One Arctic Summer Read online

  Lisa giggled behind her hand. “Nice to meet you, too,” she said, then led Oscar away, whispering to her fiancé, “I like her. I think Rocky likes her, too. He just doesn’t know it yet.”

  Seeing the couple walk away awoke something in X. She wasn’t sure what it was, but suddenly, she had the biggest urge to mimic Lisa and cuddle into Rocky’s side. “Lisa was right, there is a chilly wind blowing,” she said, using the line as her excuse to stand nearer and share his warmth.

  Rocky brought up his arm and wrapped it around her shoulder, bringing her close with two quick and gentle tugs toward him, reassuring her that it was okay, she wasn’t being too forward. Suddenly, this felt so right, holding her. Maybe she really was his red raven and his spirit soulmate had just been playing the trickster.

  A few minutes later they arrived at the site, white cording partitioning off the area from the rest of the grassy bluff above the beach.

  “Not much to look at from here,” she said, and burrowed deeper into him.

  Rocky pulled her jacket collar up, leaning into her hair as he did so, inhaling her spicy scent, her unbound auburn hair flying about, tickling his nose. “Make sure you bundle up when you come to work. If your luggage doesn’t get here in time, we’ll figure something out. You won’t be thinking clearly if you’re shivering from the cold. Plus, your hands will be stiff and won’t work.”

  “I don’t have to come here tomorrow. From the tentative schedule that was set up before I left, I’m supposed to show up at the dig on Monday morning. Dr. J. said first light, but I’m pretty sure he was messing with me since he knew about the twenty-four hours of daylight at this time of year. After he said that, he added, ‘Or eight o’clock, whichever suits you.’”

  X squatted down and peered into the area that had already been partially excavated. She looked up at Rocky. “We call the man, pardon my speech, Dr. Jackass. He was a newly tenured associate professor until the head of the department keeled over from a heart attack. Next thing you know, Dr. J.’s in charge of all the American archaeological digs. He always wanted to come to Alaska, but he wasn’t in line for it. He made a few calls and suddenly he was top dog on the dig, even though Dr. Peterson had been on the schedule to come up here for over a year. Men!”

  “What brought that on?” Rocky asked, and squatted down beside her, enjoying her nearness despite her exasperation.

  “Dr. Peterson is a woman. She’s as smart as they come but there’s the matter of tenure. She started on her doctorate late in life because she wanted to have children before she was too old. Beautiful kids, too. Anyhow, even though she was slated to come up here, he bumped her off the schedule and took her place. He couldn’t add her as an assistant because then they’d have to pay her and that wasn’t in the budget. That position was for an unpaid intern. I wasn’t supposed to come out either. Scotty was next in line for the internship, but I guess Dr. J. liked my body-type more and asked for me by name. As if I’d ever let that sexist, ego-bloated…”

  X looked over and saw Rocky’s eyes widen, shock ready to take over if she continued her rant. “I’m sorry. He has, shall we say, tried to take liberties with me. I may be single, but he’s a married man. Even if we were both single, unsolicited advances are unwelcome.”

  Rocky patted her shoulder, then stood up. “Come on. The wind is getting stronger as the sun gets lower. Let’s get back to my grandmother’s house.”

  ***

  “Grandmother, this is Alexandra. Both her luggage and her hotel reservation were lost. I’ve invited her to stay with us for the night.”

  Grandma looked X up and down, the lack of eye contact with her guest indicating she didn’t need to include her in the conversation. “She can sleep with me,” she said to Rocky.

  “No, grandmother. She and I already discussed it.” Rocky looked over at X and fixed her with a ‘don’t challenge me on this—I know her, and you don’t’ stare. “I can sleep on the floor and she’ll take the couch.”

  “No. She can sleep with me,” Grandma said, punctuating her declaration with a stomp of her cane on the wooden floor.

  X opened her mouth, ready to agree with her simply to end the tension but balked when she caught Rocky’s glare. She closed her mouth quickly, and a forced smile took its place.

