Jack’s expression told her what he thought of that estimate of his hostesses, and she was hard put to keep her face straight.
“You come back tomorrow, Katya,” Auntie Joy said firmly. “We catch lots, we need help with the cleaning and the hanging. You come back and help.”
“Okay, auntie. Just as long as I don’t get stuck with fire detail.”
“Fire detail?” Jack said apprehensively. “What’s fire detail?”
Kate refrained from telling him that fire detail was tending the fire in the smokehouse. It had to be maintained around the clock. It couldn’t be too big and it couldn’t be too small, and it could never, ever be allowed to go out. If the fire went out, the smoke went with it, and if the smoke went with it, the salmon would be ruined, and if the salmon were ruined, there went this year’s smoke fish. It was an important job, maybe the most important job, and definitely the most tedious.
It was also the job most beginners got stuck with their first summer. Kate sternly repressed a grin.
He followed her down the creek bank. “Are we going to be able to get any real fishing in if we stay here?”
“Depends on what you call real fishing,” she said. “I think Auntie Vi’s definition is a little different than yours.”
“You’re telling me,” he muttered.
She relented. “Of course you’ll get some fishing in. Maybe not only the kind of fishing you came for, but you will fish.” She laughed at his expression, and turned him to face upstream. “About half a mile up the left bank, there’s a great hole for reds.”
He brightened. “Really?”
“Really. Although you might be sharing it.”
“You mean with other sport fishermen?”
She nodded. “George Perry will probably be landing a few on sandbars while you’re here. There’s even an airstrip about a mile inland.”
“Why?”
“Why the fishermen?”
“Why the airstrip?” He waved a hand. “Why build one out here? Was there a herring cannery or a gold mine out here one time, or what?”
“No.” Kate’s smile faded. “RPctCo built it a couple years back. When they were sinking exploratory wells hereabouts.”
“Oh.” A touchy subject, and Jack knew enough not to pursue it. “So we’re in Iqaluk.”
“Pretty much everything you can see from here is Iqaluk,” Kate agreed. She didn’t want to talk about that, either.
Iqaluk was a fifty-thousand-acre parcel of land that included the eastern shore of the Kanuyaq River and part of the Prince William Sound coast. It was home to some of the richest salmon spawning grounds in the Gulf of Alaska, hence the name iqaluk, the Aleut word for salmon. It was also one of the last old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest. Title to it had been clouded by competing claims, from the Niniltna Native Association, the Raven Corporation, the state of Alaska and the federal government. The federal government did not present a united front, either; the Forest Service and the Department of the Interior had been squabbling over Iqaluk since before statehood in 1959.
Everybody had a different idea about what should be done with Iqaluk. The Niniltna Native Association wanted the land deeded to them as part of the tribal entity’s compensation under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. Raven, the parent corporation for Niniltna’s region, wanted the land so they could lease it out for logging and subsurface mineral explorations and development. Either idea was enough to send the state into orbit, because if the land was handed over to Raven or Niniltna the state wouldn’t see a dime in taxes. The timber companies wanted the federal government in the form of the Forest Service to gain title, because the Forest Service had the charitable habit of building roads into old-growth forests at public expense for private profit. They went faint at the thought of the Department of the Interior gaining jurisdiction, because Interior would turn it over to the National Park Service, who would incorporate it into the national park system, which excluded exploitation of any kind, unless directed to do otherwise by an Act of Congress. Which brought everything full circle, because if Iqaluk was turned into a park, limits would be imposed on hunting and fishing, and Auntie Joy and Auntie Vi would be in the front row of the rebellion.
Hell, they already were. “Civil disobedience,” Kate said out loud.
“Huh?”
“Thoreau would be proud of my aunties. The federal government told them they couldn’t fish subsistence here, and yet here they are, about to hook up their fish wheel.”
A small plane approached, flying low and slow over the surface of the creek. It was George Perry’s Super Cub, on tundra tires, following the course of the stream a hundred feet off the deck. They waved, and George banked a sharp left, folding down the window as he circled. “Hey,” he yelled, “get a move on, you deadbeats, there’s fish in that thar water.” He straightened her out and took off again up the creek, rocking his wings in farewell.
