Breakup. Part 9

Kate was distracted by a burst of noise from the television screen, where a little old Native man was being roughed up by a bunch of big ugly oil field workers in what pa.s.sed in Hollywood for a bar in the Bush, which was about as accurate as the rig fire scene. Steven Seagal entered the frame. Old Sam Dementieff, who was twice as old and twice as decrepit as the little old Native man on the television screen, raised up a thin, twittering voice. "Oh, please, Mr. Big Strong White Man, save poor, weak, drunk little me from the Big Bad White Guys!" Obediently, Seagal did, with the requisite amounts of testosterone and karate. "Oh, thank you, thank you, Mr. Big Strong White Man!" Old Sam cried. "You saved me! You shall be made a member of my tribe! Forever after you shall be known among us by your secret tribal name, Biggest White p.r.i.c.k!"

Chuckling, Kate turned back to the table.

"He's a big-time Anchorage contractor," Bernie was saying.

91 "He built the Roadhouse for me. Back when we were both just starting out. He cut his expenses to the bone, I'll say that for him, but he sure was hard on employees. He paid them ten bucks an hour-for Bush work, no less-and made 'em sleep in tents. Oh, and he refused to hire a cook."

"What'd they eat?"

Bernie grinned. "Surplus MREs."

"No f.u.c.king way!" Bobby roared in outrage.

"So," Kate said, with a quelling frown in Bobby's direction, "Mr. and Mrs. Baker, how long will you be visiting? Mandy didn't say."

"The jet will be back in Anchorage for us next Sat.u.r.day," Mr. Baker said, and drained his gla.s.s as if it were the last drop of liquid between him and the day of departure. Mrs. Baker wasn't far behind.

Bernie signaled for a second refill, as a brief silence, respectful of a private jet, fell.

"It's great that you came up," Kate said. "I know Mandy's been wishing you would f8r a long time."

Mrs. Baker's lips tightened ever so slightly. "We've been trying to talk her into coming home for a visit for years."

Obviously dangerous ground, and Bobby said briskly, "Enough with the small talk." He straightened in his chair, adjusted the set of the wheels, brushed an imaginary speck of dust off his T-shirt and demanded, "Ask me how my winter was."

"How was your winter?" Kate said obediently.

Bobby stroked his chin and seemed to consider. "Productive," he decided finally. "Yes, I'd say productive was the appropriate word." Dinah smiled again, the same dreamy smile as before. The rest of them sensed a story, and waited in expectant silence. Bobby did not disappoint them.

"In fact," he said, regarding the level of beer in his gla.s.s with a critical frown, "I'm glad you came in today, Kate, I need to ask you a favor."

"Name it," Kate said, raising her gla.s.s.

"Will you be our best man?"

The c.o.ke went down the wrong way and she choked and coughed 92 and Bobby, a huge grin on his face, wheeled around the table to pound her on the back with more force than was absolutely necessary but she couldn't catch her breath to complain. Meanwhile, Bernie exclaimed, Mr.

and Mrs. Baker added dignified congratulations and Dinah smiled her dreamy smile. When Kate got her breath back she said, eyes watering, "You're actually getting married?" She looked from Bobby to Dinah and back again.

"Yeah, I know, sounds a little precipitous, don't it? We haven't even been living together for a year yet. But, well, you know, we thought it best, what with the baby coming and all."

This time the c.o.ke came out her nose. Bernie was rendered speechless, an event so rare it ought to have been recorded in the Park annals, if there had been such a thing. Again, Mr. and Mrs. Baker leapt into the social breach, not by so much as a flicker of an eyelash indicating any disapproval of the sequence of events, or of anyone's relative age, or of the color of anyone's skin, either, which made Kate wonder if perhaps Mandy hadn't misread her parents' reaction to Chick. When she got her breath back the second time, she said, "I'll be best man only if I get to be G.o.dmother, too."

"Deal." Bobby stuck out a hand.

She took it and yanked him into a hug. "You lucky b.a.s.t.a.r.d," she said into his ear.

He hugged her back hard. "I know." They both admired Dinah, who sat in her chair looking positively angelic, which she was not. "I know," he said again.

She watched him watching Dinah. Bobby's face was square and smooth and black as coal beneath a tight cap of frizzy curls going gray at the temples, his eyes brown and shrewd, his smile in turn charming, seductive and downright wicked. Bobby Clark was a hillbilly turned Park rat from Tennessee who had come to Alaska by way of Vietnam, where he'd left both legs from just above the knee. What he didn't know about surviving in Bible Belt, jungle or Bush wasn't worth knowing. He and Kate had been lovers once and were friends now, and Kate was happy for him and a little sad for herself, although she couldn't have said precisely why.

93 They discussed names for the baby-Bobby favored Clyde, for Clyde McPhatter, or maybe Chuck, for Chuck Berry, or, alternatively, Ronette, Shirelle or Chiffon. Kate caught Dinah's eye, who shrugged resignedly and said, "He could want to call her Dixie Cup."

"Or Supreme," Kate suggested, getting into the spirit of things.

"Or Jelly Bean," Bernie said with a grin.