  “Grandma, she’s not used to this house. If she’s a sleepwalker, then she’ll step on me before going outside. We wouldn’t want our guest to wake up in the lagoon now, would we?”

  “Hmph! No. She stay on the couch and you sleep on the floor. You two come to bingo with me in one hour. She can help me mark my cards. My eyes not so good anymore. She has young, pretty eyes. I like her. She has red hair, too. Just like your great-great-grandfather.”

  She looked at X, speaking to her for the first time. “He’s part Russian, you know,” nodding to Rocky. “No red hair in family since me, but now mine’s all white. Maybe he’ll have red-haired children if he finds the right wife.” She nodded thoughtfully. “I think Wilma in Wainwright has red-haired granddaughter. I’ll ask her how old she is. I need to see great-grandchildren before I die. I want at least one with red hair like me.”

  Grandma finished her dissertation on the search for a redheaded wife for her grandson, then toddled over to her rocking chair, picking up her bag of yarn before she sat down. “Maybe she will have a little girl and name her Krista like me.” She picked out her work in process—a soft brown scarf—and began crocheting, pacing her rocking with her hook work. “That would be nice. Very nice.”

  Rocky canted his head toward the kitchen, his eyes asking X to meet him there. This latest match with Grandma had ended in a tie. He had won the sleeping assignments, but she had someone to escort her to bingo.

  “Is she always that insistent?”

  “Yup, she’s a redhead. Actually, I don’t think hair color has anything to do with it. Elders pretty much get their way with everything. After all, they have had a lifetime of experience to learn from. I know in modern society, it’s not that way. But in older cultures, we understand that unless there’s some sort of impairment, the old folks generally know what’s going on. ‘Been there, done that’ is real for them.”

  X shrugged her shoulder in a non-committal fashion. The only older people she was familiar with were aloof professors. She didn’t care about their attitude and biased opinions, and the few times she had reached out, they let her know they didn’t care about hers, either. Instead of commenting, she asked, “Can I call the airport and see if my luggage made it in yet?”

  Rocky stuck out his bottom lip and shook his head, then looked at the rack of handmade coats and kuspuks hanging on the hooks lining the plasterboard wall. The jackets were for him to mend, the kuspuks—women’s cotton print overgarments—were torn or worn-out beyond favor from their previous owners and he was supposed to cut them into rags, reclaiming any large pieces of usable fabric for quilts or other projects. He sighed at the possibilities, then shook his head again in case she had missed it.

  She hadn’t. “Why not? Why can’t I call the airport?”

  “You could if you went to the neighbor’s house and asked them very nicely if you could use their phone. We don’t have one. Or you could walk two blocks and ask the agent yourself, but all you’d get out of that would be exercise. No more flights are coming in today. Unless the airlines had a special request from you to transfer your bag to the cargo company and that plane came in a day early, your luggage isn’t here.”

  “So, now what am I supposed to do? Wear the same clothes for another day?”

  Rocky looked at her and grinned. “They look clean enough to me. Even your coat got a quick semi-dry cleaning from Fish Face. But if it makes you feel better, I have an idea. You’ll have to wear the same pants until I figure something else out, but I have some kuspuks here that are usable. I know this one is from a woman who is about the same size as you. All I need to do is mend a couple of rips. It may not be the prettiest, but you can wear it over your clothes to keep them clean
.”

  X’s frown of frustration quickly turned into a smirk of satisfaction. “If only my mother could see me now, getting ready to have a man dress me in a reclaimed and patched kuspuk while working for free in the semi-frozen tundra, hundreds of miles within the Arctic Circle. She’d turn twelve shades of purple. Yup, Rocky, whatever you can do to help me out is much appreciated. I’m still working on ‘unlearning’ the useless set of values my mother did her best to instill in me. I’m sure I’ll survive without designer lotions and clothing.”

  “These are designer clothes, and if you need some lotion, I have something that I’m sure is just as good, if not better than, the cocoa cream butter you were looking for. Since I blended it from an old family recipe, it’s designer, too.”

  “Design away! This may not be my home, but I feel more comfortable here, right now with you and your grandmother, than I have anywhere else since I summered with my own grandmother when I was eight.”

