A Grave Denied

“Not much meat on the man,” Kate observed.

“Not much incentive for a hungry bear,” Dinah agreed. “Damn it.”

“Want me to get rid of him?”

Dinah eyed her. “And how would you do that?”

Kate shrugged. “I’d figure it out.” She saw Dinah’s expression and choked on a piece of fry bread. “I didn’t mean I’d kill him,” she said, laughing out loud.

“What did you mean?”

“I don’t know. Sneak up on him one dark night, throw a sack over his head, and trundle him out to the airstrip, where I’d have George standing by ready to fly his ass to Anchorage and dump it on the first plane south.”

Dinah examined Kate carefully. It wasn’t braggadocio she saw on her friend’s face, it was sincerity and determination. “I believe you would.”

“Say the word.”

“You tempt me greatly,” she said, and sighed again, wistful. “But no.” She looked over her shoulder at their two men, one of whom was instructing the other in the fine art of pirating a little radio wave for the broadcast of Park Air. “There’s a lot Bobby’s been waiting to say to his family. I think he needs to.”

Kate was surprised. “You sending him home?”

“This is his home,” Dinah said firmly. “Katya and I are his home. But we are who our parents make us. His father’s dying. If he doesn’t say good-bye…” She let her voice trail off.

“Will he go?”

“He says not.” Dinah looked at her husband.

“Want me to take Katya and Joh

Dinah shook her head. “No, I’ve already said all I’m going to.” She gave a wan smile. “The rest is up to him.” She shook herself. “Enough of that. How the hell was your day, dear?”

Before Kate could play along, there was a knock at the screen door and they looked up to see Jim Chopin standing there.

“Hey, Jim,” Dinah said. She sounded less than friendly, which surprised Kate, because Dinah, while never having numbered among the legions of Jim’s lovers, was not immune to his manifest charms, either.

“Hey, yourself.” He looked at Kate.

Kate met his eyes without a trace of her usual discouraging scowl.

He looked confused, and then alarmed.

“Chopper Jim Chopin, long time no see,” Bobby said. “Must be all of twelve hours.”

Maybe it was the lower decibel level, maybe he didn’t want to see what was on Kate’s face, but Jim actually looked away from Kate. He frowned down at Bobby. “Who died?”

“My father,” Bobby replied. “Or the son of a bitch is about to.”

It was a toss-up who was more surprised at the words, Bobby or any of the rest of them.

“Screw it,” he said. “Let’s get drunk and go dancing.”

They commandeered the big round table in the back corner, Bobby and Dinah and Jim and Kate. Katya had been dropped off with Auntie Vi, who had taken one look at Bobby and made plans for keeping the baby overnight, overriding all obligatory, if feeble, parental objections. Joh

Bernie brought over a round, took the temperature of the table, and departed at speed with the barest minimum allowable bonhomie.

“Drink up,” Bobby said, and upended a bottle of Alaskan Amber like it was the last bottle in the last case Bernie had in stock.

Jim had left his cap, badge, and sidearm in his vehicle, which indicated that alcohol would be involved in whatever happened for the rest of the evening. He had a beer and a shot. He was out before Bobby was. Dinah was sipping at a double shot of Gran Marnier, warmed, in a snifter. Kate brooded over a sparkling water over ice, with lime.

The mood was not what you could call convivial.

As one might expect on a Friday night after breakup and before fishing season, the Roadhouse was jammed to the rafters. A gang of climbers stumbled in unshaven and smelly from a successful summit of Big Bump, and Bernie poured out Middle Fingers for all, the downing of which was accompanied by chanting and cheers from everyone else in the bar. Park rats admired insanity so long as it was sincere, and there was nothing more insane or sincere than the ambition of every mountain climber on the North American continent to summit the technically unchallenging but relatively high Angqaq Peak. Pastor Bill of the Jesus Loves You New Gospel Little Chapel in the Park and his congregation of four, down two since the wife of one had run off with the husband of another the year before, were singing hymns in the back room, although a rhythmic chinking sound accompanied by zither music indicated that they might be sharing space with the belly dancers that practiced at the Roadhouse once a month.

Jimmy Buffett was wasting away again in Margaritaville on the jukebox. “Come on, babe,” Bobby said to Dinah. “Let’s dance.” He pulled her into his lap and rolled out into the middle of the floor, where they wove a complicated little spiral of wheels and feet to a calypso beat.

“This could be our first date,” Jim said.

Kate closed her eyes and shook her head.

“A double date,” he said. “We can hang out without you getting all stressed that I’m going to jump your bones.”

Kate drank water.

“I am, of course, but that comes later. Me, too.”

“Jim,” Kate said.

“Kate,” Jim said, and gri

She couldn’t stop herself. She laughed.

“That’s better,” he said, and waved over another round. When Bernie had come and gone he said, “I haven’t seen you since Tuesday. I see you’re still living and uncharred, which I find to be a good thing. What have you got on Dreyer?”

“Nothing.”

He looked skeptical. “Nothing?”

“Nothing.” She shook her head and rolled the ice-filled glass back and forth across her forehead. “Jim, I was born and raised in this Park. I’ve howdied, as they say, with just about everyone who has lived or is living in it. I’m related by blood to at least a third of them, by marriage to at least another third, and the last third owes me one way or another. People talk to me because they know me and because they know I’ve been around forever.”

“You got diddly.”

“In the past three days, I’ve talked to anyone who ever said hi to Len Dreyer going into the post office, anyone who ever stood in line behind him at the Niniltna General Store, anyone who ever bumped into him in this bar. He did some kind of work for just about all of them, fixed roofs, laid floors, dug foundations, fixed boats, cars, snow machines, four-wheelers, hair dryers, irons, blenders, Skilsaws, and one 1994 Harley-Davidson two-tone blue and silver Fat Boy with twenty-four thousand miles on it that is apparently driving Archie Spring either into his second childhood or the sunset, depending on whether you talk to him or his wife.”

“An all-purpose, super-duper utility handyman.”

“With a work ethic that wouldn’t quit. His mother must have been frightened by a slacker when she was pregnant. He always showed up when he said he would, he always stayed on the job till it was done, and he always got it right the first time.”

“He could have gotten rich in a town like Anchorage.”

“Why didn’t he, then?” she said, frustrated. “And why didn’t he live higher on the hog in the Park?”

“How did he live?”

“You know his cabin burned down?” He nodded, and she pulled out a photo and shoved it at him. “Got that from the Association files, you know that survey they did of every building in the Park and its history back when the ANCSA money started coming in?”

“Sort of like a Doomsday Book for the Park,” he said, nodding.

“Yeah. Emaa wanted a starting place, an inventory for when she went looking for federal money to build housing.”

They bent their heads over the photo. It showed a tumbledown shack made of weathered boards, with a roof that looked like it was about to slide in one direction and an outhouse in the background that looked like it was going to crumble in another.