“Does it bother you to have the feather again?” Mara asked him.
“Bother me? Like a hangnail,” Joe laughed.
He took on a serious tone. “It was me that gave it to you and since then it has taken on its own path, its own journey. I am left wondering if it is following destiny or if it is creating or even altering destiny. So, I guess the answer is yes, the feather troubles me. It troubles me because I don’t understand it anymore. When it was protecting you, I understood it, but now that it has returned to me, I don’t understand it anymore. Yes, it troubles me, Mara. It troubles me.”
Mara took the feather from the old man’s hand and tucked it into his breast pocket.
“You must allow life to unfold in its own way,” she told him. “That is one lesson that the feather taught me.”
She watched Joe’s face and saw his puzzled expression momentarily shift to the hint of a smile.
“Your father would be proud of the woman you’ve become,” he told her. “He’d be every bit as proud as I am, for sure.”
Chapter Eighteen
Once Again, Goodbye
Sal left so unexpectedly one August morning, that Joe barely had time to finish his morning coffee before getting her to the airport.
“I can come with you now or I can come later,” he told her. “Just say the word and I’ll be there.”
“No sense, Joey. No sense troublin’ you with this mess any more’n I have already,” she answered, using a mix of both her childhood and her colloquial accents.
“How long will you be, do you think?” he asked her.
“Well, hard ta say,” she replied. “I’d like ta take that weaselin’ little twerp, Dorland and show ‘im the business side a ma rifle,” she sputtered, sounding more like the Sal that Joe had married.
Then she sighed, took a deep breath, and said with perfect diction, “Dorland Kindle is a puppet controlled by Elzianne, Joe. There’s a reason that his father and my Bert were as estranged as any two brothers can be. Everyone in Rhinebeck knows that both Dorland and his father, Driscoll, wanted to get their hands on Bert’s estate when he died, but in spite of all the legal challenges they mounted, none of their shenanigans worked. They didn’t work when they tried to horn in on Bert’s business dealings when he was alive either. They never cared a hoot about Bert, only about his money and his long list of contacts.
Now that Dorland’s old man has passed on, it looks like the son will follow the father and do everything he can to vilify Bert Kindle, and the good name he carried all his life.”
“Couldn’t you just let your lawyer handle all this?” Joe asked her.
Sal smiled and reached her hand over to lay it on top of Joe’s.
“You are such a kind man, Joe Michael. Why should I be at all surprised to hear you talk this way, to assume that this is a simple matter that can be resolved with civility and decorum? You wouldn’t know of the ways of people like Dorland Kindle and his father. People whose only path in life is on the backs of those they can use.”
“I’ve seen my share of evil,” Joe answered.
“There’s no denying that you have,” Sal said. “But people like Dorland and Driscoll Kindle, and Bert’s father, Jameson, before them, take evil to a whole new level. It is one thing to be conned and swindled in life, but it is quite another to be so defiled in the name of love, honesty, and family loyalty. That, my wonderful husband, is a special kind of evil.”
Joe and Sal embraced tightly before he walked her to the plane. He kissed her on the cheek and helped her up the three stairs to her seat in the tail section of the small plane that held fifteen people excluding the pilot and copilot.
He stood by the plane with his hand on the door while the pilot finished loading the luggage and did a full walk-around to check that all doors were secure.
When officials asked him to step behind the fence, he did so as he watched the propellers spin, first slowly in one direction, and then with increasing speed in the other. He listened to the finely tuned whine of the engine as he watched the pilot and copilot run through a checklist, their bowed heads visible through the front windows of the cockpit.
He put his hands on the fence as if to steady himself as he scanned the windows looking for Sal, but Sal was seated on the far side of the plane, so he waited until it had taxied down the runway, turned around, and began to accelerate before raising his right hand in a hearty wave as it sped by.
Had she seen him? Was he in her consciousness as intensely as she was in his? Would she find the answers she was seeking in Rhinebeck this time, or was this the beginning of a new nightmare in a life that had already known more than its share of strife?
When he reached into his pocket for his truck keys, he felt the feather in his fingers and knew that the path would not be clear. But if the feather could protect him as well as it had served Mara, then surely he would be able to deal with it, whatever it might turn out to be.
Chapter Nineteen
More Reflections
Joe Michael drove to the scrap yard next to the dock that he and Sal had rented to sort tsunami debris. A brisk wind was blowing in off the water and the stream of low white clouds along the mountains foretold a coming storm. For the moment, though, the warmth of the sun kept the chill from his bones as he walked among the piles of jetsam in the yard. The beach-lander had gone out this morning, so the yard was quiet, with all the sorting necessary having been done last week.
He stopped alongside a pile of rubber fishing floats. The faded shades of orange and yellow of the markers made the heap look like an artistic array. Missing were the stacks of crab pots and ropes so typical of Alaska fishing villages. Instead, there were piles of driftwood, and scraps of painted lumber and boards from houses and other buildings torn loose by the earthquake and tsunami in faraway Japan.
