Jimmy Bluefeather: A Novel (11 page)

A bald eagle landed in a nearby spruce and made a piercing cry. Eagles mate for life. If one dies, do they mourn for life? James caught himself wanting to cry or scream. What was it Gramps said? It takes a while to understand that there is something out there bigger than you, something greater than what you’ve designed for yourself.

Aunt Ruby had spoken to him about his “new future.” Yes, he would never play for the NBA, but he could make a big difference in a more important game, help her one day take back what was hers, his, theirs.

The feather stirred.

James looked about for the wind, as if it had a face. A whale surfaced nearby, its blow so percussive it startled him. Another whale surfaced, then two. Humpbacks. A minute ago there were none. Now there were—what? Four . . . five . . . six? Where had they come from? They blew again and showed their flukes. Minutes passed. In the absence of his own breathing, James heard the strangest thing. Again, his rifle felt heavy, and warmer than before. Cold metal burning. He set it on the ground and got to his feet, certain his ears were playing tricks. He listened with fierce intensity, trying to purge all noise from his mind. He opened his mouth, thinking it would help, but thinking itself was a kind of noise. A low melody arose, and for a moment James was the only human alive. What he heard was singing.

Whales singing.

SIXTY MILES TO the north, Anne dropped anchor and Kate Johnson announced that the two of them, she and Anne, would row ashore in a small punt while everybody else stayed on the
Firn
.

Paul Beals frowned.

“It’s okay, Paul,” Kate said with a rueful grin, “we’ll send up smoke if we get lost or attacked.”

Anne pulled on the oars and watched Paul watch them as a father would watch his daughters going off on their first date with their hemlines too high and their necklines too low. A Mormon, he had a passel of kids, six or seven, most of them grown and making kids of their own, a sea of all-American faces with striking blue eyes and gossamer hair, a tribute to Genesis from the Old Testament that we humans be fruit flies and multiply. Near as Anne could tell, Paul differed from many Mormons. He had read Aldo Leopold and concluded that nature wasn’t a commodity humans owned, it was a community we belonged to. Anne liked and respected him, and felt sorry to see him looking so forlorn as she rowed away with the former astronaut and first director of the National Marine Reserve Service.

“He’ll be fine,” Kate said. “He’s the one who needs to talk to those lawyers, not me. Besides, your friend Taylor looks like she can handle those four.”

The oars dipped in and out of quiet water. Small icebergs tapped the hull. Black-legged kittiwakes called from their cliff nests near the tidewater face of Margerie Glacier, a blue-white river of ice flowing into the sea. “Their eggs are elliptical,” Anne said of the kittiwakes. “That way they roll in tight circles and not off the ledges.”

Kate acknowledged this with rich, liquid eyes. She leaned back, elbows on the gunwale. The punt had less than a foot of freeboard, yet she showed no concern.
Small in size only, she seemed to embrace the day in a way that made everything else large. She reached over to trail her fingers in the cold water. Her golden gray hair, previously pulled back in a tight knot, fell across her face. She picked up a piece of ice, studied it and let it go. Anne kept pulling. “You said you knew this old man canoe carver in Jinkaat,” Kate said. “How well?”

The sun had come out. The air felt kind.

“Not well. He saved my life when he pulled me out of the ocean twenty years ago. A storm capsized my boat, off Shelter Island, near Auke Bay.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes . . . my sister, Nancy, was with me. She didn’t make it; she hit her head and drowned. I remember him pulling her out of the water with incredible strength, trying to save her, revive her, get her to breathe again. I remember his hands, his amazing hands.”

“Oh my—”

“I doubt he remembers me.”

“You’ve not reconnected with him?”

“No.”

“He might not remember
you
, but I’m sure he’d remember the incident, and he’d be happy to see you again, see how you’re doing.”

“I’ve lived in Hawaii for the last twelve years. I got my master’s degree there in marine biology at the Manoa Campus in Honolulu, with a focus on whale acoustics. I did my fieldwork in the Pailolo and Auau channels between the islands of Maui, Lanai, and Molokai. This is my first summer back home, in Alaska.”

“So Alaska is home?”

“I think so.”

“How’s it feel?”

“Cold.”

“I’m sorry about your sister.”

“Yes . . . me too, thank you.”

“Whale acoustics, what’s that?”

