Jimmy Bluefeather: A Novel (22 page)

“Somebody saw you yesterday morning cruising west past Adolphus. It seemed weird, so they called it in. Now everybody’s talking on the VHF, channels sixty-eight, sixty-nine, and seventy-two, mostly.”

“I monitor those channels and have heard nothing. What’s so weird about me steaming west past Adolphus?”

“Shit, Marge, everything. You bought fish three days ago and haven’t bought or sold any since. You gotta be low on ice and maybe low on fuel.”

“I’ve got lots of ice and fuel.”

“Well, you’re thirty miles from the Lisianski fleet and missing the biggest coho opening in weeks. That’s weird, and you know it.” Cobb turned to Keb. “Everybody’s on high alert looking for you, Keb. You’re like a hero, you know, like a cult hero or a folk hero or some damn thing.”

“I don’t want to be a hero.”

“Too late. You already are.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I guess because you carved a canoe and got everybody involved, and pushed off like Tlingits used to do a thousand years ago, before the world got crazy with television and Twinkies.”

Keb shrugged.

“They’re worried about you, that you might freeze or drown or fall off a cliff. Your daughter Ruby is all over radio and TV, asking for your safe return. The Crystal Bay rangers want to catch you and make sure you’re okay. But I have to tell you, a lot of people, folks like me, we want to help you. We really do. We want to help you get wherever it is you want to go.”

“We don’t need any help,” James said.

Cobb shrugged. Little Mac sidled up to Keb and put his withered hand into hers.

“Why?” Keb asked. “Why do people want to help me?”

“I don’t know,” Cobb said. “You’re the little guy, I guess, and people want to help the little guy. But you’re also a big guy, the old man whose house got
burned down but he doesn’t sit around and mope about it. I mean, everybody talks about Crystal Bay being a traditional homeland, but nobody—nobody—gets in a canoe and goes back there in the traditional way. You see? You’re like a blast from the past. That’s why you got everybody stirred up; a lot of people want to help you. Me too. I thought you could use my help, is all. If I’m wrong, I apologize and I wish you luck. I hope you get back to wherever it is you want to go.” He turned to leave.

“Back,” Keb said.

Cobb spun around. “Back, really?”

“Yes, back.”

“Back to where, Keb?”

“Back . . . back to the way it used to be.” Keb could feel himself standing taller.

“That’s where you want to go?”

“Yes.”

“That could be a long journey, you know? You don’t remember me, do you?”

Keb did remember him a little, maybe. Was he related to Father Mikal? The friend of a cousin? The cousin of a friend?

“You and Bess took my brother and me berry picking when we was kids.”

“Nagoons?”

“Wild strawberries.”

“Oyyee . . . shákw . . . put up with salmon eggs, kanéegwál.”

“What about the Gants?” James asked Cobb. “Has anybody seen Tommy or Charlie Gant?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Have they been arrested or anything?”

“I don’t think so.”

Marge said, “We have to go. It’ll be daylight in a couple hours, and we have some distance to cover.”

Cobb said, “Keb, if there’s anything I can do, any way that I can help, you tell me right now.”

“Gracie,” Keb said to Cobb. “My girl, Gracie. I need you to tell her not to worry about me, not to worry about James, any of us. She’s sick. I don’t want her to worry. Tell her not to worry. We are fine. We are good. Can you tell her that?”

“I’ll tell her,” Marge said, “after I drop you off. I’ll reach her by marine dispatch.”

Little Mac squeezed Keb’s hand.

Cobb said, “I have to go.” He disappeared into the liquid night, only after
Kid Hugh made him promise to keep his mouth shut. Marge banged on a pipe and Quinton came into the galley. Or maybe it was Morgan. She flashed her fingers and the boy bounded into the wheelhouse. A minute later the
Silverbow
was underway, twin diesels pumping big pistons. Graves Harbor was out of the question now. Too far.

Marge began packing food into a tote. “I’m making you a care package.” Her other son came into the galley, moving fast. He smiled at Little Mac, grabbed a bag of tortilla chips, and was gone.

“Was their father deaf?” Little Mac asked Marge.

“No. He heard everything just fine, except me.”

“So your boys, do you know why—”

“Why they’re deaf? No. Their father said the devil made them that way. I sometimes envy them their silence, you know, how peaceful it must be in there, not having to hear all the crap we have to hear. I can’t see either of them ever finding a woman or having kids. But you never know. They might surprise me one day. I’d like that.” She paused as chatter spilled across the VHF radio.

