Jimmy Bluefeather: A Novel (35 page)

“Gramps, you have to make your answer a question.”

Keb asked Little Mac to roll him to the window. The lights of the city were up, and beautiful. Above, Keb could barely make out the brightest stars. Down below, the basketball boys shuffled over their court, shooting through hoops without nets. One boy in particular caught Keb’s attention, how he moved with boldness and grace, artfully floating his jump shots.

“He’s good,” James said, suddenly at Keb’s side.

“Yes.”

“He moves better to his left than he does to his right.”

“Yes, and the others know that.”

“I miss it, Gramps.”

“Basketball?”

“No, the wind and the sea and the canoe and the whole thing. Being out there, it’s so real. I mean, sometimes I didn’t even know where we were going.”

“Neither did I.”

“The nights were amazing.”

“Yes, a
x
tòowoo kli
g
éi ee kàa-
x
, I’m proud of you.”

“Me?”

“You learned the language.”

“No, I have a long ways to go.”

“Not Tlingit, the other language, older than Tlingit. The oldest language of all.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You will. One day.”

“I’ve been thinking about my name.”

“Grandmothers give us our names, but your grandmothers passed on to the great spirits before you were born.”

“Do you remember Anne, the whale biologist who gave us the ride to the glacier? She said many things have the wrong names.”

“Your mother changed her name back to Wisting after she divorced your father. That was good. She changed your name back to Wisting, too.”

“I’m glad she did.”

“It’s Norwegian.”

“I’ve been thinking that maybe my Tlingit name—”

“Bluefeather,” Keb said. “
X
’eishx’w yax T’aaw. That’s your new name, your Tlingit name, as of today. I’m giving it to you now. Is that what you want?”

“Yes, Gramps . . . thanks. It’s another way of being alive, isn’t it? In a canoe. A better way, I think . . . I don’t know. Everything made sense out there.”

“X’éi
g
aa át,” Keb said without explanation.

“The canoe pulled to the left a little, don’t you think?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll bet if we reworked the keel line we could correct it, using small adzes.”

“Yes.”

“Anyway, Gramps . . . we’re going down the hall, Little Mac and me, to see Mom.”

“Yes . . . good. Tell her you love her.”

“You want to stay here with Aunt Ruby, or come with us?”

“Stay.”

WHEN RUBY AWOKE, Keb was at her side. She asked for water and he managed to move the drinking cup close enough for her to reach the straw. “You see those flowers?” she said, motioning toward the largest bouquet on the table. “They’re from Paul Beals. Can you believe it?”

Keb believed it.

“Actually, the card is signed by Paul and his entire staff. And that card there, see, the one with the whales on it? It’s from the woman who gave you the ride to the glacier.”

“Oh?” Keb tried to find the card among all the others. He said, “She isn’t a ranger anymore. She’s in Jinkaat with Stuart Ewing.”

“Stuart and the woman whale ranger? Really? You got any more gossip?”

“Not me, but Helen does.” At the Rumor Mill Café.

Ruby grinned. “You used a canoe to steal an airplane. That’s funny.”

“It is?”

“Yes. It’s funny and crazy and brilliant and a whole bunch of other things.”

“Stuart and Truman say a judge will probably order the kids to do community service, for stealing the plane and the radios.”

“Tell the judge that all those people coming together at the glacier was a pretty good show of community. Thank you for that, Pops . . . Gunalchéesh.”

“I wish Gracie could have been there.”

“And Mom. She would have hugged you to pieces.”

“Ruby, you have to get well and come home. We’re going to bless the canoe next week, in Mitch’s Garage. Lots of food. Smoked coho, nagoonberry pie. Oddmund and Dag are cleaning it up good, the canoe. We’re going to paint it and carve clan crests on the bow. Make it look real nice. Nathan Red Otter will be there this time, and Father Mikal. I want you there, too, for the blessing. I brought you the last paddle. It’s for you. The one Kevin made, over there, on the table, by the flowers, see?”

“For me?”

With great effort Keb rolled himself over to the table, put the paddle on his lap, and rolled back. “Yes, for you.” He put the paddle on Ruby’s bed and gave her his hand, and was surprised by the strength she used to pull him to her, such strength that he rose from his wheelchair and found her, his first child, small in his arms. He cradled her and could hear her breathing, the little girl she used to be. He remembered loving her for her bewilderment, all those years ago, her face wet with tears, her spirit—like the spirits of so many others—caught between two worlds then and still today. “You didn’t have to do this, Ruby, for your sister. You didn’t have to, but I’m glad you did.”

