With a hot meal in her stomach and her feet roasting in front of the fire, Nick felt like a new person. She also felt foolish for allowing herself to be spooked by a fireside ghost story, which was all Gus’s talk about old sins and long shadows amounted to. No doubt he and Ranger Kelly had planned it together, so they could get a good laugh out of frightening the tourists.
Speak of the devil, she thought, as Kelly and Gus reappeared in the firelight. They’d been out scouting the perimeter, or so they’d said, but she couldn’t help imagining them marking the trees like territorial dogs. Moving in unison, they sat on either side of her.
“We wanted to speak with you privately,” Kelly said, hanging his hat on his knee.
Not knowing what to expect, Nick pasted a smile on her face and said nothing.
Kelly continued. “I owe you an apology. I came on a little strong earlier. By uncovering that body, you were only doing your job.”
“And you were doing yours,” she said. “No harm done.”
“The thing is, Gus and I have been talking. You seem to be the only one here with any kind of real experience.”
Nick didn’t know what he was getting at, but the last thing she needed was to get in the middle of some political feud.
“Doctor Alcott is my boss,” she reminded him. “He’s in charge of this expedition. If it’s a decision you want, talk to him, not me.”
“Not the money man?” Kelly said, nodding in Ivins’s direction.
“His company is our sponsor, if that’s what you mean. The expedition is strictly a Smithsonian operation.”
Gus clicked his tongue. “Money talks, but the blood talks stronger. See for yourself.” He was looking directly at Ivins, who was by the cooking stove with his arm around the doctor’s shoulder.
“They both work for E-Group. They’ve probably known each other for a long time,” Nick said.
As she spoke, Ivins and Dr. Royce snuggled together.
“On a cold night like this, sharing a sleeping bag is a good way to keep warm,” Gus said.
Kelly fidgeted. “Let’s stick to the point. We came to you, Ms. Scott, because we think you have your head screwed on straight.”
“Thank you, I think.”
“While you were out there digging today,” Kelly continued, ignoring her sarcasm, “I kept an eye on you through the binoculars. Once I caught a glimpse of bears.”
“Where?” Nick said.
“In the rocks. I lost sight of them after a few moments, but I had the feeling they were following your trail.”
“It could be they were heading for the high country,” Gus put in, “and we just happened to be in their way. If they’d been tracking us, we’d have seen a sign of them by now.”
“I hope you’re right,” Kelly said to Gus. He paused, then hesitantly said, “Doctor Scott, I respect you enough that I think you won’t mind if I ask you if you or the doctor are, uh, if this is a special time of month for either of you ladies.” Nick was amused that the ranger had turned a bright beet red.
“I’m sorry,” Nick said. “I can’t speak for Doctor Royce but I can assure you I’m not in that part of the estrous cycle.”
“Bears are highly sensitive to the smell of blood,” Gus added.
“You act like they might attack,” Nick said.
Kelly shook his head. “They never have, not here in the refuge. But there was a case in Yellowstone. For sure, they know we’re here. That’s the problem.” Kelly toyed with his hat. “Bears are unpredictable. If they take it into their minds to come into camp, we’ll have to abandon the site.”
“You just said they won’t attack.”
“I said they haven’t so far. But that’s not the issue. This refuge exists for one reason, to ensure the survival of the Hammersmith’s bear. Here, as I told you before, they have the absolute right-of-way. Should they want this site, we’ll have to move.”
“That’s crazy.”
The ranger shifted his hat from one knee to the other. “Surely, you wouldn’t want to further endanger a species already on the verge of extinction.”
“I was thinking of scaring them away, not shooting them.”
Gus snorted. “She’s got you there, Terry.”
“We have our orders,” Kelly persisted.
“She does work for the Smithsonian,” Gus reminded him. “So maybe we can bend the rules.”
Kelly opened his mouth as if to object, then broke into a grin. “If you say so, but just how do you suggest we go about scaring them?”
“Sometimes loud noises will scare a bear,” Gus said. “Sometimes a bear is scared of nothing. Siudleratuin is not afraid.”
“Here we go,” Kelly said. “I’d better warn you in advance, Ms. Scott. Gus’s name, Auqusinauq, means teller of myths. Teller of tall tales is more like it, if you ask me.”
“You may call my stories myths if you want, but what I tell you now is true. Once, long ago, but not so long that a man’s lifetime wouldn’t stretch that far, my people came to a place like this.” With one arm, he gestured expansively. “They built a village despite the warnings of a wise old man, whose memory went back before long ago, to when he’d found what he called the book of the dead. ‘I found it,’ he counseled them, ‘very near here. Here, the dead come alive and walk.’ But the old man’s eyesight was failing, so the people thought he couldn’t tell one place from another and they ignored him and built their village. But no sooner was it finished than people began to sicken and die.
“A meeting was called and the people gathered together to ask the old man’s advice. ‘What can we do?’ they asked him. ‘Nothing,’ he told them. ‘It is too late.’
“‘We can leave,’ they said. ‘We can go back to where we came from.’