Keb was still thinking about wild strawberries.

Marge looked at him with such sadness that everything vague a minute ago came into sharp focus. What a powerful, sorry thing she was, this woman, fallen on a thousand thorns, picked up, and fallen again.

James said to her, “You’ve been good to us. We’ll get off now, with our canoe. We can paddle hard and put good water between you and us before dawn.”

“No need,” Marge said. “I’ve got a plan.”

AN HOUR LATER, as soft light broke to the east, they made landfall at a place called George Island, between Cross Sound and the small fishing town of Elfin Cove. While Morgan used one skiff to take Keb, James, Little Mac, and Steve the Lizard Dog ashore, Quinton used the other skiff to pull the canoe into a deep cleft in a nearby cliff, where he and Kid Hugh buoyed it out of sight, impossible to see from the air. From the water, too. Marge gave them the tote with three days of food. She told James to take care of his grandpa. She told Little Mac, “I’m sorry. I wanted to help you, all of you.”

“You have.”

James said to Little Mac, “If you want to stay on the
Silverbow
, you can. We’ve talked about it.”

Little Mac was taken aback by this, Keb could see. Steve wagged his tail as if he’d been in on the discussion too, and was prepared to man a paddle—the canoeing dog. Little Mac appraised James. “You don’t want me along?”

“I do. I just don’t want you to be wet and cold and frightened.”

“I’m not.”

“You might be, in the days to come. We plan to paddle at night.”

“That’s fine. I’m strong. I can paddle. I want to go, James.”

“Okay, you go.”

“James?” Marge said abruptly. “Is that your real name?”

“It’s my dad’s name. He wanted me to have his name.”

“He’s Apache,” Keb said.

“Arapaho,” James corrected him.

“This might offend you,” Marge said, “but James is the kind of name a shithead English king would have, don’t you think? Have you got a Tlingit name?”

“Yeah.”

“Why not use it.”

“I did, for a while. The missionaries took our language away.”

“Keeeeerist, you can’t blame the missionaries no more. They bullyragged your people a hundred years ago, but no more.”

“I’m not blaming the missionaries, I’m just—”

“You’re just ready for a new name. Look, I believe in you. Your life excites me, with all its possibilities. It excites other people too. Go out there. Move at night, like you said. Paddle far. Be sneaky. Use every advantage you can; don’t let the rangers find you. Go where you need to go. Listen to your grandfather. Go where he needs to go. Take this beautiful girl and get your language back. Maybe use your Tlingit name on this journey. Have you thought about that?”

“I used to use my Tlingit name when I was a little kid.”

“Then use it again, if that’s what you’re trying to be, a real Tlingit.”

“That’s what Gramps is trying to be.”

“Well, he’s not alone. Would either one of you be on this journey without the other? Did he carve the canoe, or did you?”

“He did. I did. Everybody in Jinkaat did. Lots of people.”

“Well there you go. Your entire town is with you. I’ll tell you what, James Whoever-You-Really-Are, the whole world is out there pulling for you. Well, not the whole world, but some of it, the best of it. Have you thought about that?”

“Yes.”

“Where’s your father?”

“Denver. I don’t see him anymore.”

“Do you miss him?”

“No—well, some. Him and my mom, they loved each other a lot, I think, once, when I was little.”

Keb said to James, “I remember the day you were born. Your mother cried with joy. After three daughters she finally had a son. She and your father performed magic on you: They buried your umbilical cord at the foot of an eagle’s tree.”

“They did?”

“Yes.”

“Tlingit magic or Arapaho magic?”

“Does it matter?” Marge asked.

James stared at her.

“Look,” Marge said, her voice quivering, “you need to go. Go find a fish or a flower or the great bird that gave you that feather. Get to know it and I promise you that fish, that flower, that bird, it’ll never lie to you.” Keb could see Marge crying. “Nature never lies, is all I’m saying. Your grandfather is old and you learn from him and he learns a little from you. You grow from each other. Even with your bum leg, you’re new, you’re a teacher, a carver. That’s what it comes down to, you and your grandfather and your friends, how you learn from each other; that’s a beautiful thing. You’re out there in a canoe in wild Alaska while the rest of America coddles and sanitizes its children. Live every moment, James What’s-Your-Name. Let nothing go unnoticed. Basketball is just another court in another kingdom filled with indoor people addicted to a box called television and a mythology called winning. You don’t need it. You’re the feather whisperer or some damn thing. . . . I don’t know. Maybe this is all bullshit. You’re the sports star who’s not who he used to be. You see beyond the obvious. Where others see black, you see blue.”