Jack shook his head. “He does like to give his tourists their money’s worth, don’t he?”
“Probably stream surveying,” Kate said.
“Oh yeah? Lamar?”
Kate shook her head. “He’s got a new sidekick. Little gal, name of Becky something.”
“She taking kindly to low and slow?”
Kate chuckled. “Not hardly. From what I saw of her uniform yesterday, she has yet to learn that she’s supposed to stick to fish counting and leave the flying to George. That wasn’t her, though, in the backseat.”
“Oh yeah?” He squinted after the Cub. “Who was it?”
“I don’t know, some guy.” The profile of the man seated behind George had seemed vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t quite place him. “Probably a fly fisherman going up the creek for a day. Mutt! Come on, girl, time to go!”
Mutt’s head appeared at the top of the bank, her great yellow eyes peering soulfully over the tips of the rye grass. Kate read her expression without difficulty. “You want to stay?”
Mutt gave a joyous bark.
“Okay, stay.”
Mutt leapt down to the beach with one graceful, arcing stride and loped over to the skiff. She hopped up to put her front paws on the side of the skiff and gave Kate a lavish lick of gratitude.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Kate said, shoving her away. “Just remember this the next time old Graybeard shows up and you want to get laid.”
Mutt barked again, and took the bank in a single bound to disappear into the tall grass.
Kate stood in the bow, Jack on the sand. He looked down at her critically. “Well, I’m not going to lick you.” He smiled, a long, slow smile. “At least not right now.” He kissed her instead. It was a long, leisurely kiss, and it took Kate three tries to get Old Sam’s older kicker started, because she kept tangling the cord. It didn’t help that Jack stood grinning at her from the creek bank until she was out of sight.
Seven
WHEN KATE’S SKIFF EMERGED from the mouth of the creek, Meany’s setnet site was still the only site fishing, and his drifter was still the only boat with a net out. He’d drifted a little too close to shore for his sixty-mesh, or thirty-foot, net, and so was pulling it, presumably prior to moving the boat farther off shore and resetting the net there, or perhaps prior to delivery, since he was riding very low in the water.
Only he had a problem, because half a dozen other drifters had crowded round him, their engines idling, making no effort to move out of the way.
Kate caught the barest glimpse of all this on her way back to the Freya, as she was preoccupied with dodging hatch-cover water-skiers and fireworks. Dewey Dineen tossed another cherry bomb that came a little too close for comfort, dousing Kate with water. She altered course to come alongside the Priscilla and share her feelings on the subject. He was half in the bag, so she let it go with a few pithy remarks that were received with a wide, unfocused grin and the offer of a beer.
Old Sam was standing in the bow of the Freya, and came down on deck to catch her line. She came up on deck and said, “What’s going on?”<
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Old Sam grinned the grin that made him look like a cross between Lucifer and Linda Lovelace. “It’s better than a Hollywood movie, Kate. Come watch.”
She followed him up to the bow, from where they had an excellent view of the altercation shaping up off the port bow. On board the no-name drifter, Meany’s son was pulling in the last of the gear, where it sat in a green pile of mesh on deck forward of the reel. Meany himself was at the controls on the flying bridge, trying to make way without much success, because he was being matched move for move by the half-dozen drifters surrounding him.
With immense enjoyment, Old Sam said, “He just took delivery from his beach site, and the rest of ‘em won’t give him sea room.”
Kate eyed him, one eyebrow raised. Old Sam was maybe five feet, two and a half inches when he stood on tiptoe and weighed maybe 125 pounds after a nine-course meal— maybe. With the passage of time—he wouldn’t say how much—the flesh of his face had wrinkled like a mass of contour lines on a well-worn map, but his step was firm, his eye sharp and his grin just nasty enough to make the people he turned it on feel for their wallets. “What are you grinning about, old man? If the fleet’s on strike, so are we. This situation isn’t putting any butter on our bread, either.”
“Yeah, well, was I fishing instead of tendering, I don’t know’s how I’d be risking a new drift net for fifty cents a pound myself.”
“I guess Meany doesn’t think so.”
