Northern Lights

here in Lunacy?"
    "I do. Regularly."
    She gave a quick laugh—the fog to Hopp's foghorn—found a pen and began writing in the book. "Well, just let me finish up here, then you can take me in. That'll be three arrests for you today. Gotta be a record."
    He leaned on the counter, noted that she was neatly listing all the items in her two boxes. "Be wasting my time."
    "Yeah, but we got plenty of that around here. Damn, forgot the Murphy's. You mind? Murphy's Oil Soap, right over there."
    "Sure." He walked over, scanned the contents on the shelves and picked up a bottle. "I saw you last night, out my window."
    She wrote down the Murphy's. "I saw you back."
    "You're a bush pilot."
    "I'm a lot of things." Her gaze lifted to his. "That's one of them."
    "What else are you?"
    "Big city cop like you should be able to find that out quick enough."
    "Got some of it. You cook. Got a dog. Probably a couple good-sized dogs. You like your own space. You're honest, at least when it suits you. You like your coffee black and plenty of butter on your popcorn."
    "Not much of a scratch on the surface." She tapped the pen against the book. "You looking to scratch some more, Chief Burke?"
    Direct, he thought. He'd left out direct. So he'd be direct back. "Thinking about it."
    She smiled the way she had in the hall, with the right corner of her mouth lifting before the left. "Charlene jumped you yet?"
    "Excuse me?"
    "I'm wondering if you got Charlene's special welcome to Lunacy last night."
    He wasn't sure which irritated him more, the question or the cool way she watched him as she asked. "No."
    "Not your type?"
    "Not so much, no. And I'm not real comfortable discussing your mother this way."
    "Got sensitivity, do you? Don't worry about it. Everybody knows Charlene likes to rattle the headboard with every good-looking man comes through here. Thing is, I tend to steer clear of her leftovers. But seeing the way it is, for now, maybe I'll give you a chance to scratch."
    She closed the book, replaced it. "Want to give me a hand loading this stuff into the truck?"
    "Sure. But I thought you flew in."
    "Did. A friend and I switched modes of transportation."
    "Okay." He hauled the dog food bag over his shoulder.
    She had a brawny red pickup outside, with a tarp, camping gear, snowshoes and a couple of cans of gas already in the bed. There was a gun rack in the cab, loaded with a shotgun and a rifle.
    "You hunt?" he asked her.
    "Depends on the game." She slapped the gate of the truck bed into
    place, then just grinned at him. "What the hell are you doing here, Chief Burke?"
    "Nate. And I'll let you know when I figure it out."
    "Fair enough. Maybe I'll see you New Year's Eve. We'll see how we socialize."
    She climbed into the truck, turned the key. Aerosmith blasted out about the same old song and dance, and she pulled into the street. She headed west, where the sun was already sliding behind the peaks, turning them flaming gold while the light went soft with twilight.
    It was three-fifteen in the afternoon.

 
     
     
    FOUR
     
     
     
     
     
     
    JOURNAL ENTRY . February 14, 1988
     
    Fucking cold. We're not talking about it, or we'll go crazy, but I'll write about it here. Then I can look back one day—maybe in July, when I'm sitting out with a beer, covered in bug dope and slapping at the sparrowsized mosquitoes—and staring out at this white bitch.
    I'll know I was here, that I did it. And that beer will taste all the sweeter.
    But right now it's February, and July's a century away. The bitch rules.
    Wind's taking us down to thirty or forty below. Once you're down that far, it doesn't seem like a few degrees one way or another matters. Cold broke one of the lanterns and snapped the zipper on my parka.
    With night lasting sixteen hours, we make and break camp in the dark. Taking a piss becomes an exercise in exhaustion and misery. Still our spirits are holding, for the most part.
    You can't buy this kind of experience. When the cold is like broken glass lacerating your throat, you know you're alive in a way you can only be alive on a mountain. When you risk a moment outside shelter and see the northern lights, so brilliant, so electric that you think you could reach up and grab some of that shimmering green and pull it inside yourself for a charge, you know you don't want to be alive anywhere else.
    Our progress is slow, but we're not giving up on the goal of reaching the summit. We were slowed by avalanche debris. I wondered how many had