by Ray Hudson
“Spasibo, Mr. Hansen,” Mrs. Shaiashnikoff called back and raised a gloved hand in greeting.
I turned to the man, but he had already sprinted up the bank.
“Chris,” he shouted down, and then he was gone.
“That guy,” I said as Booker and I started toward a shallow part of the creek, “I think he’s one of my relatives.”
“Him?”
“One of my dad’s grandfathers, or he could be.”
Booker followed me from rock to rock across a shallow stretch of water. I led the way through a low pass on the left side of Haystack, wading into the lush vegetation that swelled across the gentle slopes. After a mild climb, we looked over a deep inlet surrounded by peaked mountains.
“This is Captains Bay,” I explained. “There’s a road now that runs all along this side out to a couple of processing plants and several fish camps. It’s amazing to see it so empty and untouched.”
“How do you get used to no trees?” Booker asked. “At home, we’re surrounded by beech, sugar maples, pine—”
I interrupted before he turned into a forest ranger. “Can’t miss what you never had.”
I knew that wasn’t true. I missed all sorts of things I had never had.
“Where’d you come up with making us orphans?”
“It worked, didn’t it,” he said. Jeez, he was getting touchy.
“For now,” I said.
Blueberry bushes rose to our waists. Blue-green leaves and reddish-brown stems and berries the size and weight of marbles. I saw Booker sample one and then another and finally he just stood there picking berries.
“Good?” I asked. “Let’s keep going.”
“Amazing,” he said as he pulled off a closely clustered handful.
“There’s a bridge now, about over there.” I pointed toward a narrow stretch of water. “It goes across to Dutch. This is so totally unbelievable.”
“Dutch?”
“That island,” and I nodded to my right. “Amaknak Island. There’s a deep harbor on it called Dutch Harbor, so the whole of Amaknak”—I drew a circle in the air that encompassed a good part of what we could see—“is sometimes called Dutch.”
Booker reached for a heavy stalk to pull himself up.
“Watch it!”
He stopped in mid-reach.
“It’s putchki. You’ll get a good welt on your hands from the juice.”
“This place is more dangerous than it looks,” he said. “Anything else I should know?”
“Keep an eye out for bears,” I said, and for the next half hour I could tell that he did little else. He followed me down to the shore. When I came to where the bank hung over the water, I used long green stalks of grass to swing across. There were no waves, no incoming or outgoing tide, just a gentle lapping and a slow pulse that suggested the great heart of the sea was elsewhere. I saw Vasilii wave toward a narrow stream rippling into the bay as he directed the skiff toward shore. I had no sooner helped secure it than his mother stepped out and extended her hand.
“Mr. Hansen didn’t give me time to greet you properly,” she said. “He’s always in such a rush.”
Vasilii introduced us, and then he gave Booker three metal berry buckets while he hefted a lunch basket and led the way up a narrow trail until we had a view of the bay. Here, on a plush carpet of moss berries, like soft dry miniature pine boughs with perfectly round blackberries, Vasilii spread out a blanket. His mother lifted her skirt slightly and seated herself. She took a small volume out of her pocket. It was titled in Cyrillic letters. She caught Booker’s glance and asked, “Do you know the poems of Pushkin?”
“Don’t let Mama terrorize you, Booker,” Vasilii said. But her question had apparently given him an idea. He held the bookmark out to her.
“Can you read this, ma’am?” he asked. “I think it’s Russian.”
She took the narrow piece of paper and studied it. I was about to start picking berries from the closest bush when she said, “It isn’t Russian.”
She frowned at him. “Where did you get it?”
She studied his reaction, but didn’t give him time to answer. “It is in my language,” she said, “Unangam tunuu, but it’s that very old language, the first language we wrote.”
“Can you read it, Mother?” Vasilii asked.
“The language has changed, but it’s a passage from a song,” she said. “You didn’t tell me where it came from.”
“It was an older relative’s,” Booker said. “He found it among some ancient papers in a book.”
“It is about that pagan Raven, the Real Raven,” she said. “It’s a song from way out west. You shouldn’t have it. It’s dangerous.”
