Breakup. Part 18

Old Sam had taken Kate's grandmother's place on the board, reflecting the shareholders' need for an elder of stature in the governing body.

173 Auntie Vi, the board secretary, acquired a lined school notebook and a pen with two spares, one behind each ear. Auntie Vi believed strongly in redundancy.

Kate stood around the perimeter of the group, unable or unwilling to bring herself to sit down. Harvey was the youngest board member at forty-five. Billy was what? Forty-eight? Demetri was fifty, Auntie Joy's entire family had just celebrated her sixty-fifth birthday, and Old Sam was a hundred and three if he was a day. Auntie Vi had been thirty for the last forty years and was determined to remain so until she died.

Harvey was pro-development, period. Demetri usually sided with Harvey, Auntie Joy usually against him. Auntie Joy would vote for anything with the word "education" in it, Demetri for anything prefaced by the phrase "rural preference." Billy Mike changed sides so often there was no decoding his bias, and as for Old Sam- She pulled herself up short. She had no business a.n.a.lyzing and measuring their characteristics, their prejudices, their strengths, their weaknesses. They were her elders and betters, who, like Emaa, always had looked and always would look at events through a local lens and would adjust accordingly their vision of what should be. These were Emaa's sisters and brothers, her daughters and sons, her mothers and fathers, and Kate would defer to them and to their wisdom. She would, she repeated to herself sternly.

Together, they had lived a total of more than three centuries and were at present marching resolutely toward their fourth. It was an impressive acc.u.mulation of wisdom and perspective. The difficulty was that sometimes that wisdom and perspective hardened into a stance inimical to change, to new ideas, to fresh faces, to youth. Kate had been born and raised among them, but at thirty- four she was by far the youngest person in the group, and she knew that had she not been Ekaterina's granddaughter she would have had no place there.

In this, she was less than perceptive of the considerable regard 174 in which she was held in the Park. Whether she knew it or not, she wore authority like a long cloak, with much was that swept up in its weighted hem of which she was unaware, including the undivided attention of the six people sitting before her now. Six pairs of sharp eyes watched her without seeming to, noticing the lines of control bracketing the usually mobile mouth, the fresh scab on her temple. None of them lingered over the scar on her throat, but then they'd all seen it before, and most of them knew the story behind it, or thought they did.

Like the presence of the wolf-husky hybrid chowing down on beef jerky at the end of the bar, it only added to the acc.u.mulating legend.

The six elders sipped coffee brought by a self-effacing Bernie, who recognized a tribal council meeting when he saw one. They chatted in low voices, settling into their seats and getting comfortable with one another.

"Well," Billy said, setting his coffee down. Auntie Vi flipped open her notebook and retrieved one of her pens. Old Sam's bright eyes flicked from one face to another. Harvey frowned into his mug. Auntie Joy's needle flashed through a square of cloth. "I'd like to thank you all for a.s.sembling on such short notice." There were grave nods all around, except from Old Sam, who grinned his vulpine grin. "We've invited Kate to sit in on the meeting. She's got a proposal she'd like to lay before the board."

"What?" Kate said.

"Go ahead, Kate," Billy said encouragingly, and the other four board members swiveled their heads in unison to look at the youngster come amongst them.

On her best day Ekaterina Moonin Shugak couldn't have pa.s.sed a better buck. You son of a b.i.t.c.h, Kate thought furiously, you set me up.

She sent a scowl across the table that should have fried Billy's brain in his skull. He took no notice of this lapse in generational respect, only continued to look at her, waiting, face schooled to an expression of innocent inquiry. So did the rest of the board.

175 The weight of their expectancy had a perceptible drag all its own, towing her in, sucking her under. She wasn't strong enough to resist, so she took a deep breath and waded in. "Cindy Bingley nearly killed her husband, Ben, this afternoon." Auntie Joy's beam vanished, and Kate waited for those who had been present to fill in those who hadn't been before continuing. "This wasn't the first time she's tried it. The next time he uses his and his kids' dividend checks to finance a drunk, she might get lucky. I don't think anyone here wants that."

Going immediately on the attack, Harvey went straight for the jugular.

"So what are you saying, Kate? You want the a.s.sociation to hold back Ben's and the kids' dividend checks?"

"I don't know, that's pretty extreme action you're suggesting," Billy observed without heat, "holding up a dividend for a lousy toot to Ahtna."

Kate hadn't suggested it, in fact hadn't even thought of it until now, but was willing to discuss the red herring Harvey had dragged across the trail just to get it out of the way. She might score some points of her own in the process. "It wasn't his first toot, Billy," she said, "and he isn't alone, as you very well know. Half the shareholders blow their dividends when they come in. Most of the time it's the wives and kids who suffer for it."

