"A Fine and Bitter Snow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stabenow Dana)1Mutt leapt to the seat of the snow machine as Kate thumbed the throttle and together they roared twenty-five miles over unplowed road to Niniltna, four miles past the village to the ghost town of Kanuyaq, and up the rutted, icy path to the Step. There, Kate dismounted, postholed through the snow to the door of the Park Service’s headquarters, marched down the hall to Dan O’Brian’s office, walked in without knocking, sat down without invitation, and said, “Now then. Would you mind repeating to me exactly what you told Ethan Int-Hout this morning?” “Hi, Kate,” Dan said, the startled look fading from his face. “Nice to see you, too.” Hard on Kate’s heels, Mutt barked, one syllable, short, sharp, demanding. “All right already, nice to see you, too.” He pulled open a drawer, extracted a slice of homemade moose jerky, and tossed it. Mutt caught it on the fly, and lay down, taking up most of the rest of the square feet of Dan’s office, looking marginally appeased. Kate was anything but. “Well?” “I’m too green for them, Kate.” Kate’s spine was very straight and very stiff. “Too green for whom, exactly?” “The new administration.” Dan waved a hand at the map of Alaska on the wall behind him. “They want to drill in ANWR. I’m on record as not thinking it’s the best idea the federal government has ever had, and now everyone’s mad at me, from City Hall in Kaktovik to the Department of the Interior in Washington, D.C. You should see some of the E-mails I’ve been getting. Like to melt down the computer.” He ran a hand through a thick thatch of stiff red hair that was beginning to recede at his temples, then rubbed both hands over a square face with open blue eyes and a lot of freckles that refused to fade. “I’ve never wanted to be anything but what I am, a park ranger in Alaska. But hell, I don’t know. The secretary won’t even listen to her own employees. They want to drill. And they’re looking at Iqaluk, too.” “I beg your pardon?” Her voice had gone soft, marred only by the growling sound caused by the scar on her throat. Mutt stopped chewing and pricked up her very tall gray ears and fixed Kate with wide yellow eyes. He flapped a hand. “Nothing to get worried about, at least not yet.” “I’m always worried about Iqaluk,” Kate said. “I know.” “So you’ve been fired?” He made a wry mouth. “Not exactly. Invited to take early retirement is more like it.” He sighed, and said again, “I don’t know, Kate. At least Clinton and Gore had a clue about the environment, or pretended they did. This guy, Jesus.” He thrust his chair back and stood up to wander over to the window to stare at the snow piled up to the top of the frame. “I don’t know,” he said, turning back. “Maybe it’s time. I don’t know that I can work with these people for four years, and maybe eight. I’ve got twenty-three years in. And hell, maybe they’re right. Maybe it’s time for a change of management. Not to mention point of view, because I sure as shit am out of fashion this year. Maybe I do need to move on, buy myself a little cabin on a couple acres, find me one of your cousins, settle in, settle down.” “Yeah, and maybe I need to shoot myself in the head,” Kate said, “but it might kill me, so I guess I won’t.” He grinned, although it seemed perfunctory. “Whom did you talk to? Who asked you to quit?” “Dean Wellington. The head guy in Anchorage. I’m not the only one. They’re making a clean sweep, Kate, right through the ranks.” “Whom are they going to replace you with? ”Pro-development‘ and ’park ranger‘ don’t exactly go together in the same sentence.“ He shrugged. “If it was me, I’d replace me with a kid fresh out of college, inexperienced, malleable, easy to lead.” “Someone who will do what they’re told without asking any of those annoying little questions like ‘What are the adverse effects of a massive oil spill on a biome?” Without doing things like counting the bear population to see if there should or shouldn’t be a hunt that fall?