Jimmy Bluefeather: A Novel Read online

  Wanting too much.

  The kid with arctic eyes and blue fingers motioned Kevin outside.

  Old Keb stuffed two shirts into a pillowcase. What else? Socks, he could hear Bessie tell him. Don’t forget socks, and extra underwear. He wanted to lie down with her just then, down under the weight of it all. Lie down and take a nap and never get up. Lie down like an old bear too tired to hunt, right there, right now; sleep against the kitchenette that Ruby’s husband, Günter, had built for him all those years ago. Lie down with the peeled logs and milled timber he’d known all his life—seet, yán, xáay, shéix’w, duk, Sitka spruce, western hemlock, yellow cedar, red alder, black cottonwood. Uncle Austin had taught him to read the grains with his eyes closed, to smell the fresh cuts and the smoke, to know the wood as you know a living thing. Even when it’s dead it’s alive.

  Old Keb wrapped his arthritic hands around his carving tools. They didn’t fit. They weren’t his tools anymore. They weren’t his hands anymore. Even his adz was a stranger, its shape a distant past. How long since he carved his last canoe? How long since he shaped something and felt it shape him? He looked around the shed, grabbed his clothes and pills and made for the door. The kid had fetched Ruby’s Dodge one-ton truck from her empty house next to the shed. He had Kevin in the cab with him.

  They shot down the road and swerved past Steve, the barking mongrel dog that belonged to Keb’s neighbors, Ty and Ronnie Morris. Nobody called him Steve. Given his big head and predatory nature, they called him Rex, short for Tyronniemorris Rex: the king of the road, the fang-endowed Doberman- Rottweiler-Rototiller that dug up flowerbeds, peed on people’s legs, stuck his nose in other dogs’ butts, and shared his bark and growl with anybody who passed by. Not exactly Lassie. “That’s a smart dog,” the kid said. “He hunts by scent.”

  Keb thought, What else is he going to hunt by, a map?

  The kid said, “Remember that old rat-haired collie that used to lie in the middle of the road all day? We called him Speedbump. I always thought he’d get run over, but he never did. He just died of old age.” As if it were a disgrace, a bad way to go. That was the kid’s tone. Better to explode in a burst of glory, go down with guns blazing.

  The kid hit nearly every pothole but reached the airstrip in good time. Keb was tempted to tell him to go back and hit the few potholes he missed. Make it a perfect run.

  A crowd stood at the bush plane counter, knots of people casting light and shadow on each other. Keb came through the door and Mackenzie Chen flew into his arms and nearly knocked him over. Once enfolded into him though, she felt weightless, forceless. People called her Little Mac. On most days she was a bee in the sun, undiminished by events around her. Not today. She was James’s girl, off and on, and today was a bad day. Truman Stein put a hand on Keb’s shoulder and asked if he could get him a cup of coffee. Keb would have preferred lemonade, mixed just right, the way Little Mac made it on warm summer days. But coffee would do. Keb saw the Nystad brothers, Oddmund and Dag, who must have closed things down at Nystad’s If We Ain’t Got It You Don’t Need It Mercantile and General Supply. They were talking to Vic Lehan, the town barber who always had something to say. Even when he fell asleep, Vic awoke with an instant comment. Each acknowledged Keb in a quiet way; in a small town you’re never far from a friend. Was Father Mikal in the crowd? So many people, some who only seemed to show themselves during a crisis. Neighbors, relatives, the old and the young, rich and poor, ambitious and lazy, Tlingits and Norwegians mostly, but also Swedish, Russian and Ukrainian, German, Filipino, Portuguese and Chinese, plus half a dozen California hippies who’d moved north to find themselves or lose themselves or lose somebody who was out to find them, and several big-city hoity-toity types whose lives were knotted in neckties before they came to Alaska. Most stood still and frozen-faced, not knowing what to say, or saying little as they fed on the news, bad as it was, just as they would feed on a miracle, the profound events that sustain small towns. Keb could see that many had eyes made of unshed tears, trying and failing with hands in their pockets to express the inexpressible, heads low and postures bent by the inadequacy of words. Could it be? James Wisting, the best Native high school basketball player in Alaska . . . in Juneau with a crushed leg?

