There wasn't much snow-just enough to whiten the ground-and Sess had told him not to expect Santa's Workshop or whatever the people down below tried to make Alaska out to be. This wasn't a postcard. It wasn't the Cascades or the Sierra Nevada. The country around here, in the interior, was about the driest in Alaska, and if they got twelve or fourteen inches of precipitation a year, that was about it. The thing was, the precipitation _stayed.__ There was no meltoff in winter, and in summer, the rains just pooled over the permafrost, which in turn created a vision of paradise for the mosquitoes-and the midges and no-see-ums and all the rest of the winged and fanged world. Marco kept on, studying the snow for sign, trying to read the country the way Sess would. It was warm now, up into the teens, at least, and he unzipped his parka and let the ends of his scarf dangle free. After a while he found himself whistling, a shrill, between-the-teeth rendition of “I Am a Child,” and where had that come from? He'd been fooling around with the guitar again lately-Geoffrey's guitar-and this just might be a tune to pick up on, he was thinking, nothing too complex, a sweet lilting melody floating over the chords, but then the vocal-the vocal might be a stretch. He'd just have to take it down a key or two, that's all.
His mood changed abruptly as he rounded the bend onto Woodchopper Creek. He wasn't whistling now, and he wasn't thinking about guitars either. He'd never been to Bosky's place and didn't know what to expect-beyond trouble, recalcitrance and a shitstorm of lies, excuses and backpedaling from Pan, that is. He pictured him-Pan, Ronnie-with the little lost drawn-up bow of his lips and the tumbling chin and the eyes that always managed to look hurt and put-upon but never stopped assessing you, as if he were rating his own performance moment to moment, Ronnie the thief, Ronnie the backstabber. He steeled himself. Gulped air till his lungs were on fire. And he wasn't walking anymore, but marching, marching like a soldier going into battle, right on up the creek, across the yard and onto the porch, and he was so wrought-up he didn't even notice that Joe Bosky's ski-equipped Cessna 180 with the stripped fuselage and the crudely stenciled _N__-number was nowhere to be seen.
He knocked, and that was ridiculous in itself, because nobody came calling out here, no Mormons or newspaper boys or Avon ladies or neighbors borrowing a cup of sugar. Nobody had ever knocked on this door. Nobody would ever knock on it again, not if the cabin stood a hundred years. A wind settled in the branches overhead, cooled the sweat of his face. “Ronnie!” he called. “Ronnie, you in there?” Nothing. Or was that the sound of movement, of voices? “Ronnie, it's me. It's Marco.”
He was about to push his way in-nobody home, and wouldn't that be a miracle-when the door swung back and Pan, in bare feet and thermals, was standing there gaping at him like a fish on the end of a hook. Pan had been asleep, that was it, a yellow crust beading his eyelashes, hair flattened to one side of his head, advantage Marco. “Oh, hey, man,” he mumbled. “Hey, good to see you.”
From inside, sleep-wearied, the voice of Sky Dog, of _Bruce:__ “Shut the fucking door, will you? What the fuck you doing, Pan?”
Ronnie slouched back into the room, talking over his shoulder. “You want coffee? I was just going to make coffee.”
Marco ducked under the lintel and entered the cabin, shutting the door behind him. It was dark, his pupils clenched round the glare of the snow and the reflective ice of the creek, and for a minute he couldn't see a thing. He could smell, though, and what he smelled was a curious mélange of overcooked meat, bodily stinks, unwashed clothes and soap-the soap and lye Joe Bosky used for tanning his wolf pelts, and there was that smell too, the smell of the skin and the dead stripped-off fur of animals. Ronnie was a ghost at the stove, then the door of the stove swung open and there was the sudden incandescence of the coals and the silhouette of a thin-wristed hand framed there laying fuel on the fire.
“No,” Marco said, “I don't want any coffee. I don't want anything from you except the guns you stole.”
“Hey, Ronnie, man-who is that? Is somebody here? Joe? Joe, is that you?”
“Fuck you, Sky!” Ronnie shouted suddenly, with real vehemence. “Go back to sleep, all right? Shit,” he cursed, slamming the coffeepot down in the direction of the stove, “there's no peace around here, not for a fucking minute!”
Marco stood just inside the door. He wasn't moving. If this was going to get nasty, then let it. He was ready. He'd been ready for a long time now, since that day in the ditch back in California, since _Bruce__ had trashed his things and Ronnie had laid his hands on Star. “The guns,” he repeated.
Ronnie came into focus now, round-shouldered, big-headed, the dirty white thermal underwear clinging to him like a mummy's wrap, the depth and clutter of the cabin stirring to life behind him in a storm of dust motes and dander and two beds materializing suddenly against the back wall, one of which contained a human form: Sky Dog, the mystery resolved. “What do you mean _steal__?” he said. “I didn't steal anything. Norm gave me those guns because I was the only one that wasn't too lame to use them, and you know it as well as I do, _man,__” and he snarled out the final locution as if it were a curse. “So screw you with your _steal.__” The pot rattled on the stove. The dust motes settled. And then, as if they'd been having a minor philological disagreement, a matter of semantics and not substance, all over now, open, shut and closed, he added, “You sure you don't want a cup of coffee?”
Marco saw the two rifles then, a simple scan of the room and there they were, suspended from nails driven into the wall above the unoccupied bed, but what he didn't see was Ronnie reaching into the pocket of the parka hanging from the clothesline over the stove. _Enough,__ he was thinking, angry, on fire with it, and he crossed the room in three strides and hooked down the top rifle, the.30–06 Springfield, and he was reaching for the Winchester when Sky Dog sat up in the bed opposite and muttered, “Hey, man, what do you think you're doing?” and Ronnie pulled Norm's uncle's long-nosed slab of a pistol from the inside pocket of the coat and said, “Put it down, man. Put it down and get the fuck out of here before you get hurt, and I'm telling you, don't push me, Marco, don't push me, man.”
But he was beyond all that, beyond threats, beyond Ronnie and Bruce and the minuscule and rapidly dwindling toehold they had in his life, and he strapped the Springfield over his shoulder as calmly as if he were getting dressed in the privacy of his own bedroom, then took down the Winchester and pulled that over his shoulder too. He gave Ronnie a long look, Ronnie at the stove in his underwear with the pistol he'd worn strapped to his thigh all summer extended now in the quaking grip of his light-shattering hand with its rings glinting and fingers curled. “Don't push me,” Ronnie repeated, and without knowing what he was doing, he let his other hand descend to the crotch of his thermals and he began to scratch himself, his fingers working in deep, digging hard, moving unconsciously to another imperative altogether.
And suddenly the whole thing was hilarious, a joke, as comical as any ten pratfalls, and could anyone have given a more inspired performance? Ronnie was holding a gun and Ronnie was scratching. Ronnie was in his underwear, with sleep in his eyes and his hair flattened to one side of his head, snarling _Don't push me,__ and Ronnie was scratching. Marco crossed the room, shifting his shoulders to accommodate the heft of the rifles, swung open the door on daylight and paused there a moment. “Take care, Pan,” he said, and it was all he could do to keep from laughing aloud. “And you too, Bruce,” he called, “goodbye, man. And thanks for everything.”