Part 9 (1/2)
Kate looked up at the girl, and caught a flicker in Dani's angry eyes. She was holding something back, but the set of her jaw didn't look promising. ”How did you get back to the site, Frank?”
”He hitched a ride, okay?”
”Who with?”
Dani tossed her head. She looked older than her brother but not by much, and not for lack of trying to look that way. Kids never looked like kids anymore, they all looked like adults by the time they were ten. Or were working at it as hard as they could. ”I don't know,” she said with an elaborate shrug. ”Some fisherman type, they all look alike, all covered with slime and scales.”
Frank actually spoke, his head still down, his voice m.u.f.fled. ”Wendell Kritchen. I saw him down at the harbor this morning. He told me Dad was dead, and gave me a ride out on the liana”
”I know you,” Marian Meany said suddenly, staring at Old Sam. ”You're Sam Dementieff. The one they call Old Sam.”
”Yes, ma'am.” The old man doffed his hat and bowed his head. Sam's company manners were faultless; he just didn't believe in wasting them on friends and family.
She pointed out the window. ”You own the tender out there.”
”Yes, ma'am.”
Marian crossed the room and sat down, her hands on wide-spread knees, staring hard at Old Sam, looking more aware than she had when they arrived. ”They say you're older than G.o.d, and that what you don't know about fish and fis.h.i.+ng and fishermen isn't worth knowing.”
”That would be about right, ma'am.” There was nothing of false modesty about Old Sam, either. And, Kate reflected, what they said was right.
”Do you know anyone who would want to buy our permit and this cabin?”
Her brother-in-law stirred in his chair, his eyes fixed on Marian's face in a steady gaze, but like Kate he said nothing.
Old Sam looked Marian over with an a.s.sessing eye not entirely devoid of male appreciation. ”You might want to try the Ursins,” he said bluntly. ”The people your husband forced out before you got here.”
She didn't so much as blink. ”Do you think they'd want to come back?”
”Depends on how much you want for the permit and cabin.”
”Whatever my husband paid for it.”
”Marian”
”Hush up, Neil,” she said. ”You couldn't stand up to him alive any more than I could. Well, he's dead, and we're not going to pretend any of us ever wanted this kind of life. He bullied us to Alaska, and then he bullied us down here after he bullied the Ursins out. We were never any of us anything more than free labor for his little empire.”
”I didn't”
”We're selling out,” Marian Meany said flatly. ”The second after someone writes us a check.”
Frank had raised his head and was looking at his mother with something approaching dumb adoration in his eyes.
She gave him a brief, wan smile. ”It's going to be all right, kids. We're going home. We're selling the setnet site and the drifter and the house in Anchorage and we're going back to Cincinnati.”
”Oh, goody,” Dani, back in her bunk, said, and turned the page of her comic book.
”Knock it off, Dani,” her mother said, the lack of hope she felt of being obeyed evident in the tired repet.i.tiveness of the words.
”Like you have anything to say about what I do or don't do.”
In the same mechanical tone, Marian said, ”Of course I do, you're my daughter.”
Dani turned her head and looked Marian straight in the eye. Her voice was low, almost gentle. ”It's a little late for you to start playing mother, isn't it?”
Marian turned away from the fury in her daughter's face. It might not be too late for Marian, but Kate wondered if the same could be said for Dani.
The widow looked at her brother-in-law, the other adult, the one person in the room she might rouse to some enthusiasm at their changed circ.u.mstances. ”You can go back to school, Neil. After we sell the boat and the permit, there'll be enough left for that, too. You can get your doctorate, teach Keats.”
”Yeats,” he said.
”Whatever.” Marian turned back to Sam. ”So, Mr. Dementieff? Do you know how to get in touch with the Ursins?” He nodded. ”Will you?”
”I'll call them when I get back to town.”
She smiled at him, a meaningless stretch of her lips. ”Thank you.”
Old Sam grunted and crammed his hat back on his head. ”Ain't done nothing yet.”
”Thank you just the same.” Her company manners were good, too.
”Listen, folks,” Kate said, feeling it was more than time to get back to the point, ”I need to know where you all were last night. It's just routine,” she added, seeing the protests form on the faces in front of her. ”Trooper Chopin asked me to get some of the preliminary questions out of the way, so he'll have a head start when he gets back.”
Dani sat up, comic book forgotten. ”Chopper Jim's coming here?”
”Yes, later tonight, or maybe tomorrow, and he”
The comic book went flying as Dani leapt from the bunk and ran over to a curtain made by hanging a length of unhemmed chintz from a wire stretched across one corner of the cabin. When she yanked the material to one side, the glow of colors behind it was momentarily blinding. Cherry red and lime green figured prominently.
”So where were you, Dani?” Kate said, patiently for her. She'd seen this reaction before in women expecting a close encounter of the trooper kind. Unbeknownst to Dani, Jim Chopin chose his victims carefully. They were all, without exception, over the age of consent, and they all, without exception, had vocabularies consisting of more than the Valley Girlisms ”Like, you know?” and ”Oh-KAY?” Kate was able to restrain any impulse she might have had to leap to the defense of the teenager's virtue.
”Where was I?” Dani said. She pulled out an almost transparent little black dress with a nonexistent skirt and no bodice to speak of and paired it with flowered leggings trimmed with lace, a new high in setnet site chic. She regarded the resultant ensemble with a critical frown, decided it didn't reveal enough skin and dove back into the closet for more. ”What do you mean, where was I?”
Although from the look of things, Kate just might have to leap to the defense of Chopper Jim's virtue.
The summer hire rose to his feet, and went to stand in front of the window, looking out. The set of his shoulders was stiff. Kate gave his back a long, thoughtful look, and said to the girl, ”Where were you last night, Dani?” Kate didn't have an official time of death, so she guessed. ”Say, from yesterday afternoon until this morning at about six-thirty?” There was silence, and she said, ”You can talk to me now, or you can talk to Chopper Jim later”precisely the wrong thing to say.
Dani emerged from her makes.h.i.+ft closet with lip curled and att.i.tude intact. ”Then I'll talk to Chopper Jim later.” The girl tossed her head; her hair, a hundred miles from an electrical outlet, bounced around her face in perfect strands, looking as if it had been blow-dried by Vidal Sa.s.soon himself five minutes before. There was so much in the gesture, all of it only too easy for Kate to sort and identify: rebellion, bravado, braggadocio and a current of s.e.xual awareness that was as angry as it was intense. She'd seen it before, the unmistakable signs of a child brought to womanhood too fast and too soon.
”We were both here,” Marian Meany said. ”Right here in the cabin. The period ended at six o'clock. We came in here and crashed.”
”That go for you, too?” Kate said to Neil Meany.
He hesitated. ”Yes. I mean no. I mean, I cleaned up here first, and then I went up the beach for a while.”
”Where up the beach?”