Part 11 (1/2)

”Been wading?” Dani inquired in a bland voice as Kate stumped grimly by.

”You're supposed to take your clothes off before you get in the water,” Frank added helpfully.

Another time, Kate might have been relieved to see that Frank could smile and joke; now, all she could feel was the red creeping up the back of her neck. She marched on.

It was another mile to Amartuq Creek. By then Kate was wet, tired and humiliated, and her defenses were down for the count.

She had been rude to Old Sam. She had been even ruder to Anne Flanaganrude h.e.l.l, actively offensive, deliberately so. Further, Old Sam was correct when he said that Kate's experiences at Chistona had colored her perception of Anne Flanagan from the moment she had been made aware that the woman shared a profession with the Right Reverend Simon Seabolt. Her grief for Daniel Seabolt had left scars, deeper ones than she had realized. Kate had never been one to agonize over past failures; nevertheless, under even the most superficial self-examination it was obvious that the events of the previous June had been nagging at her like an unhealed wound ever since.

And poor Anne Flanagan, her mere existence a prod at the open sore, bore the brunt of an acc.u.mulated frustration Kate hadn't even known she was carrying around.

She had deserved the dunking for being rude to Sam, who had told her nothing less than the truth, and she had deserved the long walk in wet clothes for being rude to the Right Reverend Anne Flanagan, who had done nothing but offer Kate tea, cookies and her other cheek.

And here at long last was the creek, its sandy mouth stretching wide, the incoming tide hiding the sandbar bisecting its channel, salmon making V-shaped ripples as they struggled upstream against the current. She halted at the water's edge. And there was Old Sam's skiff, beached on the other side of the creek. With the tide coming in, the channel was full of water. There would be no skipping across the sandbar that guarded the channel, which meant her shoes would get soaked again, and they had yet to dry out from their first dunking as it was.

For a split second she was angry all over again, and then the humor of the situation struck her and she burst out laughing. It was slightly uncontrolled, maybe even a little hysterical, but laughter it was, warming and cheering. She felt a lot better afterwards. It didn't even bother her when, halfway across, she tripped over a red salmon, lost her balance and fell in, getting all-over wet for the second time that day. What the h.e.l.l, at least it was mostly fresh water this time. She got up, wrung out her hair and squelched up the bank.

Mary Balashoff's cabin perched at the edge of the trees across the creek, a plywood shack with tarpaper s.h.i.+ngles and the long bow line of a skiff tied off to a cleat attached to the deck. It had a small porch hanging off the front door, and on this porch sat two figures, one small, one large. The small one had his chair tilted back and his feet up on the porch railings. The large one was rocking slowly back and forth in her rocking chair.

Kate was dripping water like a rain forest when she came to a halt in front of the cabin. Standing with her head bowed, she said, ”I'm sorry, uncle. I was rude. Please forgive me.”

He grunted. Taking his time, he put down his mug, removed his gimme cap to scratch tenderly at the back of his scalp, resettled the cap to his satisfaction and finally leaned over to reach down to a tray resting in front of the door. From a chipped china teapot he poured her a mug of steaming Russian tea, liberally sweetened with honey squeezed out of a plastic bear. She cradled the hot porcelain thankfully between cold, clammy hands. The tea scalded all the way down. Grateful, she took another long swallow, and Old Sam, teapot at the ready, topped off her mug again, adding another dollop of honey.

Implicit in his pouring of the tea was forgiveness. Implicit in her acceptance of it was their mutual understanding that at the first opportunity she would also apologize to Anne Flanagan. The proper balance of aged authority and penitent youth restored, the subject was dismissed.

Mary Balashoff looked from one to the other. Kate was serene. Old Sam was imperturbable. She shook her head. 'Jesus, you Shugaks. I never will understand you.”