James turned the feather in his hand.

“Jimmy Bluefeather,” Little Mac said. “That’s you, James. You’re Jimmy Bluefeather.”

MARGE HUGGED OLD Keb and didn’t let him go. She pulled him to her with such ferocity that she nearly suffocated him—bosomed him to death. Not a bad way to die. Keb wanted to tell her stories about his carvings. About his travels and favorite boats and books, the ones Uncle Austin used to read. He wanted to tell her to go deep into her life, what remained of it; a fish cannot drown in water. But words failed him. He said nothing.

She let him go and walked away and didn’t look back. In minutes she was in the skiff with her sons, going full throttle beyond the headland and out of sight, out to where the sea writes eulogies and takes us away.

BY MIDMORNING SWORDS of sunlight cut through the clouds and a plane flew low overhead, a Cessna 206 on floats, according to Kid Hugh. Might be a search plane, or a charter on its way to a fancy sportfishing lodge in Elfin Cove. Either way, Kid Hugh didn’t like it. Keb half expected him to shoot it out of the sky.

Back in the deep forest, Keb found the terrain such rough going—muddy and root-infested—that he sat down, his heart pounding. He tried to open his pills. Little Mac helped him and put each one in a spoonful of yogurt to make it go down better. James set up a tent near a game trail, and with Little Mac’s help put down a thick pad and a sleeping bag for the old man.

Keb had wanted to pick berries as he did with Bessie, years ago, deep in the forest and low to the ground where green was a texture, not just a color. Where moss made the best beds for naps, and you awoke beneath great trees that passed no judgment, and the woman you loved was perfect in how she loved you back and put her head on your shoulder and loved all the things you loved, and you knew without saying that every day was a gift, that you have to go hungry to become real. That’s what Milo Chen used to say. Truman too, writing his books. You have to suffer and come out the other side, find compassion in the emptiness. Respond by not filling it up. It’s no easy thing. It’s not what we build, Uncle Austin used to say. It’s what we leave alone that makes us who we are. Look around. We cannot improve this place. We can only honor it by receiving its bounty with wisdom and thanks. Go into the woods when your kids are young and gather devil’s club to make tea. “Alaska ginseng,” he called it.
S’áxt’
. Good for fatigue. Keeps you fit and able to split wood into old age. Bessie always made it just right. Remember how she let the kids run wild? Up the slopes and along the beach in bare feet, their prints so small next to the tracks of brown bear.
When they and Keb said they were hungry, Bessie replied, “We don’t feed them when they fuss, we feed them when it’s time.” What feisty little things they became, Ruby and Gracie more than the boys. Bessie said those girls were born with their hands on their hips, saying no. After she died, the days were dimmer, the stars brighter. Keb never dated again. It felt better to live with the memory of Bessie than to find another woman. He still drank Alaska ginseng, when Gracie made it for him. He had some with him on this journey, in a Mason jar. The boys might need it, with so much paddling ahead. Crazy kids these days, going to the drugstore to buy cough syrup. “It’s all in the forest,” Bessie used to say. All you need is caribou leaf salve, devil’s club, and yarrow. Yarrow will cure anything. Uncle Austin used to say the best devil’s club grew on islands, with the leaves facing west.

Was it September? First day or two anyway. Keb could smell it blowing off the ocean. The taste of winter coming, change and darkness and storms. He could see it in the margins of
yaana.eit
, smell it in the tangy odor of beach grass and meadow sedges. Everything burnished. Cranes and geese and swans going south. Young gulls painted by an artist’s brush, testing their wings. Keb’s favorite month. It should have cheered him up. But he felt poorly. Even with Little Mac comforting him with her guitar. He missed cornbread and hot coffee; Marge’s lively banter. Bedded down, socked deep into a sleeping bag with his nose cold but his bones warm, he could hear James and Kid Hugh setting up a second tent. Talking. Arguing about where to go, how to proceed, how to avoid getting found, arguing about how to argue.