Breakup. Part 10

Seemed like all day people had wanted the answer to that question.

Someone was crying and someone was cursing and somebody else was screaming and Kate looked up just in time to see the lady tourist from Pennsylvania aim her camera and take a picture. Her husband, wide grin intact, looked as if he'd gotten a bargain in front-row seats to a John Wayne shootout.

"Get down, you d.a.m.n fools!" Kate shouted.

They took her picture instead.

Kate crawled beneath the television screen, opened the back door a crack and hooked one wary eye over the sill. n.o.body shot at her. A belly-sc.r.a.ping slither got her outside and down the steps. She sidled furtively up to the corner and peered around. Nothing, but the yelling was louder. She sidled even more furtively up to the next corner and peered much more cautiously around it.

The yelling resolved itself into words. "You b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, you shot my wife!" The speaker was kneeling on the steps to the front door, a woman draped over his lap, her left shoulder and breast stained red. He had a pistol in his hand and a feral look in his eye. "You b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, I'll kill you for this, I'll kill you!"

"You deserve everything you get, you G.o.dless heathen!" was the response, a woman's voice, high and shrill and determined. A shot followed and a bullet hit the wall of the Roadhouse not a foot from his head.

"Get down!" Kate snarled. "G.o.ddammit, you a.s.shole, get down!"

He looked her way, half raising his pistol, a .357 magnum. At least it wasn't an automatic; he could only shoot her six times. It wasn't a comforting thought.

Another shot from the parking lot slammed into the building to Kate's left. She jerked back instinctively and banged her head hard enough on a protruding beam to see stars. "Ouch!" There was another shot and another. From the front of the building 101 there was a scrabble of bodies; she hoped it was the man with the pistol hauling his wife beneath the stairs.

Kate, rubbing her aching head, spared a moment to wish that Mutt was with her, so she could have launched an attack on two fronts. In the next moment she was just as glad to be alone, as not even Mutt was immune to bullets. She gathered her courage and peeked around the corner again.

"Mom!" The voice came from a jumble of vehicles a little to her left.

"Mom, where are you?"

"I'm over here, Petey!" came the reply. The same woman's shrill voice, hard-edged, coming from somewhere near the Pace Arrow in the parking lot. "Are you okay?"

"Yes! Where's Dad?"

"I don't know! Joe? Joe!"

"Dad! Dad, are you okay? Dad, answer me!"

Under cover of the yelling, Kate slipped out of the shelter of the bar and ducked in between a red Suburban and a construction- orange Dodge pickup. She dropped forward on her hands and looked underneath the Suburban, getting a face full of mud and slush for her pains.

About six vehicles down she saw the bottom half of a body, clad in jeans and shoepacs and holding a rifle into which a pair of hands was feeding bullets. The hands were shaking and dropped every other bullet, but enough were making it into the rifle for the rifle to accomplish its designated task. s.h.i.+t, Kate thought, and took a detour out to the perimeter of the parking lot. Her feet crunched in the snow and it was only a matter of time before Mom or Petey heard her, not to mention Joe, wherever he was. She had to move fast if she was going to get a handle on the situation before it exploded again.

She jumped when a shot boomed from beneath the front porch of the Roadhouse. Dirty Harry warming up. The other two returned fire, Petey with his rifle, the .30-30 maybe, from the sound of it, more firepower than Kate wanted to go hand to hand against, and Mom with what sounded like a popgun by comparison but 102 was probably a .22 and could kill her just as dead at close range.

She used their shots to cover the sound of her movements, duck- walking behind the last row of trucks. Her Nikes, soaked once already that day on the airstrip and just beginning to dry out, were soaked again. There was just no justice in the world.

Nothing to be done about it now, but any feeling of mercy she might have had in dealing with the cause of her wet feet died stillborn. A stumbling rush brought her up behind the last vehicle in the row next to the Pace Arrow, an old white International pickup the size of Rhode Island. Three more booms sounded from the Roadhouse's front porch, during which Kate crossed to the Pace Arrow, followed by a pause.

Probably reloading. Kate took the opportunity to peer around the corner.

A woman in jeans and sweats.h.i.+rt was on her knees, leaning against the Pace Arrow, her rifle grasped in both hands.

