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Overview
When two Easterners hire Bailey to pilot them into the bush, a series of events is set in motion that will upset the delicate racial balance of the land and lead to violence. As the truth behind the couple's arrival becomes apparent, the refuge Bailey has created for herself shatters. Forced to face the demons of her unresolved past, she is given a chance to free herself at last from the secret that haunts her.
Marked by spare, resonant prose and imbued with an indelible sense of place, True North tells a powerful story of adventure and survival. It is a welcome debut by a gifted new voice in literary fiction.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781101213100 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Penguin Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 03/01/2001 |
| Sold by: | Penguin Group |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 288 |
| File size: | 337 KB |
Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
That morning Bailey started the generator for the first time in weeks, had to hand crank it because the cold had long since sapped the battery. She'd let the weak, spring sun warm the motor beforehand, a small trick learned after five years of living in the Alaska interior, one of many tricks that came of learning to think about everything one did, no matter how trivial or insignificant. The first trick she'd learned had been to let nature work for her as much as possible because damn sure it worked against her most of the time.
The engine choked, caught, and grumbled fitfully before conceding to run. She recoiled from the sound, then smoothed the grimace from her face. Annoyance cost energy and led to things done too quickly, and things done too quickly could lead to mistakes that cost. You didn't fly for three years as a bush medic without getting that lesson etched into places that hurt. But she'd quit that two years ago when she found this camp for sale and bought it. The prospect of a haven was the reason she'd come to Alaska, why she'd done the medic job in the first place.
She returned to her cabin to lie on the couch that still reeked of dog, even though it had disappeared in February. Almost blind, it must have wandered inevitably into the belly of something hungry, because everything was hungry by that time of year. The wolves had commenced mating and were particularly sharp tongued. That's how she knew what month it was when the dog left: the wolves had begun to give voice, and she imagined them, snouts pointed skyward, poised on high ground in order to sendtheir voices farther. The were trying to connect as they loped, spread-toed, across the river valley, looking for recognition in the voice and eyes of another.
She rued the dog's absence on bitter nights, when it had been good to curl around; missed it, too, when scraps of food had to be eliminated and it was not around to fill the position. Now she had to burn everything to keep the bears away from camp in spring when they would lumber in and eat even the Naugahyde-covered foam rubber seats off her snow machine. On the odd occasion they came in anyway, the dog had been a good sentinel. It could detect a pine marten skittering across late winter snow crust. But its sense of detection didn't stop at the tangible. Finally, that is what she hated about the dog. She could not look at it without realizing that it knew. It knew her, and it remembered.
* * *
It had belonged to her sister, but at least had the sense to get out of the house, though its fur was singed all to hell and stank for months afterward. It had wanted to survive. She only had to drag it away from the intense wall of heat into the field where she'd fallen, pulling it down beside her. It had struggled a little but she held on to it, her nose full of the burnt protein that had been its pelt.
She could smell the burning still, feel Temple's weight balanced against her as she dragged her down the upstairs hall. She imagined her lungs shriveling like raisins. Now she was at the stairs, dragging Temple bumpety-bump. One step, two, and that was as far as she'd gotten before the beam came down, breaking her hands away.
Without the counterbalance of Temple's weight, Bailey fell freely down the stairs. She'd hit the floor, heard the air whoosh from her lungs even over the sound of flame sucking up the old wood of their house. Had she passed out? Dampness on her face, the sharp rack of the dog's voice. She found the door handle, pulled. Dark air moved in a cool, insistent column past her and up the stairs where the fire gobbled it greedily. She snaked down the porch steps on her belly, the dog scrambling down her back in a panic, using her body like an escape ramp. Its claws tangled momentarily in her hair and she swung at it, connecting with a hank of its fur that came away in her hand. She grabbed it again, this time finding a good hold, and used it to angle herself to her feet so she could stumble away, dragging the dog with her as she called for Temple, knowing she could not go back there, it was too late to go back. She had felt consciousness slip from her like a dank shroud, ebbing so quickly she was hardly aware of its passing.
* * *
The smell of the dog's old body rose redolent around her. She closed her eyes, wishing that ears could also be closed so that she could block out the high, tight voice of the generator. It disturbed the rhythm of her careful world, made her think she had to be moving, doing something, when she did not. At least she was able to keep the machine outside now. It was worse over the winter when she had to keep it inside the cabin, and when starting it precluded being able to stay in the cabin at all. But she was unable to leave it unattended for fear it would cause a fire. She would run it only when the weather was good enough to allow for hours of outdoor chores while it charged the batteries, anticipating the moment it would run out of gas and die.
