Killing Grounds (8 page)

Old Sam swore. "What the hell was that?"

"I don't know," Kate said, beginning to rise to peer up over the console, and ducked back again when there was another loud crack! followed by a rapid rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat! and a long, loud whistle, followed by a distant explosion. There was a flare of color through a window. "What the hell?" She stood up, in time to see a shower of lavender stars fall from the sky, fading rapidly into oblivion. It had already been light out for five hours.

"I'll be goddammed," Old Sam said, rising to stand next to her. "I totally forgot." Kate looked at him, and he whacked her across the shoulders. "It's the Fourth of July, Kate! Independence Day, by God! Fireworks and hot dogs and beer and boring speeches by pissant politicians and freedom and justice for all!"

Kate counted backwards in her mind. The opener had been two days before, and it had been July 2. Yes, indubitably, today was the Fourth of July.

"So what do we do now?"

Her question was punctuated by another pyromaniac getting an early start on the celebrations with a cherry bomb. A fountain of water rose up from a space between two boats and smacked down again, liberally dousing both decks and the fishermen thereon. Old Sam waited until the cursing stopped before answering Kate's question. "Have breakfast. I'm hungry."

Jack made the toast while Kate scrambled eggs with cheese and onions and potatoes. "So do we get to go fishing, Dad?" Johnny said, buttering his toast with a lavish hand and loading on a half a jar of strawberry preserves.

Jack raised an eyebrow at Kate, who shrugged. "No reason why not. The commercial fishermen are on strike, but to my knowledge that's never stopped a sport fisherman."

"Or a subsistence fisherman," Old Sam said.

"Solidarity, anyone?" Jack said brightly. Nobody laughed, nobody even smiled, and he reflected on the foolhardiness of joking in Alaska about something as serious as salmon.

"Doesn't look like anybody'11 be delivering fish anytime soon," Kate said, "so I'll take the two of you up Amartuq in the skiff after breakfast." After an acid remark on the unreliability of wimmen and how a sure-enough boat jockey had only his fool self to blame if he hired one for a deckhand, Old Sam waved his assent.

"Is he mad?" Johnny said in a low voice as they cast off.

"Nah," Kate said as she started the kicker and the skiff pulled away from the Freya. "He's ecstatic. I'm living proof that all his worst suspicions about women in the workplace are true. The next time he gets together with Pete Petersen they can damn my whole sex without fear or favor."

"If he feels that way," Jack said, "how come he even lets you on board?"

She grinned. "If I didn't work summers on the Freya, I'd have to find another tender. Old Sam isn't about to turn me loose on the unsuspecting fishing population."

Probably, Jack thought, Old Sam wasn't about to allow the population to turn itself loose on an unsuspecting Kate. Probably Kate knew that, because nearly every summer Kate could be found weighing fish on the deck of the seventy-five-foot fish tender, at the beck and call of the crustiest, crankiest Alaskan old fart ever to wet a toe in the Gulf of Alaska. "I thought he liked women. You're always telling me stories about Old Sam's girlfriends. That nurse in Anchorage, for instance."

"He loves women," Kate said. "Just not on the deck of a boat, and in particular not on the deck of the Freya."

"How does he like them?" Jack said, pretty sure he already knew the answer but unable to resist.

"Naked and stretched out on a bed. It's our proper place in the cosmic scheme of things."

"I heard that."

So had Johnny, whose eyes were the size of dinner plates, but neither adult was paying any attention to him.

Jack looked at Kate, at the tilted hazel eyes bright with humor, the breeze generated by their passage pulling a strand of her hair loose from its braid and bringing a glow to her cheeks, and knew a mighty temptation to tackle her right there in the stern of the skiff.

Unfortunately, the presence of his son and heir was something of a hindrance, not to mention fifty fishermen who seemed to have gone collectively insane.

All around them salmon jumped and splashed, the school a dark swath beneath the water that cut back and forth between the boats riding at anchor. Cases of beer had appeared on every deck, and aluminum lawn chairs upholstered in plastic green plaid unfolded themselves in bows and on the tops of cabins. A skiff whizzed by, towing Tim Sarakovikoff water-skiing on his hatch covers. His face was split wide in a grin, and he swerved toward them. Kate ducked in time, but Jack was sprayed and Johnny was drenched.

