Jimmy Bluefeather: A Novel (7 page)

He gasped.

“Talk to me, Dad.” Keb was flat on the ground, pressed to the earth. He blinked through dusty shafts of sunshine. Hovered over him were Gracie, Coach Nicks, Little Mac, and Deputy Sheriff-in-Training Stuart Ewing, their faces half in shadow, half in bright light. Tyronniemorris Rex was there too, Steve the Lizard Dog, his head cocked in bewilderment. Gracie stroked Keb’s hair. “Say something, Pops. Can you hear me?”

“I hear you.”

“Can you sit up?”

He was lying on his back. He sat up and saw James not kneeling beside him like the others, but removed and strangely dispassionate, still on his feet.

“You stopped breathing,” Coach Nicks said. “You feel okay, Keb?”

“Am I breathing now?”

“Yep.”

“I feel fine.” Keb got to his feet so quickly that he startled everybody. “Where are Charlie and Tommy?”

“They left.”

Keb looked around. His stomach rumbled. “I’m hungry. Let’s make waffles.”

THE CONFRONTATION HAD unsettled Gracie, Keb could see. She was more fragile these days. “We’ll eat in Ruby’s place,” Keb said. “It has a big kitchen table.”

“Ruby won’t like it,” Gracie said in a weak voice.

Keb shrugged. Ruby was in Juneau or Anchorage or Washington. He couldn’t keep track of her anymore. “We need waffles, Gracie. Make them like you used to.”

“Little Mac will help me,” Gracie said.

Little Mac smiled, her way of saying yes.

Old Keb watched James, the radius of his heat, his hands working in and out of fists.

Coach Nicks and his boys set the table. Truman made orange juice. Gracie pulled out the sourdough starter, added cinnamon, whipped it up, and gave each waffle a minute in the waffle iron. Little Mac opened a couple rashers of bacon. Out came the butter with maple syrup tinged with spruce tips and nagoonberry jam. Best waffles in Alaska. Keb tried to remember if James had ever turned them down. Wounded and confused, James probably wanted to get away with Little Mac. That’s why Gracie recruited her, and Truman and Coach Nicks and the ballplayers, James’s best friends, hoping as hopeless people do that things could be as they once had been, back when her son had two good legs and lived in an ocean of light. Back when she made waffles after every home game victory—there had been many—and the lanky-legged boys ate and laughed and told stories with such bravado you’d have thought they’d just slain a mammoth.

The Lakers jersey kid zoomed off on his motorcycle to follow the Gant brothers down the hog-backed road to make sure they didn’t double back. Who was this kid? Keb was beginning to like him. Coach Nicks said his name was Hugh; he lived alone in a rat-hole trailer down at the boat harbor and worked as a
carpenter and heavy equipment operator. He looked about fifteen, but according to Deputy Sheriff-in-Training Stuart Ewing, he had a driver’s license that said he was twenty-three. He came from up north and never got cold and smoked cigarettes and sometimes wore wire-rim glasses that made him look like Johnny Depp, though his manner was all dispossessed Indian. Stuart had run a criminal check on him and come up clean. Beyond that, nobody knew much.

Ten minutes later the kid motored back up the road, parked his motorcycle, and stood at the door until James waved him in. The waffle iron was hot, the bacon browning.

“Smells good,” Kid Hugh said.

“Did you see the Gant brothers?” Coach Nicks asked him.

“Nope.”

He sat down with a polite nod to Gracie and Little Mac. Everybody listened as Stuart’s Jeep rumbled up the road. He came through the door with Carmen Kelly and Daisy Robinson, Carmen with her book of horoscopes, Daisy with her cribbage board.

“Where’d they go?” Coach Nicks asked Stuart.

“Up the Pepper Mountain Road.”

“You going to talk to them?”

“I already did.”

“What’d you say?”

“I said they need to stay civil and calm. So do you, James.”

James shrugged. Kid Hugh opened a small knife, cut a callus off the palm of his hand, and said to James, “You should probably get a gun.”

“No,” Gracie snapped.

“For protection,” Kid Hugh added.

“No guns,” Stuart said.

“Everybody in America has a right to bear arms,” Carmen said.

“And arm bears,” added Daisy, a flaming environmentalist who like Carmen had a crush on Truman.

