Dana Stabenow - A Fine and Bitter Snow

Auntie Vi was there with one of her sons. Kate squinted through the dim light. Roger, she thought. Roger’s wife was there, too, and three of their four children. Mary Balashoff was visiting from Alaganik-Mary must have given up on prying Old Sam loose from the Park-and she and Old Sam were pegging like mad in a fierce game of cribbage. The four Grosdidiers had commandeered their usual table with the ringside seat in front of the television set hanging from one corner of the room, groaning at a bad call by the referee of the football play-off game presently on the screen.

The door opened and Jim Chopin stepped inside. There was the usual lull when five-foot twenty-two inches of state trooper blue and gold stepped majestically into the room, but when it became apparent he wasn’t there to arrest anyone, the noise soon regained its proper level and he was allowed to walk to the bar unmolested.

“Kate,” he said.

Kate was aware that Dan had braced himself on the stool next to her. “You made it back.”

“It stayed above minimums. Barely.” He pulled off the ball cap with the trooper emblem on the front and ran his hand through his hair, which looked a little less immaculate than usual. “Bernie.”

“Jim. Can’t beat you off with a stick lately.” Jim didn’t offer an explanation for his presence that evening, and with the delicate tact required of the professional bartender, Bernie didn’t ask. Besides, he had a pretty fair idea that he already knew. “What’ll you have?”

Jim never drank on duty. It was an obligation he felt he owed the uniform, but it had been a long day and he would have killed for a long cold one. “Coke,” he said finally, and sighed when he said it.

“You get out all right?” Kate said.

“Yeah. I missed the last plane into Anchorage, but Kenny Hazen put the body in the local meat locker and promised to get it on the first plane tomorrow.” His Coke arrived and he looked at it sadly. “Not that an autopsy is going to tell us anything we don’t already know.” He allowed himself to take notice of Dan O’Brian. “Hey, Dan.”

Dan shifted on his stool. “Hey, Jim.”

A brief silence ensued.

“I went back out to the lodge,” Kate said.

Jim looked at her, his eyes sharpening. “Why?”

“Because. I’m like you-I can’t figure out why he did it. I looked through his papers, Jim. If he was dying of disease, he didn’t know it. He had money in the bank; all his bills were paid, all his workman’s comp up-to-date. He’d sent his chef and some of the long-term employees Christmas bonuses, the rest of them Harry and David fruit boxes. There’s just no reason for what he did.”

“Maybe he was lonely,” Dan said, who had been listening and looked relieved, probably because the conversation had taken a turn away from him.

Lonely. There was that word again. Kate set her teeth and drank club soda. She wondered what a shot of scotch, neat, would do to firm up her backbone, and was immediately appalled that such a thought would come within thinking distance of her teetotaling brain. Just another example of how keeping bad company can decay your moral fiber, she told herself.

Jim saw her stiffen and wondered who’d shoved what poker up her spine. Lucky for him that he wasn’t interested in easy. He wished he could have a beer. He wished he could have several. He wished he could take Kate Shugak to bed and not leave it for the foreseeable future.

Christie, taking a break, was standing next to Dan, who had his arm around her. Her bright blue eyes were watching as she listened. “Maybe Mr. Letourneau was just tired.”

“He didn’t have any business being tired,” Kate said crossly. “He was only sixty something. For a Park rat, that’s practically the prime of life. At sixty Park rats are just getting started. They quit jobs and go back to school, they go into business, they get married and start family, they-”

Dan snorted. “Right. John Letourneau, married, with children. That would have happened.”

Jim said to Kate in a quiet voice, “What?”

She stared at their reflection in the mirror at the back of the bar. “I just thought-”

“What did you just think?”

“I-nothing.” She shook her head. “No. Nothing.”

“You sure?” Their eyes met in the mirror. “You looked like you were having an epiphany there for a second.”

She smiled, a little rueful, but her smiles were rare in his direction and he’d take what he could get. “A crazy idea, nothing worth saying out loud.” She raised her glass and drank. “So, Christie, how are you liking the Park?”

Christie gave Dan a long, sultry look. “I’m liking what I’ve found here.”

Dan actually quivered all over. With difficulty, Kate refrained from rolling her eyes. Kick me, hit me, beat me; I’ll love you anyway and maybe even because of it. What was it with guys and the stick-and-carrot treatment? Christie had been all over Pete Heiman at the potlatch, and the Bush telegraph being what it was, Kate couldn’t believe Dan hadn’t heard about it. What did Dan think all that action over at Dandy’s and Pete’s tables was about? Men. Were they blind, or was it just that they couldn’t see?

Whatever. It wasn’t any of her business, thank god. Kate got a refill and enticed Bernie into a long, detailed discussion on the possibilities of Niniltna bringing home the state’s Class C men’s varsity basketball championship. Seldovia was this year’s favorite, with Chuathbaluk a close second, but Bernie was confident his team would pull it out.

Basketball, now there was a game men could play.

And ought to stick to.

When she left the Roadhouse an hour later, the sun had set behind the clouds and it was beginning to snow again, the remnants of the storm that had been coming off the Gulf in fits and starts since the day after they had found Dina and Ruthe.

Kate loved falling snow. She loved the look of it, light, powdery flakes that seemed to vanish as they floated gracefully to the ground. She loved the feel of it, the wet, cool shock as it touched the skin of her upturned face. She loved the way it seemed to displace sound. No airplane ever seemed so loud in the falling snow, no boat, truck, or snow machine. Falling snow toned a shout down to a murmur and then absorbed the murmur, imposing its own sweet, silent hush on a noisy world.

She stood motionless next to the snow machine, her face turned to the sky, until Mutt nudged her hand in a purposeful manner. She sighed and mounted. Mutt leapt up behind her and gave her an encouraging look. “You have no soul,” Kate told her as she started the engine.

Jim was going to rent one of Bernie’s cabins for the night. Kate had given it some thought but then decided to head back to Bobby’s, snow or no snow. Not that she didn’t trust herself, but she’d feel better with twenty-seven miles between her and the trooper.

There wasn’t much traffic-a couple of other snow machines and a dogsled going in the other direction, but the rest of the road was theirs. Snowflakes made white streaks in the headlights. A pair of eyes flashed out at them from beneath the heavily frosted skirts of a spruce tree. An arctic hare bounded across the road, giving Kate just enough time to let up on the gas without sending Mutt over her shoulder and jackknifing the trailer.

They came to a stop just a few feet short of the turnoff to Camp Teddy.

She meditated for a few moments, looking at the narrow trail that snaked up the hill to Dina and Ruthe’s aerie. “We’ll just be a few minutes,” she said to Mutt.

Mutt gave the impression that she was prepared to put up with the detour, for a price to be negotiated later.

It amazed her how normal the inside of the cabin looked. There ought at least to be the scorched outline of two bodies beneath the coffee table.