The boy whooped. "Hey, come back here, let me try that!"

"No way," Jack said.

"But Dad"

"No," Jack said, and with firm hand sat Johnny down hard on the bow thwart. Johnny pouted.

They passed Cal Meany's drifter, his net paid out over the stern, white corks bobbing like popcorn popping as the fish hit it. He and his son were moving up and down the cork line, picking fish so fast their hands blurred in action. The skiff was already two-thirds full. Not a few fishermen were eyeing them with less than favorable expressions on their faces, and several comments were made in raised voices, "scab" being the nicest epithet hurled.

"Is that going to be trouble?" Jack said as they left the no-namer behind.

Kate nodded. "Probably."

"Should we do something?"

"Like what? Tell Meany to stop fishing? He'd tell you to fuck off. Tell the fishermen to leave Meany alone? They'd just beat the shit out of you first."

Johnny leaned around his father to see if she was kidding. Her face was calm and unsmiling. He sat back, sober and a little regretful. He was going on adolescence, and this might be the closest he'd ever come to a shooting war. He was kind of sorry to be missing it.

They passed the markers and entered the mouth of the creek, a broad stretch of water gray-blue with glacial silt, sandbanks on either side and a few sprouting midstream. Kate reduced speed and threaded a careful path upstream. No matter how many times you'd been up the Amartuq and no matter how well you thought you knew him, he was a noisy, contrary, temperamental beast who delighted in surprise ambushes that usually resulted in the loss of a kicker, if not a hull. Sandbars changed sides, deadheads lurked around every bend, boulders shifted location beneath the force of the spring runoff, until you thought you could hear a deep, mocking laugh in the rush of the water beneath the bow. Kate took her time. If they hit something, at least they'd hit it slow.

Alders and cottonwoods and the occasional scrub spruce crowded the banks. "Look!" Johnny said, pointing. A grizzly lumbered out of the brush and waded out belly-deep into the water. As they watched, he caught a gleaming salmon in his claws and sat down in midstream to eat it. His matted pelt shone golden brown in the morning sun just breaking through the overcast. He didn't bother to look around at the noise of the outboard, concentrating on brunch instead.

Around the next bend a wolverine snarled at them from beneath a clump of diamond willow. On the other side of the creek a family of otters played tag. Jack grabbed his son by the shoulders and turned him to look at a lynx crouched on the branch of a cottonwood, tufted ears cocked forward over glowing cat eyes. Two trumpeter swans paddled in a calm backwater, while high above an eagle beat his enormous wings steadily homeward.

Jack shook his head. "You've sure got the wildlife out here well trained, Shugak, I'll say that for you."

Johnny was bug-eyed and speechless. Kate was unable to repress a grin, well aware of the absurdity of taking any responsibility for the perfection of the day or the proliferation of the wildlife, but proud that Calm Water's Daughter was putting her best foot forward nonetheless. What The Woman Who Keeps the Tides was up to in Prince William Sound she preferred not to think about.

Fifteen minutes later the left side of the creek spread out into a wide, flat area of sand and tall grass. A log cabin with a roof sprouting green moss sat on the bank behind. A smaller creek ran next to the cabin and into the bigger creek, and where the two met sat what looked like a miniature version of what pushed riverboats up the Mississippi a hundred years before.

"What's that, Kate?" Johnny demanded.

"A fish wheel."

"Cool," he breathed. "What's a fish wheel?"

"You'll find out," she promised him.

Of the two of them, Jack had more experience with that sweetly promising tone of voice. He looked apprehensive. She saw the look and smiled at him. He did not feel reassured.

A woman came to the door of the cobin, saw them and

called out, "Vi, Edna, Balasha, come see! Katya is here!"

Kate cut the outboard engine and the bow of the skiff nosed up onto the gravel. Johnny jumped out and tugged them in the rest of the way, Jack following more slowly. Mutt took the bow in one leap and galloped madly up the bank as Auntie Joy and Auntie Vi and Auntie Edna and Auntie Balasha came out of the cabin, laughing and chattering excitedly, taking turns patting Mutt, who ducked her head at each in turn, very much in the manner of royalty granting an audience. When etiquette was satisfied, she led the way down the bank with her tail at a lordly angle, escorting the four old women as if it were their first trip down to the water's edge.