Occasional pieces of furniture, their once fine finishes since bleached and faded by their trip across the Pacific Ocean, were heaped in one corner—their value questionable, and kept only out of respect for the enormous loss to the people of that nation. Maybe one day there’d be a bonfire with a ceremony or something to dispose of them respectfully.
The scrap yard felt comforting, as if a tangible mirror of his own tumultuous past. Here among the battered, weathered, neatly sorted remnants of an entire nation, walked a battered, weathered Native elder, whose now orderly life gave little hint to all that had gone before.
Joe let his fingers search out the feather in his pocket, feeling the softness of its edges and gently twirling its spine lazily in the tips of his fingers. As he did so, his mind drifted, as a mental newsreel of his life played in his head.
He had been born not far from this very spot in a small cabin built of spruce logs hand scribed by his father and his uncle, and since lost to a wildfire several years ago.
He had been the oldest of two brothers and a sister who died of influenza before she was two. Stu, whose carelessness had caused the fire that cost Joe his first wife, had died still estranged from his brother a little over a year ago, leaving him with no family except for a smattering of cousins who still lived around Southeast. Of course, there was Della, Stu’s only child, and he considered Mara and Doug family—but beyond that, except for Sal there was no one.
Even after the embezzlement and implications of wrongdoing that Stu had wrought on him, Joe had attended the memorial to his brother. He had done it for Della, he supposed. After all, Della was an innocent and her mother was the twin sister of Joe’s beloved late wife. It had been right that he had been there for Della, and it had brought a modicum of closure for himself after he’d learned that Stu had never intended to harm him with the bank scheme, but had been simply a dying man trying to take care of the daughter he had abandoned at birth.
Joe sat on a log bench along an old shed at the edge of the yard. He leaned back on the metal siding now warmed by the sun and closed his eyes. He had learned to savor the sun in this place where it rained 360 or so days a year. He lifted his h
ead with his face pointing towards the sky so as to capture every comforting ray. He might have fallen asleep; at least it seemed so when the low swoop of a passing magpie startled him into the present.
A board, lifted by a sudden gust of wind, dropped from the top of a pile onto the ground. He ducked reflexively, just as he had done countless times at the sound of gunfire in Vietnam.
He turned the collar of his jacket upward as fast-moving clouds obstructed the sun. How strange, to have been alone here for so long. It had felt peaceful, as though being near his roots had brought him home. The yard was seldom this quiet. He nodded heavenward in appreciation.
Sal had left him a refrigerator full of meals. He knew that in advance without having to look. Maybe he’d swing by to see Doug and Mara on the way home, and tomorrow, well tomorrow he might just decide to have coffee with Della. Then he’d go home and nap from around three until Sal called as usual at five—just to make sure he was okay and that he was eating the food that had “danged well better get ate or else . . .”
He smiled at the realness the sound of her voice had in his mind. Rhinebeck had better be good to Sal Kindle. It just had better darned well be good to her.
Chapter Twenty
Surprise Departure
The next morning, Joe went back to the scrap yard. This time he climbed onto the old Cat D9 that he had picked up at auction a few years ago, and began moving some of the scrap metal that had become a minimountain in the center of the yard, pushing it over to the side of the lot that he had cleared of brush last week.
He had considered renting a compactor to crush it and bale it for salvage, but instead had decided to load it back onto the landing craft towards fall, and haul it over to Juneau for compacting once he had accumulated a few more piles. The recycling would cost him a pretty penny, but he had already received several generous offers for the final product that had assured him the effort would be worth the trouble.
After hopping down from the D9, he walked around the yard to check his work. Satisfied, he backed the machine close to the shoreline, and parked it well above the high-tide line.
On is way back to town, he stopped to check the salmon that he and Sal had hung in the old tradition for drying, satisfied that all was well there. Then he drove down onto the beach and threw some fish scraps out for the eagles. No one had ever complained at his tending to the birds that were the mascot for his old army unit, the “screaming eagles” of the 101st Airborne. As a matter of fact, most people really seemed to enjoy watching the majestic birds feed.
He loved to watch the eagles. Although there was plenty of salmon to keep them fat, they never turned down Joe’s gift of a meal, and he never missed an opportunity to treat them.
He sat there until the incoming tide started lapping against his tires and another truck had pulled up alongside to launch a dinghy. With a polite nod to the other driver, a stranger and probably one of the summer residents, he let his dualie pull slowly up the beach to the shore and then drove aimlessly back into town, slowing regularly to check out things in general along the way.
He nearly got sideswiped when a fully equipped deluxe jeep came peeling by at a high rate of speed, causing a cloud of dust to obliterate his vision enough to force him to a full halt. Although it was not uncommon to have to dodge speeding four-wheelers on this road, generally local residents were respectful of each other and didn’t engage in antics such as the one that had just occurred.
The incident irritated him more than usual. The last few weeks had shaken his resolve to never let life overpower him again. Almost without thinking, he reached for his gun, but instead felt his fingers touch the feather. It had come back to him for a reason and not knowing that reason was making him insecure—if insecure was the right word for a man as strong and steady as he.
Beside the feather and the gun, he felt the lifetime ferry pass he had placed there the other day.
