Her braid loosened, and her hair fell free and hid the white bandage on
her temple, and she began to toss her head and throw her long black hair
back and forth. She lunged at a group of dancers, calling to them, and
they lunged and called back. The boy with the eagle feather and the
Nikes caught up with her, and for a while they danced together, Kate
slowing down so that he could keep up. She turned and danced away; he
followed. Another fell into line, a third, and soon all the dancers were
stamping their feet and shaking their hands in a line that snaked around
the floor and doubled back on itself half a dozen times. Kate led the
way, up the floor and down, in and out of the corners, around the tables
and back again.
On the floor, Kate's pulse seemed to beat in time with the beat of the
drums, her breath to come and go with them, her steps dictated by them.
The drums guided her through the dance with a firm hand, taking over her
body and leaving her mind free to grieve.
Abel. She had not thought of him, or had tried not to, in months. Abel,
her uncle-by-choice, her uncle-by-honor, who had died if not by her
hand, then as a result of actions she had put in motion. He had guided
her steps throughout her childhood as the drums guided her steps now,
had taught her everything she knew of woodcraft, of hunting and fishing.
His missing presence was a constant ache at the back of her mind.
Suddenly she saw him, standing at the edge of the crowd, his grizzled
old face grinning at her, his faded blue eyes twinkling, as if to say,
"Well, girl? Ready to do a little poaching with the old man?" He turned
as if to go, and she faltered slightly, and then the beat of the drums
caught her up and swept her away.
She saw Pat and Becky Jorgensen, hand in hand, smiling warmly at her,
their fingers smeared with ink and marked with paper cuts from sorting
their neighbors' mail. The thin, intense figure of Steven Syms stared
over at her with a fanatical expression. He'd been a born-again Baptist
type, Kate remembered, who never went anywhere without a Bible and who
had staged a one-man protest demonstration, with sign, in front of the
Roadhouse when a movement to reform Alaska's twenty-year-old legal
abortion law was quashed in the state legislature. Next to him, Lisa
Getty, blond and blue-eyed, slender and seductive, smiled the smile that
enticed and mocked at the same time. Max Chaney, appropriately enough,
stood on her other side, looking
around with a puzzled expression, so new to the company that he did not
yet understand his presence in it. Other figures appeared dimly, figures
she knew must be the Longstaffs and the Weisses, coming to bid her
farewell.
She strained to see her mother, her father, but it had been too long
since their deaths, and nothing was left of their spirits on earth
except what she carried within her.
The drums began to slow and ease in volume, and Kate's movements slowed
and eased with them. The song ended on a long fade, Kate's dance with a
last, graceful
flight of eagle feather through the air. The music stopped as she came
to a halt before Chief William. She reached for his gnarled, twisted old
hand and, bending forward from the waist, held it for a moment to her
forehead. She returned the finger mask to the Koniag dancer and held
both hands out, palms up and eagle feather lying across them, to the
boy. She said something to him, and he blushed and ducked his head.
Bernie was awed, by the dance, by the spirit it invoked, even in him, a
practicing cynic, the only philosophy a working bartender could hold to
and survive. "That was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my
life," he told Kate when she returned to his side.
Her face was flushed and she was out of breath. She laughed at him, and
then he saw her smile fade and a guarded wariness replace the joy in her
Shugak approaching, and in that moment he remembered something else
about Kate Shugak. She didn't get along with her grandmother.
"Finaa," Kate said, inclining her head stiffly. Her temple gave a
vicious throb.
"Katya," her grandmother said. She gave a regal, dismissing nod in
Bernie's general direction. Bernie, amused, had watched the stout old
woman make her progress through the crowd, smiling at someone, stopping
to shake hands with someone else, holding up a baby and exclaiming over
its beauty, in a manner that reminded him irresistibly of Elizabeth II
of England outside Buckingham Palace. He managed now to remove himself
from her presence without quite bowing and backing away.
"Bernie, wait," Kate said, "I need to talk to you. It's why I came. Can
we go-"
He raised a dismissive hand. "Later."
"Not later, now. Bernie, it's important. I have to talk
"Whatever it is'll keep. I've got a team to psych
up." "I am glad to see you here, dancing with your people," the old
woman said to Kate.
