Ice Hunt

window. In the midnight gloom, the bright interior shone like a beacon.

Jenny sighed and patted Bane as the wolf followed beside her.

Bennie glanced over to her, spooling the hose line. “You know he quit drinking.”

“Bennie, I don’t want to talk about it.”

He shrugged again and puffed out a large cloud of cigar smoke. “I’m just saying.”

“I know.”

The small door to the hangar banged open. Belinda, Bennie’s wife, stood in the doorway. “You two coming in out of the cold? I have eggs and caribou strip steaks frying.”

“In a second, hon.”

Bane didn’t have such patience. With his nose in the air at the scent of frying meat, the dog sauntered toward the door, tail wagging furiously.

Belinda let him pass with a pat on the head, then pointed at the glowing tip of Bennie’s cigar. “The dog’s welcome, that isn’t.”

“Yes, dear.” He gave Jenny a look that said, See what I have to put up with. But Jenny also saw the love shining between both of them.

Belinda closed the door with a sorry shake of her head. She was a decade younger than her husband, but her sharp intelligence and world-weary maturity spanned the gap. She was native to Kaktovik, her family going back generations, but she and her parents had moved to Fairbanks when she was a teenager. It had been at the beginning of the black gold rush — a flood of oil, money, jobs, and corruption. Indians and native Inuit, all anxious for their share of the wealth, flocked to the cities, abandoning their homelands and customs. But what they found in Fairbanks was a polluted, blue-collar town of construction workers, dog mushers, Teamsters, and pimps. Unskilled natives were ground under the heels of progress. To support her family, Belinda became a prostitute at the age of sixteen. It was after her arrest that she and Bennie had met. He took her under his wing — literally. He showed her the skies above Fairbanks and another life. They eventually married and moved here with her parents.

Bennie straightened, drew one last drag on his cigar, then dropped and stubbed it into the snow. “Jen, I know what you think of Matt.”

“Bennie…” Warning entered her tone.

“Hear me out. I know how much you lost…both of you.” He took off his oil-stained cap and swiped his thinning hair. “But you gotta remember. You’re both young. Another child could—”

“Don’t.” The single word was a bark, a knee-jerk reaction. As soon as she said it, she remembered Matt cutting her off just as abruptly. But she could not hold back her anger. How dare Bennie presume to know how it felt to lose a child? To think another child could replace a lost one!

Bennie stared at her, one eye squinted, judging her. When he spoke next, it was in a calm, measured voice. “Jen, we lost a child, too…a baby girl.”

The simple statement stunned her. Her anger blew out like a snuffed candle. “My God, Bennie, when?”

“A year ago…miscarriage.” He stared out into the dark snowy plains. In the distance the few lights of the seaside village flickered. A heavy sigh escaped him. “It nearly crushed Belinda.”

Jenny saw it had done the same to the man in front of her.

He cleared his throat. “Afterward we found out she would never be able to bear a child. Something to do with scarring. Docs said it was secondary to—” His voice cracked. He shook his head. “Let’s just say, it was secondary to complications from her old job.”

“Bennie, I’m so sorry.”

He waved away her sympathy. “We move on. That’s life.”

Through the window, Jenny watched Belinda laughing as she refilled Matt’s coffee. Not a sound was heard but the whistle of wind across the tundra.

“But you and Matt,” Bennie resumed, “you’re both young.”

She heard his unspoken words: You two could still have another child.

“You were good together,” he continued, kicking snow off his boots. “It’s high time one of you remembered that.”

She stared through the window. Her words were a whisper, more to her own heart than to her companion. “I do remember.”

She had met Matt during an investigation of poaching in the Brooks Range. A conflict had arisen between native rights and the federal government over hunting for food in parklands. He had been there representing the state, but after learning of the subsistence level of existence of the local tribes, he became one of their most vocal advocates. Jenny had been impressed by his ability to look beyond the law and see the people involved, a rarity among government types.

While working together to settle the matter and make new law, the two had grown closer. At first, they simply sought work-related reasons to get together. Then, after running out of fabricated excuses, they simply started dating. And within a year, they were married. It took a while for her family to accept a white man into their fold, but Matt’s charm, easygoing nature, and dogged patience won them over. Even her father.

Benny cleared his throat. “Then it’s not too late, Jen.”

She watched a moment longer, then turned from the window. “Sometimes it is. Some things can’t be forgiven.”

Bennie met her gaze, standing in front of her. “It was an accident, Jen. Somewhere in there you know that.”

Her anger, never far from the surface, flared again. She clenched her fingers. “He was drinking.”

“But he wasn’t drunk, was he?”

“What the hell does that matter! Even a single drop of alcohol…” She began to shake. “He was supposed to be watching Tyler. Not drinking! If he hadn’t been—”

Bennie cut her off. “Jen, I know what you think of alcohol. Hell, I worked with you long enough in Fairbanks. I know what it’s done to your people…to your father.”

His words were like a punch to the belly. “You’re crossing the line, Bennie.”

“Someone has to. I was there when your father was hauled in, goddamn it! I know! Your mother died in a car accident because your father was drunk.”

She turned away, but she couldn’t escape his words. She had been only sixteen at the time. Epidemic alcoholism was the coined term. It was devastating the Inuit, a curse winding its way down the generations, killing and maiming along the way — through violence, suicides, drownings, spousal abuse, birth defects, and fetal alcohol syndrome. As a native sheriff, she had seen entire villages emptied from no other cause than alcohol. And her own family had not escaped.

First her mother, then her son.

“Your father spent a year in jail,” Bennie continued. “He went to AA. He’s been on the wagon and found peace by returning to the old ways.”

“It doesn’t matter. I…I can’t forgive him.”

“Who?” His voice sharpened. “Matt or your father?”

Jenny swung around, fists clenched, ready to swing at him.

Bennie kept his position before the door. “Whether Matt had been stone-cold sober or not, Tyler would still be dead.”

The bluntness of his words tore at the thick scarring that had formed in her own body. It wasn’t just around her heart, but strung in tight cords through her belly, in her neck, down her legs. The scarring was all that allowed her to survive. It was what the body did when it couldn’t heal completely. It scarred. Tears arose from the pain.

Bennie stepped forward and pulled her into his arms. She sagged in his grip. She wanted to dismiss Bennie’s words, to lash out, but in her heart, she knew better. Had she ever forgiven her father? How much of that anger had become a part of who she was? She had entered law enforcement in an attempt to find some order in the tragedies and vagaries of life, finding solace in rules, regulations, and procedures, where punishment was meted out in blocks of time — one, five, or ten years — where time could be served and sins forgiven. But matters of the heart were not so easily quantified.

“It’s not too late,” Bennie repeated in her ear.

She mumbled her answer to his chest, repeating her earlier words. “Sometimes it is.” And in her heart, she