"Won't pass," Auntie Vi said.
"Yes, it will, Auntie," Kate said. "If I have to convince every shareholder one at a time, baby to elder, including every one of you, yes, it will."
They looked to a woman spitting mad, even Auntie Joy. Kate grinned at them, although it was an expression lacking any real amusement. "You wanted me to be on the board. You wanted me to be chair. Be careful what you wish for, Aunties. You might just get it."
She went to the door and paused for her parting shot. "Oh, and on a personal note."
She looked at Auntie Balasha. "I'm not moving into town, Auntie. I like my homestead, and I've got all the company I want or need. I don't want to be any closer to family. I don't want to be any closer to the other shareholders, or to the Association office. I'm right where I want to be, and I'm going to stay there."
She looked at Auntie Edna and her eyes hardened. "My personal life is my own affair, Auntie. Don't you tell me who I can or can't have a relationship with ever again."
The other three aunties looked at Auntie Edna in surprise. Kate looked at Auntie Vi. "I'm not going to be the next Association chair for life, Auntie. In case, you know, you didn't hear me the first sixteen times."
Lastly, she looked at Auntie Joy. "And thanks for being the only auntie who didn't try to rearrange my life, Auntie Joy. I appreciate it." She left.
As she was leaving the gym she felt someone touch her sleeve, and turned to see Harvey Meganack. "It wasn't a landslide, Kate," he said. "You only won by four votes. Next time it'll be different."
"Yeah," she said, "next time I won't be running."
He snorted his disbelief and walked away.
Why was it so difficult for anyone to believe that she didn't want it, any of it, not the power, not the glory, not the responsibility, none of it?
She thought again of Tikani vanishing slowly down the years, its patriarch starving to death, its youth wasted from a lack of occupation, sinking into a life of poverty and despair. Too many villages were going the same way. If something didn't change, if someone didn't bring in more jobs to the Park, they would vanish, too.
Niniltna could be on that list one day.
She turned and looked at the crowded room, the chairs shoved against the walls, filled with people gossiping with neighbors over plates of fry bread and smoked fish and mac and cheese, exchanging family news at the laden tables when they went back for seconds. Elly Aguilar, Auntie Edna's granddaughter, was sitting next to Martin Shugak, her belly pushing out almost to her knees. She smiled shyly in answer to a question Martin asked, and took his hand and put it on her belly. A second later he jumped, and they both laughed.
Kate shook her head. Every now and then Martin made her think that there might be more than a loser residing in that body after all.
The basketballs were out, a line of kids from eight to eighty doing layups, jumping, hooking them in, bouncing them off the backboard, and then by some unspoken osmosis the layup line re-formed in the key and it was free throws. Free throws win ball games. One of Coach Bernie Koslowski's immutable laws.
A little girl in a pink kuspuk skittered out of the crowd and careened into Kate's legs with such force that she bounced back and landed on her fanny on the floor. She looked up, eyes wide, too surprised to cry. Kate laughed and tossed the girl up into her arms. "Hey," she said, softly chiding. "Watch where you're going, you could hurt somebody."
The little girl stared at her wide-eyed, one finger in her mouth, a little snot leaking out of her nose, before wriggling free and careening off in a different direction.
Kate opened the door and went outside.
Not on her watch.
TWENTY-NINE
That night the Roadhouse was packed to the rafters. Everyone was back in their accustomed places, Old Sam with the other old farts at the table beneath the television, the aunties working on the new quilt at the round table in the corner, Bernie behind the bar. "I hear you kicked Association ass today, Kate," he said with a faint approximation of his old self.
"Not kicked ass, Bernie," she said, and gave it some thought. "Gently but firmly encouraged the shareholders to walk in the proper direction. Me and Robert's Rules of Order." Next to her, Jim grinned.
"What'll it be?" Bernie said, and they ordered all around. After a bit a couple of guys got out the beater guitars Bernie kept in the back and started singing from the Beatles' songbook, and a while later the belly dancers showed up, and from the jukebox Jimmy Buffett started threatening to go to Mexico again. Demetri stepped up next to Kate, gave her his reserved smile, and ordered a beer. Harvey Meganack was sitting at a table with Mandy and Chick, and from the nauseous expression Mandy had to repress from time to time Kate gathered that he was holding forth with his usual know-it-all swagger to GHRI's new representative to the Park. Be careful what you wish for, indeed.
"True what I heard?" Jim said, following her gaze. "You're going to make him boss of that mine advisory panel you're putting together?"
Kate toasted Harvey with her Diet 7UP. Taken aback, he was a beat late in returning the salute, but return it he did. "Keep your friends close," she said, "and your enemies closer."
"You'll have to watch him."
"I always do. What do we hear about Gallagher?"
"Greenbaugh."
"Whatever."
"He's lawyered up."
"Who?"
"Frank Rickard."
Kate winced. "Is Rickard the biggest asshole magnet in the state, or what?"
Jim shrugged. "If Alaska fails to convict on the Macleod murder, Idaho 's drooling at the prospect of indicting him on the truck stop homicides."
"Will Johnny have to testify?"
"Maybe." Jim raised his beer. "Here's hoping nobody else shows up from his hitch north, okay?"
"I heard that." They clinked glasses.
At the end of the bar Nick Waterbury sat hunched over his beer, a full one waiting to one side, no Eve in sight. "Poor bastard," she said.
She looked past him at the aunties, receiving obeisances from a train of Park rats on their way home or to Ahtna from that day's meeting. "Howie isn't here tonight," she said. "He wasn't at the shareholders meeting today, either."
"Even Howie's smart enough to figure it'd be a good idea to stay out of the aunties' way for a while," Jim said dryly.
She looked back at Nick. At that same moment he raised his head and met her eyes, and she was struck by the similarity she saw between him and Al Sheldon. They were nothing alike physically, one tall, the other short, one dark, the other fair, one white, the other Native. They reminded her of Bernie, come to think of it. The loss of a child told the same story on all three faces in sunken eyes, drawn complexion, the agony of loss, the absence of hope.
She gasped. "Jesus Christ," she said.
"What?" Jim said. He looked from Kate to Nick and back to Kate. "Kate?"
They borrowed one of Bernie's cabins out back. Nick followed them there without protest. When asked the direct question, he confessed without surprise, in a flat monotone that had all the life leached out of it, a monotone that reminded Kate only too painfully of the interview with Al Sheldon.
Yes, he'd been at the post office that morning. Along with everyone else waiting for their mail he'd heard that Louis Deem was going to go free.
He'd sat in his pickup down the street from the trooper post, and when Louis Deem walked out and started up the road to the Step on foot, Nick had taken his shotgun and followed.
"I stayed far enough behind so he wouldn't hear me," Nick said. "When we were a couple of miles out of town, I caught up with him. And I shot him."
He didn't look at either of them as he sat there, big, gnarled hands hanging between his knees. He got up and followed Jim obediently out to Nick's truck and watched silently as Jim took his shotgun from the rack in the back window.