Dana Stabenow - Whisper to the Blood

"Uh-huh," Pete said, clearly not attending.

"Something you wanted, Pete?"

He did his best to look wounded. "Can't I just sit down and have a friendly cup of coffee?"

"No," Kate said.

To his credit, Pete laughed. "Yeah, okay, you never were one for the bullshit, Katie. Okay." He faced her squarely. "I hear you're the new chair of the Niniltna Association board of directors."

"Interim," Kate said. "Interim chair. The membership may decide differently when they vote in January." As she devoutly hoped they would.

"Yeah, okay, interim. But you're chair now."

"I am. What do you want, Pete?"

He cocked an eye. "Word is it was a pretty interesting first meeting."

Kate stiffened. "That wouldn't be any of your business, now, Pete, would it?"

"No," he said hastily. "None at all."

His thoughts were pretty plain on his face. Kate Shugak had once had a pretty robust sense of humor, and instead of squashing his interest in the board meeting she had only ratcheted it up a notch. He wouldn't rest until he got all the gory details, and he'd probably be telling the story for years to come, too. Him and Harvey, it would be like getting it in stereo. Wonderful. "So?" she said.

He shrugged, but the tension in his shoulders gave him away. "Well, as the new NNA chair, a lot of us are wondering what kind of stand you're going to take on the Suulutaq Mine."

Her eyebrows raised. "That would be my business," she said blandly. "And the board's, and the shareholders'. Why do you ask?"

He snorted. "Ah, Jesus, Katie, you know damn well why I'm asking. Global Harvest is going to bring a lot of jobs into my district."

"And a three-by-five-mile open pit mine into my backyard," Kate said.

"Ah, shit," he said, half in distaste, half in dismay. "You ain't gonna fight them on it, are you?"

"I don't know what I'm going to do yet, Pete," Kate said. She drained her mug and rose to her feet. "And even if I did, I wouldn't tell you before I told the board and my fellow shareholders."

He snatched up her check as she was reaching for it. "I'll get that."

"No." The receipt tore a little as she pulled it from his hand. "I'll get it."

His hurt feelings were well simulated, she had to give him that much. "Shit, Katie, I've bought you coffee before."

"I wasn't chair of the board, before," she said.

She paid for her espresso and left.

Outside Auntie Balasha was making obeisance to Mutt, who was accepting it with a gracious air. "Hey, Auntie," Kate said, giving her a hug.

"Katya," Auntie Balasha said. "The dog, she look good. Nothing bad left over from last year?"

Last year Mutt had been shot and almost killed, requiring surgery and a week's recovery at the vet's in Ahtna, a traumatic period that Kate even now had difficulty reliving. "She's fine, Auntie." Kate looked up and down the narrow little street to see if anyone was in listening distance. There wasn't, but she lowered her voice anyway. "Listen, Auntie, have any of you seen anything of the Smith girls?"

Auntie Balasha's face darkened. "Vi keeping watch. She go out to Smith place once a week. She even get parents to say okay for the girls to come to her house after school sometime. When they come, they talk to Desiree."

Desiree was the school's nurse practitioner, and Auntie Balasha's granddaughter. "What does Desiree say?"

Auntie Balasha's lips tightened and she said sternly, "Desiree never talk about patients."

"Auntie."

Auntie Balasha sighed. "Desiree say they don't talk much, but they do talk some. She say this is little bit of good. Maybe better later."

Kate felt a tightness in her chest ease. "Good. That's good, Auntie. I was keeping tabs last winter but this summer I was fishing and then I was working and-" She stopped making excuses. "I'm glad you and Desiree and Auntie Vi are keeping tabs on them." She hesitated. "Do they still refuse to tell their parents about what Louis did to them?"

"They don't tell parents nothing," Auntie Balasha said succinctly.

There were twenty-one kids in the Smith family. Kate wondered if it was harder or easier to keep secrets in a family that size. Easier to hide them in the noise, or harder to hide because of all the noses standing by to sniff them out? She hoped for Chloe and Hannah's sakes that when their parents did find out the girls got all the love and support they needed, but she'd seen the family in action and she doubted it. She had Father Smith pegged as a greedy opportunist, and Mother Smith as someone who had perfected the art of going along. "How about you, Auntie?" she said out loud. "Everything okay?"

"All well."

But Auntie Balasha seemed preoccupied. Kate looked at her, standing there in her homemade calico kuspuk, lavishly trimmed with gaudy gold rickrack and lustrous marten that she had probably trapped and tanned herself. Like all the aunties she was comfortably plump, with long graying hair she kept bundled out of her face, round cheeks a pleasing walnut brown, clad in skin that was by now wrinkled like a walnut, too. She was missing a tooth, and there was a faint scar on her left check, remnants of her marriage. It had ended when he had gone down the boat ramp in Cordova, drunk as a skunk, tripped over his own feet, and drowned in the harbor, leaving her with three children to feed and clothe and shepherd into adulthood. She had succeeded, partly because she'd had the love and support of the extended family of Park rats, and partly because she would have sold herself on the streets of Spenard before she let her children go cold or hungry. What Kate considered most remarkable was that she'd never heard Auntie Balasha whine or complain. She just kept on keeping on, and when her own children were grown and gone like Auntie Joy she had progressed to an enthusiastic and indiscriminate adoption of every stray that wandered across her path, strays like Martin, and Willard, and evidently now Howie, who of course lost no time in exploiting the situation.

That thought roused Kate's protective spirit like nothing else. If Willard and Howie were stealing fuel from Auntie Balasha again, this time she wouldn't just beat Willard to the ground, she would eviscerate him. "What is it, Auntie? Is there a problem? Something I can help you with?"

Auntie Balasha raised her enormous brown eyes, liquid with love and concern. "I worry about you, Katya."

Kate was taken aback. "Worry about me?" She even laughed a little. "Why? I'm fine."

"You live so far out of town." Auntie Balasha gestured vaguely in the general direction of Kate's homestead. "If you get in trouble, who help you? Who come when you call? You should live in town. I live here. Vi live here. Joy, Edna live here. You get in trouble, we help you. We drop by more often, check up on you, see if you okay."

The prospect of the aunties dropping in at any hour of the day or night to check up on her froze the blood in Kate's veins. Trying to speak amiably, she said, "That's a nice thought, Auntie, and I thank you for it, but you know I've got Johnny with me now." Driven to it, she added, "And Jim Chopin stops by now and then."

This artless addition got the skeptical look it deserved. "But you chair of Association now, Katya."

Kate stiffened. "Yes."

Balasha, ignoring the warning signs, carried on. "Position of responsibility. People need to talk to you about something, where you are? Far away! Can't walk there, have to drive truck or snowgo. If shareholders need you, if emergency happens, long time it takes to come get you. You should move to town."

"Auntie," Kate said, "I've got to go, I've got some business down the road. I'll see you later, okay? Mutt. Up."

It came out as more of an order than a request and a startled Mutt scrambled to her feet. Kate climbed on in front of her and pressed the starter. The roar of the engine drowned out Auntie Bal-asha's further remonstrances. Kate smiled tightly, tossed her a cheerful wave, and got the hell out of town.