The Romanov Cross: A Novel (61 page)

There was a banging on the door and a snowball hit the window as a bunch of teenage boys, horsing around outside, hollered, “Get a room, Mayor!” and “So when do we get to see the totem pole?”

Nika, laughing in embarrassment, pulled away. Glancing at her watch, she shouted, “It’s not time yet. It’s officially scheduled for six
P.M.
”

“Looked like it was the right time to me!” one of them hooted outside the window, as the others, dispersing into the night, guffawed.

Slater tried to regroup, but Nika had returned to the table where she had left her speech and was looking it over one last time. Making one final addition—Growdon’s Lumberyard and Mill—she folded the paper into the pocket of her coat. “Oh, I almost forgot I had this on me,” she said, pulling out an opaque plastic baggie labeled Nome Regional Health Center. “The orderly gave it to me on the way out.”

Slater took the bag and unzipped it.

“I found it on the bridge, and they gave it back to me along with my other personal belongings.”

Slater could hardly believe what he was seeing. A Russian Orthodox cross, made of silver, and studded with emeralds.

“It must have been Charlie’s, or maybe it belonged to his wife.”

Slater knew better.

“But now Charlie’s dead,” Nika said. “And Harley, too.”

Slater knew that a memorial service for the Vane boys was scheduled for the following Sunday, but he wondered just how many mourners would turn up.

“I guess we should just give it to his wife,” she concluded.

“Rebekah didn’t make it, either,” Slater said. “She died from the flu, at the treatment center in Juneau.”

Nika hadn’t known that, and the news rocked her for a moment. “What’s to become of Bathsheba?”

“Last I heard, she was heading back to the cult in New England. Apparently, the lost lamb is still prized there.”

Nika nodded, looking relieved. But then, studying the cross again, she said, “So what do we do with this then? It looks awfully valuable.”

It was a terrible breach of medical protocols, Slater thought, for the cross to have been returned at all—under normal circumstances, he would have raised hell over it—but in this one instance, it was a godsend. The worst mistake he could make at this point would be to make its existence known, or to release it to anyone else, ever again. Turning it over, he saw that there was an inscription on the back, in Russian of course, and even as he wondered what it said, he slipped the cross into the pocket of his own parka and said, “I’ll take care of it.”

“Come on, Mayor—we’re freezing our asses off out here!” one of the teenagers shouted from the pier.

Nika said, “Maybe we should get this over with.”

Slater opened the door, and they walked toward the commotion around the totem pole, which was still veiled in its tattered sail.

Calling out to a couple of the partiers, she asked them to swing their trucks and cars around, and aim their headlights at the pole. Then she climbed up into the back of the flatbed, disconnected the speakers from the long, trailing power cords, and plugged in a microphone instead. The music abruptly stopped, and the crowd grew quiet as the vehicles pointed their lights at the pole. The only sounds were the crackling of the fires in the trash cans and the rustle of the wind, the never-ending wind, blowing off the sea. The night was clear.

Standing in the bed of the truck, mike in hand, Nika welcomed them all, first in English, then in the Inuit’s native tongue. There was a lot of happy nodding in the crowd, especially among the older people, at the sound of their own, almost forgotten language being spoken. It wasn’t hard for Slater to see how this vibrant young woman could also have become their tribal elder.

“Before I get to the reason we’re all here tonight, I want to take this opportunity to answer a few of the important questions that have been coming into the community center all day,” she said.

“Yeah, what burned last night?” a kid in a down parka called out. “I heard it was St. Peter’s? I can still smell the smoke.”

“Yes, there was a fire in the old colony. But I have been informed,” she said, nodding toward Slater, who was standing close to the truck, “that it has been entirely contained, and the Coast Guard will be overseeing the island from now on.”

“That’s still our land,” an older Inuit man complained. “It’s ours, by treaty.”

“They can have it,” another one answered him. “The damn place has been cursed for a hundred years.”

Nika held up a hand, and said, “It’s still ours. But for the time being, it’s off-limits.”

Slater knew that it would stay that way—strictly off-limits—forever.

