Blood Will Tell (28 page)

Mutt was unconvinced, and the words sounded false to her own ears.

The clouds crowded the sky now, thick and white and full. The smokers standing around outside the Egan Center weren't even zipping their coats. Kate went inside and was immediately pounced on by Olga Shapsnikoff. "Kate, where have you been? You missed Paul Anahonak's talk on sovereignty. I thought we were going to go out and stone somebody, preferably a state legislator." She grinned. "Speaking of great public speakers, people have been asking about you ever since your speech yesterday."

"It wasn't a speech," Kate said. "All I did was tell a story."

"We should all be able to tell such stories. Come meet some of my family." She paused. "Kate? Are you all right? You look a little pale.

Except for your cheek, how come it's all red?" She saw the napkin. "And what's wrong with your arm, is that blood?"

"I'm fine."

"Are you sure?" Olga looked her over critically. "You look like you need a cup of coffee. Come on, I'll get you one."

Kate summoned up a smile. "What I really need is to talk to my grandmother. Have you seen her around?"

Olga nodded. "Yeah, I saw her with Cindy Sovalik a while ago. Or no, that was before lunch, I think."

Kate's stomach reminded her it hadn't had breakfast yet, let alone lunch. "Where?"

"Downstairs, at Cindy's booth."

"Okay, I'll go take a look. See you later."

"You had lunch?"

"Later," Kate called, and escaped.

Downstairs Ekaterina was nowhere to be found. Kate stood on a chair in one corner of the room and searched in vain for the square-shaped figure with the tight black bun.

"Kate."

The voice came from below and she looked down. "You are looking for your grandmother," Cindy said. She was wearing one of her kuspuks today, made of sky blue corduroy and trimmed with silver rickrack and silver fox.

Her eyes flicked to Kate's cheek, the makeshift bandage on the younger woman's arm and away again.

"Yes, I am," Kate said, stepping down. "Olga said she saw her down here with you. Where is she?"

"She is at the hotel."

Kate frowned at the note in Cindy's voice. Before she could speak Cindy said, "You have found out what is wrong."

Kate gave her a sharp look which Cindy endured without any expression on her broad, impassive face. "How would you know anything was wrong?"

Cindy shrugged. Kate smiled. "

"There is danger here?"

" she suggested.

Cindy's face didn't change. "Not that kind."

Kate's smile faded. "What do you mean?" Cindy held out a hand. It was dry to the touch, the bone and sinew beneath hard and strong. A chill rippled over Kate's skin. The two women stood motionless and silent as around them conversation rose and fell, goods were traded and bought, newborn babies exclaimed over, teenagers' basketball records bragged about, family news good and bad exchanged. Kate saw no one and nothing but Cindy Sovalik.

Cindy let go of her hand and returned to her table without a backward glance.

Kate turned on her heel and walked to the escalator, threading her way through the crowd without stopping, not responding to the greetings called her way.

Kate knocked on Ekaterina's door. There was no answer. She knocked again. Still no answer.

A short, rotund woman in a maid's uniform said in a thick accent, "Is there something I help you with, ma'am?"

Kate nodded at the door. "It's my grandmother's room. She should be here, but she's not answering the door. Do you have a passkey?" The maid looked doubtful. "Please," Kate said. "Open the door. You can stand right here while I go in."

Something in Kate's anxious face must have convinced her. The maid produced the passkey and opened the door. Kate pushed it open. "Emaa?"

There was no answer. She stepped inside. "Emaa? Are you in here?" She walked down the little hall that led past the bathroom and the closet.

The drapes were closed, the thin afternoon light seeping into the room beneath the hems.

There were two queen-size beds, one littered with Ekaterina's suitcase and various items of clothes. The bedspread had been drawn back from the other, both pillows pushed to the floor, and Ekaterina's form lay still beneath the blanket.

"Emaa? Wake up." Kate walked to the window and pulled the drapes, talking feverishly. "I haven't had lunch yet, have you? What say we head for the Lucky Wishbone, get us some fried chicken. You haven't been yet, this trip, have you?" There was no answer. Kate walked to the bed and bent over. "Emaa?" Ekaterina was lying on her back, still and silent.

