Jimmy Bluefeather: A Novel (16 page)

“James,” Keb said with a shake to his shoulder. “James, wake up. There’s something wrong.”

The boy startled awake and sat up. “What?”

“There’s something wrong.”

“What, Gramps?”

On the table next to the sofa Old Keb saw James’s beaded necklace with the raven feather. He hadn’t touched it in weeks. James had needed it more than him. Picking it up, he said, “We have to go.”

“Go? Go where?”

“We have to go. Go now.”

“Okay, okay.” James pulled on his shirt and pants while Keb moved across the living room. He struggled with the front door lock. Raven was jumping up and down in his mind, flapping its wings. “Hurry, hurry,” it said, “follow me, hurry. . . .”

The lock opened and Keb shuffled out onto the front deck and worked his way down the wooden stairs. The lights of the boat harbor shone across mirror water. Beyond, he could see the faint outline of Chichagof Island against the dawn. In the distance, a dog barked. No traffic. No sign of anybody up and about. James appeared at his side. “What is it, Gramps?”

They stood in the road for a minute. “Listen,” Keb said, “that’s Steve barking.”

He began to walk down the harbor road toward his end of town, past Mitch’s Garage and Nystad’s Mercantile. Not his usual shuffle. He walked with such vigor and determination that his grandson had to hop-step to keep up, his knee in a brace. Again, Keb stopped and listened. The barking was more distinct.

“Gramps, look,” James said, pointing. On the skyline, a yellow-orange glow threw itself against heavy clouds. Large spruce and hemlock stood
silhouetted, as if last night’s bonfire were still ablaze. But this was something else.

“You got one of those little phones?” Keb asked James.

“Not with me.”

“Go back to Mitch’s. Get help. Call emergency. Tell them my shed is on fire.”

James stared at him.

“Go,” Keb said.

“What about you?”

“I’m okay. Go.”

James turned and hop-stepped as fast as he could back to Mitch’s house.

Keb walked on, striding on adrenaline that he would have thought his body stopped producing a thousand years ago. He hadn’t felt this strong in centuries. He reached the hog-backed road and put his legs into low gear, the feather firm in his grasp. A couple minutes into the climb he heard a motorcycle approaching from behind. The beam of the small headlight danced against trees that flanked the road. Keb stopped and watched it come at him as if it would run him down. He didn’t move. It skidded at his feet.

“Get on,” Kid Hugh said.

Keb wrapped his arms around the kid’s skinny waist, just as he had more than three months before, when the kid told him about the accident. Up the road they charged to the clearing and the shed—what used to be the shed, bright as a newborn sun now, the youngest star in the sky, hotter than hell, a fever fire feeding on death and dying.

“Oyyee . . .”

THE FIRE HAD a mighty appetite all right. Keb and Kid Hugh watched it consume the carving shed in minutes, flames high over the roof, a hungry incandescence biting the sky, sucking the atmosphere dry. Such heat, Keb could feel it pull the moisture from his eyes. He and Kid Hugh stood next to the canoe, across the clearing from the shed.

“It’s gone,” Keb said. “There’s nothing to save.”

“It’s your home,” Kid Hugh said.

The canoe is my home now
.

Within minutes, Mitch arrived in his truck with Gracie, James, and Little Mac.

“No, no, no!” Gracie screamed as she climbed out and began walking toward the burning shed, arms up to shield herself from the oppressive
heat. James grabbed her and pulled her back. She buckled into him. “Oh God, no, no, no.”

Her anguish did more to rip out Old Keb’s heart than seeing his home burn. He joined James in comforting her.

About the time they heard the first siren, they found Kevin sitting on the ground near the canoe, his face wet with tears.

“Kevin,” James asked, “what happened?”

The boy shook his head.

“What happened?”

No response.

“Did you do this?”

He shook his head.

“Do you know how this happened?”

Using a small carving knife, Kevin wrote in the dirt: TOMMY AND PETE.

“Tommy and Pete were here?”

Kevin nodded, yes.

“They started this fire?”

Another nod.

“This is arson,” Kid Hugh said.

Keb wondered: Where’s Steve? He’d been barking up a storm twenty minutes ago.

Kevin showed Keb a burlap bag filled with carving tools. He’d managed to get into the shed and save all of Keb’s best tools, but burned both hands and his leg.

Little Mac knelt at his side and began attending to him.

“I’ve got a first aid kit in my truck,” Mitch said. He went to get it.