  The fancy-pants magazine Sports Illustrated had mentioned him as a “high school standout.” Duke University had sent an e-mail and talked to Coach Nicks.

  Old Keb never did understand basketball until one night, years ago, in the school gym. He sat on those hard wooden bleachers with three hundred people going crazy in the fourth quarter, his back aching and the score tied. He listened as Truman, a writer who used to live in Manhattan, told him to think of men long ago hunting mammoths and mastodons, working as a team. You see? A kid charges down the court dribbling the ball. He passes to another kid, equally fast, who flips the ball into the air. Not into the basket, but near it, where a third kid, graceful as a gazelle, catches it and banks it off the glass. He misses. But the first kid, always alert, makes the rebound and bounces it to the third kid who flips it to a fourth kid who fakes a shot and passes to a fifth kid who floats a jumper that swishes through. Backpedaling now, those same five kids must defend their end of the court from five others who have just as much heart. “It’s more than just sport,” Truman said. “It’s something difficult and beautiful and all the more beautiful because it is so difficult. It’s what you do in Alaska these days. It’s basketball, the new hunt.”

  “Hey, Keb,” the air-taxi office manager yelled across the crowded office. “There’s a NMRS plane coming over from Bartlett Cove that’ll be here in ten minutes and take you and Little Mac into Juneau. Gracie’s already there with James and Coach Nicks and some of the kids from the team.”

  Keb nodded his appreciation as his one good eye continued to survey the room. Seated against the far wall were half a dozen Greentop boys, loggers tipped back in their chairs and eating pizza from Shelikof’s, the local takeout. Idaho rednecks, hard-bitten timber men with wood chips on their pants and frowns on their faces, cigarettes in their fingers. Oil-stained gloves tucked under their belts. Silver metal hats upside down on the floor, spinning when they kicked them with their steel-toed boots. Old Keb shuffled over.

  Charlie Gant got to his feet and wiped pizza sauce off his lips with an oily sleeve. A disk of pepperoni fell on the floor. Steve the Lizard Dog snarfed it up. Charlie offered a hand. “Hey, Keb, we’re all really sorry. Damn, I mean—it just happened and like, I don’t know. . . .”

  Sitting next to his older brother, his face opaque, Tommy Gant had his eyes on Mackenzie Chen.

  The crowd moved in behind Old Keb. He could feel their weight, their hunger for an explanation. Truman handed Keb a cup of coffee.

  Keb asked, “What happened, Charlie?”

  “It just happened, it was an accident.”

  Keb studied him hard.

  Charlie said, “James was a choker-setter and . . . I don’t know.” He shrugged. “I can’t say.” Tommy and Pete and the others nodded, thumbs hooked in their suspenders. Yep, can’t say.

  AIRSICKNESS NEVER BOTHERED Old Keb until he started flying in these little planes that shouldered their way into dour clouds. Rain pelted the windows. Keb closed his eyes over the clear-cuts of Chichagof Island and Port Thomas, mountains and valleys stripped of their trees. Streams brown with sediment. A ravaged land. The timber industry had never bothered him until it all went wrong. Until chain saws brought out the worst in boys and corporations the worst in men and his own people lost their way.

  The affable pilot pushed his headset mouthpiece away and said over his shoulder, “Hang on, Keb. I’ll make this ride as smooth as possible. There’s a headset in the seat pocket in front of you if you want to use it. I got Buddy Tabor on channel one and Emmylou Harris on channel two.”

  Keb didn’t move. Opposite him was a woman in a NMRS uniform, and behind him were two other uniformed federal officers who worked for the National Marine Reserve Service, a new federal agency
that Truman had said was established to protect America’s threatened oceans, though exactly how the oceans were threatened Keb didn’t know. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know. Everything was threatened these days.

  “I’m sorry about your grandson,” the pilot added.

  A nod from Keb. He was going to barf any minute unless this buckaroo got his plane to calm down.

  When the pilot did find smoother air, Keb leaned forward and asked him, “Do I know you?”

  “Terry . . . Terry McNamee.” Big smile. Crooked teeth. “I contract out to the National Marine Reserve Service. My mom works at PacAlaska with your daughter, Ruby Bauer. She’s your daughter, right?”

  Keb nodded. No matter how much she irritated him, she would always be his daughter. Chichagof Island receded off their tail.

