Killing Grounds (9 page)

And national park managers, Kate thought, who wanted to annex every square foot of land they saw and keep it pristine and inviolate, unsullied by human hand. They failed to recall that the indigenous peoples who came across the Bering land bridge during the last Ice Age had had their hands all over anything that had the remotest possibility of nutritional value and were every bit as much a part of the landscape and the wheel of life as the fish and the birds and the mammals. It wasn't until salmon started being taken commercially, in fish traps owned by Outside consortiums based in Seattlefish traps that spanned the entire mouths of creeks and trapped whole schools of fish in their comprehensive mawsthat the fish runs began to suffer their drastic declines.

She waited in case Edna wanted to say more, but the old woman had lapsed into her customary silence. "Like I was saying, Johnny, we've always fished subsistence here, but then the feds selected this creek at statehood, and they closed the fish camp down. Five years ago, Auntie Joy and Auntie Vi petitioned for it to be reverted back to subsistence use. The feds turned them down."

"And?"

"And, they sued."

"It still in court?" Jack asked with the cynicism born of long experience with the legal system.

Kate nodded. "They lost at the state level, big surprise. They're appealing to the supremes."

In sudden realization Jack sat up straight on his log. "You mean we're busting a federal law, fishing on this creek?"

Kate's smile was sardonic. "Oh no, you can sport fish here all you want, so long as you've got a state fishing license and the fish hawks declare the stream open." She nodded at the circle of women. "It's the aunties who aren't supposed to." She hooked a thumb over her shoulder in the direction of the creek. "That fish wheel's illegal as all hell. Lamar comes upstream every year and tells Auntie Joy so, doesn't he, auntie?"

"Humph," Auntie Joy said again.

"Lamar's not that bad, auntie," Kate said gently. "He's nowhere near as bad as some of the other fish hawks have been over the years."

The old woman's face relaxed, and she sighed. "I know, Katya. But his rules are not our rules."

Auntie Vi was not so generous. "Who is he, this park ranger, tell us what to do like he own everything? He don't own the creek. He don't own the fish. Nobody own them, so everybody own them." She sat back on her stump, dismissing the matter.

"Vi is right," Auntie Joy said, and added reasonably, "And besides, how our children and grandchildren living, if we don't teach them the old ways?" She waved a hand at the shack full of drying racks standing behind the cabin, a quarter of them hung with the limp red carcasses of red salmon. Split, boned, soaked in brine, they would be left hanging until the oil ran, when the dried alder would be lit and the shack filled with smoke to dry, flavor and texture the meat. "Who knows how to smoke fish when we're gone, if we don't come to the river and teach the children?"

"We always looking for children to come to fish camp." Auntie Balasha sighed. "But children don't come much no more."

A memory of the deer hunt with her father flashed through Kate's mind. As small as she had been, as young as she had been, as unskilled as she had been, still Stephan had been determined that his child would learn the traditional ways, at the very least be able to feed and clothe and house herself without being dependent on anyone else. He had died the following year, but by then the pattern of self-reliance was set, forming the fabric of her life.

She looked around the circle at the four old women, and saw her father staring back at her from every face.

Edna surprised them again. "No, the children don't come, but the white men do. They come with their planes and their powerboats and their four-wheelers, all the time making noise, leaving garbage all over." She leaned forward. "You know what I hear about those ones? They don't even eat the fish! They put them on the wall of their house, to look at! Why? Why is that?" she demanded. "Fish is food, for hungry in winter, not pretty for wall of house." She sat back and stared accusingly at the two white men in their midst.

Jack looked undeniably guilty.

"Gee, Dad," Johnny said, "maybe we should"

"We eat everything we catch," Jack said hastily. "Don't we?" he appealed to Kate.

"I don't know," Kate drawled. "What about all those trophies you've got lining the walls of your den back in Anchorage?"

There were gasps of horror from all four old women.

"Den?" Johnny said. "We got a den?"

"Kate," Jack said ominously.

"Let me see, now, there's a moose, and a Dall sheep, and a goat, and two bearskins, and three king salmon, and I think there's even a wolverine." Kate added, "And he flies and shoots caribou the same day, too, and not for meat, for the racks, can you imagine?"