Kate looked at Old Sam, whose mother had in fact been a Shugak, and smiled. He grinned back, his usual face-splitting, people-eating grin. ”Well h.e.l.l, Mary,” he said, ”can't let you pluck out the heart of our mystery, now can we?” He c.o.c.ked a hopeful eyebrow at Kate, who valiantly swallowed any astonishment she might have felt at Old Sam Dementieff quoting Shakespeare on the sh.o.r.es of Alaganik Bay. Thwarted by her lack of response, he reached over and pinched Mary on the behind.

Again he was disappointed. Mary shook her head. ”Shugaks,” she repeated, and heaved herself to her feet. An amiable giant of a woman, she stood six feet, one inch in her stocking feet and had startlingly blue eyes at odds with her brown face and black hair. Back when such things were not done, her father, a handsome Aleut from Tat.i.tlek, had run off with the beautiful daughter of a Norwegian seiner. Speaking of Shakespeare, Kate thought. The seiner, a proud and bigoted man, had washed his hands of the affair and returned to his Ballard neighborhood of Seattle, also known as Little Norway, righteously to declare himself to be without issue from that day forward.

It had been a happy marriage, so far as Kate could remember the tale, made all the more so by the fact that the union had scandalized the Tat.i.tlekers as badly as it had the Ballardians, which allowed the couple to live in happy obscurity on a homestead outside of Copper Center, unhampered by advice from either family. They'd had five children, four boys and one girl, all of whom had blue eyes like their mother and black hair like their father and all of whom grew to a minimum of six feet in height. The boys went off to school, moved Outside and never came back. Mary had stayed, and by default had inherited the family setnet site.

She had been fis.h.i.+ng it for thirty years. The Amartuq fish camp had been abandoned by federal decree for almost the same amount of time, and until the aunties had gone back up the creek a generation of Park children, including Kate, had learned to pick fish from Mary's skiff, to mend nets at Mary's knee, to fillet salmon and to tend the fire that burned beneath the drying racks after they had been filleted. Park parents had come to regard the Balashoff setnet site as on-the-job training for those offspring unlucky enough not to be chosen as deckhands.

Mary had also had a longtime summer romance going with Old Sam. Kate remembered this interesting fact just in time for Mary to save her from further speculation by saying, ”Come on, honey. Let's get you into some dry clothes before you catch cold.”

Kate, s.h.i.+vering now in spite of the tea, followed her inside, and emerged a few minutes later dressed in a worn Aran sweater that hung to her knees and a pair of jeans rolled up twice at the ankles and cinched at the waist by a frayed length of half-inch polypro and a thick pair of wool socks. She sat on the porch with her back to the wall, and at that moment the sun broke through the clouds and bathed the bay in a warm, golden light. It was nine-thirty, and with the sun came a small breeze that rippled the surface of the bay, rocking the boats gently at anchor.

Mary refilled the teapot and they drank in comfortable silence. At last Mary stirred. ”What's this I hear about someone getting killed yesterday?”

”Let me guess,” Kate said. ”Wendell Kritchen bring you the news?”

Mary grinned, showing off a set of perfect white teeth. 'He stopped by this morning.”

”He's better than a town crier,” Kate said, and left it to Old Sam to explain. Mary rocked, and listened.

When he was done they sat in silence. Out on the bay, a bowpicker's engine turned over. Its skipper weighed anchor and headed west, Cordova probably. Maybe he wasn't coming back. Maybe, like Old Sam, he didn't think fifty cents a pound was worth tearing up his gear for. Kate sighed.

”Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy,” Mary said.

Kate looked from the bowpicker to Mary and back again.

”No,” Mary said. ”Cal Meany. Now there's a name was well deserved. He was one mean son of a b.i.t.c.h.”

”How did you know him?”

Mary refilled her mug from the pot. ”He cut my nets.” She saw their expressions and smiled without humor. ”Oh yes. And not just once. Twice. The first time was during last month's king opener. Snuck down and cut my gear from the anchor.”

