Jimmy Bluefeather: A Novel (13 page)

It was time to ask Ruby and Harald to leave. Keb dreaded it. It turned out he didn’t have to. Gracie came through the door with James and Little Mac. Gracie took one look at Ruby and said, “I know what you’re up to.”

“He’s my father, too.”

“Leave him alone, Ruby.” This was the old Gracie, back before her health turned bad, when she still had salt and vinegar in her. Keb had to hand it to Ruby. She didn’t argue. She and Harald got to their feet and moved to the door and put on their raincoats. There’d be hell to pay later.

James and Little Mac watched with saucer eyes. He was a high school sophomore then, she a freshman. They didn’t hold hands, but their shadows did.

“How’s practice?” Ruby asked James as she pulled on her boots.

“Good.”

“You going to play in the NBA someday?”

“I’d like to.”

She tousled his hair. “You will.” Without looking at Little Mac or her own sister, Ruby turned to Keb, “Thanks, Pops. I’ll check in on you next week. It’s nice to see this place so warm and dry. I guess Günter and Josh did a good job on the roof. Call if you need anything, okay?” She went out the door with Harald.

After a long silence, Gracie said to Keb, “She wants you to be a spokesman for PacAlaska. You know that, right?”

The old man looked at his hands.

“She’s using you, Pops. I can’t believe it. No, in fact—I can believe it. She’s shameless. She wants you to help her get into Crystal Bay, so PacAlaska can make a ton of money. Do you know she makes two hundred grand a year in salary and bonuses for being on the board? It’s obscene. Nobody needs that much money.”

James said, “She bought me my last pair of basketball shoes, you know? Really good ones.”

“I know, honey. She believes in you. I appreciate that.”

“Do you?”

“Of course I do.”

“She bought me other nice stuff, too.”

“I know.”

“Then why treat her the way you do?”

“James,” Little Mac said softly, touching his arm.

He pulled away but didn’t take his eyes off his mother. “How come every time I tell Aunt Ruby I’m going to play for the NBA, she says I will. But when I tell you the same thing all you ever say is ‘Do your homework, do your homework.’ That’s all you ever say.”

“James, I want you— ”

“You want, want, want. Why can’t you be more like Aunt Ruby and think about what other people want? Why can’t you believe in me the way she believes in me?”

“I’ve always believed in you.”

“Not like Aunt Ruby.”

“I want your dreams to be realistic; I want your dreams to come true. I don’t want you to be disappointed.”

“Disappointed? Are you serious?”

“Yes, I’m serious.”

“You’re too late for that, Mom. Can’t you see? You’re way too late.”

He grabbed Little Mac by the hand and stormed out the door.

KEB WOULD NEVER forget how Gracie turned to the wall and trembled, how he felt nailed to the chair, thinking: we build a perfect picture of what we want our children to be. And when that picture falls and shatters, what do we do? His sister Dot once told him: we get on our hands and knees and put the pieces back together, and call it parenting.

IS THIS WHERE I’m supposed to be?

Anne poured herself a cup of coffee and drifted in the fog. August had blown in as if it were October: cold, wet, determined, dour. June seemed years away, May a distant memory. Come September, new snow would whiten the mountains and signal the end of summer. “Termination dust,” Alaskans called it. Anne would be back at reserve headquarters, in Bartlett Cove, shackled to a computer, buried in data. Strange, how she had looked forward to office time earlier in summer, when the air was too cold, the water too deep, the distances too far. But now, after living day and night aboard the
Firn
, things had changed. She had changed. She loved the iron clouds and watchful trees, the million daily miracles seen and unseen. She loved anchoring up in quiet coves, fixing simple meals, using her polar fleece jacket for a pillow, sleeping without dark dreams. A while back she had awoken and realized the entire previous day had come and gone without her once thinking of Nancy.

Was it okay to forget?

The sea offered a calm reflection, a portrait, a mirror. On some days she could live above her sorrow, other days below. And what of the fog? Am I off Point Adolphus? She could have used her GPS, or radar. But what fun would that be? She could have stayed in Hawaii too.

She sipped her coffee and studied her map.

