Free A deeper sleep by Dana Stabenow Page A

which included aviation. Also electricity, running water, power tools, voting, jury duty, and public education. They also shunned birthdays and Christmas, but given their seventeen offspring this was generally seen to be more an act of fiscal survival than a faith-based initiative.
     
    This aversion apparently did not include heavy-duty equipment, as their first act upon relocating to the Park was to rent a D6 Caterpillar tractor from Mac Devlin. Their second act was to bulldoze a track over fourteen miles of previously pristine Park land.
     
    This had taken place the previous January. The Smiths woke up at least one bear by rolling over its den, felled a small forest of spruce that had managed to survive until that day the depredations of the spruce bark beetle epidemic, diverted the course of Salmon Creek, and wiped out Demetri Totemoff's duly permitted trapline along said creek. Demetri appealed to the Park's chief ranger, Dan O'Brien.
     
    Upon inspection of the afflicted area, Dan went into orbit, not a great surprise to anybody watching. Everyone liked Dan, one of the few rangers in Alaska never to have been shot at in the line of duty. This was a real danger in the Park, first from cranky old farts who had homesteaded in territorial days only to see themselves after statehood slowly surrounded by the creation of federal and state parks, wildlife refuges and forests, and second from cranky Alaska Natives who had been hunting caribou and moose and bear in the area for ten thousand years and saw no need for either hunting licenses or hunting seasons.
     
    But it had to be said that there was more than a little fellow feeling for the Smiths, who were only exercising their by-God given rights to access their own by-God land.
     
    "Except it turns out," Bobby said, enjoying himself hugely, "that the title to said land may be in some question."
     
    "You mean the Smiths didn't buy it after all?"
     
    "Oh, they bought it, all right, but they bought it off some old guy who just got a divorce and hadn't waited for the property to be divided up between him and his ex-wife before he sold it off."
     
    Kate paused with her coffee mug in midair. "Would that be Vinnie Huckabee?"
     
    "And his lovely former wife, Rebecca, yes it would. God, what a bitch."
     
    Dinah poked him in the side. "You used to think she was hot."
     
    Bobby poked her back. "She was hot. Until I got to know her. Now she's just a bitch."
     
    Rebecca and Vinnie Huckabee had split the sheets in spectacular fashion a year before. It hadn't been a Spenard divorce, exactly, but rumor had it there had been gunfire involved and later, and worse, a lot of lawyers who had distinguished themselves primarily by the speed with which they had serially decamped the case. Rebecca, an attorney prior to marrying Vinnie, in the end violated the cardinal rule of jurisprudence and represented herself, which didn't give her anything in the still-ongoing settlement hearings except continuity.
     
    "The story goes that Vinnie hightailed it to town and hunkered down with his brother in Chugiak. His brother—"
     
    "Walter."
     
    "—his brother Walter put the word out about Vinnie having land for sale and along come the Smiths, new to the state and—" Bobby hesitated, "—and new to our ways."
     
    Kate looked at Dinah. Dinah looked demure. "Let me guess," Kate said to Bobby, "they wanted to get back to nature."
     
    Bobby clucked his tongue. "Don't be so cynical. They came to Alaska to reinvent themselves, as do all good cheechakos who hear the call of the wild." His grin flashed out again, partly righteous, all rogue. "They heard tell someone had some land for sale up back of beyond, and got in touch. Vinnie wasn't asking much, from what I hear, he just wanted enough cash to adios it. Last anybody heard he was on his way to Nome. Is Nome a good place to hide out from pissed-off soon-to-be ex-wives?"
     
    "Beats the hell out of me."
     
    "And she was pissed off, was the lovely