Harley said hi, but Rebekah, in her usual long dress with its buttoned-up collar, just nodded. On her way out, she said to Charlie, “We’re almost out of fuel oil.” She had a thick New England accent — she was from some hick town not much bigger than Port Orlov — where she’d been living in a so-called Christian commune that had been broken up by the state. Still, Harley often wondered what had made her, and her sister, do something so stupid as to come all this way to Alaska.
Charlie grunted and, once she was gone, picked up where he’d left off. “Maybe you oughta let me handle the press from now on.”
“There’s not much left of it. Nobody’s called me today, except the Coast Guard. They want to know more about that coffin top that came up in the nets.”
“What’d they say, exactly?”
Harley knew that his brother would be intrigued by that. “They want to be sure that’s all that came up.”
“That’s what you told ’em, right?”
“What do you think?” Harley said, looking steadily into his brother’s dark eyes. “Of course I did.” He sipped the hot tea, which tasted like it was made from boiled leather.
Charlie met his gaze and didn’t blink.
Screw it, Harley thought; it was now or never. “You came to the hospital,” he said, pointedly, “and you left with my anorak.”
“What about it? You want your coat back, it’s in the hall closet.”
Harley put the cup down on a stack of old newspapers, went out into the hall, and came back with his coat. He sat down and began rummaging through the various zipped pockets, and apart from a packet of throat lozenges, came up empty-handed. “Okay,” he said, “where is it?”
“Where’s what?” Charlie answered, but with that malicious glint in his eye that told Harley he knew perfectly well what he was talking about. It was like they were kids again, and Charlie was holding out on him.
“You know what. The cross that was in the inside pocket.”
Charlie’s face slowly creased into a grin, revealing a row of crooked gray teeth. “What cross?”
Harley put out his hand and said, “Give it to me, Charlie.”
“Or what? Are you gonna beat up your own brother — your own crippled brother?”
Nobody ever milked a wheelchair the way his brother did. “If I have to, I’ll turn this whole goddamned house upside down.”
“Oh, I don’t think Rebekah and Bathsheba would let that happen,” Charlie said, and Harley knew he was right. The two sisters might be bony as skeletons, but they were tough and, though he hated to admit it, scary as hell. Their eyes were black as little pebbles, set in dead-white, pockmarked faces, and he’d once seen Rebekah wring a fox’s neck without even looking down at it. Even scarier, he had the impression Bathsheba kind of had a crush on him. It was one more reason he’d had to move out.
Before the stalemate went on much longer, Charlie seemed to have tired of the joke, and gesturing at the gun rack below the window, he said, “It’s in the ammo drawer.”
For a split second, Harley wondered if the ammo drawer was booby-trapped, but then opened it and found the cross, wrapped in a clean rag. It looked like Charlie had shined it up a bit, and the stones—emeralds, for sure—glistened in the light from the computer screens.
“Lucky you didn’t shoot your mouth off about that,” Charlie said.
Harley turned it over in his hands, marveling at the weight of it, wondering if the silver sheen was real, wondering what the gems would be worth, wondering what the Russian words inscribed on the back meant. There was a fence named Gus Voynovich in Nome — he and Charlie had used him now and then in the past — and if anybody knew what it was really worth, he’d be the one. The guy was a crook, of course, but he knew his business.
“So I figure it’s a fifty-fifty deal,” Charlie said.
“What are you talking about?”
“You’re going to fence it at the Gold Mine, right?” The Gold Mine was Voynovich’s pawnshop in Nome. “Well, you owe me half of whatever Voynovich gives us for it.”
“That’s bullshit. I found it. I nearly died getting it.”
“And if I hadn’t picked up your coat, the Coast Guard, or some fucking orderly, would have it by now. And then how much of a share do you think you’d have gotten?”
“I’ll give you ten percent.”
“I’m not arguing about this with you, Harley. I could just as soon have taken a gun out of that rack and told you to get the hell off of church property.” Vane’s Holy Writ was headquartered in the old house, and as a result, Charlie paid no property taxes. He also drew a tidy disability benefits check every month. “Now, there’s really only one question left for us to discuss.”
“What the hell is that?”
“How much else is there?”
“How much of what else? The coffin’s gone, it sank, same as the boat. Don’t you read the papers?”
“The coffin came from somewhere. And that somewhere would be St. Peter’s Island. It’s one of those old Russians who lived there. Who knows what else is buried in the other graves?”
Harley sat very still, the cross growing heavier in his hand by the second. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying, we’ve got to go back out there, before somebody else does, and do some digging.”
“You want me to dig up graves?” Harley said, feeling exactly the same way he did when Charlie had told him to climb through the skylight of the liquor store on Front Street.
“Listen to me,” Charlie said, leaning forward in his wheelchair. “Don’t you remember the stories?”
“Sure I do. The damn place is haunted.” He didn’t add anything about the black wolves … or that yellow light he thought he’d seen on the cliffs.
“Now you don’t really believe that stuff, do you? If you ask me, the Russians made up all that crap years ago, just to keep everybody off the island.”
“There was never any reason to go on the island.”
“No, there wasn’t,” Charlie agreed. “Back then.” Everyone knew there was nothing on St. Peter’s but the remains of the old Russian village, its wooden cabins no doubt fallen to pieces by now, and guarded, supposedly, by an old lady with a lantern, who walked the cliffs at night, luring mariners to their death. “But there is a reason now.”
Harley didn’t know what to say, or how to counter what his brother was saying. That’s how it had always been. Charlie had always won the arguments — sometimes all at once, and sometimes just by waiting Harley out.
“What other options have you got?” Charlie taunted him. “You think you’re ever gonna get another boat? Or a crew? Your fishing days are over, bro, in case you didn’t know it already.” He smiled broadly and smoothed his hands on the front of his flannel shirt. “This cross is what I’d call heaven-sent … and one thing I do know is that God doesn’t knock twice.”
Harley wasn’t so sure it was God knocking at the door at all.
But nodding at the Russian artifact, Charlie added, “And you might want to leave that here for safekeeping. That tin-can trailer you live in isn’t exactly burglarproof, now is it?”
Chapter 9