"They get their own dividends," Demetri said.

"Not if somebody beats them to the mailbox."

Harvey's gla.s.sy stare made him look as if he'd been stuffed and mounted, Auntie Joy beamed at her placidly, Old Sam examined Kate with a critical eye.

"I suppose we could hold Ben's and the kids' checks for Cindy to pick up," Billy said.

They studied that in silence for a while. From the expressions on their faces they were all entertaining visions of shareholders storming the a.s.sociation offices for their checks and not relis.h.i.+ng the prospect.

"You know," Demetri said, "Cindy's not exactly blameless in this situation. She's done plenty of partying herself."

176 "She takes good care of those kids," Auntie Joy said.

"He'd sue," Harvey said flatly, because that was what he would do and don't any of them forget it.

"Not if he doesn't have any money to hire a lawyer," Auntie Joy said, because she hadn't had much use for Harvey since he hogged most of the fry bread at a dinner she cooked for the high school basketball team on which Harvey was a starting forward. That had been over twenty years ago, but Auntie Joy never forgot an act of greed or selfishness.

"Someone would take it on spec," Demetri said unexpectedly. "There are a thousand Philadelphia lawyers in Anchorage just drooling at the prospect of taking on a solvent Native a.s.sociation for costs alone. They could drag the case out for years and run their billable hours into the stratosphere. We can't chance it."

Everyone was impressed by this professional a.s.sessment of the situation.

Everyone also wanted to know where Demetri had come by the easy familiarity with legal jargon, but Bush manners prevailed and no one asked.

Personally, Kate didn't think Ben could leave off drinking and chasing women not his wife long enough to retain an attorney, so the point was moot. "Ben is a shareholder, like the rest of us," she said. "ANCSA funds were allocated by congressional act. It's probably a federal offense to interfere with their distribution. Ben gets his check, same as you, same as me, same as every other Niniltna shareholder."

They thought about that for a while. Tribal elders spent a lot of time thinking in silence, which led to rational problem solving and sensible decision making. It was one of their greatest strengths.

Demetri stirred. "She could divorce him. That way, she could attach his dividend for child support."

"If she hasn't divorced him yet, she's not going to," Billy said.

"He is a charmer," Auntie Joy admitted with a rueful sigh.

"What the a.s.sociation could do," Kate said. Billy looked at her encouragingly. "What the a.s.sociation could do," she repeated, setting her jaw, "is tackle it from the other end."

177 Bernie returned to refill their mugs and set a plate of Oreo cookies on the table, his inspired contribution to a harmonious meeting. Seven hands reached out, and everybody except Harvey opened up the cookies and licked the frosting off the inside.

"It's not just Ben and Cindy and their kids who need help. I'm sure you've all heard about the shoot-out the Jeppsens had with the Kreugers here yesterday," Kate said. "Some of you were present for it." Her hand moved to her left temple to finger the scab left by the too-close-for-comfort graze. Six pairs of eyes followed the gesture. Old Sam chuckled, and Auntie Joy looked at him, scandalized. "Three people were hurt. But," she said, and paused for effect. "But," she repeated, "because we had emergency medical technicians in the bar, we had treatment ready to hand."

"There wasn't anybody hurt that bad," Demetri observed. He'd had too many near misses with wannabe Great White Hunters for a couple of minor bullet holes to upset him.

Auntie Joy transferred her scandalized look from Old Sam to Demetri.

"True," Kate said. "But I believe the result would have been the same even if someone had been badly hurt. The point is, we had trained people at the scene to deal with the situation." She paused again. "People trained in Ahtna, by the Ahtna Native Health Foundation."

She held up her right hand. "I caught myself a splinter the other day, a bad one. Figured I'd need a teta.n.u.s shot. When I was in Ahtna this morning, I stopped by the health clinic and talked hina Barnes into giving me a DPT booster. You all know Irina. She's the community health representative for the Ahtna Native a.s.sociation, trained in town by the Public Health Service in emergency medical care and standard immunization and testing procedures." Kate paused. "A useful person to have around. We could do with one of our own."

This time it was Billy who broke the silence. "What are you saying, Kate?"

178 Kate took a deep, steadying breath and spoke her first words in an advisory capacity to the Niniltna Native a.s.sociation board of directors.

"I'm saying it's time we started some kind of clinic of our own, right here in Niniltna. Half the villages in this state already have some kind of health care clinic. Why not ours? Raven Corporation has a nonprofit health branch that's been trying to get a foot in the door here for years."

Harvey said, face set in taut lines of disapproval, "We don't want any outsiders telling us how to live. We can take care of our own."

Kate thought again of the Bingleys, of her cousin Martin's lifelong struggle with alcohol and drugs, of Chick Noyukpuk's, of her parents'.