They all considered that one for a moment, before saying in unison, "Nah."

Bernie six-packed the table (apple juice for the expectant mother, c.o.ke for the teetotaler) and rose to his feet to toast the imminent arrival of the newest Park rat. They drank, and in the absence of a fireplace to hurl the gla.s.ses into thumped them all down onto the table and raised a ragged cheer.

"Katya!" She turned to see Auntie Vi waving at her again. There was no ignoring the summons a second time, and she excused herself temporarily from the celebration.

Auntie Vi was a tiny woman with defiantly pitch black hair cut short and permed into a thousand tiny corkscrew curls around a face like an old apple, red-cheeked and wrinkled but with plenty of juice still left beneath the skin. Widowed, Auntie Vi fished subsistence during the summer and ran a bed-and-breakfast out of her home the rest of the year.

She lived in a rambling cabin just outside Niniltna on the road to the Kanuyaq mine. Since hers was the only noncamping place to stay between Bernie's cabins and the pipeline-camp-converted-into-a-hotel in Ahtna, she did a brisk business with hunters, climbers and other a.s.sorted phenomena. In the past the latter had included an itinerant art collector scrounging old ivory carvings and baskets and b.u.t.ton blankets and halibut lures and fishing visors and glory hallelujah, one time even an entire kayak in astonishingly good condition, which n.o.body told the collector had been made the previous summer by Gordon Tobeluk and sunk in the river to age for a year, as well as a Stanford sociologist writing his Ph.D. dissertation on the dynamics of subsistence survival in an adulterated rural lifestyle, who jumped a foot in the 94 air every time a twig snapped and refused to go any farther from the village than the last house, and a television reporter from ABC's L.A.

affiliate looking for the definitive story on the effect of the RPetCo Anchorage oil spill, which he hoped would but did not get him an offer from national.

Auntie Vi rented them all beds made with clean sheets, served up caribou sausage and eggs, homemade toast and nagoonberry jelly the following morning, and charged on a sliding scale according to what she perceived to be her guests' net worth. She was the closest the Park had ever gotten to having their own homegrown entrepreneur. Mac Devlin wasn't even in the same cla.s.s.

She was also an expert quilter. Close up, the quilt the circle was working on looked even more beautiful than it had at a distance, an organized swirl of shades of blue and white, with flowers made of a combination of embroidery and applique s.p.a.ced at regular intervals.

"Forget-me-nots?" Kate said. "My favorite flower."

"You hinting, Katya?"

Kate batted her eyes. "Who, me?"

Enid Koslowski, Bernie's wife, scowled at both of them. "She's not married."

"Nor about to be," Kate agreed, and nodded at Dinah. "She is, though."

"And Bobby's been here a long time," Auntie Joy said happily, knotting a thread.

"I didn't know you were in town, Auntie," Kate said to her.

Auntie Joy heaved a gusty sigh. "I get hungry for family, so I come."

Over the tops of her half-gla.s.ses, she fixed Kate with a severe eye.

"How is it this is first time I see you, Katya? You too good, or maybe just too lazy to come to town to visit your auntie?" Not waiting for Kate to answer the unaswerable, she said, "Break time, Vi?"

Grinning, Auntie Vi nodded and the other five exchanged thimbles and needles for mugs. Auntie Vi rose and stretched and took a few steps from the table, nodding at Kate to follow her.

95 "So," she said, looking over Kate's shoulder, "I hear you give Mandy's mom and dad the grand tour?"

"You could call it that."

Auntie Vi's eyes twinkled. "Mandy probably never let her folks back in the state, much less the Park."

"Probably not."

"They look like nice people."

"They're coming around," Kate admitted.

"So maybe their s.h.i.t stink like everybody else's," Auntie Vi said complacently, and Kate had to laugh. "Katya, I need a favor."

"Sure, Auntie," Kate said, displaying about as much sense of self-preservation as Kevin Bickford had that morning on her homestead.

"Anything you want, you know that."

"I want you to talk to Harvey."

Kate stiffened. Harvey was Harvey Meganack, one of five board members of the Niniltna Native a.s.sociation. He was pro-development to the extent that he was willing to open traditional tribal lands up to mining, logging and tourism, a subject over which he and Kate had locked horns the previous October. The board, stable and unchanging for twenty years beneath the firm hand of Kate's grandmother, had recently experienced a sea change, losing three of its members and electing a new chair. It was still sorting itself out, and no one really knew what direction the board might take in the future.

Auntie Vi was only the board secretary, not a member, but she was a tribal elder and as such had tremendous influence with both the board and the shareholders. Kate, who had been waging a lifelong battle to stay as far removed from tribal politics as possible, was thrice cursed, first in that she was the granddaughter and only direct descendant of Ekaterina Moonin Shugak, second in that she was smart, capable and a natural leader, and third in that those qualities were recognized and needed by her people. Authority is as often a burden thrust upon the reluctant recipient as it is a prize pursued by the ambitious.

96 Kate, resolved to serve from outside the circle of power no matter how often her elders tried to extend it far enough to draw her in, said guardedly, "What about Harvey?"