"No," Auntie Joy said, aghast.

"Ayapu," Auntie Vi said, appalled.

"Alaqah!" Auntie Edna said, deeply offended.

"Kate," Jack said.

She went for broke. "Not to mention all those Outside hunters he flies out to Round Island to take walrus illegally for their tusks."

Auntie Balasha went so far as to put a hand to her breast and nearly swoon from shock.

"Kate!"

She couldn't hold it back any longer and burst out laughing. The four women joined in, rollicking back and forth on their logs, teeth flashing, bellies shaking, hands clapping. The sound was loud, merry and unmistakable. Aleuts, one, Anglos, zip.

A slow grin spread across Johnny's face, and Jack mopped a heated brow. "Sheesh," he said, "you broads sure are hard on a couple of simple guys just trying to follow the hallowed Western tradition of raping the environment."

"Well, aunties," Kate said, draining her mug, "thanks for the tea. I'd better head on down the creek."

Jack shot up next to her. "Why? They aren't fishing, so they won't be delivering."

"You never know," Kate said. "Maybe they won't be able to stand Meany catching all that fish in their faces."

"Meany?" Auntie Joy said sharply. Auntie Vi looked at her.

Kate couldn't read either face, and her brows came together in a slight frown. "Yeah. The processors have dropped the price of reds to fifty cents a pound. The fleet's on strike. All except for Meany," she added, watching Auntie Joy. "Both his drifter and his setnet site have their nets in the water. The fish are hitting big-time, too. Even at fifty cents a pound, he'll make money."

Auntie Vi started to say something and Auntie Joy cut her off. "That one always make money." She snorted. "All he good for."

Kate looked at Auntie Vi, who was studying her toes with complete absorption. "Okay then," she said, rising to her feet and dusting unnecessarily at her jeans. "I'm off."

Next to her, Jack looked over at the four aunties, clearly uneasy at being left to their mercy. Kate saw the look and dropped her voice. "Don't worry, Jack, they're nice, kind, cuddly old ladies. They won't hurt you."

Jack's expression told her what he thought of that estimate of his hostesses, and she was hard put to keep her face straight.

"You come back tomorrow, Katya," Auntie Joy said firmly. "We catch lots, we need help with the cleaning and the hanging. You come back and help."

"Okay, auntie. Just as long as I don't get stuck with fire detail."

"Fire detail?" Jack said apprehensively. "What's fire detail?"

Kate refrained from telling him that fire detail was tending the fire in the smokehouse. It had to be maintained around the clock. It couldn't be too big and it couldn't be too small, and it could never, ever be allowed to go out. If the fire went out, the smoke went with it, and if the smoke went with it, the salmon would be ruined, and if the salmon were ruined, there went this year's smoke fish. It was an important job, maybe the most important job, and definitely the most tedious.

It was also the job most beginners got stuck with their first summer. Kate sternly repressed a grin.

He followed her down the creek bank. "Are we going to be able to get any real fishing in if we stay here?"

"Depends on what you call real fishing," she said. "1 think Auntie Vi's definition is a little different than yours."

"You're telling me," he muttered.

She relented. "Of course you'll get some fishing in. Maybe not only the kind of fishing you came for, but you will fish." She laughed at his expression, and turned him to face upstream. "About half a mile up the left bank, there's a great hole for reds."

He brightened. "Really?"

"Really. Although you might be sharing it."

"You mean with other sport fishermen?"

She nodded. "George Perry will probably be landing a few on sandbars while you're here. There's even an airstrip about a mile inland."

"Why?"

"Why the fishermen?"

"Why the airstrip?" He waved a hand. "Why build one out here? Was there a herring cannery or a gold mine out here one time, or what?"

"No." Kate's smile faded. "RPetCo built it a couple years back. When they were sinking exploratory wells hereabouts."

"Oh." A touchy subject, and lack knew enough not to pursue it. "So we're in Iqaluk."

"Pretty much everything you can see from here is Iqaluk," Kate agreed. She didn't want to talk about it, either.