“And what was the deal with that quarantine?” a white guy in a Green Bay Packers hat asked. “That’s bullshit, the government telling me where I can, and can’t, go. I couldn’t get to my ice-fishing shack.”

There was a lot of muttering and nodding heads, and Slater heard two or three people saying something about conspiracies.

“That was an emergency measure,” she said, and here she spoke carefully, following the script that she and Slater had rehearsed in Nome. “I can tell you now that there was the remote chance of a communicable disease reaching Port Orlov, and to be on the safe side we had to cordon off the immediate area. There is no threat now, however. None whatsoever.”

“And what really happened to the Vanes?” the Packers fan asked. “Charlie Vane still owes me a hundred bucks for a snowblower.”

“As I reported in the community newsletter,” Nika patiently explained, “Charlie and Harley Vane died in a car crash on the Heron River Bridge. We’re planning to hold a memorial service next Sunday.”

“That won’t get me my hundred bucks back.”

Nika, wisely, let that one pass, and just when Slater thought the whole event was going to devolve into a Tea Party rally, she asked everyone to gather around the foot of the totem pole for the unveiling.

“For too long now,” she said, “we have all been living with a disgrace in the center of our town. And as your mayor, I take a lot of the
blame for that. This totem pole was built, by some of our Native American ancestors, two hundred years ago, and it was bequeathed to their descendants. It’s more than just some stately souvenir. It represents the Inuit people—their history, their legends, their spirits. It was meant to remind us of our heritage, and at the same time to watch over us in the present day.”

She allowed her words to sink in before continuing.

“But we have not watched over it. We’ve allowed the paint to fade. We’ve let the wood crack. We’ve let it almost fall over.”

The Inuit in the throng looked distinctly uncomfortable at this reminder of their own neglect, and even the nonnatives looked vaguely embarrassed, too.

“It’s the symbol of Alaska, and as such it should always stand tall. The way that all Alaskans, whatever their background, and wherever they came from, do.”

This was one sentiment that could be counted on to meet with general approval, which it did.

“And that’s why we have come together tonight, all the people of Port Orlov, to set things straight—in every way.” Referring to the paper in her hand, she read off the list of donors and citizens and businesses that had contributed money, time, and labor to fixing the totem pole. The hardware store had contributed the paint and cement, the Growdon Lumberyard had worked to restore the wood, a local contractor had supervised the construction of the new base. Many others had chipped in five or ten dollars to the cost. And the Yardarm had provided free drinks for the celebration. “But only one beer per customer,” Nika warned everyone, with a smile.

There was a smattering of applause when she was done with the list, and as Nika nodded at her nephew Geordie, he stepped forward and took hold of the rope that held the covering in place.

“And so, with no further ado and before we all freeze to death, let’s take a look at what we can do when we all pull together. Geordie, let ’er rip.”

Geordie gave a sharp tug on the rope, but, anticlimactically, there seemed to be a snag. Changing position and wrapping the rope around
his wrist, he tugged again, and this time the old sail neatly unfurled from the top of the pole, rustling and pooling around the base. The freshly painted faces of the otters and bears, foxes and wolves, gleamed in the light of the arc lamps; their teeth were now white and shining, their fur a rich brown or inky black, their eyes a deep, metallic blue.

At first there was an appreciative silence from the crowd, then the Packers fan tossed his hat in the air, and hollered out the state motto, “North to the Future!” Everyone laughed and started to applaud, and even Slater felt himself caught up in the general exultation.

Kozak sidled up to him, his free beer in hand, and said, “I will still do a ground study before I leave. No charge.”

Slater nodded in thanks.

“But it is quite beautiful now,” the professor acknowledged.

Sergeant Groves, standing a few yards off, gave it two thumbs-up.

Nika put the mike away, ducked down behind the speakers, and plugged in the CD player.

But it wasn’t the Black-Eyed Peas she was playing anymore.

