The Singing of the Dead (7 page)

“Margaret's not here,” he said, squinting down the barrel of the BB gun, seeming to debate whether or not to take another shot. He did. “Damn,” he said, “missed him,” and lowered the gun again.

“Where are the kids?”

“She took 'em.” He leaned the gun up against the greenhouse wall and stood up, towering a foot and a half over Kate. Johnny's eyes widened. “Come on, I'll make some coffee.”

The kitchen was a mess, the sink filled with dirty dishes, the top of the cooking stove encrusted with blackened grease. Ethan didn't apologize, and he didn't try to stop Kate when she started in on the dishes while they waited for the kettle to boil.

The coffee was instant. Kate hid a wince and loaded in the creamer. Johnny's cocoa was instant, too, but the marshmallows, though stale, melted in a satisfactory manner. After Ethan cleared the chairs around the kitchen table of unopened mail, dog-eared catalogues, a Shooter's Bible , and a stack of Aviation Week magazines, they sat down, still in silence.

Usually, Kate was comfortable with silence. It was why she lived alone on a homestead in the middle of a twenty-million-acre federal park, twenty-five miles away from the nearest village over a road that was impassable to anything but snow machines in the winter and to anything but the sturdiest trucks in the summer.

Ethan's silence was palpable. He was angry, but he wasn't sulking over it. She decided there was nothing for it but to wade in. “I need a favor, Ethan,” she said. She wasn't happy asking and, although she tried hard not to let it show, Ethan, when he bothered to look up, could see it in her face. For the first time that day he smiled.

He'd always been able to read her, from the day they shared what was her first kiss at the top of Widow's Peak after an hour's hike one hot day the summer she was sixteen. He was back from his freshman year of college and they were both working for his father, tending the dogs and the farm while Abel was out setnetting with Old Sam Dementieff and Mary Balashoff on Alaganik Bay. They'd spent the morning clearing alders off the airstrip and the afternoon hilling potatoes, and when Ethan suggested a picnic as a reward, Kate had been all for it.

Ethan was the second of Abel's four sons and the closest to her in age. A three-year difference at five and eight or ten and thirteen might as well be thirty, but at sixteen and nineteen the distance had suddenly narrowed. Ethan came home and for the first time Kate noticed how attractive his smile was, how smart and funny his conversation, how capably he shouldered the business of the homestead. Ethan came home and for the first time noticed that Kate had breasts and a figure to go with them, and a smile that, when she bothered to use it, melted him right down to the marrow in his bones. His marrow had been melted before, of course; he was self-aware enough to realize that his looks and his talent at center on the basketball team would get him most of the girls he wanted without too much effort. The girls at UAF did nothing to disabuse him of this notion, especially the girls in the Wickersham Dorm, for whom the jocks of Lathrop Dorm (basement, basketball; first floor, hockey; second floor, swim team) were a specialty.

So when Ethan looked at Kate when he returned home from school that June, it was with the eye of a newborn connoisseur. She was aware of him. He could tell that from the sidelong glances, the occasional soft blush, the not-so-accidental bumpingsof arms and hips, but he made no move until his father was safely out of the way. Even then, he waited until the work of the day was done, and felt virtuous in doing so.

Kate at sixteen had never been kissed. Truth to tell, no boy had ever had the courage to so much as try to hold her hand. It might have been the force of her grandmother's personality, or the power Ekaterina had over the tribe, but it might also have had something to do with Kate's air of self-containment, of assurance, of capability. She didn't give off vibes like she needed anybody in her life, let alone a guy. Her classmates saw her as smart, and some of them translated that as arrogant, and some of them translated that as eccentric. She was quiet and some of them translated that as stuck up, others as shy. She had no close friends. She had no boyfriends.

Which was why Ethan's obvious attention hit her like a ton of bricks. Tall, good-looking, funny, smart (even then Kate couldn't abide stupidity), competent at whatever he turned his hand, and best of all, someone with whom she was familiar, someone with whom she already had history, someone who didn't require the elaborate ritual of inane chatter and silly giggles and he-told-my-brother-and-my-brother-told-me conversations and slap-and-tickle games that preoccupied her contemporaries. This was Ethan, and it was obvious that he was interested. It was enough to make every female nerve in her body sit up and take notice. The three weeks between Ethan coming home and Abel leaving were the longest and most excruciating three weeks of her life.