Old Sam spat over the side, an eloquent assessment of his opinion of the fisherman in question.
Kate looked over at the drifter, still surrounded. “He trying for us, or for town?” Beneath the green mesh of the net, the deck of the drifter was awash in a slippery pile of salmon, while her trim line was riding dangerously close to water level. If a squall blew up, the drifter could founder in an instant. It had happened before, when a skipper’s greed overshadowed considerations of safety of ship and crew. It would happen again.
But not today. “Them boys ain’t gonna let him do neither,” Old Sam predicted.
He was only half right. There was the sudden roar of an engine and Meany’s drifter, sluggish but determined, plowed straight for the midships of the Esther. Tim Sarakovikoff let out a yell of outrage, and Kate had a split second to wonder if he knew about Myra’s extramarital activities. There was an answering roar of engines and a froth of water from the stern of the other boats, and the drifter slid through the sudden opening made between the Esther and the Deliah like waxed thread through the eye of a needle.
“Slicker’n snot,” Old Sam said with reluctant admiration.
There was a furious roar from a dozen throats. Meany was called a lot of names, most of which would have offended his mother deeply, but he made it to deep water and out of the bay.
Old Sam spat over the side again. “Guess he’s doing his own delivering today. Good.”
Kate thought so, too. Fishermen had long memories, and Old Sam and the Freya could ill afford to be seen as helping to break a strike, not if they wanted fishermen delivering to them in the future. On the other hand, Kamaishi signed their paycheck. It was a thin enough line to tread, sometimes too thin. “We heading for the barn? Not much point in sticking around here, if nobody’s fishing.”
What with Jack and Johnny marooned with the aunties up Amartuq Creek, she didn’t really want to go anywhere, and was glad when Old Sam grinned his demon grin. “Here’s where the action seems to be, girl. We might as well stay and watch the show. Hell, we got front-row seats.” She opened her mouth to request permission to spend the night on shore, caught his choleric eye and thought better of it. Besides, Jack and Johnny needed a day or so to acclimate, anyway. Not to mention, if she stayed on board she could read instead of fillet fish.
Pete Petersen brought the Monica alongside and the two old men retired to the galley and drank beer and reminisced about the good old days, when the Fish and Game and the fish buyers and wimmen knew their places and kept them. Kate had heard it all before, and retreated to the wheel-house. Settling herself comfortably in the captain’s chair, feet propped on the console, she opened The Heaven Tree Trilogy and lost herself in medieval Wales, which at that point seemed a lot more civilized than modern-day Prince William Sound on the Fourth of July.
With Meany gone, the scene shifted from confrontation to celebration. The parade in Cordova started at two that afternoon and since the fleet was on strike the fishermen could have upped anchor and sailed for Cordova in time to catch it, but they didn’t trust each other enough to stay on strike, so they all stayed out on the fishing grounds until the period was over, just to keep each other honest.
It was immediately obvious that most of them had prepared well in advance to celebrate Independence Day, strike or no. At two o’clock, precisely in conjunction with the parade they were all missing, the fireworks came out in force, a fountain of pyrotechnics generated from every deck. With the injudicious placement of a large Roman candle, Jimmy Velasco went so far as to set the roof of the cabin of the Marie Josephine on fire. His nearest neighbors downed punk and raised buckets and helped him get it out before it did too much damage.
Les Nordensen broke his left arm when the hatch cover he was water-skiing on caught the stem of the Terra Jean. Pete Petersen set it with a roll of Playboy magazines and duct tape, and Les went back to the party.
Also under the influence, Kell Van Brocklin fell hopelessly in love with Ellen Steen, and pulled the hook to follow his pheromones across Alaganik Bay. They were pretty effective; after nearly running down Lamar Rousch’s Zodiac, which raised a doubt in certain suspicious minds as to just how drunk he actually was, he sniffed the Dawn out from a group of drifters rafted together at the south end of the bay and nosed up alongside. From the Freya’s wheel-house it looked like the Joanna C. was trying to mate with the Dawn, but Ellen managed to repel boarders and steam off to a safe distance. Rejected, Kell lost interest, passed out at the wheel and ran the Joanna C. up on a sandbar, which effectively put him out of commission until the next high tide.
