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ISBN 0-425-15254-5
It’s June, and while picking morel mushrooms for cash buyers from Outside, Kate stumbles across a body, a right-wing religious sect and a conspiracy of silence.
About once a month I get a letter from, say, North Carolina taking me to task for slandering the god-fearing in print. Most of them add that I’m going straight to hell for my sins. My mother could have told them that when I was fourteen.
Of course, about once a month I also get a letter from, say, Seattle telling me all about some relative who was sucked in by a fanatical sect whose parents had to have him deprogrammed.
I don’t know which I find more depressing. Almost as depressing as the fact that the plot is based on three separate true incidents from the last twenty years of Alaskan history.
About the Dedication
for Dixie and Brian and Sandy and Gary
and especially for Rhonda Lynn
here’s to the Taylor Express
and the Malemute Saloon
and the motormouth in bunny boots
and the days we thought would never end
Dixie and Brian and Sandy and Gary and Rhonda and I all went to school together at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. We lived in Lathrop Dorm, which housed the basketball team in the basement, the hockey team on the first floor, the swim team on the second floor, the engineers on the third floor and women on the fourth floor. Yeah, it was coed, all right. Just barely.
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Book Excerpt
It was hot, too hot, so hot even the dust lay resistless beneath it when a car trundled down the road. She squinted around for a thermometer. There was a big white round one with large numbers that told her it was a sizzling 79 degrees Fahrenheit. Funny, it hadn’t felt that hot until she saw proof positive, but now the sweat trickled down her back in an unending stream, pooling at the base of her spine. “Give me twenty below anytime,” she muttered.
She leaned back, looking in vain for even the wisp of a cloud. The eagle was still roosting in his treetop, and he looked pissed, but then that is an eagle’s natural expression and Kate couldn’t put it down wholly to the weather. There was a rustle of undergrowth and she around to see a cow moose browsing in the alder thicket at the edge of the gravel lot. Two soft-nosed calves stood next to her on wobbly legs, nuzzling at mama’s belly. Kate wondered how anybody could be hungry at this temperature.
The tavern door opened and Monsieur, Madame and pauvre petit chien came out and saw mother and children at the same moment. There was a loud exclamation and a torrent of excited language, not one word in ten of which did Kate catch or need to. Mama moose looked around in mild bemusement, a strip of leaves hanging out of one side of her mouth. Neither calf, having reached Nirvana, paused in their busy suckling.
“Oooohhh!” Madame cooed, which meant the same thing in any language. She dropped the poodle and trotted off across the parking lot. The poodle yipped and tore after her.
Mutt’s ears went straight up. The dangers of heat exhaustion forgotten, Kate surged to her feet. “Hey! Wait! Don’t do that! DON’T!”
Monsieur gaped at the scene, Madame never turned around and the poodle, yipping hysterically, bounced in the rear on tiny legs, trying frantically to catch up. Kate and Mutt took off in hot pursuit but neither of them had gotten up enough speed to intercept by the time Madame reached the moose and stretched out a hand to pet one of the calves.
Madame stood five feet five inches tall in her two-inch heels and at best guess weighed in at 115 pounds wringing wet. Alces alces stands on average five and a half feet high at the shoulder, measures nine feet stem to stern and weighs in anywhere from 800 to 1,400 pounds on the hoof. Bull moose have big racks they use to bang on each with in rut that can weigh as much as 85 pounds all by themselves; because she lacks this rack the cow is not to be considered less dangerous, especially if she has two new-born calves fastened to the faucets. In Kate’s experience, no female of any species was to be trifled with fresh out of the delivery room. “For God’s sake madame HOLD IT!”
Mama moose watched that human hand reach out for baby, waited until the range was just right and let fly with her left rear hoof. It caught Madame squarely in the solar plexus. She flew backward, in what Kate was pleased to identify (from a different class lo those many years ago), as an arc, or any part of a curve that does not intersect itself. This arc intersected all right, with the ground, hard. Kate, reaching Madame, stooped and without ceremony grabbed one of her arms and hauled her to her feet. She hooked the arm around her waist and started moving as fast as she could toward the porch. Behind her she heard Mutt give one short, sharp warning bark. Monsieur, recovering from the shock that had kept him immobile with his mouth open, rushed forward and supported Madame on the other side. Together they got back to the porch and safely behind the railing. Kate dumped Madame, who had yet to inhale, on the bench and turned to look. Mama was back at the alder and baby was back at the faucet.