Whisper to the Blood

by Dana Stabenow

  “Really,” Kate said. There was a lot going on here that she didn’t understand. Kate never enjoyed feeling ignorant, unsure, and out of control. “Listen, Ms. Macleod—”

  “Talia, please.”

  “Okay, Talia,” Kate said. “No offense, but while I’m prepared to acknowledge that you can ski and shoot my ass off, what do you know about gold mines?”

  There was the barest perceptible glimmer of emotion from Auntie Joy. Old Sam laughed outright. Demetri pretended to be invisible. Harvey sucked in his breath, but before he could protest Macleod said, “Maybe a little more than you do, but only because I’ve been boning up on them since Global Harvest hired me.”

  Kate thought about it, and nodded. “What’s your interest here?”

  Macleod gestured at Harvey. “Like Harvey says, they hired me to liaise with the Park. It’s a paycheck. Biathlons don’t pay real well.”

  “Fair enough,” Kate said. Auntie Joy had reverted to the Great Stone Face again, and Old Sam was maintaining a watching brief, so no help there. “Okay. Make your pitch.”

  Macleod shrugged. “I’m not going to bullshit you, Kate, or anyone else in the Park for that matter. Global Harvest is in the gold mining business because they can make money at it. They bid on the leases at Suulutaq because they had a good hunch as to what they’d find there.” Macleod pulled a wry face. “I don’t think they knew just how much was there, but now that they do, they’re in for the long haul. Gold, last time I looked, was a little over nine hundred an ounce and rising. For that kind of money, they’re willing to do things right from the get-go.”

  “Beginning with?”

  “Well, just for starters, we’ll be taking applications the first of next month for a hundred jobs, to Park residents only, entry level twenty dollars an hour, six-weeks-on, six-weeks-off rotation.”

  The front two legs of Old Sam’s chair hit the floor. “Twenty dollars an hour?”

  “A hundred?” Kate said. “That isn’t a lot.”

  “During exploration and development, we expect the mine will employ a minimum of two thousand,” Macleod said, and was obviously pleased with the expressions she saw around the table. “When we move into production, the payroll should be around a thousand.”

  “Twenty dollars an hour?” Old Sam said.

  “Time and a half for overtime,” Macleod said.

  “What kind of jobs?” Kate said.

  “So far, we’ve got one person on the payroll, as caretaker on the site. I’m looking for a second so they can work in rotation. As I’m sure you know, we’ve got a trailer out there already, a small one serving as a rudimentary office, lab, and bunkhouse. We’ll be bringing in more housing shortly. Future jobs will be in drilling and analyzing core samples to define the extent of the mine, and in support of same. Some people will be working with microscopes and test tubes, others will be washing dishes and making beds.”

  “Twenty dollars an hour?” Old Sam said.

  “Anything over eight hours a day, anything over forty hours a week is overtime,” Macleod said.

  “You’ll train them?” Kate said.

  Macleod nodded. “On the job. And they get paid for it, at the full rate, starting their first day.”

  “Twenty dollars an hour?” Old Sam said.

  “Double time for state and federal holidays,” Macleod said.

  “Where will they live?” Kate said.

  “They live where they work, on site. Right now, there are four trailers sitting in Ahtna, three fifty-man sleepers and one for offices. And that’s just the beginning.”

  “Twenty dollars an hour?” Old Sam said.

  Old Sam Dementieff, a contemporary of Auntie Joy’s and someone who knew where all the bodies were buried, was ancient, vigorous, practical, and irascible. He had no time for fools and he considered everyone who wasn’t him or Mary Balashoff, his main squeeze, a fool. That included Kate, who deckhanded for him on the Freya, his fish tender, during the salmon season. All that being said, he was loyal through and through, although to whom and to what could be changeable. Most of the time he was loyal to the Association, by which he meant the tribe. He was loyal to the Park and to the Park rats who lived in it, whether they were shareholders or not. Or he was to the ones who’d survived at least one full winter without turning tail and making tracks south. After the Park rat in waiting passed that first crucial test, Old Sam was known to say, “Weeeellll, you’re showing me something. Let’s see you make it through another.” He was Everyfart, the quintessential Alaskan Old Fart, and not only did he know better than anyone else, he said so, early and often. The hell of it was that he was right most of the time.

