Jimmy Bluefeather: A Novel (20 page)

“Got any Coke?”

“Nope.”

“Root beer?”

“Nope.”

“Coffee will do then.”

“So where you headed in that canoe of yours?”

“Away.”

“Running then?”

“No.”

“Sure you are. Every young man runs at your age. If he doesn’t, he’s a fool.”

“I got a girlfriend.”

“All the more reason to run.”

“She’s pretty, don’t you think?”

“Having a girl because she’s pretty is like eating a bird because it sings.”

“I saw your sons looking at her.”

“And they saw you looking at me.”

Keb could feel James thrumming his good leg.

Marge said, “This coffee’s bitter. I’ll make a fresh pot.”

James said nothing. Keb could see him thinking things so hard that you could almost see his thoughts.

Marge left the galley and returned with two large cohos and slapped them down on the counter. She began cutting up fillets. She said to James, “So tell me, what are you going to do now that you can’t play basketball anymore?”

“I could have played for the NBA.”

“Oh shush. I didn’t ask you what you could have done. I’m asking what you’re going to do.”

“I could go to school. My Aunt Ruby went to Princeton.”

“Keeeeerist.” Marge shook her head and left the galley again.

Did Keb fall asleep? He saw Bessie dancing in her bare feet, a flowered dress around her legs, her smile filling the room. Nathan Red Otter was there, and Father Mikal standing in a circle with Keb. Bessie had a toddler, a little girl she wheeled about the room. Was it Gracie? Like her mom, she tossed her head back and laughed. Keb said to Nathan, “We need to bless the canoe.” The three men looked at him. “Bless the canoe,” Keb said, “I forgot to bless the canoe. It’s not running true. It pulls to the left. It doesn’t move right. Maybe it’s a crack? Not good. Uncle Austin, he mended his canoe by pulling the crack together with roots and tightening the stitches with a wedge.” While on shore you had to keep the keel moist. Haul the canoe up the beach and sink it deep in the wet sand. The glaciers . . . the glaciers are going away, the ice is melting all over. . . .

“Gramps?”

Keb gasped awake.

“Gramps, you’re dreaming and kicking the table.”

“What?”

“Can you sit up, and join us?”

He was back in the galley, on the
Silverbow
. His dreams hadn’t been this vivid since—when? Since he had last been on the water a thousand years ago.

James pulled him up gently.

Marge said, “Look who’s decided to join us. You want something to eat?”

“Got any more cornbread?”

“Hell, yes. I got cornbread I haven’t even eaten yet. How about some garlic-pesto salmon? Or halibut caddy ganty with cashews and red peppers?”

“Sounds good.”

Keb realized that Little Mac and Kid Hugh were at the table, too. When
did they show up? How does this happen? How does an old man fall out of time? Little Mac was picking a melody on her guitar. She had her head down as her fingers worked the frets. Keb tried to remember his dream of Bessie and Gracie. Bessie had always been good at remembering. She had a Rolodex of her dreams. Keb’s friend Truman kept his memories on Post-it Notes, a million of them all over the place, on his computer, desk, refrigerator, stove. He wrote everything down on little scraps of paper, and once told Keb that the strongest memory is weaker than the palest ink. Maybe it was a hallucination, a crazy fantasy, him seeing Bessie and Gracie dancing. “Gracie’s not well,” Keb said softly, almost to himself. They were all talking and didn’t hear him.

“Gracie’s not well,” he said, louder this time.

They stopped.

“Your mom,” Keb said to James. “She’s not well. We need to call her.”

They were looking at each other, not knowing what to say. Keb had seen people respond to him like this before.
They think I’m crazy
. “I’m not crazy,” he said.

“No, Gramps, you’re not crazy.”

“She might have to go to the hospital, very expensive.” These days only doctors could afford doctors. “We forgot to bless the canoe. Nathan Red Otter was going to be there, at the steaming, but he . . . but he . . . we have to bless the canoe.”

The cornbread arrived and just as quickly Keb forgot his concerns. Little Mac cut him a corner piece and added butter. Keb was about to take a bite when his chest seized and his arms froze and he couldn’t breathe. A searing pain buckled him. He dropped the cornbread and Steve got it.

“Gramps?” Little Mac and Kid Hugh were on their feet in seconds, holding him while James supported the other side. Keb gasped as pain shot from his chest to his hip and back.
Yéil Yeik
. Jesus, Mary, Mother of God. Marge got him a cup of water. James whipped off his shirt and carefully removed the necklace with the raven feather. He held it against Keb’s chest. Keb said, “I need . . . to . . . lie . . . down . . . now.” He did, and soon said, “I think I feel better.”

