A Fine and Bitter Snow

by Dana Stabenow

  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 miniseason 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 miniseason in January, to take advantage of the prolific tendencies of the Kanuyaq caribou herd.

  Letourneau Guides, Inc., offered the thrill of the chase 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 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 gray arrow, 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 hard to read, his expression usually remote and unchanging, as if sometimes he 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, relaxing 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 remedial work. 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 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 interest 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 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 text book, 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 an unquenchable thirst for anything 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 don’tcha 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 at 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.

  “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 soda water. Bernie was constantly in motion, sliding up and down the bar as if on skates, dispensing beer, screwdrivers, red hots, rusty nails, salty dawgs, and, for one foolhardy table, Long Island iced teas all around, after delivery of which, Bernie confiscated everyone’s keys and designated Old Sam Dementieff to drive them home in his pickup. Old Sam got out his martyr look, but fortunately they all lived in Niniltna and he accepted his assignment with minimal grumbling. Bernie returned to his post, and Kate, folding straws into weird shapes for Katya, said, “You hear about Dan O’Brian?”

  “What about Dan O’Brian?” a deep voice said, and Kate looked around, to find Alaska state trooper Jim Chopin towering over her. He couldn’t help towering, of course; he was six foot ten and she was five foot nothing, but she disliked being towered over, and she let it show.

  A weaker man might have been intimidated. Jim appropriated a stool and sat down next to her, close enough to brush sleeves. At her earliest opportunity, which was immediately, Mutt reared up, two enormous paws on his thighs, and submitted to a vigorous head scratching, an expression of bliss on her face that Kate considered extreme. Katya said, “Jeeeeeeeem!” and made her usual aerial launch to her next favorite person. The trooper fielded her like a bounce pass and settled her into his lap. “How about a Coke, Bernie? And a Shirley Temple for my girlfriend.” To Kate, Jim said, “What’s this about Dan O’Brian?”

  Kate bristled. “What’s it to you?”

  Old Sam, sitting on the other side of Jim, looked into the depths of his beer glass and shook his head. Bernie rolled his eyes, only because Kate wasn’t looking at him. Jim’s face remained inscrutable, although his blue eyes did narrow.

  “They’re trying to force him into early retirement,” she said grudgingly. “The new administration wants to bring in their own people.”

  “And you thought I wouldn’t be interested?” Jim pulled off his ball cap and ran his hand through a thick mat of carefully cut blond hair. “I live here, too, Kate. And work here, and I work pretty well with Dan O’Brian. He’s a good man.” His smile was meant to be disarming. “Plus, I don’t want to have to break in somebody new.”

  She owed him an apology. She would have walked over hot coals before she offered it. “Do you have a useful suggestion to make, or are you just talking because you love the sound of your own voice so much?”

  A brief silence. She refused to drop her eyes, ignoring the heat climbing up the back of her neck. B
ernie brought Jim a Coke, took the temperature of the silence lingering over this section of the bar, decided that discretion was the better part of valor, and busied himself with restocking the beer in the cooler.

  Jim took a pull of his Coke. “Have you talked to Ruthe or Dina yet?”

  She stared at him.

  Old Sam thumped the bar. “Damn good idea.”

  Jim kept a steady gaze fixed on Kate’s face.

  Kate drained her glass and set it down on the bar with exquisite care. “Good idea,” she said, forcing the words out. “I’ll take a ride up there, see if they’re home.” She held out her arms and Katya flung herself into them.

  “Why?” Jim said, handing over the baby. “They’re right over there.”

  Kate looked where he was pointing. “Oh.” She gave a stiff nod. “Thanks.”

  The two men, three when Bernie sidled up, watched her very straight back march off. “Woman sure is on the prod,” Bernie said.

  Old Sam raised his glass of Alaskan Amber draft and regarded it with a thoughtful expression. “Yea-yah,” he said. “Been thinking I’d have a word with Ethan Int-Hout.”

  “About what?” Bernie said.

  Old Sam took a long, savoring swallow. “Been thinking I’d tell him to shit or get off the pot.”

  Jim turned to stare at Old Sam.

  Old Sam, well aware of the stare, gazed limpidly at his own reflection in the mirror on the wall at the back of the bar, what he could see through the standing forest of liquor bottles. “Make things easier on everybody all the way around when that broad has a man in her life.”

  Jim turned on his stool so he could look Old Sam straight in the eye. “You mean she doesn’t now?”

  Old Sam cast his eyes heavenward. “Some men,” he said to Bernie in a withering tone of voice, “some men purely have to be taken by the pecker and led.” He shook his head and finished his beer. “How up are you on your Bible studies, Sergeant?”

  “Way down,” Jim said.

  “Read up on Jacob,” Old Sam said, and moved to a table with a better view of the game to continue his play-by-play. Michael Jordan was back, and Old Sam was way more interested in that than he was in anybody’s love life.