It was a cabin much like the one she had come from, twenty-five feet on a side, with an open loft reached by a ladder. The logs had been planked over with a light pine and were sanded smooth and finished. The ceiling was Sheetrocked and painted white, making the interior much lighter than that of many Bush cabins. There was a large picture window to the right of the door as you faced in, and another large window over the sink, to the left of the door. Both windows faced southwest.
There was an oil stove for cooking, a woodstove for heat, a small table that looked leftover from the fifties with a Darigold one-pound butter can sitting in the middle of it, stuffed with paper money and change. An L-shaped couch had been built into one corner, covered in blue denim that looked as if it had been pieced together from old Levi’s. The kitchen counter held a shallow porcelain sink mounted with a pump handle; open cupboards above and below were filled with canned goods and sacks of flour, sugar, and rice. Shelves ran all around the walls, filled mostly with books, but there were also decks of cards, board games, and a cassette deck with tapes. A.30-06 rifle and a pump-action 12-gauge shotgun were cradled in a rack over the door, ready to hand, boxes of ammunition on a shelf nearby. There were no family pictures, although there was a large, thick photo album sitting on one shelf. A tiny ivory otter, perched on his hind legs, thick fur ruffled from the water, looked at the room through gleaming baleen eyes.
There was a basketball rolled into the crease of the couch, and a guitar hung from a hook next to the door, but otherwise the room was a reflection of someone who liked to cook, read, and listen to music. Someone self-contained, self-sufficient, content with her own company, having no need in her day-to-day life for a telephone, cable TV, or Net access.
Someone, perhaps, who placed a high value on the qualities of solitude and silence.
Every lantern was lit, and the kettle was steaming on the woodstove. Dirty dishes had been washed and put away in the cupboard and the counter swept free of crumbs. The loaves of bread from that morning’s baking were wrapped in tinfoil and the kettle of last night’s stew had been removed to the cooler on the porch outside the front door. The cushions on the couch were plumped up, the books on the shelves were lined up. The cassette tapes were stacked in neat piles, labels out. Except for on the guitar, there wasn’t a speck of dust anywhere.
It wasn’t that she wasn’t a notorious neatnik. It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate someone doing her chores for her. It was just that she was used to doing for herself. It made her inexplicably uneasy to be done for.
Still, she managed a smile for both man and boy. At face value, they were both well worth it. Ethan looked like a Viking, tall, broad-shouldered, long-limbed, pale skin, blond hair, blue eyes; his forebears could have come from anywhere so long as anywhere was Norway, Sweden, or Denmark. Johnny was at that ungainly stage of adolescence when his limbs were growing out beyond his control, but he would be tall, too. He bore a striking resemblance to his father, thick dark hair over a heavy brow, deep-set blue eyes, firm mouth, strong chin. He would never be handsome, but his face, once seen, would never be forgotten.
“Hey,” she said, shrugging out of her parka.
“Hey,” Ethan said, catching it and leaning down to kiss her at the same time.
Johnny was sitting at the table, hunched over a book, and Kate instinctively pulled back. Ethan maintained his smile, but there was a frown at the back of his eyes. “Had dinner?”
“Yeah, I had dinner up to Ruthe and Dina’s.”
Ethan’s lips pursed in a long, low whistle. “Lucky girl. They have pie?”
“Rhubarb and something extra.”
“I’m jealous.”
“It was good,” Kate admitted. She pulled her bibs down and hung them next to the parka. The coat hook was crowded with Johnny’s and Ethan’s parkas and bibs, and hers were elbowed onto the floor. She picked them up and jammed them on the hook again. This time, they stayed.
“I was about to make some cocoa.”
“I’d like that. It was a long ride home.”
Ethan turned to the kettle. “What were you doing up at the old gals’ place?”
“I went there to ask them to help with Dan.”
“Ah.” He was silent for a moment, measuring cocoa and honey and evaporated milk into three mugs. “I wasn’t expecting you to charge off that way this morning when I came galloping over with the news.”
Kate raised one shoulder. “He’s a friend.”
“Urn.” He brought her a mug. It had miniature marsh-mallows in it. She repressed a shudder.
He gave a second mug to Johnny, who grunted a thank-you without looking up, and came back to sit next to where she was curled up on the couch. He stretched out his long legs and propped his feet on the burl-wood coffee table, about the only piece of furniture in the room that had any pretension to style. “What did Dina and Ruthe have to say?”
“Well, they weren’t surprised. They said the current administration wants to drill for oil in the Arctic, and it follows that they-the administration-will try to get rid of every bureaucrat who thinks otherwise.”
“They don’t have the votes in Congress, do they?”
“Ruthe says they don’t.” Kate tried to drink some cocoa without allowing her lips to come into contact with the marshmallows. It wasn’t easy. “But I don’t think she or Dina have a lot of confidence that the situation is going to stay that way.”
“You for it or against it?”
“What? Drilling in ANWR?” Kate thought about it. “I don’t know. I’ve gone back and forth on it. I’ve been to Prudhoe Bay; they did a good job there. Then I think of Valdez, and how badly they did there. And then I think-” She stopped.
“What?”
“Well… well, it’s just that maybe, once in a while, we should let a beautiful thing be, you know?” She looked at him. “What else is left like that?” She looked at Johnny, still hunched over his homework. “What do we leave behind when we’re gone if we move into it now with D-nines?”
Ethan finished his chocolate. “I’m for it.”
“You’re for drilling?”
“Yeah. There’ll be jobs, Kate. It’s easy for you to say let it be, but I’ve got kids to support and educate.”
“Your father raised four sons single-handedly before there was an oil patch.”
“I’m not my father.”
They were both angry, both aware of it, and both made a conscious decision to pull back from that anger. Ethan leaned forward to place his mug on the coffee table. “Where’d you get this table, anyway?”
“Buck Brinker made it for Emaa,” she said. “I brought it home when she died.”
“Thought I recognized the work. Nice piece.”
“I like it. What did you do today?”
“Chopped wood.”
“Filled up your woodshed?”
“Nope.” He stretched, his joints popping, and gave her a lazy grin. “Filled yours.”
“Oh. Ah. Well. Thanks.”
“Thank me later.”
She gave Johnny’s back a warning glance.
Ethan’s grin faded. “We’ve got to talk about this, Kate.”
“Not now.”
“It’s always ‘Not now.” When?“
Johnny sat up and closed his book with a decisive thump. “There!” He swiveled in his chair. “Done!” He fixed Kate with a hopeful eye.
“What?” she said.
He looked at the guitar.
So did she. Dust lay over it like a shroud.
“You said you would,” Johnny said.
“I know I did,” Kate said, reflecting on the unwisdom of making promises to adolescents. They were worse than elephants. It never occurred to her to renege, though. She set her mug next to Ethan’s and got to her feet, ignoring the stifled sigh she heard Ethan give.