“ The grin had faded, and Dan looked tired and, for the first time since she’d known him, every one of his forty-nine years. “When’s the last time you had a vacation?” she asked. He rubbed his face again. “I was Outside in October.” He dropped his hands and looked at her. “Family reunion.” She snorted. “That’s not a vacation; that’s indentured service. I mean a real vacation, white sand, blue sea, drinks with little paper umbrellas in them, served by somebody in a sarong.” “Gee, I don’t know, that’d be about the same time you were there.” “I don’t vacation,” Kate said, “I hibernate. When?” He didn’t answer. “Do me a favor, Dan. Don’t say yes or no to your boss. Take some time off, and let me work an angle or two.” “Why?” “Oh, for crissake.” Kate stood up. Mutt gulped the last of her jerky and bounced to her feet, tail waving slightly. “I’m not going to sit around here and pander to your ego. Get out of town.” A genuine smile broke out this time. “That’s good, since pandering to my ego isn’t your best thing. I’m not going to get out of town, though, even though I am now officially terrified to say so.” “And why not?” “I’ve got a girl.” “So what else is new?” “No, Kate, I mean really. I’ve got a girl.” She estimated the wattage of the glow on his face. “Why, Daniel Patrick O’Brian, as I live and breathe. Are you, by any chance, in love?” He laughed. He might even have blushed. “Argghh, the “Are you?” “I don’t know. I don’t want to leave her, though.” “Who is she?” “She’s waiting tables at the Roadhouse. She’s great, Kate. I’ve never met anyone like her. She loves the outdoors, she loves the wildlife, she hikes and mountain-bikes, and she’s a good cross-country skier. She wants to learn how to climb and maybe take on Big Bump with me next summer. She’s gorgeous, too.” He paused. “I’ve got at least twenty years on her. I’ve been afraid to ask her how old she is. I don’t know what she sees in me.” “Yeah,” Kate said. “Don’t worry. I do.” He grinned, a little sheepish. “I’m heading out to the Roadhouse this afternoon. I’ll introduce you. And buy you a drink?” “Sold. See you there.” She stopped to survey him from the door. Reassured by the sparkle in his eyes and the reappearance of the dimples in his cheeks, she turned and left, Mutt at her heels, flourishing her graceful plume of a tail like a pennant of friendship. His smile lingered after they were gone. He had been feeling besieged, and if he was not mistaken, he had just received a delegation from the relieving force. Well. If his friends-it appeared he did have some after all-were going to fight for him, he could do no less. His smile widened. And he knew just who to recruit for the front lines. He stood up and reached for his parka. On the way back down the mountain, Kate thought of all the things she could have said in answer to Dan’s question. That he’d been the chief ranger for the Park for eighteen years, after working his way up the Park Service’s food chain fighting alligators in Florida and volcanoes in Hawaii. That Park rats knew him and trusted him as no Alaskan trusted a federal park ranger anywhere else in the state. That moose and bears both brown and black wandered regularly through her yard, and that a herd of caribou migrated regularly over the plateau, and that no one in the Park who knew how to shoot or any of their families and friends had ever gone hungry on Dan O’Brian’s watch. That Dan O’Brian had managed, sometimes single-handedly, to maintain healthy populations of every species of wildlife from the parka squirrel below ground to the bald eagle above, and had managed to do it while maintaining the good opinion of park rats Native and nonnative, sourdough and cheechako, subsistence hunter and big-game hunter, subsistence fisher and sports fisher and commercial fisher alike, and that he had managed to do it without being shot, or hardly ever shot at, was a remarkable achievement. If some wet-behind-the-ears, fresh-out-of-college kid wired through his belly button to the current administration took over, the Park would begin to deteriorate, and the population of the wildlife would only be the beginning. Mac Devlin would roll out his D-9 and start flattening mountains and damming rivers with the debris in his search for new veins of gold. Dick Nickel would start chartering sports fishers by the 737 into the village airstrip. John Letourneau would start bringing in European big-game hunters by the 747, if he didn’t already. Dan O’Brian was just a finger in the dike, but he had it stuck in a pretty vital hole. Besides, if he left, she’d miss him. She stopped in Niniltna to talk to Auntie Vi, who listened in bright-eyed silence, her head cocked to one side like a bird’s. “I’ll start calling,” she said, and displayed a cell phone with pride. It was lime green and transparent. Kate recoiled, as if someone had offered her a diamond-back rattlesnake. “Uh, great, Auntie. I’m going to talk to Billy now. And I might go to Anchorage.” “You know somebody there?” “I can get to know them.” Auntie Vi grinned, and the evil in that grin kept Kate warm all the way to the Niniltna Native Association offices. Billy looked up when she walked into his office. “Ah, and here I was just inches from a clean getaway,” he said. Kate was known in the Park and, indeed, across the state of Alaska for many things. One of them wasn’t finesse. “You hear about Dan O’Brian?” “No.” She