Whisper to the Blood (7 page)

"Auntie, I—" Kate remembered Auntie Vi's visit the previous
month. "Cardboard? Brown?" she said without much hope.

"Auntie Vi bring."

Kate slumped a little. "Auntie Vi bring." Where had she left that
box? She had a vague memory of putting it in the back of Johnny's truck. It
couldn't still be there, could it?

"And Katya not read," Auntie Joy said sorrowfully.

"No." Then Kate rallied. "So what? The agenda says for them
to be read and approved. So somebody read them, for crying out loud."

Next to her
Harvey
chuckled, a little louder than was perhaps strictly necessary. "The rest
of us already have, Kate."

"So what?" Kate said again. "The agenda says read them, we
read them."

"You see, Kate,"
Harvey
said, enjoying himself hugely, "Annie sends out the draft minutes of the
last meeting to all the board members. Board members read them in advance, so
we don't have to waste our time reading them during the meeting. Then we
approve them."

"Oh."

Auntie Joy said anxiously, "But we read now. Is okay. Okay?" She
looked around the table.

Joyce Shugak, eighty-something, was a subsistence fisher, retiring each
summer to a fish camp on Amartuq Creek, upstream from Alaganik Bay where all
the commercial fishers in the Park got their nets wet. She had been married
once, long ago, and the great tragedy of her life was that she had had no
children. The result of this child-hunger led her to adopt every soul in the
Park from one to a hundred as her very own. She was a plump, cheerful person,
easy to please, ready to praise, and if not quite capable of being blind to
faults in others, at least nurtured a determined nearsightedness that worked
just as well.

Like the other aunties, she spoke a truncated, rhythmic form of English that
came from speaking it as a second language, as all the aunties grew up speaking
Aluutiq, Eyak, and Athabascan. Kate suspected that they could all of them have
spoken flawless English if they had chosen to do so, but by now it was a matter
of pride to speak in their self-invented patois. It branded them as Alaska
Natives, born and bred and living the life. They were proud of it, and they
didn't mind reminding people of that fact every time they opened their mouths,
which obviated the necessity of their having to actually say so.

Old Sam shrugged. "Sure," Demetri said.
Harvey
heaved a sigh and said wearily,
"Sure, why not? I've only got six other things that need doing
today."

"Yeah," said Old Sam with his patented nasty grin, "but this
one you get paid for."

Kate looked at him. "We get paid?"

There was a moment of silence. Annie Mike cleared her throat. "If the
board please," she murmured to her laptop, "the secretary will now
read the minutes of the last meeting, dated April fifteenth."

"April?" Kate said, still reeling from the information that she
would draw a paycheck for this. How much? Did they get paid per meeting or was
it all in one check at the end of the year? Or maybe the beginning of the year?
She wondered if it would be enough to cover the cost of a new four-wheeler. She
could use a new-

"Wait a minute," she said.

Annie paused. "Yes, Kate?"

"April? I thought the last meeting was in July."

Harvey
rolled his eyes. "It was cancelled, Kate. You and Old Sam were fishing.
Demetri was upriver running his lodge, and the aunties were downriver at fish
camp. We didn't have a quorum."

Kate was pretty sure she knew what the word
quorum
meant from the
context but she resolved to look it up in her tattered copy of
Webster's
Unabridged
at the earliest opportunity, just to be sure.
"Sorry," she said shortly. "I forgot."

Annie finished reading the minutes. There was silence. "Oh," Kate
said. "Am I supposed to say something?"

"Ask if there are any corrections,"
Harvey
said briskly. He even smiled at Kate.

Enjoy yourself while it lasts, asshole, Kate thought. Out loud she said,
"Are there any corrections to the minutes?" There weren't, the
minutes were approved, and it was with distinct relief that Kate said,
"Reports?"

Annie gave the treasurer's report. NNA sounded fiscally healthy to Kate, but
then she wasn't the best person ever with numbers, so she resolved to ask
Auntie Joy privately.

"Unfinished business?" Kate said.

"I move we table all unfinished business for the moment,"
Harvey
said.

"Second," Demetri said.

