A Grave Denied

“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 ski

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 gri

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 begi

“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 Joh

Kate held out an arm, and Joh

Her eyes filled with tears. There was nothing she could say that would express the fullness of her heart. Joh

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.

Kate held up a hand for silence. She got it, eventually. She looked around for her glass and Joh

“No,” she said, and raised the pop can like it was a crystal chalice filled with only the best champagne.

“Here’s to you.”

Sunday,June 1

I don’t believe this house we’ve got, this is nicer than Mom’s house in Anchorage, it’s as nice as Dad’s house on Westchester Lagoon. Everything is so new, I’m afraid to touch anything. Kate says that’s what a house is for, to live in, and that dirt happens and she’s bound to track in as much or more than me. And I have my own room, and there is an indoor toilet and Kate says maybe we’ll even get a hot water heater and be able to have showers!

I know Kate’s a little sad still about the cabin being gone. I mean, her father built it and she was born in it, so I can understand. But the new house is so cool, and the way it got built is even cooler. Ms. Doogan said it was positively Amish.

Van is living with Mr. and Mrs. Mike. She says it seems kind of fu

Van says they talk at the Mikes, and you can play music and make as much noise as you want, A

Jim hasn’t been around much lately, but we heard that Virgil Hagberg pled guilty to all charges. Auntie Vi says the stuffing went out of him when Telma was put into care, whatever that means. Hard to feel sorry for him. I mean, he killed two people and he would have killed Kate if we hadn’t shown up in time. And me, when he burned down the cabin. And Mutt. Still, it’s sad. Those poor dead babies. Mrs. Hagberg must really be crazy.

I’ve been reading up on the corvis family of birds, magpies, crows, jays, and ravens. I was having a hard time dealing with what they did to Mr. Mike’s son. I know it’s just nature but it was really ugly. I told Ruthe about it and she gave me a couple of books and I’ve been reading them. This Bernd Heinrich guy has spent a whole lot of time with birds, I’ll say that much for him.

I think I saw a wolverine the other day. I didn’t tell Kate because she hates them, which is kind of fu