Pop leaned back again, looking up at the holes in the roof and blowing smoke toward them. “It’s not bad,” he said. “Not much suspense, though. I’m not sure it’s worth six beers.”
“I don’t give a damn what you think it’s worth,” the Cutthroat said, tapping ash from his cigarette. “It ain’t my story anyway. My mother heard it a long time ago from some Inuits on the mainland, and she told it to me when I was a kid. But we’re Unangan. Not Eskimo.”
“So you think an Eskimo might have killed this eagle too?” Pop asked. “Staked it to the ground, gutted it?”
The Cutthroat frowned. “Like I said, I ain’t heard of anything quite like that. But I ain’t heard of a lot of things. Some of those shamans might still hold a grudge against eagles. People can stay mad about crap like that for five, six hundred years. Or maybe some guy just thought if he killed an eagle, he could take its power. And then he could be a better hunter, or fisherman, or warrior. I’ve heard of that. And you white people like stuff like that, too. I’ll toss that in for free.”
Pop was giving the Cutthroat a steady gaze. “But you’re saying it wouldn’t have been you who killed the eagle. Or anyone else Unangan.”
The Cutthroat shook his head. “Doubt it. Sometimes the eagles show us where the fish are. And sometimes we toss ’em a few in return. We get along all right.”
Pop nodded, sat back against the earthen wall, and closed his eyes. He took a long pull on his cigarette. “I’ve been all over the post, both Armytown and Navytown, many times. But I’ve seen very few Aleuts or Eskimos. So just from the odds, I doubt that a native is our eagle-killer.”
As much as I hated saying anything at all in front of the Cutthroat, I couldn’t keep my mouth shut anymore. Pop was infuriating me.
“There’s a dead man over there!” I yelled, pointing at the section of collapsed roof. “Who cares about the eagle now?”
Pop opened his eyes and regarded me through a smoky haze.
“Actually, I don’t care much,” he said. “But because of that dead man, the eagle has become slightly more interesting.”
“Why?” I asked, still furious. “Just because he had a feather in his pocket? That doesn’t mean anything. He might have found it.”
Pop’s eyebrows rose. “I don’t think so. He and the eagle have both been dead less than a day. So the coincidental timing, plus the feather in his pocket, suggests a connection. Either he killed the eagle, and then had an unfortunate accident…”
He fixed his gaze on the Cutthroat again.
“… or whoever did kill the eagle, or helped him kill it, may have then killed him as well.”
The Cutthroat ground out his cigarette butt. “I told you guys before. It wasn’t me.”
“And I still believe you,” Pop said. “I’m just wondering if you might have any idea who it may have been.”
“Nope,” the Cutthroat said. There was no hesitation.
Pop leaned back against the wall again and looked up at the holes in the roof.
“I don’t have any idea either,” Pop said. “But I think you were right about one thing.”
“Huh?” the Cutthroat said. “What’s that?”
“Whoever it was, he’s a fucking son of a bitch.”
The wind seemed to scream louder in response.
VIII
The williwaw finally slacked off a little after noon, leaving only blustery gusts. The three of us stirred ourselves on stiff joints and muscles and rose from our places in the main room of the ulax.
Pop and the Cutthroat had both dozed after finishing their cigarettes, but I had stayed wide awake. I knew who the dead man was. But I hadn’t told Pop yet for fear that the Cutthroat would hear me.
That was because, while I didn’t recognize this particular Cutthroat, I knew who he was, too. On Attu, the Alaska Scouts had saved my life and the lives of dozens of my buddies, but they hadn’t done it by being kind and gentle souls. They had done it by being cruel and ruthless to our enemies.
And I knew that a man couldn’t just turn that off once it wasn’t needed anymore. I knew that for a cold fact.
I boosted Pop up through the hole in the roof where we’d dropped in, and then I followed by jumping from the raised earthen shelf at the side of the room, grabbing a whalebone roof support, and pulling myself through.
I joined Pop on the hillock just beside the ulax, blinking against the wind, and then looked back and saw the Cutthroat already standing behind me. It was as if he had levitated.
“So this thing here is not our fucking problem,” the Cutthroat said, speaking over the wind. “We all agree on that.”
Pop nodded. “That’s the body of a Navy man. So the private and I will tell the boys at the Navy checkpoint to come have a look. And if they ask our names, or if they know who I am, I’ll be able to handle them. They’re twenty-year-olds who’ve pulled checkpoint duty at the base of an extinct volcano. So they aren’t going to be the brightest minds in our war effort.”
I didn’t like what Pop was saying. But for the time being, I kept my mouth shut.
The Cutthroat nodded. “All right, then.” He turned away and started down the slope.
“We have a jeep,” Pop called after him.
The Cutthroat didn’t even glance back. So Pop looked at me and shrugged, and he and I started back the way we had come. A few seconds later, when I looked down the slope again, the Cutthroat had vanished.
When we reached the spot where the dead eagle had been staked, I thought for a moment that we had headed in the wrong direction. But then I saw the rocks I’d used as markers, so I knew we were where I thought we were. The eagle was simply gone. So were the nails. So was my canteen.
“The Scout was right,” Pop said. “The wind took it.”
If I tried, I could make out some darkish spots on the bare patch of ground where the bird had been staked, and when I looked up the slope I thought I could see a few distant, scattered feathers. But the eagle itself was somewhere far away now. Maybe the ocean. Maybe even Attu.
“This is a good thing,” Pop said, continuing on toward the jeep. “Now when you tell the lieutenant colonel that the eagle was gone, you can do so in good conscience. Or good enough. It’s certainly gone now. That fact should get me back to my newspaper until he thinks of some other way to torment me.”
He looked at me and smiled with those horrible false teeth, as if I should feel happy about the way things had turned out. But I wasn’t feeling too happy about much of anything.
“What about the man in the lodge?” I asked.
Pop frowned. “We’re going to report him to the Navy.”
“I know that,” I said. “But what should I tell the colonel?”
Pop stopped walking and put his hand on my shoulder.
“Listen, son,” he said. His eyes were steady and serious. “I’m not joking about this. Are you listening?”
I gave a short nod.
“All right.” Pop sucked in a deep breath through his mouth and let it out through his nose. “When you see the lieutenant colonel, don’t mention the dead man. You brought me up here to show me the eagle, as ordered, and it was gone. That’s all. Do you understand?”
I understood. But I didn’t like it.
“It’s not right,” I said.
Pop dropped his hand and gave me a look as if I’d slapped him. “Not right? How much more ‘right’ would the whole truth be? For one thing, there’s no way of knowing how the eagle got into the state it was in. So there’s no way to give the lieutenant colonel that information. But now it’s gone, which means that problem is gone as well.”