Dana Stabenow - A Grave Denied

Bernie and Enid Koslowski were mudding and taping one wall, working together smoothly, like a team who had done this before. On the opposite wall two older women were doing the same thing, one climbing a ladder to work on the open area above the living room, the other holding the ladder. Kate took a second look, unable to believe her first. “Cindy? Olga?”

Olga Shapsnikoff and Cindy Sovalik paid her no attention. “Old woman, you are not using enough mud on that seam,” Olga said.

From the top of the ladder Cindy Sovalik said, “Old woman, how can I put enough mud on the seam when this ladder shakes like there is an earthquake underfoot?”

Old Sam Dementieff was on the roof, skipping nimbly from rafter to rafter, accompanied by the rat-a-tat of a staple gun. Kate handed up a can of pop. “I can’t believe this,” she told him. “I just-I can’t-” Speech failed her.

He grinned down at her, sweat dripping from his nose. “Believe it,” he said.

And if Kate had been worried as to how to fill up all this achingly empty new space, her fears would have been allayed by the appearance of two beds and a couch big enough to fill up the living room all by itself and a dining table with four chairs handcarved from some kind of pine. There were pillows and sets of sheets to fit both beds, with blankets to spare, and kitchen utensils, and Costco packs of Ivory soap and toilet paper and paper towels. Keith and Oscar brought her a flat full of herb starters. “It’s not for the house exactly,” Oscar said, a little shy.

“They’re exactly right,” Kate told him.

“Here,” Old Sam growled, shoving a book at her, and damning the duo with a suspicious glare. “Get your library kick-started.”

Kate had to blink several times before she could focus on the page she opened at random. “‘There’s the picture-and it isn’t exaggerated,” “ she read.

We find them everywhere. Slowly, but surely, our male citizenry is becoming emasculated to the point of utter helplessness. Sliding along, content in their weakness, glorying in their inability to do things. Proud of the fact that they’ve never been taught to use their hands-and blind also, to the fact that they know mighty little about using their heads.

A laugh was surprised out of her, and she looked at the cover. “Modern Gunsmithing” she said. It had been published in 1933. She looked up at Old Sam, whose name was written on the flyleaf in round, careful boyish letters. “Thank you, Uncle.”

He nodded, satisfied, and stumped off.

But it was the gift from the four aunties that rendered Kate speechless. It was a handmade quilt embroidered and appliqued with Alaskan wildflowers, so colorfully and painstakingly made that they were even more glorious than the real thing. It was a solid piece of work, thick and soft and heavy.

“You have a son now,” Auntie Balasha said.

“So you get a quilt,” Auntie Joy said.

“You sleep warm under it,” Auntie Edna said.

“You watch that boy,” Auntie Vi said, “he get too skinny, you send him to me, I fatten him up.”

The expression on Kate’s face must have been enough, because they, too, stumped away with satisfied expressions.

Dinah said softly, “Everyone I talked to wanted to help, Kate. The people who couldn’t make it to the house-raising contributed materials or phone minutes or ran around for me in Anchorage or sent gifts. This wasn’t just the Park, this was pretty damn near the whole state. Brandan says hi, by the way. So does Andy Pence.” She smiled a little. “Bobby may never speak to me again, however. He’s so pissed he missed this.”

“He’s okay?”

Dinah nodded. “He’s okay. He’s staying for the funeral at Jeffrey’s request, but he’ll be back on Sunday.”

Kate smiled at her. “Is he glad he went?”

“Yeah. It was tough, he said, but his father was glad to see him, and his mother was glad because his father was glad.” She grinned. “He showed them a picture of me and Dinah, and Jeffrey was afraid it was going to push the dad into the great beyond then and there.”

Kate laughed. “Bring him out right away so I can show him the new house.”

Dinah’s eyes glinted. “Well, maybe not right away.”

By midnight it was done, right down to the plumbing and the wiring. Kate wandered around the inside, half dazed. The heavy wooden door fit solidly into its frame, weather-stripped within an inch of its life and snug behind a glass storm door. There were wall plates over the light switches and the electrical outlets. There were toilets in the bathrooms. There was a refrigerator and a stove in the kitchen, both propane-powered. A brand new woodstove big enough to heat the whole house stood in one corner of the living room, with pipe ascending to the ceiling and emerging outside in a capped chimney.

Oh, she still had to paint, and get a fuel tank for the furnace, and they’d left the choice and installation of floor covering up to her, but the windows were all in and they opened with little cranks and they had screens on them, even up in the loft. There was a deck-a deck, she couldn’t believe it.

The whole house smelled sweetly of cedar. In the morning, light would pour into the house from the windows that started at the floor and ended just beneath the eaves. Through them, the Quilak Mountains curved south and diminished into the west, and she could almost imagine that she could see a blue shine off the surface of Prince William Sound. She would wake up to that view every morning of her life.

She took a deep breath, blinked back tears, and walked out the door of the kitchen onto the deck and up to the brand-new railing, looking at the people sprawled around her front yard.

Jim Chopin was squatting at the edge of the crowd over a toolbox, wiping tools with an oily rag and stowing them away. He was responsible for some of the kitchen; she had seen him working in it. He felt her gaze and looked up.

She held it for a moment, and then let her eyes drop down over his body. She raised them again just as slowly, loitering here and there, a long, lingering, and from the expression on his face, almost palpable look. She met his eyes again, and smiled, a smile that told him she knew exactly what changes her look had wrought. He flushed right up to the roots of his hair, definitely a first in Park history, slammed the toolbox shut, and took off out of the clearing as if the hounds of hell were at his heels.

She looked back at the rest of them, her relatives, her friends, her fellow Park rats-yes, her family. No less than three barbecues were broiling hamburgers and hot dogs. Folding tables had been set edge to edge with buns and condiments and salads and desserts and a tower of paper plates and a bucket full of plastic flatware. Now that the work was done, tubs of beer packed in ice appeared. Someone was strumming a guitar and a few voices were beginning to sing along.

“Hey,” she said. Nobody heard her. “Hey,” she said, more loudly this time. Heads turned and voices stilled. She felt movement beside her and turned to see Johnny. Vanessa watched both of them through the window.

Kate held out an arm, and Johnny came to stand within its curve. “The kid and I want to say thanks for our new house. Thanks.” She laughed a little and shook her head. “There are no words.”

Her eyes filled with tears. There was nothing she could say that would express the fullness of her heart. Johnny gave her an awkward boy’s hug, and she hugged him right back.

People rose up, one by one, until everyone was on their feet. “Here’s to Kate’s new house,” Billy Mike said.

“Hear, hear,” someone else said.

“Here’s to Kate,” a third person said. There were cheers and whoops and whistles, and a growing, deafening sound of applause that thundered up into the perpetual twilight of an Arctic spring, spreading across the Park to Niniltna and the Step and the foothills and the Quilaks and the coast and the Gulf and- who knew? Perhaps even beyond.