A fine and bitter snow (10 page)

Dinah had the door open before he got to the top step, one finger to her lips. He kicked snow from his boots and stepped inside, to see Bobby seated in front of a transmitter, in the middle of a broadcast.

Park Air was not what you could call a scheduled radio show. Nor was it a show licensed or, for that matter, even sanctioned by the Federal Communications Commission. It had a tendency to wander up and down the bandwidth, forcing its listeners to search for it up and down the FM dial. Which would have been easier had Park Air had a fixed schedule and a regular broadcast. It wasn't like Bobby sat down every night at six o'clock to flip switches and send Creedence Clearwater Revival out into the ozone.

And that was another thing: His play list was, well, to put it kindly, somewhat antiquated. Bobby had been born in the fifties and his musical taste had matured in the sixties, and when the seventies came along and brought the Eagles with them, he slammed the door to the tape player in all their faces. Nowadays, when during a broadcast the Park rats heard some John Hiatt, or a little Jimmy Buffett, or sang along to Mary Chapin Carpenter, they knew they had Bobby's wife, Dinah, to thank. Dinah, born in the seventies, now and then liked a little calypso poet in her airtime, and she was not averse to slipping the occasional rogue CD into the pile at Bobby's elbow. Nor was she completely averse to the right bribe.

During the school year, Bobby broadcast advertisements for senior class car washes and junior high bake sales and the school lunch menu for the day, or maybe the week. During an election year, candidates for local and regional offices made the pilgrimage to Bobby's house for an on-air discussion of what the candidate promised to do if he or she was elected, which, since Bobby never believed a word they said and did not hesitate to say so, could get pretty lively. During fishing season, businesses from Cordova, Ahtna, and Valdez advertised nets and impellers and boat hooks.

When someone had a boat, a truck, a band saw, a refrigerator, or a swing set for sale, or needed to buy a crib, a snow machine, a dogsled, or a sled dog, they came to Bobby, paying him with what they had, which was usually fish or game. The result was that Bobby hadn't had to do any of his own hunting since the first year Park Air had gone on the air, and he fished only for the fun of it.

And then there was the Park Post. Bobby was reading from a fistful of scraps of paper, either hand-delivered or mailed to Bobby's post office box in Niniltna. "Bonnie over in Loon Lake, Bonnie over in Loon Lake, Jake in Anchorage says he'll be out this weekend. Hmm. I don't think I'm reading the rest of what he says here, Bonnie, 'cause you might blush. Not to worry, it can be redeemed for a price, small unmarked bills in a plain brown envelope. And the bidding is open!" Bobby crumbled the scrap he was reading from, tossed it over his shoulder, and read the next. "Old Sam Dementieff in Niniltna, Old Sam in Niniltna, Mary Balashoff says for you to get your butt into town for the gun show. 'Gun show,' that's a good one, Mary. Old Sam'll appreciate that." Next scrap. "Mac Devlin in Nabesna, Mac Devlin in Nabesna, your sister Ellen in Omaha just had her first grandchild, a boy, seven pounds, nine ounces, mother Lisa and boy, named Mackenzie for his great-uncle, both doing fine. Congratulations, Mac, and may I proffer a piece of advice? As a much-married and much-fathered man myself, I suggest that you make plans to visit Omaha in about seven years, when little Mackenzie will have acquired at least the veneer of civilization."

A box of Kleenex hit the back of his head and bounced off. Unperturbed, he said, "Also, you won't have to change any diapers."

This time, it was a disposable diaper—clean, fortunately. It bounced down to join the Kleenex.

"Excuse me, folks, I'm getting a little editorial comment from management. Stand by one." He scooped up the diaper, turned in the same movement, and let it sail right back at Dinah. It fell short, but it was a good effort. He went back to the mike. "Christie in Niniltna, Christie in Niniltna, your lawyer wants to talk to you. He says you know the number. Well, that can't be good. My condolences, Christie."

