Though Not Dead (19 page)

“You think I haven’t?” she said. “That’s six, eight more weeks I didn’t have with him, and I can never get them back. But you know he’d tear a strip off us both for saying so, so let it go.” She paused, and added, “Try to, anyway.”

Another time he said, “Why? They must have clobbered you because they wanted the journal and they could see you through the open door, standing there, reading it. So why trash the cabin? What else were they looking for?”

She stared at him for a moment. “You are not just another pretty face,” she said.

His smile was smug.

“I would have gotten there.”

His smile got smugger.

When she spoke of Jane, his forehead wrinkled. “Really old ugly woman, short, looked like a spawned-out humpy?”

She had to laugh. “That’s her. She was in fact at least as old as Old Sam, if not older, and I’m pretty sure she knew where even more of the bodies are buried in the Park than Old Sam, Emaa, and the aunties put together. She was in a position to follow the money.” She paused. “I think she might also have been a good-time girl at the Ahtna fancy house, which would surely have put her on the receiving end of all the best stories.”

His jaw dropped. “Fishface was a hooker?”

She gave him a reproving look. “You malign some of the founding mothers of the state of Alaska with your slander, sir.” She grinned. “Including one of my own ancestors.”

Later, he said, “Did you send Mutt after him? The guy you heard running out the back of Jane’s house?”

“No.” That came out with more force than she had meant it to. She saw his look, and moderated her tone. “No, I didn’t. Jane … Jane was dying. I didn’t have time for anything but talking to her and trying to find my goddamn cell phone so I could call 911.”

He opened his mouth, looked at Mutt snoozing on her quilt, and changed whatever he had been about to say to “What did she mean? When she said ‘paper’?”

“I don’t know. She was the lands officer for the Park. I’m guessing a title, a deed, some kind of document that had something to do with Old Sam. She knew him. I’m starting to think she knew him pretty well.”

“Did you find it? The paper?”

“She had a wall full of books, too, most of it Alaskana. We got there before all of them had been tossed on the floor.”

“Just like at Old Sam’s.”

“Yes.”

“Any old journals?”

“Yes.”

“Any written by this judge, this—”

“Judge Albert Arthur Anglebrandt.”

He looked slightly stunned for a moment, and then rallied. “Any written by him?”

“No.” And then she said, “Oh. Oh for dumb.”

“What?”

“I just remembered.” She got up and crossed to where he’d hung her jacket. “I can’t believe I forgot.”

“What?”

From the inside pocket she produced a creased manila envelope. “The lawyer gave me this. Said Old Sam gave it to him when he updated his will a couple of weeks ago. Said to give it to me when I came in.”

“You didn’t open it right away? What, are you nuts?”

“Whatever it was I knew it wouldn’t help me beat the snow home. Figured I’d wait.” The envelope lay in her hands.

“Well?” Johnny gave an impatient wriggle. “Go on, open it.”

She turned the envelope in her hands. “I thought the letter he wrote with his will was the last time I’d hear from him.” She looked up with a rueful smile. “As usual, the old fart surprised me. Turns out this the last thing he’ll ever say to me. I guess the truth is I wanted to wait as long as possible before I read it.”

“You’ve been assaulted twice in three days,” he said, with elaborate sarcasm. “You could have been killed both times. Not to mention Mutt.”

Mutt heard her name and raised her head to give a concurring yip.

“Whatever it is,” Johnny said, “he didn’t want to say it to you until he died.” To make sure she understood, he added, “He didn’t want you to know it until after he was dead. It has to be important, Kate. Open it!”

She acknowledged his point with a faint sigh, and slid her finger beneath the flap of the manila envelope. Inside was a single sheet of paper with three words in handwriting that matched that on the outside of the envelope.

Find my father
.

That was all. Old Sam hadn’t even bothered to sign it.

She stood there staring at it until Johnny said, “What? What! What’d he say?”

She handed him the letter and went to sit down on the couch. “Damned if I know.”

He read it, frowning, and then he read it again. He looked up and said, “Who was his father?”

“His name was Quinto Dementieff.”

“What kind of a name is Quinto?”

“Filipino. His grandmother was from the Philippines. A bunch of them came over to work cheap in the salmon canneries around the turn of the last century, and some of them stuck.”

“What happened to him? To Quinto?”

“I’m trying to remember. He worked in Cordova, if I remember right. Long shoring? On the Blue Canoes? I’d have to ask. One of the aunties will know.”

“What’s the mystery about him?”

