Jimmy Bluefeather: A Novel (6 page)

When she was little, about three or four, Gracie loved to play hide-and-seek with the bigger kids. She’d stand in the middle of the meadow with her
hands over her eyes, hiding from the entire world, invisible in a child’s logic. If she couldn’t see them, they couldn’t see her. Ruby, eleven years older, would yell, “Gracie, you’re standing in broad daylight. We all see you. You have to hide behind a tree or something.” Unyielding, Gracie would hold her hands over her eyes until the seeker pegged her. Each time she’d drop her hands, her face alight, her laughter filling the sky, her little mind oblivious to rules and the importance of winning. It was the happiest Keb had ever seen her.

Keb considered going out to visit her, at the truck, but that required standing up and moving and was no small task when his joints worked like rusted oarlocks. She came in and walked across the creaky wooden floor; flipped on the single bare lightbulb that hung over the kitchen table. Her eyes adjusted to the evidence of frugal living.

“Hi, Pops.”

“Hullo.”

“You hungry?”

“No.”

“How about I make you some waffles?”

“Okay.”

She lit a cigarette, pulled butter and syrup from the fridge, and said heavily, “Did you hear? James got into an argument with some of the Greentop boys at Shelikof’s. I wasn’t there but everybody’s telling me about it. I guess he accused Charlie of skidding the logs up on Pepper Mountain and making things more dangerous than they needed to be.” She blew out smoke, sucked in another deep drag, blew out again.

Keb shifted. “Skidding the logs?”

“Yep.”

“That’s not good.”

“I know, Pops. That’s why I’m telling you. I guess the troopers have been talking to everybody who was up there.”

Poor Gracie. Every kindness the years had shown Ruby had been cruel to her. Ruby the elegant kittiwake, Gracie the honker goose with flat feet and a pear-shaped figure in baggy pants and teardrop glasses, her uncombed hair piled on her head. Keb could see she wasn’t well, her color wasn’t right. He struggled with his feet. He had to get his shoes off. An old Norwegian Tlingit can only absorb so much bad news with his toes bottled up. Uncle Austin used to say, “Never trust a man who takes away your language or makes you wear tight shoes. You want to understand the world and where you came from? You want to know who you are? Free your toes.” Let them breathe.

“Nobody should make trouble with the Greentop boys,” Keb said.

Gracie dabbed cigarette ashes into an empty Dinty Moore can. “I told James that. He got mad at me. I can’t tell him anything anymore. Nobody can.”

Keb said nothing.

“What’s he supposed to do, now that he can’t play basketball?”

“I’ll handle that,” Keb said, too softly for Gracie to hear.

“You know, he started dating Little Mac when Tommy was sweet on her. There are hard feelings there, too.”

Keb warmed at the mention of Little Mac. Part Chinese and part Scottish, with a little Tlingit and Filipino thrown in, she was a one-girl melting pot. “Chop Suey,” the other girls called her, fighting off envy and losing every time. As a kid, Little Mac would pop wheelies on her bike, eat apple cores, and skip rocks. She could outrun and out-spit most boys her age, and she grew into a beauty made all the more beautiful by the way she moved, a young confident woman who never learned to fear the future. Keb loved her questioning intelligence, the fact that she was incapable of holding a grudge in a town built on them. Now sixteen, she had breezed through her junior year at a Seattle high school and returned north to spend another summer with her family in Jinkaat, where every logger and stevedore hit on her without success. Nearly a century ago, her great-grandfather, Milo Chen, had worked the salmon cannery in Dundas Bay with Keb’s pregnant mother, Nora. When Nora’s water broke and the cannery foreman told her to keep working or she’d lose her job, Milo, the hardest worker of them all, got onto his knees and delivered the baby—little Keb—while a dozen salmon-packers did double-time to cover for him. Milo cut the umbilical cord with a bone-handled filet knife, held Keb over his head, and sang a Mandarin blessing as pure as rain over rocks. He put little Keb on his mother’s chest and finished sixteen hours of packing salmon to make rich men richer down in Puget Sound.

After Keb’s mother and father died, the salmon industry collapsed and the Dundas Bay cannery closed down. Keb was about twenty by this time, back when Uncle Austin found Milo back-bowed on a construction job in Juneau, pouring concrete for two dollars a day. What exactly had Milo said when he held little Keb over his head? Uncle Austin wanted to know. “We are not human beings on a spiritual journey,” Milo told him. “We are spiritual beings on a human journey, born into our lives for one reason only: to seek the road that makes death a fulfillment.”

“Keb Zen Raven,” Milo called the boy. “The philosopher bird.”