told him. As a clincher, she added, “Dan says the feds are interested in selling exploration leases in Iqaluk, too, Billy. We need him.” Billy frowned but said nothing. Kate was incredulous. “Don’t tell me you want to let them drill in Iqaluk!” “It’d mean jobs, Kate.” “None for us! Nobody here knows how to drill for oil!” “They could be trained. We could get the feds to make it a condition of the leases.” A hot reply trembled on the tip of her tongue. From somewhere, she found the strength to repress it. “Then,” she said, with tight control, “you’d better make sure that we’ve got the ear of the top spokesman for the feds in this Park.” He frowned. “What do you want me to do?” “Do you want to have to break in a new ranger? Somebody who’s going to go around burning out squatters, even if they’ve been squatting for twenty years? Somebody who doesn’t know a moose from a caribou and won’t look the other way when somebody shoots one to feed his kids after the season is closed? Somebody who’ll let all the fish go up the river because the lobbyist for the sports fishers has a bigger bullhorn and a fatter wallet than the lobbyist for the commercial fisher?” She paused and took a deep breath. “I’ll fight against any kind of development in Iqaluk, Billy, barring the logging leases we’ve already signed, but if you decide you want to go after subsurface mineral development and you get your way, it’s better for all of us to deal with Dan, someone who knows us and knows our ways, than some yahoo with a diploma so new, the ink isn’t dry on it yet. At least Dan listens to what the elders have to say about the history of salmon runs. The seals are coming back to the Sound today because he did.” She paused again. “You know you don’t want to have to break in somebody new.” “Well,” Billy said, a defensive look on his round moon face. There was only one right answer, and they both knew what it was. “No.” “All right, then. Call everyone you know in Juneau and then start in on D.C. NNA’s got a lobbyist, doesn’t it?” “Yes.” “Call him and tell him the Niniltna Native Association, the largest private landowner in the Park, has a good working relationship with the current chief ranger and how you’d hate to see that change. In fact, you’d hate it so much that any new ranger appointed in his place would very likely meet with resentment and possibly even active opposition. You can’t vouch for his or her safety. Mention tar and feathers.” Billy laughed. Kate stared at him. The laughter faded. What Kate Shugak lacked in finesse, she more than made up for in force of personality. Besides, Billy was, above all else, a smart politician and he knew what a poll of Park rats would say about Dan O’Brian leaving office. He cleared his throat and reached for the phone. Kate made a couple of other stops to talk to village elders, and she was satisfied with their responses. Screw with one of us, screw with all of us, and Dan had been a Park rat long enough that he was definitely on the inside looking out. Mutt, riding behind her, nose into the wind, seemed to sense her feelings and took a swipe at Kate’s cheek with her tongue, nearly dislodging the bright red knit hat crammed down over Kate’s ears. On the way to the Roadhouse, she had an inspiration, and five miles short of her goal, she took a turnoff that led down to the river, a mile from the road at this point. Spruce trees stood tall and thick next to a narrow track, snow up to the lowest branches, only to fall into deep declines nearer the trunk. It took some doing not to slide into them, and after the second near miss, Mutt decided to get off and walk. Kate slowed the machine to a crawl and thought about the man she was going to see. John Letourneau lived on the Kanuyaq River, about a mile downstream from Niniltna. Home was an immense lodge built of peeled spruce logs, with the wall facing the river made almost entirely of glass. He had his own septic system, so there were flush toilets. He had his own well, so there was running water. He had his own generator, so there were electric lights. It slept twenty in single rooms, each with a private bath, in season, which was as large as he allowed his parties to get. In season was from late June, when the kings started hitting fresh water, until mid-October, when the hunting season ended. There was a miniseason around breakup, when the bears woke up and their coats, which had been growing all winter while they were hibernating, were at their best. He was thinking of starting a second miniseason in January, to take advantage of the prolific tendencies of the Kanuyaq caribou herd. Letourneau Guides, Inc., offered the thrill of the chase and the satisfaction of the kill, a trip