For a week now the going was too treacherous to do much of anything outside. This close to break up, the ice on the river was rotten as moth-laced fabric. The snow pack on land, though still a good foot thick, was even more rotten than the ice, pocked with air holes left by the receding moisture. Just getting from cabin to outhouse was a chore. Even the snowshoes held no promise of ease as they sunk into the snow, then came out of their holes caked with the clingy, wet mess. This was the time of year she hated most, and this was the time she spent working on the cabin's interior.
When the river backed up, everything on the bank a hundred yards in would be flooded and washed clean. Even the cabin would sit in a few inches of water which was why she did not bother to clean the floor until after iceout. Then she would wash away the river silt, scrub the log walls free of gluey grease accumulated there from long winter months of cooking meat in the small enclosed space, and clean and lube the two outboard motors.
The first boat ride after iceout was always particularly pleasing to her. She was eager to see what the ice had scored or torn away, how the landscape had changed from its winter cloak to its raw, gash-marked spring skin. She marveled at how harsh the landscape looked then. There was no color in it, no varying hue, no life. The fawn-colored flanks of the Nulato Hills were almost indistinguishable from the flat river valley. Standing in the stern of the boat, braced against the wrenching movement of the current at high water, she was thrilled by the tableau. In its deadness, all seemed possible.
She could almost smell the washed-over cleanness of the land when the static-riddled click forked into her ear, as if someone had snapped their fingers directly into it. Her body went rigid on the couch.
"Village to River Camp, do you read?"
She stood, walked stiffly to the shelf where she'd hidden the handheld VHF unit behind a stack of repair manuals, and scrubbed her eyes hard, as if the gesture could rub away the reality of the voice that spoke to her now, unavoidable.
"Village to River Camp, do you read?"
She could choose not to answer, certainly, but the voice compelled her, and she picked up the black box, squeezing the reply bar with a callused thumb. She cleared her throat into the mike, then released the bar without responding. She had not spoken in so long once the dog was gone, she wasn't sure she could bear the sound of her voice, or that she could speak at all.
"That an answer?" the box asked.
She pressed the bar again. "This is River Camp. Go ahead," her voice remarkably normal, not graveled as she had expected.
"Roger that," Raina said. "Sounds like you made it through winter okay. How's the ice look up there?"
"Rotten. Another week, maybe."
"Sounds about right. Well we got a little problem maybe you can help with, over."
She could picture Raina clearly—long hair glinting darkly, eyes dropped down when talking until finished, then fixed on the face opposite her as she listened to the response, a habit peculiar to the native Ingalik of the region. It had unnerved her initially, having been trained from childhood to look somebody in the eye, for that was when you could tell best if someone was lying, and so her gaze had grown steady, then immutable.
"Still there?"
"Yeah. What's up?"
"Kash's plane's still gettin' checked out in Anchorage. When you planning to fly the Cessna in?"
"Couple of weeks, I guess" Bailey said, but the hand holding the radio set had drifted away from her mouth.
"Come again," Raina said, "I can't read you."
"Couple of weeks I'll come through," Bailey said again, the handset now in range of her voice. "Somebody need a ride into the city?"
"It's people wanting to come out from Anchorage is what I'm talking about."
The possibilities blew into her ear. She did not respond for fear her voice would crack.
Again, Raina broke the long silence. "River Camp, did you copy?"
"Roger that," Bailey said.
"They'll be staying up at the Lodge. Something Kash is tryin'. You know him and his schemes. He woulda done the flying, but like I said, his plane's out. You been missing those little visits?"
Bailey hesitated. That fall, Kash had begun to fly up every couple of weeks. He didn't radio to let her know he was coming that first time nor did he on successive visits. At first, she waited for him to state his business—it was inconceivable to her that one would waste time on an aircraft engine for a social call. But there was only small talk and a gift here and there, functional, of course. He stayed long enough to unsettle her completely, then left.
She had begun to listen for his plane, could recognize the sound of the Cub's engine from a distance. She started to take a little more care with her appearance, made sure she had on a clean shirt, found herself shaking out her hair, smoothing it with fingers unaccustomed to such ministrations. As something like the Yukon's most eligible bachelor since his wife's death a year and some previous, his interest might be physical. She searched for signs but gleaned none. At first she was insulted but squelched that immediately. It was a waste of energy. She was thirty-five years old. This was not her first time at the rodeo. Nevertheless, she had continued to see to her appearance and swallowed the extra work of washing more clothes as a result.