Of her mother's. Yeah, she thought, and we've done such a good job of it so far. She had to fight to keep from saying so out loud, and tried instead for a placating smile, but her facial muscles were unaccustomed to the effort and she gave it up. She did take a beat to rein in her temper, because abusing elders, especially in the presence of other elders, was no way to get anything accomplished in the village. On the other hand, she and tact were no more than pa.s.sing acquaintances.

Learn, then, Katya, a stern voice said.

She closed her eyes. The board, watching and waiting, saw a shadow pa.s.s across her face, the usually smooth skin acquire lines that aged it into a harsh mask that had seen too much of suffering and sorrow. A mask that recalled the presence among them of an older, wiser woman whose deliberate and resolute speech echoed in the rasping voice of her granddaughter.

Kate opened her eyes and the mask vanished.

"We could try circulating a pet.i.tion to go dry again," Auntie Joy said doubtfully.

Harvey rolled his eyes, but then Harvey liked a martini before dinner and a shot of Drambuie afterward. Niniltna had gone dry once, by a three-vote margin. Dry meant that no alcohol, not for retail sale or personal consumption or gin for Harvey's martini, was allowed on tribal land, none, zero, zilch, zip. The a.s.sociation had 179 hired shareholders to act as guards to check planes at the airstrip for incoming contraband, armed guards that were empowered to break up any intercepted s.h.i.+pments on the spot. It was a miracle that the Dry Act had pa.s.sed at all, a miracle aided by a sagacious decision to hold the election during the summer, when most of the fishers were out in Prince William Sound.

When the fleet got back into town, another pet.i.tion was circulated and another vote was taken, this time for the village to go damp, which meant alcohol couldn't be sold but it could be imported in small quant.i.ties for personal use. The second pet.i.tion pa.s.sed by a four-vote margin, having been held during the AFN convention, when all the dry votes were in Anchorage.

Everyone was afraid of what the circulation of a third pet.i.tion might bring. No one wanted any bars opening up again in the village; at least the Roadhouse was twenty-seven miles away and Bernie was a responsible bartender. He didn't serve drunks or pregnant women, and he forcibly removed truck, snow machine and D-9 keys from driving lushes and bedded them down in one of the cabins out back.

For a nominal fee, of course. Social work came a long way behind capitalism on Bernie's list. "Certainly we can try, Auntie," Kate said, "but since the last vote went against us, maybe we should try something else. Like a clinic," she added doggedly.

"What's a clinic got to do with Ben and Cindy Bingley?" Harvey said.

"Everything," Kate said. "If we fund a clinic, we can hire counselors.

If we have counselors on staff, locally accessible so our people don't have to go to town for treatment, which they won't anyway, we can tackle this problem at the roots. Other a.s.sociations and corporations have already done so. Look at Ahtna. They've got a full-time substance-abuse counselor wired into the AFN sobriety movement."

"Our people won't go to Anglo doctors," Harvey said.

Kate said patiently, "They will if the board members are the Anglo doctors' first patients. In the meantime, why don't we set 180 up some kind of additional funding to apprentice our own people to the staff of the clinic and, if they are so inclined, maybe pay to send them to medical school? They don't have to be doctors, they could be nurses, nurse-pract.i.tioners, physician's a.s.sistants, counselors. That way, eventually we would have our own people treating our own people."

"And," Auntie Joy added, "it might keep the kids home." All five of Auntie Joy's children had moved to Anchorage to pursue education and careers. Auntie Joy lived up the Glenn Highway from Anchorage, but it was a long, cold drive in the winter and she never saw enough of her grandchildren.

"Most of our money's tied up in capital construction or investments,"

Billy said, doubtful. "The sawmill at Chokosna. The salmon plant in Cordova. The market holdings Outside."

Auntie Vi glanced at Kate from the corner of her eye. "What about the dividend you're about to declare from the Chokosna logging profits? The shareholders aren't expecting that, so they wouldn't miss it."

Harvey bristled. Billy shook his head and said, "I don't know. The shareholders want money, and the a.s.sociation has given it to them from the first year it showed a profit. They've been happy with that for a long time, going on twelve years now."

"And what do you think they are going to say," Harvey said triumphantly, "when we cut back on the quarterly dividends to maintain this clinic?"

"And this will be something new," Demetri observed, as dispa.s.sionate as always, "and you know elders. They like to move slow. And they vote."

Oh, Kate thought, you mean like the six people at this table right now?

"Shareholders are used to going to Ahtna or Anchorage for health care,"

Harvey said, and smiled at Kate. "I haven't heard any complaints."

