Whisper to the Blood Read Online Free PDF

patted the steering wheel and gave her a
sidelong grin. "We don't have to make a habit out of it, but today's kind
of a special day."
    She considered. "Where do you want to go?"
    There weren't a lot of places to hang out in the Park, and that was a fact.
"We could go watch the bears at the dump," he said.
    She smiled. "Been there, done that."
    "It's a nice day. We could hike up to the Lost Wife Mine."
    She shook her head. "I don't feel like sweating."
    "Riverside Cafe and the espresso drink of your choice?"
    She raised one shoulder and let it fall. She turned her head and opened her
eyes. One eyebrow might have raised, ever so slightly.
    "Want to go to Ahtna?" he said.
    Technically, he had his driver's license. He had his own truck in his own
name, bought and paid for with his own money, earned in a dozen odd jobs. He
had deckhanded with Kate for Old Sam Dementieff the previous summer. He'd
hauled, cut, and stacked wood for Auntie Balasha, Auntie Joy, Auntie Vi, and
Annie Mike. He'd swabbed floors at the Roadhouse and canned salmon for Demetri
Totemoff. He'd even helped Matt Grosdidier smoke silver salmon the month
before, although for that job he'd gotten paid in fish, not that he was complaining.
Neither was Kate. He'd even filed paperwork for Ranger Dan and Chopper Jim.
    And it wasn't like Kate had told him he couldn't go to Ahtna if he wanted
to. Of course, he hadn't asked her. Mostly because he had had a pretty good
idea of what her answer would be, especially if he was cutting school the
second week of the year, and using his brand-new truck to do it. And then of
course there was the little matter of his license being provisional until he
was eighteen. He could drive himself but he wasn't supposed to drive anyone
else underage. But who bothered with that in the Bush?
    He had a niggling feeling that Kate and Jim both might have an answer for
that. What they would like even less was their destination. Ahtna was a big
town, over three thousand in the town proper. Every student in Park schools had
been weaned on stories about the kids at Peratrovich High.
    Ahtna was the biggest town closest to the Park, bigger even than Cordova,
and you had to fly or take a boat to Cordova. Ahtna had a movie theater, a
courthouse, a DMV, a Safeway, and a Costco, making it the market town for the
Park. It had bars, and two liquor stores. The Park had Bernie's Roadhouse,
where owner, proprietor, and bartender Bernie Koslowski by virtue of also being
the Niniltna basketball coach knew the birthday of every kid in the Park. There
was no buying a drink at the Roadhouse if you were underage.
    Ahtna was a different story. It was easy, so they said, to get lost in the
crowd in Ahtna. It was easy to pass for legal. All you needed was a fake ID,
and sometimes you didn't even need that. The very mention of Ahtna's name
brought an intoxicating whiff of sin to any Niniltnan in his or her teens, and
a corresponding shiver of fear to their parents.
    But "Sure," Van said, before he could think better of his
invitation, and smiled at him again. They went to Ahtna forthwith.
    It wasn't an easy drive, a battered gravel road that had begun life as a
remnant of the railroad roadbed for the Kanuyaq River & Northern Railroad,
built to haul copper ore from the Kanuyaq copper mine to the seaport in
Cordova, there to be loaded onto bulk carriers and shipped to foundries
Outside. The copper ran out after thirty years and the mining company left,
pulling up the railroad tracks behind it. Unfortunately, they weren't quite as
conscientious about the railroad spikes that had held the tracks together.
    The road had not improved in the interim. Maintained by a state grader twice
a year, once in the spring after breakup and once in the fall before the first
snow, it was ridged and potholed, with shoulders crumbling to narrow a road
that was barely wide enough for one car to begin with. Overgrown in some places
with alder and stands of rusty brown spruce killed from the