Immediately south of Crystal Bay, Point Adolphus was the northernmost landfall on Chichagof Island, where strong tides collided in a vortex of upwelling. Nutrient-rich bottom waters circulated up to mix with sun-bright surface waters in a rich seafood buffet of kelp, herring, sandlance, capelin, salmon, and krill that attracted eagles, seals, sea lions, orcas, and humpback whales. Only one percent of one percent of the world’s ocean waters upwelled like this. Humpbacks could feast on huge numbers of krill and forage fish, mostly herring.
“Great balls of herring,” Taylor called it.

Okay, where are they?

A deep quiet had settled down with the fog. Anne was tempted to write of a silence that stretched all the way to Asia. But it wasn’t so. A million birds were up early with a million things to say. Murrelets trilling and gulls chattering, silk-screened on a painted sea—mew gulls, Bonaparte’s gulls, glaucous-winged gulls, even black-legged kittiwakes seventy miles from their cliff nests near Margerie Glacier, at the north end of Crystal Bay. Anne heard another call: plaintive, lyrical, leaking through the fog in a way unfamiliar to her. A loon? She drifted east with an incoming tide. The chart showed no offshore rocks, a good thing, unless she found an uncharted one at great expense to her boat and career, if she had a career.

Kate Johnson’s words kept coming back to her: “You’re a seasonal employee with no retirement or benefits.” Ranger Ron had told her a dozen stories about luckless mariners who’d fetched up hard on rocks, some of them charted, others not. Be safe. Travel in twos.

Well, she’d take her chances. She liked being alone with her radio off, at least for a while, not lost but not found either, the business card from Director Kate and the satellite phone from Superintendent Paul deep in her pack with the stale crackers and smelly socks. Her patrol partner, Taylor, had found a sexy summertime boyfriend in Strawberry Flats, the small town next to Crystal Bay, and had asked Anne to patrol solo for a while. Find those whales, said Taylor. Make them sing. Bribe them if you have to. Taylor would join her on the next patrol, or the one after that. And safety? “Can’t have too much safety,” Taylor would say with sarcasm. “One day we’ll seal ourselves in our homes and bubble-wrap our kids.”

Folded over her map, Anne traced the north shore of Chichagof Island from its western extreme where it opened into the Gulf of Alaska, past the little fishing village of Elfin Cove to Point Adolphus, and east to Port Thomas and the town of Jinkaat. The map’s creased and worn texture gave her comfort.

She had always loved maps.

She lowered the hydrophone, switched it on, and heard nothing but soft static. After half an hour she turned it off. A foghorn sounded at a distance, probably a cruise ship entering Crystal Bay, all those passengers wanting a sunny day. Even the wealthy can’t bribe the weather. This fog had attitude, a low-pressure tenacity that would keep planes down for days, strand hundreds of travelers, force locals to ask why they lived here, and show no interest in their answer. Not many people went out in fog like this.

“HEY,” a gruff voice yelled from nowhere, “watch your drift there.”

Anne jumped to her feet. Dead ahead a skiff emerged from the fog with two young men, fishing poles in their hands, floating as if in a dream. Their boat pulled hard on an anchor line and was about to get smacked by a larger boat—her boat, a white, gleaming Bertram. A federal government boat. She turned the ignition and the
Firn
rumbled to life. She put the twin engines in reverse and backed away, swinging her stern to starboard. She could see them now, shaking their heads and talking as she wheeled the
Firn
around and approached them from their downside-drift. She needed to apologize.

“You got radar on that boat?” one man yelled as she drew near.

“Yep.”

“Then use it. You almost ran us down.”

“Ran you down? I was adrift at one knot.”

“More like three or four knots if you ask me.” He turned to the other guy. “What do you think?”

“Five knots, I’d say.”

“Maybe ten knots,” the first man said.

Yeah, right. Forget the apology
. Anne throttled forward to hold her bow in the current, beam-to-beam with these two yahoos in their skiff, their anchor line played out with lots of scope. She had a good view of them now. Men? No, boys pretending to be men, thinking they were funny. Untouched by the wet and cold, the bigger one wore a T-shirt and jeans and a ball cap backwards over thick black hair. He had a darkness about his mouth and eyes. He wore a brace on one knee, and moved as if determined that his bum leg wouldn’t slow him down. The other guy was spider-thin but tough, made of sinew and scars. He wore a Lakers jersey and looked young and old at the same time. What caught her most about the boy with the bum leg were his offset eyes, one a little higher than the other. Searching eyes.
Just goes to show, everybody is looking for something
.