"Don't get all clammy on me," Raina said. "I'm just fooling on you."
"Wouldn't think otherwise," Bailey said cautiously. "Anyway, I'm too busy, thanks to you, to mess in that horseshit."
Raina laughed and made a point of keying the mike so Bailey could hear it. That was good. Without Raina's good graces, it was hard for her to operate. In spite of Raina's occasional drinking bouts and not so occasional bad taste in men, she liked the woman.
"So, about these kids, now. They'll pay," Raina said. "Figured you could use the money."
"Who is it?"
"Couple of kids from out East," Raina said. "Fellow and his girlfriend want a 'wilderness adventure.' They'll get that, all right, flies and all. But Kash'll make sure that's all they get."
Bailey knew what Kash was worried about. He headed one of twelve regional corporations set up by Congress when land disputes with Alaska natives settled in '71, and was in the position of playing arbiter between the white power base and the seething animosity and despair of his people. Hostility raged through rural Alaska in a giant backlash against faults inherent in the settlement, faults that threatened native control of their land, their way of life. Kash's politics did not lean to the radical faction, some members of which resided in Ingalik Village, that was violently anti-white. While he was utterly pro-native, he was a realist. White incursion in their culture was inevitable. History bore him out on that point. His ideas about letting whites into their country but controlling the access as tourism had gained him the stamp of being pro-development. It was not a complimentary term.
"Hey," Raina prompted her. "It's not like you got a lot else to do, and you could use a little social life, you know?"
"Yeah. Like a hole in my pointy little head."
"Lighten up," Raina said. "It's just a ride they need. No big deal."
"When are they coming?"
"June first."
"Okay," Bailey said. "But you'll have to do something for me."
"What's that?"
"Call my mechanic and reschedule my appointment for that morning."
"No problem," Raina said.
"I'll stop in the Village on my way out."
"Roger that," Raina said. "Ingalik out."
Bailey turned off the handset and shivered. She had tried as much as she could bear to contribute to the community in positive ways: she gave freely of her airplane time and her medical training when someone was lost or hurt in the bush; bought her fuel and as much of her food as possible from the Village, even though the cost was twenty percent higher than in Anchorage; and didn't abuse the privilege of living there by mining or trapping or bringing other people in for those purposes. She hunted and fished for herself and the dog and that was all. The natives could allow that, she hoped, because it made sense to them. She did everything she could to be a useful, positive presence, but her motives had little to do with altruism. To her, people were like the proverbial albatross; if she could control the amount of contact she had, life was bearable.
But if Kash's tourism schemes became reality, her haven was threatened. The native corporation had bought out the doctors who built the lodge on their site only five miles upriver from her camp. They had intended to bring in upscale hunting and fishing clients by float plane. The fish and game were good there, no doubt, but above her camp, the river's character changed. The upper watershed configured itself tensely, gushing through tight channels or, where the river widened on the plains, spread itself thinly over gravel bars. It did not allow for a straight, deep stretch of water on which to land a float plane when the water was low much of the summer. The Lodge was still accessible by boat, but eighty long river miles separated it from the Village. Most wealthy sporstmen would not tolerate such inconvenience, but Kash's guess was that a scaled-down clientele would tolerate it, and enjoy the experience to boot. Eco-tourists, he called them. He had read all about it.
She shivered again. The woodstove needed stoking. She managed to pack down a decent trail in the mush from woodpile to cabin and before long found she had amassed almost half a cord without realizing it. She pulled the maul down from its nail pegs on the wall and began splitting what she had hauled over. Each wedge set was considered, precise, and while the spruce and larch was mostly twisted and difficult to split, she needed few strokes.
She was fit and clean-limbed as an athlete, but she did not have the bulk and muscle to spare on ill-considered motion. She used to look at herself and admire what she saw. With shirtsleeves rolled up even in the dead of winter as she went at the demanding task of cutting wood, she would regard the corded muscle in her forearms, biceps clearly defined, hands thickly veined from the work and strangely attenuated on a body that was characterized more by blunt ends than elegant tapers.
But her body was no longer something to admire and appreciate so much as a machine to maintain scrupulously and to curse when it could not perform what was required of it. There was seldom anything she could not do as long as she had her mind and a few basic tools: chainsaw, axe, pulley, and winch. Compared to what her responsibilities had been so much of her life, the mental and physical challenge of surviving alone was a pleasure.