She looked at him. “I don’t have a clue. So far as I know Old Sam’s parents were pretty ordinary people. They lived in Cordova. I think Old Sam was born in Cordova.”

“Yeah, okay, so Old Sam’s father is dead, right?”

“Of course.”

“Explain to me how you’re supposed to find somebody who’s dead?”

She looked back at Old Sam’s letter. Still said the same thing.
Find my father.
“I don’t know. Maybe I’m supposed to find his grave?” She remembered another grave hundreds of miles north, and the carved round of wood that had answered questions she’d had about her own family. Was this something similar?

He took the letter from her hand and read it again. It hadn’t changed since the last time he looked at it, so he handed it back. “I don’t get it.”

“Neither do I.”

“Why does he want us to find his father?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why’d he have to be so cryptic?”

Johnny was starting to sound a little annoyed. That was okay because Kate was starting to feel a little annoyed. “I don’t know.”

She got up and found Old Sam’s file box and looked through it again. “No birth certificates here for either one of his parents, but that’s not surprising. There were hardly any doctors in Alaska back then. Oh.”

“What?”

She extracted a piece of paper, thick and yellowing, inscribed with fancy lettering. “It’s their marriage certificate.”

He looked over her should. “April 1919.” He saw her frown. “What now?”

“There was a rumor…” Her voice trailed off as she stared into the distance. Mutt, who had followed her from the couch to the coatrack and back again, rested her chin on Kate’s knee.

He waited until he couldn’t wait any longer. “A rumor? What kind of rumor? About who?”

“That maybe Quinto wasn’t Old Sam’s father.”

Johnny blinked. “Wow. Really?” He thought about it. “Back then that would be kind of a big deal, wouldn’t it?”

She shook her head. “You have no idea, and you don’t even know why. Quinto was half Filipino, back when non-Natives were flooding into the Territory. A lot of them were adventurers, boomers, mostly men with an eye for the main chance, looking to grab up anything anybody didn’t move out of reach first.”

“So—who was Old Sam’s mom?”

“Elizaveta Kookesh.” Kate leaned back against the couch and closed her eyes briefly. “That was probably what pissed off people most. She was a chief’s daughter.” She thought back to the conversation with Ben in the
Ahtna Adit
office, and thought again how much she’d like to read his father’s journals.

“Wow.” Johnny, as white as you get without bleach but from extensive and intensive propinquity fully alive to the hierarchy of Alaska Native life, was properly impressed. “So it’d be twice as bad for her to marry outside the tribe.”

“It would.”

“How bad?”

“Not tar and feathers bad,” she said. She paused. “I don’t think. But they could have made things pretty uncomfortable for her.” She snapped her fingers and pointed at him. “That’s why Old Sam was born in Cordova. He’s even got a birth certificate.” She dove back into the file box and emerged with it in hand. “See?”

He looked at it. “I see.” He pointed. “See what I mean?”

“He was born in September,” she said.

“And they were married in April.”

“Doesn’t prove anything,” she said. “Lots of couples jump the gun, even back then.”

“Still, pretty obvious she had to get married,” he said. “Mr. Tyler’s making us read a bunch of old books for American history. Being a bastard was a big deal back then.”

“Say ‘illegitimate’ instead,” Kate said.

“Why?”

“ ‘Bastard’ is harsh. It’s turned into a swear word.”

“I’ve heard you call people bastards.”

“I prefer son of a bitch.”

“Whatever. The point is Elizaveta might not have cared if the guy she married was the father of her baby or not.”

She looked at Old Sam’s birth certificate. The father’s name stood out in bold black ink. Quinto Sergei Dementieff. “I wonder if he knew.”

“Old Sam or Quinto?”

“Quinto. Old Sam must have known, at least that he’d been conceived out of wedlock. He had the certificates, and he could read as well as we can.”

“Did Old Sam have any brothers or sisters?”

Kate shook her head.

“So his father got a son out of the deal. He might not have cared.” Johnny shrugged. “I mean, Old Sam didn’t act like he had a chip on his shoulder, like he’d been raised by a stepfather who hated his guts. He ever mention his father to you?”

“A few times.”

“Who’s the guy in the rumor?”

“What? Oh.” Kate shook her head. “I only ever heard a nickname. I walked into Auntie Vi’s one day and all the aunties were sitting around the table. They didn’t hear me at the door and they were talking about Old Sam. I heard them mention Chief Lev’s daughter and some guy. They used a nickname. Kick the Bucket?” She shook her head. “Doesn’t sound right, but it was something like that.”

