Jimmy Bluefeather: A Novel (26 page)

“Scared of what?”

“Himself. The difficult choices he needs to make.” Stuart said this with such tenderness that it made Anne’s heart swell.

She asked him, “Do you speak Tlingit?”

“No. Why?”

“I guess if I find the old guy, I’d like to be able to say something to him in his own language. It seems the right thing to do.”

“You got any lemonade on your boat?”

“No.”

“Get some. He loves lemonade . . . and moose stew, nagoonberry pie, and cornbread.”

“Thank you for not arresting me.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Are you this nice to all the women you meet?”
Please say no
.

“No . . . I don’t meet that many women. This is a small town.”

“I like it here, the lay of the land, the harbor—”
You, everything
.

“Don’t go.”

“I have to.”

“Come back then.”

“Okay.”

The steady rain didn’t dissuade a dozen townspeople from milling about the dock to look over the
Firn
. A nice boat, if you liked government boats. Stuart parted the crowd and ushered Anne aboard. She collected their silent appraisals, and heard one Tlingit say to another, “Is she going to leave now? With the storm coming?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Stupid white woman.”

“Yeah.”

AN HOUR LATER she was in the thick of it, the
Firn
beating north-northwest where Port Thomas opened into Icy Strait, a crazy swell quartering off her starboard. Strong currents in a cross-grained sea. Windshield wipers working hard to stay ahead of the rain and sea spray. Damn. It had been only a light breeze when she left Jinkaat. She should have listened to Stuart, the marine forecast, the chatter on the dock.

Anne set a GPS heading for Strawberry Flats. Forget Bartlett Cove, too far away. Fierce winds whipped water off the tops of big waves, the biggest waves eating away at her transom, the gale building beneath a dour, undertaker sea. Dryness gripped her throat. She saw Nancy’s pale face, a ghost, a raven’s wing, an old photograph of two sisters laughing at the camera. She saw her mom coming home from work after midnight, beat on her feet, a shadow after Nancy’s death, a silhouette, arranging things already twice arranged, cleaning the floor as if she could scrub it all away.

Anne had a nautical chart but could hardly look at it for the concentration she needed to steer. The GPS said she was moving due north. Again and again she bucked big sets and shipped water, too much water. Sheets of sea washed over the stern and across her decks as the scuppers struggled to keep up. Something broke loose and slammed into something else. The engine sputtered, stalled, coughed back to life. She thought about Taylor in bed with her boyfriend. The
Firn
lurched, corkscrewed, and began to list. No longer buoyant, it felt ponderous, slow. She fought to right it as another big wave hit, and another, and another.

Shit.

She wanted to call Stuart and ask for help, hear his voice. Had she seen a marine VHF radio in his office? His Jeep? He had to have one somewhere. If she called, everybody would hear a federal government NMRS boat calling the Jinkaat Police Station in distress. Not good. What to do? Take it easy . . . take it easy.

That’s it. Fake names. Use names only he will understand.
Make it sound like I’m calling another vessel
.

She grabbed the radio mic, took a deep breath, and in the most casual voice she could muster, she said, “Calling the Take It Easy, the Take It Easy, the Take It Easy, this is the Firecracker on channel sixteen, over.” She waited. She
couldn’t see a thing. Gray-green seawater slammed into her. No horizon. It felt like the end of the world. “Calling the Take It Easy, the Take It Easy . . . this is the Firecracker on channel sixteen, over.”

A pause, then: “This is the Take It Easy.”

Anne almost burst out crying. “Take It Easy,” she said, “you want to meet me on channel seventy-four?”

“Seventy-four . . .” Seconds passed, it seemed like forever. “Anne, you there?”

“I’m here. I’m in a jam, in really big seas. I’m shipping water and cavitating. I’m losing control and I’m scared.”

“Okay, stay cool. Make sure your scuppers are clear. Do you have an ELT?”

“Yes, they’re clear, and it’s on.”

“How about a survival suit?”

“Yes, but I’m not wearing it and I don’t think I could get it on without losing my boat. I’m about three miles into Icy Strait. The farther north I go, the more fetch I’m exposed to and the bigger the seas get. I’d like to turn around and get back to you, but I’m afraid to make the turn, of taking big waves on my beam.”