After Temple's death, it had taken a couple of years for the habit of her old burdens to slough away. For too long, she had expected to feel the near constant touch of her sister's warm fingers, to see the idolatrous gaze, hear I love you over and over, all of it so seamless, ceaseless. When she shook the memory away, her skin gone clammy, the voices would remain. Her mother, the smell of her sick body, and the voice launched from a face set with pain, with no expectation of reprieve before inevitable death: Take care of your sister. She hasn't got what God gave you.
Yes, and thank God I don't have what you gave her, she'd thought a million times as she heard those words flipped at her so automatically that they had lost weight, become the meager mantra of a sick woman who was too tired to blame herself aloud anymore, as she surely must have in her soul. Outwardly, though, it was always her father's fault that her mother had been drunk that night; her father's fault for having screwed around with Black Label Mable in the double-wide trailer down the road—her father had sold the woman life insurance and worked a little harder than usual to sign her up, apparently—his fault that her mother tried to drive home, that she was doing forty-five when she fishtailed onto the dirt road that led to their place and never recovered from the skid.
Two pine trees took the brunt of the collision, along with the six-month-old fetus that sloshed hard in her womb. Miraculously, it had lived, though it spent the rest of its gestation bundled up hard under her mother's breastbone, unmoving, until it tumbled reluctantly into day. Temple was three when her parents admitted there was something wrong with her. "Fetal Alcohol Syndrome" had not been coined; in those days, she was simply "retarded." When Bailey was born that year, her mother had had her checked fanatically for similar symptoms. Had thought, she later told Bailey, that it was in her blood and not, as the doctors insisted, a result of one night's exceptionally poor judgment. Bailey understood it all more clearly when she finished nursing school.
As Bailey split wood precisely, rhythmically, she planned the task of returning the float plane to the water as soon as the river ice cleared, and worked her way around the darkened place in her brain to which the radio contact had been relegated, the place where past and future could not torment her, nor threaten her present refuge. When her camp was in order for the day, and she had maintained the machine in which she lived, she would open the dark place and examine it with ruthless curiosity, as she had seen raccoons do when examining objects of potential danger.
* * *
She hated landing on the slough behind the Village in the spring. The water stayed muddied year-round there at the confluence of the Ingalik and the Yukon, and in spring the debris that washed down from above was concealed by roiled water. She had circled low four times already and still unease kept her aloft as she strained to detect the ghostly outline of a tree trunk or branch, waterlogged and hanging just beneath the surface, that could puncture one of her floats.
Her flight instructor, Whip McClintock, had been very thorough. On arrival in Anchorage one spring, learning to fly had been Priority One; the solitude she sought depended on it. She researched the available pool of instructors; McClintock's name surfaced repeatedly.
She was rebuffed on her first approach. He told her she could enroll in one of his classes that didn't begin until spring. No classes, she had told him. She wanted private lessons and then offered him a sum that was enough above the going rate to surprise him. He had peered at her for an uncomfortably long, silent time before agreeing.
The recommendations had been on the mark. Though he was technically precise ("fussy" was the word some had used), he was also an intuitive pilot. He could think quickly in an emergency and improvise. Of course, he had pointed out to her, his "fussiness" precluded him getting in many of those situations in the first place. "Think ahead," he'd tried to impress on her. "There are always signposts along the way to a bad decision." One of the most important of those signposts, he had told her, was an emotional one. "Unless you are absolute master of your emotions, do not fly when you are exceptionally riled. If you catch your man in bed with another lady, do not jump into your airplane and expect to have a hundred percent at your fingertips." She had let go with an uncharacteristic laugh at that advice. "Oh," he had responded. "Obviously your man is one of the trustworthy ones."
"No," she'd said, still laughing. "My fussiness precludes me from ever getting in that situation in the first place."
By December she had completed her ground school and wheeled training. She would have to wait for spring to get her float rating. She spent the winter apprenticed to a mechanic Whip recommended so that she could get certified to do most of her own maintenance. Nights kept her in a grim efficiency apartment near Lake Hood studying manuals and anything she could get her hands on to read. She collected brochures, newspapers, flyers, magazines—anything that would give her a better sense of the place, the country. In addition, she badgered the hapless employees of the Department of Natural Resources, and Fish and Game. She attended any open meetings hosted by native organizations and read all their publications, because the more she learned, the more she realized that nursing work for the clinics in rural Alaska guaranteed involvement with natives.
