Shaman Pass Read Free Page A

for Malcolm Anirak’s pickup.
    “Oh, shit, I gotta keep those two apart.” Silver, moving fast for a man of his bulk, galloped out of the gate in the chain-link fence and reached the pickup just as Maiyumerak rapped his sign on the pickup’s roof over Anirak’s window. Active headed over to watch.
    “Free Uncle Frosty!” Maiyumerak shouted at the window of the pickup, which was so frosted over that Anirak could barely be seen inside as he pounded the horn and motioned for Silver to do something. Maiyumerak whacked the truck with his sign again. Anirak jumped out.
    Silver arrived just in time to step between them. He grabbed Maiyumerak’s sign in one hand, his collar in the other, and backed him up two steps. “Calvin, what did I tell you about this?” the police chief was saying as Active reached the fence.
    Anirak slammed the pickup door and examined the roof over the window. “He scratched my paint!” Anirak said.
    Kennelly panted up, stuffing the camera into his backpack and pulling out a tape recorder. He slung it over his shoulder on a strap, and held a microphone between Silver and Maiyumerak. Silver swatted the microphone aside. “Christ, Roger, how many times have I told you not to put that thing in my face?”
    Kennelly stuck it back into the space between the two, but farther from Silver. “This is a public facility. I have a right to record these activities,” he said. Silver sighed and looked tired. But he didn’t swat the microphone again.
    Kennelly was white, very young, very serious, and, Active feared, might be in Chukchi to save the Inupiat from Western civilization. He was devoid of humor, with one remarkable, near-brilliant exception: He had, as far as Active knew, coined the name “Uncle Frosty” for the unidentified Inupiat mummy the Smithsonian was shipping to Chukchi. At any rate, the first time Active had heard it was when Kennelly used it during a call-in show on Kay-Chuck. Kennelly had somehow tapped into the cheerful fatalism with which the Inupiat seemed to arm themselves against the perplexities of life, and the nickname had caught on instantly. From then on, the Smithsonian mummy was Uncle Frosty.
    Silver turned his attention back to Maiyumerak. “I explained this to you yesterday, Calvin. You can walk around and shout your slogan and wave your sign. But you can’t hit anything with it. If you do, I’ll have to put you in jail for interfering with these activities.”
    “I got my free speech right to express my opinion that Uncle Frosty should be left out on the tundra like them old Inupiat used to do.” Maiyumerak shook his sign. “That’s where them naluaqmiut from the government found him anyway.”
    “Yes, we’ve all read your letters to the editor and heard you calling me names on Kay-Chuck,” Anirak said. “But our tribal council has the right under the Indian Graves Act to receive Uncle Frosty’s remains and care for them as we see fit.” The executive director of the Chukchi Tribal Council was about forty, Active guessed, pudgy with black-frame glasses. He wore a shirt and tie even today, and only a windbreaker over them. Presumably Anirak was relying on the Ford’s heater for protection from the elements during this brief excursion out of the tribal offices. Active had talked to him a couple times about the handoff of Uncle Frosty, and had heard him being interviewed on the radio about the mummy’s impending arrival. Malcolm Anirak might have been born Inupiaq, Active had concluded, but he was now pure bureaucrat.
    “Care for them! Ha!” Maiyumerak raised his sign as if he would now whack Anirak over the head with it, caught a warning look from Silver, and instead thumped the butt of it on the snowy gravel beside the fence. “You’re gonna put Uncle Frosty in a glass case in your museum so them naluaqmiut tourists can look at him.”
    “That’s what my council directed me to do and that’s what I’m going to do. It’ll be a very tasteful