  Macleod smiled at him. She even looked amused when he didn’t visibly wilt from the heat in that smile. “When we really get started, it’s going to go twenty-four seven, two twelve-hour shifts. With overtime, one employee could pull down as much as nine thousand dollars a month.”

  “How are you going to get the trailers out to the mine?” Kate said.

  “Same way we got this one out there. Airlift. We’ve leased a helicopter, a Sikorsky, I think they told me, until we get the airstrip in.”

  “Airstrip?” Kate said. “Where will you be flying your employees in from? Ahtna? Anchorage?”

  “Wherever we hire them from,” Macleod said. “Park people will be flown in from Niniltna, until we get the road in. But, yes, other employees will fly in from Ahtna, Fairbanks, Anchorage.”

  “Outside,” Kate said.

  Macleod spread her hands. “Some of the expertise necessary to exploration and development isn’t available to us here in Alaska.”

  Auntie Joy cleared her throat deliberately. All eyes turned toward her. She was red-faced and sweating. Kate knew how much she loathed speaking aloud in front of strangers, so she appreciated the courage it took today for Auntie Joy to say what she had to say. “Fish? Caribou? Moose? Bear? All wildlife? This mine bad for those things.”

  “Mrs. Shugak,” Macleod said, “Global Harvest Resources knows that we have to be good neighbors to the people who live in the Park. That includes respecting the fish, the wildlife and the environment, and the subsistence lifestyle practiced by everyone who lives here. We’re going to use the very best science available to us to run an operation that has the lowest possible impact on the Park, and on the lifestyle of the people who live in it.”

  Fine words, Kate thought. They would have been more convincing if they hadn’t sounded so well rehearsed. “You’re going to have to get a lot more specific than that,” she said.

  “We know,” Macleod said. “And we will. We’re just getting started here, Kate. We’re not naïve enough to think there won’t be problems. Of course there will be. But every step of the way we expect a Park—what is it you call yourselves?—a Park rat at our elbow, telling us what we’re doing wrong. We’ll be listening for that advice, and we’ll be acting on it.”

  “You better be listening for it,” Old Sam said, “because you’ll be getting it. A lot of it.”

  “Thanks for dropping by, Talia,” Harvey said with an enthusiastic handshake.

  “My pleasure,” Macleod said. “Ask me back any time.” With a wave and a smile she was gone.

  “Anything else?” Kate said. “Great, we’re outta here.”

  The last thing she heard as she escaped through the door was Auntie Joy’s faint, despairing, “No, Katya, no further business, meeting adjourned!”

  CHAPTER 5

  Auntie Vi opened the door before he had to knock twice. “What,” she said inhospitably, but Johnny knew better.

  “Is that fry bread I smell, Auntie?”

  Auntie Vi grumbled and opened the door wide enough for him to enter. “Got a nose on you like that Katya,” she said, shooing him up the hallway to the kitchen. “I start bread, she show up on doorstep. Better than a bear at sniffing out food, that girl.”

  He grinned down at the heavy cast-iron skillet on top of the stove. Half a dozen flat, gently puffed circle
s of dough were already turning a golden brown in sizzling oil. On the counter next to it sat a bowl of bread dough.

  Auntie Vi poked him in the side. “You want fry bread, you make.”

  He gaped at her. “I don’t know how, Auntie.”

  “Best you learn, then.” Briskly, she showed him how to pull off a handful of dough, flatten it and stretch it into a circle, and hang it over the side of the bowl to wait its turn in the frying pan. She handed him a spatula and he got the pieces in the pan onto a cookie sheet lined with paper towels. When he put the spatula down and reached for one of them, she smacked his hand.

  “But, Auntie, I’m hungry, I—”

  “You eat when you finish,” she said.

  “But they’ll all be cold by then!”

  She cast her eyes up to the heavens. “Fine, then. One. One!”

