A Deeper Sleep Page 6

  In fact, Jim’s usual winter workload was down considerably, which didn’t hurt his feelings any but which left him a lot more time to brood over Kate Shugak. He haunted the Riverside Cafe, flirting desperately with Laurel Meganack, a very easy on the eyes twenty-something who had indicated her interest on more than one occasion but who had now totally backed off. He feared that she knew he and Kate were an item, which of course they weren’t, but he couldn’t seem to muster up the strength of character to out and out say so.

  And more and more often at the end of the day his vehicle seemed to head up the road to Kate’s house, where more and more often he seemed somehow to spend the night. True, six months into this, he still didn’t know what to call it, this whatever it was he had going on with Kate. The frantic, almost ferocious sexual need that marked the beginning of all his best affairs had settled into a slumberous ardor. But that ardor had the damnedest way of flaring up and leaving nothing but scorched earth behind it, all the more enjoyable—and unsettling—because he wasn’t expecting it. Usually by this point in Jim’s relationships boredom had set in and he was looking for a way out with the least amount of damage to everyone involved, especially him.

  And then he would look down at Kate, her face flushed and glowing, a smile curling the corners of her lips, her legs still tight around his waist, and feel complete, whole, all his empty spaces filled up.

  Like he was home.

  When he realized this, he waited for the panic to set in. Hell, he would have welcomed it.

  It just wasn’t there.

  One evening he was helping Johnny with his algebra. “Man, I hate this stuff,” Johnny said, grumbling. “It was a lot easier when X was just a letter in the alphabet.” He looked up from where he was torturing a page of his textbook. “You’re really good at it, though. How come?”

  “I don’t know. Probably because I had a really good teacher.” They were seated at the dining room table. Kate was curled up on the sofa, her nose in a book. Typical. It would be easier to get over her if she were a little more labor intensive. Jim shifted in his chair, ostensibly to stretch but really to get a look at the title. Pride and Prejudice. Jane Austen. Bleah.

  He looked back at Johnny. “I never went as far with it as I wanted to. Someday I’m going to go back to school and take bonehead math right on up to trig and calc.”

  “Why the he—?” Johnny looked over his shoulder at Kate, who he knew from personal experience was never so oblivious to her surroundings as one might like. “Why would you want to do that?”

  “I always wanted to take astronomy. You need calc to take astronomy.”

  “Oh. You gonna buy a telescope?”

  “That’s my plan.”

  Johnny considered, and then jerked his head toward the front windows. “We got a deck.”

  “Yeah,” Jim said, “I noticed.”

  “All I’m saying is it’d be a good place to put a telescope.”

  “Yeah,” Jim said. “About that X—”

  He felt reasonably confident that the implication of that conversation was going to jerk him out of a sound sleep at three A.M., sweating bullets. Instead he was woken at three A.M. in the middle of being taken thorough advantage of by Kate.

  Well. It wasn’t like he could resist. Male anatomy being what it was.

  The next morning he woke up before she did and looked over to see that she was still asleep. It didn’t happen often. He lay very still.

  She was curled on her right side facing him, close enough that he could feel her breath on his cheek, although he couldn’t hear it. She was the quietest sleeper he’d ever shared a bed with, to the point that sometimes he’d nudge her to get a grunt or a moan, just to prove that she was still alive. With her eyes closed you could see the Aleut in her even more than when they were open, the slight upward tilt of the eyelids, the high, flat cheekbones, the wide mouth, the strong, stubborn chin. Her skin was a warm olive tint, her hair black and straight and very short. It had fallen to her waist at one time, usually bound back in a thick braid, and then for reasons she had never explained to anyone, she had cut it all off. He’d wondered if it was in reaction to Jack Morgan’s death, some kind of cultural custom to express grief, but of course he had never asked.

  Jim knew women, knew a lot of them and knew them well. Jack Morgan had known just one woman, and known her very well indeed. This woman, this five-foot, 120-pound package of strength and courage and intelligence and humor. Her grandmother had for many years led Kate’s small band of transplanted Aleuts and consanguinated Athabascans and adopted Eyaks and conscripted Tlingits, and it had been obvious what Emaa had wanted when she died. She had wanted Kate to step into her shoes.

