Blood Will Tell (21 page)

The representative of the Bristol Bay Native Corporation, another Yupik, this time from Manokotak, took a scholarly approach, defined the various federal, state, local, sports and commercial fishing, environmental and animal rights groups' pressures on Native subsistence, and recommended that the Secretary of the Interior, also known as Alaska's landlord, be encouraged to seek out traditional tribal knowledge in game management.

She waited for the applause to die down and added, peering over the tops of her half glasses, "They don't make microscopes big enough to find the state of Alaska's support of the subsistence lifestyle." Her tone was so measured and her words so evenly spoken that it took a moment for their import to sink in. When they did, there was a roar of approval and more applause. Again, she waited for it to die down. "When one word from a state biologist fresh from some Outside college is enough to cancel out a thousand years of traditional Native knowledge, it is time for a change." For a third time applause swelled. Without haste, the Yupik from Manokotak collected her papers together and returned to her seat.

All the panelists had spoken. It was Kate's turn. Olga nudged her to get up. She sat where she was, petrified with fear. She had nothing to report, no speech to give, and anything after the lady from Manokotak would be anticlimactic. I can't do this, emaa, she thought.

The audience was waiting for her, all of them, hundreds of them, silent, expectant, even eager. She knew a sudden, queer feeling of standing on the edge of a yawning chasm, the vacuum that had been left by Ekaterina's absence beginning to suck her over the edge.

Olga nudged her again and somehow Kate found herself at the podium, blinking at the lights. People were stirring in their seats and conversation was building again at the back of the room. She gripped the sides of the podium and stood on tiptoe to speak into the microphone.

Her voice squeaked on the first try and she had to clear her throat and start again. There was a spark of malicious enjoyment in Axenia's eyes;

Kate never saw it. The conversation got louder, and the only thing that kept her in place was the thought that, however Ekaterina had maneuvered her appearance here today, she couldn't let her grandmother down. She opened her mouth, and to her surprise, words came out.

"Ladies and gentlemen, elders, family, friends and guests. The issue is subsistence." She paused. Some people looked her way. A lot more were engrossed in conversation. There was laughter and whispering. The wail of a hungry baby cut off abruptly. Her grip on the fake wood of the podium was sweaty and her hands slipped.

And then it came to her. A story. She'd been told stories all her life.

She would tell one now, to people who lived by stories, to people who lived on through them, to people who died and returned in stories to live again.

"I shot a moose in my front yard this year."

She let the statement lie there and gather attention.

"Not fifty feet from my front door."

A lot of men shook their heads, as if they couldn't believe the luck of some undeserving people. There were a few faint, frankly skeptical grins.

"I dropped him from my front door with a single shot from a thirty-ought-six."

The details began to add up into either a true story or a good one. More people began to listen.

"In any other fall, on any other year, I wouldn't have been able to.

"Not because I can't shoot," and she grinned at the skeptics, "because you know I can."

They grinned back.

"No." She let the grin fade. "I got to shoot that bull because for the first year in six, I drew a permit."

She let that sink in, and was gratified when the room became still except for a few rustles from the back where a couple of kids scuffled for possession of an Eskimo yo-yo. One's mother confiscated the yo-yo and they quieted.

"I got to shoot that bull because for the first year in ten, the feds declared a moose hunt would be permitted in the Park's game management unit."

There was a collective growl of acknowledgement.

Kate felt that growl somewhere way down deep inside, and whatever was there rose up in response.

"The hunt only lasted seven days.

"There were only ten permits issued.

"I got my moose."

She gripped the podium firmly and said into the microphone, "Nobody else in the Park got their moose.

"Just me.

"I got my moose.

"I got enough moose to last me the winter.

"I got enough moose to share with my family.

"I got enough moose to share with my friends. "Nobody else in the Park got a moose.

"Hunters from Anchorage, they got their moose.

"Hunters from Anchorage with helicopters and four wheelers, they got their moose.

"But nobody else in the Park got a moose.

"Just me."

The crowd was silent. Kate let her next words drop one at a time, into the waiting pool of silence.

"You know what? "You know what I was thinking when I shot that moose?

"I was thinking I was shooting a moose where my dad shot his moose.

"I was thinking his dad's dad shot his moose there.