“We are each other, Pops. You told me that once, remember? You, me, Gracie, all of us. We are each other.”

“Yes.”

“I did it because I wanted to. Do you believe me?”

“I believe you.”

“I’ve always tried to do the right thing.”

“I know, Ruby. Don’t be angry and resentful, okay? It steals your soul. Everything’s not going to be the way you want it to be. It’s okay. Give it time. You’re too beautiful to be angry.”

“Oh, Pops.” She held him fiercely and he held her and in the holding Old Keb knew what Angola had meant. It wasn’t Ruby’s life he had saved. It wasn’t James’s life, or Gracie’s life.

It was his own.

KID HUGH MOVED the forklift forward with the massive central beam balanced on the wide tines. Mitch directed him with hand motions while everybody moved out of the way. “Higher, okay, higher still . . . good, now a little to your left, more, good . . . good . . . okay, now forward, forward . . . stop . . . now, down . . . slowly, slowly. . . .”

As the central beam eased into place atop the end posts, teams of carpenters, all volunteers, shimmed the joints, set in the wooden plugs, and went to work placing in the mortise-and-tenon hip rafters and jack rafters.

“Once the rafters are in,” Jimmy explained to Anne, we can start laying down the two-by-eight, tongue-and-groove red cedar.”

“Not a single nail?” Anne asked Jimmy.

“Nope. Canoes don’t need nails, neither do carving sheds.”

“It’s really not a shed, is it? It’s more like a shop, or an art studio.”

“Hey, Jimmy,” Truman yelled, “you got the bevel square?”

“Albert’s got it.”

“It’s next to Vic’s chop saw,” Albert yelled.

“Look at you, Truman,” Vic said. “You’ve got a real job. You’re going to ruin your reputation.”

“This isn’t a job, Vic. It’s a hobby. I’m doing this for fun. So are you.”

“Hey, Anne,” Dag yelled, “Oddmund and I put a kroner under the end posts, you know, for good luck. Keb would have liked that, don’t you think?”

Anne smiled. She did that often these days.

“Where’s lunch?”

“It’s coming.”

Anne was torn. She wanted to be here and watch the shed go up, four
walls raised in a single day, forty people working together. She also wanted to be at the airport where Stuart and little Nancy were due after a week away, visiting his family down south. He had called to say that he’d see her at the shed. His sheriff’s rig was at the airport; he’d drive straight to the construction site. “You’ve worked for years on the fund-raising for this,” he’d told her. “Stay. Watch it go up.”

This was her day, everybody’s day, a major construction day of the new “Keb Shed.”

“Here comes Ruby,” yelled Big Terry McNamee, as he put down his Skilsaw.

The one-ton Dodge rumbled up the hog-backed road and stopped in the clearing, halfway between Ruby’s house and the site of the new carving shed, where the old one used to be, its charred remains hauled away years ago. Ruby got out with ten pizzas. Kevin Pallen got out with two cases of root beer. Stiff-legged with arthritis, Steve the Lizard Dog got out and followed the pizza.

Everybody stopped to eat, and to pet Steve.

“Thanks, Ruby,” somebody said.

“I didn’t pay for these,” she said. “Anne did.”

They all understood. The money came from the nonprofit Anne had created. Nearly on her own, she’d written a mission statement and business plan, assembled a board, gotten nonprofit status, and raised half a million dollars to rebuild the shed and make it the “Keb Wisting Jinkaat Community Arts Center,” where local kids and adults and visiting artists would express themselves through carving, basketry, weaving, music, and who knows what else. Anne might one day rearticulate a humpback whale skeleton, or teach poetry, with help from Truman. PacAlaska had offered fifty thousand dollars; Anne accepted one thousand dollars for the high school shop class to build a mini-canoe for the preschool playground. The rest of the money came mostly from private donations, some anonymous, one from France, another from New Orleans. She’d raised the full amount in ten months.

“Hey, Ruby,” Vic said, always pushing buttons, “I just heard that PacAlaska considered buying a bird shit fertilizer company in Peru.”

“I didn’t vote for it.”

“But it’s true?”

“It’s true. Why don’t you stuff a little more pizza in that big mouth of yours, Vic.”

People laughed.

