Johnny laughed, appeased. "Now you know better."
"No kidding. Anyway, I told Bernie I was looking for work, so he put me on temporary while his regular barmaid is off."
Johnny remembered his dad saying that the Salvation Army was the best place to go for a bed and a meal when you were down to your last dime. It was the one charity Jack had been willing to write a check to, but there was no Sally's in the Park. A little shyly Johnny said, "Are you okay for cash?"
Greenbaugh shrugged. "I'm okay for now, but thanks for asking."
"Did you hear about the mine?"
Greenbaugh jerked his head at the bar. "Hard to miss, with the babe going full steam. She's been here for a couple hours now, talking it up to everyone who walks in."
"Did she talk to you?"
"She did." Greenbaugh grinned. "She says she thinks she might be able to find something for me. There are some real opportunities in this mine. Get in on the ground floor and a person can just coin the money, you know?" He winked at Johnny. "I'm hoping it ain't only a job, if you catch my drift." He nudged Johnny with a jocular elbow. "We're staying in the same boardinghouse, after all."
Johnny felt uncomfortable at sexual badinage with someone so much older than he was-the guy had to be in his thirties-so he pretended not to understand. "That's great, Doyle, I'm really glad to hear it. She told everybody up to the school that they were going to start taking applications immediately and that they'd start putting people to work on the first."
"Barely two weeks from now, I know. Howie Katelnikof was talking to me about it."
"What's Howie know about it?"
"He was the first guy she hired, caretaker out on the claim. He says he'll try to get me on next. He's a good guy."
"You're kidding."
Greenbaugh looked surprised. "No. Why would I be?"
Because, Johnny thought, every Park rat worthy of the name knew that Howie Katelnikof was the best excuse for preventive homicide the Park had ever seen. Because whenever a cabin was burgled, a snow machine stolen, a truck stripped for parts, Howie Katelnikof was the guy voted most likely to. Because Howie Katelnikof was always going to be the go-to guy in the Park to fence stolen property, buy a lid of dope or a hit of coke, and Jim Chopin was certain he was cooking up batches of crystal meth and selling it retail out of the homestead he and Willard Shugak had been squatting on since the death of Louis Deem.
But mostly because Howie Katelnikof had tried to kill him last year, and Kate, and he had almost killed Mutt. Johnny thought of himself as a pretty easygoing guy, but once he got pissed off he stayed pissed off, and he was pissed off at Howie for life. He opened his mouth to issue a warning of some kind, but he'd hesitated too long. Greenbaugh had something else on his mind. "Listen, kid, do me a favor?"
"Sure," Johnny said. "Not like I don't owe you about a hundred."
"I'm going by the name of Gallagher here. Dick Gallagher. Richard, if you want to get technical on me." He grinned again, but he was watching Johnny with a sharp eye.
"Oh," Johnny said inadequately. He rallied. "Um, I guess it's none of my business why."
Greenbaugh-Gallagher-shrugged. "I don't mind saying. There's stuff left over from my life I'd as soon be shut of." He grinned again. "Women, mostly. I want to start fresh, new life, new name, new job. Remember how you told me that day in Ahtna that a lot of people do that at the border crossing?"
Johnny had said that. "Yeah."
"Well, that's me, to the life. I'm starting over here, clean slate. So Dick Gallagher from now on, okay?"
Johnny thought back to earlier that day and making fry bread with Auntie Vi. Had Greenbaugh's-Gallagher's-name been mentioned? "Is that the name you're registered under at Auntie Vi's?"
"Yep. Started the way I mean to go on. So what do you say? Forget that loser Greenbaugh?"
It seemed ungrateful and unreasonable to refuse. What did it matter, anyway? A new name to go with a new life. Wouldn't be the first time that had happened in Alaska. He remembered the stories Kate had told him of her time in Prudhoe Bay, when the news cameras would come into the mess hall and half a dozen guys would get up and walk out, leaving their dinner on the table, before the deserted wife or the parole officer they'd left Outside caught them on film at eleven. "Okay," he said, "sure. Why not?" He was proud that Greenbaugh-Gallagher-trusted him enough to ask the favor. How many times does a sixteen-year-old kid get asked to help somebody hide out from his past? It was right out of Zane Grey. It made Johnny feel like a card-carrying member of the Last Frontier.
Greenbaugh-Gallagher!-thumped his shoulder and grinned at him again. "I'm sure glad I picked you up on the road, Johnny. You're my lucky charm!" He laughed heartily, gave Johnny's shoulder another thump. "Oh," he said, pausing with one hand on the door, "and maybe you could tell that little girlfriend of yours, too. Make sure she knows my new right name, and tell her why?"
"Sure," Johnny said. "Van's cool. She'll be happy to."
"Great," Gallagher said, and disappeared back inside.
Without knowing how, Johnny had the distinct feeling that there was a joke he was missing, but it was getting darker and colder and later by the minute, so he shrugged it off, climbed back on his snow machine, and headed for home.
SIX
Kate?"
She heard Jim's voice from downstairs. She didn't move.
His footsteps sounded on the stairs. "Kate?"
"Go away," she said, her voice muffled by the comforter she'd pulled over her head.
"Kate? Where are you?" The overhead light clicked on. "Oh. Hey, Mutt." The bed moved as Mutt lifted her head and whined, a single, plaintive note.
"Kate, what's wrong?" Jim said in a different tone. "Are you sick?"
"No. Go away."
The side of the bed sank beneath his weight and she felt the comforter pulling away. "Don't," she said, grabbing for it, but by then it was too late. She blinked up at Jim and Mutt, two pairs of eyes, one blue, one yellow, staring down at her with equal concern.
"What's going on?" Jim said. "You're never in bed during the day."
"None of your business. Leave me alone." She pulled the cover back over her head.
The weight of him on the bed didn't move. Neither did Mutt's.
"Oh. Has this got something to do with the board meeting this morning?"
"I don't want to talk about it."
"I take it it didn't go well."
"I don't want to talk about it!"
"Okay." The bed heaved and she heard footsteps go downstairs. The bed heaved again as Mutt jumped down and followed, the ticky-tack of her claws sounding on the floor.
"Traitor," Kate said, her voice muffled by the comforter. Given Jim's come-hither presence downstairs, and given Kate's present mood, it was doubtful that Mutt would have returned even if she had heard Kate call her name.
Kate was, in fact, sulking. Nobody loved her. Everyone thought she was stupid. In fact, she was stupid, didn't even know what a quorum was. She'd looked it up in Webster's when she came home and it was the minimum number of members of the group meeting required to take a vote. She'd had the vague idea that it had had something to do with books, and how they were put together, but no. Thank christ she hadn't said that during the meeting.
The aroma of frying bacon crept beneath the covers, a sinuous and seductive smell.
Although she'd said plenty else that Harvey Meganack would be happy to repeat over the bar at Bernie's for months to come. If not years. She still couldn't believe they got paid for sitting on the board. And what the hell was a point of order, anyway?
Johnny's truck drove up and a few minutes later she heard the sound of his feet on the stairs. The door slammed. He said something to Jim. Jim replied, and both of them laughed. Probably laughing at her.
She'd looked for the U-Haul box when she got home. It wasn't in the back of Johnny's truck. It wasn't in the garage. It wasn't even in the woodshed. She wondered if maybe she'd tossed it onto the slash pile from the beetle kill the three of them had cleared at intervals this summer. The slash pile was a mile from the house and she didn't have the energy to navigate the three-foot layer of snow between, especially not in the cold and the dark.