When she began her training in float planes, it felt like what she'd been waiting for. She had been fascinated by them since she was a child and watched one land on the river in front of their house. It belonged to a bear-hunting guide who hosted his clients at his camp upriver. He used the plane to scout for game from the air, and to take his clients into remote areas other people could not reach. She would watch the plane lift off in a shower of spray, its slightly recurved pontoons dangling from its underbelly as if a snow skier had been lifted from the mountain by a giant hawk. Places other people could not reach. She wanted that.
Finally, she radioed to Raina that she was coming down. She had marked the villagers on the beach working on their boats when she made her passes; though they would not stand and watch her overtly, she knew they were watching. A stiff crosswind toyed with her trajectory and she practically stood on the right rudder pedal to keep the plane straight. She concentrated on her depth perception and kept her eyes on the surface of the water, no longer aware of the people on shore. Now her body was part of the plane, when it seemed that if she shifted her hips, the plane would shift with her.
The rear of the pontoons dug into water, sending up huge walls of spray. She coaxed the nose down to level once she had slowed enough to let the pontoons go horizontal. No one looked up as she let the plane drift close to shallow water, then cut the engine. Curan, Raina's son, waited at water's edge. Bailey splashed into the water in her hip boots to tail the plane up on the sand.
"Mom's up at the store," he said.
"Thanks, Curan," she said with a smile that pulled her mouth tight across her face; the feeling of it, the smile, was as foreign as if somebody had touched her skin.
After tying the plane off to a scruffy clump of alder up the bank, she perched facing backward on Curan's ATV for a ride up to the Store. Wind eddied into her eyes. Between slitted lids she watched the dogs chained to their worn patches of dirt. They lunged against their restraints at the passing distraction, their faces worn dull by equal doses of outrage and boredom. Kash's store was the only one in town serving the population of one hundred and twenty-five people. His sister, Raina, pretty much ran the place. She was the liaison to most of the commercial flights landing on the gravel runway on the hill behind the village, and transported any freight, mail, or passengers the two miles between town and airstrip. She was also secretary to the Native Corporation of which Kash was president. She had access to all of the meetings and all of the paperwork. A VHF marine-band radio hulked in the corner behind the counter where Raina sat now, talking to the commuter flight on a separate aviation-band unit.
A young boy scooted out the door as Bailey walked in, shrinking away from her. She didn't waste a smile on him. Ferrin hulked over the desk in front of Raina. He had been the Village cop at one time, before the Corporation board decided having a cop in town incited more bad behavior than they originally had. Ferrin worked on the North Slope oil field now, two weeks on and two weeks off, making eighty dollars an hour. He was one of the minuscule minority able to function in a cash-based economy. He moved like a wrestler, thighs so overly developed he walked slightly spread-legged, as if he were not yet used to walking without snowshoes.
Bailey nodded at him as she stopped at the desk. He walked out, eyes on the floor. Raina shrugged when Bailey turned to her, then flung out a casual hello as if nine months had not elapsed since they had seen each other.
"Plane's comin'. Head on up," Raina told Curan. He jogged out, drafting in his wake the smell of the cheap leather jacket that hung loosely on him. She turned to Bailey and moved her eyes frankly over her. "That a new shirt?"
Bailey fought the blood down from her face. "I wash my clothes from time to time. I'm not just sitting up there eating chocolates in a pile of dirt." It was all she could do to keep from purposefully messing up the long rope of hair she had braided so carefully before flying down.
"Okay," Raina said, leaning over the counter with a pad of paper. "Thing One: Got that fifty pounds of dog food you wanted."
"Don't need it."
"Got that dog on a diet or something?"
"No," Bailey said. She took off her cap and settled it again on her head. "What's Thing Two?"
"I got a list of supplies these kids said they wanted. I figure it's going to take you more than one trip between them and their gear and this stuff." Her eyes stayed glued to the paper as she spoke, then wandered to Bailey's face.
"What do you think they're really coming out here for?"
"Better not be for the wrong reasons. They're on Ingalik land up there and hell's the price if they go back on their word. It ain't the old days anymore. They signed a contract and we will enforce it."
"Contract?" Bailey asked.
