Whisper to the Blood (10 page)

Meanwhile, back on the couch, Kate glowered at the view. It was clear and
cold that evening, a dark sky glittering with stars and a waxing moon on the
rise, a luminous, reflected glory in the snow-covered landscape beneath. The
Quilaks bulked up on the eastern horizon, igneous bullies flexing their
sedimentary and metamorphic muscles to intimidate the lesser beings cowering in
their shadow. Angqaq towered above them all, the jagged, homicidal peak a
reckless gauntlet flung down to every mountaineer worthy of the name. From the
heights, the mountains and glaciers fell precipitously, interrupted only by an
irregular shelf of land called locally the Step, before rolling out into a vast
plateau seamed with rivers and carpeted with spruce and cedar and willow and
hemlock and birch and cottonwood. Bordered on the south by the Gulf of Alaska,
on the west by the Alaska Railroad and the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, on the north
by the Glenn Highway, and on the east by the Quilaks and the border of the
Yukon Territory, the Park was twenty million acres in size, several steps out
of the mainstream of Alaska life and a light-year away from the rest of the
world. They got their news from satellite television, the state was bringing at
least one Internet connection into every village with a school, and every adult
and not a few children had a Costco card, but that didn't necessarily make them
members of the global community. It frequently wasn't enough to make them
Americans.

Alaskans had attitude, no doubt about that. They loved their land with a
fierceness that bordered on mania, while freely admitting insanity was a
prerequisite for living there. This might have been a partial explanation as to
why, as a community, they voted Republican with an enthusiasm that continually
overwhelmed Democrats at elections, disavowing anything that smacked of big
government subsidies. At the same time they paid no state income taxes, instead
accepting a check every year from the state in per capita payment of the gross
annual taxes on oil produced in
Prudhoe Bay
.

And that, Kate thought, was why Global Harvest Resources Inc. was going to
get the red carpet treatment from everyone involved, governor's office on down
to the lowliest Park rat. Alaskans had grown accustomed to handouts. A whole
generation of kids had been raised to believe it was the natural order of
things, the permanent fund dividend, earmarks to congressional budget bills for
big budget construction projects like schools in villages and bridges to
nowhere, government subsidies at federal, state, and local levels to actually
run the government. The federal government was
Alaska
's biggest employer.

The Niniltna Native Association wasn't blameless in this, either. It handed
out a quarterly dividend, one to every shareholder, representing half the
Association's annual profits, the rest of the profits going back into the
Association's operating capital account. The payments were legitimate, earnings
from leases sold to companies like Global Harvest, though heretofore much
smaller in scale, to exploit natural resources on Native land.

But it bothered Kate. It had been a bone of contention between Emaa and
herself. "All this money coming at us, Emaa," she had said, "and
we don't do anything to earn it. The state grades the road into the Park. Who
pays for that? Not us. The village has running water and electricity. Who pays
for that? Not us."

"You want to send money to the state, Katya," her grandmother had
said dryly, "you go right ahead," and that was the end of that
conversation.

"Supper's on," Jim said, and Kate looked up to see the table set
and a pot of stew steaming on a trivet in the middle of the table.

She seated herself and Jim ladled out stew all around.

"Smells great," Johnny said. "What is it?"

"Coq au vin."

"Huh?"

"Chicken stew with bacon and mushrooms, you little cretin."

"Yum," Johnny said after the first taste, and for a while was
heard from no more.

Kate took a bite. Johnny was right. The bread was store bought, but she knew
what Jim would have said if she'd remarked on it. She'd been in no shape to
bake any when she'd gotten home, so she didn't. She ate, silent while the men
exchanged news. Jim had responded to an accident out at the Sheldons', a bad
one. "They were digging a hole for a new septic tank."

"Now? In October?"

"They did leave it a little late, which might have something to do with
why the Cat broke a tread on a slope and rolled over. Maybe, I don't know. The
Cat used to belong to Mac Devlin-I could see where the Nabesna Mine logo had
been on the side before it got painted over-and it didn't look real well cared
for. At any rate, it killed the driver. Messy. The driver? The son. Yeah, just
the one kid. Bad news all the way around."