"Emaa," Kate said, her voice sounding in her own ears as if it were coming from a great distance. "Emaa?"

Ekaterina's shoulder was still and cool. Her eyes were closed, her face unsmiling, stern even in death. The winter light filled in the wrinkles that outlined mouth and eyes, glanced off the firm chin, picked out the dark eyelashes that lay like fans on her cheeks.

"Emaa," Kate said again. She felt her throat swell, swallowed hard against the rise of tears. She dropped to her knees and buried her face in the bedspread. "Emaa."

"Ay del que," the maid said. There was a rustle of clothing as she crossed herself.

Outside the window large flakes of snow began to fall, like wisps of cotton, soft and thick.

Saturday morning the city lay silent and still beneath a soft, thick cover of white, the hush broken only by the scrape of shovels on sidewalks, the chatter of red-cheeked children building snowmen, the occasional rumble of a grader down a side street. The hush crept even into the Egan Convention Center, where people stood in groups of four and five, speaking in low voices.

Kate walked in at noon, alone, as the King Island Dancers took to the stage. The drums sounded. It was a dance of remembrance, marking the passage of milestones, and seasons, and of loved ones. There was no applause at the end, only a deep, expectant silence. It was traditional dress day, and every other person there wore tunic and leggings, button blankets, kuspuks and mukluks.

The outgoing chairman took the podium one last time to name the incoming chairman, and the incoming chairman took his place. He thanked the outgoing chairman for his service to his community, thanked the members for the honor of being named the new chairman, and promised to work hard at resolving the problems of subsistence and sovereignty. There was brief, polite applause. He shuffled the pages of his acceptance speech together, waiting for it to end. "As most of you know by now, the Alaska Native community has suffered an enormous loss. Ekaterina Moonin Shugak died yesterday."

There were exclamations from the few who had not known. Heads turned toward Kate, a hand touched her shoulder. Axenia stood a few feet away, her eyes swollen and blotched with tears. Lew Mathisen stood at her side, clutching her hand, his thin face self-conscious. Kate continued to stare straight ahead.

"At this point, I will cede the floor to Harvey Meganack, a fellow board member of the Niniltna Native Association, who has agreed to speak in memory of Ekaterina."

Harvey's stocky figure climbed the stairs to the stage. The new chairman stood back and let him take the podium. He cleared his throat. His voice was hoarse but controlled. He spoke of Ekaterina's life, of how her family had been forced out of their home in the Aleutians during the Japanese occupation of Attu and Kiska, of their arrival in Niniltna to stay with distant relatives, of how when the war ended they decided to make the Park their home. He spoke of her husband and his death at sea, of her five children, and how every parent's nightmare of surviving their own children had come true for Ekaterina, and of her strength in surviving their deaths. He spoke of Ekaterina's work with Elizabeth Peratrovich and the Alaska Native Sisterhood in seeking Native rights.

He reminded everyone in the room that but for their efforts and the efforts of many more like them, Alaska Natives' ability to become Alaskan citizens might still hinge upon the condition that they gave up their tribal ways for a "civilized" lifestyle. He said the words simply, telling a story, not inciting to riot, and they listened to him in silence.

He spoke of Ekaterina's work in helping the Alaska Federation of Natives negotiate the crucial loans from the village of Tyonek and the Yakima Indian Nation, which together funded the final push to congressional passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act in 1971. He spoke of her tireless efforts in helping the tribes and villages adapt to that act, of her own chairmanship of an immensely successful AFN convention in the mid-eighties, of her terms as Niniltna's tribal chief, of her seat on the Raven Corporation's board of directors, of her sponsorship of the sobriety movement.

"Ekaterina's family came first in her life," Harvey said, "but we were all her family." He spread his arms, encompassing the room, the city outside, the state beyond. "From Metlakatla to Kivalina, from Anaktuvuk Pass to Attu Island, from Anchorage to Barrow, from Nutzotin to Nome.

All this was her home, and all of us were her family. That we exist today is due to her, and to all the elders of her generation who fought not just for our rights, but for our very survival." He paused for a moment, letting them grieve their loss. His tone had changed when he spoke again, had become louder, clearer, more firm. "The passing of Ekaterina Moonin Shugak marks the passing of an age. That age, the age of living in the past, is done. The new age, the age of living in the now and working toward the future, has arrived."