“Whales vocalizing, singing. They do it in Hawaii, during courtship, males mostly, and we think they do it here, too, in Alaska, but not as often.”

“You do seem at home here, I have to say.”

“Is that a compliment?”

“Take it as you wish. It warms my heart to see young, skilled, dedicated women like you and your friend Taylor in the NMRS.”

“We’re not that young.”
Or dedicated. Maui Wowie
.

“You know what I mean.”

“Yes, I know what you mean.”

THE LITTLE PUNT slid onto shore and Anne rested the oars. Kate asked, “How well do you know the Tlingit people in Jinkaat?”

“Not well.”

Kate’s expression said this wasn’t the answer she wanted.

“I know their culture is matrilineal,” Anne added.

“Meaning?”

“In the past, every Tlingit was born into the moiety of his mother, but had to marry into another moiety. A raven married an eagle, an eagle married a raven. But I’m not sure it’s still that way, since Jinkaat has a lot of Norwegians and Germans.”

Kate shook her head. “I want to know how the Jinkaat Tlingits see their relationship to Crystal Bay.”

“From what I’ve heard, many feel displaced, and want more time in the bay to collect gull eggs and hunt seals and live like their ancestors did, when Crystal Bay was their homeland, their grocery store.”

“But PacAlaska is a corporate approach.”

“Yes, and I think that worries many Jinkaat Tlingits.”

“So while many want a greater presence in the bay, only some support the PacAlaska lawsuit?”

“I think so, yes. They’re relieved that Crystal Bay is a marine reserve, and protected.”

“Are they willing to say so publicly?”

“You’re asking the wrong person. This is my first summer back here. I’ve only been to Jinkaat a couple times to land at the airport, the last time in a single-engine Piper Cherokee before going on to Juneau. That’s when I last saw Old Keb Wisting, in May, when he got on our Marine Reserve Service plane after his grandson hurt his leg.”

“The Marine Reserve Service gave him a ride into Juneau?”

“Yes. It was Paul’s idea.”

Anne could see Kate processing this, figuring out how to make it work to her advantage. Kate said, “Paul tells me you spend a lot of time on the water.”

“Looking for whales.”

“Looking. Seeing. Developing your vision.”

It was true. Anne had sharp eyes.

“Do you plan on making a career in the federal government?”

“I don’t know. I’m still figuring it out. I’ve thought about starting a nonprofit someday, for community development. I also love whale research.”

“I ask because you’re a seasonal employee with no retirement or benefits. You have little to lose by telling me the hard honesty of what you see and think and know.”

“About what?”

“Anything. Your job, your boss, the PacAlaska jurisdiction case, the people of Jinkaat who consider Crystal Bay their homeland. Whatever you feel free to tell me, I’ll hold in strict confidence. You have my word.”

Paul Beals is a nice guy but has the courage of a rabbit. I hate safety meetings and love mango salsa
. . . . “Other than Keb Wisting, who’s mostly Norwegian, I’ve never spent much time with a Tlingit from Jinkaat.”

“Here’s my concern: as this PacAlaska case heats up, Tlingits in Jinkaat could get excited and start staging press events in the bay, bring media attention that could affect the final court ruling. However this lawsuit goes, it could set case law for other marine reserves and ocean conservation policy. It could weaken our jurisdiction everywhere.”

Everywhere?
The last time Anne checked, the US had seven marine reserves: two in Florida, two in Hawaii, and one each in California, Maine, and Alaska. No more. The US Marine Reserve System was young and small, with Kate Johnson handpicked by the president, like an apple. “They want their ancient homeland back,” Anne said. “Every summer the NMRS brings the Jinkaat schoolkids into Crystal Bay on a tour boat, so they can see and learn and develop their own relationship with the bay.”

“Yes, I support it 100 percent. But the Jinkaat Tlingits are part of a large corporation now. They’ve made their choice. They can’t have it both ways.”

Can’t they?
Anne decided she liked Kate Johnson better back on the
Firn
eating lunch, when she had pita bread in her mouth and hummus on her hands and laughed at Taylor’s wit.

Kate climbed out of the punt, stood on her toes, and stretched. Anne could hear distant streams tumbling off mountains, a thousand voices speaking of ice melting into water, rock pulverized into silt, habitats coming alive, rebirth and change, everything on its way to becoming something else.