The homestead was at fifteen hundred feet, on the edge of the wide, level valley that made up the center of the Park. Widow's Peak was another thousand feet up, a mere foothill to the Quilaks looming behind. It was a clear day, and they fancied they could see all the way to Prince William Sound. “Think they're catching anything?” Ethan said as he unpacked their picnic.

Kate shook out an old olive green Army blanket. “I hope so. I haven't had any salmon out of the Sound yet this summer.”

Ethan sat back on his heels and narrowed his eyes against the sun. “If I'd known that, I would have brought you one out of the creek myself.”

Kate hoped her skin was too dark and the light was too bright for him to see her blush. “No, I meant salt water fish. They're always fatter than the ones you catch in fresh water.” She changed the subject. “Do you want a fire?”

“Do we need one?”

She looked up to meet his eyes and flushed again. “I guess not,” she said, and reached for the Spam sandwiches.

They ate mostly in silence, because Ethan, after all, also had been raised in what Robert Service had called “the hush of the Great Alone,” but when their meal was over and they were packing the debris into their daypacks, he found occasion to brush her hand with his. It felt exactly as if an electric spark had leaped between them, and she jumped. He grinned, and leaned in.

She didn't move during that first kiss, curious at the touch of his lips on hers. He drew back and looked at her. “Come on, Kate,” he said, his voice husky, “kiss me back.”

She wouldn't admit to not knowing how, but she let him teach her, and oh my, did it feel good. So did his tongue delicately tracing the whorls of her ear, his teeth at the base of her throat, his hand cupping her breast, his knee rubbing between her legs. She felt like she'd been run over by a truck, a big one; she had no breath to protest, and no will to, either.

She was naked, and he was shirtless and starting on the zip of his jeans when the Super Cub buzzed the top of Widow's Peak on a short final into the homestead. It was Abel, flying back from Alaganik Bay after the Fish and Game had closed the bay to fishing for the week, and he got an eyeful.

Abel asked Ethan one question when they got back down to the homestead. “You use a rubber?”

Ethan set his jaw. “We didn't get that far,” he muttered finally, when it became evident that his father wasn't going to let it go.

That evening, Abel flew Kate to a one-man placer goldmining operation near Nizina. Seth Partridge was the miner, and Micah Int-Hout, Abel's third oldest boy, barely thirteen and no competition for Ethan, was already apprenticed to him for the summer. Seth agreed to take Kate on, too. She spent the rest of July and most of August pining for Ethan and the astonishing feelings he had coaxed from her body, and learning how to alter the course of a creek with a D-5 Caterpillar tractor. When she got back to the homestead, Ethan was already back in Fairbanks. The next summer, Abel found him a job in Anchorage.

Two years later, upon graduation from high school and at the insistence of her grandmother, Kate went to Fairbanks and joined Ethan in the ranks of the student body. Ethan knocked on her dorm room door on the day after she arrived. “Hi,” he said, and smiled, and she toppled over the same edge she had been teetering on two summers before. She wanted him, she wanted him so much her teeth ached. It seemed that he wanted her, too, and only the fact that they both had roommates kept them out of each others' beds for as long as it did. They necked a lot, squirming together on a chair in a dark corner of the Student Union Building, taking time out up against a tree in the middle of running the Equinox Marathon, in the back row of the campus theater during a showing of Psycho. “I think it's going to fall off before I get the chance to use it again,” he groaned one evening in the Lathrop lounge, when they were interrupted by a horde trouping in to watch Dallas.

He must have taken steps to see that it wouldn't happen, because a week later she caught him with another girl, and that was the end of that. Disloyalty was the one sin Kate Shugak would not, could not forgive.

At Thanksgiving break, Abel, not usually so slow, woke up to the fact that the UAF campus wasn't all that large and that his son the junior and his foster-daughter the freshman were both living on it. In December Ethan transferred to the University of Washington, ostensibly because the wildlife-management curriculum was larger and with better teachers, and would round out his degree. There he met Margaret, and married her the month after he graduated.