Most of the news featured Talia Macleod's arrival in the Park, the
community's reaction to her, and what the mine was going to mean in the long
run.

"More work for me," Jim said, "is all I see."

"Why?" Johnny said.

Jim helped himself to more stew. "They'll mostly be hiring young men,
and when you put young men together with a lot of money, trouble comes."

"You mean like drugs?"

"Drugs, booze, women, bigger and better and more dangerous toys, and
people who will be selling all of the above." Jim gave his head a gloomy
shake. "Not to mention all the hucksters hanging around the fringe
offering the newly rich wonderful investment opportunities, most of them scams.
I've heard about some of the stuff the Slopers have been sucked into, apple and
pistachio farms in
Arizona
, oil wells in
Colorado
, real estate deals in
Seattle
. All of them fail, everybody takes a
bath, and the losers start looking for somebody to blame, which always ends
well. It won't be pretty."

"But there'll be jobs," Johnny said tentatively. "Macleod
says there will be as many as two thousand jobs during construction, and a
thousand after, when the mine is operating. A thousand steady jobs, Jim, where
there were zero before. That's gotta be good. Doesn't it?"

"Sure," Jim said, reaching for more bread. "But there's a
price for everything, Johnny."

"I was thinking. . . ." Johnny looked at Kate and hesitated, but
she wasn't listening. "Macleod said there were certain professions that
would be especially attractive to Global Harvest, like engineers and
geologists."

"And?"

"I graduate in two years. I figured I might check out the degree
programs at UA, see if any of them fit."

"I thought you were interested in biology, in wildlife
management."

Johnny grimaced. "I've been talking to Dan O'Brien, and he says those
kinds of jobs are almost always government. He says they're hard to come by,
and that they don't pay very well, and you don't get to pick where you
work."

"Do you have to make a lot of money?" Jim said.

Johnny looked uncertain. "I thought that was what everybody
wanted."

"Do what you love," Jim said. "The money will come."

Johnny was unconvinced, but he let the subject slide for now.

He looked over at Kate. She'd finished and now sat frowning at her empty
bowl.

"Something wrong with the stew?" Jim said.

"What?" She came to herself with a start. "No. No, it was
great." She saw his eyebrow go up and said with forced warmth, "It
was terrific. You can make that again any old time."

"What, then?"

Kate's spoon clattered into her bowl. "She didn't say hi to
Annie."

Jim exchanged a glance with Johnny. "Who didn't?"

"Talia Macleod. When
Harvey
brought her into the board meeting. She glad-handed everyone on the board,
called us all by name, knew something personal about each and every one of us.
But she didn't even say hi to Annie."

"She's hired a caretaker for the mine site," Johnny said.

"Who?" Jim said.

Johnny looked at Kate with some caution. "Howie Katelnikof." Jim
paused in the act of running his finger around the edge of his bowl.
"You're kidding," he and Kate said at the same time. "That's
what I said," Johnny said.

"Who the hell told her that putting Howie on the payroll was a good
idea?" Jim said. "Didn't she ask around first, get some names?"

Kate got up and headed for her coat and boots. "Where you going?"
Jim said.

"To see Mandy," Kate said.

M
andy Baker's place was down the road
toward Niniltna, at the end of a rutted track a little narrower than a pickup.
It was a rambling, ramshackle collection of buildings that had once housed a
wilderness lodge whose original owner had bankrupted himself in a failed
attempt to attract big game hunters, most of whom were already clients of
Demetri Totemoff's. The lodge was threatened on all sides by a dense forest of
willow, black and white spruce, black cottonwood, and white paper birch, which
had been allowed to grow unhindered save for half a dozen trails the width of a
dogsled. The trees on the south side closest to the house had been trimmed to
stumps and were used as posts to restrain Mandy's dogs from heading to
Nome
on their own. When
Kate pulled up in the clearing, they set up a collective howl that could have
been heard from the moon.

