Stabenow, Dana - Shugak 11 - The Singing Of The Dead

by The Singing Of The Dead(lit)

  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