The RV was twenty-five feet long if it was an inch, too long a distance for Kate to rush without Mom hearing, way too long for Kate to get to her before she swung the rifle around. She cast about her for something to even the odds. Nothing but half- melted snow and rotten ice and gluey mud as far as the eye could see.

She looked back at the surface of the lot. Why not? She scooped up a bunch of snow and packed it down, squeezing the muddy liquid out between her fingers, rounding off the edges, shaping the ma.s.s into a solid ball of ice, as fine a projectile as an attacker could hope for. She made half a dozen more, stockpiling her a.r.s.enal. She waited until Mom was sighting down the barrel before she raised her right arm and threw a fast, hard ball that hit with a solid thump between Mom's shoulder blades.

"What the h.e.l.l!" Mom was rocked forward on her knees but she didn't drop the rifle. She turned and Kate threw again, as hard as she could, this time connecting with Mom's shoulder.

"Ouch!" Rocked off her knees, Mom sat down hard in the slush, and Kate threw again, this time adjusting trajectory for wind 103 resistance and gravity, this time putting every ounce of force in her body behind it and this time smacking Mom squarely between the eyes.

The rifle dropped into the snow, Mom's eyes rolled up in her head and Mom fell face forward into a puddle of slush, out cold.

Kate was rather pleased with herself. She was slightly less pleased when the .357 opened up again, the bullets tearing into the Pace Arrow.

"Mom?" Petey's voice was sounding quavery, which Kate took to be a good sign. "Mom? What are you doing? What do we do now? I shot somebody, Mom!"

Kate got Mom's face out of the slush before she asphyxiated and unloaded the .22, pocketing the bullets and tossing the rifle into the back of someone's pickup. The .30-30 had opened up again, exchanging desultory fire with the .357 under the porch. Crouching down next to the wheel, trying to make herself as small as possible in case the shooting started coming at her from both directions, she raised her voice. "Petey! Petey, stop shooting! And Wayne, if that's you under the porch, you do the same!"

A bullet hit the tire three feet from her head and the air sighed out of it. "G.o.ddammit, you two, this is Kate Shugak!" she roared furiously.

"You two idiots put down your weapons! Do it! NOW!"

A brief silence, into which a shaken voice said, "Mom?"

"Your mom's okay. Put down that rifle before you hurt somebody else, Petey. Do it now."

"He had his gun out first!"

"Like h.e.l.l I did!"

"I don't care who had whose gun out first," Kate roared again, "I want them both down on the ground! Now!" Too angry for caution she surged to her feet and swarmed down on Petey, a thin, pallid youth with the scraggly beginnings of a beard and an incipient whine. He shrank back against the truck as she approached and, lucky for him, wasn't fool enough to raise the rifle. She yanked it out of his hands and unloaded it. A fist knotted in his 104 collar pulled him to his feet. "You dumb little s.h.i.+t," she said, and kicked his a.s.s all the way across the parking lot. He uttered distressed yelps with every contact, which only made her want to kick him harder.

At the porch, Kate bent down to peer through the risers. "Wayne? Is that you?"

A burly bear of a man some twenty years the boy's senior crawled out from beneath the steps, soaked, s.h.i.+vering and covered with mud, still holding his pistol. Kate delivered a final kick up Petey's behind that propelled him headfirst into the side of the building. There was a thud, a groan, and he slid down on his b.u.t.t in the mud, his head falling forward, tears streaking his cheeks.

Kate removed the .357 from Wayne's unresisting hand and unloaded it.

"Where's the rest of it?" Wayne stared at her, uncomprehending, and she snapped her fingers impatiently. "Come on, Wayne, where's your ammo?"

Mute, he produced a yellow cardboard box, half full of rounds. Kate stuffed it into the pouch of her wind breaker, feeling like a pregnant kangaroo, and tucked the pistol into her waistband at the small of her back. "How bad is Kay?"

Recalled to his wife's presence, the burly man dove down and hauled out a body that at first glance looked as if nothing could save it. Kay's entire right side was covered in blood. Kate, who had seen more than enough dead bodies for one day, swore and raised her voice. "Hey! Inside the bar! We need a medic out here on the double!"