“You do, really?” James asked.

Keb nodded.

Marge said, “That’s the black feather, the one they talked about on the radio, on the news. They said it gives him special powers, that he can see things that others can’t see, and he knows things others don’t know.”

“It’s mostly black,” James said. “But it’s also blue, if you look at it right.”

“I must be looking wrong then.” Marge turned away to check the oven.
Little Mac comforted Keb with her delicate fingers. When Marge turned back, she directed herself to James. “I wish I were you, any of you. You’re free. You have the whole world in front of you. I’m not talking about the world we’ve made for ourselves. I’m talking about the world that’s always been here.”

James handed her the feather. She took it tentatively. “Do you see the blue?” he asked. He spoke with a kindness Keb had never heard from him. Marge wiped away tears and looked hard, as if imploring the feather to show her its secrets. “Turn it in the light,” James said, “like this, slowly, at an angle.”

She did, and handed it back to him, saying, “It’s not for me to see; it’s for you. This is your journey, not mine.”

YOU REALLY THINK he wants to die?” Taylor de la Croix asked Gracie Wisting.

Anne winced at Taylor’s straightforwardness as she checked the twin outboards and greased the steering cables on the
Firn
. They were adrift off the north shore of Pleasant Island, near Strawberry Flats, in the lee of the storm, which wasn’t as stormy as predicted—so far. Leave it to Taylor to go right to the heart of things, to ask the question about Old Keb that nobody else dared ask—of his daughter, no less. Taylor was acting frisky these days, capable of anything, getting laid every night in Strawberry Flats. Anne wondered: How long has it been for me? Who was president of the United States the last time I got laid? Nixon? Hoover? Grant?

Gracie responded to Taylor’s question with a wry smile. She looked out over Icy Strait as if drinking it up, and finally said, “I think my dad thinks he wants to die. That’s why he’s on this journey, to find out. Death takes us all, you know. Some quicker than others.”

Taylor said, “My first boyfriend was a star quarterback in high school. He was a lot of fun until he freaked out about that fact that he would die someday. So he bought the big insurance package in the sky; he signed up for heaven and the Bible and all that, in his junior year, and got down on his knees and brought Jesus into his life.”

“How’d that go?” Gracie asked her.

“Good for him, bad for me. His mom never liked me; she was super religious. They celebrated by going to Disney, in Florida.”

“How American,” Gracie said.

Anne liked this woman better than she liked Gracie’s hard-edged sister who sat forward in the wheelhouse, deep in conversation with Superintendent
Paul Beals, the two of them folded over maps and documents, with Ruby doing most of the talking. Paul had an easy manner, a voice that made you listen, but with Ruby he never got the chance. Near as Anne could tell, Ruby would have it no other way. On those rare occasions when Paul did speak, Anne could see Ruby sit rigid-backed and defiant. Gracie must have caught Anne watching them. She said, “My sister always gets what she wants.”

Taylor asked Gracie, “Are you worried about your father and son, about them being out in a canoe in weather like this?”

“No.”

“You think we’ll find them?”

“No.” Gracie answered with such calm conviction, it surprised Anne. She could see it surprised Taylor too. How could this woman be so certain?

For the tenth time Anne climbed topside, above the wheelhouse, and glassed the waters. She could see sport charter fishing boats at anchor off the Strawberry Flats Public Dock, and a salmon troller to the west headed their way, beating into the waves, and farther still, a tugboat pulling a barge loaded with containers, westbound toward Cape Spencer and beyond, north to Seward perhaps, or Anchorage. No other vessels. Modest whitecaps across Icy Strait. A fifteen-knot wind blowing from the southeast, not as fierce as predicted, the seas much calmer in a good lee. Gulls everywhere, a few alcids, pigeon guillemots mostly, and now and then a Steller sea lion.

“Anything?” Taylor asked when Anne returned.

“Nope. Anything on the VHF?”

“Nope.”

“They’ve gotten a ride,” Gracie said, again with calm assurance, almost pleasure.

Anne felt it too. The thrill of Keb out there in his canoe, befriending strangers, winning hearts, outwitting anybody who sought to find him and bring him in.

“A ride?” Taylor said.

“Just a guess,” Gracie said. “A ride from a sympathetic skipper, or they’ve hauled their canoe onto a beach under cover of alder and spruce and made camp. My James can set up a tent blindfolded in a rainstorm and a wind tunnel. Either way—on a big boat or in the forest—they’re fine.”

