About 350 road miles separate Anchorage from Rejoice. The highway follows the Matanuska Valley, climbs through a pass between the Talkeetna and Chugach mountain ranges, parallels the Copper River, then swings north and east along the Jordan to join the Alaska Highway.
Even in the snowstorm, there was a fair amount of traffic on the road between Anchorage and the Valley. The town of Palmer, about forty miles northeast of Anchorage, had started as the center of a social and economic experiment during the Great Depression, when families from the Midwest were relocated to establish agriculture in Alaska. But the coming of the container ship, the jet airplane, and the chain store made milk and vegetables from the West Coast cheaper than milk and vegetables from the Valley. Most of the people who lived in and around Palmer worked in Anchorage now, commuting because they liked the rural lifestyle and cheaper housing.
From Palmer on, only an occasional laboring semi marred the open road. On the long climb through the mountains, Kane watched the trees grow smaller and sparser, the houses fewer and farther between. He thought about why people came to Alaska and why they stayed. The Alaska they came to now was more like the rest of America than the one he’d been born in: more developed, more strident, and more polarized. But it retained its allure for people, at least certain kinds of people. Still the land of new beginnings and last chances, he thought.
On a good day, the drive from Anchorage to Rejoice takes five or six hours. It wasn’t a good day. The snow slowed Kane to a crawl, and he had to stop well below the top of the pass to put on the tire chains, a wet, unpleasant job, then stop on the other side to take them off. There was, as usual, much less snow on the interior side of the mountains, but the air was much colder.
Kane looked at the trees he passed and the streams he drove over, wondering what it would be like to throw a pack on his back again and head off into the wild. He’d always loved the outdoors. When he was a boy, his father had taken him fishing and hunting. Then his father abandoned the family. But Nik was soon old enough to fish and hike in the summers with his friends and, later, hunt as well. He strapped on snowshoes as soon as he could, and skis not long after. The outdoors had been an escape from the troubles at home, and during the summers anyway, the source of fish, meat, and berries, much welcomed by his mother.
He’d done everything he could to show his own children the joys of the outdoors, with mixed success. Only his oldest daughter seemed to have caught his enthusiasm. His other daughter was an indoor girl all the way. And his youngest, his son? Kane had missed too much of his growing up to know.
His own attitude toward the outdoors seemed to have changed in prison. After so much time in confined spaces, the land that passed by the windows of his pickup looked too big and empty. I hope I get over this, he thought. I’d hate to lose the outdoors, too.
Kane was stiff, tired, and hungry when he pulled into the parking lot of the Devil’s Toe Lodge a little after six p.m.
The lodge was a long, low log structure. Most of the logs were dark with age, but some were lighter, showing that someone had added on to the place. A door opened into a bar and café.
Inside the bar, a big, bearded drunk dressed in work clothes was yelling at a small, white-haired Native man wearing jeans, a flannel shirt, a ski jacket, and one of the nicest pairs of knee-high beaded moose-hide moccasins Kane had seen in years. A half dozen men in work clothes sat at a couple of tables, watching.
“We don’t want none of you goddamn salmon-crunchers in here,” the drunk was yelling. “Now get the hell out.”
The old man stood with his head bowed, leaning slightly toward the man like his words were a stiff wind. The drunk towered over him. Kane’s first instinct was to ignore the situation. It wasn’t his problem. But that was prison talking. I’ve got to get out of prison sometime, he thought. He walked over and stepped between them, facing the drunk.
“Calm down,” he said quietly, “or you’ll break something.”
The bartender looked at the two of them and scurried from the room.
Up close, the drunk looked to be Kane’s age or a little older. He had small, bloodshot eyes and a beak of a nose etched with the red lines of a heavy drinker. His shirtsleeves were rolled up, and he had an ornate tattoo on his left forearm of a demon doing unspeakable things to a woman. The finger he shook at Kane had dirt embedded under its nail.
“Who the fuck are you?” the drunk screamed. “You keep out of this or you’ll wish you had.”
