Jimmy Bluefeather: A Novel

by Heacox, Kim

  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.”

  Old Keb was on his feet in seconds, shame filling his heart. The boy looked at him with shock; Old Keb took his stare and turned it back on him. “Apologize,” he said.

  “What? What’s the big deal?” James blushed.

  Keb thought: Better a red face than a black heart. “Apologize to your mother.”

  “Jesus, Gramps. All I said was that I wanted a couple more waffles. What’s the big deal?”

  “Apologize.”

  James got to his feet and shoved his way past everybody and hobbled stiff-legged to the door. He turned flint-eyed to face them, tormented by anger and fear and the death of too many dreams.

  “Oh, James,” Gracie said, beginning to cry.

  He burst outside and slammed the door so hard it snapped a hinge.

  first you need to learn the language

  A WEEK LATER, Keb found James holed up in Brad Freer’s windowless basement playing shoot-’em-up video games. The boys sat at computer monitors, each with a mouse in one hand and a beer in the other, eating Doritos, eyes rimmed red. Hip-hop pounded out the big speakers. The place reeked of marijuana. Beer cans everywhere. Computers plugged into the wall, and these guys plugged into the computers. Keb tried to focus. Brad looked as though he hadn’t been outside since the Ice Age. An Iraq War veteran, he was the worst commercial fisherman in Jinkaat, the guy who ate tuna from a can while h
is rust bucket troller, Call Me Fishmael, sat in the harbor leaking diesel. Near as Keb could tell, the sky was a dead thing to Brad. His jaw seemed to unhinge when Keb walked in with Little Mac and Kid Hugh. “What are you doing here?” Brad said.

  For days nobody had known James’s whereabouts. Gracie worried herself sick. The night before he showed up at Shelikof’s Pizza, where people said he and Tommy Gant got into a shouting match and nearly went at it before Stuart Ewing intervened.

  To give James a break and get him out of harm’s way, Robert the Coca-Cola man and his jabbermouth wife, Lorraine, had offered to take him on their cross-country drive to Atlanta. He could sit in the back with the poodle on Prozac and Infinity the cat, and play games with their son, Christopher. They planned to leave next week, and drink Coke all the way. Stay in four-star hotels. Maybe hit a roadside motel and have a big adventure, since Lorraine’s idea of wilderness camping was to go one night without cable TV. Their first stop would be Las Vegas, where they planned to attend the World Pet Expo. Dogs and cats on parade. Very exciting.

  Old Keb had another idea. He asked Brad to turn off the music. Brad ignored him, so Kid Hugh unplugged it. Still engrossed in his computer combat, James worked the mouse hard. “I need your help,” Keb said to him.

  James ignored him.

  Kid Hugh pushed Brad aside and unplugged the computer. Just like that, the make-believe world vanished. Only then did James look up, his face hangdog.

  “I need your help,” Keb said again.

  James took a long draw of beer. “What kind of help?”

  “You need to beat on something.”

  “What?”

  “You need to beat on something, work with your hands. But first we have some heavy lifting to do. I need you to put that beer away and come help me.”

  “Did Mom put you up to this?”

  “She told me you apologized to her. That’s good.”

  James brought the can to his lips. “No,” Keb said, surprised by his own sudden ferocity. “You can finish that beer, or you can put it down right now and come help us. I won’t ask you again.”

  Little Mac said, “James, it’s a canoe. It’s the last canoe.”

  He regarded her as if through a thick cloud, where beneath all the bluster and confusion and loss was a quiet plea to be rescued. Keb could see it and figured Little Mac could, too, by the way she took James’s hand and said, “C’mon, we need you.”

  THEY DROVE TO the carving shed and walked to the back, following Keb, whose gait was surprisingly nimble. A recent rain had been received by such thirsty ground that little evidence of it remained. Under a carport, Kevin Pallen sat on a massive, twenty-five-foot red cedar log, carving an alder spoon and smoking a cigarette. The log was on the ground, and deeply notched near both ends. Between the two notches, the upper one-third of the log’s midsection had been removed—planked away along the clear grain—while the ends retained their full diameter. Next to the log stood six sturdy sawhorses, each built at one-quarter height and double strength.

