A fine and bitter snow (9 page)

On the other hand, he and his people were getting the job done. "What brought this on?"

A sigh. "You know we've got these bean counters running around down here right now, looking over our shoulders."

The Outside auditors the state had brought in. "I've heard."

The chuckle was not quite as genial this time. "Yeah. They've seen the amount of reports you file, the case load. They're thinking you're overworked, and that it's going to cause problems down the road."

"Why not just assign me another corporal?"

"I suggested that."

"And?"

"They also looked at the response times. Hell, Jim, they've got a point. That's the hell of a lot of territory you people cover. Some of that territory is a long way from where you're sitting."

Jim sat back and propped his feet on the windowsill this time, looking at the map of the Park. Niniltna was at its heart, when Ekaterina Moonin Shugak was still alive in more ways than one. Ahtna and Cordova were bigger, but Niniltna had the strong native association, with its solid leadership, and some legendary figures as shareholders. One in particular.

It also had a 4,800-foot airstrip, long enough to land a jet on—a small one anyway. Always supposing any pilot worthy of the name would put anything other than a Here down on gravel. "Just as a matter of curiosity," Jim said, "have we got enough funding to create a new post?"

"Yeah, right."

A brief silence as Jim surveyed the map again. "Gene," he said, "are you satisfied with my work?"

A snort this time. "If I wasn't, you would have heard so before now."

"So if I come up with another way to set what passes for the bean counters' minds at ease, you'd listen to it?"

"Hell yes. What is it?"

"Give me a couple of days?" He waited.

"Yeah," Gene said finally. "Okay."

"One more thing."

"What?"

"You know Dan O'Brian?"

A brief pause. Jim could hear the Rolodex between his boss's ears clicking. "Dan O'Brian. Right. Chief ranger your area. What about him?"

"He mouthed off about drilling for oil in ANWR. They're trying to force him into retirement."

"So? Should have kept his mouth shut."

"Agreed, but otherwise he's a good man. We work well together. I'd hate to have to break in some newbie. Can you call somebody, make some noise?"

"I can call several."

"I owe you."

"Maybe. Maybe not. We'll see after the next time we talk."

"Gotcha," Jim said, grinning. He hung up, and grabbed his jacket and hat on his way out the door.

It was as clear and calm this morning as it had been the night before, the big high pressure system hanging over interior Alaska strong enough to keep it that way for the next three to four days. He had done preflight and refueled the Cessna with the shield on its side the night before. All he had to do was roll her out, and he was in the air five minutes later. He was on the ground in Niniltna in less than an hour, taxiing up to the hangar that served as headquarters for George Perry's two-plane air taxi service. George was there, pulling the backseat from his Super Cub and loading the back with mailbags. "Thank God for the U.S. Postal Service," he said in greeting.

A U.S. Postal Service mail contract had been the savior of more than one Bush air taxi running on duct tape and the owner's sweat. "What's with all the packages going out?"

George grinned. "Christmas returns."

"Oh." The only Christmas presents Jim sent were to his parents, usually something out of a catalog. In return, he got a card accompanied by a baseball cap with the logo of whatever sports team his father was currently following, and a box of his mother's homemade fudge. The fudge, he ate immediately. The cap usually went to the first kid he saw in the next village he flew into. The card lasted longer than either of them.

"What's up?" George said. "Somebody get uppity enough to require the personal attention of the law?"

Jim gave a noncommittal grunt. George had heard that grunt before, and he changed the subject. "See you at Bernie's later?"

"I don't know. Depends on if I have to make a run."

"Try." George grinned. "I hear somebody made a successful winter assault on Big Bump."

"Ah. It's Middle Finger time."

"You got it."

"George?"

"What?"

"Tell me about weather in the Park."

George cocked a quizzical eyebrow.

"Pilot to pilot," Jim said.

George's take was that it was typical Interior weather—a lot of cold, clear days in the winter and a lot of hot, clear days in the summer, if you didn't count the blizzards and the forest fires, respectively. "We're in between the Alaska Range and the Chugach Range," George told him, "with the Quilaks at our backs, and we're far enough away from all of them to keep us CAVU more often than not. So what's all this about?"

"Something in the wind," Jim said. "I'll let you know."

"Will it be good for the air taxi business?"

"Yes. In fact, start figuring out how much you'd charge to haul prisoners to Ahtna, Tok, or Anchorage. And try to keep it below highway robbery."

"Wilco." George, not the most curious of men, tossed the seats in on top of the mail and cut the conversation short. "Gotta go. Got three passengers waiting on a ride into the Park, and it ain't so often this time of year I got a full load coming back from a mail run."

George took off and Jim walked around the hangar and down the road. His destination wasn't far, but then, nothing in Niniltna was far from anything else. A block in that direction was the school, a block in the other the river, and in between was the airstrip and the mostly handmade homes of the town. The Niniltna Native Association building, prefabricated, vinyl-sided, and tin-roofed, stood on its own ground a little farther out and a little higher up, looking like a benevolent uncle with a fat belly, kicking back in the winter sunshine.

Ekaterina Moonin Shugak had ruled her kingdom from there. In her titular place was now Billy Mike, the association's new president and tribal chief. But through a long and profitable acquaintance with the Park and all its residents, Jim knew where the real power lay.

He went to see Auntie Vi.