“It’s just paper, Mama,” Vasilii said.
“It’s trouble,” she said as she tucked it into her book and slammed the cover shut. I jumped, half expecting her to vaporize. But there she sat. She waved a hand toward a blueberry bush and then folded both her hands over the volume of poems. As Booker picked up a bucket, she touched his sleeve. “Come to vespers tonight,” she said and her voice was really a command. “That will help a little.”
We picked from tall bushes while Mrs. Shaiashnikoff read and occasionally checked that our buckets were not too crowded with leaves.
“This is super,” Booker said. His fingers and lips were blue.
“Better picking than at King Cove?” Vasilii asked. “I’m glad we don’t have to worry about bears.”
Booker looked at me.
I raised my eyebrows.
“No bears here?” Booker asked Vasilii.
Before he could answer I started laughing. I laughed until Booker scored a large blueberry into my open mouth.
By the time we had filled every container to the brim, loaded them into the skiff, and seen Vasilii’s mother seated, clouds had gathered over the western ridge at the end of the bay. Vasilii studied them and said, “I think we should hurry in order to get back before the storm.”
“Storm?” Booker looked where Vasilii indicated clouds massed and drooping as though they, too, were loaded with blueberries.
Church confirmed that there was something ancient and unsettling about the carved fox.
I insisted we should at least wash up before vespers, even if we didn’t have other clothes to change into. Both our hands were stained with blueberries, and Booker’s lips looked like he had been bruised in a fight. We appeared a tad better when we finished. My fingers were hardly blue at all, but I still had that ragged stain across my palm. If anything, I thought, it was a little bigger and darker after all the surface dirt had been washed away.
The cupola and cross were silhouetted as we walked through a misty rain up to the church. On each side of the portico there were two ruby-colored glass lanterns with flickering candles inside of them. I hesitated before going inside the building. It was like walking into an old photograph. A warm glow filled the interior of the church from a massive three-tiered silver chandelier ablaze with candles. From all sides, light ricocheted off silver-faced icons and banners embroidered with metallic thread. This wasn’t the church I knew at home, but some of the icons and the chandelier were old friends, and the wonderful pungent scent from wax and incense was the same. Orthodox churches have a wall separating the area where the people stand from a smaller area where the altar is located. This wall is filled with icons. In fact, it’s called an iconostasis. That’s a long word, but it’s one everybody in the village knows. The icon screen in this church had white pillars with scrolled crowns highlighted in gold. They rose between taller paintings of Christ, the Virgin Mary, and assorted saints. Through the central door I glimpsed the altar standing in solitary glory.
I could tell Booker was surprised by the absence of pews, but I liked standing in church. It wasn’t done to make us feel like we were suffering or anything. We had a few chairs in the back for folks who needed to sit. Standing made me feel closer to the people around me. Booker glanced nervously at the icons. I wouldn’t have been sur
prised if a few had frowned down at him for all the lies he’d been telling. He followed me to the left side, but I gave him a slight shove to the right where the men and boys were standing. I took my place among the women and girls. I didn’t see the woman from the store, but even if she had been there, she wouldn’t dare make a ruckus. The older women wore somber shawls and black head-scarves, while younger women, not unlike today, used church to show off anything new. The men wore simple dark suits. The liturgy began as Father Shaiashnikoff stepped from behind the icon screen and the choir broke into a solemn and joyous melody. It was some time into the service before I recognized Vasilii among the boys who helped the priest.
I could see him as a priest, I thought.
Then he caught my eye and winked.
Two very serious old men threaded among the worshippers, stopping before icons and at the floor stands to replace candles that had burned low. I knew what to do, when to stand, and when to kneel. I was deep into the service when I gave a slight involuntary jerk. The woman beside me turned.
“Sorry,” I muttered. Her eyes widened. I broke free from her stare and stepped back. What was wrong with me? She was the woman I had seen through the store window. The hatchet face, the piggy eyes. But it wasn’t Mrs. Skagit. Of course, it wasn’t Mrs. Skagit. What was wrong with me?
Then it happened again, only this time I knew it was the leather pouch under my dress. It had pulsed. I tried to still it with my hand.