Iqaluk was a fifty-thousand-acre parcel of land that included the eastern shore of the Kanuyaq River and part of the Prince William Sound coast. It was home to some of the richest salmon spawning grounds in the Gulf of Alaska, hence the name iqaluk, the Aleut word for salmon. It was also one of the last old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest. Title to it had been clouded by competing claims, from the Niniltna Native Association, the Raven Corporation, the state of Alaska and the federal government. The federal government did not present a united front, either; the Forest Service and the Department of the Interior had been squabbling over Iqaluk since before statehood in 1959.

Everybody had a different idea about what should be done with Iqaluk. The Niniltna Native Association wanted the land deeded to them as part of the tribal entity's compensation under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. Raven, the parent corporation for Niniltna's region, wanted the land so they could lease it out for logging and subsurface mineral explorations and development. Either idea was enough to send the state into orbit, because if the land was handed over to Raven or Niniltna the state wouldn't see a dime in taxes. The timber companies wanted the federal government in the form of the Forest Service to gain title, because the Forest Service had the charitable habit of building roads into old-growth forests at public expense for private profit. They went faint at the thought of the Department of the Interior gaining jurisdiction, because Interior would turn it over to the National Park Service, who would incorporate it into the national park system, which excluded exploitation of any kind, unless directed to do otherwise by Act of Congress. Which brought everything full circle, because if Iqaluk was turned into a park, limits would be imposed on hunting and fishing, and Auntie Joy and Auntie Vi would be in the front row of the rebellion.

Hell, they already were. "Civil disobedience," Kate said out loud.

"Huh?"

"Thoreau would be proud of my aunties. The federal government told them they couldn't fish subsistence here, and yet here they are, about to hook up their fish wheel."

A small plane approached, flying low and slow over the surface of the creek. It was George Perry's Super Cub, on tundra tires, following the course of the stream a hundred feet off the deck. They waved, and George banked a sharp left, folding down the window as he circled. "Hey," he yelled, "get a move on, you deadbeats, there's fish in that thar water." He straightened her out and took off again up the creek, rocking his wings in farewell.

Jack shook his head. "He does like to give his tourists their money's worth, don't he?"

"Probably stream surveying," Kate said.

"Oh yeah? Lamar?"

Kate shook her head. "He's got a new sidekick. Little gal, name of Becky something."

"She taking kindly to low and slow?"

Kate chuckled. "Not hardly. From what I saw of her uniform yesterday, she has yet to learn that she's supposed to stick to fish counting and leave the flying to George. That wasn't her, though, in the back seat."

"Oh yeah?" He squinted after the Cub. "Who was it?"

"I don't know, some guy." The profile of the man seated behind George had seemed vaguely familiar, but she couldn't quite place him. "Probably a fly fisherman going up the creek for a day. Mutt! Come on, girl, time to go!"

Mutt's head appeared at the top of the bank, her great yellow eyes peering soulfully over the tips of the rye grass. Kate read her expression without difficulty. "You want to stay?"

Mutt gave a joyous bark.

"Okay, stay."

Mutt leapt down to the beach with one graceful, arcing stride and loped over to the skiff. She hopped up to put her front paws on the side of the skiff and gave Kate a lavish lick of gratitude.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Kate said, shoving her away. "Just remember this the next time old Graybeard shows up and you want to get laid."

Mutt barked again, and took the bank in a single bound to disappear into the tall grass.

Kate stood in the bow, Jack on the sand. He looked down at her critically. "Well, I'm not going to lick you." He smiled, a long, slow smile. "At least not right now." He kissed her instead. It was a long, leisurely kiss, and it took Kate three tries to get Old Sam's older kicker started, because she kept tangling the cord. It didn't help that Jack stood grinning at her from the creek bank until she was out of sight.

When Kate's skiff emerged from the mouth of the creek, Meany's setnet site was still the only site fishing, and his drifter was still the only boat with a net out. He'd drifted a little too close to shore for his sixty-mesh, or thirty-foot, net, and so was pulling it, presumably prior to moving the boat farther off shore and resetting the net there, or perhaps prior to delivery, since he was riding very low in the water.

Only he had a problem, because half a dozen other drifters had crowded round him, their engines idling, making no effort to move out of the way.