Kate winced and put her fingers in her ears. Mutt trotted out into the
middle of the pack, sat down, raised her nose, and gave one loud, minatory
bark, showing a little teeth while she was at it. There was an instantaneous
silence, and Mutt stared around her with narrowed yellow eyes, just to make
sure the point had been taken. It had.

"Man, I wish they'd do that for me," said a voice from the door,
and Kate looked up to see Mandy standing in it.

"Why do you mush dogs if their howling drives you crazy?" Kate
said, threading her way through the pack.

"Why do you think I took up mushing?" Mandy said. "They don't
howl when they're hitched up and running."

"There's a problem with that reasoning but I'm just going to let it
go," Kate said. She paused on the doorstep. "You doing some late
culling? Doesn't seem to be quite the teeming mass of caninity that it usually
is."

"Caninity?" Mandy said.

"Caninity," Kate said. "If Shakespeare can make up words so
can I."

"Coffee?" Mandy said, standing back and holding the door wide.

"Sure." Kate shed parka and boots and went inside.

The door opened into a large room that served Mandy as kitchen, dining room,
living room, and harness shed. There was an enormous old-fashioned woodstove in
one corner with a fireplace in the corner opposite, and a higgledy-piggledy
jumble of tables, chairs, couches, refrigerator-freezers, sinks, counters, and
cupboards in between. On this dark, cold October night the room glowed with the
muted light of half a dozen Coleman lanterns, hissing gently from hooks screwed
into overhead beams. Mandy preferred them to electric light and had never
installed a generator. Pots and pans, traps and ganglines hung from more hooks,
making the entire area a hazard to navigation.

Mandy was a tall, rangy woman with a face full of good, strong bones, hair
cut a la Prince Valiant, and a latent twinkle in her gray eyes. The scion of a
wealthy Bostonian family, she had abandoned crinoline petticoats and charity
balls for down parkas and dog mushing as soon as she was of legal age. This had
distressed her proper, conservative family no end, although her parents had
come around after an eventful visit to the Park three years before. Since then,
relations had been cordial, punctuated frequently by care packages featuring
L.L.Bean, a telling switch from the usual Neiman Marcus.

"Chick around?" Kate said, accepting a steaming mug and adding a
generous helping of canned milk.

She looked up in time to see the twinkle vanish. "Not lately."

Kate groaned. "Not again."

Mandy sat opposite and added three spoonfuls of sugar to her own mug.
"To tell the truth, I don't know. I suppose it's possible he's not on a
bender. All I know is he went to
Anchorage
last week to visit his mom, and I haven't heard from him since."

Chick was Chick Noyukpuk, Mandy's lover and mushing mentor. He was also a
chronic alcoholic. A short, rotund little man with a cheerful disposition when
sober, when drunk he turned maudlin and suicidal. Mandy had bought her first
dogs from him. Then he had had his own kennel. Then he had been a world
champion distance musher in his own right, earning the nickname the Billiken
Bullet, much beloved of sports reporters for his evenhanded way with a bar tab.
Now, he worked for Mandy, overseeing the breeding and training of the teams and
as a tactical advisor on the trail, with the result that Mandy had been
finishing in the money since her third Iditarod.

"His mom okay?" Kate said.

"She's in assisted living. She's pretty much all there mentally, she
just needs help with the physical stuff. He's a good son, he goes in a lot. He
just doesn't usually stay this long without calling. Unless he's on a
bender."

"Um." Kate, knowing sympathy would be unwelcome, didn't offer any.
"I met a friend of yours today."

"Oh, yeah? Who?"

"Woman by the name of Talia Macleod."

Mandy's face lit with pleasure. "Talia? No kidding? What's she doing in
the Park?"

Kate told her.

"Not a bad gig," Mandy said. "An outfit like Global Harvest
would pay for a face like that to put on a project this size. Lay a lot of
Alaskan hackles, too, her being a local hero and all. And she is very smart and
very personable."

Kate, about to refute this, recognized the justice of it in time. "Yes,
she is," she said ruefully.

"How'd you meet her?"

Kate described that morning's board meeting, and when Mandy stopped
laughing, she said, wiping tears away, "I would have paid real money for a
ticket to that show."