"Kash's idea. Anyone wants to use our land for recreation purposes has to sign a waiver of responsibility, plus an agreement to leave it like they found it, haul their trash and shit out. Strictly forbids hunting, trapping, or mining. Plus we charge a daily fee, just like them big paper companies do in the lower forty-eight and Canada, is what Kash told us. He started advertising for people to come in. You know. Like tourists. Least we can control it that way and make some money."
Bailey turned away, one hand hooked over the crest of her shoulder to work her fingers into tensed muscles. Gruesome images of incompetent, curious, sociable people surging up the river, wave upon wave, washed across the backs of her eyes. Sweat tickled down the small of her back and she flinched involuntarily as if already their needy fingers were upon her.
Bailey willed a smile to widen her mouth as she spoke. "So about these kids now. Think they'll stick to the weight restriction?"
They all knew that folks from the outside could not imagine a situation in which all that they deemed vital in the world could not be hauled into the bush, that they had no concept of a plane smaller than a 747.
"Hope so," Raina said. "I'd hate to see the kind of shaking down you'll give them. That gal's hair dryer and high heels'll be at the bottom of Lake Hood, sure." She paused a moment. "Seen Kash yet?"
"No," Bailey said, "but I've got to find him to get the keys to the fuel pump. Need to top off the wings before I head out."
"Oh," Raina said, stretching the vowel way out. "Guess he hasn't had a chance to check with you then, eh?"
"What about?"
"He wants a ride into Anchorage to get those people moving on his plane. Got a couple of meetings, too. And he hasn't seen his daughter in a month."
"I won't be able to ride him back with the load I'll have," Bailey said, almost talking over Raina's last words.
"He'll fly his own plane back. Think he's at the Corporation office now. I saw him drive past before you landed.
"Okay."
"Here's the information on those kids. I told them exactly what you told me about where to meet you and when, but you should know where they are and stuff, in case they're late."
"They don't show up at the right time and place I won't need any information because I'll leave on schedule," Bailey said, remembering to tack a smile onto her comment. "It's good of you to organize everything like this. I hope you're getting paid for your trouble."
"Wasn't much," Raina said. "They paid for the phone calls and stuff and I don't have nothin' much else to do till commercial fishing starts." She looked up at Bailey, then away. "They seem nice enough."
"Most folks are nice enough until you get to know them," Bailey said, hoping she sounded cheerful.
* * *
She walked up the hill from the Store, sloshing through the streams created by the onslaught of defrosting earth. She kept her cap pulled low to her brow and watched the road as she went. She knew by heart the tiny, prefabricated structures along the way, didn't need to see the dogs that persisted in straining at her, choking their own barks back into their throats. They all looked the same, anyway, dogs and houses alike. Looked particularly forlorn this time of year with rotten mounds of dirty snow heaped anywhere the bulldozer had been able to pile them, bare earth still frozen to rock consistency only half an inch down, the raw top layer roiled and churned into mud that found its way into everything. Her boots were already two pounds heavier with it.
As people passed her on the road she kept her eyes down or gave a short sound that sounded like "hi" or a subtle nod. Nothing more was needed here, especially if you were white. With her eyes down she heard him before she saw him.
"Looking for my keys, I bet," Kash called from the tiny porch of the Corporation's offices. His smile was broad and welcoming. But he was a worldly man, she had to remind herself. He did business with big shots, handled the Corporation's millions of dollars in investments, and was used to wheeling and dealing with whites. He was one of the few natives she knew who looked at her when he spoke. She was so accustomed to dealing with the Ingalik, or mostly with no one at all, it made her uncomfortable. Made her particularly uncomfortable coming from him. She looked up, shading her eyes against the flat glare.
She was reminded again that he was not a tall man. There was bulk to him, though, a hard, sinuous fullness to his body that reminded her of the huge old oaks back east. She had thought, at times, that even her long fingers could not encircle his arm—not that she ever meant to test her supposition.
"Happy spring," she said.
"Always a good occasion," he said.
"Hear you might risk riding in with me."
He laughed and brushed the hair back from his forehead. She watched it feather slowly forward again. "Yeah, I'm still thinking about it."
Two adolescent boys passed her, distaste palpable in the cant of their heads away from her. The sickeningly sweet vapor of airplane glue muscled into her nostrils as they passed. They creaked up the steps past Kash on their way into the office, at least a head taller than he. He spoke softly to them in dialect and they responded each with a "yeah" before disappearing inside.
"Thought I'd top off the wings and be on my way. You ready to go?"