“Those tools belong to you now,” Keb told Kevin.

Gracie was still distraught, staring at the burning shed, breathing funny.

Two fire trucks arrived, and three pumper trucks kept the hoses going. So many lights, sirens, and engines, men shouting and running around in red helmets and yellow coats, others tugging on turgid hoses that shot fountains onto Keb’s shed, what was left of it, and Ruby’s house, where embers landed on the metal roof. “We’ll save what we can,” Big Terry McNamee told Old Keb.

They saved Ruby’s house, and tended to Kevin’s burns.

Keb sat on the ground and watched numbly as the fire died and all light seemed to empty into the dawn. A light rain began to fall. Steve walked into the clearing badly winded, as if he’d run twenty miles. If only he could talk. Had he
seen Tommy and Pete? Chased them away? Followed them as far as possible? Why would Tommy and Pete do this? Get the right man drunk and he’ll do the wrong thing.

Kid Hugh wrapped his arms around Steve and got him a pan of water. Keb rubbed the dog’s head and neck and ears. Steve accepted the affection with a modest wag of his stubby tail.

Keb worried about Gracie. She was already in poor condition. Now this. Stuart Ewing asked Mitch to drive her back to his house and maybe have Irene knock her out with a sedative.

“Sorry, Keb,” Big Terry said. “We all feel really bad about this. Can I get you anything? Food, water?”

“Water.”

Terry yelled, “Somebody get Keb water.”

Ten firemen came running with bottles and canteens.

STUART EWING GOT off his little phone and said, “The state troopers are headed out in a chopper. They’ll be here in an hour. Once the fire cools, we’ll need to tape off the area as a crime scene.” He knelt down. “Keb, the firemen secured your propane tank. We need to know if there are any explosives in your place.”

“What?”

“Explosives. Are there any explosives or loaded firearms in your place?”

“A shotgun and a hunting rifle, a Remington .270 that Uncle Austin gave me a long time ago.”

“What about ammunition?”

“Not much.”

“Could you draw me a map of the shed and show me where, exactly, the guns and ammunition are?”

Keb nodded.

A crowd had gathered, extra hands wanting to pitch in. Keb heard somebody say, “Give him some time, Stuart. He just lost his home.”

Keb was petting Steve under his chin, the way he liked it. “If only you could talk,” Keb said to him.

As the morning brightened it revealed the faces of many of Keb’s friends, distraught to see his shed in smoldering ruins. It was the biggest fire since the Fire of ’62, when so many baskets and blankets were lost. Keb remembered how that fire made Uncle Austin cry. Now other people were teary-eyed: Carmen and Daisy, Galley Sally and Myrtle, and of course Gracie, back with Irene in her
house, drugged and falling asleep, Keb hoped. More people arrived, a steady stream of cars, trucks, and ATVs.

Squeezing her way through the crowd was Tanya What’s-Her-Toes from Channel Four. Speaking of toes, the first thing she saw when she got to Keb was his bare feet. It set her back to see this old man, white-haired in the rain, his one weathered hand petting a dog, the other holding a feather. Nothing on his feet. “Keb Wisting,” she said, “this was your home that just burned to the ground. Is there anything you’d like to say?”

Keb watched Big Terry pull her away and walk her and her cameraman back to their rented van, or maybe to the nearest cliff. James, Kid Hugh, and Little Mac were busy talking with Stuart. About what Keb could only imagine.

“We need to find Tommy and Pete,” Dag said.

That got everybody talking. Old Keb sat there petting Steve, listening.

“Let’s hunt ’em down.”

No
, Keb thought.

“They burned down Keb’s shed.”

“We don’t know that for sure.”

“C’mon—”

“And what do we do when we find them?”

“We arrest them. Citizens arrest.”

No
 . . .

“We can’t just stand here.”

“We’re doing that now.”

“That’s what I mean. Let’s do something.”

No
 . . .

“Shoot ’em with burning arrows.”

“Not funny.”

“They might be up on Pepper Mountain. We could track them up there.”

“Not in this rain.”

“We need a good tracker, like the guy who chased Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid over bare rock.”

“That was in the desert. This is a rain forest.”

“We’ll need lots of coffee.”

“And pizza from Shelikof’s.”

“No anchovies.”

“We should look for Charlie, too.”

No
 . . .

“He went deer hunting up Port Thomas.”

“I don’t think so.”

“And no veggies on the pizza. Just sausage and pepperoni.”

