Sure you wouldn't want to talk to Clarence? Might be worth your while.'
Zavala saw Austin's newfound interest. 'I wouldn't mind stretching my legs for a while longer. At least we don't have to worry about getting home before dark.'
Joe's point was well taken. Daylight was more than twenty two hours long, and even after the sun set, technically, night was only a short period of dusk.
Mike guided them along a muddy street past more shacks, gangs of round-faced children, sleeping huskies, and racks where crimson strips of salmon dried in the sun. He went up to the door of a shack smaller than the others and knocked. Someone inside told them to come in. They stepped into the one-room house. It smelled of wood smoke and something meaty cooking on a camp stove. The house was sparsely furnished with a bunk bed in one corner and a table covered with a red-and-white checkered oilcloth. A man who looked as old as a glacier sat at the table carefully painting a wooden polar bear figure about six inches high. Several others figures of wolves and eagles had been painted and lined up.
'Grandpa, these men would like to hear the story about your rifle.'
Dark Oriental eyes sparkled with intelligence and good humor from a face creased in a thousand wrinkles. Clarence wore dark-framed glasses, and his thick silvery hair was neatly parted on one side. His mouth widened in a grin that seemed to take over his whole jaw. Although he must have been in his eighties, he shook hands in a bone-crunching grip and looked as if he could still wrestle a sea lion to the floor. Yet the voice that should have been amplified by the powerful frame was as soft as wind-blown snow.
His grandson said, 'I have to go back to the shop. I'll have the plane refueled by the time you get back.'
'I make these for the gift shops in Anchorage,' the old man said, putting the polar bear and paints aside. 'Glad you dropped by. You're just in time for lunch.' He indicated a couple of rickety chairs, and, refusing the protests of his guests, he spooned the stew from the stove pot into some chipped willow-pattern china bowls. He took a big spoonful as if to show there was no harm in his cooking. 'How is it?'
Austin and Zavala tentatively sampled the stew and pronounced it quite good.
The old man beamed with pleasure.
'Is it caribou?' Zavala asked.
The old man reached into a trash bucket and pulled out a can of Dinty Moore beef stew.
'Mike's a good boy,' Clarence said. 'He and his wife buy me stuff so I won't have to cook. They worry that I'm lonely since my wife died. I like visitors, but I don't want to bore you men.'
Austin looked around the room. The walls were decorated with primitive harpoons and Eskimo folk art. A Norman Rock well print with the boy sitting in the dentist's office was hung in congruously next to a fierce walrus mask. There were family pictures, including many of a stout, handsome woman who could have been the old man's wife. The most out-of-place object was a computer tucked in the corner. Grandpa Tinook saw Austin's amused gaze and said, 'It's amazing. We've got the satellite so the kids can learn about the rest of the world. I can talk on that machine with anyone, so I'm never alone.'
Clarence was no old blubber-chewing windbag, Austin deduced. He was sorry he had been in such a rush to avoid meeting him. 'If you don't mind, we'd very much like to hear your story,' he said.
Grandpa Tinook noisily scooped up the last of his stew, put the bowls in the sink, and sat down again. He squinted as if the memory were hard to recall, but when he started to talk it was clear he had spun this tale before.
'One day many years ago I was out hunting. There was some good trout and salmon fishing, fox to trap, and herds of caribou. I always got something. I had this little aluminum skiff and a fine motor. Got me around pretty good. It was too far to come home after the hunt, so I used to stay over a couple of nights at the old airfield.'
Austin glanced at Zavala. Alaska is dotted with airfields hardly worth the name.
'Where was this airfield?' he asked.
'Up north a ways. Left over from the Big War. They used to ferry planes to Russia and used it as a stopoff. Blimps there used to look for subs. Not much left. There was a hut where I could light a fire and keep warm and dry. I could store game and smoke it there 'til it was time to come home.'
'How long ago was that?'7
'Oh, fifty years ago or so. My memory ain't what it used to be. I remember when they said I had to stop going there, though.'
''171~y?'
The old man nodded. 'For months I never seen anybody. Then one day two men come by in a plane just as I'm cooking up some trout. Hard-lookin' white men. They flash their badges, say they're with the government and want to know what I'm doing. I give them some fish, and they're a lot nicer. They say there's going to be a big secret at the base and I can't come there anymore. But they will buy any fresh meat and fish I can get them. One of them gave me that gun you saw so I could shoot game. I took them lots of game and fish, never to the base, though. I'd meet them halfway.'
'Did you see any planes?'
'Sure, lots coming and going. Once I was hunting and I heard one that sounded like a hundred rushing rivers. Big as this whole village and crazy shape.'
'What kind of shape?'
He went to the wall and took down a harpoon. Touching the sharp metal point with his finger, he said, 'Something like this.'
Austin's gaze was unwavering. 'How long did you hunt game for these men?'
''Bout six months, I think. One day they showed up, said they didn't need any more. They told me to stay away from the airfield. Didn't want me to step on a mine. Said I could keep the rifle. They left in a big hurry.'
Zavala said, 'We've been looking for an old airfield supposed to be on a piece of land that looked like an eagle's nose, but we can't find it.'
'Oh, sure, this place used to be like that. Things have changed from ice and wind. In the summer the water comes in from rivers and floods the land. Doesn't look the same as it did back then. You got a map?'
Kurt pulled the map from his jacket and unfolded it.
Grandpa Tinook's thick finger came down on a section of coast under the pencil shading. 'Right here,' he said.
'We must have flown right over it,' Zavala said.
'Tell me,' Austin said, 'those men, did they give you their names?'
'Sure, Hewy and Dewy, they said.'
Zavala chuckled. 'I suppose Lewy was busy.'
The old man shrugged. 'I read Donald Duck when I shipped out on merchant ships out of Anchorage. They figured I musta ate whale blubber all my life. I let them think that.'
'It was probably a good thing that you did.'
'Like I said, they were hard men, although we became pretty good friends. I went back to the old base after the war. I think they just said that about the mines to scare me off. Felt like something had been poisoned and left to rot.' He paused thoughtfully. 'Maybe you can tell me. One thing I always wondered. What was the big secret? We weren't fighting the Japanese. The war was over.'
'Some men can't live without war,' Austin replied. 'If they don't have one they find another.'
'Sounds crazy to me, but what do I know? Well, that was years ago. Why do you men want to go to that old place?'
For once Austin was at a loss for words. He could have said how important it was to find an odd substance named anasazium before Gogstad got its hands on it and made worldwide mischief. But he suspected his real reasons were more visceral. The story of Buzz Martin's father had smoldered in him and offended his sense of right and wrong.
The best answer he could muster was, 'There was a boy once who went to his father's funeral, only his father wasn't dead.'
The old man nodded solemnly as if Austin had been the soul of clarity.
Austin's mind was already racing toward the task ahead. 'Thank you very much for telling us your story,' Kurt said, rising. 'And for lunch, too.'
'Wait,' Clarence said. He perused the wooden figures he'd carved, picked out two, and gave one to each of the NUMA men. 'Take these. The bear for strength and the wolf for cunning.'
