A Grave Denied

“Bo

Kate digested this for a moment. “Have you actually seen this alleged parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme growing?”

“No, but they gave me some, and a couple of recipes.” Bobby assumed a virtuous expression. “Really, Kate, I don’t think you should go around assuming the worst of people. Just because – ” And then he had to duck when she threw a pillow at him.

“Besides,” he said, recovering his dignity, as well as rolling strategically out of range, “if Dreyer was going to blackmail them, he’d think of something much better.”

“Something better than growing marijuana?”

“Yeah,” Bobby said, and started laughing. “They’re gay, Kate.”

“Gay?”

“Gay,” Bobby said, nodding, a broad grin on his face. “Jesus Christ, how naive are you, Shugak? They’re a couple.”

“A couple?”

He lay back in his chair, helpless with laughter. Dinah was laughing, too. Even Katya was getting in on the act.

“Yeah, yeah, so my gaydar isn’t as good as some other people’s,” Kate said when the laughter finally died down to a couple of hiccups and the odd tear.

“Jesus, you don’t need gaydar when they’re practically necking right in front of you,” Bobby said. He rubbed the heel of his hand across his face. “Man, I haven’t laughed like that in I don’t know how long. Thanks, Kate.”

“Anytime,” Kate said dryly.

“Seen Jim lately?” Dinah said.

Kate’s face went opaque. “He came to the hospital to clear up some questions about the case.”

“Oh.” Something going on there, Dinah thought, and exchanged a look with her husband. Turning back she caught a very small, very odd smile on Kate’s face. She would have pursued it to its source, but Kate was talking again. “So Jeffrey went home.”

“Yes, finally, the prick did go home,” Bobby said.

“Alone,” Kate said.

“I don’t believe what I’m hearing,” Bobby said. “You actually think I should have gone with him?”

“Oh, man.” Kate sighed and shook her head. She got to her feet and went to the window, looking at the Quilaks for inspiration. She stretched a little, wincing as new skin rubbed against her shirt. “I ever tell you how Emaa died?”

She heard the whisper of rubber tires as he wheeled up next to her. “No.”

“It was in the middle of AFN. She wasn’t feeling well, kept rubbing her left arm. For crissake, I trained as an EMT when I worked in Anchorage, I even went on a few runs. I know the signs, but I didn’t see them on my grandmother.” She closed her eyes. “She was supposed to make a speech on subsistence in front of the whole convention, in front of Alaska Natives from Metlakada to Point Lay. Hundreds of people in the room, and she was such a giant, they all wanted to hear what she had to say. It would define the issue for a lot of diem, they’d go home quoting her.”

She took a deep breath. “So she’s feeling lousy, and she hands it off to me.” She looked down at him, her smile wavering. “Just walks away, and leaves me standing there with no speech and no track record and no profile to speak of, not compared to hers.”

She was wrong about that last, but Bobby held his peace.

“So I told them some yarn about shooting a moose in my front yard that year. They held still for it, they even put their hands together for it.”

Bobby somehow managed to hide his amazement.

“Right after, a woman I know, she’s-well.” Kate gave up on trying to describe Cindy Sovalik. “Someone I met when I was doing that job for Jack in Prudhoe Bay. She said I should check on Emaa. Well, that was what she meant, anyway. So I did.”

She took a long, shaky breath. “I got the maid to let me into her hotel room, and she was just lying there, kind of frowning. And already cool to the touch.”

She shoved her hands in her pockets and turned to look at Bobby. “She handed off to me, did it in public so everyone could see that she expected me to take up where she left off, and then marched off to die.”

There followed a bleak silence, broken when Bobby cleared his throat. “I don’t see that you could have done anything but what you did.”

“No.” A ghost of a laugh. “Emaa called the shots in her death, the same way she called the shots in her life.”

“Then I don’t get it,” Bobby said. “My father’s calling the shots here, too.”

“You’re letting him.”

He looked at her, angry. “I’m not letting him dictate to me, if that’s what you mean.”

“Sure you are. You let him push you out of your own home, let him push you into the army, let him push you all the way to Vietnam. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that you chose to rebuild your life in Alaska, about as far away from Te

“But he wants me to come home.”

“Don’t go home for him. Go home for yourself. He helped make you what you are, Bobby, like it or not. Go home and say good-bye.” She paused, and said slowly, “I didn’t get the chance to say good-bye to Emaa. I’ll regret it for the rest of my life.”

There was another long silence. From her seat on the couch, cradling a sleeping Katya, Dinah looked from one stubborn face to the other, biding her time.

“I just hate the thought of doing anything Jeffie wants me to,” Bobby said at last.

And there it was. “This is a guy who’s never been out of the state of Te

Bobby snorted. “I’d be surprised if he’s ever been fifty miles from his own front doorstep.”

“Until now,” Dinah said. “He was here, though. Humbling himself to you, begging you to come home.”

“Ordering,” Bobby said, “ordering. There’s a difference.”

“Whatever it sounded like, he was begging. His father, your father is dying. He could even be dead by now.”

There was a brief silence. Finally Bobby said, “Dad always did like him best.”

Relieved, Dinah laughed a little harder than the jest deserved.

Bobby looked at her. “So you think I ought to go home, too?”

Dinah chose her words carefully, knowing they would live to haunt her marriage if she got them wrong. “I want a life with you, Bobby, a long one. You brought a lot of baggage with you. I don’t care, it’s who you are.” She smiled a little. “It’s part of why I love you. But I also think it’s time to get rid of some of it, so it doesn’t weigh us down.”

“Why, Dinah,” Bobby said, “that’s fucking poetry.”

Dinah reddened. “I mean it, Clark.”

Bobby, sober now, said, “I know you do, Dinah.” He rolled over to her and lifted both her and the baby into his lap.

Kate walked past them. “You’ll think about it?” she heard Dinah say.

“No,” Bobby said, jaw coming out. “I’ll go. If I think about it, I won’t.”

20

The morning Bobby left, Dinah decided she needed something to occupy her time, otherwise she’d sit around waiting for Bobby to call and say they were moving back to Nut-bush, Te

She looked down at her daughter, a hot heavy sprawl in her arms, a little milky drool coming from one corner of her mouth. Love pierced her like a knife. If anyone in Nutbush, Te

“What would Katya’s mother do?” she said out loud. Katya stirred, and Dinah gathered in her child’s rambling limbs and tucked her into her own bed. Then she went for a pad and paper and started making a list. She liked making lists as much as Kate Shugak, and this one was a list Kate would get behind.