Kate tried not to think about it.
From nowhere on either island was there a view that did not include a vast, unending expanse of water. In the north it was the Bering Sea; in the south, the Pacific Ocean. Both bodies of water were a constant reminder of what fueled Dutch Harbor. Dutch was a boom town and looked it. Prefabricated buildings crowded up against each other along narrow strips of beach, beaches that were themselves crowded between a landscape that rose suddenly and vertically with very few softening curves, and a sea that from one moment to the next varied in color from bright blue to dull green. Looking at this view was as alarming as it was invigorating, Kate now discovered, as if she were riding a roller coaster with both feet planted firmly on the ground.
Kate always felt better when she knew exactly where she was, and having identified all the relevant topographical features, she started out down the gravel road with a will. It was sodden beneath her feet. Gulls gave raucous screams as they swooped and dived overhead. A bald eagle perched on the top of a streetlight. He looked down his beak at her in the haughty manner of his kind, and after admiring him for a moment she passed on. The road was an obstacle course of fast-moving pickup trucks and vans, each of the vans with the logo of a different taxi service painted on their sides. Another interesting fact Andy had gleaned from his book on the Aleutians was that there were thirteen cab companies in Dutch, and within the first mile of her walk Kate had narrowly missed being run over by twelve of them.
She passed a crab processor, a surimi plant, another processor, another surimi plant, making her way down the gravel road that paralleled the beach and the rectangular harbor. She dodged a red Ford pickup with a supercab crammed with an indeterminate amount of people in bright yellow rain gear, and came upon a group of fishermen, identical in jeans, plaid shirts, shoepaks, navy-blue knit watch caps and unshaven faces. They stood in the middle of the road, oblivious to the trucks and vans rattling impatiently around them. They were all talking at once, at the tops of their voices, and punctuating their words with vociferous gesticulation. Kate paused to listen.
The man at the center of the group shook his head adamantly and held up ten fingers.
"Forget it!" one of the other men exclaimed. He had a dark, full beard that did little to conceal his choler. "Fifty and not a penny more!"
Kate, craning her neck, saw that the man at the center of the group had a bundle of loose fur beneath one arm.
He held it up and it resolved itself into a hat, the kind seen in illustrations of winter life in Moscow. The fur was long and deep brown, almost black in color. The man showed it around the circle, allowing the prospective buyers to finger it admiringly. There were murmurs of appreciation at its softness and shine. Kate realized the scruffy guy must be off the big Russian processor anchored in the harbor, and was in the act of trying to raise some spending money. She elbowed forward for a closer look at the fur.
"Fifty," the fisherman who had bid last repeated.
The Russian, obdurate, shook his head and held up ten fingers again,
"Goddammit!" The fisherman was frustrated. A friend standing next to him said something in a low voice and he gave his head an impatient shake, "I forgot her birthday, I've gotta send her something or she'll throw all my clothes out the window like she did last time. She's into that ethnic shit, she'll love a Russian hat from a real Russian. Okay, sixty." He held up six fingers.
The Russian stood firm at a hundred. He couldn't speak a word of English but he knew a desperate man when he saw one. He was right; the fisherman eventually peeled five grimy twenties from a roll that would have choked a hippopotamus and exchanged them for the hat.
Kate waited until the men had moved on before going to stand next to the Russian fisherman. "What kind of fur was it?" she asked.
He was counting his money, laboriously, licking his fingers between each bill. Unsatisfied with the first count, or perhaps disbelieving it, he counted a second time before looking up, his face split with an immense grin. It widened when he saw Kate, and he fired a stream of Russian in her direction.
She spread her hands and gave him a rueful smile that he had no problem interpreting and that left him undiscouraged. He pantomimed chugalugging a drink and looked at her hopefully, a big, rumpled, enthusiastic puppy dog. "Oh-kay?" he said, evidently the limit of his English vocabulary.
What the hell, she thought. Might as well provide herself with some cover in case she ran into someone else off the Avilda. The prospect of meeting Jack with an enormous Russian in tow also had its appeal. "You know the Shipwreck?" she suggested out loud, and the Russian's grin threatened to split his face in two. It appeared he knew the Shipwreck. Kate smiled, shrugged and nodded.
Without further ado her new friend placed a massive and proprietary arm around her shoulder and urged her down the road.
"Wait a minute," she said, holding up both hands. He halted, his face failing ludicrously. "No, it's okay, I'll go with you, I'm going that way anyway. But the hat." She demonstrated, pulling off her own, a baseball cap with the Niniltna Native Association logo stitched across the front. She pointed after the other fishermen, patted the canvas on her hat and rubbed her fingers together. "What was it made of? Your hat?"
He hesitated, looking at her.
"It's all right, I'm just curious," she assured him. "I do a little trapping myself. What was it?"
Still he hesitated. Kate wet her lips and gave him her best smile and his reservations dissolved. He looked around to make sure no one was looking, and held one hand at his side, palm down. "Woof," he said.
She laughed. "That's what I thought." She remembered Mutt and her smile faded, but he laughed back at her and offered his arm again. She took it. He would have steered her directly for the Shipwreck if she hadn't just as firmly steered him first to the Alyeska Trading Company, an all-purpose general store selling everything from California oranges to Stanley screwdrivers to Nikon cameras to Levi's jeans. Kate was there to buy dental floss but her Russian admirer took one look at the crowded shelves and fell in love, and Kate spent the next thirty minutes trailing after him up one aisle and down the next. He swooned over the coffee. He agonized over the relative merits of Marlboros and unfiltered Camels.
Dismissing the best Timex had to offer with a decisive shake of his head, he was investigating the workings of a Canon Sureshot when Kate looked up and saw Harry Gault over by the meat counter, talking rapidly in a low voice to a short man with Asian features. He looked stubborn, Harry angry, and they both looked somehow furtive.
Kate had begun an unobtrusive drift in their direction when half a dozen of her new Russian friend's shipmates rolled in the door and engulfed the two of them. Harry looked up at the shouts and laughter. Caught looking at him, Kate met his eyes calmly and nodded hello. His eyebrows snapped together, he scowled and ushered the Asian man down an aisle and out of sight.
The Russians looked from Kate to their shipmate and back again and there was a considerable wagging of eyebrows and a lot of talk recognizable as ribald -in any language. One of them asked her a question. Of course it meant nothing to her and she shook her head helplessly. Her newfound bosom buddy held up one finger in inspiration and poked himself in the chest.
"Anatoly! Anatoly!"
"You're Anatoly," she said, nodding. He pointed at her and waited. "Kate. I'm Kate."
He looked puzzled for a moment. "Kate?" Dawn broke.
"Ekaterina!" She nodded, and jumped when the entire crew shouted her name with one voice, causing heads to turn all over the store. Anatoly, noticing her alarmed expression, grabbed her hand and hauled her over to the window. He pointed at the processor anchored in the harbor, a squat, ungraceful ship that towered over its harbor mates, looking like an immense gray gull with its head tucked beneath one wing. "Ekaterina!"