“And olives.”

“I’ll bet they’re at a secret hideaway, an old cabin somewhere filled with Snickers bars and Doritos and beer.”

“Or a tent camp deep in the woods, surrounded by trip wires.”

“With M-16s on tripods, like in
Rambo
.”

“Don’t get green olives, Gene. Get the little black ones.”

“And mushrooms.”

“And whole wheat crust.”

“C’mon, guys. We need to track these guys down, arrest them, and bring them in.”

“No,” Keb said forcefully.

Everybody fell silent.

“No posse,” Keb said.

“But your shed, Keb. Your home. It’s lost.”

Keb got to his feet and faced them. “It’s not lost.” He brought his hand to his chest, palm flat against his beating heart. “It’s here.”

They stared.

Dag was near tears. “But Keb, your shed—where are you going to live?”

“I’m leaving.”

“Leaving? Where are you going?”

“Back.”

“Back? Back to where?”

“Just back.”

AN HOUR BEFORE midnight, Keb found time alone with James. “I need you to listen. There will be no revenge. You’re not going after Tommy and Pete. That’s Stuart’s job.”

“Jesus, Gramps, they burned down your shed, your home. They ruined my basketball career. What are we supposed to do?”

What are we supposed to do?

Father Mikal used to say that the hardest thing when you’re digging yourself into a hole is to stop digging. It’s one thing to be bold, another to be wise. One thing to be resolute, another to be judicious. Who could James and his friends trust? Who could they model themselves after? The elder who sees blue where they see black? Why is it so easy to disregard the old man? When Keb was young, a man lived alone on the edge of town, past a crude sign that said
“NO TRESPASSING.” Keb could still see the lines around his eyes, the sad mouth and slumped shoulders. Live in a small town and you learn the simple act of dropping by, and discover there’s an art to it, that it’s made to look casual while in fact it’s deliberate; it involves great caring and compassion. So it was odd to have a guy who wanted none of it. Nobody dropping by. Nobody in his world but himself. Yes, people in Jinkaat watched each other. They watched
out for
each other. But not this guy. He lived out the road and came into town once a month for groceries and nothing more. Spoke hardly a word. His name was Mercer, first initial T. Nobody knew his first name, the one his parents gave him. He never did take that “NO TRESPASSING” sign down. He even fixed it up, painted it. When he died, he died alone; dragged himself out onto the front porch, sat in a rocking chair, and gave up. Simple as that. He died after he took his last breath and said nothing about it. Abigail Tyler, out picking blueberries, came by and saw him covered in crows. No family claimed him or his things. A dozen townspeople cleaned out his house. In a drawer they found stacks of unsent letters written to a woman who probably never knew he loved her, and never loved him back. Somebody said those letters were the most tender and lyrical they’d ever read. After that, the kids called him Mercy. Tender Mercy. Ironic, to name a man after the very thing he needed most but never received. Uncle Austin used to say that ravens build their nests out of twigs, grasses, deer hair, even their own breast feathers. Are we any different? We make our homes from parts of ourselves—the laughter of our kids, the friends who drop by. They become our finest decorations, our best memories, the things no fire can burn.

Keb gripped James hard by the arm and said, “Look at me.”

James gave him an earnest look.

Keb handed him the feather. “You have to see blue where there’s black.”

“I know, Gramps, but—”

“Go pack for an open boat journey. Tell nobody. Bring good foul weather gear and camping gear, some halibut hooks, salmon lures, baitfish and line, two knives, a sharpening stone, a berry basket, matches, dry kindling, and your deer rifle. Invite Little Mac and Kid Hugh.”

James’s eyes brightened. “The canoe? We’re leaving in the canoe?”

“Be at Portage Cove tomorrow night at eight, high tide.”

“What about Steve? Can we bring Steve?”

Keb grinned.
He got invited before you did
.

WARREN HAD SAID the canoe would be ready, and it was, thanks to Mitch and Vic, who hauled it down to Portage Cove on the flatbed. And to Albert at his carpentry shop, and Oddmund and Dag, who applied every shipwright skill they learned as youngsters in Norway: the bow and stern pieces affixed, plugs set, false bottom and cubby fo’c’sle laid in, foredeck canvassed, small main mast and mizzenmast bolted in tight. “We put a kroner under each mast,” Dag said, “for luck, you know.” A coin, like a penny. Nordic shipwrights had been setting them under masts since the Viking days.