Joe Anahonak challenged Craig Pirtle to a joust, and a group of drifters made a lane between two unsteady lines of boats. The Darlene and the Rose charged at each other at full throttle, boat hooks at the ready. Full throttle on a Grayling bowpicker was only about eight knots; still, it was enough to bring the aluminum bows together with one hell of a clang, causing Kate to peer over the top of her book just in time to see Joe take a perfect, airborne tuck-and-roll over his own bow and Craig’s as well, ending up in the water with a magnificent splash, big enough to cause a mini tidal wave that rocked nearby boats and caused two other fishermen to nose-dive for sea bottom. Craig was not so lucky, his boat hook somehow entangling itself in Joe’s anchor chain. Either too dumb or too drunk to let go, or possibly distracted by a low-flying Super Cub, a grinning George Perry on the yoke, Craig pole-vaulted Joe’s deck with a form worthy of an Olympic score of ten, to pancake on the roof of Joe’s cabin, where, fortunately for him, Joe’s spare set of gear was piled.
George waggled his wings in applause and headed off toward Cordova. Kate reached for the binoculars. The person in the rear seat sprang into focus. It wasn’t the man she’d seen going up the creek; this time it was Auntie Joy. What was Auntie Joy doing going into town? Usually once she got out to fish camp she was there for the duration, like the rest of the aunties. The aunties didn’t usually fly between fish camp and town, either; it was too expensive for all of them and supplies, too. If there were anything to worry about, Auntie Vi would have brought the whole bunch out to the Freya. Kate trained the glasses on the mouth of Amartuq Creek. It remained empty of anything but water and sand and occasional jumping salmon. She put down the glasses and tried not to worry.
Meanwhile, back on the jousting grounds, Yuri Andreev fished Joe out of the drink. Yuri was one of the teetotaling Old Believers from Anchor Point, fishing his first year on the Sound, and he was torn between disbelief and disgust at the behavior of his fellow fishermen. Joe, u
nheeding, thanked Yuri profusely for the rescue and collapsed into Craig’s arms to swear lifelong devotion to liberty, equality and especially fraternity.
The party went on. It was still going on when Kate finished the first part of the Trilogy, mopped up her tears with a shirtsleeve and turned in.
Possibly because of the unusual activity carrying on all night around the Freya, her dreams were disturbing. In one, Auntie Joy was tending her fish wheel, with Aunties Vi and Edna and Balasha cleaning and filleting the catch on the bank behind her. Lamar and Becky appeared, attired in clean uniforms with knife-edged creases on their shirtsleeves and pant legs, and hats squared away at precisely the correct angle. Somehow Auntie Vi had a gun, and it went off. It was a shotgun, Kate noticed, because Kate was in the dream, too, but only as an invisible observer, and the shotgun kicked hard, knocking Auntie Vi over backwards. Lamar and Becky were miraculously unharmed, no speck of blood marring their crisp uniforms, but Auntie Vi’s chest had been crushed by the recoil and she lay dead, staring open-eyed at the blue, blue sky.
Kate couldn’t remember dreaming in color before, and she admired the effect, before the scene shifted to the deck of Meany’s no-namer. He was beating his kid again, thump, thump, thump, his fist connecting with the boy’s body in the one-two punch of a professional boxer, the meaty sound like someone smacking his lips together over and over again.
Or no, it was the sound of a heartbeat, lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub, slow, steady, inexorable. The halibut heart was back, and Kate stirred and moaned in her sleep. The dusky, humping lump of grainy flesh pumped against her hands, once, twice, three times, and she came awake in a rush, perspiration beading her forehead, her blood beating rapidly against her eardrums.
It was early yet, by the slant of the sun’s rays no more than six. A light breeze caused the water to lap at the hull of the Freya. All else was calm, no sounds of jousting or other celebrations of fraternal love. There wasn’t any halibut heart sharing her bunk, or crawling down the slant of the chart table, or lumping its way over the sill of the door between chart room and wheelhouse. She shook her head once, sharply, clearing the lingering trace of the dream from her mind, and took a deep breath and blew it out explosively.
Killing Grounds Page 8