into the primal past, where men could get back in touch with their inner hunter, who killed the night’s meal with his bare hands-and a.30-06-and bore it home in triumph, to be awarded the best seat next to the fire and the choicest bits of meat. Not to mention best pick of whatever young virgins happened to be handy. Young virgins, John couldn’t provide, although there were occasionally women among his hunters. He couldn’t keep them out because he couldn’t necessarily tell from a letter who was a man and who was a woman, and as long as their Visa cards went through and their checks didn’t bounce, he didn’t care. He cut them no slack, however: They had to keep up, and no whining. If it came to that, he’d had a lot more whining from his male clients, not that he was ever going to say that out loud to anyone. Especially the ones who, because they’d outfitted themselves at REI before they came, figured they had the backwoods about whipped. It was his pleasure, Kate thought perhaps his very great pleasure, to show them, at their expense, that they didn’t. She’d never heard him go so far as to say that he was in the business of making men from boys. But he did not deny that it sometimes happened. He housed them well, he fed them very well, and he ran their asses off all over the taiga. They came home most nights to a hot shower and a soft bed, and sometimes, if it was that kind of party, a woman in that bed, on the house. He wasn’t averse to a little of that kind of entertainment himself. No loud parties, however, no boozing, and everyone behaved themselves and treated their companions like ladies or they were on the next plane out. Usually, his clients went home with at least one trophy, and the smart ones took the meat, too. When they didn’t, he handed it out to elders in the Park, because he was a man who could see the value in getting along with one’s neighbors. Next to the Niniltna Native Association, he was probably the village of Niniltna ’s biggest taxpayer, and he paid up in full and on time. He’d been around since the sixties. He’d started out fishing in Cordova, learned to fly, and homesteaded on the Kanuyaq. He started advertising salmon fishing parties and guided hunts in He lived alone. The chef arrived with the salmon and departed with the last moose rack. So did the maids and the groundskeepers and the gardener and the boatmen. In the winter, he cooked his own meals and made his own bed, and spent the rest of the time trapping for beaver and mink and marten and curing their skins, which he took into Fur Rendezvous in Anchorage every February and sold at auction. He didn’t have much truck with religion. He drank some, mostly hard liquor. He collected his mail regularly at the post office, and spent enough time at Bernie’s to keep up on what was going out over the Bush telegraph, and to avoid the label of hermit. He had not the knack of making friends, and so his winters were solitary. Kate had the feeling that dignity and a spotless reputation meant more to John Letourneau than anything as messy as a relationship. She pulled up by the front of the porch, giving the motor a couple of unnecessary revs to give him warning. He was waiting at the door by the time she got to the top of the steps. “Kate,” he said. “John,” she said in return. Mutt gave an attention-getting sneeze behind her, and she turned, to see the big yellow eyes pleading for fun. “Okay if my dog flushes some game?” “Turn her loose.” “Thanks. Go,” Kate said to Mutt, and Mutt was off, winging across the snow like an enormous gray arrow, head down, tail flattened, legs extended so that they looked twice their normal length. “Be lucky to see a ptarmigan again this year,” John commented as he closed the door. “Coffee?” “Sure.” He got a carafe out of the kitchen, along with a plate of shortbread cookies. Conversation was restricted to “please” and “thank you” until he had finished serving her and had taken a seat across the living room, at a distance that almost but didn’t quite necessitate a shout for communication. The interior of the lodge was very masculine, sparingly but luxuriously furnished with sheepskin rugs, brown leather couch and chairs, heads of one of each of every living thing in the Park hanging from the walls. No humans that Kate could see, but then, it was a big place. It didn’t look all that lived in to her, but it fit him. He was a tall man with a lion’s mane of white hair, carefully tended and swept back from a broad and deceptively benevolent brow. He looked like he was about to hand down stone tablets. He’d kept his figure, too, broad shoulders over a narrow waist, slim hips and long, lanky legs encased in faded stovepipe jeans, topped with a long-sleeved