The Yup'ik girl beamed. “Really? Now?”
“That would be great.”
Aurora grabbed her hand and dragged her through the streets of Akiak. When they reached a long, low gray building, Aurora clattered up the wooden ramp. “I just need to stop off at the school for a sec,” she said.
The doors were unlocked, but there was nobody inside. Aurora flipped on a light switch and hurried into an adjoining room. Laura unzipped her jacket and glanced toward the gymnasium on the right, its polished wooden floors gleaming. If she looked closely, would she still see Cane's blood? Could she retrace the steps Daniel had taken all those years ago, when he ran away and into her own life?
Laura was distracted by the sound of... well, it couldn't be a toilet flushing, could it? She pushed through the door that Aurora had entered, marked Nas'ak. Aurora was standing in front of a serviceable white porcelain sink with running water. “That one's sitting on my bladder,” Aurora said, smiling.
“There's plumbing here?” Laura glanced around. On the upper lip of the bathroom stall, various items of clothing had been draped: bras and panties, long-sleeved T-shirts, socks.
“Just in the school,” Aurora said. “On any given day, the line'll be out the door with girls waiting to wash their hair. This is the only place it won't freeze solid.” She gave Laura a chance to use the facilities - use wasn't really the word as much as relish or give thanks for - and then they struck outside again. “Does your boyfriend live far away?” Laura asked,
wondering what might happen if Daniel returned to find her missing.
“He's just over that hill,” Aurora said, but as they crested the rise, Laura didn't see any homes at all. She followed Aurora inside a picket fence, careful to stay on the trodden path instead of hiking through the drifts that were hip-high. In the dark, it took her a moment to realize that they were walking to the far end of a tiny cemetery, one scattered with white wooden crosses that were almost entirely buried in snow.
Aurora stopped at a cleared grave. A name was engraved on the wooden cross: ARTHUR M. PETERSON, June 5, 1982-March 30, 2005. “He was mushing, but it was the end of March, and he went through the ice. His lead dog chewed through the lead and came to our house. I knew the minute I saw the dog that something was wrong, but by the time we got to the river, Art and the sled had both gone under.” She faced Laura. “Three days later I found out I was pregnant.”
“I'm so sorry.”
“Don't be,” Aurora said, matter-of-fact. “He was probably drinking when he went out on the trail, like usual.” As she spoke, though, she leaned down and gently swept the cross clean of its most recent dusting of snow.
Laura turned away to give Aurora privacy and saw one other grave that had been carefully cleared. In front of the marker was a collection of ivory - full mammoth tusks and partial ones, some nearly as tall as the wooden cross. On each tusk, numerous flowers had been carved in exquisite detaiclass="underline" roses and orchids and peonies, lupine and forget-me-nots and lady's slippers. It was a garden that had been bleached of its color and none of its beauty, flowers that would never die, flowers that could bloom even in the most inhospitable climate.
She imagined the artist who'd crafted these, walking through sleet and hail and ice storms to plant this endless garden. It was exactly the sort of romance and passion she would have expected of Seth, who had tucked poems into the flustered leaves of her date book and the prim mouth of her change purse.
Wistfully, Laura let herself imagine what it was like to be loved that deeply. She envisioned a wooden cross labeled with her own name. She saw someone fighting the elements to bring gifts to her grave. But when she pictured the man weeping over what he'd lost, it wasn't Seth.
It was Daniel.
Laura brushed the snow off the marker, wanting to know the identity of the woman who had inspired such devotion.
“Oh, I was going to show you that one,” Aurora said, just as Laura read the name: ANNETTE STONE. Daniel's mother.
* * *
Trixie had gone AWOL. She couldn't say why she felt guilty about this, especially since it wasn't like she was really supposed to be working the Tuluksak checkpoint in the first place. She ran beside Willie in the dark, small puffs of her breath leaving a dissipating trail.
As promised, Willie had come back to the school, although Trixie hadn't really expected him to. She had planned to leave his coat behind with one of the volunteers when she got ready to leave
- whenever and toward wherever that would be. But Willie had arrived
while Trixie was still babysitting Joseph. He'd knelt down on the other side of the snoring old man and shook his head. He knew Joseph - apparently everyone did in an eight-village radius, since Joseph didn't discriminate when it came to where he'd go on a bender. The Yupiit called him Kingurauten - Too Late - Joseph because he'd promised a woman he'd return, only to turn up a week after she'd died.
Willie had come to invite Trixie to steam. She didn't know what that meant, but it sounded heavenly after shivering for nearly two days straight. She'd followed Willie, tiptoeing past Joseph, past the sleeping Jesuit Volunteers, and out the front door of the school.
They ran. The night was spread like icing over the dome of the sky; stars kept falling at Trixie's feet. It was hard to tell if it was the uncovered beauty of this place that took her breath away, or the seize of the cold. Willie slowed when they came to a narrow road lined with tiny homes. “Are we going to your house?” Trixie
asked.
“No, my dad's there, and when I left he was drinking. We're going to my cousin's. He was having a steam with some of his buddies, but they're leaving for a city league basketball game downriver.”
Several dogs that were chained up outside houses started to bark. Willie fumbled for her hand, probably to get her to move faster, but if that was the intent it didn't work. Everything slowed inside Trixie: her heartbeat, her breathing, her blood. Although Janice had tried to tell her otherwise, Trixie had believed she would never want another guy to lay hands on her again. But when Willie touched her, she couldn't really remember what it had felt like to touch Jason. It was almost as if one canceled out the other. She knew this: Willie's skin was smoother than Jason's. His hand was closer to hers in size. The muscles in his forearms weren't thick, the product of a million slap shots they were lean and ropy, almost sculpted. It made no sense, given their upbringings, but she had this weird feeling that she and Willie were equals, that neither of them was in control, because they were both so skittish in each other's company. They stopped behind one of the houses. Through the buttery light of the windows, Trixie could see a sparse living room, a single couch, and a few young men putting on their coats and boots. “Come on,” Willie said, and he tugged her away. He opened the door to a wooden shack not much bigger than an outhouse. It was divided into two rooms - they had entered the larger one; the other room lay through the closed door directly ahead of Trixie. Once the sound of his cousin's snow machine winnowed away, Willie shrugged out of his coat and boots, gesturing to
Trixie to do the same. “The good news is, my cousin already did all the hard work tonight - hauling water and chopping wood. He built this magi a few years ago.”
“What do you do in it?”
Willie grinned, and in the dark his teeth gleamed. “Sweat,” he said. “A lot. The men usually go in first, because they can handle the real heat. Women go in later.”
“Then how come we're here together?” Trixie asked. Willie ducked his head. She knew he was blushing, even if she couldn't see it.
“I bet you take girls here all the time,” she said, but she was only half joking, waiting for his answer.