Breakup (10 page)

But at the door to the Roadhouse, Mr. Baker paused. "Ms. Shugak-"

"Yes, Mr. Baker?"

"That woman at the mine-"

"Yes?"

"Was it our bear that killed her? The one that ran into us on the road?"

Kate briefly considered lying, and quickly discarded the notion. "Probably."

"There was blood on her muzzle."

"Yes."

"That woman's blood."

"Yes."

Mr. and Mrs. Baker exchanged glances. "Will someone go after the bear, try to kill it?"

Kate looked surprised. "Why?"

Mr. Baker blinked. "Well, naturally, I assumed- I've been hunting in Africa, Ms. Shugak. When a lion becomes a man-killer, the only thing to do is to hunt it down and kill it, otherwise it will go on killing men."

Kate sighed. "Mr. Baker, an Alaskan grizzly eats anything that doesn't move out of the way in time, animal, vegetable or mineral. That includes bugs, canned goods, canteens, backpacks and people, as well as any and every other mammal that comes down the pike. Protein is protein. They're a perambulating appetite with a serious advantage in speed and armament. Most of the time they leave us alone. Sometimes they don't."

Mrs. Baker regarded her with a quizzical expression. "It doesn't appear to upset you very much, Ms. Shugak."

Kate shrugged, and repeated what she had said to Dan, this time with more conviction. "Hard to get upset over bears actin g like bears. Comes with the territory. It's not pretty, but then nature often isn't."

The Roadhouse door opened abruptly into the conversation, almost catching Mrs. Baker on the nose and smacking into Kate's reflexively upraised hand. A man somersaulted out of the building to roll down the steps and fetch up flat on his back in a puddle of muddy slush. There was a slurred curse.

The Bakers regarded the outcast for an expressionless moment before Mr. Baker reached for the door, which was swinging slowly closed, and pulled it open with a polite inclination of his head. Mrs. Baker swept through, with Kate bringing up the rear, feeling like a very minor courtier in an exceptionally regal retinue.

Inside, the bar was three deep, there wasn't an empty table in the joint, and the floor was jammed with dancers in Pendleton shirts, Levi's and wafflestompers, the men distinguished from the women only by their beards. On a twenty-four-inch television screen suspended from one corner of the roof Steven Seagal was putting out an oil fire in a series of actions that would have put his ass into orbit on any oil field other than Hollywood's. An enthusiastic audience led by Old Sam Dementieff was improvising new dialogue. Half a dozen older women sat in a circle quilting, mugs of hot buttered rum at their elbows, Auntie Vi firmly guiding the gathered needles in some complicated knot. She looked up, saw Kate and beckoned. Kate deliberately mistook the gesture and waved back airily.

Another crowd stood around two pool tables in the back, the crack of ball on ball muted by the occasional flush of a distant toilet. Jimmy Buffett was on the jukebox, wanting to go where it's warm, accompanied by half a dozen tone-deaf backup singers who felt the same way, including Frank Scully, evidently suffering no guilt feelings whatever at not contributing his share to the state treasury.

The tourists from Pennsylvania were easy to spot. They sat at a table by themselves, attired in matching plaid polyester pantsuits.

Matching Pittsburgh Steelers windbreakers hung over the backs of their chairs, matching potbellies pushed at their shirts, and matching befuddled smiles spread across their faces as they took in Life in the Alaskan Bush, a point-and-shoot camera at the ready on the table in front of them, right next to a dog-eared copy of the Milepost, Everytourist's all-purpose, super-duper utility guide to Alaska. In spite of herself Kate thought they looked kind of cute.

The air smelled of stale beer, roll-your-owns of old tobacco and older marijuana, and wet wool. Eau de breakup.

Kate broke trail to the bar, where Bernie was pouring out drinks with all eight hands. He was a long, gaunt man with a receding hairline in front and a ponytail that reached to his waist in back to make up for it. He looked like an aging hippie only because he was one.

Bernie Koslowski was Chicago-born and Midwest-bred and all flower child. He had been mugged by Daley's finest at the 1968 Democratic convention, had danced in the mud at Woodstock in 1969 and had merrily burned his draft card on the steps of the Capitol in Washington, D.C., in 1970, whereupon Attorney General John Mitchell, unamused, had had Bernie and three thousand other demonstrators thrown behind a chicken-wire fence on the Mall, in direct violation of their Fourth Amendment rights. Bernie took it personally. Upon release, he walked by the White House to flip Nixon the bird and hauled ass for Canada, eventually migrating into Alaska through the Yukon Territories, working construction on the TransAlaska Pipeline. He retired from the pipeline to buy the Roadhouse in 1975. If the Roadhouse wasn't connected by road to the TransAlaska Pipeline's right-of-way, there were other means of transportation an ingenious and thirsty pipeliner could and did promote, including, one glorious day two years before, a D-9 Caterpillar tractor. Business boomed.