  “It’s been a bad spring,” Terry said, as Keb studied whitecaps below on Chatham Strait. “Crappy weather. And now this, you know . . . the accident. . . .”

  Old Keb nodded again.

  “Remember that basketball game last year against Unalakleet, when he scored thirty points and had two defenders on him all night? Damn . . . I sure hope he’s okay.”

  Old Keb shrunk into his big coat. He stuffed his hands into his pockets and found, to his surprise, a feather. He pulled it out, stared at it. Raven black. How did it get there? Holding it by the shaft, he twisted it slowly between his thumb and forefinger. Had he put it there? The hand that held it felt more agile. The feather flashed with rare light, not black but blue, a stormy sky over indigo water. Keb trembled and dropped the feather. For an instant he was a boy again with Uncle Austin in Crystal Bay, ninety years ago, watching golden leaves fall off tall cottonwood trees, spiraling down, laughing as they tried to catch them.

  “We’re over Admiralty Island,” Terry said to him. “How are you doing?”

  “Fine,” Keb lied.

  Admiralty Island, what kind of name was that? A square-rigged British name. Keb’s people called the island Kootsnahoo, Fortress of the Bears. A little to the north, off the plane’s left wing, was Point Retreat, so named by Lieutenant Joseph Whidbey of His Majesty’s Ship Discovery, when a warrior band of Auke Tlingit pursued Whidbey and his sallow-faced sailors, those scurvy-wracked, black-gummed, homesick men who rowed facing backward while the Tlingit paddled facing forward. According to Uncle Austin, who knew everything, Whidbey served under the bloated Captain George Vancouver, a man without imagination. “Captain Van,” his men called him, but never to his face. Now the chase off Point Retreat, the Tlingit warriors stabbing the sea with each stroke, each man fixed with a niyaháat and a shak’áts’, a breastplate and a double-ended dagger. The cedar canoe running true. The x’igaa káa in his shadaa, a wooden helmet, fiercely beckoning his men forward. Not far ahead, Whidbey’s men rowed for their lives, muskets ready. A rising wind filled their sails and gave them a close escape. Five years later the Russians arrived with Aleut slaves and powerful cannon and a lust for furs. The Tlingit fought bravely, where Sitka stands today, and lost. Evicted from their home, they lived apart from the Russians. Then came the missionaries and whalers. In time, the shamans died, and so did the Tlingit language—almost—and the world was never the same. “You see, little man,” Uncle Austin would say to young Keb, “when you’re rich, it can all be taken away.”

  The plane buffeted. The NMRS woman seated next to Keb handed him his raven feather. Blue uniform. Shipwrecked eyes. A face like héen xuka hinxuka—the surface of water. “Do you remember me?” she asked.

  Just then Terry butted in, “Whoa, Keb, sorry about the turbulence. We’ll have you there in a minute. Remember that game against Skagway, the state championship? James was in rare form that night, I’ll tell you. . . .”

  a real cliff dweller

  RUBY WAS AT the airport. “Hi, Pops,” she said as she looped her arm through Old Keb’s. “Thanks for coming.”

  How was it she managed to be taller than him? Everybody was taller than him these days. At the rate he was shrinking, they could bury him in a shoebox. It was one thing to be a shaan, an old person, but another to be a shannák’w, a little old person.

  Gray-streaked hair framed Ruby’s brown face, her eyebrows tipped in black. A kittiwake among gulls, she was a cliff-nester, a risk-taker, a big shot Princeton graduate and university professor and president of the PacAlaska Heritage Foundation.

  Keb watched her ignore Little Mac.

  He sucked in air. The airport was too crowded, too hot; the lights too bright. Where was the blue uniform woman with the shipwrecked eyes? Did he remember her? Why should he remember her? He heard voices, the cut of sharp words and questions. He fumbled with his buttons, trying to remove his heavy coat. He could hear Ruby above the others, speaking . . . to him? No . . . about him. About James, too. Then he understood . . . the heat and light were television cameras. Oyyee . . . He raised his hand to shield his face.

  A man yelled from the back, “Ruby, Ruby! Allen Jenkins here with the Juneau Empire. Do you know the exact nature of James’s injury? Have you heard anything from Duke or the NBA?”