dark red plaid shirt over a white T-shirt. He had not yet reached an age to stoop, and his step was still swift and sure across the ground. His hands were enormous, dwarfing the large mug cradled in one palm, calloused, chapped, and scarred. His jaw protruded in a very firm chin, his lips were thin, his nose was high-bridged and thinner, and his eyes were dark and piercing. He fixed her with them now. “What can I do for you, Kate?” he said. “I’m guessing this isn’t just a social call.” Since she liked social bullshit as little as he did, she greeted this opening with relief. “You’d guess right. It’s about Dan O’Brian.” John had always been hard to read, his expression usually remote and unchanging, as if sometimes he wasn’t really in the room when you were talking to him. “What about him?” “Did you hear they’re trying to force him into early retirement?” “No.” He drank coffee. “I hadn’t heard that.” “The administration is looking for a change of flavor in their rangers.” He picked up a cookie and examined it. “I can’t say I disagree with them.” She smiled. “Come on, John,” she said, relaxing back into her chair. “You’ve got things pretty good right now. You and Demetri are the sole big-game guides licensed to operate in the Park. Between the two of you, you constitute a monopoly. Dan’s happy to keep it that way.” He didn’t say anything. Kate plowed on. “Plus, we know him, and he knows us. What if they start making noises about drilling in Iqaluk again?” “Are they? “They are in ANWR. I figure if they start punching holes there, they’ll look to start punching them other places, too, and Iqaluk is one of the few places in the state that has already supported a profitable oil field.” “Fifty years ago.” “Still. They can make a case that there’s more to find. What happens then? I’ll tell you. They move in all their equipment, and they either find oil or they don’t. If they don’t, it’s a temporary mess and we hope they don’t screw up the migratory herds too much, and don’t spill anything into the water that’ll screw with the salmon. If they do, it’s a permanent mess, requiring long-term remedial work. Who better to deal with either of these scenarios than the guy who’s been on the ground for the last twenty years? The guy we know, and who knows us? Who actually listens to us when we tell him we need to cut back on escapement in the Kanuyaq because too many salmon are getting past the dip netters and it’s messing with the spawning beds?” He smiled, a slight expression, one that didn’t stick around for long. “You’re very eloquent.” Kate dunked a cookie in her coffee. “Thanks.” “What do you want me to do?” She swallowed. “You host a lot of VTPs here, John, people with power, people with influence. As I recollect, the governor’s been here a time or two. So have both senators and our lone representative. Not to mention half the legislature, and past governors going back to territorial days. Call them and ask them to put in a good word for Dan.” He didn’t say anything. He was very good at it. Kate wanted a commitment. “It’s in your best interest to do so, John.” “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe not.” She looked at him, puzzled. “Why wouldn’t it be?” She searched her mind for any Park legends involving a confrontation between the chief ranger and its biggest guiding outfit, and came up zip. “It’s personal,” he said, dumbfounding her. He got to his feet. “That all you wanted? Because I was about to go out when you drove up.” She set down her mug, still half-full, and her cookie, only half-eaten, and got up. “Sure. Thanks for listening. You’ll think about it?” “I’ll think about it.” Personal? she thought as she drove away. John Letourneau had something “personal” going on with Dan O’Brian? She was pretty sure the earth had just shifted beneath her feet. The Roadhouse, a big rectangular building with metal siding, a metal roof, and a satellite dish hanging off one corner, was packed right up to its exposed rafters, but then, it always was the day after Christmas. People came from all over the Park to show off their presents, drink away the fact that they hadn’t received any, and generally recover from an overdose of family. Dandy Mike was dancing cheek-to-cheek with some sweet young thing, but he winked at Kate as she threaded her way through the crowd. Bobby and Dinah held court in one corner, baby Katya on Bobby’s lap, resplendent in a bright pink corduroy kuspuk trimmed with rickrack and wolverine, necessitating a brief deviation from Kate’s course. Katya saw Kate coming, and as soon as Kate was within range, she gathered her chubby little legs beneath her and executed a flying leap that landed her on Kate’s chest. “Oof!” Kate