“Are they coming in sets? Typically the waves come in sets, and if you can time your turn, that would be good . . . go when the waves are at their lowest. And when you do turn, have the throttle full open to make it as fast as possible.”

“I know. I’ll do that.”

“How’s your fuel?”

“Good.”

“Have you got a kicker?”

“Yes, but I don’t know if I could get it started or even hold into the weather if I did.”

“Anne, listen . . . you’re not far from a small group of islands called the Sisters, due east of you. You could gain their lee after you make the turn.”

“Okay. Stay with me on this channel. I won’t be able to talk to you while I make the turn. Everything’s getting worse.”

“I’m here. I’m with you.”

She dropped the radio mic and tried to focus, tried to be smart, tried not to panic. Everything was gray except for the nightmare before her, the shrieking wind and pounding seas and a shadow in black pointing a long accusing finger and shaking its head. Stupid white woman.

OLD KEB HAD met a philosopher or two in his life, but none like the black Cajun chef, Angola, a big man, half-African conga, half-Canadian bacon, all Louisiana soul kitchen. How authentic he seemed with his callused hands and clear eyes, his every move balanced against the pitch and roll of whatever life might throw at him.

“Me, a philosopher?” Angola laughed, as the
Etude
rested on her anchor in Graves Harbor, in the middle of the night, with everyone else asleep. “I don’t think so. I’m better at defining problems than at solving them. Maybe that doesn’t make me a philosopher. I don’t know. How about you?”

“My Uncle Austin was a philosopher. He read books.”

“You know what appeals to me about philosophy? Nobody wins.”

“Half of philosophy is about death, I think. Does it seem that way to you?”

“It might someday, when I get as old as you.”

“You don’t want to get as old as me. You’ll hurt everywhere and eat pills and bury everybody you love, and get lonely, and get the willies.”

“The willies? You mean the heebie-jeebies?”

“No, the willies are worse than the heebie-jeebies.”

“Not in Louisiana, where I come from. Nothing’s worse than the heebie-jeebies.”

“How about the wangdoodles?”

“The wangdoodles? What are they?”

“They’re bad, but they’re not as bad as the willies.”

“You’re telling me that the wangdoodles aren’t as bad as the willies, and the heebie-jeebies aren’t as bad as the wangdoodles?”

“Oyyee . . .” Keb was getting confused.

“Man, you people up here got everything upside down, that’s all I’m saying.
I’ve seen death, too, old man. It makes being alive look pretty good, that’s all I’m saying. How’s the cornbread?”

“Good.”

“Not too spicy?”

“A little. What’s in it?”

“Jalapeños, Tabasco. Cajun love spices.”

Cajun love spices? Keb had downed a quart of water. He needed to pee. He needed to take his pills. One for his heart, one for his blood. Others for his thyroid, liver, stomach, bladder, colon, semi-colon, appendix, semi-appendix, muscles, nerves, joints, you name it. Some weren’t pills at all, they were capsules the size of small bullets. He took those with yogurt. The cornbread wasn’t round. It wasn’t square either. Angola made it rectangular, the size of Montana, with four perfect corners cooked to the color of Navajo sandstone. He served up another plate for Old Keb, and a cup of yogurt, key lime pie flavor.

Angola was talking to himself in cryptic Cajun phrases as he made croissants, a baker’s tall white hat sitting on his balding head, his elegant long fingers twisting the dough.

“You’re from Louisiana then?” Keb asked him.

“That’s right.”

“Descended from slaves.”

“Yep.”

“How’s that make you feel?”

“I don’t feel like I used to feel. Most of my nerves went dead after Katrina.”

“Katrina, a woman?”

“No man, the big-ass storm.”

Just then Monique breezed into the galley wearing a man’s large button-up shirt and nothing else. Without a word, she opened the fridge, pulled out half a gallon of milk and drank from the carton. Keb watched a bead of milk roll down her chin and neck and under her shirt. Everything about her was forbidden: the hard, self-satisfied smile, the hips and spine, the stab of shoulder blade and perfect vixen lines. Looking at her, Keb felt a distant stirring and remembered women as beautiful as her when he was young and strong. Stronger than he’d ever be again. More than a hundred times he had had his entire life ahead of him. Did he realize it then? Even once? Monique finished, wiped her mouth, and said something to Angola in French. Voltaire jumped onto the table and swished his tail past Keb’s nose.