"I was thinking I would pick cranberries to go with that moose.

"I was thinking I would be picking those berries the same place my mother picked those berries." "Yes," a woman's voice said from the audience. "I was thinking I would be picking those berries the same place my mother's mother picked those berries.

"That moose, those berries, they will feed me, the same way they fed my mother and father, the same way they fed my grandmother and grandfather.

"But they won't take away my hunger."

"No," the voice in the audience said. "No," echoed someone else.

"That moose, I shoot it where my father shoots his moose, I shoot it where my grandfather shoots his moose."

"Yes."

"Yes."

"Yes!"

"Those berries, I pick them where my mother picks them, I pick them where my grandmother picks them."

"Yes!"

"The land is my culture. The land is my history. The land is my living.

It feeds me, it clothes me, it teaches me."

"Yes!"

"The moose."

"Yes!"

"The berries."

"Yes!"

"The caribou."

"Yes!"

"The salmon."

"YES!"

"The moose, the berries, the caribou, the salmon, the beaver, the marten, the otter, the wolf, these are my mother and my father, these are my brothers and my sisters. They feed me, they clothe me, they house me. The Old Woman She Keeps the Tides for me. Raven he gives me the land and the light. Agudar he guides me."

Agudar must have been guiding her then because she was speaking in tongues, without conscious thought, in the grip of an exhilaration as unexpected as it was unidentifiable. The crowd was on its feet, cheering her on, and she felt their support as a physical presence. Johnny stared at her from the front row, openmouthed.

"I say," she said, grasping the sides of the podium with fingers numb from the force of her grip, "I say that when a thousand years of history and culture is judged illegal, then the law is wrong, not the People."

The crowd cried out its approval, and Kate had to raise her voice to invoke the traditional end of the story.

"That's all!"

There was such a roaring in her ears when she collapsed into her chair that she was afraid for a moment that she might faint. It took a moment to realize that the sound was the beating together of hundreds of palms, the shouting of hundreds of voices.

Olga was looking at her with wonder. The older woman started to say something, realized she would go unheard over the noise, and closed her mouth. Slowly, her hands came up and began to clap. The other panel members joined in. The room echoed with it. Mutt was on her feet, gazing at Kate with wide, alarmed eyes.

Kate was frightened. She didn't want to be good at this kind of thing.

What frightened her even more was how much she had enjoyed it.

KATE DROPPED JOHNNY AT JACK'S OFFICE AND DROVE TO the Sheraton, parking in the rear with Mutt sacked out on the back seat.

She'd had a long night, too.

Ekaterina was waiting in the cafe at a booth next to the window. Kate was happy to see the lines of her face had relaxed and smoothed out.

Ekaterina looked almost sixty again. "How do you feel?"

Ekaterina brushed the question aside. "Fine. All I needed was a little nap. How did the panel go?"

"Fine." Kate picked up the menu. Her stomach was growling, she hoped loudly enough for Ekaterina to hear.

If Ekaterina heard it, she ignored it. "I hear you made a speech."

Kate sighed and put down the menu. "Who called?"

"Who didn't?" Ekaterina said.

Kate picked up the menu again, concentrating on the sandwiches, feeling color creep up into her cheeks. "All I did was tell a story."

"Ay, that one must have been some story."

Kate looked up sharply and surprised a twinkle in her grandmother's eye.

She dropped her head before an answering smile crossed her face. "Is there a cheeseburger on this menu that costs less than ten bucks?"

"Hotel food," Ekaterina said, letting the subject go, much to Kate's relief.

They ordered. The waitress took away their menus and Kate had nothing left to hide behind. Now was the time for her to report to her employer on the early-morning raid on Dischner's offices. "Dammit, emaa," she said, suddenly angry and exasperated, "what the hell is going on?"

Ekaterina looked startled at the sudden attack. "With what?"

"Emaa, don't do this to me again, please!"

Ekaterina managed to look even more mystified. "Don't do what again?"

Kate wasn't buying it. "Don't do to me what you did when I was trying to find out who killed Ken and that ranger. What the hell is going on? You come out to the homestead and tell me that Sarah is dead and there's a problem with the board over Iqaluk. Now Enakenty is dead, too, and I find out that you didn't tell me Lew Mathisen is involved, that Axenia probably got him involved, and you sure as hell didn't tell me Edgar Dischner is involved. So I'm asking. What the hell is going on?"