Bemie's father, who never let anyone forget he had gone ashore with the first wave at Anzio, had struck Bemie's name from the family Bible and forbidden mention of it in his presence. His mother and sisters sent him surreptitious care packages every yea r at Christmas, filled with water filters, Swiss Army knives and waterproof compasses ordered from the REI catalog. From time to time they would inquire solicitously as to the state of his health, since blubber couldn't be all that nutritious as a dietary staple, and did his Eskimo friends live in igloos? Bernie had never met an Eskimo in his life, or seen an igloo, and since whales had been put on the endangered species list, muktuk was in short supply, and Aleuts ate seal muktuk anyway. Or the ones he knew did.

One of his Aleut friends who ate seal muktuk jerked her head toward the other end of the bar, where Bobby Clark was, as usual, sitting at the center of a lot of laughter and rude comment. "Life of the party," Bernie said. "How you been, Kate?"

"Don't ask."

"All right," Bernie said agreeably, and poured Kate a Coke without waiting for an order. "Where's Mutt?"

"Guarding the homestead from the federal government."

"What?" There was restive movement behind Kate, and Bernie said, "May I help you"

"Bernie, this is Mr. and Mrs. Baker. Mandy's parents."

Bernie broke into a smile that lit the deceptively mournful lines of his face with warmth and humor. "Of course. Mr. and Mrs. Baker. I've heard Mandy talk about you." With the diplomatic dexterity of a career bartender, he refrained from repeating precisely what he'd heard Mandy say. "It's nice to meet you. May I pour you a drink?"

"I wish you would," said Mrs. Baker with feeling.

"You certainly may," said Mr. Baker at the same time, with even more feeling.

Bernie glanced at Kate, and was intrigued by the suddenly wooden expression on her face, although true to form he made no comment. "Fine. What would you like?"

The Bakers eyed the assortment of bottles crammed into the shelves on the wall behind the bar. Mr. Baker spotted a tall green bottle and pointed. "Is that Glenlivet?"

"It certainly is."

"I'll have some," Mr. Baker said, in a manner that brooked no contradiction. "Dear? Dear?"

Mrs. Baker's gaze was fixed and staring. Bernie turned to see what she was looking at.

On a small shelf by itself perched a clear, square-sided bottle half filled with golden liquid. It was what was lying on the bottom of the bottle that had caught Mrs. Baker's fascinated attention, and Kate smothered a grin as Bernie said with elaborate nonchalance, "Oh, that. That used to be tequila. Now it's Middle Finger." Mrs. Baker's eyes widened but before Bernie could launch himself on the saga of the unprepared climber who had lost three fingers to frostbite climbing Angqaq Mountain, one of which now reposed at the bottom of the bottle in question, Kate said, "Bernie, these folks have already been through one bear attack, one plane crash and one attempted murder today. Just pour them some booze, okay?"

Drinks in hand, they moved down the bar, gravitating naturally toward the spot generating the most noise. Bobby was accompanied by a wraithlike blonde who caught sight of Kate before he did. "Hey, Kate."

"How you doing, Dinah?"

"Fine," the blonde said, smiling, blue eyes dreamy. "Incredible. Wonderful. Sublime."

Impressed, Kate said, "Must have been one hell of a winter."

The dreamy smile widened. "You have no idea."

Dinah Cookman was a twenty-two-year-old strawberry blonde who, upon graduation from Columbia the previous spring with a degree in photojournalism, had armed herself with a video camera and a pale blue 1969 Ford Econoline van and driven north to Alaska, determined to make her name with a breakthrough celluloid essay on life in the Alaskan bush. By the time she got to Tok she had run out of gas money and stopped off to pick mushrooms to sell to cash buyers from Outside, and also to meet Bobby and Kate, but especially Bobby. Under their expert tutelage, especially Bobby's, she was fast redeeming her cheechako status. Thi s afternoon, for almost the first time since Kate had known her, she was without her video camera. She looked unnatural, almost naked, without it.

The black man with the impressive shoulders put his wheelchair into a 180. "Goddam! Shugak! Long time no see!" A long arm hauled her into a comprehensive embrace, a hard kiss and a not so brotherly pat on the ass. "How was your winter?"

