A fine and bitter snow (17 page)

Her shift ended and Chick's began. He had a nice mellow baritone and sang a pretty good folk song. Kate listened at the door to a few lines of "The Unfortunate Miss Bailey" before Mandy materialized in front of her with cups of coffee. They sat together in the lounge. "You headed back home?" Mandy said. She was a rangy woman with short, prematurely graying hair and skin weathered by long days in the Arctic sun.

Kate nodded. "I've got the potlatch to get ready for."

"Yeah. We'll be back for that."

Kate looked at Ruthe lying in the bed, unmoving. "Is the whole Park coming to Ahtna in shifts?"

"Kind of looks like it. Auntie Joy was with her when we got here, but then, she lives right down the road." In Alaskan terms, "right down the road" meaning within seventy miles. "I think people are just showing up. Dan O'Brian said he'd bring a copy of d-2 and read it to her."

"That'll bring her back," Kate said, and both women smiled.

"What's this I hear about Dan being forced to retire?"

Kate shook her head. "Not going to happen. I sicked Auntie Vi on it."

"Well, if anyone can get the job done."

"Yeah. Did I hear correctly—that he was standing over the bodies when Dandy walked in?" Mandy continued.

"Yeah. He'd stopped by to ask them for help with his job."

"Wow." Mandy expelled a breath. "He must have almost walked in on whoever did it."

"I wish he had." Mandy was avoiding Kate's eyes. Now Kate remembered how Dandy Mike had stared at her, open-mouthed, as she had rushed by on her way to her snow machine. "What?"

Mandy shrugged uncomfortably. "Dandy's been saying some stuff."

Kate's shoulders tensed. "About me and Jim Chopin?" she said, keeping her voice even.

"Yeah. At Dina and Ruthe's cabin. He said you were fighting."

Kate stared. "What?"

"He said you were fighting. Well, he said you were using Jim for target practice. And I saw Jim at the post office in Niniltna yesterday; he's got a shiner. A beauty."

"He does?"

Mandy smiled. "Yes. He does."

Kate felt herself relaxing. "Oh. Ah. Well."

"Why'd you hit him?"

"Because he deserved it," Kate said swiftly, if inaccurately.

"What, did he try to make a move?"

Kate didn't know what to say without giving herself away. Mandy had been too close a friend for too long. Fortunately for Kate, Mandy decided to answer herself. "Like he never did that before."

"Right," Kate said. "Did you mush into Ahtna?"

Mandy shook her head. "No." She was still curious. She'd never heard of Jim Chopin pressing unwanted advances on anyone. He'd never had to—most women crumbled at the first long look, the first smile that said, I know you. Let me show you how well. And Mandy did know Kate Shugak better than most. Enough to know when the NO
trespassing
sign was out. "No place to kennel the dogs."

"Who's taking care of them while you're gone?"

"Didn't he tell you?"

"No," Kate said, "no, he didn't tell me anything." She caught Mandy's look and said, "I'm sorry. "Who?"

"Johnny. Johnny's stopping by on his way to and from school to take care of the dogs."

"No kidding. He know what he's doing?"

Mandy reflected. "More or less."

"You paying him?"

"More or less. He wants to learn to mush."

"He wants to learn everything," Kate said.

They smiled at each other. The little lost boy, did he but know it, was lost no more.

On Saturday, before the potlatch, Kate went back up to the Step. Dan was sitting behind his desk. "Hey, Kate."

She surveyed him critically as she took a seat. "You don't look as peaked as you did the last time I saw you. The bruise is fading."

"Yeah." He rubbed his head. "That Dandy throws a mean door."

Kate laughed and tossed him a bag. "Here, couple pieces of Auntie Vi's fry bread. They're cold, but you can nuke 'em."

"Marry me," Dan said, and took her advice and popped them in the microwave. "Almost as good as right out of the pan," he managed to say around a mouthful. "If you won't marry me, I'm trying for Auntie Vi."

"Have you heard anything?"

"About the job? I'm still suspended."

"I notice you're also still here."

"Yeah," he said, and grinned. It did her heart good to see it. "I got a couple of calls—none from my boss—saying I should stick it out and make 'em fire me. The thing is, Kate . . ."

"What?"

He brushed crumbs from his shirt. "The Park Service subsists on a budget set every two years by Congress, just like every other government bureaucracy. The funds within that bureaucracy are allocated, allegedly, on a case-per-case basis, according to greatest need. Unless there are specific congressional requirements that set aside particular funding for any given project, the money goes into a general operating budget. And that budget is overseen by the secretary of the interior, who handpicks his or her staff members, one of whom is my boss. The secretary, you will note, is a political appointee, who serves at the whim of the president, a president who can fire his or her ass."

"I got it, Dan. I think I had it before I sat down."

"Yeah, well, I just don't want the Park to suffer because the secretary or one of her minions doesn't happen to like the chief ranger. And hell, it's not like I wouldn't want my own people in charge if I were taking over." He brooded. "Ah hell. I figure whatever happens, I'll deal with it."

"Good attitude. In the meantime, what's going on?"

"What's going on is that all the bears are asleep, the moose are bedded down by the rivers, conserving energy, and the Kanuyaq caribou will start getting thinned down"— he looked at the calendar—"in four days, which will considerably relieve my mind. Other than that, there isn't much going on. Have to start going through applications for summer hires. Shovel some snow off the roof."

"You lonely up here all by yourself?"

He shrugged. "No." His grin was sly this time. "Course, I'm not up here all by myself all the time."