All these years later, people in Jinkaat made a sport of watching Little Mac, Milo’s great-granddaughter, the way she moved on coltish legs and wore
her beret and tied patterned scarves in her faded jeans; how she kicked rusty beer cans down the road and waved at passersby, no matter that they didn’t wave back. What suspicion they must have felt, watching her commit the sin of being different in that breezy way of hers, with that look in her eyes that said she was a continent away.

“I SWEAR,” GRACIE said, “we are hard on each other in this town. A lot of people say they wanted my James to get into Duke. Maybe they did and maybe they didn’t. We’re like a bucketful of crabs. Any time any one of us tries to crawl out to be somebody, the others pull him right back down. That’s what happened to my James. He’s talented. He’s a good student. He’s a Tlingit crab trying to get out with everybody pulling him right back down. It’s sick.”

Just then James angled his way through the door, a wide-shouldered silhouette, heavy on his cane. Old Keb couldn’t see his face. He didn’t need to. Eyes like chestnuts, downcast, vulnerable, one slightly higher than the other. Flat mouth, set jaw. Contours hardening in the cold journey of consequences that turns a boy into a man.

Gracie said, “I’m making your grandpa waffles. You want some?”

No reply. Keb could see the boy assessing his place, the wood shavings on the floor, the faint oily smell of yellow cedar, the hand tools on the wall and on the corner workbench where Kevin Pallen had been carving a block of hemlock.

“You need to beat on something?” Keb asked him.

“What?” James answered distantly.

“You need to beat on something?”

James turned. A motorcycle crested the hill, coming fast. It blasted up to the truck and skidded to a halt. Riding it was the kid, the same feral boy who delivered news of the accident to Old Keb six weeks ago. He wore the same baggy pants and ball cap and Lakers jersey like winter fur on his weasel back. He had a lean and hungry look, fed on conflict more than food, as though no part of him would go unused in a fight. As he loped to the door, Keb heard Gracie say something but didn’t get the words. Dust veiled things. Sunlight slanted through thirsty boughs in the trees. Keb couldn’t see a whole lot, but one thing he did see rattled him. Standing in the doorway, the kid was a soul on fire. “Charlie Gant’s coming,” he said. “He’s got the Greentop boys with him.”

EVERY FAMILY FACES moments when the world rises up to bury it, that’s what Uncle Austin used to say. Be ready. They’re little moments that get big fast, each one different for a thousand different families, each one made of truths and lies woven into patterns or woven not at all. Some approach with naked teeth, others you can’t see until they drag you into darkness. They change everything and nothing. Wounded Knee, Trail of Tears, Pequot Wars, all big moments. Little moments have no telling in the history books. Still, lives end. Tribes and clans disappear, and the hurt comes from how easily others forget. This could be one of those moments, Keb knew. He had to get his shoes off. Gracie passed him and was out the door when he heard the ATVs—five big-wheeled machines that roared up the narrow rutted road into the clearing past Ruby’s house. They stopped a short distance away and rumbled beneath their rebel riders who flanked Charlie Gant two to a side. Old Keb recognized Pete Brickman behind silver mirrored sunglasses, true as any shadow. Next to him was Charlie’s brother, Tommy, his eyes the color of ice in a pan. The two riders to his other side added nothing to the descriptions of the first. All were short-haired and grizzly-bearded except Charlie, who was clean-shaven with dishwater blond hair down to his shoulders. All five wore T-shirts except Tommy, who wore no shirt at all. Keb watched one rider roll a toothpick between his teeth. “Stihl Crazy After All These Years” read a sticker on Tommy’s ATV, Stihl being a chain saw favored by loggers who rendered forests into slash. After clear-cutting Idaho, these gentlemen had come to Alaska for the last big slice of American pie. Keb wondered what they would do when all the ancient trees were gone. Cut grass? Mow the big boss’s front lawn?

James stood next to the truck and faced them, his hand on his walking cane. His mother, standing behind him, appeared snake-bit. Old Keb rolled his tongue and clenched his hand thinking it’s a young man’s nature to have an adversary.

Charlie turned off his machine and motioned the others to do the same. “Hey, James,” he said. “You got time to talk?”

James shifted his weight but said nothing.

“The troopers are asking a lot of questions and I’ve been answering them,” Charlie said. “We’ve all been answering them, haven’t we, fellas?” He looked at his buddies, who nodded. Tommy’s nod lacked enthusiasm, Keb thought. But it was a good beginning. Charlie added, “I’m sorry about what happened. We all are. It’s a bum deal for you, and it was an accident. It really was.”

Again, no comment from James.

“It would have been cool to see you make it in the NBA,” Charlie said. He sounded so sincere, looked sincere too, with his open face and expressive eyes and winning smile. Remember Custer? Uncle Austin used to say. He had a winning smile and long golden hair and didn’t smoke or cuss or drink; he loved the opera and classical music, adored his wife, spoke sincerely, and shot Indians.