Since the Ahtna Native Health Foundation had begun running EMT cla.s.ses five years before, they had qualified ten Park residents in emergency medical training. As the most serious hunting, fis.h.i.+ng and flying accidents tended to be instantly fatal, about the only thing the EMTs got to do was deliver babies, which led to a certain amount of professional frustration. Kate didn't have to ask twice; at least five doctor-wannabes, some the worse for liquor but if anything more enthusiastic because of it tumbled out of the Roadhouse to engulf the victim in TLC. Bernie produced blankets 105 and they formed a makes.h.i.+ft stretcher and carried Kay inside, where three tables had already been cleared to form an operating theater. The lady tourist was hovering on the fringes of the action, camera snapping, face flushed with excitement, her husband at her elbow. Mr. and Mrs.

Baker, thankfully, remained in the background out of the way, gla.s.ses clutched tightly in their fists. Gla.s.ses, Kate noticed in pa.s.sing, which testified to the consummate professionalism and dedication of their bartender. This was what, their fourth?

Kate was not an EMT and had no desire to become one. She shoved Petey into a chair and Wayne into a chair next to him, and went outside to fetch Mom, just regaining consciousness. When the three of them were lined up in front of her she said, "Okay, what the h.e.l.l is going on here?"

Wayne, face white and strained and eyes fixed painfully on the crowd surrounding his wife, didn't answer. Mom was groggy but game. "Don't use that foul language around me, if you please."

"I don't please," Kate said unpleasantly. The woman returned no answer, and Petey's eyes slid away.

Behind her Bobby's voice said, "It's about the access road, isn't it, Petey?"

Petey wouldn't look at Bobby, either.

"The access road?" Kate said. "I thought you people got that settled last fall."

Mom, also known as Cheryl Jeppsen, Petey's mother and Joe's wife, raised a hand to her eyes, which were swelling into twin s.h.i.+ners of historic proportion and hue. "G.o.dless heathens," she muttered.

A figure detached itself from the crowd around Kay and crossed the room.

"Wayne?"

"Dandy?" Wayne looked up, dazed.

Slim and handsome with laughing brown eyes and an infectious grin, Dandy Mike had been one of the first Park rats to qualify as an EMT, from motives Kate was certain had more to do with getting women's clothes off them than ministering to the sick. He 106 was wiping red-stained hands on a bar rag. Wayne looked at the rag and his face went even whiter.

Dandy took a swift step forward and reached out to keep the big man from sliding off his chair to the floor. "Wayne, it's okay. Kay's going to be fine. The bullet hit her high up in the shoulder, from the looks of it small caliber, so there wasn't much damage." The .22, Kate guessed.

"It's a through-and-through. We'll clean it and slap a bandage on it, and she'll be fine. She'll be hurting, but she'll be fine. Lucky thing Cheryl and Petey are such lousy shots."

Petey began to weep, long, sad tears rolling down his face and into his collar.

"Praise G.o.d," Cheryl said, although it didn't have quite the pious effect she'd hoped for.

"Oh for Christ's sake," Bernie said wearily, "stop with the everlasting Jesus-freaking, will you, Cheryl?"

Stiffening, Cheryl said, "You'll answer to the Almighty for that blasphemy, Bernard."

Dandy used his free hand to chuck Cheryl beneath her chin. "Cheryl honey, why don't you put a lid on it before I tell all these folks just how G.o.dless you could be in the old days?"

Cheryl's mouth snapped shut like a live trap and she flushed a deep red.

"That life is all behind me now. I have confessed my sins to G.o.d and He has forgiven me."

Dandy gave an evil chuckle. "Even the night up on the bridge over Lost Chance Creek?"

Bobby, reprehensibly, grinned. "Tell us, Dandy. Sounds like a tale I'd sit still for."

"Okay?" Wayne said, belatedly fastening on the one word of Dandy's that mattered to him. "Kay's going to be okay?" His eyes fell on the bar rag again. "But I saw her, I-"

Dandy, reminded of his duties, turned back to Wayne and shook him once, gently, to stop the babble. "Wayne, Kay is going to be fine," he repeated. He raised his eyes and looked at Cheryl. Lucky for you, his eyes said. Cheryl's eyes held his for a moment 107 before sliding away. In that moment the family resemblance between her and Petey was very clear.