His breath smelled like the inside of a bourbon barrel.
He was taller than Kane and, with his ample gut, probably fifty pounds heavier. Kane wasn’t worried. Every Anchorage cop had plenty of experience with big drunks.
“I’m just a guy came in here to have a quiet meal,” Kane said reasonably, “which I can’t do if you’re carrying on like this.”
“Fuck you,” the drunk said, and wound up to throw a big right hand. Kane shifted his feet and kicked the drunk’s brace leg out from under him. The drunk toppled over, banging his head on a table as he went down.
“Jumpin’ jimminy,” the old man said, “we’re having fun now.”
Kane looked around the room. All the men were standing. He turned to face them, arms at his sides and what felt like a big grin on his face. One of the men raised his hands and clapped them together. Slowly, the others joined him, until the café was filled with applause.
“Hit the rotten cocksucker again,” one of them called. “We don’t like him anyway.”
The drunk put his hand to his head. It came away bloody.
“Son of a bitch,” he said, and tried to get to his feet. Kane let him get to a knee before reaching over and shoving him onto his back.
“Stay there,” he barked. “You get up again and you’re just going to get hurt.”
The drunk mumbled something but stayed put.
The bartender returned. He had a dark-haired young guy with him. The guy looked worn out to Kane, but he was carrying a metal baseball bat.
“What happened here?” he demanded.
“Relax, Little John,” a voice called from one of the tables. “Henry just fell down.”
“Yeah, twice,” another voice called. General laughter followed.
“That what happened?” the guy with the bat asked Kane.
“More or less,” he said, “leaving out the fact I helped him fall. You really should stop serving guys like him before their true personalities come out.”
The guy gave Kane a tired grin and lowered the bat.
“Henry is a bastard,” the man said, “but his money spends just as good as the next man’s. As long as these boys don’t break the place up, they’re welcome.”
He turned to the Native man.
“But you’re another story, aren’t you, Abraham?” he said. “You know what Dora will say when she finds out you were here again, don’t you.”
The Native man smiled and lowered his head.
“Maybe you should head on home,” the man said, “before you get yourself—and me—in trouble.”
“I can’t leave,” the old man said. “I’m going to meet my son here.”
Kane looked toward the thin, wood-panel partition that separated the bar from the café.
“Let’s go get a bowl of soup, uncle,” Kane said. “If your son shows up, he can find us there.”
The old man stopped and looked at the men at the tables. He looked at the man with the bat. He looked at Kane.
“Okie dokie,” he said. “I like soup.”
Kane took the old man’s arm and led him toward the café.
A couple of the men helped the drunk to his feet. When he was upright, he shook them off and rushed toward Kane and the old man.
“Look out,” one of them called. Kane pivoted, saw the drunk coming and stepped aside, nudging the old man out of the way. When the drunk reached him, Kane planted his feet, grabbed one of his arms, and heaved. The drunk went flailing past, and crashed into a table, tumbling over it. He lay there for a moment and got to his feet again.
“You know,” Kane said conversationally, “being big isn’t all there is to it.”
The man rushed him again. Kane admired his gumption, but was getting tired of playing matador to his bull. He stepped aside again and as the big man floundered past Kane screwed his feet into the floor and put everything he had into a kidney punch. The man dropped like he’d been shot and lay there moaning, clutching his side.
A couple of the other men came over to help the big man into a chair.
“That was some punch,” one of them said to Kane. “Henry here will be pissing blood for a week. Can’t say he didn’t deserve it, though.” He laid a hand on the old man’s arm. “We don’t all share his views on race relations.”
“This ain’t over,” the big drunk said through gritted teeth.
The other men in the bar laughed.
“Shit, Henry,” one of them said, “you start up with that guy again and we’ll be chipping in to buy flowers for your funeral.”
Kane led the old man to a table in the café. A dark-haired young woman in tight jeans, a low-cut blouse, and sneakers brought them menus.
“What would you like to eat, uncle?” he asked.