  Thus far, Kate hadn’t. She was too blunt for the diplomacy required to shepherd a tribe between the Scylla of government funding and the Charybdis of intertribal warfare, and she had too little patience with human foible to be able to turn a blind eye. Both qualities had made her an excellent if intimidating investigator for the Anchorage district attorney, arid they made her an even better private detective now. Other skills were called for when shepherding the lives and fortunes of 173 shareholders who tended to be fiercely independent, suspicious of authority, and united as one in their determination to retain their cultural identity. They were also to a man, woman, and child completely divided in opinion as to how to go about it. He’d seen an article in Alaska magazine a while back that had reminded him forcibly of life in the Park, something about putting four Alaskans in a room and getting five marriages, six divorces, and seven political parties. Tip O’Neill had it wrong: All politics was personal. All Niniltna shareholders were related by birth or marriage, and nobody fought harder or meaner than family. Jim had had a front-row seat at a few NNA examples of the internecine warfare that rose periodically among the shareholders, and every time he’d come away thankful to be white.

  And then there was the almighty dividend, a sum representing a percentage of the association’s previous year’s annual earnings, which amount was set by the board of directors to be paid out quarterly to shareholders and which was always subject to being second-guessed by even the best-natured among them. If the fishing had been bad, if gas prices started rising, if the state’s annual permanent fund dividend dropped, the nastier the fight over the dividends was. There was currently a controversy brewing over quarterly payments versus one annual payment, with a critical minority in favor of liquidating all the association’s assets and making one lump sum payment and walking away. Billy Mike, the Association’s chairman, had been looking more than usually strained this winter. Jim put that down to Billy losing his son, Dandy, the year before, but the Association’s internal conflicts couldn’t be helping.

  And Jim had a shrewd suspicion that Auntie Vi had addressed this very topic in her conversation with Kate following Louis Deem’s acquittal. Clearly it had been gnawing at Kate ever since. She hadn’t said anything, but Jim had been an eyewitness to her running Billy Mike off the property twice now in the interim, and Johnny had told him that the four aunties had spent an hour at Kate’s table one morning the week before, sipping coffee and tearing into fresh-baked bread with nothing other than “please” and “thank you” being spoken out loud. “Enough to freeze the blood in your veins,” was the way Johnny had put it, not without relish.

  Jim noticed that Kate had been baking a lot of bread, too, her preferred method for expiating rage, sin, sorrow, and pretty much any emotion that might be alleviated by beating the hell out of flour and water.

  Like maybe guilt.

  Kate’s eyes opened, and Jim promptly forgot about the trials and tribulations of the Niniltna Native Association.

  As always she opened her eyes completely awake, aware of who and where she was. And who she was with. She smiled, the shared memory of the night warm between them.

  “I was just getting up,” he said.

  The smile widened into a grin as he got out of bed. On the way into the bathroom he noticed that he
smelled like her and that it didn’t bother him as much as he thought it ought to. It was hard to force himself into the shower.

  Breakfast was coffee and the killer date-nut bread that Kate had baked the night before. “What have you got going on today?” he asked her around a mouthful. It was sweet and rich and heavy and nutty. Seemed appropriate.

  “Bobby sent word by Johnny yesterday that Brendan wants to talk to me about a case, so I’m headed over to his house after I drop the kid at school.”

  “Can we pick up Vanessa on the way?” Johnny said. “And then pick us both up at Bernie’s house after school?”

  Jim refused to meet Kate’s eye. “Sure.”

  Johnny read something unintended into Jim’s neutral assent and decided an explanation was called for. “We’re working on a project together for science.”

  “Urn,” Jim said.

  “Ms. Doogan’s real tough about deadlines, so we wanted to get started on it before class this morning.”

  “Uh-huh,” Jim said, totally absorbed in the precise width of the slice he was taking off the loaf of bread.

  “It’s a class thing,” Johnny said. “Van and I, we’re just lab partners. Along with Fitz.”