There was a single clap of hands, immediately silenced. The room was heavy with a puzzled kind of expectancy, as they waited for what Harvey would say next.

"It is time," he said, "it is more than time for the Native corporations to realize that they are business corporations first, and Native corporations second. I say, as I'm sure Ekaterina would have said, that it's time to put away the beads and the feathers and integrate ourselves into the twentieth century." The rams' heads on his watch flashed coldly in the stage lights.

Kate, who had been moved nearly to tears by his previous words, raised incredulous eyes. Harvey was staring straight at her, in his steady gaze both a warning and a challenge. She looked around the room. Elders sat with faces like stone. Young people looked at each other, bewildered.

She turned her head to the right and she saw Olga, plump figure stiffly erect, brows drawn together, mobile mouth still. She turned to the left and saw Cindy, the planes of her broad face fined down somehow to their essential elements, all bone and strength. In that moment both reminded her so sharply of Ekaterina that she caught her breath against the pain.

Both were in traditional dress, Olga in sealskin and Cindy in caribou hide.

They looked at her, waiting. The whole room seemed to be waiting, even though Harvey was still speaking. Again Kate had the queer feeling of standing on the edge of an abyss, the vacuum left by Ekaterina's absence tugging her inexorably, unwillingly over the edge.

Olga carried a drum. A round drum on a thin frame, seal gut stretched across it and bound with caribou sinew. Without looking away from Kate, she tapped it once. The single, sharp note echoed through the great room, demanding to be heard.

Harvey looked up and frowned, searching for the interruption.

Olga tapped the drum again, and again it echoed around the room.

With the third strike it became a song.

In time with the beat, Cindy began to chant.

The chant was the chant of remembrance, the one the King Island Dancers had performed to open the day an hour before.

It was the same, and it was different.

Another voice joined Cindy's in the chanting. Another drum began beating in time with Olga's.

Against her will--or was it?--Kate felt her feet begin to move, her arms raise in the traditional movements, as if their paths were already marked out for her against the very air of the room. One of the King Island Dancers tossed something; she caught it in mid-air, a ringer mask woven of dyed rye grass, like a tiny fan, ornately beaded and trimmed with feathers. She slipped it over her right forefinger. A second followed the first and she slipped it on her left forefinger.

Olga drummed.

Cindy chanted.

Kate danced.

She did not dance alone. The outgoing chairman was the first to join her, the incoming chairman the second. Chairs disappeared from the center of the floor and a circle formed, stamping in unison to wake up the spirits, reaching for the sky to draw them in. No word was spoken; none was necessary. Axenia joined in, and Harvey. Lew stood pressed up against the wall, watching with a look both bewildered and apprehensive.

All danced, all together, all as one.

They danced the dance the missionaries had called heathen and satanic, they danced the dance their parents had been forbidden, they danced the dance their ancestors danced for a hundred and a thousand and ten thousand years, dances to mark a birth, to celebrate a wedding, to heal the sick, to mourn the dead, to thank Agudar for the good hunt, to pray to Maniilaq for guidance.

They danced the dance they would always dance, that their children would dance, that their children's children would dance, in joy and in sorrow, in entreaty and in thanksgiving, and, yes, with beads and with feathers, in button blankets and spirit masks, in kuspuks and mukluks, in jeans and Nikes.

The last note of the drum echoed across the room.

A thousand feet stamped in unison in reply. The building shook with the force of it.

The dance was done.

Kate returned the finger masks to the King Island dancer. She bowed her head to Cindy. She bowed her head to Olga. She walked from the room.

An elder of the church in Eklutna gave the benediction in a shaken voice, and the convention was over.

IT WAS A CLEAR NIGHT WITH NO WIND. THEY TOOK OFF from abel's strip as a full moon crested Angqaq. The light was dazzling against the snow. Jack stood the borrowed Super Cub on her left wing and banked toward Kate's homestead, maintaining an altitude of a hundred feet and throttling back to just above stall speed when they reached the creek. He pulled the zipper on his parka up to his chin and folded open the window.