A Grave Denied

The next thing she knew she was on her feet and moving forward.

“No,” she said out loud, and she was at the door.

“Don’t do this,” she said, and the door, already open, swung wide.

“Stop right now, you idiot!” she screamed, and she was inside.

Monday, May 5

It’s late, almost midnight here at the mine camp. I let the fire burn low so it’s just coals. The stars are out but very faint. Pretty soon, with the sun up all the time, I won’t be able to see them at all.

Van’s asleep across the fire from me, all curled up in her sleeping bag. I wonder what the deal with her folks is. They don’t seem to worry about her a lot, she pretty much comes and goes like she wants. They’re some sort of cousins of her parents, I think. She doesn’t talk about her real parents at all. I asked her where they were and she said they were dead and that’s it. I asked her where she lived before the Park and she said Outside and that was that. I like her, though. Maybe because she doesn’t talk much. She’s different from other girls that way. Except for Kate.

There was a rustle in the bushes a little bit ago and Mutt went off to check it out. She came back without any feathers or fur around her mouth, so I guess whatever it was got away. I saw a bear this evening, a brown, I think. Its skin was all loose, like it hadn’t eaten in a while, but the fur was really long and shiny. I think it was a sow although I didn’t get a close look. I didn’t see any cubs. She was eating horsetail. Ick. Kate told me bears will eat anything when they first wake up from hibernation, they’re hungry and there’s no salmon up the creeks or any berries on the bushes yet. Dad told me he shot a bear once that had an unopened can of tuna fish in its gut. And Ruthe told me that male bears will eat bear cubs if the female bear isn’t watching. I guess protein is protein. Ruthe told me bears are different in different places in Alaska. Like salmon don’t get all the way up the rivers and creeks in Denali Park and so the bears there eat mostly plants, with every now and then a marmot to supplement the fat they need. Plus maybe an occasional tourist, Ruthe said, although I think she was joking. I think.

I wonder what it’s like to sleep a winter away. I wonder if you dream when you do. If I was still stuck in Arizona with Gram, I wouldn’t mind sleeping the year away.

I won’t go back. I don’t care what anyone does or says. I won’t go back.

I didn’t tell Kate about the bear.

She didn’t make me go back with her. She wasn’t mad, either. Instead we talked about how the dead guy got in the glacier. She went all over the Park today talking to people about him.

I like the way she talked to me, like I was a grown-up, too. I almost am.

Kate’s thirty-five. Twenty-one years older than me. Sometimes it doesn’t seem like that much.

7

It could be two totally different things,“ Jim said, handing Kate a mug of coffee. She wasn’t cold. She didn’t understand why she was shivering so violently that the coffee threatened to spill over the rim. Reaction, she thought, clinging to the thought, and clamped her teeth together so they wouldn’t chatter.

“We could have a firebug loose in the Park,” Jim said.

She managed to control the shivering enough to sip at the coffee. Made by A

“We could be looking at someone going around starting fires for kicks,” Jim said.

Kate, wrapped in a blanket and ensconced in her red pickup with the engine ru

It was seven o’clock according to the digital readout on the dash, and the light of the newly risen sun was merciless. The cabin wasn’t much more than a crumpled, smoking ruin. With difficulty, Kate said, “My father built that cabin when he homesteaded this land.”

“You could have been inside it when they torched it,” Jim said.

“He brought my mother to that cabin when they were married,” she said. Her voice was husky from the scar to begin with, and the smoke hadn’t helped.

“Joh

“They lived their whole married life in it. I was born in it. I’ve lived most of my life in it.”

“Don’t you get it!” he bellowed, grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking her, hard. The coffee went everywhere, unregarded. “If you’d been sleeping inside when they torched it, you’d be dead!” He stared at her, furious, and then he kissed her, hard, his hand at the back of her head so she couldn’t move. Faced with two hundred-plus pounds of thoroughly pissed off male, she was smart enough not to try. Besides, she wasn’t sure she was capable of forming a fist.

Billy Mike raised an eyebrow.

“Don’t look,” his wife chided.

“Like hell,” Bobby said, and then gave in to the insistent tug of Dinah’s hand.

The four of them formed a semicircle, drinking coffee to ward off the morning chill and eating chunks of heavily buttered bread fresh out of the oven, also made and brought by A

“They can stay with us,” Bobby said, looking at Dinah.

“Sure, if they will,” she said. “They won’t. Kate for sure won’t.

Joh

“Kate said he was camping out with a friend overnight. He’s okay.” Bobby looked at the pile of rubble, embers glowing red. “Or he will be until he sees this. Probably melted all his Aero-smith CDs. Darn.”

Dinah carefully avoided A

“We could get her a trailer, or a camper,” Billy said. “Maybe an RV.” He thought. “Ke

“Sounds like it might be a plan,” Bobby said, thinking it over. “How’s the road?” He was referring to the gravel road leading into the Park. It was graded twice a year, once in the spring and once in the fall, and the rest of the year left to fend for itself. In spring, it was death on the transaxel.

Billy winced. “They haven’t graded it yet. They want to wait until they’re sure it won’t snow again.”

Bobby snorted. “So basically we’re waiting until Memorial Day, like usual. Well, hell. I guess we could do the convoy thing, have a truck with a come-along on it before and another behind.”

Billy nodded. “That’d probably work.”

“Sounds like a good idea,” Dinah said. “But ask Kate first.” She sneaked a glance over her shoulder. Ah. Things had regressed from kissing back to yelling.

“How’d you do this?” Jim said, grabbing a wrist and forcing her hand from her sleeve, to reveal what seemed to his horrified eyes like third-degree burns on the back. Blisters had already formed.

Kate mumbled something.

“What?” Jim said, managing to infuse the single word with enough menace to back down George Foreman.

Her wide mouth set in a mutinous line. “The cabin wasn’t all burned down when I got here. I went inside to get some things.”