Ekaterina said nothing, and exasperated, Kate said, "What is it? Is it Axenia? Are you afraid of what I'm going to find out about her? Emaa, talk to me!"

The waitress brought Kate's Diet 7-Up and Ekaterina's tea. Ekaterina waited until she had left again before meeting Kate's angry, anxious eyes, her own steady and unreadable. "You're the investigator, Katya."

She made an indefinable gesture with one hand. "Investigate."

Kate could have lost her temper at that point. Instead she repeated,

"Are you afraid of what I'll find out about Axenia? Is that it? If it is, I can find some way to fix it, but I have to know, now, before I dig any further into this mess, and believe me, emaa, it is a four-star, government-certified, Olympic gold medal mess."

Ekaterina said nothing.

Kate said, getting desperate, "They would need someone on the inside, and Axenia's an ideal candidate. Is that what happened? Did Mathisen romance her because she's a share holder of the corporation that is contesting ownership of Iqaluk?" Ekaterina said nothing. A cloud moved across the sun, and for a fleeting moment the change of light brought all the lines back to her skin, draining her face of the vigor that had once characterized it. "Are you sure you're feeling all right, emaa?"

Kate said, brows coming together.

"I'm fine," Ekaterina said testily. "Stop pestering me."

"Fine," Kate snapped.

"Good," Ekaterina snapped back.

The food arrived and they ate in silence.

Kate mopped up salt with her last french fry and tried one last time.

"Whatever I find, I won't hide it, emaa. If you don't help me, I won't be able to."

Ekaterina said nothing.

Kate left the hotel in a quiet rage and hit the first pay phone she saw, punching out the 800 number of Jane's credit union with savage precision. "Account number?" She gave it. "Password?" She smiled. It wasn't a nice smile. "Ward well. W-A-R-D-W-E-L-L. Yes, that's right.

Yes, I need to withdraw five thousand dollars, and I would like that in a cashier's check, please. Yes, I'll be picking that up in person. Which branch?" From Jane's statements it looked like she did most of her business at the Juneau Street branch, which made sense since Jane worked downtown and lived in Muldoon. "The Benson branch, please." They wouldn't know Jane at the Benson branch. They might keep the check waiting---and the $5,000 out of her account--for days, maybe even as much as a week. "Yes. Yes. Thank you." She hung up and dialed the 800 number for Starbuck's. Jane sent a Braun coffee maker and an assortment of coffees to her mother, her boss and Archbishop Francis T. Hurley.

Kate hung up for the second time. It hadn't helped; she was still mad, and she drove around until she found an automatic teller and withdrew another $300 from Jane's account. She took the cash to the post office on Ingra and bought a money order and a stamped envelope. She addressed the envelope to Family Planning in Fairbanks, stuck the money order inside and dropped it into the mail chute.

She felt a little better then but no less determined. With a single-minded sense of purpose she ran Axenia to earth in her own office.

Except that she no longer worked there.

Two years before Kate, through Jack, had put Axenia to work typing, filing and answering the phone at the state district attorney's office.

The pay wasn't bad and the benefits were excellent, and Kate had extracted a promise from Axenia to start taking classes at the University of Alaska, Anchorage. She didn't care what classes, she told Axenia, she didn't care if she wound up majoring in Eastern religions, she just wanted her taking a class every semester for a couple of years.

Maybe she'd find a discipline she'd like to pursue to a degree, maybe not; regardless, the experience wouldn't hurt her, and it was one way to make friends. Town life could be lonely for bush refugees; Kate knew from personal experience. At that point in Axenia's life, Kate thought that rubbing elbows with the kind of people determined to get themselves an education was just what Axenia, a directionless, eighteen-year-old adolescent ruled by her hormones, needed more than anything else. Kate had been subsidizing Axenia's education at $64 a credit hour for the price of a copy of Axenia's grade slip every semester. Kate had followed her cousin's academic career with interest and some amusement, from Introduction to Criminal Justice, which she found mildly nattering, to Accounting 101, in which Axenia floored her by getting an A. When Axenia took English 111, she knew she had won. The only thing other than gun-point that would get Axenia into an English class was the fact that it was required for a degree.