Kate said softly, almost to herself, “I became a grandmother two months ago. It changes everything, you know, motherhood. Are you—”

“No. I was engaged once, but he loved sports more than he loved me.”

“When I was in the space shuttle, my own hand was larger than the world we call home. I was traveling at five miles per second, and could cover
Africa with my finger.” She studied the mountains with her steady eyes. “It changed my life.”

“I think the sea is the same,” Anne said. “Go deep enough and the blue turns to black, right? It’s not outer space, it’s inner space.”

“Like the human heart,” Kate said with a rueful smile.

Yes, well, the human heart, forever inexperienced
. Anne remembered her stepfather, a plum-faced man who mocked her mom and fished off the pier and pitched cigarette butts into the sea. “You, a scientist?” he had said to Anne when she came home from first grade after learning about Rachel Carson and announcing what she’d be one day. “Where’d you get a crazy idea like that?” It’s a brutal thing to discover that some men should never be fathers, and yours is one. She thought about Nancy, beautiful Nancy, who could get people to tell her the truth even when they lied to themselves.

“I hate him,” Anne had whispered late one night in their bedroom.

Nancy, three years older than Anne, whispered back, “Just because his dreams didn’t come true doesn’t mean yours don’t have to.”

KATE REACHED INTO her pocket and extended a hand. “This is my card. Do you have a cell phone?”

“Yes, but it doesn’t always work in parts of the bay.”

“Do you have a satellite phone?”

“No.”

“Get one. Paul tells me you’re working the lower bay this summer, out into Icy Strait, off Point Adolphus.”

“If that’s where the whales are, I’m there too.”

“That’s where the Jinkaat boats will be. If you see anything suspicious, I want you to call Paul. If you can’t reach him, call me. Don’t worry about waking me, with the four-hour time difference between here and Washington. I’d like to hear from you.”

“I’ve got VHF radio contact with Ron at reserve headquarters, in Bartlett Cove. He’s my immediate supervisor.”

“I know. Feel free to call me as well.”

Anne stared at her.

“Are you comfortable with that?”

“I’m a whale biologist, not a patrol ranger.”

“You’re an employee of the US National Marine Reserve Service. Paul tells me you have a law enforcement commission.”

“I do. Point Adolphus isn’t in the reserve, you know?”

“But the waters around it are administered by the National Marine Fisheries Service, our sister agency. You’ve got jurisdiction there.”

Was this true?

“We need you to be our eyes and ears, Anne. That’s all I’m asking. Be our eyes. Report everything you see. You can still do your whale work.”

Anne told Kate what she wanted to hear. She would be her eyes and ears and call by VHF radio, cell phone, or satellite phone. What she didn’t tell her was that long ago native Hawaiians used a member of their tribe—a wise old woman called a
wahanui
—to protect their identity by divining the biases of outsiders who came looking for knowledge and telling them exactly what they wanted to hear. She would confirm their prejudices and make them think they knew everything, while in fact they knew nothing, and send them packing as ill-informed as when they arrived. Another thing Anne didn’t tell Kate was a story she’d heard years ago about an astronaut and an anthropologist who visited a remote island tribe. When the anthropologist told the tribe that his colleague had been to the moon, an old shaman was brought forward, who said that she too had been to the moon, many times.

Anne was thinking that no science is so complete or poem so perfect that one cannot benefit from the other. A cold wind brushed her neck, a breath off the glacier. She heard Kate announce that she was going to take a short walk. Would Anne be so good as to wait with the punt? A crazy impulse hit Anne, to pull out the Maui Wowie and smoke it in front of the Grandmother Astronaut. Kiss it all good-bye. No retirement. No benefits. Little to lose. She pulled out her journal instead, and sat with her back against a rock.

Remember when we talked all night

and rounded the rounded shore?

the sky was cold, and old

and young, too

Did I say that,

or did you?

Frozen stars, melting sun

Watching the rivers run

We finally slept

when morning came

everything new, ancient, patient,

the rounded shore the same.

KATE RETURNED, BREATHLESS with an idea. “Paul is scheduled to speak in Jinkaat next week. It could be challenging. I’m going to change my plans and join him. My celebrity status can be a plus in times like these. I’ll have Victor join us. That way we can be a triumvirate of sorts, a team, to explain our case in Crystal Bay. What do you think?”