“The old man shook his head. ‘We have come to a place where the spirits of the dead, the Siudleratuin walk,’ he told them. ‘And we haven’t come by chance. The Siudleratuin lured us here, so they wouldn’t be alone. They want our spirits to walk with them.’”
Gus paused, nodding to himself. “And?” Nick prompted.
“They died and walk here still.”
“If they all died,” she said, “no one would have been left to tell the tale.”
“She has you there,” Kelly said, nodding at Nick.
Gus tilted his head to one side and clicked his tongue. “The dead crave company.”
“I suppose you mean us?” Nick said.
The Inuit shrugged. “Your airplane. Perhaps they lured it here to crash and keep them company.”
“I’m not a tourist, Gus,” she said. “Your story doesn’t scare me. I’ve been hearing ones just like it all my life from my father.”
The Inuit stared up at the star-filled night. “My people have a saying. One is not alone. Always remember that, Ms. Scott.” With that, he got to his feet.
After a moment’s hesitation, Kelly stood and said, “Don’t let Gus worry you. He and I will stand a bear watch tonight. Sleep well,” with that the pair of them crossed the fire-cast terminator and disappeared into the night.
“One is not alone,” Nick murmured to herself but decided not to dismiss it as more of Gus’s cryptic shaman-speak. A people like the Inuit, who lived and hunted in a desolate, arctic wilderness, needed to believe they weren’t alone. Just as we all do, Nick reminded herself as the spill-gate opened and a flash flood of memory washed over her.
“I’m always alone,” her mother had complained so often it had become her mantra. Usually, it marked the beginning of one of Elaine’s black moods of depression. During those times, she seldom left her bed, surrendering everything, housework and cooking, to Nick.
“Alone, alone,” she’d croon from her bed. “Your father knows I’m afraid to be alone, but still he leaves me. He runs away from me like you do, Nicolette.”
“I always come back, mother.” Usually Nick ran only as far as her father’s office on campus.
“That’s because you have nowhere to go.”
“Elliot comes back, too.”
“Only so he can leave me alone again,” Elaine answered. “One day I won’t be here when he comes back.”
How could she leave, Nick had wanted to ask, if she never left her bed? But she’d kept the question to herself.
“When I’m dead he’ll be sorry,” Elaine said. “You, too, my girl. You’ll all be sorry.”
“Yes, mother.”
“Don’t you want to know why I’ll be dead?”
“No.”
“Do you ever wonder what it’s like to be dead?” Elaine asked.
Nick had fled her mother’s bedroom and then the house, though her father was beyond reach on one of his Anasazi digs. Even so, she was determined to run away until dinnertime at least. But where to go? She’d come away with no money, so there was nothing to do but walk. The park was close by, but Elaine had warned her about going there on her own, especially now that she was nearly a woman, as her mother put it.
Three blocks from home, Nick saw Billy Meeks working on his car. At least, those were his legs, encased in grimy jeans, protruding from beneath his old Ford convertible. He was two years ahead of her in junior high, too young to drive legally, and the envy of the student body because of his car.
Rumor had it that he had once served jail time for car theft. Whether Elaine had heard the rumor Nick didn’t know, but Billy and his friends were definitely on Elaine’s list of undesirables. Nick hadn’t believed the stories until she’d overheard Billy in the cafeteria, boasting that he could hot-wire any car ever made.
She was about to pass by when he slid out from under the car and sat up. “I saw you coming, kid.”
He looked her up and down, stopping at her bare legs, which pleased and embarrassed her at the same time.
“I’d take you for a ride,” he added, winking, “but I’ve got to get this baby ready for a hot date tonight.”
Nick glanced toward the house and was relieved to see Billy’s mother watching them from the window. Nick waved.
“Look at her,” Billy said. “The old lady loves spying on me.” So did Elaine, Nick thought, but this was one time she took comfort from such company. Besides, the sight of Billy had given her an idea. She said, “Some of the kids at school say you hot-wire cars.”
“Why are you asking, kid?”
Because she had a plan. “Most of us don’t believe it.”
“Believe it, kid. But hot-wiring ain’t easy like you see in the movies. You don’t just twist a screwdriver in the ignition. But if I can pop open the hood, I can start anything.”
“Could you teach me how?”
“Why would I do that, kid?”
“Because I’ll pay you,” Nick said, already imagining herself hot-wiring Elaine’s car, which seldom left the garage, and driving away to meet her father.
“How much?” he asked.
Nick had twenty dollars saved to buy her next model airplane. “Twenty dollars.”
“Christ, kid, if you were a little older, I’d make you pay on your back. Now, beat it.”
Nick’s face flushed, but she didn’t back off. “I was right, you don’t know how.”
“Look, kid, why would you want to hot-wire a car anyway?”
She glanced at the house again. “To get away from my mother.”
Billy stared at her for a long time. “Okay, kid,” he said finally, “just don’t tell anybody where you learned how.”
“I promise,” she said, crossing her heart.
She had kept that promise, too, when the police arrested her for driving Elaine’s car without a license.
Nick shook her head at the memory and headed for her tent. As she was about to zip herself inside, she saw Gus silhouetted in the moonlight, standing bear watch.