  “Where’s the powdered sugar? Oh. Thanks, Auntie.” He tossed the fry bread from hand to hand, and when it had cooled a little, sprinkled the sugar over it generously. The first bite was a little crunchy, a little chewy, a little greasy, and a lot sweet. He closed his eyes. “Auntie, this is . . . this is just one of the best things I ever want to put in my mouth.”

  She gave a skeptical grunt, but he could see that she was pleased.

  They finished frying the batch—Johnny managed to talk her out of another piece before they were done, and three more after that—and then he made her sit down at the table, poured her a mug of coffee, and cleaned up the kitchen. She put down two pieces herself, along with three cups of coffee, while maintaining a running criticism of his kitchen skills. There was also a lesson in the proper cleaning of a cast-iron skillet, involving warm water, no soap, and drying it over a hot burner.

  As he was folding the dish towel and hanging it on the oven door handle, he said, “Auntie, did that guy I told you about last month ever show up?”

  She eyed him as he sat down across from her. “He come a week ago. He stay here. You know him.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, from when I was Outside. Is he okay for money?”

  She shrugged and picked up a deck of cards and began to shuffle them. “All right, I guess. He pay his rent on time.”

  “Good. Is he looking for work?”

  “He look,” she said. “Don’t know if he find.”

  “I was wondering if maybe he could get on at the mine,” he said.

  She looked at him. “They hiring?”

  His turn to shrug. “It was all over the school at lunch. Global Harvest is going to start hiring the first of next month, with preference given to Park rats.”

  Her lips pressed together.

  “What, Auntie?” he said.

  She glared at him, but there might have been a lurking twinkle in the back of her eyes. “I just hear this myself from Auntie Joy. Who tell school?”

  “A lady came from the mining company. She’s the skier, they hired her to be their representative. She talked to us at lunch, told us about the mine and how they were going to start taking applications right away and hiring next month. It’s a big deal. Twenty bucks an hour, Auntie.”

  Auntie Vi shuffled cards in silence. “Your friend got job at Bernie’s. Temporary, while Amy gets teeth fixed in Anchorage.” She swept the cards up with an air of finality, and he took that as a hint to leave.

  As he got up, she said, eyes on the cards as she shuffled them, “That mine lady rent room here, too.”

  “Oh,” he said, taken aback. “Okay. That’s good, I guess.” He couldn’t help ending the sentence on an interrogatory note.

  “Of course good,” she said briskly, tapping the cards on the table and sliding them back into their box. “All money in the bank for me. Mine a different story. Good for me maybe, but maybe bad for the Park. Now shoo you!”

  Outside, he climbed back on the snowmobile and looked at the sky while he was waiting for the engine to warm up. It was almost three thirty, and it was cold and getting colder. It would be dark soon. He really ought to head for the barn.

  But he wanted to see Doyle Greenbaugh, make sure he was all right.

  It had been a long drive, almost twenty-five hours from the outskirts of Phoenix where Greenbaugh had picked him up to the warehouse in the International District in Seattle, where he’d got off. When they’d both got tired of listening to golden oldies on a series of radio stations, they’d started talking. Greenbaugh had never been to Alaska, but like everyone else in the known universe said he’d always wanted to go. Partly because he was homesick, and partly because he wanted to make sure Greenbaugh didn’t fall asleep at the wheel, Johnny had told him all about his home state, and then he’d told him all about himself.

  He wouldn’t have done it today, but he’d been a lot younger then, and a lot less wary of casual friendship, and he’d been so very grateful for the ride that he had been willing to pay his way with conversation. In one ride, he’d traveled almost a thousand miles, well out of his mother’s reach. He knew his grandparents weren’t coming after him. He wondered if they’d bothered to tell her he’d left. He hoped not, and on the whole, he thought not. They hadn’t liked his father any more than their daughter had, and they hadn’t liked him much, either. By the time Jane knew he was gone, he’d be well out of reach, and by the time she caught up with him, he’d have Kate on his side.