"Huh?" Kate said.

Auntie Joy leaned across the table and said, "Motion moved and
seconded. In favor say aye. Opposed, say nay."

"Oh. Okay. All in favor say—"

"All in favor of tabling unfinished business," Auntie Joy said.
"Okay, all in favor of tabling unfinished business say aye."

"Aye,"
Harvey
said.

"Aye," Demetri said.

Old Sam gave
Harvey
an appraising glance. "What's this about,
Harvey
?"

Harvey
glared. "Out of order!"

Auntie Joy patted the air with pacific hands. "I say aye, too, Old Sam.
No fighting, now."

"Oh, all right," Old Sam said, giving in, but he fixed
Harvey
with a cold and
untrusting eye.

Auntie Joy said encouragingly, "Okay, Katya, motion carried."

"The motion is carried," Kate said obediently.

"No, you say what motion is."

"Oh. Okay. The motion to table unfinished business is carried. By
majority vote!"

She couldn't help the note of triumph, and
Harvey
's laugh was immediate and unkind, and
Kate's hackles rose. She looked down at the agenda. "All right, then I
guess we go to new business. Anybody have any new business to discuss?"

"I do,"
Harvey
said, promptly and predictably. "With the board's permission, I'd like to
introduce Global Harvest Resources Inc.'s personal representative to the
Niniltna Native Association, and to the Park." Before anyone could say
anything, he got up and went to the door. "Talia?" He ushered a woman
into the room.

"Katya!" Auntie Joy said urgently. "Point of order,
Katya!"

"Point of what?" Kate said.

"Question!" Old Sam said.

"What was the question?" Kate said.

"Everyone, meet Talia Macleod,"
Harvey
said. "Talia, this is the
Niniltna Native Association board of directors. Starting on your left, Sam
Dementieff, Joy Shugak, Demetri Totemoff, myself, and our recently named
interim chair, Kate Shugak. In the corner, that's Annie Mike, our secretary and
treasurer."

The name was instantly recognizable to them all, as was the dazzling smile
she sent round the room, which had graced the front page of every newspaper in
Alaska
, as well as the cover of
Alaska
magazine,
Outside
magazine, and
Sports Illustrated,
twice. True, one of those had been a
group shot of the whole Olympic team, but still.

Talia Macleod was an Alaskan athlete of international renown, a member of
the American biathlon team, finishing six times in the top ten nationally,
taking first once, and going to the world championship five times and the
Olympics twice. Her hair was a white blond mane, her eyes cerulean blue and
widely spaced, and she had a lithe figure that looked equally well in ski pants
and bathing suits, this latter attested to by the most recent
Sports
Illustrated
swimsuit issue, her second appearance in that periodical.

And then, there was that smile. Full-lipped, white-toothed, dimpled even at
rest, it had been described as incandescent by one besotted journalist, and it
lit up the newspapers, the magazine covers, and any room she walked into.

Including the Niniltna Native Association board room. She didn't suffer from
shyness, either. "How nice to meet you," she said, walking around the
table to shake hands. Either
Harvey
had rehearsed her or she was very good with names, because she addressed them
all faultlessly and without hesitation.

"I hear they call you Old Sam," she said with an up-from-under
flutter of eyelashes. "I can't think why."

"Mrs. Shugak," she said, holding one of Auntie Joy's hands in both
of hers. "It's an honor to meet one of Ekaterina Shugak's closest friends,
and one of the founding members of the Niniltna Native Association. I'm looking
forward to working with you."

"Demetri," she said, pulling Demetri to his feet and giving him a
warm hug. "Great to see you again."

"You, too." Demetri hugged her back and sat down again, avoiding
everyone's eyes.

"Demetri took me and a bunch of friends of mine from Outside hunting up
in the Quilak foothills a couple of years back." She smiled down at him.
"My, that was a good time."