Kate, left alone at UAF, went into hibernation, emerging only at the invitation of an inspired English teacher, who taught her how to read recreationally. From that point on, she had never been lonely. She had seen Ethan perhaps a dozen times for brief periods since. She was always civil. He was always courteous. They might have been strangers, instead of almost lovers. Since he had moved back to the Park, family in tow, to start a fly-in bed-and-breakfast on Abel's homestead, she had seen him perhaps half a dozen times, at the Int-Hout homestead when Mandy had wanted to stop in and say “Hi,” at the post office in Niniltna, and at the Roadhouse. She was still civil. He was still courteous.

It was obvious by the gleam in his eye that Ethan was remembering a lot of the same things she was. Johnny looked suspiciously from one adult to the other. When Kate looked at him, he sneered, and she could imagine his thoughts. “My dad not dead a year, and you're ready to jump in bed with somebody else.” She thought of July in Bering and Jim Chopin, and then she did not. “I need a favor, Ethan,” she said again.

“You said that,” he replied.

“Yeah,” she said, “sorry.” She nodded at Johnny. “Johnny's—” She hesitated. “Johnny's staying with me for a while, but I'm going to be in and out for most of the next month or two. I don't want him to stay at the homestead alone, so I was wondering if he could park here for the duration.”

Ethan looked at Johnny, who met his gaze with a sullen expression. “He looks like he wants to move over here, all right.”

Kate kicked Johnny beneath the table.

Johnny kicked her back, hard enough to make her jump and swear.

Ethan laughed, which transformed his face. Johnny relaxed a little.

Still laughing, Ethan told Johnny, “You're my kinda guy, kid. Sure, you can bunk in here if you want to.” The laughter faded, leaving him looking glum. “It's not like I don't have the room.”

Voice carefully devoid of anything that might be mistaken for genuine interest, Kate said, “So, when is Margaret coming back?”

Ethan got up and collected their cups. “She isn't, according to her,” he said over his shoulder. “She's filed for divorce.”

All Kate could think of to say was, “Why?” and then she added hastily, “I'm sorry, Ethan. None of my business.”

He snorted. “Like it wasn't all over the Park by sundown the day she left. Where have you been?”

“Out of town,” she said. “So what happened?”

He turned around and folded his arms, leaning back against the sink. “She wants to move back to Seattle. That's where her parents are, and her sister. Says she doesn't want the kids growing up all alone in the middle of a wilderness. Says they're going to have a civilized upbringing. I think myself she wants cable back.” He sighed. “Breakup was too much for her, I guess. Or maybe it was breakup and the Park in combination. She wasn't raised to it like we were. I probably should have seen it coming. She never did like Cordova much, either, and she sure wasn't happy when we moved back to the homestead. Didn't like the idea of cooking and cleaning up after strangers, so the fly-in B-and-B idea went west. After that it was one big downhill slide. She and the kids left in May, right after school let out.”

He looked at Johnny. “You gotta have cable, kid?” Johnny shook his head. “Good. Cause they ain't any such animal here. Or phones. Got lights, though, and hot and cold running water.” He hooked a thumb at Kate. “Better'n her dinky little cabin.”

A brief silence. “I'm sorry, Ethan, ” Kate said, sounding as inadequate as she felt.

Johnny gave Ethan a curious look. “Don't worry,” he said suddenly,“he's not.”

“Johnny.”

Ethan stared into the blue eyes so unlike his own. “It's okay, Kate,” he said finally. “He's right. I miss the kids.” He smiled again, and again transformed himself from someone who ground men's bones to make his bread into yet another rueful Alaskan backwoodsman who had picked the wrong woman. “But that's about all I miss.”

While Johnny was checking out Ethan's old room, still filled with Ethan's old model planes, Ethan walked Kate back to her truck. “I've already got him enrolled in school in Niniltna. He knows how to run a four-wheeler, and he knows how long it'll take him to get there. He's got the schedule, and his books.”

“Yeah, but will he go?”

“He says yes.”

“That's not necessarily the whole-hearted endorsement I was looking for, Kate.”

“He says yes,” she repeated. “He's young, but he keeps his word when he gives it. He'll go.” At least for the next two years, she thought, and shrugged it off. Time enough to think about that when it happened.

Ethan touched her arm and in an instant it was like she was back on the top of Widow's Peak on a hot, sunny afternoon, with the sky clear all the way to Middleton Island. She moved to one side, out of reach. “What?”