"But then," Kate said, with a smile as false as Harvey's, "you 181 weren't looking down the wrong end of Cindy's thirty-thirty today, were you, Harvey?" That was too close to impudence for her elders, and five different kinds of disapproval radiated in her direction. Again, Kate reined in her temper. "Where's Suzy Moonin going to get prenatal care for her and my cousin Martin's first baby? When Carl Stoff broke his leg, he had to be medivacked to Anchorage. When Eknaty Kvasnikoffs little brother-I forget his name-"

"Brian," Auntie Vi said.

"When Brian Kvasnikoff got appendicitis, he died because the weather was socked in and we couldn't fly him to a hospital in Anchorage. It's not just the substance-abuse treatment we need."

"The community is a small one, for the supporting of an entire clinic,"

Uemetri observed.

"It isn't if you include everyone," Old Sam said, "Natives and whites."

Everyone was taken aback, especially Kate, since she'd been planning on saying that herself.

"Pay for white care out of Native funds?" Billy said, shocked.

"Nope." Old Sam shook his head. "Charge everybody on a sliding scale, a percentage based on their annual income. If they don't have any annual income, they don't pay. If they have a little, they pay a little. If they have a lot, they pay a lot. Harvey-" he grinned his desiccated grin at Harvey, who didn't grin back "-and, say, Bernie Koslowski, now, they'd pay a lot. Ben and Cindy, they'd pay a little."

He surveyed their startled expressions with tolerant contempt. "Else how we going to do it? We all live here, all together, Native and white and Negro or black or African American or whatever the h.e.l.l Bobby Clark's calling himself this year. We're neighbors." He added, his sarcasm deliberately heavy-handed, "You all may be too young to remember the ructions we went through over ANCSA, but I'm not. Lot of resentment between the races because of it. Lot of it."

182 Billy opened his mouth and Old Sam raised his voice. "I don't want to hear it, Billy. It don't matter a hoot that we deserved rest.i.tution for getting our a.s.ses kicked around for three hundred years. We got money and land because we had brown skin and the people we'd been living next to for a century didn't. It's taken us twenty years and change to smooth over the bad feelings. No point in stirring it up all over again by starting a clinic-which idea by the way I like and will vote for-that only serves us Natives. Dumb." He met Harvey's glare with another of his patented nasty grins. "Dumb and divisive."

"Where'd you get the idea about payment, Uncle?" Demetri said. "I like it."

"Caught myself the clap the last time I was in town, over Fur Rondy in February," Old Sam said, and winked at Auntie Joy, who for once was not beaming. "Didn't want to stand in line at the Native hospital. Somebody told me about Family Planning. I went down there and they took real good care of me, and that's how they charged me. I was interested, so I asked." He grinned. "Got an awful cute little nurse behind the counter there, explained it all to me. Plan on visiting her again, next time I'm in town."

Kate's lip quivered at the fascinated way the rest of them sat staring at the wizened-up old coot. "Could the board maybe think about this for a while?" she said, sternly controlling the quiver. "Maybe you could meet next week and take a vote on whether to present it at the next shareholders' meeting."

Old Sam hooted. "Good G.o.d, girl, don't give them time to think. Make them vote, right here, tonight. If you don't, they'll talk it to death, just like Congress, and the d.a.m.n thing'll never get built. The a.s.sociation charter provides the board authorization for the creation of something like this, so we don't have to put it before the shareholders, which I for one don't think we should. I never noticed n.o.body in the Park ever voting for something just because it might actually be good for them."

After that comprehensive, scathing and unfortunately accurate a.s.sessment, no one could think of a thing to add, or they were too 183 scared of Old Sam to try. Old Sam moved for a vote, Auntie Joy seconded it, and the measure to fund a community health clinic out of funds from the Chokosna logging project pa.s.sed four to one, Harvey voting against, which was only to be expected.

Everyone looked as dazed as Kate felt as the meeting broke up. Auntie Vi, scribbling furiously in her notebook, said, "Who took over for Sarah Kompkoff as head of the local chapter of the sobriety movement, does anybody know?"

"Ethan Swensen," Auntie Joy said.

Surprised, Kate said, "Isn't he a little young?"

"He's twenty-two," Billy said. "He started drinking when he was nine.

He's been sober three years. Who better?"

He jerked his head, and Kate followed him across the room to the bar.

"What'll it be, Billy?" Bernie said.

"How about a beer?" Billy said.

"Coming right up. Kate, look what I've got." He reached beneath the counter and pulled out a six-pack of Diet Seven-Up. "George brought it in from Anchorage and dropped it off. Said he owed it to you."

"Bernie," Kate said, "I want you now."

"Kate," Bernie said, "I'm yours."

"You handled yourself pretty well over there," Billy said after Bernie had served them and moved on to another customer.

"You sandbagged me," she said. "You p.r.i.c.k."