Kate watched Bernie's back moving rapidly in the opposite direction and
swore under her breath. She almost went after him but couldn't quite
bring herself to turn her back on her grandmother and walk away, and
cursed again. "I enjoyed it, emaa," she said out loud. Determined to
give the devil her due, she added, "This potlatch was a good idea."
"It was the right thing to do," her namesake said simply.
"Yes," Kate agreed. "And a good thing, for all of us. Friends," she
added, emphasizing the word, "as well as family."
There fell an awkward silence. At least for Kate it was awkward. The
last time Ekaterina Moonin Shugak might have felt awkward was during the
birth of her thirteenth child, some thirty years previous. Kate doubted
it. Ekaterina Moonin Shugak ruled her family, the Niniltna Tribal
Association, the Park, the Alaska Federation of Natives and much of the
Alaska state legislature with the same firm, unshakable, unfumbling hand
with which she would have ruled Kate, had Kate let her, and she was
never, ever awkward.
Kate cleared her throat. "Well, I came to see someone, emaa. I'd better
get to it."
The old woman delayed her, touching a forefinger to the bandage at her
granddaughter's temple. "You've been hurt."
Kate shrugged away. "It is nothing."
Ekaterina's hand dropped back to her side. "Have you heard from Axenia?"
Kate went on alert. "Yes." "How is she?"
"She's fine, emaa. Jack found her an apartment and a roommate. She's
enjoying her job. And she's enrolled
in an accounting class at the University of Alaska. She sounded very
happy the last time I talked to her."
Kate couldn't help the defensive sound her words took on at the last.
The old woman did not reply, but her silence was immensely eloquent, at
least to Kate. "Well, if that's all, I'd better get going."
"Katya." "What!" Her grandmother looked mildly surprised at her tone,
and Kate was immediately ashamed of herself and as immediately
determined not to show it. "I only wa
nted to say, Katya, that you may
have been right about Axenia."
Kate's jaw dropped slightly, and the old woman pressed her advantage.
"She was unhappy here. If she is happy in the city, perhaps it was good
for her to move there. If she had stayed home, who knows? Your mother
..." Ekaterina didn't finish her sentence.
Kate regarded her with a slowly lightening expression, and unfortunately
Ekaterina chose that moment to add, "Besides, the tribe does not need
weaklings. There are few enough of us left. Those that remain must be
strong."
Kate stiffened. "Axenia demonstrated her strength when she had the
courage to recognize she didn't want to live here. She demonstrated her
determination when she fought your disapproval to move to Anchorage, and
she demonstrated her courage when she moved away from everything and
everyone she knew, to a place with no friends or family."
"She abandoned her culture," Ekaterina snapped back, and those watching
from a discreet distance were struck by the similarity of their faces,
one old, one young, both stubborn.
"Maybe not," Kate said, bristling. "Maybe she took her culture with her,
to pass it on to those who weren't
"No real Aleut-"
"Define Aleut for me, emaa," Kate said in a voice that was almost a
shout. "Are we talking about the Kanuyaq River Aleuts, most of whom are
descended from Ninety-Niners as much as they are Alaskan Indians? Are we
talking about the Kodiak Island Aleuts, who are descended from Russian
promishlyniki as much as they are the Alutiiq? Or are we talking about
our own family, which in only the last four generations includes a
Russian cossack, a Jewish cobbler, a Norwegian fisherman, a Rhode Island
whaler and a Cherokee chief? Axenia is as much one of us as you or I,
emaa. Just because she chooses not to live in the Park doesn't make her
any less an Aleut. Or any more a weakling."
She spun around on one heel and marched off, shoving her way through the
crowd, now engaged in wrapping up the remaining food, breaking down the
tables and clearing the floor for basketball action. She was angry and
wasn't paying attention to where she was going.
"Whoa!" a male voice said when she ran full tilt into someone. Two hands
caught at her arms to steady her.
She looked up, shoving the hair out of her eyes. "Oh. Hi, George. Sorry,
I wasn't watching where I was going."
"No problem." He released her. "You get your Koreans off okay?"
"Yeah, Lottie took them up." He grinned. "She didn't look any too happy
about it, but I made her an offer she couldn't refuse."
Kate halted and stared at him. "Today?" He nodded. "Just a couple hours
ago." "You stop to get permits?"
He looked surprised. "Of course. Dan issued them himself. We stopped on
the Step long enough to check in with Park Service and then I kicked
them out at the base camp."
"How's the weather?" she asked automatically, not really listening to
his reply.