The Park Post was the Park equivalent of jungle drums, putting the father in touch with the fisherman, the fisherman in touch with his banker, the banker in touch with the deadbeat, the deadbeat in touch with the Brown Jug Liquor Store. During cold snaps, when the mercury hit minus double digits and the wind howled down out of the Quilaks, forcing everyone to huddle inside around the woodstove, they turned on the radio to hear Bobby Clark tell them that George was holding their Costco mail order at the hangar until it warmed up enough to hitch the trailer to the snow machine, or that their husband had been weathered in on a caribou hunt ("a likely story," Bobby's invariable comment), or that their daughter had just become engaged, married, or pregnant.

"And last but not least," Bobby said, tossing another crumpled scrap, "Billy and Annie Mike are throwing a pot-latch at the school gym this Thursday afternoon in honor of their new son, Cale. Everybody come on by and meet him and have something to eat, and there might even be a dance or two. Okay, time for some music, and none of that wishy-washy, weak-kneed, warbly boy band stuff we got going around today, no sir." Bobby flipped open a case and put a CD in the player. "Here's the Temptations'
Seventeen Greatest Hits
coming at you, except I'm going to skip to the second cut. Why? Because it's my favorite, and because I can! Bye!" He flipped off the mike and punched the play button, and the strains of "My Girl" came out of speakers almost as tall as Jim was, four of them, mounted one to each wall of the room.

"It's enough to make you believe in stereo," Jim said to Dinah.

Bobby wheeled around. "Jim Chopin! As your chopper didn't fill up my show with a bunch of goddamn background noise, I have to assume you were reduced to driving in."

"Yeah, I borrowed Billy's truck."

Bobby's eyes widened. "Holy shit! He let you borrow his new Explorer?" He zipped to the window in his wheelchair, which, given the way he operated it most of the time, seemed like it was jet-propelled. Jim stepped nimbly out of the way of the wheels.

It was easy to remember that Bobby was black—all you had to do was look at him—and, as such, part of a minority measured in the single digits in the Park. It was, however, sometimes hard to remember that he had lost both his legs from the knee on down in a Southeast Asian jungle before he was twenty. His personal history was hazy in between his time in a veteran's rehab clinic and the time he appeared on scene in the Park somewhere around 1978, but whatever he'd been doing in the interim had to have been lucrative, because he'd had enough cash in hand to stake a claim on Squaw Candy Creek, build his A-frame, stock it with enough electronic equipment to keep NASA in business, and buy a vehicle each for air, land, sea, and snow, specially modified, in Bobby's exact phrase, "to get a no-legged gimp anywhere he wants to go in as short a time as possible." He was now the NOAA observer for the Park, calling in weather observations twice a day. Other than that, he seemed to subsist on barter and air, a neat trick, since two years ago Dinah had moved in with him, and a year after that, she presented him with Katya. Dinah, a budding videographer, wasn't pulling in a lot of money herself.

Jim had long ago decided that what Bobby had or had not done before he settled in the Park was none of his business. Bobby drank a lot of Kentucky sipping whiskey, he pirated a little radio wave, and, other than throwing an annual blowout for other Park survivors of the Tet Offensive, lived a quiet life.

And, Jim had enough of the outlaw in himself to recognize another outlaw when he saw one. "Hey, Bobby." He doffed cap and jacket and accepted a mug of steaming coffee from Dinah.

"Goddamn, Chopin!" Bobby said, executing a perfect turn on one wheel with no perceptible traveling. Five point nine, all judges. "How the hell did you talk Billy out of his new wheels?"

Jim moved over to one of the couches surrounding the big rock fireplace set between the ceiling-high windows and sank into very deep cushions. "Well, it's like this."

Bobby and Dinah listened with absorption, and when he was done, they exchanged one of those glances married people give each other, the kind that exchanges a wealth of information without a word being said, and at the same time casts the uncoupled people in the room into outer darkness. "What?" he said.

"Nothing," Dinah said, giving Bobby the look, it being another one of the shorthand methods of married communication.

