Dana Stabenow - Whisper to the Blood

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.