It sank in, and relief washed over Wayne's face. He got to his feet. "I want to see her."

"Fine," Dandy said soothingly. "Go ahead." They watched Wayne lumber off, and then Dandy turned to look Kate's drenched and muddy self over with a speculative eye. "Shugak, you are a mess." Gentle fingers touched her left temple and came away b.l.o.o.d.y.

She looked at his hand in surprise. "What's that?"

"Blood. Yours." He turned for a handful of cotton and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. He dabbed at her temple and examined the result with a critical eye. "Yeah, she grazed you all right. As clean a crease as you'll ever want to see."

"I didn't feel it," Kate said blankly. The room took a half-turn around her. "I didn't even hear it."

Auntie Vi said something in Aleut that was probably better left untranslated, and came forward to grab Kate's arm and sit her firmly down in a chair, where she suffered not in silence beneath Dandy's ministrations.

"Oh, quit your b.i.t.c.hing." Dandy shook his head, recapping the bottle.

"It's just a scratch. It's not even bleeding now. You always did have more luck than you deserve, Shugak."

"You should talk," Kate retorted.

He looked her over again. "Anything else I should see to while I'm at it?"

Her head ached where she'd banged it against the side of the Roadhouse, but not bad enough to let Dandy Mike anywhere near her. "No way, Dandy.

I don't need or want any more nursing."

He patted the air. "Fine, fine. Jesus, anybody'd think you were somebody's maiden aunt. I just wanted to help." The wounded sound of his voice was belied by a wide grin. "It's your loss, after all," he added, and sauntered off to prospect the crowd for a female patient with less resistance.

108 Kate remembered something still left undone. "I forgot about Joe.

Watch these jerks," she said to Bobby, pointing at Cheryl and Petey, who she noticed for the first time was wearing a T-s.h.i.+rt inscribed "I Burn Banned Books." She wondered if she could turn Petey loose up around the Kanuyaq mine. Maybe the bear would get lucky a second time.

"Katya!" Auntie Vi said with indignation. Auntie Joy, who understood Kate better than her sister did, put a restraining hand on Vi's arm, although both aunties watched Kate leave the room in equally disapproving silence.

She found Joe groaning under a flatbed loaded with PVC. He'd tripped and managed to knock some of the PVC loose, which had returned the favor and rolled over on him, whereupon he'd fallen and fractured his tibia. Kate called Dandy out and he pulled an inflatable cast over the break with gentle hands. "There now," he told Joe, patting his shoulder comfortingly, "that'll hold you until you get to the clinic at Ahtna.

You ought to be fine so long as you don't make any sudden-"

Kate grabbed Joe by the scruff of the neck and hauled him to his feet.

Joe screamed.

"-movements," Dandy finished. "Jesus, Kate," he added, but it was more in resignation than protest.

Inside the bar, Kate slung Joe down next to Cheryl and Petey, who was still sniveling. Kate would have liked to kick the boy again just on general principles.

"What you gonna do with them?" Bobby said, without much interest.

"I'm not doing anything," Kate said. "It's not my problem." Seemed like she'd been hearing herself say that same sentence all day, too. "You can call Chopper Jim if you want."

There was a brief silence.

"Well," Bobby said, "n.o.body's dead."

He looked at Bernie, who shrugged. No way was he going to swear out a complaint and have to be a witness at some trial in Glenallen or Palmer, or worse yet, Anchorage. Who would fill in 109 behind the bar? He looked across the floor at Enid, and shuddered.

She was still p.i.s.sed about Lisa Gette. Best not to push it.

No one else wanted to get tangled up witnessing and testifying, either, not with fis.h.i.+ng season so close to starting. Wayne, asked if he'd like to press charges, shook his head numbly and accepted a.s.sistance in getting his wife into their vehicle. No one else stepped forward to lodge a complaint. Mr. Baker squinted into his empty gla.s.s. "Well, h.e.l.l," Bobby said, disgusted. "Better get somebody to drive 'em to their place."