  And Greenbaugh had been so very interested, and not in a bad way, either. He’d bought Johnny a huge and sorely needed meal in a diner at a truck stop in Idaho and between mouthfuls of chicken fried steak and mashed potatoes and gravy he’d urged Johnny to keep talking. He’d listened uncomplaining to Johnny talking about his dad and had laughed at all the best stories and sympathized in all the right places. He’d come across as good-hearted, with an occasional flash of temper that faded as quickly as it sparked. He hadn’t much education, but he was sharp enough to own his own rig, which was admirable, even if he had lost it in the end.

  No, not a bosom buddy, but someone to whom Johnny owed a debt of gratitude, so instead of turning right for the road to home he turned left and went out to Bernie’s, a fifty-mile trip that had his nose bright red and his cheeks numb by the end of it. A helmet with a face shield would have cut down on the frostbite, but nobody ever wore a helmet in the Bush.

  The Roadhouse parking lot was crowded but it was easy enough to find a spot for the snowmobile. He went up the steps and opened the door. Inside, the belly dancers—one in full diaphanous regalia, one in bra and blue jeans, and a third in what looked like an Indian sari—beat on tambourines and clanged on finger cymbals and shook their hips at an adoring crowd consisting of the four Grosdidier brothers and Martin Shugak and a couple other guys he didn’t recognize. Johnny watched the dancers himself for a few minutes, just to make sure they had the steps down. He wondered if Van had ever wanted to learn to belly dance.

  Old Sam Dementieff and the usual crowd of old farts sat around a table watching football on ESPN on the enormous television hanging from another corner. Leaning against the bar, Mac Devlin stood, red-faced and angry, holding a bottle of beer. Someone else was sitting on the stool next to him, shoulders hunched, but he had his back turned and Johnny couldn’t tell who it was. At a table in the back, Pastor Bill, his congregation a little smaller than in years past, exhorted the righteous to be faithful, to which everyone replied with a hearty “Amen!” and drinks were ordered all round, some of them not sodas. It looked like the no-alcohol-in-church rule had been waived, which, once the news got around might go far to increase the size of the congregation.

  In the center of the room stood Talia Macleod, who he recognized from the lunchroom at school earlier that day. She was the focus of a group of Park rats who stood in a circle facing her with a communal expression that made him feel a little uncomfortable. Most of them were staring at her chest, currently displayed in a soft turtleneck sweater the color of which matched her hair and looked as inviting to the touch.

  “In the past year alone the price of gold has gone up eighty-one percent,” she said
, although it sounded more like a purr, “silver a hundred and twenty-three percent, and zinc a hundred and thirty-two percent.” She smiled at her admirers, and a collective quiver ran over the group. “I’ve heard all the naysaying and the doom and gloom, but when has Alaska ever gone the way of the South Forty-eight when it comes to the economy? Whenever there is a recession Outside, we get a boom.”

  Howie Katelnikof, visiting with Auntie Edna and Auntie Balasha at their corner table, scurried over to stand a step behind Macleod. “She’s right,” he said, punctuating his words with a portentous nod.

  Everyone wasn’t buying into it, though. “And whenever Outside gets a boom, we go bust,” Mac Devlin said loudly from the bar.

  Without looking around, Macleod said, “True, but with gold on the way up to a thousand an ounce for the first time in history, even if we do get a little bust it’ll never fall back to what it was. Guys, I’m telling you, Global Harvest is in it for the long haul. We won’t be ripping out any railroad tracks on our way out of the Park.”

  “We sure won’t,” Howie said.

  “You will when the gold runs out,” Mac Devlin said. His contempt felt a little over the top, a little manufactured, and no one was listening to him anyway.

  Doyle Greenbaugh came to Macleod’s elbow with a tray of drinks, and Johnny saw her hand him a credit card that was as gold as the nuggets Global Harvest was prepared to pull out of the ground in Iqaluk, along with a brilliant smile. Howie smacked him genially on the back and made sure he snagged the first drink on his return.

  “It’ll be twenty years minimum before the gold runs out,” she said, “and by then Global Harvest will have found something else worth harvesting. It’s a big fucking Park, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  They laughed at that, Howie loudest of all, titillated by her use of profanity.