The woman gave me a brief calculating glance.
Vasilii’s father came from the altar through the central door.
I took in a long deep breath. The carving had settled down.
The service was about to end. The priest offered prayers for the Czar, the royal family, and the president of the United States.
And who is the president? I let my mind wander. Lincoln’s dead. Maybe Grant?
Then he swung the chain holding his incense burner out across the congregation. When it arced in my direction, I jumped as though I had been struck.
The woman clamped her hand over my arm. Father Shaiashnikoff intoned his blessing and the service ended. I jerked my arm away and hurried over to Booker. We joined the congregation as it flowed like a dark river into the night air.
THREE
TO THE BEGINNING OF THE WORLD
10. Booker
I’ve been letting Anna tell this story. Well, a lot of it is her story. More than mine. I was along accidentally because of the bookmark, which had found it’s way back to me from the book of poetry. But now, thanks to Anna, it was torn and not working. But this next part, well, it happened to me as much as to her.
After we left the church, we returned to the hotel. I was starved but neither of us wanted to face running into the buttoned-up woman again or anybody else, for that matter. We found Ivan and he showed us into the kitchen where we helped ourselves to several thick slices of bread, some cheese, and a couple of apples.
“You looked like you almost knew that old man,” I said after we had returned to our room. I was sitting on my bed. The apple was a bit mushy, but it tasted good.
“Peter Rostokovich,” Anna said. “A real old guy with that name used to visit my gram.”
“You think it’s the same guy?”
“It couldn’t be, but maybe they’re related. My gram used to invite him for tea. But he was drunk so much of the time I just didn’t like to be around him. She said he had had an unlucky life. His whole family was unlucky. She felt sorry for him.”
“What about that boy?”
I jumped as a blunt thud burst against the wall and sprayed the windows with rain pellets. The air closed on itself like a fist. Wind, I said to myself as everything was suspended in an eerie stillness. Then the pressure in the room exhaled.
“That boy?” Anna didn’t seem to notice the storm. “Peter was pretty certain the fox belonged to him, wasn’t he? I don’t know. Everything is weird.”
I was wired, but Anna curled up and fell asleep almost immediately. My brain slipped from Vasilii disappearing into the fog and then reappearing to berry picking with no bears. His mother had recognized the writing on the bookmark being about a raven, a real raven. And what’s an unreal raven? I drew the comforter over my head. The old man had been scared to death of the carved fox. I hadn’t shown him the bookmark. In all of this I was just pushed along, shoved here and there, like it hadn’t been me who had found the fox, like it hadn’t been me who had made it possible for us to travel here.
I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I knew it was light.
“I’m going to church,” Anna said. “Do you want to go with me?”
She was standing at the window.
“We went last night,” I said and tried to burrow further under the covers.
“I’d like to see it again.”
“Do you mind if I don’t?”
“You can do me a favor,” she said and nudged my shoulder. I uncovered my head as she removed the cord with the leather pouch from her neck. “Maybe church isn’t the right place for this.”
“Sure,” I said.
The pouch was on the stand beside my bed when I woke up again. A wind half-heartedly bumped against the window, but the rain had stopped. Time to find something to eat, I said to myself as I stepped into the hallway. A door on the opposite side of the hall was so close to the outside wall that it was unlikely to be a guest room.
Just a quick look.
Steep stairs rose toward the roof once I had squeezed past a bucket and a mop. I avoided the tag ends of rafters that narrowed as the stairs climbed into the attic. A window at each end let in enough light to show that boards had been laid across the timbers down the center of the floor. There was a trough on each side. I could almost stand up as I made my way to the far end, past a couple of wooden crates, and crouched down. Right below me the roof of the store tilted away. The church was in the distance. Service must still be going on. I started back and stopped to snoop in a crate stenciled Gift of the Woman’s Home Missionary Society. It was stuffed with jackets, pants, dresses, and gloves. Right on top was an old-fashioned, small-billed baseball cap. It fit perfectly.
In the dining room I filled a plate with cold scrambled eggs, added a roll and a piece of crispy bacon, and returned to the room. I had just finished eating when Anna walked in.