Auntie Vi lived in a big house that used to be filled with children and was now filled with guests who paid far too much for a bed, a bathroom down the hall, and an unvarying breakfast of cocoa and fry bread. It was good cocoa, Hershey's, homemade, and superb fry bread, and Jim was lucky to be early enough to be offered some of both. He sat down next to a man in a nattily stitched denim pantsuit. The man took one look at Jim's uniform and ate the rest of his meal with as much of the back of his head toward Jim as possible, and then sidled out at his earliest opportunity.

"A uniform does have a way of clearing out a room," he said ruefully to Auntie Vi.

She laughed as she finished clearing the table. "This way, I didn't have to serve him seconds. Ay, those bums, they eat me out of house and home if they have the chance."

Just then, her other guests came in, a couple of state surveyors, who conversed in numbers, scribbling lines and formulae on a sheet of paper held between them. Jim wasn't sure they'd even registered his existence. They left, too, after stuffing themselves and their pockets with fry bread, which immediately showed up in grease stains on the out-sides of their jackets. Jim noticed Auntie Vi made no objection, and he reflected on the state's propensity not to dicker on a set price for Bush accommodation. Auntie Vi's favorite customer, the state of Alaska.

Auntie Vi was about four feet tall and weighed maybe eighty pounds with her false eyelashes on. She was one of Ekaterina's contemporaries and therefore had to be in her late seventies, if not her early eighties, but the years sat lightly upon her shoulders. She had her share of wrinkles around the eyes and mouth and the backs of her hands, but her spine was still straight, her step light, her hair as thick as a girl's, although she had allowed the temples to go gray, giving her an elegant look that could only have benefited from a crown perched thereon. She had a wide smile filled with improbably square teeth, a pug nose, and bright brown button eyes that were naturally inquisitive.

She finished clearing the table and bustled the dishes into the kitchen, leaving him to enjoy the last piece of fry bread and the dregs of his now-lukewarm cocoa in solitary splendor. It was a rectangular room, big enough to hold a table that seated twelve, along with twelve chairs and a sideboard with a hutch on top of it. Flowery prints decorated the walls, which were covered with some tiny floral-print wallpaper in a delicate yellow. There were ruffles on the sheer white curtains hanging at the windows, and tatted tablecloths covered the surface of the table and sideboard and the backs of all twelve chairs. It was a very feminine room, but not so feminine that he felt uncomfortable in it.

He heard the hum of the dishwasher, and shortly Auntie Vi bustled back in. "Now," she said, sitting down across from him and laying both hands flat against the table. On to business. "What you here for, Jim, eh?"

"Your cocoa and fry bread breakfast."

She shook her head, although she couldn't suppress her smile.

"It would have been worth the flight alone," he said, "but you're right, Auntie, I need your help."

"Ah." She folded her hands and tried to look impassive, but he was not deceived. Auntie Vi loved being asked for help, almost as much as she loved giving it. "With what?"

Her accent was that of a person who spoke English as a second language, a little heavy on the gutturals and a little light on the verbs, but she had no trouble understanding what he was saying. "Good idea," she said when he finished explaining.

"What about office space?"

She shook her head. "Build your own."

"Yeah, I was afraid of that."

"Where you live?"

He met her eyes. "I'd be looking for a small place, probably."

"Uh-huh," she said. "A cabin maybe."

"Maybe," he said.

"Maybe not in village. Maybe down the road a ways."

"Maybe."

He got the hell out of there.

She waited until the door had closed behind him before allowing the wide, all-encompassing grin to spread across her face.

Ayah, that Katya, her life was about to get interesting again. Auntie Vi gave a sharp nod.

Good.

Jim went to talk to Billy Mike, implying without actually saying so that Billy Mike was the first person he'd come to. Billy was notoriously easygoing, but he had his pride. Billy's first question was, "You bringing your clerk with you?"

"I hadn't thought," Jim said. "Pretty much up to her. She's pretty dug in in Tok. I don't know that she's going to want to pull the kids out of school. And then there's the housing. I didn't see any
for sale
signs on my way here."

Billy gave a short, satisfied nod. "Let me know. I'll set you up some interviews."

No doubt he meant with some of his many relatives, but then, the only person who had more relatives in the Park than Billy Mike was Kate Shugak. Jim just hoped that if Billy tossed any of his daughters into the mix that it would be Lilah, who was quick and bright, if a little sharp around the tongue, and not Betsy, who was a major whiner—it was always God or somebody else's fault. Since Lilah was never out of work and Betsy was seldom in, he didn't hold out much hope.

The next thing Billy said was, "You'll have to build."

"I know."

"The Niniltna native association owns a construction company."

"I know."

As he left, Jim reflected that his plans were having unforeseen side effects, which, all told, put him on even more solid footing in the Park than he had been before.

He went to Bobby Clark's next, borrowing Billy's brand-new Ford Explorer (the Eddie Bauer model, this year's Park vehicle of choice at permanent fund dividend time) to get there. The large A-frame on Squaw Candy Creek was set in a densely wooded glen next to a rocky, burbling little creek, the whole frosted with a thick layer of snow so white it was almost blue. It looked like a place you would see from the seat of a sleigh on the way to Grandmother's house, and Jim paused to admire it before crossing the little bridge and pulling up in front of the deck that extended the width of the house.