The Alpine Decoy (2 page)

Vida guessed as much. “Shane is the middle Campbell child,” she informed me, licking twister glaze off her fingers. “He’s been living and working in Seattle for the past two or three years. I think he was with Fred Meyer. I heard he moved back here because the chain planned to open a store at the Alpine Mall.”

“They keep putting it off,” I noted. “I had Ed call their Oregon headquarters just last week.” As a former Portland resident and employee of
The Oregonian
, I was well acquainted with the Fred Meyer stores; they featured everything from apparel to groceries to electronics to jewelry. While I would welcome their convenience as well as their advertising, I realized that they might be hesitant about a new venture in a town as economically depressed as Alpine. I also realized that our local merchants would be upset. The small specialty stores featuring books, CDs, china, jewelry, stereos, and shoes wouldn’t welcome the competition.

Carla was going through her in-basket. She stopped and called to me just as I was heading back into my small, cluttered office. “Emma—should we do a story on Marilynn Lewis? I mean, it
is
news that she’s here—and that she’s African-American.”

I considered the idea. “No, not yet. She’s been here—what? A couple of weeks? Let’s give her a chance to get
settled in. I don’t want to draw attention to her and make her a target of any bigots. Let’s face it, the news isn’t that she’s here; it’s that she’s African-American. I’m not sure Marilynn would regard that as a positive story angle. If you want to do a newcomer feature, interview Libby Boyd. Isn’t she the first female forest ranger to be posted up here?”

Vida confirmed that she was. Carla, however, gave an in-different shrug. “Women doing what used to be men’s work isn’t news anymore. Besides, she hasn’t been in the job long enough to know how it feels. She had an office assignment in Seattle.”

Carla, however, didn’t press the Marilynn Lewis story, and Vida didn’t comment. I took the scorched jacket into my office along with my coffee and went back to work. Briefly, I thought about Marilynn Lewis. She
was
very brave, perhaps a trifle foolish. I wondered why she’d exchanged the relative anonymity of the Big City for the scrutiny of a small town. But I didn’t think about it too long. I had problems of my own, and at the moment, they were all named Tom Cavanaugh.

“Those Anasazi Indians have got ruins older than you are, Mom,” said my son over the phone. “Uncle Ben thinks he can get me on a dig. Aren’t you hyped?”

“Sure, I think it’s great.” I reached for my take-out burger. I gathered that Ben thought it was great, too. My brother had seemed enthused that his nephew was going to join him for the summer in Tuba City, Arizona. Naturally, I would have preferred that Adam spend at least some of his time helping Ben out at the mission church on the Navajo reservation, but it seemed that my only child’s interests were centered on the artifacts in the ancient tribal villages. At least, I chided myself, he
had
an interest. There were times when I felt Adam was drifting, from one university to another, from one girlfriend to the next, from one professed major to the latest career of the week….

But Adam had maintained his enthusiasm for Native-American culture ever since Ben’s visit to Alpine in December. My son had been determined to join my brother in Tuba City, and would fly from the University of Alaska at Fairbanks directly into Phoenix in June. He would then take
a bus to Flagstaff where Ben would meet him. Adam would come to Alpine at the beginning of August, about the same time the temperature hit a hundred and twenty in northern Arizona. With any luck, Ben might get away for a week or so then, too. But as the only Catholic priest in the vicinity, it was possible that he’d be stuck until his regular vacation came due at the end of the year.

While Adam waxed on about digging in the digs, I contemplated telling him about his father’s scheduled appearance at the WNPA conference. But Adam had seen Tom since I had. After twenty years of estrangement, they had finally met in San Francisco last November. The meeting had gone well. If Adam had resented his father’s absence from the scene, it hadn’t showed. Maybe my son—our son—understood that Tom’s defection hadn’t been voluntary. Twenty-two years ago, when I discovered I was pregnant by a married man, I’d told Tom to get lost. Reluctantly, he’d complied. After all, he had a family of his own. It wasn’t his fault that his wife was crazier than a loon. At the time, I wasn’t feeling entirely stable myself.

But Tom had stayed married. His wife, Sandra, had stayed crazy. And Adam and I had created our own little world. It was only by coincidence that Tom had showed up in Alpine a year ago last autumn. At least it
seemed
a coincidence at the time. He had given me invaluable advice about running a weekly newspaper, and I had given him my pardon for a crime he never committed. But I still wasn’t willing to give him Adam. That had only happened after much soul-searching and many letters from Tom, asking to see his illegitimate son.