“You could ask them.”

She snorted. “Yeah, I could. If they’d tell me is another story.”

“I thought they told you everything.”

“Oh, they tell me everything, all right,” Kate said. “They tell me how to run the Association, they tell me to sort out this screwed-up adolescent and that messed-up family, they tell me to move into Niniltna—”

“What?”

“—they tell me I should get a Native boyfriend—”

“What!”

“—but they’re mum on the family history. I think there’s a lot that wouldn’t stand up to close scrutiny.” She paused, thinking again of the Dawson Darling. “Well, that they think wouldn’t. Old scandals aren’t old to the elders; to them they happened just the day before.” She thought about the expression on Auntie Joy’s face the last time Kate had been in Niniltna. “Or maybe even that morning.” She wasn’t going to tell Johnny about Old Sam and Auntie Joy, not yet. For one thing, she didn’t know the story, not for sure. For another thing, it wasn’t her story, and one of its characters was still living.

“What are you going to do next?”

She yawned suddenly. “Go to bed.”

He caught her yawn and returned it with interest. “What time is it?”

“Time to go to bed.” She put the certificates back in the file box, Mutt padding behind her. Kate would not be sleeping alone tonight, no matter where Jim was.

“Hey,” Johnny said, “have you heard from Jim?”

“Yeah. I talked to him on the phone from Ahtna, I guess night before last?”

“He okay?”

“As okay as you can be when you’ve just lost your father.” And it sounds like you have the mother from hell.

“You just lost yours,” he said. “How are you?”

She met his eyes, and they were both horrified when tears welled up in hers. She blinked furiously and had to try twice before she could say anything in a recognizable voice. “I miss him. I always will.”

“Me, too,” he said.

She gave a lopsided smile. “I know.” She started up the stairs. “I’m wrecked. Time for bed.”

“Yeah,” he said, a huge yawn breaking across his face. “Hey, Kate?”

She looked over her shoulder at him. “What?”

“You know you’re going to have to give me a note excusing my absence from school today.”

She grinned. “I believe I can do that.”

She looked tired, but her shiners had faded from neon to pastel, and her grin was still recognizable as a bona fide Kate Shugak grin, wide and joyous and evil, ready, willing, and able to take a bite out of the absurdities of life.

A lot like Old Sam’s grin, in fact.

It was an oddly comforting realization to take to bed with him.

After all, Old Sam had been well nigh indestructible for most of his time on earth.

Fourteen

It snowed another foot overnight. They put Johnny’s pickup in the garage and ran their snowgos into town the next morning, waving when they split at the Y, Johnny to go to school, Kate to run down to Demetri Totemoff’s place. Demetri had a come-along on his pickup, and if Kate was lucky he would already have changed from his summer tires to his Wile E. Coyote tires.

His Wile E. Coyote tires, so named by Kate the first time she’d seen them, raised the body of Demetri’s pickup a good four feet off the ground. He left them low on air, and combined with a V-8 300-horsepower engine they could accomplish most of the heavy lifting that was necessary during a Park winter.

Like traveling sixty miles over three feet of new snow without getting stuck, and pulling her pickup right side up without putting on the parking break.

His wife, Auntie Edna’s eldest daughter, also Edna, answered the door. When she saw who it was the expression on her face only enhanced her resemblance to her mother. Kate wondered if Demetri ever looked at Auntie Edna and saw what was coming his way in twenty years. Kate liked him, so she hoped not.

She gave Edna a pleasant smile. “Hi, Edna. Is Demetri home?”

Edna hesitated just long enough to be rude.

Mutt, standing next to Kate, lifted her lip.

Edna’s expression didn’t change but she fell back a step and gestured Kate inside out of the cold. “I’ll get him.”

She did not, Kate noticed, offer anyone on two legs or four feet food or beverage, but Demetri appeared a moment later in his stocking feet, a burly, big-chested man of medium height. He was in his mid-fifties, with dark Aleut eyes and dark Aleut hair and high flat Aleut cheekbones clad in Aleut skin, which like Kate’s still held a golden cast from the previous summer’s work. In his case this was guiding Outside hunters and fishers to wall mounts. His luxury lodge in the Quilaks was a single-destination resort for big spenders from as far away as Germany and Japan. They flew into Anchorage in their private jets and were whisked directly from there to the lodge via floatplane. In years past Kate had done some work for him, acting as an assistant guide, mostly as insurance so none of his clients would shoot themselves in the foot or set a Vibrax spinner in a friend’s eye.