It wasn’t like him to have reached so easily for his gun. When he got home, he locked it in his gun safe for now. No sense carrying it when he felt this on edge. Then he packed a duffel bag, drove back down the same road he had come from, made a hard right turn into the ferry terminal, got out, locked his doors, and went inside.
By the time the ferry departed at noon, Joe was standing on the deck watching Hoonah fade from sight. He left a message on his phone before they moved out of cell phone range: Gone for a week or so. I’m fine. Just needed some time. Keep an eye on the salmon I got hanging. Then he turned the phone off, shoved it deep into his bag and stuffed the bag into the far corner of the bottom bunk of his stateroom.
Chapter Twenty-One
Home Again?
Joe Michael shuffled along the deck of the Malaspina following the invisible well-worn path left from his years of riding the Alaska State ferry. A deck worker nodded in recognition, but as he had always done before, the old man stared at his feet as he shuffled along.
A school of Dall’s porpoises chased the wake of the ferry, causing him to smile ever so slightly at the sight. Effortless swimmers, so graceful and so swift—they were freedom, happiness, untethered spirits of the earth. Like the birds that soared above, they were unhampered by physical constraints. Perhaps he would return to earth as one of them one day after he had long left his human form. Did he really believe in such things? He felt the feather in his pocket and imagined that he did.
Once back in his stateroom, he checked his phone for messages. There were two from Mara; nothing from Sal. Mara would be worried. He should probably call her soon. Maybe he would, but not right now. He rubbed his tired eyes and put the phone away, hung his jacket over the end of a chair, readied for bed, then quickly fell into a sound sleep.
When the ferry docked in Juneau, he resisted the temptation to get off. Later, in Sitka, he used the five-hour layover to walk past the memorial to his family, who had perished in the fire accidentally started by Stu.
The brass memorial was tarnished a crusty blue by the sea air, but it seemed fitting that it so blended in with its surroundings. He paused to read the names of his family, saying each of them out loud in his soft, monotonic accent. He dabbed a tear from his eye as he choked back thoughts of wishing he were with them in heaven. But he wasn’t with them in heaven; he had been left on this earth for some reason he still could not understand.
Was it Sal? Maybe he had been spared to take care of Sal? Or perhaps Mara or Della—maybe all of them? Whatever the case, his family was gone and he was not, so he wiped a sleeve gently across the brass plate and shuffled off down the street, speeding up slightly when he heard the blast of the ferry horn, before catching a cab to the ferry terminal some twelve miles out of town.
Once back on board the Malaspina, he stood on the deck watching Sitka fade away, before having dinner alone in a corner of the dining room and then heading to his stateroom for the night. He slept through stops in Wrangell, Petersburg, Ketchikan, and most of the trip south to Bellingham. Then, once he was back on land, he did the unexpected and got on a plane to Rhinebeck, New York.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Destined Path?
After renting a motel room near the airport some fifty miles or so from Rhinebeck, and still not sure why he had decided to come to New York, Joe dialed his wife’s phone only to get a voicemail saying that she would return the call later.
When morning came too soon, he had a leisurely breakfast before checking his voicemail to hear Sal calling and wondering why he wasn’t answering. Her message said that she had talked to Mara, who had told her about his need to be away for a few days.
“I’m fine, Sal. I’ll call later,” was the message he left in return when he again got only the voicemail on her phone.
He rented a car and set out for Rhinebeck, enjoying the drive along the Hudson River Valley filled with its grand estates, parks, and golf courses.
The area was nothing like Alaska and nothing like he had seen before. There was a quietness and a civility to the landscape that though deve
loped, had been done so in the days long before Alaska had first enjoyed statehood, and long after his Native American brothers had inhabited the area.
He hadn’t brought any special clothes for the trip, but his casual neatness made him blend in as just another tourist, although at some point he wisely chose to lose the ball cap that he had been sporting since his years of travel on the ferry.
Once in Rhinebeck, he passed several of the old violet houses that Sal had spoken about, and even passed the old LaMonte estate, marked by a small metal sign nailed to the stone fence surrounding it.
He almost pulled in to inquire about Sal, but decided not to, again trying to reach her on her phone. This time she answered.
“Joey? That finally you?” she bellowed, after first answering in the perfect diction of her upbringing. “Mara said ya took off on the ferry again cuz ya was upset. What’s that, Joey.”
They spotted each other at the same time as he rounded a corner near one of the violet houses. He saw Sal’s mouth drop open as she pressed the off button on her phone and made her way to the car.
“Joe,” she said simply, using proper English and a refined tone of voice.
“Yup. It’s me,” Joe answered.
“But, what are you doing here? I mean . . . Joe, you came all the way from Hoonah?”
“Well, you did,” he replied, “and so I figured you might need me. I figured you might like some help. I figured I might like to see this place. I figured you missed me.”
“No one knows about you here,” Sal answered, stepping back from embracing her husband.
The move took him by surprise.
“I’m sorry if I’m intruding,” he said softly. “I thought you’d be happy.”
“I am happy, Joey,” Sal answered, stepping forward to embrace him. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me for acting this way. This whole thing—this whole experience about returning here—has been unsettling and put me off balance.”
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