“You know,” said Adam, as if reading my mind, “I’ve got enough money to fly into Seattle and come up to Alpine before I go to Arizona.”

The money had come from Tom, providing airfare for Adam to visit me and Ben and the pope, if he wanted to. Tom had been very generous, trying to make up in one year for two decades of paternal absenteeism.

“Well,” I hedged, “that’s up to you. I’d love to have you come, of course. But if you’re returning to Fairbanks next year, you’ll need to save up.”

“I don’t know about that,” Adam replied. “I’m thinking
about transferring to Cal-Berkeley. They don’t have an archaeology major up here. Or is it anthropology?” As ever, Adam sounded vague on the subject of his future.

“What’s wrong with the UDUB?” I demanded, referring to the University of Washington in Seattle which had been good enough for me.

“There’s WAZZU, too,” Adam remarked. The nickname stood for Washington State University, some three hundred miles away in Pullman. “But I like the Bay Area. San Fran is cool.”

San Fran was indeed cool. It was also home base for Adam’s father. I had mixed feelings about that. “Talk to Ben. He gives good advice.”

To my mild surprise, Adam agreed. We talked some more, about his classes, which bored him, about his latest girlfriend, who thrilled him, about his part-time job with the state highway department, which fatigued him. He was still trying to convince me it would be terrific for him to stop off in Seattle and Alpine en route to Tuba City. I didn’t argue further; I’d be too glad to have my only son with me to squelch the idea.

I had just hung up when Milo Dodge loped into my office. Since it was Thursday, the day after our weekly publication, I wasn’t as frantically engaged as usual. So far there had been only a dozen irate phone calls from readers. This week they pounced on two issues. One was Vida’s account of the perennially controversial Junior Miss Alpine competition. The other was my recent editorial devoted to resurfacing the county road that led out of town to the ranger station. It was pretty tame stuff, but some of our subscribers felt that any public work demanded new taxes. They weren’t entirely wrong.

Milo is the sheriff of Skykomish County, and just because we are both single and share the same decade of birth, people often think we should be madly in love. We are not. Milo is involved with a potteress from Startup named Honoria Whitman who gets around in a wheelchair, courtesy of her late husband who once threw her down a flight of stairs. I am involved with my newspaper. Or so I like to tell myself.

“People sure are dumb,” Milo declared as he settled his
shambling body into one of the two chairs positioned on the opposite side of my desk. “Are you eating that salad?”

“I sure am,” I retorted, stabbing at the lettuce with a plastic fork. “If you were so hungry, why didn’t you call? We could have gone out to lunch.”

Milo scratched at something on his neck. “I thought about it, but we got a call from that new nurse at Dr. Flake’s. Some jerk is writing her threatening letters.”

I swallowed quickly. “Marilynn Lewis? We were just talking about her this morning.”

Milo’s long face grew longer. “She’s gotten three of them. Two are obviously from the same nutcase, but the third may be from somebody else.”

“Antiblack?” I asked, polishing off the burger dip.

Milo nodded. He is a few years older than I am, in his midforties, with graying sandy hair, hazel eyes, and a laconic manner that fools a lot of people. I am not one of them. “It’s to be expected. There haven’t been any minorities around Alpine since the Orientals worked the mines back before World War I. Oh, we get tourists who aren’t lily-white, but they don’t stick around, so the locals tolerate them. But this Lewis woman seems inclined to stay. Some of the reactionaries resent that.”

“You’re right: they’re dumb.” I pushed the plastic container of salad at Milo. “Here, have some. I’m getting full.” It wasn’t exactly true, but bigotry has a way of taking the edge off my appetite. “Do you know who sent them?”

Milo shook his head. “It could be anybody. Ms. Lewis isn’t all that upset, but after the third one, she felt she ought to notify us. I’m afraid we can’t do much about it.”

I sat back and watched Milo finish my salad. Absently, he drank my Coke. Unconsciously, he gobbled up the last four milk chocolate Easter eggs I’d been saving for a month. I sighed.

“It’s not a story,” Milo asserted, mistaking my reaction.