Now it was a native song, a rhythmic chant, accompanied by a low, steady drumbeat. A respectful silence fell over the town square, and some of the older Inuit people instinctively lowered their heads. With eyes closed and arms held akimbo, they began to gently sway and stomp their boots in the snow. The area around the base of the totem pole cleared away, as the elders, and a few of the younger Native Americans, too, started to dance in a slow circle around it. The old women moved like hawks soaring on the wind, arms spread wide, while the men lumbered like bears on the ice. Everyone else made way, watching this ancient ritual unfold in the shadow of the pole, feeling the power, the majesty, and the unspoken sadness, of the dance. It was a nearly forgotten vestige of a world long gone, a world that had started to slip away on the very day the first Russian explorers sailed into these waters in the eighteenth century.

Nika, too, was absorbed in the music and the dance, her shoulders undulating as she stood between the speakers, her eyes closed in mystic communion. It was this ineffable connection that had brought her back to Port Orlov, and it was this same connection that would make
it impossible for her to leave. She had come back to rescue her people, to save their culture from extinction, and Frank, watching her now, knew that she would never give that up … even for him.

Just as he knew it would be wrong of him ever to ask it.

The spell cast by the music was interrupted by a crackling burst of static, and the lights in the storefronts suddenly dimmed, then shut down altogether. The speakers on the flatbed sputtered and fizzled, and the streetlamps along Front Street blinked out one by one.

Slater could guess what was happening.

The dancers, like everyone else, stopped and looked up at the omen revealing itself in the sky. The tribal elders hummed and chanted in place, their upturned faces growing wet with tears.

A gigantic ribbon of green light, smooth and shiny as satin, was slowly unspooling … then rippling wider, like a curtain spreading itself open across a blackened stage. It was only the second time Slater had seen the aurora borealis, but he could not have conceived of a more portentous time for it.

Nika, looking delighted, jumped down from the bed of the truck and grabbed his hand.

“Don’t tell me you planned this,” he said, and she laughed.

“I wish I could take credit,” she replied, “but I’m only the mayor, not God.”

Most of the crowd stayed right where they were, but some drifted off toward the shoreline to watch the lights over the water.

Nika, like a kid at a carnival, dragged Frank toward the harbormaster’s shack, then out onto the pier. At the very end, they stood alone with the sky shimmering above them. Slater wrapped his arms around her, and she leaned back into his embrace. Together, they gazed up at the spectacle unfolding in the night, the green now joined by a flickering orange flame that spiraled like a staircase up into the heavens. Even the air seemed to crackle with the electrical energy.

“The spirits are rising,” Nika said, her dark eyes shining in the orange glow.

Across the black waters, Slater could swear that he heard the wolves on St. Peter’s Island baying at the sky.

“They’re going home.”

And he believed it. The lights were like a celestial staircase, and he could envision the old woman—Anastasia, Grand Duchess of All the Russias—climbing the steps at long last.

He could see other things, too. He could see himself remaining in this place, with Nika forever at his side, and running the medical clinic that the town so desperately needed. For too long, he had tried to save the world. Now he would concentrate on saving just this tiny, much-overlooked part of it.

When the lights went out, snuffed like a candle, and Nika turned her head in the darkness, he bent down and kissed her. All the words he’d meant to say evaporated, all his questions were answered. There was no need to speak at all.

And even the wolves, he noted, had gone silent. Apart from the cry of a hawk, soaring overhead but impossible to discern in the night sky, there was nothing but the empty and incessant howling of the wind.

Still holding his hand, Nika started back down the pier, but Slater stopped a few seconds later and said, “I just have one thing to do.”

Nika, though curious, stayed where she was as he reached into his pocket for the emerald cross and returned to the end of the dock.

The hawk, still crying, swooped past the dock, some wriggling prey clutched in its talons.

Nika saw him raise his arm, and heard a distant splash, and when he came back to her, she didn’t ask him what he’d done. She didn’t have to.

The lights in town flickered back on, and arm in arm, they walked toward home together … as the hawk settled into its perch atop the Yardarm. There, it went about devouring its hard-won meal—a tiny white mouse, with an orange stain on its back and tail.

As some readers may have noticed, certain authorial liberties have been taken with the Alaskan backdrop of this story. For instance, you won’t find on any map St. Peter’s Island, the town of Port Orlov, or a road leading directly from the northwest coast into the city of Nome. Consider the road my gift to the citizens of Alaska.