The Alpine Advocate (2 page)

Except for Adam and the half-million dollars. They were both better than good. After nine months, Adam didn’t exactly come as a surprise, but the five hundred thousand did. I never dreamed that my ex-fiancé, Don Cummings, would forget to remove me as the beneficiary of his life insurance policy with The Boeing Company. But then I didn’t expect him to die at forty-five, either. When he did both, I ended up with a windfall—and the cash to buy
The Advocate
.

I left a detailed memo for Carla, a brief note for Vida, and a question for Ed on the Harvey’s Hardware and Sporting Goods Store ad. I headed for the car, finding Front Street as deserted and dark as should be expected so early in the day. Alpine is set a mile off Stevens Pass, twenty miles below the summit where the Tye River joins the Skykomish, and smack on the Burlington Northern railroad line. The town founders built compactly on both sides of the train tracks, there being a dearth of level ground and a tendency for residents to walk a bit like mountain goats. Hills surround us, and mountains tower over the hills. In winter, Alpine is cold and dark and often isolated, with the tang of sawdust and woodsmoke carried on the wind. In summer, the town is fragrant with wild flowers, and the sharp, clean air is intoxicating. I love the place, though it’s not Eden. Small towns have vices, too. When you run the local newspaper, you know every one of them by name.

I crossed the bridge over the South Fork of the Skykomish River and found first light about ten miles down the highway. I loved this part of the drive, where the road was still narrow and the tall second-stand evergreens framed the asphalt like stalwart sentries. Seventy years ago the original inhabitants of Alpine had hacked down the Douglas fir and the red cedar and the Western hemlock and the white spruce, but their heirs had done more than inherit the earth—they’d reforested it. I blessed them every time I drove this stretch of road.

One of those farsighted Alpiners had been Constantine Doukas, known for reasons I’ve never heard as
Neeny
. His parents had come from Greece at the turn of the century, and his father had gone to work in the mill. The family was prone to saving and scrimping; by the time the mill was shut down, Grandpa Doukas was able to buy up most of the town. Neeny had been selling it off by bits and pieces ever since. His grandson was Chris Ramirez, and if Neeny was as rich as everybody said, it was no wonder Chris wasn’t worried about getting his tuition money back
from the state of Hawaii. Neeny could probably afford to buy Waikiki.

But I wasn’t sure that Chris would ever see any of that money. His mother, Margaret, had married “beneath her,” as Vida Runkel and half the town were fond of saying. A handsome Mexican laborer had passed through Alpine twenty years ago to help put in a new sewer system. He had swept Margaret off her feet—and Neeny Doukas had tried to sweep the romance under the carpet. Failing that, he had threatened to disinherit his daughter if she married Hector. She did—but, as far as I knew, Neeny didn’t carry out his threat.

That, however, resulted from Hector’s abandonment of Margaret when Chris was about six. Or so the story went. I rely on Vida for Alpine’s history, since I arrived in town only a little over a year ago. A small town’s past is very important, I’ve discovered, since its inhabitants seem less concerned about the future than their city counterparts. Maybe that’s because they figure their towns don’t have a future. Or else their lives have become so intertwined that a local history is more like a family album than a textbook. Whatever the case, Vida Runkel was the current Keeper of the Archives.

According to Vida, Margaret was overcome by grief. Furthermore, she had never liked the rain. Or her father. So she bundled up young Chris, left Alpine, and moved to Hawaii. About a year ago, she died of cancer.

Adam had made friends with Chris Ramirez at school, the two of them having the common bond of an association with Alpine and growing up virtually fatherless. Later they discovered a mutual fondness for basketball, surfing, girls, and half-racks, though not necessarily in that order. Now Chris was coming home after fourteen years. I wondered how much he’d remember. I also wondered what his grandfather would think of him after all this time.

The fragile silver sky of the past few mornings was dimmed, promising rain later in the day. Over the mountains
and above the trees, the sun came up behind me, looking wan in the early mist.

It was beginning to drizzle when I reached the freeway. I turned on the windshield wipers and realized I was not the only driver on the road. It was after five
A.M
., and the commute had begun, a thin trickle of cars headed for Everett to the west and Seattle to the south. I’d avoid city traffic by taking the Eastside route through Bellevue.