  “That’s not a canoe,” James said. “That’s a log.”

  “Not for long,” Old Keb said. “We need to roll it over and get it on the sawhorses. Loop that line around the end.”

  Keb and Kid Hugh had devised a pulley system using a chain-saw winch and a come-along tied off to a big spruce. After several attempts the log didn’t budge. Keb sat down, breathless. Little Mac stirred up some lemonade. Kid Hugh zipped away on his motorcycle and half an hour later rumbled up the hog-backed road driving a front-end loader. He lifted one end of the log, then the other, and soon had it where Keb wanted it, saddled on the sawhorses, bottom-side up, with the keel line right down the middle. Little Mac served more lemonade, and Keb drank. He hurt everywhere but felt more alive and purposeful than he had in a long time. After a good rest, he picked up his adz and swung it with surprising agility. Thwack! It sunk into the log. Gasping for air, he said, “The adz marks need to be the same size and depth, parallel to each other for the whole length of the canoe. We add the bow piece later, secure it with pegging. Put a hogback in the middle that will level out when we steam it open and increase the beam-width and fit in the crosspieces. Flaring sides, rounded bottom, buoyancy, speed. Vertical cutwater to throw off high waves in a storm wind, k’eeljáa.” Keb took another breath, rolling now, coming alive. “Oyyee . . . carve out the interior to where the hull reaches even thickness . . . two fingerwidths on the sides, three on the bottom. Drive in pegs, maybe—guides for even thickness. Nathan Red Otter didn’t need pegs. He gauged perfect thickness by running his hands over the hull. His hands carry knowledge you cannot explain in books. Perfect symmetry, the wood is lighter on the south side of the tree, the ground needs to be dry; it’s important we split it and chisel it out east to west . . . use wedges and hand mauls for that. Use the chips for fire scoring, wet moss to keep the heat not too hot.” Keb lifted the adz for another strike.

  “Gramps, what are you doing?” James said, alarmed. “You can’t do that. You’re almost a hundred years old.”

  Keb struck the log again with an artful blow. Anybody watching him could see he had once done this with accuracy and grace. He took another swing, his arms like withered twigs on the sturdy handle, hands shaking.

  “Gramps, you’re going to kill yourself.”

  “If I’m lucky.”

  James put a hand on his shoulder. “Take it easy, okay?”

  Old Keb sat down and accepted more lemonade as Little Mac stroked the white hair off his forehead. James and Kid Hugh stared, half expecting him to have a heart attack. Kevin sat apart, still carving his alder spoon, a tidy puddle of shavings in his lap, his lower lip trapped between his teeth. For a moment Old Keb envied his dull mind, the gift of quiet that must come with it. Ruby’s Dodge one-ton rumbled up the road just then, not with Gracie driving, but Ruby herself, eaten up with urgency. She had her son Josh with her, and his two daughters with ribbons in their hair. The door opened and the little girls ran to Keb and threw their arms around him. Ruby strode over, long hair on her shoulders, eyebrows black yet the eyes themselves unchanged, marooned on the wrong side of history. How different things would have been had Keb’s kittiwake daughter greeted the rapacious Russians when they arrived in Alaska hungry for sea otter pelts. She would have seduced them, slit their throats, burned their ships, and freed their Aleut slaves. Even as a little girl she carried the biggest banner, the deepest wounds, as if she alone would right every wrong since Columbus, that arrogant Spaniard who left Europe not knowing where he was going, arrived in America not knowing where he was, and returned home not knowing where he’d been. Alone if necessary, using canny politics and the tinted prism of her pride, Ruby would reclaim the sovereignty of the Tlingit Nation. Never mind that she was only part Tlingit, her mom Bessie having been half Filipino, a real beauty. Keb shook his head. Watching her was like watching his own life reflected and distorted at the same time. Did he love her? Yes. Did he like her? Well, we like someone because; we love someone although. Keb rose to greet her. She embraced him, then moved to James. “Hello, nephew, how are you?” She made slight acknowledgment of Kid Hugh and Kevin Pallen, while Little Mac she ignored altogether. “Pops,” Ruby said, “we need to talk about the lawsuit against the feds in Crystal Bay. It’s heating up.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’ll make you dinner tonight, white king salmon. I’d like you to join us, James. You need to be made aware of this issue.”