“You mean ‘Sheriff Charged With Piggery’? Damn it, Milo, I’ve been keeping those chocolate eggs in the refrigerator since Easter.”

“Oh.” Milo had the grace to look sheepish. “Sorry. I wasn’t thinking. You didn’t figure I came here to see about running something on those letters, did you?”

I shook my head. “I assumed you came her to steal my lunch. It’s too bad, because I was thinking about asking you and Honoria to dinner tonight.”

“Honoria’s in Seattle until Sunday,” Milo replied. “There’s some kind of ceramic and pottery show at the Center. I could come, though.”

Not having been serious about the dinner invitation, I found myself hoisted with my own petard. I surrendered with good grace. “You’re right,” I agreed as Milo eased himself onto his feet. “It’s not a story.”

Milo nodded. “The letters’ll go away. People’ll get used to having a black person around. I guess she’s a pretty good nurse.”

“She’ll offer Alpine a positive image of African-Americans,” I said, wondering if Carla had any twisters left over. It was unlikely, since Ed had returned from breakfast and stuffed himself at Carta’s expense. “I’m glad she’s here. With so many commuters from Everett and even Seattle, it’s about time we got some racial mix.”

Milo inclined his head. Somehow, I wished he’d given me a vigorous nod instead.

Ed Bronsky was trying to explain why we didn’t need to publish a special section on the new bowling alley. I saw the event as an occasion for various Alpine merchants and organizations to take out ads congratulating the Erdahl family on opening Alpine’s Fast Lanes; Ed saw it as a nuisance.

“Do you know how long it takes me to lay out a four-page insert?” Ed looked as if he was first oarsman on a Roman slave galley.

“Actually, Ed,” I persisted, “Ginny gives you all kinds of help. If we get enough ads, we could actually turn a profit for the first week of June.”

Ed’s heavy face fell at the sound of an obscenity like
profit
. He was about my age, not quite medium height, wide of shoulder, and broad of beam. The only person I knew who had a worse shape than Ed was his wife, Shirley.

As if on cue, Ginny Burmeister entered the news office. She expressed mild enthusiasm over the proposed
insert, which was about as excited as Ginny ever gets. Ed didn’t take kindly to her positive stance.

“You’re still young, Ginny,” he said in his lugubrious voice. “You can stand hard work and long hours. You don’t have to go out and beat your feet on the sidewalks, hustling every day.”

“Like who?” Vida looked up from proofing the obituary of ninety-three-year-old Axel Swensen, who had worked the big cut-off saw in the original Alpine mill. “Ed, the last time you hustled was when Carla cut Ginny’s birthday cake. You slipped in a puddle of punch and landed right in the frosting. Carla took a picture to prove it, but as usual, she forgot to load her camera.”

It was going on five. I didn’t feel like listening to my staff wrangle anymore for the day. “We’re going to do the insert, and that’s that,” I declared firmly. “You know, Ed, maybe it’s time you rethought your career. I sometimes get the impression you don’t really like advertising.”

Even as the words tumbled out of my mouth, I regretted them. I rarely took a staff member to task, and when I did, it was always in private. I was dismayed as I watched Ed redden and seem to creep inside the collar of his rumpled raincoat.

“I
love
advertising,” he protested. “My father was a salesman for John Deere. It’s in my blood. Free enterprise, the American way, the whole idea of
commerce
—why, I wouldn’t know how to do anything else!”

I didn’t doubt that for a minute. But I refrained from saying so. “Then try changing your attitude,” I said, making my voice sound less harsh. “You give the wrong impression. It’s very frustrating for me sometimes.” I smiled, if a bit feebly.

Seemingly placated, Ed rummaged around his desk, made incoherent noises about pursuing the insert idea, and then left. Twenty minutes early. Ginny returned to the front office to finish her daily chores, and Vida announced she was heading home, too. In her case, I didn’t mind. I knew she had to cover a party up at the ski lodge that night. One of the county commissioners was retiring due to ill health or perennial intoxication, or both.

Just as Vida left, Carla returned, holding her head. “My
ear is hurting again. I went over to the high school to interview the music teacher about the Methodist Church’s ban on rap recordings, and I got the most awful stabbing pains. Do you think I should see Dr. Flake before he leaves for the day?’

I advised her to go. “Are you sure the music teacher didn’t make you listen to some of those recordings?” I asked dryly.