Or so I thought, always forgetting that Bellevue was a city. In my youth, it had been a sleepy little suburb. But that was almost forty years ago, and time and invading Californians had changed all that. I kept driving in traffic that grew more dense and aggravating. A year in Alpine had spoiled me; twenty years in Portland had been dismissed as if they had never existed.

The flight from Hawaii was a mere fifteen minutes late. Chris emerged into the terminal wearing a Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt, a Dodgers baseball cap, and a sullen expression. He registered no surprise at seeing me in the role of his personal chauffeur but at least had the grace to mumble something that passed for thanks. His luggage, he told me glumly, consisted of one suitcase and a gym bag.

“How long will you be staying, Chris?” I asked when we finally collected his belongings and had reached the dark green Jaguar that is, next to Adam, the light of my life.

Chris’s black eyes roamed somewhere in my direction. “I don’t know,” Chris said. “A couple of weeks, maybe.”

“Oh.” Call me crazy, but I can never figure out how the hotel-motel industry keeps going when nobody I know supports it. My house is small, with two bedrooms and a den. When Adam is home, the only place guests can stay is in sleeping bags on the front porch. Or that’s the way it should be, but I have been known to put up a family of five in the living room, the dining nook, and even the laundry room. Of course that was my cousin, Trina, and her brood, which hardly counts because I figure they usually sleep in trees and eat out of troughs. “Sure,” I conceded,
“you can sleep in Adam’s room. He might even have made the bed before he left.”

“Cool.” Chris’s voice was remote. His gaze was fixed on the passing traffic, now bumper-to-bumper, mostly headed for Boeing—where Don worked until his fatal heart attack and fortuitous insurance policy. I would have felt guilty about the money had he not also taken out a second personal policy in the same amount which covered his wife and three children. As it was, I counted my blessings. I might not have wanted to be Don’s bride, but I never wished him ill. Ironically, the reverse may not have been true. Don was not a happy man when I told him I was carrying Tom’s child. Come to think of it, Tom wasn’t too thrilled about it either. At least he never told his wife.

“Do you remember much about Alpine?” I asked as we swung onto the Eastside freeway and found ourselves going against traffic for a change.

Chris gave what I assumed was a shake of his head. “Just the trains going through. And the snow.”

“It’s grown some,” I offered. “Your uncle Simon has two new partners in his law firm now.”

“I don’t remember him.” Chris’s voice was uninterested.

“Your cousins are both still in town.” I was struggling to make conversation, raking up a past that I wasn’t sure meant a rat’s behind to Chris. Except that it must, somehow, or he wouldn’t be coming back. “Jennifer is married to Kent MacDuff. He works at his dad’s used car lot. Mark manages property for your grandfather. He had a girlfriend, but they broke up.”

“Mark used to lock me in the cellar at Grandpa’s.” He spoke matter-of-factly, but the fact that he mentioned the incident at all spoke volumes.

The rain was coming down harder; I switched the wind-shield wipers on to high. “Will you see them while you’re in town?” I asked, trying to sound casual.

I sensed rather than saw Chris shrug. “I don’t know. They’ve never come to see me.” He was silent the whole time I drove past Bellevue.

Resisting the urge to ask about Deloria, I kept closer to Chris’s home turf. “Your grandfather isn’t too well,” I remarked at last. That was what Vida told me, anyway. She’d run into Neeny Doukas at young Doc Dewey’s office about a week ago. He’d definitely looked
poorly
to her, but so did Sheriff Dodge’s Siberian husky.

“Neeny’s old,” Chris replied in a tone that assumed anyone over seventy was expected to be ailing. “He never liked me.”

I slowed down as the first of the logging trucks pulled onto the highway. “Chris,” I began, a bit surprised at the annoyed note in my voice, “if you don’t think much of your relatives, why are you coming back to Alpine?”

Chris glanced at me, then looked down at his battered but expensive gym shoes. “That’s my business.” He scuffed one foot against the other and relented a bit. “I’ve got a score to settle with Grandpa. I hate him so much I could kill him.”

N
OW
BOYS WILL
be boys, and all that, but I still found Chris Ramirez’s response disturbing. I hardly knew the kid, but he struck me as too unmotivated to do much of anything, let alone stage a face-off with Neeny Doukas. I laughed, a bit lamely, and gave him a quick sidelong glance.