  “If that’s the case, go in the living room and chat with Grandma for a bit while I get this finished. We have less than an hour until it’s time for bingo.”

  Grandma regaled X with the stories of her youth, of the winter of near starvation when her husband had been injured after his crew had towed a big bowhead to the shore. The men were maneuvering the massive creature for butchering when the tow line snapped, the sheave block hitting her husband in the thigh bone, breaking his femur, the gaping wound and loss of blood threatening to take his life.

  She had been on the beach that day, her young daughter slung close to her body under her coat, ready to assist in the butchering. She told X how she had elbowed the men aside and took over the job of quickly setting the bone and holding his wound closed, staunching the flow of blood with her tight grasp. The men put her husband on the flat board that was supposed to be used as a processing table for the meat and carried him inside the church. She shuffled alongside him, her grasp on his thigh tight, the baby inside her coat squirming and squalling because she had been jostled from her nursing position. She ignored the infant’s wails, knowing the baby could be late in a meal but her husband couldn’t afford to lose another drop of blood.

  Once inside, she directed her nephew to get her medical satchel and take out one of the needles she always kept on hand threaded with a suture, soaking in a bottle of vanilla extract. He pulled out the suture, handed her the needle, and took over her job holding his uncle’s leg together.

  She quickly flexed her hand, working the circulation back in her frozen and stiff fingers, then bent to work, stitching the muscle together first before finalizing her work by pulling his blue-tinged flesh together. The loss of blood was extreme. Only time would tell if her efforts were worth it or not.

  The village did the best they could to help her with food and fuel that winter while he healed, but times were tough for them, too. With all the ado about taking him to the church for mending, the whale had washed back out to sea. It was more than a month before another whale was harvested, this one much smaller. Some said it was bad luck brought on by some of the people in the village drinking the white man’s whisky and others said it was simply the circle of life—some years were prosperous, some were lean.

  “We survived, but my husband was never the same. We lost our daughter, but that wasn’t his fault. She was weak to start with, and because there wasn’t enough food for me, I couldn’t produce enough milk. He thought that if he had been more careful, he wouldn’t have been hurt, they wouldn’t have lost the whale, and his daughter wouldn’t have perished. There was nothing I or anyone else could do to convince him that she wasn’t ready for this world yet, that she was safe and sound in another world.”

  Grandma shrugged her shoulder. “I couldn’t undo the past and neither could he. I decided to make the present and future a better place instead. I guess if I hadn’t lost her, I wouldn’t be so determined. She taught me a lesson and so did he.”

  “Did you ever have any more children?” X asked, enthralled with the story. “Of course, you did or you wouldn’t have your grandson.”

  “Not with my husband. He left the next year. Then there was this one special man…” Grandma giggled. “I had a daughter by him—Rocky’s mother. He left before I even knew I was pregnant. Rocky’s mother and I had a challenging life, but we did okay. She stayed here until he was born. Then there was this one special man…” She grinned and waved her hand, letting X know that she had left with him, leaving Rocky with her.

  X’s eyes widened, then she swallowed her chagrin. Grandma had set her up on purpose and was waiting for her shocked reaction. Instead, X chuckled and said, “Yes, there’s always that one special man…”

  Grandma reached over and patted X on the leg. “I like you Alexandra. You remind me of me. You’re a sharp woman. I don’t think you found your special man yet, but you will. There’s always that one man…” She drifted off into her own world of memories, picked up her crochet hook, and started back on the scarf. “Always that one special man you’ll never forget…”

  Rocky shook his head as he waited for a break in the story. “Ahem. Are you ready to try on your hand-me-down, custom-repaired designer kuspuk?” he asked, holding up the bright yellow calico overdress.

  “Wow! That’s beautiful.” X felt the cotton fabric, worn soft from years of use and washing. “This feels better than any synthetic suede or polyester blend I’ve ever worn. How do I wear it?”

  “Slip it over your head. The hood will keep your hair and the mosquitos out of your face, sort of.”

  X pulled the kuspuk over her head, then put her arms in the sleeves. “Uh, oh. The sleeves are too short.”