"Pretty much," he said. "If you'll wait a minute I'll grab my stuff from the office, then ride you down to the store."
The scene played itself out, unbidden. Her behind him on the ATV, arms clasped lightly to his sides, the half-inch space between them turned to boiling air. The clean air smell of him whorled over her face. And then there was Ferrin and Raina and Curan staring at them.
"How's about I walk down now, get the chariot all ready. I'll meet you at the plane."
He shrugged, unzipped his coveralls down to the crotch to scrabble in his pants pockets for the right keys, then underhanded them gently at her, laughing when her groping hand missed the catch. She bent to pick them out of the dirt, tried to make a joke of it when she straightened. But his eyes had an unusual sheen, his mouth, pursed gently at the corners. He had seen something he liked; a sign.
She turned and started back down the hill, the keys gripped so hard in her hand they almost drew blood. Curan came slopping along on the ATV, the little trailer rattling behind. "Ride?"
"Down to the beach?"
"Yeah," he said.
She sat back to back and signaled him to go on. Kash still stood on the porch, not smiling. She raised the edge of a flattened hand to her brow in flippant salute. There. I got your sign.
* * *
He watched her go, remembering the time he first met her. He'd known she was coming, knew she was alone and therefore, he'd figured, she was probably homely as hell. She had flown into the Village once or twice for the Clinic, given vaccinations, checked a few wounds, but he'd always been away. She arrived the day after the ice left the river and set the red Cessna down on the muddied slough, a bit awkwardly, he thought. Overly cautious. A 185, to boot. Lord, she was probably humongous as well as homely. But she looked nothing like he had imagined based on ... what? The sort of woman who would do something like this had to be big, raw, unattractive. The person he met looked tightly bound, compact.
She introduced herself with an outstretched hand. He tracked her name across his tongue, Bailey, and tried to decide whether she was of God or the Devil. When he drove the fuel truck down to the beach so she could top off her wings, the airplane was loaded to the ceiling. A dog stared morosely out the window. After she finished fueling, he suggested she taxi out to the Yukon so she'd have plenty of room for takeoff. She had looked at him, head cocked slightly and said, "I planned on it." Her eyes showed him only what they saw reflected there: a plan.
When the land claims settled out for the second time in '88, one glitch was not remedied, but the concession was so minuscule in the big scheme, he dared not oppose it. The glitch had entailed the omission from a native claim of any parcel of land held by a patented deed. For the most part this was negligible; most privately owned parcels were held by standard deeds and could be rescinded by the government for any reason it deemed important to its greater interests, such as oil or mineral strikes. But patented deeds could not be rescinded, which left the Ingalik territory with two small outholdings in its vast millions of acres, specks on its glimmering armor. One hundred acres among millions did not seem like a big deal to anyone else in the community, but Kash was a seer. He knew an infinitesimal flake of rust could spread like cancer to consume huge structures, that one moth could render useless an entire garment. He knew, too, that if the Lodge were to become operable without native control, the inevitable clashes would end in unpleasant reckonings if the local radicals had anything to do with it.
When the previous owners of the lodge went belly-up, he managed to manipulate corporate funds into a chunk that would enable the Corporation to buy the lodge. He got no argument from the board on that. None of the community liked the fact that white people paid other white people to come in and shoot the hell out of native game; the natives were the only ones who lost in that arrangement. He'd thought getting the other parcel would go just as easily.
But the board didn't see the little camp as threatening, not like the Lodge had been with its blood-happy sportsmen who shot moose and bear for the trophy, then left the meat to rot. What could it hurt, they argued, to have that parcel sit empty up there, even if the Corporation didn't own it? Nobody was going to buy it anyway, not for the asking price. It was on floodplain and bears had reduced most of it to nothing more than a porcupine den. Even if someone were fool enough to buy it, they wouldn't last long in that inhospitable locale. No, the board would rather use the money on a dozer for snow removal, converting the electricity generator plant to diesel so it would be cheaper and more efficient, and how about seeing a few bucks on their corporate dividends? He hadn't been able to argue that. As usual, the immediate outgunned the long-term.
He had presided over the remainder of the meeting, making the automatic responses, then left the office and went to the ceremonial ground on the hill. He walked the clearing, fingertips burning, and shook his hands into the air. He had experienced setbacks before and on a much larger scale, but for some reason this little speck of land ate into his heart.