  Fitz was Bernie Koslowski’s fourteen-year-old son. “Got it,” Jim said, his mouth full. Behind Johnny’s back Kate crossed her eyes. The bread went down the wrong pipe, and he choked.

  “Are you all right, Jim?” Kate said, grave as Judge Singh in a hanging mood. “Are you able to speak? Can you say your name? I know CPR.”

  Bobby was on the air when Kate walked in. Katya, two and a half beautiful and precocious years old, spotted her godmother first. “Kate!” she said, waddling forward as fast as her pudgy little legs would carry her. “Kate! Kate! Kate!”

  Kate scooped her up and blew big wet raspberries into her plump little neck. Katya dissolved into a bundle of giggles. It all went out on Park Air, of course, and Bobby was not loath to exploit the scene on his pirate radio station. “Yes, folks, that’s the beautiful and deadly Kate Shugak walking in the door, so I’m going to wrap up this morning’s broadcast of Park Air’s weekly Rummage Sale with these last three ads.

  “Billy Mike is looking for a chain saw, he doesn’t care what size so long as it runs. That’d be Billy Mike, Lord High Everything Else down at the Niniltna Native Association, in case you’ve been living in a cave for the past two years. How’s that new little baby of yours and Annie’s doing, Billy? Cute as a kitten last time I saw her, and about as cuddly. Not as cuddly as Katya, though, sorry.

  “Bernie out the Roadhouse says he’s taking the Niniltna High men’s and women’s basketball teams to the Gold Medal Tournament in Juneau the end of March. This of course takes money, of which of course he doesn’t have any, so the teams will be doing the usual bake sales and car washes and, he says, they’ll be doing an exhibition game against a town team for which they will be charging admission.”

  Bobby dropped his already basso profundo voice to something approaching a sonic boom, what he thought of as a convincing murmur but which came across the airwaves as a clear and present danger to those who did not obey. “I don’t know how many of you have been to the Gold Medal your own selves, so here’s something for the history-impaired out there in radioland to chew on. Did you know that the Gold Medal tournament has been going on longer than the NBA championship? That’s right, and what’s more, there’s a rock solid certainty that Bernie’s kids’ll get a chance to see some Edenshaws playing for Kla-wock, which as anyone who’s ever seen one Eden-shaw on a team let alone five will tell you is a learning experience all by itself. The teams are going, Bernie’s taking ‘em, you’re paying for it. The exhibition game is at noon this Saturday at the Niniltna High School gym, and if you’re not on the floor, I’ll expect to see you in the bleachers.

  “Last up, Auntie Vi is hosting her annual swap and shop the first Saturday in April, right after Bernie and the gang get back from Juneau, noon to six P.M. Bring by anything you want to sell, clean out those shops and sheds and crawl spaces to make room for mending gear this spring. Auntie Vi is donating ten percent of the proceeds to whatever expenses the team doesn’t manage to cover, because you know there’ll be some, and Bernie Koslowski tells me he’s going to be anteing up a few choice items from his gold nugget hoard.

  “I’ve got a heads-up for you cross-country travelers, too: Howie Katelnikof will have a booth there and you know how he’s always got the good stuff priced to sell. He tells me he’s featuring some like-new snow machine parts, everything from the track up, so be there! This is Park Air, and here’s some music to get you in the mood for love. What’d I say? Of course I meant shopping.”

  Bobby sat back from the circular console that surrounded the central post of the A-frame as the strains of the Beatles’ raunchy request for “Money” rocked out of the speakers. “Kate!” he bellowed. “How the hell are you?”

  “Fine!” she yelled back, and reached around him to turn the volume down. Mutt galloped forward and elbowed Kate unceremoniously to one side so she could rear up and put both front paws on Bobby’s shoulders.

  His chair rolled back into the console with a sound thump. “Goddamn, Shugak!” Bobby roared, trying without success to fend off the tongue bath. “The house is fucking filled with fucking wolves again!”

  “Goddamn!” Katya said, bouncing excitedly up and down in Kate’s arms. “Goddamn!”

  An ethereal blonde smiled at Kate from her seat in front of a computer on the other side of the console. “Hey, Kate.”

