan and wave your sign. But you can’t hit anything with it. If you do, I’ll have to put you in jail for interfering with these activities.”

“I got my free speech right to express my opinion that Uncle Frosty should be left out on the tundra like them old Inupiat used to do.” Maiyumerak shook his sign. “That’s where them
naluaqmiut
from the government found him anyway.”

“Yes, we’ve all read your letters to the editor and heard you calling me names on Kay-Chuck,” Anirak said. “But our tribal council has the right under the Indian Graves Act to receive Uncle Frosty’s remains and care for them as we see fit.” The executive director of the Chukchi Tribal Council was about forty, Active guessed, pudgy with black-frame glasses. He wore a shirt and tie even today, and only a windbreaker over them. Presumably Anirak was relying on the Ford’s heater for protection from the elements during this brief excursion out of the tribal offices. Active had talked to him a couple times about the handoff of Uncle Frosty, and had heard him being interviewed on the radio about the mummy’s impending arrival. Malcolm Anirak might have been born Inupiaq, Active had concluded, but he was now pure bureaucrat.

“Care for them! Ha!” Maiyumerak raised his sign as if he would now whack Anirak over the head with it, caught a warning look from Silver, and instead thumped the butt of it on the snowy gravel beside the fence. “You’re gonna put Uncle Frosty in a glass case in your museum so them
naluaqmiut
tourists can look at him.”

“That’s what my council directed me to do and that’s what I’m going to do. It’ll be a very tasteful educational display and it’s not just for visitors. Our schoolchildren and other local people will also learn about how we lived before the
nalua
—” Anirak glanced at Kennelly, who was not only white but also a reporter, and shifted gears. “Before we adopted Western ways.”

“It’s still not right!” Maiyumerak shouted. “You should put him on the tundra, let the animals take him. That’s the Inupiat way. Back to the earth, like a great big circle.”

“That’s the old Inupiat way.” Anirak climbed into his truck and spoke through the open door. “Things are different now. We need the money Uncle Frosty will bring in if we are going to keep our tribal school open. Our bingo games alone can’t do the job and picket signs won’t either.” Anirak slammed the door and glared at Maiyumerak through the frost on the window.

Maiyumerak looked for a moment as if he would whack the Ford again, but he lowered the sign and walked to his snow-machine. Kennelly trotted over and interviewed Maiyumerak as he bungeed the sign onto the dogsled.

The forklift driver deposited Uncle Frosty on an Arctic Air Cargo flatbed truck as Horace walked up to Active with a clipboard. “I guess you’re supposed to sign this, ah?”

Active took the clipboard, fished inside his parka for a pen, and signed quickly before the ink could congeal in the cold air. Horace walked out the gate and took the clipboard to Anirak, who rolled down the window of his pickup to sign.