He shrugged. "Looking good for now, but who knows? We're talking Big
Bump here. That mother changes moods the way Princess Di does clothes."
Someone called his name and he turned to answer. "Damn," Kate whispered.
Then all her suspicions were true, and there was nothing she could do
now to stop it all coming out. Someone bumped into her, jostling her out
of her preoccupation. "Damn," she said, more loudly, "damn, damn, damn,
" and shoved her way through the crowd toward the stairwell.
There was a long hall at the bottom of the stairs. She walked all the
way down to the end, stopped in front of the door of the boys' locker
room and banged on it with a clenched fist, venting her anger on the
blank and innocent steel. The door opened and Stevie Kvasnikof's
suspicious face appeared. "No girls allowed," he growled and would have
slammed the door shut if she hadn't smacked her open palm against it and
stiffened her arm.
"I want to talk to Eknaty."
"Eknaty who?" he said, thrusting his jaw forward. "There's no Eknaty in
here."
"Eknaty Kvasnikof your brother, you idiot," she told him. "I know he's
in there, he's the shining hope of Niniltna's second Class C state
championship. Tell him I want to talk to him."
He glowered at her for a moment and then turned to yell. "Coach! Hey,
Coach! Kate Shugak's out here!" There was a chorus of young and rude
male noises.
Bernie shoved past Stevie and closed the door behind him. He stood in
front of her with his hands on his hips. Any lingering, mellowing
effects of the dancing upstairs had dissolved in the cold, bracing
anticipation of competitive testosterone. "What do you want?" he
demanded. "We got a game to play. If you want to talk to me, see me after."
"I don't want to talk to you, I want to talk to Eknaty," Kate said,
patiently for her.
"Same thing. You want to talk to Eknaty, you see me after." He half
turned and paused. "Why do you want to see him, anyway?"
"Max Chaney's been shot." He froze. "What?"
"Max Chaney has been shot. He's dead." He paled. "Like Lisa?"
She raised her eyebrows. "You know about Lisa?" His eyes fell. "Enid
told me." He looked up. "Was he? Was Max Chaney shot like Lisa?"
"It looks like it."
"Jesus." Bernie's eyes closed and he shook his head. "I know," she said.
"We can't go around anymore with our heads in the sand, hoping something
will happen to make this all go away. The killer has killed twice now,
has even had a try at me." She touched the bandage at her temple. His
eyes widened. "You said Eknaty was pretty upset at Lisa's death. If he
was odd jobbing it for Lottie, he may have been there the morning Lisa
got shot. He may have seen something. If I can find the rifle that shot
her ..." Her voice trailed away.
Their eyes met in perfect, if almost shamed, understanding. "All right,"
he said finally. "You can see him. After the game," he said, raising his
hand to stop her when she reached for the door. "And for ten minutes
only. I'm not having you play mind-fuck games with my star guard in the
middle of the goddam state championship. And Kate," he said, raising one
finger and poking it toward her with vicious emphasis, "if that kid's
free-throw percentage falls after tonight, I'll be on you like stink on
shit."
When Kate reentered the gym, the tables and food and signs had
disappeared, the floor had been swept clean, and the dancers had
abandoned the floor for the bleachers,
and were packed in together as tight as a salmon stream in July. The
potlatch had left everyone feeling good, and the prospect of three solid
days of basketball put the cap on everyone's enjoyment.
Of the half dozen teams from around the state, first up in the
tournament's rotation were the Kanuyaq Kings against the Seldovia Sea
Otters. Cheerleaders in letter sweaters and short skirts stamped and
clapped and yelled and worked the crowd into a feeding frenzy. The Kings
took to the floor in blue and gold, the Otters in red and white. The
Kings' center was ha
lf a foot taller but the Otters' center wanted it
more and Seldovia got the tip-off.
"Two points, big team, two points," the Otters' cheerleaders chanted.
"Defense, defense!" the home crowd yelled. The Otters tried too hard and
the guards took the ball down the court without waiting for the rest of
their team to take position. The lay-up rolled around the rim and out of
the basket and was recovered by a King forward who broke and ran with
it. His slam went dunk and the crowd went wild. Galvanized, the Otters
brought the ball back in and down the court, set up a tight man-to-man
offense, worked the ball ,around the key until their center was clear
and fed it to him the way momma feeds strained pears to baby, no