  “Hey, Dinah.”

  “How goes the battle?”

  Kate’s smile was slow and wicked. “I’m winning.”

  Dinah laughed. “Good to know.”

  “Be good to know what the hell you people are talking about even half the time,” Bobby said. “Down!” he said to Mutt. She dropped down on all fours and laughed up at him, tongue lolling out the side of her mouth. He looked at Kate. “Unhand my child!”

  “Daddy!” Without a moment’s hesitation, Katya launched herself into space. In a well-practiced choreography, Mutt dodged out of the way so the latest aspirant to the Flying Wallendas could land neatly on Bobby’s lap.

  “One of these days you’re going to miss,” Kate said when her heart starting beating again.

  Katya, a brown-faced, blue-eyed, curly-headed cherub, beamed at her. “Kate!”

  “Yeah, that’s me, kid, just several years older than when I walked in.”

  Kate gave Bobby a once-over, from his tightly curled cap of black hair, to the sharp angles of his cheekbones, his wide, firm-lipped mouth that seemed to be fixed in a permanently evil grin, to the broad shoulders and strong arms, to his muscular thighs that ended just below the knees.

  He almost purred beneath her approving gaze, and she almost laughed out loud. “You are such a babe,” she said.

  “Why, thank you, Kate. You hear that, Dinah? About me being such a babe?”

  “I heard. I’m considering the source.”

  Kate went for the coffeepot, poured mugs all around, and carried them to the living room.

  Bobby Clark had acquired his land in a timely purchase just before d-2 had kicked in in 1980, forty acres on Squaw Candy Creek not far from where it flowed into the Kanuyaq and only a few miles from Niniltna. He’d built an A-frame with easy access for his wheelchair in mind (one big room, clockwise from upper left the bedroom, the bathroom, the kitchen, and the living room, floor clad in tongue-and-groove ash, and a central pillar up which snaked innumerable cables linking the electronics console that took up the center of the house to the 212-foot tower out back.

  Bobby was the NOAA observer for the Park, reporting twice daily to NOAA and the National Weather Service and as needed on existing flying conditions to the FAA. This brought him in a very small amount of income, which led the curious to wonder how he financed his lifestyle. This included not only a wife and a daughter, but also a new truck every three years and a Piper Super Cub, as well as the
stable of snow machines and four-wheelers required of any Park rat worthy of the name, all of them modified for use by a man who had left both his legs below the knee in Vietnam. The troopers out of Tok and Cordova had paid serious attention to Bobby when he had first appeared in the Park, but he had been scrupulous in giving them no reason whatsoever to continue this surveillance, and after a while they had gone away. After a while longer, the curiosity had gone away as well.

  Attention resurfaced when Park Air went on the air, but Bobby was well able to afford the kind of devices that would deflect official notice from the FCC. Bobby had also from time to time been able to aid the troopers in their inquiries into various missing persons, as well as sundry personal property that had been, ah, misappropriated. Besides, the troopers enjoyed the broadcasts as much as the next Park rat, especially when Bobby, swallowing hard, put up a weekly two-hour show featuring the likes of Clint Black. Loretta Lynn he could stomach and he thought Patsy Cline divine, but he also thought the last decent country western singer had died with Hank Williams. Senior. “If they wanna be rock stars, let ‘em sing goddamn rock and roll,” he growled, but beneath his breath when the law showed up with the latest Tim McGraw CD.

  Dinah had appeared in the Park almost four years before, a self-taught videographer with the declared intention of producing documentaries on life in Alaska. In spite of her being as white as he was black and twenty years his junior, they had married, and produced Katya minutes later. Kate had been in attendance front and center for both events, the memory of which she had been trying without success to erase from her cerebral cortex ever since.

  As Kate watched, Katya wriggled free of her father’s lenient grasp and scooted over to where Mutt was pawing through the wood box in search of the thighbone of a T. rex Bobby always kept there in case wolves got into the house. Bobby rolled his wheelchair around the console and picked Dinah up out of her chair and wrestled her into his lap. She protested but not too much, and he rolled them both over to the living room and shifted them to one of the couches that formed an open square.