Kate rolled her eyes. "Right. What was I thinking. How's Christie?"

"Perfect." But he didn't look as smug as he ought to have when he said it.

"Trouble in paradise?" she said lightly.

He crumpled the paper bag and tossed it in the trash.

Then the in box needed straightening. "No," he said. "No trouble."

Okay. "See you at the potluck?"

His brow lightened. "I'll be down."

"Good. Because you know the fry bread was just an appetizer."

It got a smile out of him, but Kate worried about him all the way down from the Step.

It beat worrying about herself.

She opened the doors to the gymnasium at precisely 12:00
p.m.,
and people began to stream inside. Dandy Mike had come early and helped her set up the long tables that lined the front of the cafeteria window. Fortunately, he also knew the secret to making the bleachers come out of the wall, because Kate certainly didn't. The coolers were beneath the tables, loaded with six different kinds of pop. The tabletops were soon obscured beneath a layer of meat loaf, macaroni and cheese, blood stew, cinnamon rolls, seventeen different kinds of fruit bread as well as innumerable loaves of homemade white bread, caribou ribs, moose roast, and the last silver of someone's fishing season, rescued from the cache and roasted whole. There were enormous bowls of mashed potatoes and boiled carrots, along with bean salad, macaroni salad, fruit salad, carrot salad, and five different kinds of coleslaw. There were sheet cakes and layer cakes, pumpkin, apple, and cherry pies, brownies, angel bars, and homemade butterscotch candy. They'd done Dina proud.

Kate kept up with the napkins and the plastic flatware while exchanging greetings with the people filling their plates on the other side of the table. Knots of people gathered on the bleachers, and more people streamed in, then more, and the hum of conversation became first a din and then a roar. It wasn't long before the little kids found the
basketball closet and began practicing free throws at the opposite end of the court.

At 1:30, the drummers assembled onstage and the room quieted momentarily. "Hey, everybody," Wilson Mike said, raising drum and stick, and "Hey, Wilson," everybody said back.

"We're singing for Dina today," Wilson said, "and you're dancing," and before he struck the second note and the singers got started on their first song, people were out in the middle of the gym floor, shoes off, feet moving and finger fans counting the beat. Everybody had on winter clothes, so it wasn't long before they started sweating, too. It was noisy, and for the most part not very graceful, and filled with joy. It lifted Kate's heart to see it.

She was behind a table, dispensing gifts. Well, one gift, the same gift over and over, a reprint of the group photo taken at the Kanuyaq Mine those many years ago. She'd gotten the owner of the Ahtna Photo Shop out of bed on her trip in to see Ruthe and had him make up a negative and run two hundred prints, then bullied him further into doing a rush order from Anchorage on some wooden frames. They weren't all the same frame, but the picture was going over very well. "Ayapu," Auntie Vi said. "That the time that man Smith, he flying tourists to the mine from Cordova." She was silent, looking at the photograph. The frame she had picked was dark blue wood, and it set off the black-and-white photograph very well. "Ekaterina, she look so young. Dina, and Ruthe, too. And Ray Chevak, hmm, yes." She cast Kate a sideways glance. "You know Ray Chevak?"

Kate, unruffled, said, "I met him in Bering this summer."

Auntie Vi nodded. "I go dance now."

"Knock 'em dead, Auntie," Kate said, and shooed her off. Billy Mike met Auntie Vi halfway and matched her steps into the circle.

One thing you could say for Park rats, they sure did love to dance. All ages, all sexes, all sizes, they were, to a man and a woman, dancing fools. There was no such thing as a wallflower in Niniltna, of either sex. It helped that most of the time the dancing was Native, en masse and the more the merrier. You could dance with one partner or twenty, but the one thing you never had to do was dance alone.

She turned, bumping into Pete Heiman as she did. "Well, hey, Pete, just the guy I wanted to see. I hoped you'd be here this afternoon."

He laughed. "I'm afraid, very afraid."

"Step into my office," Kate said, and led the way through a side door.

Outside, the snow was falling in small soft flakes. Kate heard a plane take off but couldn't see it. There were some men clustered together at the end of the building, sharing a bottle. Kate repressed the urge to glare at them and looked back at Pete.

Pete lit a cigarette. "What's up, Kate?" Through the smoke, his eyes were watchful.

His eyes were always watchful. Pete Heiman was the duly elected senator for District 41, which included the Park, and, as such, every Park rat's Juneau mouthpiece. He was also an old drinking buddy of Abel's, and Kate had known him all her life. She liked him, but she didn't trust him. Still, he was her mouthpiece, too. "Dan O'Brian's been suspended as chief ranger for the Park. They're trying to pressure him into early retirement."

"Dan the ranger." Pete drew on his cigarette. "Well, well. I hadn't heard."

"You're a little slower than usual on the uptake, then, it's all over the Park. No one wants him to go, Pete. Can you call someone?"

Pete had run for reelection that fall, and Kate had worked for his opponent, who had almost beaten him and would have if a couple of nasty little murders hadn't gotten in the way, so technically he was under no obligation to grant Kate a favor. On the other hand, this was Kate Shugak asking him a favor. Kate could all but hear the gears ticking over between Pete's ears.

"Whom would you suggest I call?"

He was stalling, and they both knew it. Pete Heiman had been a card-carrying Republican from his cradle; his father and his grandfather had seen to that. If he didn't know whom to call, nobody did. "I've got people working the phones here, too," Kate said.