almost went down under the onslaught. “Shugak!” Bobby bellowed. “Good ta see ya. Sit down and have a snort!” Kate exchanged sloppy kisses with Katya and exchanged a grin with the ethereal blonde who was her mother. “Hey, Dinah.” “Hey, Kate.” An unknown blonde with melting blue eyes and a figure newspaper editors used to call “well nourished” came over, inspecting Kate with a quizzical eye. “What can I bring you?” “You know Christie Turner, Kate?” Aha, Kate thought. “We haven’t met, but I’ve heard tell.” Christie cocked an eyebrow. “Oh, really?” Kate grinned. “I was just up to the Step.” Christie ducked her head and appeared, in the dim light, to blush. A shy smile trembled at the corners of her mouth. “Oh.” That was almost textbook, Kate thought, watching, but then Christie rallied to her duty. “Can I get you a drink?” The Park was like a desert in midwinter-it sucked every drop of moisture out of the body, caused lips to crack, hangnails to sprout, and an unquenchable thirst for anything in liquid form. “Club soda with a wedge of lime would be good. One of the big glasses.” Ben E. King came on the jukebox. “You’ve got baby duty,” Bobby told Kate, and snatched Dinah’s hand and rolled his wheelchair out onto the dance floor. “Da-deee! Da-deee!” “You’ll have to get taller first,” Kate told her. Mandy and Chick were jitterbugging. Old Sam was watching a game on television and doing the play-by-play, since the sound was turned down. “Where’s the defense? Where the hell is the defense? Jesus H. Christ on a crutch, just give him the ball why don’tcha and tie a bow on it while you’re at it!” The First Nazarene congregation, consisting of three parishioners and one minister, was holding a prayer meeting in one corner. A group of Monopoly players huddled around one table, with no attention to spare for anything but buying property, acquiring houses, and collecting rent, not even for Sally Forrest and Gene Mayo, who were all but having sex on the table next door. All pretty much business as usual at Bernie’s. “Kaaaay-tuh,” Katya said. “That’s me,” she told her, and they rubbed noses in an Eskimo kiss. Katya leaned over in a perilous arc to tug at one of Mutt’s ears. “MMMMMMMMMutt,” Katya said. Mutt endured, looking resigned at this assault on her dignity and person. The song ended and Bobby and Dinah came back to the table. Bobby gave Kate a salacious grin. “How’d you like to keep Katya overnight?” “Bobby!” Dinah smacked her husband without much sincerity. “Behave.” “Why? That’s no fun,” he said, and kissed her with a mixture of gusto and conviction that involved a certain amount of manhandling, which appeared to be received with enthusiasm. Sally and Gene had nothing on these two. “Jesus,” Kate said, “get a room,” and perched Katya on her hip for the walk to the bar. Bernie, what hair he had left caught in a ponytail, intelligent eyes the same brown as his hair set deeply in a thin face, had a stick of beef jerky and Kate’s club soda waiting. Mutt exchanged a lavish lick for the jerky and lay down at Kate’s feet, where everyone was very careful not to step on her. It was crowded that afternoon, full of talk and laughter, loud music and smoke, and the clink of glass, the pop of bottle caps, and the fizzle of soda water. Bernie was constantly in motion, sliding up and down the bar as if on skates, dispensing beer, screwdrivers, red hots, rusty nails, salty dawgs, and, for one foolhardy table, Long Island iced teas all around, after delivery of which, Bernie confiscated everyone’s keys and designated Old Sam Dementieff to drive them home in his pickup. Old Sam got out his martyr look, but fortunately they all lived in Niniltna and he accepted his assignment with minimal grumbling. Bernie returned to his post, and Kate, folding straws into weird Old Sam cast his eyes heavenward. “Some men,” he said to Bernie in a withering tone of voice, “some men purely have to be taken by the pecker and led.” He shook his head and finished his beer. “How up are you on your Bible studies, Sergeant?” “Way down,” Jim said. “Read up on Jacob,” Old Sam said, and moved to a table with a better view of the game to continue his play-by-play. Michael Jordan was back, and Old Sam was way more interested in that than he was in anybody’s love life. He didn’t look much like Cupid, but then, he’d never much cared for Ethan Int-Hout, having been corked by his father a time or ten out on the fishing grounds. In his eighty years on the job, Old Sam had had some earned life experience in the dictum, Like father, like son. And in Like grandmother, like granddaughter. Ekaterina had never been one to go long without a man, either. |
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