“Charlie’s a Gemini,” Carmen announced. “That’s why he’s witty and adaptable and clever but also devious and superficial. With Jupiter in ascension the way it is right now, and with Mars totally in Virgo, he’s not the one to worry about.” Keb watched Coach Nicks roll his eyes. “Tommy’s the one to worry about. He’s an Aries. So is Pete Brickman. That’s why they’re friends. That’s why Tommy has a bad temper. He’s going to be even more unstable with Mercury in retrograde and with Venus as a morning star.”

“I thought Venus was a planet,” Daisy said.

“It is.”

Keb ate his third waffle and did his best to follow Carmen, talking the way she did: like, oh my God, everything so totally like something else. Truman called it simile shock, whatever that meant. He said her horoscope was actually a horrorscope, since most of what she predicted was doom and gloom. But she did it with a fetching smile, and since Truman’s heart was as big as a pumpkin, he treated Carmen like a scholar and she loved him for it. Others thought she was a fruitcake. Carmen and Daisy were good friends, and that went a long way. In fact, as Keb looked around the table and saw so many people knitted together by friendship, it warmed him and reminded him that when he grew up as a kid in Jinkaat he had good friends too. The best friends. He didn’t know Mercury from Venus back then, or Leo from Virgo, or a bagel from a burrito, but he knew who he was, and where he belonged.

WAFFLES LANDED ON plates and disappeared as if slam-dunked. Coach Nicks called for a full court press. The table became a free-for-all. Gracie and Little Mac kept it coming like short-order cooks. Daisy and Carmen pitched in. Keb watched one of the basketball boys connect a gadgetgizmo to speakers above the stove. Music soon thundered through the kitchen and everybody sang along in words Keb couldn’t follow. But the beat thrilled him. When Gracie went to the pantry to get canola oil, Little Mac flipped a waffle Frisbee-style at James. He caught it one-handed to the gleeful hoots of his teammates. Everybody laughed and cheered. It was the first time Keb had seen James smile in weeks. Gracie returned. “What happened?”

“You have to stick around if you want to see the action, Gracie.” Coach Nicks said something about major league baseball and the “crazy big salaries.”

One of James’s teammates responded, “The Rockies paid a hundred million dollars for that pitcher dude from Japan.”

Keb tried to imagine what he could buy with a hundred million dollars.

“If money is so important,” Truman asked, “why do some of the best basketball players come from the poorest inner cities?”

“It takes heart first,” said Stuart. “You have to have great heart.”

“And natural talent,” somebody said, Old Keb didn’t catch who; the conversation was too fast among a dozen people who sat at the table eating and talking like a pack of wolves, making a big mess. Ruby would have freaked out.

“You’re either born with talent or you’re not,” somebody else said.

“It’s all in the planets and the stars,” Carmen announced. “I know you don’t believe me, but it’s true.”

The boys chuckled. One said sarcastically, “You mean when the planet Pluto is aligned with the planet Mars?”

“Pluto’s not a planet anymore.”

“It’s not?”

“Who’s got the maple syrup?”

“It’s a funny thing, how talent improves the more you practice.”

Underwear, Keb thought. Bessie would want me to have new underwear, and new socks. If I had a hundred million dollars that’s what I’d buy.

“In team sports it’s not the best player who wins,” said Coach Nicks. “It’s the best team, the team that thinks and moves as one, and puts the
we
before the
me
. The guy with supreme talent has to surrender his self-interest for the greater good.”

“
Sacred Hoops
and The Zen of Basketball,” Truman replied.

“That’s right.”

“When did Pluto stop being a planet?” Keb asked. Nobody heard him.

“You’re talking about Phil Jackson,” Kid Hugh said.

“Who’s Phil Jackson?” Daisy asked.

“The winningest coach in the NBA. He led the Bulls and the Lakers to three consecutive championships each.”

“Jack Nicholson’s a Lakers fan.”

“Who’s Jack Nicholson?”

“A movie star.”

“Is Neptune still a planet?” Keb asked, louder this time.

“Phil Jackson had incredible talent to work with: Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O’Neal.”

“But none of those guys were on a champion team until Jackson came along.”

“Is there any more butter?”

“Wasn’t Jack Nicholson in
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
?”

“There’s more butter in the fridge.”

“Phil Jackson used to play with Bill Bradley.”

“He’s taller than he looks.”

“Phil Jackson?”

“No, Jack Nicholson.”

“Phil Jackson is six eight, at least.”

