Dana Stabenow - A Fine and Bitter Snow

“Yeah. So I was wondering…”

“Wondering what?”

Dandy shifted his weight. “Well, if maybe you’d be hiring. Like, I don’t know, an assistant.”

Jim was momentarily dumbfounded. “You want a job?” he said, heavily stressing the first and last words.

Dandy flushed. “Well, I might. Maybe. I guess. Yes.” He shifted his feet. “I’m thinking about getting married, and-”

Jim stared at him. “I beg your pardon?” Dandy started to speak, but Jim waved him to silence. There was nothing wrong with Jim’s hearing, either. “Never mind, I don’t think I’ll still be standing if I hear it twice.”

He took a long look at the floor, vaguely surprised that there wasn’t a charred outline of his and Kate’s bodies marking the spot. He still wasn’t sure he hadn’t died and gone to heaven right there.

“I’ve got some calls to make. Let’s head back into town.”

Kate had given a potlatch for her grandmother. This would be her second, and she felt relatively experienced. The place-the gym-was set and the principal was declining rent. “Even if their, er, lifestyle wasn’t one that we would want to set up as an example for the children,” she told Kate, and since the woman hadn’t been in the Park even a year and was totally clueless, Kate forbore to snarl.

There had to be a lot of food, but everyone would bring a dish, so all Kate had to do was make sure there was pop and that it was cold. George had promised to fill up a plane and would only charge for freight. She had coerced the senior class into filling half a dozen coolers with snow.

There ought to be gifts to give away, things that would remind the guests of Dina. That was more difficult, especially since Ruthe was still hanging on to life by a thread in the Chief William Memorial Hospital in Ahtna, and Kate did not know which of Dina’s possessions Ruthe would want to keep.

Kate had flown to Ahtna two days before, to sit vigil next to Ruthe, a figure swathed in bandages, hooked up to enough machines to launch a space shuttle. One was breathing for her. The doctor, who was personally acquainted with Kate Shugak’s built-in bullshit detector, was very frank. “We’ve done all we can. It’s up to her now.”

So Kate settled into an uncomfortable armchair and read out loud for two hours, parts of Travels with Charley, The Monkey Wrench Gang, and even a few entries out of Alaska’s Wilderness Medicines. She thought Ruthe had given a tiny smile when she read the entry on devil’s club, but it could have been her imagination.

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.”