Part 11 (1/2)
”We can drive ourselves,” Cheryl said, sitting up.
”Right, and have you play b.u.mper cars with Wayne and Kay all the way home,” Bernie said. Just because he wasn't pressing charges didn't mean he wasn't thoroughly p.i.s.sed off. ”I'd as soon let a drunk out of here with his car keys in hand.”
Kate had a fleeting wish that Ben Bingley confined his drinking to the Roadhouse. Bernie was the only bartender she knew who had a real conscience and acted on it. ”You know, Cheryl,” she couldn't resist saying, even knowing it would do no good, ”the Bible says, Love thy neighbor. That's all it says. It doesn't say, Love thy neighbor only if he's a straight white antiabortion meat-eating bom-again right-wing Republican foot-was.h.i.+ng Baptist. Love thy neighbor. That's all it says.
You miss that verse, or what?”
”I didn't miss the verse that says even the devil can quote Scripture for his purpose,” Cheryl snapped.
Feet wet, her head aching, Kate had to smile. ”That's not in the Bible, Cheryl, it's in The Merchant of Venice.”
She repaired to the bar, intercepted along the way by Frank Scully, who insisted on grasping her hand and shaking it warmly. ”G.o.ddam, if it isn't our trusty Eskimo protector! You do good work, Shugak! Saved all our a.s.ses yet again!”
The only reason he lived to see another dawn was that he was obviously drunk. ”I'm not an Eskimo,” she snapped, and shouldered him aside.
Bernie poured her a fresh c.o.ke, the Bakers more Glenlivet, Bobby a bourbon and Dinah a gla.s.s of fizzy water with a twist of 110 lime. Steven Seagal was still on the television screen, now getting on a horse in the company of a Chinese actress playing an Eskimo woman, although judging by the thickness of the tree trunks in the background, she should have been a Tlingit or a Haida or maybe even a Tsims.h.i.+an.
”Can you ride a horse?” asked our hero, and the actress glowed and replied, ”Of course! I'm a Native American!” at which point Old Sam Dementieff alarmed all the other old coots at his table by going off into what appeared to be an apoplectic fit. ”Horses!” he recovered enough to wheeze. ”In Alaska! Yah sure, you betcha! Head 'em up! Move 'em out! Ride 'em cowboy! Yeehaw! Just let me hitch my dogsled up to those oat-burners, yawl!”
”I beg your pardon, but what is all this concerning an access road?” Mr.
Baker said. The weighty and meticulous manner in which he put his words together caused Kate's eyes to narrow in sudden suspicion.
Bernie jerked his head toward the trio in the corner. ”Those are the Jeppsens. They homesteaded forty acres on Mad Mountain six years ago.”
He jerked his head at the front door through which Wayne and Kay had disappeared, Dandy helping her down the steps and copping a discreet feel while he was at it. ”Those are the Kreugers. They got the forty acres next door to the Jeppsens, five years ago.”
”Most of the problem,” Bobby said, ”is that Kay and Wayne have master's degrees and Joe and Cheryl dropped out of high school.”
”Yeah,” Dinah said, ”the Kreugers actually read books, can you imagine?”
”Dreadful,” Mrs. Baker said, very much the dowager d.u.c.h.ess.
”Deplorable,” Mr. Baker said, eyelids closing and opening again in a long, slow blink, like an owl.
”And of course,” Bobby said, ”the Jeppsens are your ordinary, everyday born-again Christian fanatics, who think the Bible is the only book necessary. They home-schooled Petey,” he added, ”so they could keep him away from all those unG.o.dly teachers at Niniltna High.”
”And you see how well it took,” Bernie pointed out, but then 111 Bernie, the local basketball coach, always resented any reduction in the available talent pool for his team, and Petey was almost five foot ten.
”It used to be funny,” Dinah said with a sigh.
”Not anymore,” Kate said, rubbing gingerly at the sore spot on her head.
”Absolutely not,” Mrs. Baker said, even more stately than before.
”Indutipably-inbutibaply-nope,” said Mr. Baker.
