"I don't like mine, Katya," Auntie Vi said again, and Kate was recalled to the present.
"I don't, either, Auntie," Kate said, "but you can't stop it."
Auntie Vi's expression became, naturally, even more obdurate. "Why not?"
Johnny clattered in the door and headed for the kitchen with the single-minded voracity of the average adolescent. "Fuggedaboutit!" Kate said. "Wash those hands or you go hungry."
Johnny rolled his eyes and muttered something about Kate's anal attention to personal hygiene and stamped into the bathroom. Kate served the sandwiches cut in halves with a bowl of tortilla chips and another of salsa. Johnny dived in like he hadn't eaten in a month, and Kate, a notorious feeder, tucked in with only marginally less appreciation, while Auntie Vi nibbled around the edges of her half of a sandwich with the air of someone who seldom ventured beyond the realm of PBJ on pilot bread, and who liked it that way just fine, thank you. An occasional desecration of mac and cheese by diced ham was about as far into the culinary wilderness as any of the four aunties cared to go.
Afterward Johnny cleared the table and washed up and Kate walked Auntie Vi to her car. "Look at it this way, Auntie," Kate said. "We're Alaskan citizens. We'll get royalties. More, as citizens of the region, we'll get jobs. If there's steady work, maybe some of the kids will move home from Anchorage. Maybe some of them won't leave in the first place."
Auntie Vi closed the driver-side door and Kate thought she might have gotten away clean, until Auntie Vi rolled down her window. "That what you say at meeting?"
Kate's heart sank. "The board meeting?"
Auntie Vi gave her an impatient look. "What other meeting there is?"
The board of directors of the Niniltna Native Association met quarterly, in January, April, July, and October. Last year, board president and NNA CEO Billy Mike had died, leaving a vacancy. Without even running, indeed over her strong objections, Kate had been nominated to fill out the rest of his term, largely at the instigation of the diminutive woman at present fixing her with the beady eye through the car window.
Kate had missed her first NNA board meeting in July by virtue of the fact that she had been deckhanding for Old Sam Dementieff during the salmon season. Disapproval of her dereliction of duty was ameliorated by the fact that three other board members, Demetri Totemoff, Harvey Meganack, and Old Sam himself, were also fishing. Impossible to argue with the fact that everyone needed to make a living, and that in Alaska much of the time that meant working through the summer. So it was with a reasonable certainty that she would not be scolded, at least not for that, that Kate felt she could say, "I'm not Emaa, Auntie."
"Nobody say so," Auntie Vi said.
"Like hell," Kate said.
Auntie Vi looked away, scowling to hide what Kate knew was a beginning smile. Kate was the only one who dared to lip off to Auntie Vi, and though she'd never admit it, Auntie Vi enjoyed the fight.
"I'm not Emaa," Kate said again. "Don't make the mistake of thinking I am. Running the Niniltna Native Association for the rest of my life is not on my agenda. I've got a life, I have a job that pays pretty well, I have Johnny to provide for, and I have a home to look after. Don't say it!" She held up a hand, palm out.
Auntie Vi did her best to look wounded. "Not say nothing."
"Yeah, but you were thinking it." They both looked at the house, a virtual palace by Park standards, built in three days and change by a volunteer army of Park rats. "I'm grateful, I always will be, but not to the point of indentured servitude."
"You not coming to meeting?" Auntie Vi said sharply.
Kate sighed. The next meeting was October 15th, a month away. "Of course I'm coming. I said I would, and I don't make promises I'm not going to keep."
"So you saying what, then?"
"I'm saying I'm not Emaa," Kate said, meeting Auntie Vi's eyes without flinching. "I am not my grandmother. Don't think I'm going to lead an effort against the Suulutaq Mine. I'm not against progress. I'm not against change. I'm not against industry coming into the Park, especially if it's going to bring jobs with it."
Auntie Vi was staring at her with a stony expression, and Kate smiled, a little grimly. "Kinda sorry you forced me onto the board now, aren't you, Auntie?"
Auntie Vi snorted, and thereby avoided a direct answer to a simple question, a skill all the aunties were famous for. "You say mine bring jobs. Hah! Jobs for Outsiders, maybe. No jobs for us."
"Auntie," Kate said. "The mine workers are going to need a place to wash their clothes. They're going to want to buy potato chips. They're going to want to mail packages. Sometimes they're just going to want a night away from camp, out on the town, even if that town is dry. They can buy a burger and a latte at the Riverside, cookies at one of the basketball team's bake sales. They could even have a beer at Bernie's if they can score a ride that far. Two thousand workers during construction, Auntie. Niniltna will be the closest community to them." Kate shrugged. "We've even got a road out. Well. For half the year anyway."
Auntie Vi leveled an admonitory finger. "What about road, Katya? Not good enough for big trucks. They pave it, then what?"
The thought of semi-tractor trailers running in and out of the Park a quarter of a mile from her doorstep did not please Kate at all. "Hah!" Auntie Vi said, triumphant. "Everything change with mine, Katya. Everything! Not just digging big hole in some land away far from here." She started the engine. "You be at that meeting."
"I said I would be, Auntie."
"October fifteenth!"
"Yes, Auntie."
"That on a Wednesday!"
"Yes, Auntie."
"Ten A.M.!"
"Yes, Auntie."
Auntie Vi nodded, a sharp, valedictory movement. "You be there."
"Yes, Auntie."
Auntie Vi held up a finger. "Forgot." She jerked a thumb backward. "I bring something to you."
Kate opened the rear passenger-side door and found a small U-Haul box. "What's this?"
"Association stuff. You take."
"I've got the newsletter, Auntie, I don't need-"
"You take!"
Kate took, and without further ado or admonition Auntie Vi stepped on the gas. The Explorer wheeled around in something approaching a brody, narrowly missing Mutt emerging incautiously from the brush. She yelped and affected a kind of reverse vertical insertion, levitating up and back so that Auntie Vi's tires just missed her toes. She looked at Kate, ears straight up and yellow eyes wide.
"You got off lucky," Kate said. She turned to see Johnny had come out on the railing of the deck.
"So," he said, "you going to that meeting next month?"
Her eyes narrowed.
He leaned on the railing and grinned. "You know. The one on Wednesday?"
She dumped the box in the back of his truck and started for the house.
"On the fifteenth?" He started to back up. "You know, the one at ten a.m.?"
She hit the bottom stair and he ran for his life.
THREE
Johnny sat very straight behind the wheel of his pickup as he made his first solo journey into Niniltna the next morning. He drove with sobriety and caution, and pulled into Annie Mike's driveway with nary a nourish.
This sedate impression of middle age disintegrated when the front door opened and Van stepped out onto the porch.
Vanessa Cox's posture was so good that she would always seem taller than she was. Her dark hair was thick, fine, and straight, cut bluntly to brush her shoulders, with a spiky fringe to frame her dark eyes. She had a slim, straight nose, a full, firm mouth, and a delicately pointed chin.
For years her attire had consisted of bibbed denim overalls with a marsupial front pocket and buckled shoulder straps, worn over a T-shirt in summer and a turtleneck in winter, usually accessorized with Xtra Tuffs and a down jacket. Recently, her wardrobe had expanded to include low-rider jeans, cropped T-shirts, and Uggs. She wore thin gold hoops in her ears and her lips shone with gloss.