  “Nope. They’re just right. Or they’re going to have to be. There isn’t enough fabric to make them longer. Besides, you don’t want them dangling into your project.”

  “Good point. Are we ready to go?” X asked, noting that Grandma had left her rocker and was waiting by the door, holding onto her walking stick, swaying her hips to the music in her head, her joy evident in her smile of peace.

  Rocky looked around the room, then took in a quick breath of ‘aha’ when he saw the bingo cards were still on the bookshelf. “We’ll need these,” he said, then grabbed the bundle of laminated cards. He walked over and opened the door for his grandmother. “After you, ladies.”

  Grandma lead the way, the confidence in her quick step setting the pace for the short two-block trip to the white-washed church. “Combination church, bingo parlor, and community hall in one. Oh, and voting center when needed.”

  “Where is everyone?” X asked, noting that only an older gentleman was in attendance. He was at a small table in the corner, bent over a project, a small engraving tool’s black cord trailing over his hand as he worried the implement over a narrow, two-foot-long ivory-colored piece.

  “They’ll be here. I come early to set up. Let me introduce you to Joe. He’s the heart of the community. Or something like that…” Rocky said, leading her to where the old man was seated, his Grandmother heading off in the other direction.

  “Joe Williams, this is Alexandra Oppenheimer. She’s here to…”

  Joe put up his hand, stopping him politely. “I know. She’s here to dig around in our ancestors’ home. I already heard. I also heard you tell her I’m the heart of the community.” Joe held up his carving, twisting the long, smooth and sturdy piece for her to see. “I’m really something else,” he whispered to X. “Just ask the ladies.”

  Rocky blushed but held his tongue. Maybe Joe wouldn’t embarrass him this time.

  Nope.

  “What is it?” X asked Joe, fingering the long smooth piece sporting fresh etchings at the base. “I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.”

  “It’s an oosik,” Joe said, his eyes twinkling at the opportunity to speak with the young and curious woman with flowing red hair.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know what an oosik is? Is it part of a whale?”

  “Nope. A whale doesn’t have an oosik, and
neither does a man, although some folks say that he used to have one, that it was called Adam’s rib and that he gave to Eve.” Joe chuckled, waiting for the line that was sure to come.

  And there it was.

  “So, what is an oosik?”

  “A penis bone,” Joe said, running his hand up and down the shaft slowly and seductively. “This one’s from a narwhal. I’m giving it as a gift to my lady friend.”

  Grandma walked up and stabbed her walking stick just inches from old Joe’s foot. “Are you playing with your penis bone again, Joe. I thought I asked you to stop embarrassing the ladies with that.”

  “You’re just jealous because I won’t give you my bone,” he said, his eyes shining with a flirt.

  X and Rocky stepped back from the interchange, both eager to be away from the elderly couple and their sexual innuendos.

  “You’d give me your bone if I wanted it,” Grandma said, “but it’s been handled by so many, I’m afraid it’d give me a disease!”

  “I could wash it…” Joe said, then set the oosik down on the table next to the engraver, “or I could let you clean it for me…” He kissed her gently on the cheek. “You going to let me tuck you into bed tonight, Krista?”

  “No! I have a guest tonight,” she said adamantly, then changed her tone and added a smile. “Maybe tomorrow night, though.”

  Suddenly, her smile was gone, and her business face was on. She turned away from Joe, looking for her grandson. “Did you get everything ready, Rocky?”

  “Just waiting for you, Grandma.”

  Grandma Krista moved over to the long side of the banquet table, stomping her cane as she walked, changing her focus from a possible romantic fling with her randy friend to her real passion: music. She set her diamond willow walking stick against the wall and flexed her fingers in front of her face, bringing her elbows up with an exaggerated flourish. “Hit it, Rocky!”

  The strains of Rachmaninoff’s Variations on a Theme by Paganini came out over the boxy speakers suspended from the ceiling as Grandma’s fingers flitted across the bare table, playing the unseen piano, her hands dancing across the invisible keyboard in perfect synchronization with the melody.