Part 4 (1/2)
”The tribe elected you to the council yet?”
”No,” Kate said, ”and they won't, either.”
Jack detected the note of truculence in her voice and as a matter of self-preservation decided to change the subject. ”Speaking of Auntie Joy”
”What about her?”
”Didn't you tell me once she's got a fish camp up Amar-tuq Creek?”
”Not according to the federal government.”
”She still suing them?”
”Uh-huh.”
Jack grinned. ”What is it with the women in your family, you take a vow with Rabble Rousers, Inc., before you're allowed into p.u.b.erty or something?”
”Emaa trained us well.” Kate had meant the words to be a joke, but they were too true to be laughed off. ”Amartuq where you and Johnny want to go fis.h.i.+ng?”
He nodded. ”Do you think it'll be a problem?”
Her answer was oblique. ”The period opens at six a.m. The fishermen won't be delivering until ten or so. I'll give you a ride up the creek in the skiff.” She raised her head to look at him, a suggestion of a smile on her face. ”Be warned. She might let you fish.”
He eyed her expression. ”Just not with poles and lures?”
She grinned. ”I've always liked that about you, Morgan, you're very quick.”
”Not when it counts,” he said with a c.o.c.ky grin.
A smile spread across her face. ”No.”
He couldn't resist kissing her under that kind of provocation, and he had a good try at talking his way into her bunk, but she held out for dry land and privacy, and in the end he unrolled his sleeping pad and bag on the hatch cover and she ascended to her lonely bunk in the chart room.
It hadn't been a lonely bunk until she climbed into it with the knowledge that Jack Morgan was lying thirty feet away and one deck down.
”What the h.e.l.l,” Old Sam said the next morning. He was standing in the wheelhouse, coffee cup in hand, staring hard out the windows. Kate, zipping her jeans, padded forward in bare feet to look over his shoulder at the gray day outside.
It was six-thirty and the seven boats rafted with the Freya had yet to cast off. The other dozen or more boats had yet to up anchor. She reached around Old Sam and picked up the binoculars. There was a setnet out; through the gla.s.ses she could see white corks bobbing against dull green ripples close to sh.o.r.e. She moved around Old Sam and craned her neck. And there was one drifter, after all, a white drifter with no name lettered on the bow.
It wasn't that everyone had overslept; there were men and women on the deck of every boat within eyesight. They all seemed to be staring at the lone drifter, and from the collective set of jaw on the bay, not liking what they were seeing. Not at all.
Kate nipped the mug out of Old Sam's hand and took a deep swallow of coffee. ”Strike?”
”Looks like it, G.o.ddammit,” Old Sam said. ”Look at that.”
Kate's gaze followed his long arm. There was a convulsive ripple over the surface of the water, and several flas.h.i.+ng bodies leapt into the air at once, smacking back into the water with loud splashes. The corks on the only two nets out were bobbing energetically, and Kate could see a figure from the no-name drifter preparing to climb down into his skiff, a figure even at this distance identifiable by the width of his shoulders and the thickness of his chest. ”Cal Meany's still fis.h.i.+ng,” she observed.
”That setnetter, too,” Old Sam said, s.n.a.t.c.hing his coffee back.
”What do you want to bet it's Meany's site?”
”No bet.” Old Sam drained his cup. ”G.o.ddammit,” he said again. ”And we were just inches away from a decent season.”
”It's not over yet,” Kate said.
They looked at each other, thinking the same thing. When fishermen got this p.i.s.sed off, it might as well be.
Hard on the heels of that unsettling thought came a loud crack! over the water. They both instinctively ducked down.
Old Sam swore. ”What the h.e.l.l was that?”
”I don't know,” Kate said, beginning to rise to peer up over the console, and ducked back again when there was another loud crack! followed by a rapid rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat! and a long, loud whistle, followed by a distant explosion. There was a flare of color through a window. ”What the h.e.l.l?” She stood up, in time to see a shower of lavender stars fall from the sky, fading rapidly into oblivion. It had already been light out for five hours.
”I'll be G.o.ddammed,” Old Sam said, rising to stand next to her. ”I totally forgot.” Kate looked at him, and he whacked her across the shoulders. ”It's the Fourth of July, Kate! Independence Day, by G.o.d! Fireworks and hot dogs and beer and boring speeches by p.i.s.sant politicians and freedom and justice for all!”
Kate counted backwards in her mind. The opener had been two days before, and it had been July 2. Yes, indubitably, today was the Fourth of July.
”So what do we do now?”
Her question was punctuated by another pyromaniac getting an early start on the celebrations with a cherry bomb. A fountain of water rose up from a s.p.a.ce between two boats and smacked down again, liberally dousing both decks and the fishermen thereon. Old Sam waited until the cursing stopped before answering Kate's question. ”Have breakfast. I'm hungry.”
Jack made the toast while Kate scrambled eggs with cheese and onions and potatoes. ”So do we get to go fis.h.i.+ng, Dad?” Johnny said, b.u.t.tering his toast with a lavish hand and loading on a half a jar of strawberry preserves.
Jack raised an eyebrow at Kate, who shrugged. ”No reason why not. The commercial fishermen are on strike, but to my knowledge that's never stopped a sport fisherman.”
”Or a subsistence fisherman,” Old Sam said.
”Solidarity, anyone?” Jack said brightly. n.o.body laughed, n.o.body even smiled, and he reflected on the foolhardiness of joking in Alaska about something as serious as salmon.
”Doesn't look like anybody'11 be delivering fish anytime soon,” Kate said, ”so I'll take the two of you up Amartuq in the skiff after breakfast.” After an acid remark on the unreliability of wimmen and how a sure-enough boat jockey had only his fool self to blame if he hired one for a deckhand, Old Sam waved his a.s.sent.
”Is he mad?” Johnny said in a low voice as they cast off.
”Nah,” Kate said as she started the kicker and the skiff pulled away from the Freya. ”He's ecstatic. I'm living proof that all his worst suspicions about women in the workplace are true. The next time he gets together with Pete Petersen they can d.a.m.n my whole s.e.x without fear or favor.”
”If he feels that way,” Jack said, ”how come he even lets you on board?”
She grinned. ”If I didn't work summers on the Freya, I'd have to find another tender. Old Sam isn't about to turn me loose on the unsuspecting fis.h.i.+ng population.”
Probably, Jack thought, Old Sam wasn't about to allow the population to turn itself loose on an unsuspecting Kate. Probably Kate knew that, because nearly every summer Kate could be found weighing fish on the deck of the seventy-five-foot fish tender, at the beck and call of the crustiest, crankiest Alaskan old fart ever to wet a toe in the Gulf of Alaska. ”I thought he liked women. You're always telling me stories about Old Sam's girlfriends. That nurse in Anchorage, for instance.”
”He loves women,” Kate said. ”Just not on the deck of a boat, and in particular not on the deck of the Freya.”
”How does he like them?” Jack said, pretty sure he already knew the answer but unable to resist.
”Naked and stretched out on a bed. It's our proper place in the cosmic scheme of things.”
”I heard that.”