She kept her thoughts firmly focused on her preparations, but somewhere, tucked in a corner of her mind, she knew what was really pushing her down the river.
Life had taken some strange turns of late, and all of those turns had left her on an unfamiliar path, each with a destination shrouded in darkness and uncertainty. Kate didn't care for uncertainty. If it came to that, she wasn't big with the darkness, either.
If that little weasel, Howie Katelnikof, were to be believed, the aunties had conspired to have Louis Deem murdered. The aunties, of all people, the fixed foot around which the rest of the Park revolved. The aunties were the first and last stop when you needed a job, a bed, a meal, or just some ordinary, everyday comfort, ladled out with cocoa and fry bread and an attentive and sympathetic ear.
She'd always known the aunties were judge and jury. She just hadn't known that they saw themselves as executioner, too.
The aunties. Conspiracy to commit murder. She couldn't believe it, and her mind refused to deal with the thought of them being tried and jailed for it.
Or of a Park without aunties in it.
The snow machine was fueled, oil checked, the rifle loaded and snug in its scabbard.
Then there was her seat on the Association board, definitely not a consummation devoutly to be wished, if she wanted to keep quoting poetry to herself, which she could if she wanted to. Not only a seat, she was chair of the board. How the hell had that happened? There followed of course her less than stellar debut at her first board meeting, as she fumbled and farted her way through an unfamiliar agenda she hadn't written, and responded-or not-to topics about which she knew little or-be honest, now-nothing.
Kate had always regarded herself as a responsible shareholder. Well, she would have if she'd thought about it. She voted in all the elections and where she felt it was necessary she spoke her mind at those-be honest again, admittedly few-shareholder meetings she'd managed to attend, work permitting. Her work took her all over the state, from Prudhoe Bay to Dutch Harbor, often at a moment's notice. The number of meetings she'd missed far outweighed the number of meetings she'd attended.
If she were being brutally honest, her shares in the Niniltna Native Association didn't mean tribal pride or self-determination or land ownership. No, what the Niniltna Native Association meant most to her was the quarterly dividend that landed in her mailbox four times a year. That dividend meant food, fuel, new jeans when the knees on the old ones ripped out, money for taxes and vehicle registration and insurance. She owned her house and her land outright, but all those things cost money to support and maintain. Her job paid well, sometimes very well indeed, but she only had on average half a dozen jobs a year, and the amount of the Association quarterly dividend was often an essential cushion between paychecks.
She went back inside and donned long Johns, cotton, wool, and felt socks, down bibs, down jacket, parka, and Sorels.
Speaking of money, now she had Johnny to provide for.
Look out for Johnny for me, okay? It was very nearly the last thing Jack had said to her. Johnny was all she had left to her of Jack Morgan. And hell-tell the truth again-she loved the boy for himself, and she wanted the best for him. He had to have an education. Since he'd been with her, her quarterly dividends had been going directly into his college fund.
Johnny was another black hole, sucking in every worry and fear she had. Adolescence was the worst time in anyone's life, when the body betrayed the comparatively stable twelve previous years and erupted suddenly in every direction, things popping out, things dropping down, voices changing, hair changing, hormones launching an all-out attack, no mercy, no quarter, no prisoners. It was quite literally an outrage, physically, mentally, and emotionally, and it went on for years, during which life existed at either the zenith or the nadir, occupying no middle ground and offering no peace. It was exhausting just to think about it. All too well did Kate remember being at the mercy of a body that would not leave her alone. It was good that she and Ekaterina had come to an understanding about Kate living on her own at the homestead, because otherwise they might have killed each other.
So far, Johnny seemed reasonably sane, although there had been something worrying at him lately, leading to long, abstracted silences. She made every effort to give him as much space and privacy as he needed, in hopes that he would voluntarily tell her what it was. In the meantime, she stewed over the cause. Vanessa, maybe? Girlfriends were tough.
Not as tough as boyfriends, though. Not near as.
In the pantry she loaded the pockets of her parka with dried dates, dried apricots, tamari almonds, and roasted pecans. She didn't know how long this was going to take and she might need fuel herself before she found them.
She went back outside and rechecked the lines on the drum, Mutt trotting behind her, ears pricked, tail wagging, as always ready to go anywhere, anytime. A scattered overcast allowed some stars to peer down at her. Her breath was a white cloud in the cold air.
"I did turn off the stove," she said.
Mutt looked up at her, tail slowing.
"I did," Kate said. "I did turn off that goddamn stove."
Jim had started coming for her, and she had known what was going to happen, every cell in her body sounding the alarm.
Not just the alarm. If she had really fought him, he would have stopped. If she had said no and meant it, he would have stopped. If she had raised so much as a wooden spoon in his direction, he would have stopped in his tracks. No, it wasn't only alarm she had been feeling, as events upstairs had demonstrated very shortly thereafter. Damn him, anyway.
"I just didn't see it lasting this long," she said to Mutt.
Mutt, realizing that departure had been delayed indefinitely, sat down with a martyred air.
Kate sat down on the seat of the snow machine. "He was supposed to be long gone by now, history, conspicuous by his absence. But he's still here."
Mutt gave her a bored look. Obviously. "Why? Is it just the sex?"
Which was a considerable factor, given the intensity of their latest encounter, and which led to a whole other worry. Passion, according to conventional wisdom and Cosmopolitan, was supposed to wane as the relationship aged. They had gone at each other like minks that first year, but while subsequently the frequency had decreased the intensity had remained, whether Jim took her by storm at night or she launched a surprise seduction before he had his eyes open in the morning.
"You know what the problem is?" she said to Mutt. "I like him. I really like him. He's smart, he's funny, he's good at his job." She thought for a moment and added, a little doubtfully, "Everybody tells me he's gorgeous. I guess he is. But you know eye candy's never been enough for me." She thought of Jack, whose blunt, irregular features had looked like something chipped off the cornice at Notre Dame, and smiled a little. No, she could accuse herself of many things, but falling for a pretty face wasn't one of them.
Mutt, impatient, thumped Kate's leg with her head.
"You're right," Kate said, and welcomed the rush of anticipation that washed out all misgivings and indecision. Action was what was needed to shake the cobwebs out, hard, fast action, a fight for the right, without question or pause. "Let's get a move on, girlfriend."
She mounted the snowgo, pressed the starter, waited for Mutt to jump up on the seat behind, and lit out of the clearing as if Raven himself was on her tail.
It took three days to smoke them out.
On the way through town she stopped for a late-night coffee at the Riverside Cafe in Niniltna, telling Laurel Meganack where she was going and what she was doing in a full, carrying voice, her words falling on a dozen pairs of eager and, she hoped, fertile ears.