“Better pack your things,” she said. “Vasilii’s father has agreed to take us to Nikolski.”
“And what if I don’t want to go?”
Anna gave me a sideways glance and said, “His dad has been planning to go there on church business for some time. Vasilii suggested we follow up on Old Man Rostokovich’s idea that I talk with his sister.”
I just sat there.
“Look,” she said. “I need your help.”
That was a first. I handed her back the pouch.
“Vasilii’s going to come with us.”
“We need to think of a way to get back where we came from.”
“Aren’t you a little bit curious about the ivory fox?” she asked. “Anyway, we’ve been gone so long, that we’ve probably got our mugs on milk cartons.”
I explained how time just sort of stops when the bookmark is used.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” she said. “But if you’re telling the truth—”
“I am.”
“Then it doesn’t matter if we’re gone a bit longer.”
I hated to admit that she had a point. She gave her right hand a good rubbing.
“Man, this itches.”
“Let me see it.”
She held it out. A dark rash with irregular edges covered her palm. She rubbed it again, drawing the surface blood away from the marks that stood out clearly.
“This might sound goofy,” I said.
“Like what doesn’t, Booker?” she asked.
Instead of answering, I took out the bookmark and laid the torn edge across her palm. The letters there met the stain almost perfectly, like they had once lined up wi
th each other.
“It’s like the ink from those letters ran into your hand,” I said. “Is that cool or what?”
“It’s creepy, that’s what it is!” She tried to cram her hand into the virtually nonexistent pocket on her dress. That’s when I remembered the crate in the attic. I swear she counted every pocket as she made her selections. In the end, with her wool shirt, wool pants, and well-buttoned jacket, she looked like a Klondike prospector.
That afternoon we visited the cemetery. None of the crosses had names on them, but that didn’t seem to surprise Anna, who went from one cross to another. Vasilii was able to name a few people who had been buried in the more recent graves.
“Those old-time Aleuts,” he said, “like Old Man Rostokovich, you’d be surprised at how superstitious they are.”
I glanced at Anna to see if she was about to argue with him, but she was busy inspecting one of the white crosses.
“Even my parents, occasionally,” he continued as we climbed the gentle slope above the graveyard in order to get a good view of the bay. “You saw how my mother reacted to that paper you showed her.”
“The bookmark,” I said. “Do you know anything about that raven she mentioned?”
“Nothing,” he said.
“That man who helped out at the creek yesterday,” Anna cut in.
“Chris Hansen? He’s been around a couple years. Nice guy. He’s a fisherman, of course, one of those Norwegians.”
“Does he live here?”
“He does odd jobs for the A.C. Company and sells them whatever furs he gets so they let him live in one of their little red cabins. He married one of the daughters of Sergie Borenin.”
“Do you think we could go see him?”
Vasilii looked out across the wide bay. A small sailing schooner had its sails filled by the wind.
“That’s his boat,” he said. “We can visit him when we get back.”
The next morning when Vasilii helped me into the front hatch of his two-hatch kayak, I saw that the inside was a web of sticks, narrow ribs, and long poles. Even lashed together it looked pretty fragile. It was covered snugly with a dark skin that had a warm smell to it. Like I’m crawling into some sort of seal, I thought. It tilted when I climbed into it, and even after I was tied in with a wide leather apron, it acted like it had a mind of its own—or maybe because I was tied in with a wide leather apron. Vasilii sat in the rear hatch. He handed me a double-bladed paddle that balanced perfectly on my palm. He rattled off instructions. I didn’t understand half of them and just hoped I wouldn’t be screaming and thrashing around in the water too much of the time. Anna had refused to crawl into the interior of the baidarka she was assigned to. Vasilii laughed and said that women and children usually traveled tucked among the dried fish, teakettle, and bedrolls. The hunter who owned the baidarka wasn’t pleased to have a female sit in his forward hatch, but the way she handled the paddle—which was better than I did—soon won him over. Before long he was smiling and kidding and calling her his partner. Father Shaiashnikoff sat in the center of a three-hatch baidarka. Our group was completed with eight other men, paired in two-man kayaks.