"Not as good as yours, apparently," she said, returning the embrace and the kiss and letting the pat go by without comment. No one else could have patted Kate Shugak's ass in public and gotten away with it, not even Jack Morgan, and the people around the group regarded him with no little awe.

Bobby peered behind Kate. "And you are?"

"Bobby, Dinah, I'd like to introduce Mr. and Mrs. Baker. Mandy's parents."

"The snobs from Nob Hill?" Bobby said, not so sotto voce.

"No, the snobs from Beacon Hill," Kate said under her breath. "Behave." More loudly she said, "Mr. and Mrs. Baker, these are some more of Mandy's friends. Bobby Clark, he's the NOAA observer for the Park, uh, that's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. And this is Dinah Cookman, Bobby's roommate and a photojournalist."

"Documentary filmmaker," Dinah said, the old her surfacing for a moment before the rosy haze enveloped her once more.

Kate regarded Dinah with a wary eye. "I beg her pardon, documentary filmmaker. And you've met Bernie Koslowski. He owns the joint."

Everybody shook hands. "Where's Mandy?" Bernie said.

"She's back at the lodge. I, ah, volunteered to give the folks the grand tour." Nobody believed it, but nobody was brave enough to say so.

"You want a table?" Bernie said.

"You got one?"

"Always got one for you," he said. "Judy!"

"Yo!" A short, wiry woman in jeans and T-shirt whose fringe o f thin brown hair was stuck to her forehead with sweat peered at them from behind thick round glasses that made her look like an inquiring insect.

"Save that table for me!"

She stuck up a thumb, and was lifting an overloaded tray without apparent effort by the time Mr. and Mrs. Baker, Kate, Bobby, Dinah and Bernie reached her. There weren't enough chairs, which Bernie rectified by snitching several from nearby tables while their occupants were on the dance floor. "I'm on break," Bernie told Judy.

"Up yours," she replied with a grin. She shoved her oversize glasses up the bridge of her nose and shot off to answer a cry for more beer.

Bernie shook his head. "That Judy, she only knows two speeds, fast and stop. So, Mr. and Mrs. Baker, how are you finding Alaska so far?"

"Quite stimulating," Mr. Baker replied without missing a beat.

Kate choked over her Coke and Bobby demanded details. They took news of the bear attack philosophically, pitying victim and survivor alike without shock or horror. "Dumb to go up there unarmed this time of year," Bobby said, which summed up the general consensus. George's ground loop was received with glee, Cindy's ambush with applause. When they stopped laughing, Kate said, "Yeah, right, hilarious," but she noticed that Mandy's parents were looking much more mellow. Probably the Glenlivet. Whatever worked.

Bernie had been in on the ground floor of Dan O'Brian's hot pursuit of the two Great White Hunters, so the denouement was well received, but it was the story of the 747 engine almost falling on her cabin that got by far the most acclamation. "Jesus, Kate," Bobby said, wiping away tears of mirth, "that's got to be the best story yet. You're getting better and better at lying in your old age." He started to laugh again. "I knew I was a good teacher, but damn, I didn't know I was that good."

"It's true," she insisted.

"Yeah, right, and the Nimitz just rammed my boat dock," he said, and everybody laughed again.

"She really is telling the truth," Mr. Baker murmured, but no one was listening.

"Is that what all that air traffic was this morning?" Bernie said.

"Yes," Kate said. "The NTSB and the FAA descended on my place at about five."

Bobby's beer was arrested halfway between table and mouth. "Air traffic?"

"Yeah," Bernie said. "Didn't you hear it? Sounded like the U.S. Air Force was staging an invasion from the Niniltna strip. Early," he added with bitter emphasis. The Roadhouse didn't close until two in the morning, and Bernie usually didn't hit the sack until three-thirty or four o'clock. He was not a morning person.

Bobby looked at Kate. "It really is true? The engine off a 747 really did land in your front yard?"

"Not fifty feet from my front door," Kate said ruefully. Mr. and Mrs. Baker nodded in solemn agreement. Kate noticed their glasses were nearly empty. So did Bernie, and he signaled Judy for a refill.

Bobby stared at her. "Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ," he said finally. "Now that's what I call breakup."

The door opened and Mac Devlin came in. He spotted Bobby and bulled his way through the crowd to the table. Kate was sitting a little in back of Bernie and he didn't notice her at first. "Bobby, is it true what I heard? Did a plane crash on Kate Shugak's homestead?"