“Just wait awhile. Vida Runkel already has him halfway to death’s door.”

“I don’t know her.” Chris was staring straight ahead through the rain-streaked windshield. The freeway felt vaguely slick, for it hadn’t rained since Labor Day. Indian summer had held sway until this last week of September.

“Chris …” I began, then stopped. I sensed his seriousness and recalled my description of him, however inaccurate, as a potential poet. But moodiness can beget other things than verse. “Did he and your mother ever write or talk?” I posed the question with less than my usual professional aplomb.

“Sometimes.” He resettled the baseball cap on his head. “Afterward, my mother would be mad for a week.”

“Is that why you’re so angry with him?”

Chris shifted in the leather-covered seat, his feet now pigeon-toed. “He wrecked my mom’s life. She died sad. She lived sad. He sent my dad away. He owes me. And them.”

This was serious stuff indeed. I recalled the time I’d been sent by
The Oregonian
to cover a story about a woman who was going to jump off the roof of a down
town Portland hotel. The policemen and firemen weren’t having any luck talking her out of it, so they dispatched me, as the only woman on the scene, to give it a try. I hadn’t had the wildest notion what to say to her. I vividly remembered walking out onto the rooftop and wracking my brain for words of wisdom. The first thing that popped out of my mouth was “Where’d you get those green shoes?” She had gone right over the ledge. A decade later, I didn’t have a lot more confidence in my abilities at persuasion.

I hedged a bit. “You never saw your father again?”

“Nope. Neither did Mom. Never heard from him either. He just … disappeared.” Chris paused, fidgeting with the baseball cap. “Whatever my grandfather did to him must have been pretty freaking grim.”

Whatever
, according to Vida Runkel, had involved a large amount of money. At least that was what she and her fellow town gossips had figured. But nobody knew for certain.

“Maybe he went back to his own people,” I suggested, veering further away from the topic of Neeny Doukas.

“Maybe.” Chris fell silent. We turned off the main freeway, heading toward Monroe, where I hoped this week’s
Advocate
had arrived an hour ago. If only Carla Steinmetz could screw her head on the right way long enough to get the paper properly routed, I’d have my faith restored in her and, to some extent, in the younger generation in general.

“Say, Chris,” I said, reverting to more practical—and comfortable—matters. “Have you got enough warm clothes?”

He shrugged. “I can buy some.”

“Okay.” I suddenly felt weary. I’d been up for eight hours, and it was only ten
A.M
. I cursed Adam for sending Chris to me; I cursed myself for being sappy enough to drive all the way to the airport. I wondered why Chris had confided in me. Maybe it was because I, like his mother, had raised an only son on my own. I experienced a familiar pang of regret, not for my sake, but for Adam’s. Chris
had had a father for the first six years; Tom had never seen Adam. I wouldn’t let him, and sometimes I was sorry.

“Hey, this is fresh!” The young man beside me had suddenly metamorphosed into an enthusiastic passenger. He was straining at his seat belt, staring out the window at the dark green hills and the occasional fertile field. “This is like forest! Are there any deer?”

“Sure. We just went by a deer crossing sign a couple of miles back. Your uncle Simon used to hunt before he got some environmentalists as clients.”

Chris didn’t react to his uncle’s change of heart. He was still gazing out the window, the faintest hint of a smile touching his wide mouth. In profile under the bill of his Dodgers cap he looked very young. I hoped it was only bravado that was setting him up for a confrontation with his grandfather. Maybe, once we were settled in and I’d fried up some chicken and made milk gravy and mashed potatoes, I could talk some sense into him.

I shot another swift look at his face. It was set in stone. I’d be better off talking shoes to would-be suicides.

To look at Ed Bronsky, you wouldn’t figure he could sell mittens to the three little kittens. Almost as wide as he was tall, Ed had the gloomiest face this side of a basset hound, and his ears were nearly as long. He was the most negative man I ever met, except for my seventh grade math teacher. I’d actually heard Ed try to talk advertisers out of buying space in
The Advocate
.

“The town’s too small. There’s no competition. You’ve been around forever. Everybody knows you already.” I still shudder every time I hear Ed chatting with one of the local merchants. After ten years in the job, it’s a wonder the paper isn’t in worse financial trouble than it already is.