Kate climbed ashore last, and looped the bow line around a low-hanging branch of diamond willow.

Auntie Vi said with a twinkle, "The old man fire you, or you quit?"

"Auntie!" Kate shook her head in mock reproof. "Old Sam can't fire me, I'm too good to lose. And I can't quit," she added, "because without me nobody would deliver to him." Everyone laughed. "You know Jack Morgan, don't you, aunties? And this is his son, Johnny."

Jack inclined his head in a gesture that was half nod, half bow and all respect. Jack had always been good with Kate's elders, possibly because he knew he would never have gotten anywhere with her if he hadn't. Johnny followed his example, the gravity of good manners resting easily upon his youthful shoulders.

"Jack and Johnny are on a fishing trip. We just stopped in to say hi."

Auntie Joy inspected father and son with bright eyes, head cocked to one side, looking like a plump, inquisitive bird. "You go up creek to fish?"

Jack nodded. "Yes, Joyce. We do."

"What for you go up creek? You stay here. Plenty fish for everybody. Okay, girls?"

Auntie Vi agreed heartily. Edna and Balasha, who didn't live in Niniltna and therefore didn't know Jack as well as the other aunts did, were shier but just as hospitable, which had as much to do with the expectation of the free labor such guests would provide as it did with innate hospitality. When Calm Water's Daughter sent such a gift up the creek, one was wise to accept it without complaint.

"It's settled then," Auntie Joy said. She beckoned with an imperious finger, and Jack bowed to the inevitable and meekly shouldered pack and pole and sleeping bag and empty coolers up the bank and into the cabin. Johnny, who by rights could have expressed serious annoyance at this hijacking of his male-bonding fishing trip with his dad, looked at Kate for inspiration. She grinned at him. He was a good kid. He sighed, shouldered his own gear and followed his father.

And the gates of mercy closed behind them, Kate thought, and followed both her men up the bank, still grinning.

Auntie Joy bustled around and produced spiced tea in chipped mugs. She had to call Balasha and Johnny up from the creek, where Balasha was instructing Johnny in the mysteries of the fish wheel. "You should see how it works, Dad," Johnny said around a mouthful of Oreo. "It's so cool, it's like this paddle wheel, only the blades scoop up salmon in them. And Balasha let me eat some eggs right out of the fish!" He demonstrated, holding his hands over his head with an imaginary salmon stretched between them. "You squeeze, and the eggs just shoot out into your mouth!"

"Mostly," Jack said, reaching out a hand to pick a cluster of pink eggs that had adhered to his son's cheek.

Johnny grinned at him, unrepentant.

"What did they taste like?"

"Cold and salty." Johnny smacked his lips together. "Better than popcorn. Yum!"

Balasha said something in Aleut to Auntie Vi, who replied briskly. Kate caught the word qaryaq, which meant salmon roe, and "Siksik!" which meant, sort of, "No way!" and all four women looked on the boy with approval. Johnny, apparently, was in. Unaware, he crammed another Oreo down after the qaryaq.

"So, Auntie Joy," Kate said. "Has Lamar Rousch been around yet this year?"

Auntie Joy curled a lip. "That boy don't come back since I run him off last year."

Johnny looked curious, but he knew enough to shut up and listen.

"Lamar's the fish hawk for this area, and this fish camp is on federal land," Kate explained,

"Why's a guy working for the state enforcing federal law?" Jack asked.

Kate shrugged. "Probably because of the federal cutbacks in the Parks department. Dan O'Brian's crew is stretched pretty thin. He probably asked Lamar to keep his eye out."

"Humph," Auntie Joy said.

"Of course, this is federal land only according to the federal government," Kate added. "It wasn't federal land until statehood, and our tribe has subsistence fished here since, hell, I don't know, since forever."

"As long as the water runs and the grass is green, we been here," Edna said. She blushed when everyone looked at her in surprise, and ducked her head.

She had invoked the traditional words included in every treaty the federal government had entered into with the Native American peoples, "so long as the water runs and the grass is green"a phrase that was supposed to imply forever regarding the terms of the treaty, but in reality had meant only until something of value was discovered on the lands the treaty referred to, something like gold or water rights or grazing lands or town sites or uranium, anything Manifest Destiny could be applied to and that therefore could be overrun by wannabe miners and ranchers and settlers and railroad builders.