Demetri Totemoff, fifty-five, had been born in
Anchorage
to Park rats who had moved away. He
had moved to the Park after two tours in
Vietnam
. Married with three
children, he was a big game guide with a high-end lodge back in the Quilaks on
a salmon- and trout-rich stream, in close proximity to bears black and brown
and within an easy hike of all the moose and caribou a great white hunter could
possibly want. The lodge, a rustic affair with hot and cold running water,
one-bedroom suites, a full bar, maid service, and a live-in gourmet chef during
the fishing and hunting seasons, had become so well known among business
executives, the Hollywood elite, and the jet set that nowadays it ran full on word
of mouth alone. While not as pro-development as
Harvey
, unlike Auntie Joy Demetri was not
averse to commerce, especially when it might make him a buck or two. On the
other hand, he wouldn't take kindly to any development that might affect the
raw, rough, wilderness experience of his guests, either. Of everyone on the
board, Demetri had the best grasp of numbers. If it looked like the mine would
make him more money, bottom line, than his lodge, he'd be for it. The opposite,
the opposite. Self-interest was a wonderful thing, and at least it made him
predictable.

Macleod walked around Demetri, trailing a hand across his shoulders, and
increased the wattage of her smile to where it was almost blinding. "And
of course the legendary Kate Shugak."

Old Sam's responding smile had been wicked and appraising, Auntie Joy's
handshake had been brief, the tips of Demetri's ears were red, and
Harvey
looked like a
proud, lecherous parent. Kate found herself very much on her guard. She leaned
forward as if to get to her feet, caught sight of Auntie Joy's stony visage,
and only just stopped herself in time. She hated being loomed over but since
Macleod was at least five ten in her stockings and the heels of her boots added
two inches more, and Kate was only five feet nothing, she would have had to
look up anyway. She accepted Macleod's hand from a seated position and said,
"I don't know about legendary."

"I do," Macleod said. Her grip was firm and strong and lasted just
long enough. "Mandy says hi, by the way."

"And you know Mandy," Kate said. Mandy Baker, expatriate Boston
Brahmin and champion dog musher, lived on the second homestead over from
Kate's, and was one of Kate's closest friends.

Macleod grinned. "I think everybody in
Alaska
has cheered her out of the chute on

"Talia,"
Harvey
said, reasserting his control of the situation, "joined us today at my
invitation to tell us a little bit about the Suulutaq Mine."

There was instant attitude from around the table, beginning with Auntie
Joy's continued imitation of
Washington
on
Mount Rushmore
. Hard for an old Native woman to look like
a dead white guy, but Auntie Joy managed it. Old Sam leaned back in his chair,
propping his knee on the edge of the table, and linked his hands behind his
head, but the carefree pose couldn't hide his attentive-ness or his tension.
Demetri closed his eyes and shook his head very slightly.

"Really," Kate said. There was a lot going on here that she didn't
understand. Kate never enjoyed feeling ignorant, unsure, and out of control.
"Listen, Ms. Macleod—"

"Talia, please."

"Okay, Talia," Kate said. "No offense, but while I'm prepared
to acknowledge that you can ski and shoot my ass off, what do you know about
gold mines?"

There was the barest perceptible glimmer of emotion from Auntie Joy. Old Sam
laughed outright. Demetri pretended to be invisible.
Harvey
sucked in his breath but before he
could protest Macleod said, "Maybe a little more than you do, but only
because I've been boning up on them since Global Harvest hired me."

Kate thought about it, and nodded. "What's your interest here?"

Macleod gestured at
Harvey
.
"Like
Harvey
says, they hired me to liaise with the Park. It's a paycheck. Biathlons don't
pay real well."

"Fair enough," Kate said. Auntie Joy had reverted to the Great
Stone Face again, and Old Sam was maintaining a watching brief, so no help
there. "Okay. Make your pitch."

Macleod shrugged. "I'm not going to bullshit you, Kate, or anyone else
in the Park for that matter. Global Harvest is in the gold mining business
because they can make money at it. They bid on the leases at Suulutaq because
they had a good hunch as to what they'd find there." Macleod pulled a wry
face. "I don't think they knew just how much was there, but now that they
do, they're in for the long haul. Gold, last time I looked, was a little over
nine hundred an ounce and rising. For that kind of money, they're willing to do
things right from the get-go."