Displaying a fine, if fraying sense of discretion for which Kate loved them all dearly, the hippie, the hillbilly and the cheechako let this pa.s.s. ”Then winter before last,” Dinah said, ”Bonnie Jeppsen, Joe's sister, got the postmaster's job instead of Kay.”
”The latest installment in the saga,” Bobby took up the tale, ”is the access road between the two homesteads. The Kreugers are higher up the hill than the Jeppsens, and somehow the Jeppsens got to thinking that the access road crossed their land and the Kreugers ought to hive to go around. But since the Kreugers going around would entail them going across Park land, Dan O'Brian naturally took a somewhat different view of the situation.”
”I'll just bet he did,” Kate said appreciatively. This part of the story was new to her.
Bernie added, ”Of course, mostly they hate each other's guts because the Kreugers grow better tomatoes in their greenhouse than the Jeppsens do.”
People in the Alaskan Bush have been shot for refusing offers for Boardwalk. ”Breakup,” Kate said, as if that explained everything, and perhaps it did.
”Breakup,” Bobby repeated, without affection. ”What the h.e.l.l is it with breakup? We make it all the way through winter without going totally insane and it's finally spring and we're gaining daylight and the kings will be up the creek any minute and now we got to start shooting at each other?”
”It's because people make it through the winter that they lose it during spring,” Kate said.
I'll 112 They looked at her askance. ”Sure, Shugak, that makes just a whole bunch of sense,” Bobby said, and rolled his eyes.
”Think about it,” Kate insisted. ”The winter's long and hard and cold and dark, but people can get through it by looking forward to spring-h.e.l.l, sometimes spring is all they've got. It's so cold their water freezes, it's dark most of the day, maybe their spouse is sleeping around, maybe the kids are acting out, maybe they're broke, but they know spring is on its way, so they tough it out through the cold and the dark, knowing better times are coming.” She drained her gla.s.s and set it down with a decisive snap. ”And then spring comes, and their wives are still s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g around on them, and their kids are still s.h.i.+ts and they're still broke. It's spring and nothing's changed, and something snaps.”
”I would prefer that it did not snap in my vicinity,” Bobby said with dignity, ”thank you very much.”
”Mine either,” Bernie agreed.
”Nor nine niether,” Mrs. Baker said.
”I'll too on it, pa.s.s,” Mr. Baker said.
Dinah looked at the Bakers, a considering expression supplanting the dreamy one in her eye. ”You know, Kate, I think you'd best come to dinner, and bring the Bakers with you. Caribou ribs and onions.” She looked at Kate and waggled her eyebrows. ”And Bobby's lemon meringue pie.” She looked back at the Bakers. ”And aspirin. And coffee.”
Click! went a shutter, and they looked up to find the lady tourist from Pennsylvania and her husband peering at them over the top of their camera. ”I hope you don't mind?” she said. ”It's just that you all look so-” she hesitated, and then said with a rush, ”-so Alaskan.”
The two of them beamed.
Mr. Baker belched.
”Come to think of it,” Dinah said, ”maybe you all should just stay the night.”
113.
They reached the turnoff to Bobby and Dinah's, inches from a clean getaway, just as Mandy and Chick came barreling down the road on Chick's four-wheeler.
”Whoop!” said Mr. Baker, and rolled down the window to wave madly at his only child. He would have fallen out if Kate hadn't grabbed his belt and hauled him back in at the same time she jammed on the brakes.
Miraculously, they were still working.
The four-wheeler slid to a halt just off the truck's starboard bow, squaring at the edge of the pickup's headlights like a malignant toad.
It wasn't possible to make out facial expressions in the evening gloom, but Kate received the distinct impression that Chick was forcibly holding Mandy in the driver's seat.
Sitting very erect between Kate and Mr. Baker and always the critic, Mrs. Baker said, ”She's supposed to be a musher. Where's 114 her dogs?” Her severity was marred by a loud hiccup, brought on by a particularly large pothole five miles back.
”That's gy mirl!” Mr. Baker whooped exuberantly. He leaned across Mrs.
Baker to inquire of Kate, ”Did I you tell what a great musher is she?”