Northern Lights

hippy—could blow up under less stress than a winter climb.
    "You yammer about living the natural life and save the frigging whales," Otto went on as he jabbed at keys, "and what you're doing is sitting on your ass living on the government you bitch about all the time. Got no respect for that."
    "I guess you wouldn't have had a lot in common, what with you coming from the military."
    "We weren't drinking buddies." He stopped typing, looked up at Nate. "What's all this about?"
    "Just trying to get a full picture of the man." As he rose, he asked, casually, "When you did climb, who'd you use as a pilot?"
    "Mostly Jacob. He was right here."
    "I thought Jacob did some climbing, too. You ever go up with him?"
    "Sure. Get Hank Fielding maybe, out of Talkeetna to fly us, or TwoToes out of Anchorage, Stokey Loukes if he was sober." He shrugged. "Plenty of pilots around to take up a party if you got the money to pool. If you're really thinking of going up, you get Meg to take you and get yourself a professional guide, not some yahoo."
    "I'll do that, but I think I might settle for the view from my office."
    "Smarter."
    Interrogating his own deputy didn't give him any pleasure, but he'd write up the conversation in his notes. He couldn't picture Otto going berserk on speed and attacking a man with an ax. But he couldn't picture him doing the tango with a woman in a tight dress either.
    People did a lot of changing in sixteen years.
    He went to The Lodge and found Charlene and Cissy serving the early dinner crowd. Skinny Jim worked the bar. And The Professor manned his stool, nursing a whiskey and reading Trollope.
    "Got a pool starting on the Iditarod," Jim told him. "You want in?"
    Nate sat at the bar. "Who do you like?"
    I'm leaning toward this young guy, Triplehorn. An Aleut."
    "He's gorgeous," Cissy commented when she stopped by with empties.
    "Doesn't matter what he looks like, Cissy."
    "Does to me. Need a Moosehead and a double vodka rocks."
    "Sentimental money's on this Canadian, Tony Keeton."
    "We're sentimental over Canadians?" Nate wondered as Jim poured the vodka.
    "Nah. The dogs. Walt Notti bred his dogs."
    "Twenty then, on the Canadian."
    "Beer?"
    "Coffee, thanks, Jim." While Jim and Cissy dealt with drinks and continued to argue over their favored mushers, Nate turned to the man beside him. "How you doing, John?"
    "Not sleeping very well. Yet." John marked his page, set the book down. "Can't get the image out of my head."
    "It's tough. You knew Max pretty well. Wrote some articles for his paper."
    "Monthly book reviews, the occasional color piece. Didn't pay much, but I enjoyed it. I don't know if Carrie will keep the paper going. I hope she does."
    "Somebody told me Galloway wrote some pieces for The Lunatic. Back in its early days."
    "He was a good writer. He'd have been a better one if he'd focused on it."
    "I guess that's true of anything."
    "He had a lot of raw talent, in several areas." John glanced over his shoulder, toward Charlene. "But he never buckled it down. Wasted what he had."
    "Including his woman?"
    "I'd be biased on that subject. In my opinion, he didn't put much effort into his relationship or much of anything else. He had a couple of chapters of several novels, dozens of half-written songs, any number of abandoned woodworking projects. The man was good with his hands, had a creative mind, but no discipline or ambition."
    Nate weighed the possibilities. Three men, drawn together by location, avocation—the writing—and the climb. And two of the three in love with the same woman.
    "Maybe he'd have turned that around, if he'd had the chance."
    John signaled for Jim to refill his glass. "Maybe."
    "You read his stuff ?"
    "I did. We'd sit around over a beer, or two, or some other recreational drug," John added with a half smile. "And discuss philosophies and politics, writing and the human condition. Young intellectuals." John lifted his glass in toast. "Who were going absolutely nowhere."
    "You climbed with him?"
    "Ah, adventure. Young intellectuals don't come to Alaska without needing to have them. I enjoyed those days and wouldn't have them back for a Pulitzer." Smiling the way a man does over past glories, he sipped at the fresh whiskey.
    "The two of you were friendly?"
    "Yes. We were friends, on that intellectual level, in any case. I envied him his woman; that was no secret. I think it amused him and made him feel a bit superior to me. I was the educated one. He'd tossed the prospect of a