Dana Stabenow: A Fine and Bitter Snow

That Dan O’Brian had managed, sometimes single-handedly, to maintain healthy populations of every species of wildlife from the parka squirrel below ground to the bald eagle above, and had managed to do it while maintaining the good opinion of park rats Native and nonnative, sourdough and cheechako, subsistence hunter and big-game hunter, subsistence fisher and sports fisher and commercial fisher alike, and that he had managed to do it without being shot, or hardly ever shot at, was a remarkable achievement. If some wet-behind-the-ears, fresh-out-of-college kid wired through his belly button to the current administration took over, the Park would begin to deteriorate, and the population of the wildlife would only be the beginning. Mac Devlin would roll out his D-9 and start flattening mountains and damming rivers with the debris in his search for new veins of gold. Dick Nickel would start chartering sports fishers by the 737 into the village airstrip. John Letourneau would start bringing in European big-game hunters by the 747, if he didn’t already. Dan O’Brian was just a finger in the dike, but he had it stuck in a pretty vital hole.

Besides, if he left, she’d miss him.

She stopped in Niniltna to talk to Auntie Vi, who listened in bright-eyed silence, her head cocked to one side like a bird’s. “I’ll start calling,” she said, and displayed a cell phone with pride. It was lime green and transparent.

Kate recoiled, as if someone had offered her a diamond-back rattlesnake. “Uh, great, Auntie. I’m going to talk to Billy now. And I might go to Anchorage.”

“You know somebody there?”

“I can get to know them.”

Auntie Vi grinned, and the evil in that grin kept Kate warm all the way to the Niniltna Native Association offices. Billy looked up when she walked into his office. “Ah, and here I was just inches from a clean getaway,” he said.

Kate was known in the Park and, indeed, across the state of Alaska for many things. One of them wasn’t finesse. “You hear about Dan O’Brian?”

“No.”

She told him. As a clincher, she added, “Dan says the feds are interested in selling exploration leases in Iqaluk, too, Billy. We need him.”

Billy frowned but said nothing.

Kate was incredulous. “Don’t tell me you want to let them drill in Iqaluk!”

“It’d mean jobs, Kate.”

“None for us! Nobody here knows how to drill for oil!”

“They could be trained. We could get the feds to make it a condition of the leases.”

A hot reply trembled on the tip of her tongue. From somewhere, she found the strength to repress it. “Then,” she said, with tight control, “you’d better make sure that we’ve got the ear of the top spokesman for the feds in this Park.”

He frowned. “What do you want me to do?”

“Do you want to have to break in a new ranger? Somebody who’s going to go around burning out squatters, even if they’ve been squatting for twenty years? Somebody who doesn’t know a moose from a caribou and won’t look the other way when somebody shoots one to feed his kids after the season is closed? Somebody who’ll let all the fish go up the river because the lobbyist for the sports fishers has a bigger bullhorn and a fatter wallet than the lobbyist for the commercial fisher?” She paused and took a deep breath. “I’ll fight against any kind of development in Iqaluk, Billy, barring the logging leases we’ve already signed, but if you decide you want to go after subsurface mineral development and you get your way, it’s better for all of us to deal with Dan, someone who knows us and knows our ways, than some yahoo with a diploma so new, the ink isn’t dry on it yet. At least Dan listens to what the elders have to say about the history of salmon runs. The seals are coming back to the Sound today because he did.” She paused again. “You know you don’t want to have to break in somebody new.”

“Well,” Billy said, a defensive look on his round moon face. There was only one right answer, and they both knew what it was. “No.”

“All right, then. Call everyone you know in Juneau and then start in on D.C. NNA’s got a lobbyist, doesn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Call him and tell him the Niniltna Native Association, the largest private landowner in the Park, has a good working relationship with the current chief ranger and how you’d hate to see that change. In fact, you’d hate it so much that any new ranger appointed in his place would very likely meet with resentment and possibly even active opposition. You can’t vouch for his or her safety. Mention tar and feathers.”

Billy laughed. Kate stared at him. The laughter faded. What Kate Shugak lacked in finesse, she more than made up for in force of personality. Besides, Billy was, above all else, a smart politician and he knew what a poll of Park rats would say about Dan O’Brian leaving office. He cleared his throat and reached for the phone.

Kate made a couple of other stops to talk to village elders, and she was satisfied with their responses. Screw with one of us, screw with all of us, and Dan had been a Park rat long enough that he was definitely on the inside looking out. Mutt, riding behind her, nose into the wind, seemed to sense her feelings and took a swipe at Kate’s cheek with her tongue, nearly dislodging the bright red knit hat crammed down over Kate’s ears.

On the way to the Roadhouse, she had an inspiration, and five miles short of her goal, she took a turnoff that led down to the river, a mile from the road at this point. Spruce trees stood tall and thick next to a narrow track, snow up to the lowest branches, only to fall into deep declines nearer the trunk. It took some doing not to slide into them, and after the second near miss, Mutt decided to get off and walk. Kate slowed the machine to a crawl and thought about the man she was going to see.

John Letourneau lived on the Kanuyaq River, about a mile downstream from Niniltna. Home was an immense lodge built of peeled spruce logs, with the wall facing the river made almost entirely of glass. He had his own septic system, so there were flush toilets. He had his own well, so there was running water. He had his own generator, so there were electric lights.

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.