There was something of a reprisal when, the very next year, he got word on the grapevine that someone from out East had bought the land. The fist in his chest tightened and then softened until he could breathe when he found out it was a woman. He felt certain the spirits had smiled. This country was hard enough on a man, let alone a woman who had it in her blood, let alone a white woman. She couldn't last long, a year at the most. And then he would raise the issue again to the board, this time with an example under his belt. You see? he would say. This is how easily it can happen, and none of it under our control.
After her arrival, he had waited surreptitiously, sensing that she was not someone who could be pushed, waited with the patience of a predator for his prey to weaken and stumble. Surely it would take no more than one summer with the mosquitoes, and a winter of isolation and hardship to send her on her way, but after the first year, he'd had to rethink his course. In the months after his wife died, the new strategy went into effect even before he knew consciously what he was doing: flying up to the Lodge unscheduled, uninvited, small gifts in hand. Here, he'd say, handing over a box or a paper-wrapped bundle. Some of us thought you might need this.
Kash courted Bailey and said nothing of his intentions; he knew better than to give the opposition a foothold. Once he had surmounted this impediment, he would achieve his goal quickly, quietly, and the land would be whole again.
* * *
He gathered some fries from the office and shoved them in a battered, soft-sided briefcase. The door opened and closed softly behind him and he couldn't help smiling. She had come back. Another sign. He composed his face as he turned to encounter round-faced John Knik. His mother was Eskimo and had passed her physical features on to John. The roundness and a gentle blush on each cheek gave him a perpetually cheerful look, though from the set of his shoulders at the moment, he was anything but chipper.
"John," Kash said with a nod. "How's Girlie?"
"Getting along okay, I guess."
John's wife had to be medevac'd to Anchorage a few months before when her appendix exploded, pumping poison through her system at an alarming rate. They had almost lost her, and she spent a month in the hospital before she was stable enough to fly back to the Village. John was beside himself, unable to afford to fly back and forth. Kash had given him a ticket, and tried to give him another, but it was too difficult, John had said, to make sure their five children were taken care of. Girlie had not yet regained her strength and the medicine was costly, not to mention the hospital bill, even though some was covered by government subsidy.
It wounded Kash to see the young man struggle. He was one of the few who made an effort to keep himself on the straight and narrow. He had sworn off alcohol years ago when Girlie threatened to leave him and take the children after his drunkenness led to a fight that left her with a broken arm. They had worked hard to assimilate their kids while still keeping their feet firmly rooted in native culture. John himself had no schooling, but he was uncomplaining, earnest, and willing to work had there been any jobs. Kash worried that depression and alcohol would reclaim John if one more slash were made in the gentle fabric of him, and he dreaded the news he was about to deliver.
"I kinda don't know what to do here," he said haltingly, then shoved a smudged envelope at Kash. "Damn Fish and Game people told me I'd have to go on the limited entry permit lottery to commercial fish this year. I filled out the forms as best I could, but heck, they was twelve pages long, and I couldn't understand half of what they was asking me. I just got this today," he said, gesturing at the letter that hung limp in Kash's bronze hand.
"Christ, John, whyn't you come to me? I would've filled it out for you."
John looked down, turned his body to the side, "You was busy then, Kash. Had them big meetin's in Seattle and all. Who couldn't fill out a application? But that letter there says I didn't do her right and now my permit's denied for the season. We open tomorrow and I took out that loan so I could get my nets ready and get that new motor. I'm screwed." He settled a hand across his forehead like a compress and sighed.
Kash almost put a hand on his shoulder, but John was too old for that now. It would have been an insult. "Listen," he said instead. "I'm flying into Anchorage tonight. I've got meetings tomorrow but I'll get over to Fish and Game no matter what and see what I can do."
"It ain't gonna do any good, man. It never does."
"Just hang in there. Let's see what happens."
John let his hand drop from its place on his forehead and settled his cap back on. "Gotta check on Girlie. She didn't take the news too good."
"Tell her I said hello, will you? And tell her we'll handle this."
"Yeah, okay."
Kash folded the letter grimly and put it in his briefcase. There was a new commissioner now, a real Republican toady whose agenda, Kash knew, was to whip into shape the sorry mess that had become of the state's control over fish and game rights. Furthermore, Kash had come out against him in highly uncomplimentary ways when the imminent appointment was announced; the man showed not one ounce of support for native subsistence hunting and fishing rights. But what the hell. It would be another fight in a long, long string of them that he never minded suiting up for, not where the people were concerned, and certainly not John Knik.