  Need to be made aware? Old Keb’s ears hurt. Why couldn’t Ruby talk like a normal person?

  “Can I bring Little Mac?” James asked her.

  Ruby ignored the request, and patted the log. “What’s this?”

  “It’s a canoe,” James said as he picked up the adz and turned it in his hands. Little Mac moved in and put her arm around his waist.

  “Dáax,” Keb said quietly. Nobody heard him.

  “A canoe?” Ruby frowned. “Why not a totem pole?” Totem poles were memory columns to th
e Tlingit people. They were heraldry and social standing, written in wood. “I think it should be a totem pole.”

  “A totem pole tells a story,” Keb said, “a canoe makes a story.”

  “Yes but—”

  “Ruby, this is a canoe.”

  THAT NIGHT OLD Keb skipped dinner with Ruby and ate instead with Oddmund and Dag, and with Daisy, who brought her cribbage board. He drank too much red wine and dreamed crazy dreams. A raven spoke to him, a salmon too, nóosh, a spawned-out dead drifting sockeye with its hooked jaw, muttering Tlingit and laughing. Milo Chen appeared on a wet cannery floor, gesturing as if to fly, then pounding the boards with his swollen hands. The next thing Old Keb knew, his bedding was knotted around him and early daylight spilled through his dusty, cobwebbed windows. He heard a loud thwack, the sound of sharp metal striking wood. Another thwack. He sat up and winced as he planted his feet and willed himself to stand. His heart jackhammered. He asked himself who he was. Keb Zen Raven, Nine and a Half Toes of the Berry Patch, son of a Norwegian seine fisherman and a coho woman from Crystal Bay, sign of the north wind. That’s who I am, or used to be. Forgetting his morning pills and dietary supplements, he entered the carport barefoot, wearing only jockey shorts, and found James swinging his adz. Cedar chips flying. “Stop,” he yelled.

  James looked up, hair in his eyes. Something about him seemed older and more mature. Keb rolled his tongue to find his voice. “What are you doing?”

  “Making a canoe.”

  “You want breakfast?”

  “Already ate.”

  “That the gunwale sweep you’re working on?”

  “I guess.”

  “You working toward the front or the back?”

  “Front, I guess.”

  “You better decide. Get it wrong and it’ll go through the water like a salmon in a gillnet. It’ll fight you every stroke.”

  James took another swing, another dig.

  “That’s good,” Keb said. Truth be told, he feared James. It hurt and was no easy thing to admit that the boy rubbed him wrong. James’s father had been a dog-whipped, smoky-eyed son-of-a-bitch who treated Gracie like a mule until one day she gave him what she got and whacked him back. He whacked her and she buckled to the floor, mouth bleeding, and told him to get the hell out. This time he did. He grabbed the stashed cash, got into the Ford Bronco they had just paid off, drove onto the ferry and left her with the mortgage and credit card debt and four kids. He moved back to Denver and nobody saw him after that. His son wore his shadow, though. In ways more apparent each year—his walk and talk—James echoed the man who beat his mother. For that, Old Keb had a mountain to climb. It’s no easy thing to see a man you despise in your grandson’s face. “You’re beating on something, that’s good,” Keb said to the boy, thinking: better a piece of wood than somebody’s head.