“Jack Nicholson was awesome in
A Few Good Men
.”

“The whole sports and money thing is out of control,” Truman said. “In the last thirty years the salaries for major university professors have increased by
30 percent while the salaries for head football coaches at the big universities have increased 750 percent.”

Old Keb scratched his head. How much was 750 percent? And what about Neptune?

Gracie pointed a spatula at Truman. “Did you know that student debt is now more than total credit card debt in this country, almost a trillion dollars? How insane is that?”

Keb thought: There’s my Gracie, the firebrand she used to be. He watched James squirm to see his mother become a little strident.

“I did know that,” Truman said.

“I didn’t,” Carmen said. “That’s terrible, students going into debt while coaches get superrich. Neptune is still a planet by the way, Keb. But it doesn’t have the cosmic influence that Jupiter or Mars or Mercury or Venus have.”

“I can’t believe you buy into that astrology crap,” James said.

“I can’t believe you buy into basketball,” Daisy fired back. “What does it matter what team wins? Does it feed the hungry or comfort the weak or shelter the homeless? All it does is entertain people who should be out doing something better with their lives.”

“Basketball was charming once,” Stuart said. “Today it’s big business.”

“Welcome to the United States of Money,” Truman announced. “That’s why PacAlaska wants to get into Crystal Bay. It’s all about money.”

“Mining, timber, and tourism,” Gracie said. “What better way to screw over a people’s homeland.”

Again, James squirmed.

“What’s so wrong with money?” Coach Nicks asked. Old Keb could see him chewing on Truman’s comments, wiping his plate with waffle number six. He had blue eyes and butch-cut blond hair, and came from Kansas, where basketball, according to Gracie, was a religion. He taught history at Jinkaat High School and volunteered at the local library and read books the size of concrete cinder blocks and never missed church and was considered the most learned man in Jinkaat until Truman showed up with his dark ponytail and goatee, the coach’s mirror opposite. Truman was from New York. He said that his hippie parents conceived him at Woodstock while Jimi Hendrix played “The Star- Spangled Banner” left-handed and upside down. He was born eight months, three weeks, one day, and fourteen hours later, at the exact moment the Ohio National Guard opened fire and killed four students at Kent State University. It was destiny, Carmen said, that Truman should become a writer and antiwar activist, and make cosmic babies with her or Daisy, which he had yet to do, but
both women remained hopeful. Truman Stein was a genius in their eyes, an almost-Einstein, given his name, a partial visionary, a thinker of almost-great thoughts, which for Carmen and Daisy, was enough. He never went to church, and once told Coach Nicks that imagination was more important than knowledge, and knowledge more important than faith, but Keb could tell the coach had a hard time imagining it. The Kansas conservative said, “You reward excellence with money. A good professional athlete deserves a good income.”

The New York liberal replied, “What’s the dollar limit?”

“As much as somebody’s willing to pay,” James said. He sat aslant of the table, his body turned so his braced leg could extend from his chair, his eyebrows stitched together as the discussion spiraled onto sports and money. Not good topics, Keb thought, for a wounded warrior feeling trapped by the bland inevitability of the rest of his life. So much heart and heartache over a game.
He needs to beat on a log
, Keb thought.
He needs to work with his hands. Build a boat
.

Gracie said, “Who wants another waffle?”

Hands went up. Little Mac dumped more bacon onto the table and it disappeared. She said, “How’d everybody get so hungry?”

Stuart said, “I think Tommy and Charlie are up on Pepper Mountain looking for something.”

“What, exactly?” Carmen asked.

“Probably whatever it is they said broke that day, when the logs came loose on the skid trail.”

James huffed.

The table went quiet.

“Tommy’s the dangerous one,” James said.

“He’s not a bad person,” Little Mac said. “He can be kind. He taught me to play the guitar and to sing harmony.”

“Then why not run back to him, if you like him so much? Start a band, go on tour, have a baby.”

Little Mac froze. Was it pain or anger Keb saw in her eyes? He sometimes wished she wouldn’t be so stoic. She was Milo Chen’s great-granddaughter all right, a little thing and a big thing all in one.

Gracie wiped her hands on an apron, and James said he’d take a couple more waffles, “Not overdone like those last ones.”

“You’ve had enough,” Gracie told him.

“Just make ’em, Mom.”

“You’ve had enough.”

“I don’t fucking believe this.”