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 Mini season
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 Mini season in January, to take
advantage of the prolific tendencies of the Kanuyaq caribou herd.
Letourneau Guides, Inc., offered the thrill of the chase
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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
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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 Field & Stream in 1965-tent
camping, it was back then. He'd built the lodge in 1969, for cash, and
from that day forward had never run empty.
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 great arrow,
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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 always hard to read, his expression usually remote
and unchanging, as if sometimes he
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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, relaxin
g 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 plans. 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
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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 VIPs 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 interests 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
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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 a
unquenchable thirst for anything
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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 dontcha 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 to 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.
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"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
Stabenow, Dana - Shugak 11 - The Singing Of The Dead Page 37