Mary's anchor was a heap of sandbags on the beach, tied together and attached to the beach end of the gear. The sea end of the gear was weighted with a small Danforth and marked with a fluorescent-orange buoy. When the tide came in, the corks floated to the top of the water and the net hung below, weighted at bottom by the lead line. The salmon, swirling in schools along the coast on a course for the creek, encountered the net en route, or hopefully some of them did, and got their gills stuck in the mesh. The thras.h.i.+ng of the caught fish in the water below caused the corks above to bob, at which time Mary would climb in her skiff and move up and down the cork line, hauling up the gear and picking the fish and then letting the gear drop down again. When the period was over, she pulled her gear and delivered the fish to the Freya. Or she did when not on strike.

And when her gear was intact. The anchor end cut, Mary's gear would float free, causing a hazard to boat traffic, not to mention that a free end was illegal as h.e.l.l and Mary could be fined big-time for it, maybe even jailed, maybeKate went a little pale at the thoughtmaybe even have her permit pulled. ”Did you see him?” Kate demanded. ”Did you see Meany cut your gear?”

”Honey, if I'd've seen him, he would have been dead before now,” Mary said flatly. ”No, I didn't see him, or at least not that night. But he dropped by after the period was over. Said he'd noticed I was having some trouble. Said he knew how tough things were on a woman fis.h.i.+ng alone. Said it couldn't get anything but tougher. Said he'd be happy to make me an offer on the site, and for my permit, too.”

Kate looked at her for a moment, and then said deliberately, ”I don't know if I really care all that much who killed this son of a b.i.t.c.h.”

Old Sam grinned his cackling grin. ”Now, now, what would Chopper Jim have to say to that?”

”Who gives a s.h.i.+t?” She said to Mary, ”You say he did it a second time?”

Mary nodded. ”This Monday. I went down at five to start setting up. This time he'd cut the cork line in half a dozen places.” She drained her mug. ”I was thinking maybe I should get a dog.” She smiled at Kate. ”Now I don't have to.”

Kate's heart sank. ”Mary.”

Mary took one look at Kate's apprehensive expression and burst out laughing. ”Oh honey,” she said, still laughing. ”Oh honey, if you could see your face.” She wiped away a tear. ”No, I didn't kill him. I'd like to pin a medal on whoever did, but I didn't do it myself.”

Kate examined the level of tea in her mug with all the scrutiny of a Socratic scholar trying for the perfect dialectic on surface tension. ”Where were you last night, Mary?”

Mary raised an amused eyebrow. ”Why, I was right here, Kate, right where I always am every night of the summer, right where I've been since the end of May, right where I'll be until the middle of September. And no, before you ask, there wasn't anybody here with me to say I was.” She reflected. ”Unless,” she added with an air of innocence that fooled no one, ”well, unless you count Edna and Balasha.” Her smile was benign, and it didn't fool anybody, either. ”They came to dinner, and we played pinochle until, oh, midnight I guess.”

”Mary!” Kate said, indignant. ”Why didn't you say so up front?”

Mary laughed again. ”Sorry, Kate, I couldn't resist. Probably my only chance to be suspected of murder.”

Old Sam was laughing, too. ”You always were a p.i.s.ser, Mary. Shame on you.”

Kate finished her tea and let them laugh. The overcast had dissipated completely by now and the sunlight was warm on her face. Her hair, braided back into its usual plait, was still wet and as thick as it probably would be for another eight hours, but the rest of her was dry and comfortable. Her stomach growled.

Mary heard it. ”Should I feed you?”

”Not just a woman but a G.o.d,” Kate said.

”How's leftover pirogue sound?”

”Yum.”

By the time the late dinnercreamed salmon and canned mixed vegetables in a flaky crust, Mary's specialtywas ready, Kate's clothes, hung over the stove, were mostly dry and she changed into them. They ate in silence on the porch, and when they were done Kate cleaned up and put water on for coffee, which she served, again on the porch. The sun was low on the western horizon, outlining what Kate thought was the hint of an incoming front. She wasn't worried. For now at least, her feet were dry and her stomach was full. ”Mary?”

Mary, stretched out in her chair with her feet propped on the railing, sounded almost as sleepy as Kate felt. ”What?”