Gracie drove into the clearing with Helen and Myrtle. They pulled out three large bowls of fresh green salad, all from local gardens, topped with nasturtium
flowers. Myrtle had fancied up the salads with strips of Cajun blackened chicken and smoked salmon.

Anne kept checking her watch.

“They’ll be here soon, honey,” Helen said. “I heard a plane land just minutes ago. I’ll bet they’re on it.”

“Hey, sis,” Gracie said to Ruby. “We just heard on the radio that PacAlaska put a bid on a guano factory in Peru.”

More laughter.

“I voted against it,” Ruby said.

“Good,” Truman quipped.

“You realize of course,” Ruby said, “that if we can’t get into our homeland in Crystal Bay and make a decent profit there, then we have to go somewhere else.”

Nobody took the bait, though Anne could see Truman was tempted. PacAlaska lost the Crystal Bay Ninth Circuit case by a 6-3 vote and did not appeal. Ruby had just one kidney and wasn’t the tiger she used to be. Her father’s death three years ago had hit her harder than anybody else, except maybe Jimmy.

“Whoa,” Gracie said, suddenly distracted. She put down her salad and walked into the shed to admire the framework. “You got the central beam in place, and some rafters, oh my . . . oh my. . . .” She noticed the shims and the chisel work. She walked over to the canoe and put her hands on it. It was her touchstone, many people’s touchstone, not just in Jinkaat but in Juneau, Haines, Yakutat, Klukwan, Sitka, Angoon, Kake, Saxman, and all the way down to Seattle and beyond. People came to see it, touch it, photograph it, and have their photos taken with “The Canoe That Stole An Airplane,” the canoe made famous on television and the Internet. The Burke Museum and the Field Museum had offered to house it and preserve it. Ruby and Gracie said no. It would stay in Jinkaat, in the new Keb Shed, thanks to Anne Bellestraude—wife, mother, biologist, and “kickass community activist,” according to Truman.

An activist himself, Truman often talked about taking Stuart and Anne’s Little Nancy to New York when she got older, so he might show her the city of his youth, famous for its museums, coffee shops, restaurants, parks and bars, its thinkers, writers, artists, and musicians. He wanted Little Nancy to see it, together with his own remarkable little girl, Rebecca, so bright and earnest, born out of wedlock with Daisy Robinson, a scandal in Jinkaat until people fell in love with Rebecca. Little Nancy and Rebecca were best friends. “Gal pals,” Anne called them. Truman wanted them to grow up aware, that’s all; he wanted them to see the world.

Forget New York, Oddmund and Dag would say. Keep the girls in Alaska, the last, best place. Teach them to work with their hands, to build boats.

Teach them to be mechanics, Mitch would say. To fix anything.

Teach them basketball and history, Coach Nicks would say.

What kind of history? Truman would ask. History from the bottom up or the top down? You going to teach them about Indians, suffragists, and slaves, or about presidents, generals, and capitalists? Coach Nicks would roll his eyes and say the architects of freedom will always be attacked by people free to do so; that Truman getting his stupid antiwar novel published—
Catch-11, Catch-44, Catch-88
, whatever—was proof that miracles happened.

Helen and Myrtle would teach Little Nancy and Rebecca to cook. Gracie would teach them to pick berries. Jimmy and Kid Hugh would teach them to hunt and fish.

So many teachers, so much to learn.

ANNE ATE A nasturtium flower from the top of Gracie’s salad and checked her watch again. Stuart had phoned every day to tell about Little Nancy’s happiness with her grandma and grandpa, adding that she missed home terribly. He was a sheriff now, but only after the State of Alaska had put him on probation for a year for tracking two boats with silent beacons without the knowledge and consent of the owners. In the parlance of constitutional law and due process, it was “the fruit of the poisonous tree.” Instead of hanging around Jinkaat, Stuart took Anne to Hawaii and proposed marriage atop Mauna Kea, the highest mountain in the world, from base to summit.

“You’re standing on top of the world,” he told her. “You deserve this.”

She cried.

They got married in Jinkaat, with a blessing from Old Keb.

The day his probation ended, Stuart was rehired as the Jinkaat deputy sheriff, and the town threw a big party. Two years later he was promoted to sheriff.

Tommy Gant and Pete Brickman got light sentences, at Stuart’s behest, backed by Old Keb who said the best revenge is the one not taken.

Again, Anne checked her watch.
Where are they?