“Don’t they have to be if you’re in the military? Isn’t that standard procedure?”
“We don’t know that he was.”
“Bobby thinks he was.” She thought about the five women Dandy had found, and frowned into her drink. There was something about it, something about all five of the women, something she couldn’t put her finger on.
Bobby and Dinah came back to the table then, Bobby roaring up in his chair and skidding to a halt that rose him up on one wheel. Dinah squealed and he kissed her, putting those patented Clark moves on her like she wasn’t his wife.
“Jesus,” Jim muttered, “take it outside.”
Kate looked at him with such open-mouthed surprise that he had to laugh, albeit a little painfully. It was difficult to watch Bobby manhandle Dinah in precisely the way he’d like to manhandle Kate.
Bobby came up for air and dove into his beer, surfacing with a loud, satisfied smack of his lips. “Damn, this was a good idea. Bernie!” he bellowed. “More beer!”
From that point on there was a mutual unspoken agreement that no serious business would be discussed, no Dreyer, no Jeffrey, no Jane, no abusive husbands or dope-dealing video renters or arsonous murderers. There was flirting, between Bobby and Dinah and between Jim and Dinah and between Bobby and Kate. There might even have been a little between Kate and Jim. The stories started tall and got taller. Dinah danced with Bobby again, and then Jim, and then Old Sam, who had patented a kind of schottische-rhumba combination that was the dread of every woman in the Park.
After a while it got crowded enough that Bernie missed a signal for another round and Kate went to the bar. Bernie was busy filling a tray, and while she was waiting she said hello to the man glowering into a glass of beer.
He nodded, a single, straight-up-and-down movement, his ill humor making his black face look like a thunderhead, ready to shoot lightning at any moment. “Ms. Shugak.”
“Didn’t see you come in,” she said. She thought about asking him to join their table. She thought better of it.
“Robert did.”
Ah. If so, Bobby had not mentioned it to the rest of them, which told its own story. She looked down the bar and caught Bernie’s eye. He held up one finger, made a circular motion, raised his eyebrows. She nodded.
“You appear to have some influence with my brother,” Jeffrey said stiffly.
Hating to ask favors of an inferior, Kate thought. “Nobody has influence on Bobby Clark,” she said. “He’s his own man. He does what he wants, when he wants.”
She could tell he was resisting the impulse to glare. “Nevertheless,” he said. “I’d appreciate it if you’d tell him you think it’s a good idea to see his father alive one last time.”
“I don’t know that it is,” Kate said.
This time he didn’t resist. “He’s his father. He wants to see his second son before he dies. That can’t be too hard even for you to understand.”
It was the “even for you” that did it. “You hate it that he’s happy, don’t you,” she said, looking at him as if she were peering through a microscope. “You could have handled it better if he were broke, hungry, maybe homeless. Instead he’s got a home and a wife – ”
He snorted.
“ – and a child, and a life. Your father made Tennessee so unliveable for him that he escaped into the army, and war, to get away from it. Just out of curiosity, did you know he’d left both legs in Vietnam before you came? Did your father know?
Did either of you bother to find out where he went and what he did when he left you?“
“He ran away.”
“Which at this point only confirms my already high opinion of his intelligence,” Kate said, and watched with interest as his face flushed red enough to be seen even given the already dark color of his skin and the dim light of the bar.
Fortunately, Bernie finally scooted down the counter to toss her a package of beef jerky. He felt the tension between her and Jeffrey Clark and gave her a quizzical look.
Kate tossed the jerky back. “Mutt’s over at Auntie Vi’s with Katya and Johnny,” she said. “But thanks.”
Bernie gave Jeffrey Clark one last look, decided it would be unwise to meddle with a volcano that close to eruption, and busied himself with filling glasses. “How’s the hunt going?”
She gave him a long, considering look, and gave a nonanswer. “We’re taking the night off.”
“Oh. Ah. Well. Here you go.” He shoved the tray at her and answered a call for another round at the opposite end of the bar, a look of barely suppressed relief on his face.
She delivered the drinks and stood for a moment, indecisive. “What, you’re waiting for a fucking invitation!” Bobby roared.
She jerked her head. “Gotta flush,” she said, but when she got to the back of the room she ignored the door into the rest room and went out onto the back porch instead. A set of stairs led down into the rest of Bernie’s domain.
There were two neat rows of cabins, each big enough for a queen-sized bed and a bathroom, which could not, contrary to rumor, be rented by the hour. There were two covered picnic areas with brick barbecues, and tables and benches made of logs sawn in half. A neatly gravelled trail led through a stand of birch trees to a two-story house built of imported cedar, fronted with a large deck held down by a full suite of wrought-iron lawn furniture and an enormous gas grill. Kate went up a wide stair-case laden with deep, square flower boxes at tastefully interspersed points and knocked gently on the French double doors. After a few moments they opened. “Hello, Kate.” “Hi, Enid. Could I talk to you for a few minutes?”
11
Enid Elliot Koslowski was a Park rat, and a daughter and a granddaughter of more Park rats who were all now either working on the TransAlaska Pipeline or in Prudhoe Bay, or in the Pioneer Home in Anchorage, eating Doritos and watching Jerry Springer on cable. She was as white as you could get without bleach, her forebears having determined early on to retain racial purity insofar as that did not preclude amicable trading relations with the Alaska Natives who made up the majority of the customers who came into the general store.
The general store had been built by her grandfather, a Canathan of Scots descent whose ancestors had emigrated to America fleeing from the heavy hand of British tyranny. Her grandfather emigrated to Alaska fleeing what he perceived to be the Frenchizization (his word) of the Canathan nation. “At least in Alaska,” he opined famously, or infamously depending on the race of the listener, “a white man can be white.”
He brought his wife with him, who quietly expired giving him his second son, who died shortly thereafter. He sent his one remaining son Outside to school, who returned eventually with a degree in history and an acceptably white wife. They had one child, Enid.
The store provided the Elliotts with a reasonably good living until it burned down one spring day in 1970. Enid’s father, who had never cared much for living in the Bush, put the property up for sale and moved to Anchorage. There were no takers until Bernie Koslowski, fleeing the repercussions of burning his draft card on the steps of the U.S. Capitol that same year, came to the Park with a fistful of cash (the provenance of which no sensible Park rat inquired after) looking for a place to build a bar.
Enid flew into the Park to close the deal for her father. She didn’t like living in Anchorage, and Bernie, if a draft-dodger, was white, thereby gaining her father’s approval, so she married him. They had three children and appeared reasonably content.
Kate, however, knew a little about what went on beneath that placid Koslowski surface. Bernie wasn’t a Cassanova on the order of Jim or Dandy but he did have an eye for the ladies, and there had been the occasional foray over the fence. He blithely imagined Enid knew nothing of these extramarital activities, but Kate had good cause to know that Enid was not as clueless as she made herself appear. Bernie was a good provider and a good father, though, and Enid had no wish to tend bar herself. She wasn’t the first wife Kate had met who had decided to turn a blind eye to her husband’s extracurricular activities. Didn’t mean she liked it, though.