"Twenty dollars an hour?" Old Sam said.
Old Sam Dementieff, a contemporary of Auntie Joy's and someone who knew where all the bodies were buried, was ancient, vigorous, practical, and irascible. He had no time for fools and he considered everyone who wasn't him or Mary Balashoff, his main squeeze, a fool. That included Kate, who deckhanded for him on the Freya, his fish tender, during the salmon season. All that being said, he was loyal through and through, although to whom and to what could be changeable. Most of the time he was loyal to the Association, by which he meant the tribe. He was loyal to the Park and to the Park rats who lived in it, whether they were shareholders or not. Or he was to the ones who'd survived at least one full winter without turning tail and making tracks south. After the Park rat in waiting passed that first crucial test, Old Sam was known to say, "Weeeellll, you're showing me something. Let's see you make it through another." He was Everyfart, the quintessential Alaskan Old Fart, and not only did he know better than anyone else, he said so, early and often. The hell of it was that he was right most of the time.
Macleod smiled at him. She even looked amused when he didn't visibly wilt from the heat in that smile. "When we really get started, it's going to go twenty-four seven, two twelve-hour shifts. With overtime, one employee could pull down as much as nine thousand dollars a month."
"How are you going to get the trailers out to the mine?" Kate said.
"Same way we got this one out there. Airlift. We've leased a helicopter, a Sikorsky, I think they told me, until we get the airstrip in."
"Airstrip?" Kate said. "Where will you be flying your employees in from? Ahtna? Anchorage?"
"Wherever we hire them from," Macleod said. "Park people will be flown in from Niniltna, until we get the road in. But, yes, other employees will fly in from Ahtna, Fairbanks, Anchorage."
"Outside," Kate said.
Macleod spread her hands. "Some of the expertise necessary to exploration and development isn't available to us here in Alaska."
Auntie Joy cleared her throat deliberately. All eyes turned toward her. She was red-faced and sweating. Kate knew how much she loathed speaking aloud in front of strangers, so she appreciated the courage it took today for Auntie Joy to say what she had to say. "Fish? Caribou? Moose? Bear? All wildlife? This mine bad for those things."
"Mrs. Shugak," Macleod said, "Global Harvest Resources knows that we have to be good neighbors to the people who live in the Park. That includes respecting the fish, the wildlife and the environment, and the subsistence lifestyle practiced by everyone who lives here. We're going to use the very best science available to us to run an operation that has the lowest possible impact on the Park, and on the lifestyle of the people who live in it."
Fine words, Kate thought. They would have been more convincing if they hadn't sounded so well rehearsed. "You're going to have to get a lot more specific than that," she said.
"We know," Macleod said. "And we will. We're just getting started here, Kate. We're not naive enough to think there won't be problems. Of course there will be. But every step of the way we expect a Park-what is it you call yourselves?-a Park rat at our elbow, telling us what we're doing wrong. We'll be listening for that advice, and we'll be acting on it."
"You better be listening for it," Old Sam said, "because you'll be getting it. A lot of it."
"Thanks for dropping by, Talia," Harvey said with an enthusiastic handshake.
"My pleasure," Macleod said. "Ask me back any time." With a wave and a smile she was gone.
"Anything else?" Kate said. "Great, we're outta here."
The last thing she heard as she escaped through the door was Auntie Joy's faint, despairing, "No, Katya, no further business, meeting adjourned!"
FIVE
Auntie Vi opened the door before he had to knock twice. "What," she said inhospitably, but Johnny knew better. "Is that fry bread I smell, Auntie?"
Auntie Vi grumbled and opened the door wide enough for him to enter. "Got a nose on you like that Katya," she said, shooing him up the hallway to the kitchen. "I start bread, she show up on doorstep. Better than a bear at sniffing out food, that girl."
He grinned down at the heavy cast-iron skillet on top of the stove. Half a dozen flat, gently puffed circles of dough were already turning a golden brown in sizzling oil. On the counter next to it sat a bowl of bread dough.
Auntie Vi poked him in the side. "You want fry bread, you make." He gaped at her. "I don't know how, Auntie."
"Best you learn, then." Briskly, she showed him how to pull off a handful of dough, flatten it and stretch it into a circle, and hang it over the side of the bowl to wait its turn in the frying pan. She handed him a spatula and he got the pieces in the pan onto a cookie sheet lined with paper towels. When he put the spatula down and reached for one of them, she smacked his hand.
"But, Auntie, I'm hungry, I-"
"You eat when you finish," she said. "But they'll all be cold by then!"
She cast her eyes up to the heavens. "Fine, then. One. One!"
"Where's the powdered sugar? Oh. Thanks, Auntie." He tossed the fry bread from hand to hand, and when it had cooled a little sprinkled the sugar over it generously. The first bite was a little crunchy, a little chewy, a little greasy, and a lot sweet. He closed his eyes. "Auntie, this is… this is just one of the best things I ever want to put in my mouth."
She gave a skeptical grunt but he could see that she was pleased.
They finished frying the batch-Johnny managed to talk her out of another piece before they were done, and three more after that- and then he made her sit down at the table, poured her a mug of coffee, and cleaned up the kitchen. She put down two pieces herself, along with three cups of coffee, while maintaining a running criticism of his kitchen skills. There was also a lesson in the proper cleaning of a cast-iron skillet, involving warm water, no soap, and drying it over a hot burner.
As he was folding the dish towel and hanging it on the oven door handle, he said, "Auntie, did that guy I told you about last month ever show up?"
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!"