“Chat folle.” Angola swiped and missed, but sent the cat flying. Monique picked it up with a scowl and disappeared down the passageway toward Rene’s cabin.

Keb finished his pills. He watched Angola put croissants on a cookie sheet, slip them into the oven, and brew up a fresh pot of coffee, what he called “Gaspay couffay,” a special blend from Quebec’s Gaspe Peninsula. Jacques and Pierre would be up soon, eager to push back south after the storm, back to George Island to collect more rocks. Keb was eager to get back too, back to the canoe. Was it still on its buoy, out of sight in the sea cave under the cliff? Kid Hugh might have to do his big dive after all, a Mexican Margarita Acapulco Loco Dive. For a strange moment—one more unsettling than any before—Keb thought about dying, the notion that he’d die soon, probably in the canoe, but where in the canoe? Not where in the canoe itself, but where at sea in the canoe? Trying to decide was no easy thing. Maybe he’d die of indecision.

What was it now that Angola was saying? Keb had no idea, but he had to agree with him. “You’ve lived through dark times, then?” Angola asked him.

Keb nodded. Dark times, yes, when one more hour was all he could see of the future. Angola jabbered in French, as if speaking in tongues, then flipped into English and said, “That’s why I found Buddhism. You ever wonder why people who want to share their religion with you almost never want you to share your religion with them?”

Keb shook his head. He didn’t know. Maybe all he believed in, in that regard, was what he told Angola. “My friend Father Mikal says that anything can be made holy, if it’s deeply worshiped.”

“You have to be careful with that,” Angola said. “If people believe something enough, that doesn’t make it fact. If they shout it loud enough, that doesn’t make it true.” The coffee pot began to perk. “It’s crazy stuff, the whole story of who we are and where we came from, how we got here. It’s all locked up in one big hiding place, a vault, you know, a steel safe with all the answers inside, and a combination. But get this: the combination is locked up inside the safe, too. It’s been going on for ten thousand years, that’s all I’m saying. It started a long time ago. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

Keb was thinking how everything was a long time ago.

Angola handed him a croissant dripping with butter. Keb took a bite and heard himself say thank you. He barely got the words out. Such a rag and bone man he’d become. It was time to get back into the canoe and get this dying thing over with before it was too late. Too late to die. It was time to go beyond the cold and indecision, go until nature does it for you, sand in the wind, a wind made of sand, the earth made of air, each of us a cloud, a seed, an angel. Lie down now, in your final garments, made without pockets, and never get up. No more possessions or obsessions. Why is it that death for each of us comes either too early or
too late? Keb ate the buttered croissant and ran his tongue over his lips. “You ever had nagoonberry pie?” he asked Angola.

“Nope.” The Cajun was making soup over the oven, dicing an onion.

“Ever make kelp salsa?”

“Nope.”

“How about beer batter halibut?”

“Nope.” Angola laughed. “How about bang butter? You ever had bang butter?”

Bang butter? Great Raven. Did it explode in your mouth? Shoot off your lips?

“Marijuana, my friend. Bang butter has marijuana in it. It makes one hell of a brownie. You should try it sometime.”

“The Tlingit people had slaves, taken during wars.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have told you.”

“Keb, my friend, you can tell me anything.”

Jacques came into the galley, rubbing sleep from his eyes. Or was it Pierre? He wore only boxer shorts and asked for coffee, in French. Angola handed him a large cup. Near as Keb could tell, Jacques and Angola were talking about the storm, wondering if it had exhausted itself enough to weigh anchor.

Like every other morning, Jacques had with him a news clipping he’d printed off the Internet in the pilothouse. The clipping came from
Le Monde
. Little Mac had told Old Keb it was French for “The World.” Good thing these guys were more interested in the world than they were in Alaska, where local news might tell them their guests were elusive, runaway canoeists.

Jacques and Pierre came from a Paris university, though Angola said Pierre had married the daughter of a billionaire industrialist. Hence the yacht. They spent hours each day and night folded over rocks and maps. One night in the lab, they told Keb, James, and Little Mac about extrusive and intrusive igneous rocks, minerals and glaciers, fault lines and tectonics. They passed around garnet granites that had formed sixty thousand feet under the surface of the earth, millions of years ago. Keb tried to wrap his head around it. He asked about Crystal Bay. “Did it have that name because of the rocks there? Rocks with crystals?”