  Old Keb staggered and nearly fell and somebody caught him. “I got you, Gramps.” It was Josh, Ruby’s eldest. Faithful Josh holding him and walking him away, and Little Mac helping, walking him to a row of seats and sitting him down and treating him like a breakable thing, a piece of pottery. Dear God. How many times since Bessie’s death had he sat alone with the silence, with only the sound of time? How many times had he thought about dying without dying himself?

  “I’m hot,” Keb told Josh.

  “I’ll bet you are.”

  “When do we go to the hospital?”

  Josh didn’t answer. Ruby appeared, kneeling, her thin, bony hand strangely talonlike on Old Keb’s arm. “When do we go to the hospital?” he asked again.

  “They sent him down to Seattle, Pops. It’s a head injury. He needed to go right away. There’s another flight in a couple hours. I’ve booked you on it with a first-class upgrade. Robert and Lorraine are coming up from L.A. You want something to eat?”

  “What?”

  “Food, Pops. You hungry?”

  “I have to go to the bathroom.”

  “All right, all right, let me finish this interview, okay?”

  “Don’t talk to those people.”

  “I’ll handle it, Pops.”

  The minute Ruby left, Josh and Little Mac got the old man to his feet and walked him to the restroom. Shuffling along, Keb looked down to see two angels beside him, two little girls with open faces, smiling their missing-tooth smiles, red ribbons in their hair, lips moving, making birdlike voices. Josh’s kids? Yes . . . but their names? What were their names? Would they grow up to resent each another, like Ruby and Gracie?

  A sadness came over him. He was tired. Tired of himself and everyone else. Tired of forgetting. Tired of eating pills. Tired of being tired. He wanted to lie down and never get up; fall over dead—dead before he hit the floor—as the doctors said would happen when the aneurysm burst near his heart. It could happen any day, they said. Keb’s family had listened with long faces as the doctors explained that the aneurysm was inoperable. That was five years ago and here he was, still on his feet, dying by degrees. And the strokes? At last count he’d had twenty or more, the doctors said. Little pieces of scar tissue dotted his brain where memories used to be. He didn’t know the names of his great granddaughters, but his mind like a fist held on to the names that brightened his own childhood, the ones he learned when traveling with Uncle Austin on the water—the name of the hunter who could outsmart a seal, the name of the island with big wild strawberries, the name of the woman who could clean a salmon with her one hand (a wolf took the other one, she said), the name of the inlet where mountain goats came down to shore to eat algae, the cove that offered protection from a north wind, the sandy shore where a family of river otters played. These he remembered, but so much he did not.

  Standing at the urinal with his forearm against the wall, his head aga
inst his arm, he peed an old man’s dribble. Damn, he had known discomfort before, but nothing like this. His cousin Johnny once used a pistol to shoot a halibut in a skiff and put the bullet through Keb’s foot instead. That didn’t feel so good. Falling off a cliff on Jonas Island and shish kebabbing himself on a spruce branch ranked up there too. A chain saw ripped into his thigh once. He did his best to forget that. There was the time he went berry picking in Dundas Bay and fell asleep barefoot in the sunshine and awoke to find a bear licking the berry juice off his toes. He yelled and the startled bear took a bite and ran off, leaving Keb with five toes on one foot and four and a half on the other. And of course, the war, the shrapnel in his hip, the artillery thunder, he and the others pinned down by machine guns, the gut-shot men moaning through the night, crying for their mothers. That was pain too, a scar. Why did he live when so many others did not? He never talked about it, or tried to make others understand. He wasn’t sure he understood himself.

  He grabbed a paper towel and dabbed the sweat off his brow and thought about all the old farts in the rest home who sit around killing time until time kills them. Everybody wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die. What to do? Keb straightened up and sealed his mind. He’d go south to the city by the sea, the city named for the great chief who said all men were children of the Earth, the city of coffee and computers. He’d visit his grandson and tell him Raven doesn’t care about fame or fortune. Raven doesn’t care about diplomas or degrees. Raven looks for scars, the signs of suffering that give a man his depth. Add this wound to the others no strangers see. Add it and move on because it’s the only thing to do. There are two tragedies in life: Not getting what you want, and getting it. That’s what he would tell his gifted, tormented grandson. After that, Old Keb Wisting would return to Alaska and walk into the woods and lie down and die.