“Just soup,” the old man said.
He ordered chicken soup for the old man and a cheeseburger for himself. The café was about half full, single men or men in small groups mostly, but one family with a couple of kids. They gave off a buzz of conversation. Above it, Kane could hear noise from the bar next door: voices, laughter. A jukebox, or maybe a television set, started up.
Kane let the silence stretch out between him and the old man. He knew he’d have to do something with him, but for the moment he just sat and let the road miles and the tension from his encounter with the big drunk slip away.
While he sat, he examined his surroundings. The walls of the café were covered with photographs of Devil’s Toe and its citizens, dating back quite a ways; the picture nearest their table showed a half dozen men trying to push a 1930s Ford pickup out of the mud.
The waitress brought their food, bending low so that Kane could get a good look at her lacy bra and what it held.
“If you see anything you’re interested in,” she said, “just ask.”
The old man picked up his spoon and began slurping.
“I like soup,” he said. “These store teeth I got make it tough to chew.”
Kane had known a lot of Natives. He’d grown up with them, gone to school with them, played sports with them and against them. On the force he’d dealt with Natives of all types: corporate leaders and street drunks, wife beaters and crime victims, and fellow cops and neighbors. He’d known a lot of Natives in prison—Native men ended up in prison all out of proportion to their numbers—including the ones who had helped him finally find peace of a sort. He’d done some reading on their culture and found much to admire. It gave them enough to keep going when disease and discrimination and booze would have broken most other people.
For a moment, Kane was assailed by an urge to ask the old man what it had been like to have his culture overrun and nearly swept away. But he recognized the self-indulgence and futility in that urge and kept quiet.
The two of them ate, the old man taking his time the way old people do. Kane’s cheeseburger was only a cut above hunger. Just as he was finishing, a young woman stormed in through the opening from the bar. She walked directly to where the two men were sitting.
“Where the hell have you been?” she said to the old man. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”
She turned to Kane.
“Who the hell are you? And what are you doing with my grandfather?”
She looked to be in her mid-twenties, with long, straight black hair, high cheekbones, and copper-colored skin.
“Buying him soup,” Kane said, “and looking after him. Like somebody else should be.”
The girl’s shoulders slumped.
“He does this sometimes, he just takes off,” she said. “When I get home from work, he’s gone.”
The old man stopped slurping soup.
“I’m here to meet my son,” the old man said. “I promised.”
He went back to eating.
Kane reached over and pulled out a chair.
“You could sit until he’s finished eating,” he said. “Would you like anything?”
The girl shook her head and sat.
“I’m Dora Jordan,” the girl said. “This is my grandfather, Abraham.”
“Nik Kane,” he told her. “I’m here to do a job for the people over in Rejoice.”
“The Angels?” the girl said. “What could you do for the Angels? They do everything for themselves.”
The old man lifted the bowl and drank the rest of the soup. He set the bowl back down and smacked his lips.
“I seen an angel once,” he said. “Back up behind where they’re mining now. I used to have a trap line back up there. Too old now, and there’s no animals on account of the noise.”
The old man was quiet for several seconds.
“But I was up there checking my traps, me and my son, when I seen the angel. It was snowing pretty good, and out of the snow came this angel all dressed in white and carrying this beautiful woman. She had long yellow hair with red streaks in it. He didn’t make a sound goin’ past me.”
The old man was quiet again. Just when Kane thought he’d finished, he said, “When I was done checking traps I went back to where I seen the angel. But there was no tracks. I guess because he was an angel. Or maybe the snow covered them up. I’ll ask my son when I see him.”
Kane cocked his head at the girl.
“His son, my uncle, went off to the Vietnam War,” she said. “He never came back. I show grandfather the letter saying he’s missing in action, but he doesn’t understand.”
Kane smiled.
“Or maybe, uncle, you just prefer living in a world where your son is coming back,” he said. “A world with angels in it.”
The old man smiled but said nothing. The girl helped him get up. She offered Kane some money, but he waved it away.