WHAT TO MAKE of these Wisting women? Anne studied them: two sisters, one the mother of the runaway James, the other his aunt, filling the
Firn
with the measured spaces between them. Ruby, the small one with the fine-featured face,
fashionable in her black pantsuit and lavender scarf, wearing the sad eyes and hard beauty of a woman who long ago learned to use that beauty to test for faithfulness and deceit. And Gracie, the big one who didn’t look well, the mother in cheap jeans and a baggy sweater who seemed to take nourishment from gratitude while her sister took hers from pride. She devoted long minutes to looking out over the water. Anne thought: We could use some whales now, mountains moving through the sea. But of course they weren’t looking for whales.

Earlier that day Ruby had arrived in Bartlett Cove and requested that since the federal government had closed Crystal Bay to traditional Tlingit activities like hunting and fishing—first as a national monument, then a national park, and finally as a national marine reserve—would the federal government please find her father and nephew and escort them home before somebody died. Her father was a frail old man; he didn’t always know where he was or what he was doing. And the kids, while capable in the wilderness, would defer to him and make poor decisions. Paul could have offered a rebuttal and reminded Ruby that no canoe was prohibited from entering Crystal Bay. He could have told her that the limits on vessels applied to motorized craft only; that while people belonged in a national marine reserve, hunting and fishing did not. Neither did corporate mining. He could have sounded as intelligent as Ruby, and used lots of big words. But, by golly, he invited her on a boat ride instead . . . with her sister.

“My sister?” Ruby had said. “What’s she doing here?”

Earlier that day, upon hearing that Ruby was coming, Paul had sent the NMRS plane into Juneau to bring Gracie to Bartlett Cove, before Ruby arrived.

“He’s my father, too,” Gracie said, weakly.

All this according to Ranger Ron, who had told Anne that when Tall Paul got up from his chair that morning to greet Gracie, and later Ruby, you got the feeling he kept standing and standing until he towered over those women like Honest Abe or Old King Lear. He had welcomed the two sisters, saying, “It’s always an honor to have Jinkaat Tlingits in Bartlett Cove.” And he meant it. Paul was always sincere. He then invited them onto the
Firn
to brief them on the NMRS search: the boats and planes and “all-points bulletin” sent via VHF channel sixteen to vessels all over Icy Strait. The report sounded official and heartless, which Anne supposed was necessary. She preferred the rendition she’d heard passed around by fishermen, picked up on her own radio: Be on the lookout for a twenty-five-foot-long dugout canoe carrying a nine-toed, barefoot old man who’s half seal, awkward on land but clever and elusive at sea. With him are two long-haired boys, a Chinese girl with a classical guitar, and a mongrel dog that thinks he’s a big lizard of some kind—maybe a dinosaur.

The search consisted of rangers, field biologists (Anne and Taylor among them), a public affairs officer, a task force commander from Washington (assigned by Kate Johnson), a high-tech headquarters with state-of-the-art, top-of-the-line stuff, and a can’t-go-wrong strategy that so far hadn’t gone right. Paul promised the sisters they’d find Old Keb. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow. But soon.

Anne got the feeling that despite Gracie’s obvious ill health, nothing would keep her from derailing her sister’s corporate agenda in Crystal Bay. Paul had said that when PacAlaska was stripping Chichagof Island of old-growth trees years ago, Gracie Wisting emerged as a folksy but powerful voice in opposition. She had her health back then. She wrote for the newspaper and got herself on radio, and testified in Washington, and never backed down. When a Yale-trained forester once proclaimed—as Yale-trained foresters had proclaimed for decades—that the oldest, largest trees in Southeast Alaska should be cut down and processed into wood pulp because their rates of rot had exceeded their rates of growth, making them “overmature,” Gracie famously asked the forester if he too one day, in his old age, should be measured so crudely. And processed into pulp, rayon, and throwaway cellophane. More recently, she coordinated with NMRS educators to have the Jinkaat School kids visit Crystal Bay every summer to hike and camp. It’s a national marine reserve, she told them, not a mall, not a chemical plant, not a damn gold mine. Embrace it. You are welcome here. Go sleep on the ground. Wake up to bear tracks and wolf howls. Let whales swim into your dreams. Gracie didn’t oppose having Tlingits in Crystal Bay. She did everything she could to bring them here. What she opposed, she said, was industrial enterprise in Crystal Bay; corporate suit-and-tie types with their hearts in briefcases and their heads in computers, thinking numbers. Always numbers.