“Anyway,” Charlie said, “my brother Tommy has something to say to you.”

By now Tommy had dismounted his machine and was standing next to it, but didn’t look at all comfortable. Keb thought he might catch on fire from the friction eating away at him. A wounded moment limped by. Keb had to get his shoes off. He tried to swallow. Everything was too hot and dry. How long since it had rained? Keb loved the rain. From his position behind James, near the truck, he watched the Lakers jersey kid circle to his left. The kid was lean and small, but something in the way he moved said it didn’t matter.

Tommy said to James, “Just before the logs rolled, I heard something break, a D-ring, I think.”

James stared at him.

“You might have set the choker wrong,” Tommy added.

“I set it right,” James said, his hand shaking on his cane. “You were the crew boss, Charlie. You made the decision to skid the logs and not high-lead them.”

“That has nothing to do with it.”

“That has everything to do with it.”

“Read the Alaska Forest Practices Act. Skid logging and cutting in the buffer strip are completely legal.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I know so.”

The Lakers jersey kid kept circling, aiming to outflank Charlie and Tommy and the others.

“Stop right there,” Charlie yelled, pointing a finger at him. The kid stopped.

A hot wind blew up then, like a breath, crazy as it sounds, but that’s how Old Keb felt it, as a parched, dry sigh that whipped up dust and grit, and brought people’s hands to their eyes. It funneled through the open cab of the truck where a raven feather lifted off the seat and sailed out the cab window and onto the ground. Keb alone saw it, from where he stood behind James. As quickly as the wind arose, it died.

Keb reached down and picked it up.

“Hey, Keb,” Charlie said, “I didn’t see you back there.”

Keb nodded. He had nothing to say.

“It’s time for you to leave, all of you,” Gracie said as she wiped the dust from her eyes.

Charlie had more to say, Keb could tell, but Sheriff Stuart Ewing roared up in his Jeep Grand Cherokee and parked next to the only puddle that three weeks of sunny weather had failed to vanquish. Coated with pollen and dust, it lay concealed until Stuart opened the door and stepped right into it. Kaploosh. “Everybody stay where you are,” he said in his best sheriff voice. He kicked his feet dry and strode forward on skinny legs.

A train of vehicles followed, the rusty, dented cars and trucks of coastal Alaska. ATVs too, bringing a small-town theater of eager onlookers keen on any conflict. Coach Nicks was there, and Dag Nystad, and Truman, Helen, Myrtle, Little Mac, and several of James’s friends from the high school basketball team. Coach Nicks said, “Go home, Charlie. All of you, go home.”

Sheriff Ewing said, “I’ll handle this, Coach.” Problem was, he wasn’t a sheriff. He was the former Jinkaat village public safety officer and now deputy sheriff-in-training, the wheat-haired son of a retired Alaska state trooper who Truman said got the other end of the male chromosome. Instead of doing what he should have done—sell kitchenware in a Seattle Sears—he became a cop. His shoulders sufficed for little more than a coat hanger. Still, you had to admire his fearlessness and determination, even though they would probably get him killed one day. With arms extended referee-style, as if breaking up a fight, he stepped between Tommy and James and said, “All right, what’s going on here?”

Nobody spoke. Charlie started up his machine.

Tommy looked wistfully at Little Mac.

A RAVEN FLEW overhead just then, northbound. Not any raven. Imagine an oracle rising from the dead, a bird with one feather missing, cutting the sky. Imagine the feather in Keb’s hand lifting too. Not a downy feather from the bird’s neck or breast, but a primary feather, broad and black as a January sky.
Made for lift and speed. What happened then Keb couldn’t say. It seemed as if hours passed, but in truth only seconds went by. He saw himself on the bird’s back, everything visible from Raven’s eye. Icy Strait appeared below. Up ahead, approaching fast, a vast wall of ice commanded the entrance to Crystal Bay. Keb recognized it as the great glacier that long ago marched down from the mountains and forced his ancestors from their home, the glacier that locked the bay in cold storage for hundreds of years before it melted back. Had it returned? Was yesterday tomorrow and tomorrow today? Raven seemed to float, the shadow of his wings patterned onto the glacier’s deep blue crevasses. Reflected in one wing-shadow, above the ice, Keb saw his own face. In the other wing-shadow, James’s face. Between them, the glacier climbed in fractured towers of ice—the colors separate yet one. The sky was an untended grave, rolling back on itself. Keb forgot to breathe. Then a movement, far below. Approaching the ice was a small canoe, hewn from wood, sharp-prow,
seet
, the most beautiful boat in the world. Keb watched as two men paddled that canoe right through the glacier as if ice were water. Then a voice: “Pops? Pops . . . are you okay?”