"He's almost convinced Demetri and Billy that the profits we made last year from the logging at Chokosna should go out in a supplementary dividend to the shareholders."

Normally, the dividend check was a quarterly payment representing income and interest earned on funds invested by the Niniltna Native a.s.sociation, one of hundreds around the state created by ANCSA, the 1972 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, which had traded money and land for a right-of-way for the Trans- Alaska Pipeline across aboriginal territory. Sound counsel and some lucky investing on the part of the Niniltna board had produced dividends that had steadily increased over the years so that individual shareholders now received almost a thousand dollars four times a year. One was paid out on December 1, to help put some spirit into Christmas; one in March, to help gear up for the fishing season; one in June to help buy that new impeller the boat needed after it went over the sandbar at the mouth of the Kanuyaq River; and one in September, in case the fishing season had been lousy and there was no money for the fall grocery run to Costco in Anchorage.

It wasn't a bad arrangement. Unfortunately, a quarterly payment was also a fine way to finance a quarterly spree, as Cindy Bingley was all too well aware. And when, as this year, additional income from investments or, in this case, logging leases acc.u.mulated and had to be dispersed to the shareholders, there was a great temptation to regard the resulting funds as found money and blow it on a spree, or a third four-wheeler.

You can never have too much stuff in the Alaskan Bush. "And?" Kate said.

"And," Auntie Vi said, "Joy says we should maybe earmark a few of those funds for a health clinic instead."

Kate looked at Auntie Joy, another round-shaped elder, whose chubby cheeks gave an impression of youth, especially when two 97 deep dimples creased them, which happened frequently. Her cheerful front hid a deep and abiding concern for her family and friends and for the community as a whole, blood or not. For "Auntie Joy says," Kate thought, read "the majority of the elders in the a.s.sociation say." She glanced at Old Sam Dementieff, the fifth, eldest and newest board member. "What does Old Sam say?"

Auntie Vi shook her head. "Nothing, yet. Will you talk to Harvey, Katya?"

"What makes you think he'll listen to me? We haven't been on good terms since last October. h.e.l.l, we've never been on good terms. He'll blow me off." Try.

Kate's hackles instinctively went up at the tone of Auntie Vi's voice.

After a brief struggle, she said, "All right, auntie. I'll try."

"Try soon."

Kate took a careful breath, exhaled it. "Yes. As soon as I can."

"Good." Auntie Vi examined her critically. "I hear you almost get flattened by airplane."

"Not a whole airplane. Just one engine."

Auntie Vi's eyes twinkled again. "Oh. Just the engine. That's all right then."

Kate had to smile.

"And woman get killed by bear." Auntie Vi shook her head. "Bad thing."

"Were they staying with you?"

Auntie Vi nodded. "For a week, they said." Her smile was wide and satisfied. "Now I got federal men staying. They pay more."

"Good for you."

"That wife nice lady," Auntie Vi said, smile fading. "She been here before." She gave Kate a sly look. "But she not with him."

At that moment the door to the Roadhouse crashed open and a neon Budweiser sign hanging on the back wall shattered and cascaded to the floor in bits of gla.s.s.

98 In the absolutely still moment of silence that followed, Kate heard the distinct echo of a rifle shot. A .30-30 she thought, but didn't have enough time to make sure.

"Incoming!" Bobby put both hands flat on the table, vaulted across the surface and tackled Dinah, who went over backward in her chair. They both crashed to the floor with Bobby mostly on top. Kate, a nanosecond behind him, caught Auntie Vi in one arm and Auntie Joy in another and used them to take the rest of the quilting bee down. Bernie did his duty by Mr. and Mrs. Baker.

"Well, really," Kate heard Mrs. Baker say when she got her breath back.

Bernie cursed.

Mrs. Baker shut up.

A second shot, a clang and the tin-shaded light over one of the pool tables swung wildly back and forth. A figure loomed up in the open doorway, outlined against the Park's one and only streetlight, and a third shot rang out, followed by a shrill scream.

"Kay!" a man's voice screamed. "OmiG.o.d! Kay!"

The figure in the doorway disappeared. The door slammed itself shut, cutting the light off as if someone had thrown a switch.

Bernie's comment came clearly to Kate from halfway across the room.

"Breakup."

99.

The door banged open again. "They've shot my wife!" a voice yelled from outside. "Somebody help! They've shot my wife!"

"Everybody stay down," Kate said, and got to her knees.

"Katya!" Auntie Vi said. "No!"

"Shugak!" Bobby yelled. "Now is not the time to play hero, G.o.ddammit!"

She ignored both of them and snaked a path toward the back of the room, past bodies hugging the floor, hugging beer gla.s.ses, hugging pool cues, and one uninhibited couple hugging each other as they took brazen advantage of their suddenly horizontal position. Kate took a second look. The guy was Dandy Mike. It figured.

There were more unintelligible yells from outside, more shots, more thuds as bullets impacted the wall of the Roadhouse and a 100 lot of panicked shouts and questions from inside, chief among which was, "What the f.u.c.k is going on?"