“Pretty quiet out here,” she said, as they reeled in their fishing lines.

“It was,” answered the boy with the bum leg.

She could have asked what they were fishing for, and how it was going, but she didn’t. Fishermen liked their secrets. She knew this from a summer on the Oregon Coast where she’d worked in a marine research lab. Ask any troller, gillnetter, or seine skipper “How’s fishing?” and he’ll likely say, “It’s okay,” or, “Getting by,” or, “Could be better.” Even if it’s the best year he’s ever had, he’ll say, “Could be better.” Anne knew. Don’t ask. Find something else to talk about. “You a Lakers fan?” she said to the smaller guy.

“Yep.”

“Not the Supersonics?”

“The Supersonics moved to Oklahoma.”

“When did that happen?”

“Five years ago or so.”

“Maybe ten,” said Bum Leg. “Or twenty.”

“The Oklahoma Supersonics,” Anne said contemplatively. “That doesn’t sound right.”

“It’s the Oklahoma City Thunder,” said the smaller guy.

“So, you a Thunder fan?”

“Nope.”

“Ah,” Anne nodded and wondered, are these guys Tlingit? “Are you guys from around here?”

“I guess,” Bum Leg answered. He asked his friend, “We from around here?”

“I guess.”

He looked back at her. “I guess we’re from around here. How about you?” Anne was thinking of a response when he added, “You know you’ve got a line over the side?”

Shit. The hydrophone cable. To avoid hitting the skiff Anne had steered a tight turn and forgotten the cable over the side. She put the
Firn
in neutral and left the controls. The minute she did, she began to drift. She hauled in the cable and coiled it on the deck. “It’s a hydrophone,” she said, as she powered forward and came back alongside.

“A hydrophone,” Bum Leg said. “What for?”

“To listen to whales.”

“You from Crystal Bay, the marine reserve?”

“Yep.”

“What are you doing here at Point Adolphus, if you’re Marine Reserve?”

“Looking for whales.”

“You’re not a ranger?”

“Some days I’m a ranger, other days I’m not. Do I look like a ranger?”

“A little.”

“How?”

“You got a fancy-pants government boat.”

“Lots of people have fancy boats and they’re not rangers. I’m a biologist.”

“You got a uniform?”

“Yeah, but I don’t always wear it.”

“How come?”

“Because I’m a biologist first, a ranger second. I don’t like uniforms.”

“You carry a gun?”

“Sometimes. How about you?”

“All the time. There are sea monsters out here, you know.” He grinned.

“I didn’t know that.”

“You will.”

“I’m just looking for humpback whales.”

“But you work for the reserve. The reserve is over there.” He pointed north.

“But the whales are here,” she said. “They don’t recognize reserve boundaries.”

NEITHER DO WE, James thought.

This woman was a spark plug, a real lynx. No little flute of a voice. No makeup or neatly combed hair. She covered her deck with swiftness and ease, a can-do gal who’d come out of the fog like a vapor but then got behind the wheel to handle her boat better than most men, a nice touch. And she didn’t ask, “How’s fishing?” James tried to look at her without staring. No easy thing; she sat with her arm out the window, like what’s-her-face in
Thelma and Louise
, the chick who didn’t take shit from any man. “Where’d you learn to drive a boat like that?” James asked her.

“On the water.”

“On the ocean, I’ll bet.”

“Same ocean as you got here.”

“Yeah? Where?”

“Hawaii.”

“They got lots of ocean there?”

“Enough.”

“Any glaciers?”

“Just volcanoes.”

“Any wolves?”

“Just dogs. Lots of dogs.”

“How about bears?”

“Just whales.”

“We got whales here, too.”

“I know. That’s why I’m here.”

“What’s a firn?” Hugh asked. He was studying the name on the bow. Studying everything.

“It’s snow that’s partly hardened into glacial ice.”

“Any snow in Hawaii?” James asked.

“Nope, just lava.”

“So you chase whales in Hawaii?”

“I don’t chase them. I study them. I listen.”

“And now you’re chasing them here?”

She looked away from James, and said to Hugh, “Actually, there is snow in Hawaii, on the tallest volcanoes on the Big Island and Maui.”

“And you listen to the whales with that thingamajig of yours?” James asked.

“It’s a hydrophone.”

“You record them?”

“I try.”

“You ever heard them sing?”