A Fine and Bitter Snow

A Fine and Bitter Snow

Dana Stabenow

1

Mutt leapt to the seat of the snow machine as Kate thumbed the throttle and together they roared twenty-five miles over unplowed road to Niniltna, four miles past the village to the ghost town of Kanuyaq, and up the rutted, icy path to the Step. There, Kate dismounted, postholed through the snow to the door of the Park Service's headquarters, marched down the hall to Dan O'Brian's office, walked in without knocking, sat down without invitation, and said, "Now then. Would you mind repeating to me exactly what you told Ethan Int-Hout this morning?"

"Hi, Kate," Dan said, the startled look fading from his face. "Nice to see you, too."

Hard on Kate's heels, Mutt barked, one syllable, short, sharp, demanding. "All right already, nice to see you, too." He pulled open a drawer, extracted a slice of homemade moose jerky, and tossed it. Mutt caught it on the fly, and lay down, taking up most of the rest of the square feet of Dan's office, looking marginally appeased.

Kate was anything but. "Well?"

"I'm too green for them, Kate."

Kate's spine was very straight and very stiff. "Too green for whom, exactly?"

"The new administration." Dan waved a hand at the map of Alaska on the wall behind him. "They want to drill in ANWR. I'm on record as not thinking it's the best idea the federal government has ever had, and now everyone's mad at me, from City Hall in Kaktovik to the Department of the Interior in Washington, D.C. You should see some of the E-mails I've been getting. Like to melt down the computer." He ran a hand through a thick thatch of stiff red hair that was beginning to recede at his temples, then rubbed both hands over a square face with open blue eyes and a lot of freckles that refused to fade. "I've never wanted to be anything but what I am, a park ranger in Alaska. But hell, I don't know. The secretary won't even listen to her own employees. They want to drill. And they're looking at Iqaluk, too."

"I beg your pardon?" Her voice had gone soft, marred only by the growling sound caused by the scar on her throat. Mutt stopped chewing and pricked up her very tall gray ears and fixed Kate with wide yellow eyes.

He flapped a hand. "Nothing to get worried about, at least not yet."

"I'm always worried about Iqaluk," Kate said.

"I know."

"So you've been fired?"

He made a wry mouth. "Not exactly. Invited to take early retirement is more like it." He sighed, and said again, "I don't know, Kate. At least Clinton and Gore had a clue about the environment, or pretended they did. This guy, Jesus." He thrust his chair back and stood up to wander over to the window to stare at the snow piled up to the top of the frame. "I don't know," he said, turning back. "Maybe it's time. I don't know that I can work with these people for four years, and maybe eight. I've got twenty-three years in. And hell, maybe they're right. Maybe it's time for a change of management. Not to mention point of view, because I sure as shit am out of fashion this year. Maybe I do need to move on, buy myself a little cabin on a couple acres, find me one of your cousins, settle in, settle down."