"No," Bobby said hastily. "Nothing. No wonder Billy gave you his wheels. Anything that brings jobs into the Park makes him happy."

"Even if other people might not be," Dinah said sotto voce, as if she couldn't help herself.

Selective deafness was one of the more useful acquired talents in law enforcement, and Jim practiced it now. "Do you think it'll work?"

Bobby stared at him through narrowed eyes. "Shit. Why ask us—you've already made up your mind."

It wasn't a question, and Jim let a grin be his answer. It was a wide grin, one that could and often did, variously, mesmerize, intimidate, terrify, annihilate, or seduce. Dinah had once heard it described as "the last thing you see before the shark bites" and again as "You know that snake in the movie
The Jungle Book''
and most recently as "When he's going out the door for the last time, it's like that Judy Garland song, 'The Man That Got Away.' "

As a female down to her fingertips, Dinah had always been relieved that she had seen Bobby first. Especially since she'd never been one for three-way relationships, and it had been clear from the first time she'd met him that any woman sleeping with Trooper Jim Chopin would be sharing that bed with a third person. It was only recently that she had realized that the third person had never changed, and only in the last year that she had learned to see Jim Chopin as a man instead of a caricature Don Juan. "Hungry?" she said to him. "I was just about to fix us some lunch."

He smiled at her, and she had to repress the instinctive urge to take a step back. Or maybe forward. "Sounds good to me."

They sat down to moose salad sandwiches and ate to the accompaniment of Katya banging her spoon against the tray of her high chair, scattering pureed moose salad all over Bobby's black T-shirt. "Goddamn!" he roared, dabbing ineffectually at his chest. "That's the second shirt today. I thought we was only supposed to be going through diapers by the dozen around here."

"Goddamn!" Katya said, and banged her spoon again.

"Goddamn!" Bobby said, a huge grin on his face. "Did you hear that?"

"Yes," Dinah said.

Bobby saw Dinah's expression and whispered to Katya, "Bad word, honey. Mommy pissed off. We'll talk later."

Katya laughed, a gurgled baby chuckle, and held out her arms. Her father swooped around the table and scooped her out of her chair, tossing her up in the air. Conversation deteriorated into Park gossip. Had they but known it a rehash of a similar conversation held not twelve miles down the road the night before, only Bobby had a lot more appreciation to express for Bernie's new barmaid. Dinah gave him a halfhearted swipe and he tucked Katya beneath one arm and scooped Dinah up in the other for a humming, prolonged kiss, which Jim observed with professional approval.

Dinah emerged from the embrace blushing, breathless, and laughing, and Bobby, satisfied, said, "She's a beauty, but cold."

It took Jim a moment to realize that Bobby was talking about the new barmaid. "Oh yeah? What, she said no to you?"

"Cheese it," Bobby hissed, jerking his head at Dinah.

"Sorry."

"I'll say. I don't know, I just don't warm up to her is all. She takes advantage. Dan walked into the Roadhouse the second day after she got there, and as soon as she got his job description, she made a beeline straight for him. Guy didn't have a chance."

"Poor guy," Jim said.

Bobby looked at him and raised an eyebrow.

"Up yours, Clark."

Bobby grinned. "Who else you talking to?"

Jim ticked down a mental list. "You, George, Billy, Auntie Vi. I think I'll head out to Bernie's, see what he says."

"Give my love to the new girl in town," Bobby said, and caught a wet sponge upside the head. "That does it, woman. Now it's war!"

5

An hour after opening time, the Roadhouse was still quiet, and Bernie had time to sit and listen. "Well," he said when Jim came to the end, "it'll sure as hell make my life easier."

"What do you think the general reaction will be?"

Bernie napped a hand. "Nothing to worry about. Hell, the bootleggers'll run for cover, the dopers will keep their heads low, and ordinary citizens might even think twice about whatever trouble they were planning on getting into. I don't see much but good coming out of it, Jim. And it won't raise my taxes, which always makes me happy."