by Heacox, Kim
“We need to get going,” James said.
Torp nodded. “Luke, get these people something to eat.”
The Terry Mae thugged and chugged but appeared to make no better speed than when it had fifty logs cabled behind it. Luke offered them no food. He took the wheel while Torp made fresh coffee. James made several trips aft to check on the canoe, and said, “We’re only making about five knots.”
Kid Hugh and Steve curled up in the corner, sleep-starved. The accommodations were dirty at best. Grit and grime everywhere, old bits of food, patches of mold, diesel fumes rising from below. The coffee tasked like tar. Keb screwed his face into a squint.
“It’s better with sugar in it,” Torp said.
“We’re not going to make it,” James said after awhile. They all looked at him. All but Little Mac, who was digging in her duffel and daypack with great concern. “We have to turn around and make for Lemesurier or Dundas. Crystal Bay is too far. There’s no good landfall between here and there; the seas will be too rough off Carolus to launch the canoe with tides like this. Daylight will be here in another hour.”
Continents moved and species evolved in the time it took Torp to respond. Keb glared at him, inasmuch as a man with one good eye can glare. Torp finally yelled to Luke to bring the Terry Mae about. “Where to then?” he asked, his eyes cold and flat. “Lemesurier Island or Dundas Bay?”
“Dundas,” the old man said.
“Áx’ awé koowdzitèe,” James added. “He was born there.”
eyes she trusted
THE OLD CANNERY made a strong temptation but was too far away on the west shore of Dundas Bay. It had collapsed long ago and was little more than rusted iron and rotting timbers, where it once stood on legs as stout as a bear’s. Little Mac had been there a few years back, to see where her great-grandfather Milo worked the slime line and delivered little Keb when he was born. But now with daylight coming, she showed no interest in returning. Like James and Kid Hugh, she wanted to get ashore fast. Keb could see that a cloud of worry had come over her.
“Sorry not to be more help,” Torp said as Keb and his companions climbed down into the canoe, off the east shore of Dundas Bay. Keb offered his thanks. Torp flashed a smile and said, “You know, I could turn you in and get myself on TV.”
James and Kid Hugh glared at him.
“Hey, just kidding. You guys need to lighten up.”
With that, they paddled away as the Terry Mae turned south. Torp had cost them time, poisoned them with bad coffee, told crude jokes, given them no food, and eaten the last of their jambalaya.
Never trust a Russian.
In the charcoal light of dawn they glided their canoe onto a large tide flat that tapered up to a cobble beach. Steve was first ashore. To their left, an abandoned fox farm stood back from a large meadow. Straight ahead, across fifty feet of tide flat and up the beach, a fringe of alder fronted a forest of spruce and hemlock, good cover. They had to move quickly and hide the canoe. James said rangers could be camped on Feldspar Peak with spotting scopes, a good place to view the entrance to both Crystal Bay and its little cousin to the west, Dundas Bay. Aircraft would be up soon. Men with search-pattern eyes talking by radio. What to do? No kelp beds in sight. No cleft or cave in a nearby cliff. No high profile piece of shore where they could gain closer access to cover. The canoe was too heavy to pull across the tide flat and into the forest.
“Sink it,” Keb said, “ka-si-yeek.”
The tide was slack low. By the time it was that low again, in twelve or thirteen hours, nightfall would be on their side. All day long the canoe would be under water.
“All right,” James said. “We’ll sink it. Good thinking, Gramps.”
Good thinking? Has my grandson ever said that to me? Have I ever said it to him?
They carried their gear across the tide flat and into the forest, making many trips. Each time they returned they hefted down heavy rocks and loaded them into the canoe. Keb’s heart jackhammered. He hurt everywhere. “Gramps, give me that rock. Go up into the forest and stay there, okay? We’ll get this done.”
“Put the canoe . . . on its . . . left side,” Keb said, breathless, “with the keel facing . . . seaward so it’s easy to re-float. Wedge the . . . the rocks under the seats and into the . . . into the thwarts so—”
“Okay, Gramps. I got it. Now go. Hurry, go.”
“Tired, ka-ya-saak . . . no more wind in me.”
“Yes, Gramps.”
“I dream in Tlingit now. Norwegian too. Viking dreams.”
“Yes, Gramps, that’s good.”
“There’s a problem . . . with . . . Little Mac. Something’s wrong in her . . . her pack. You need to—”
“Okay, I know, Gramps. I’ll talk to her. Now go.”
Old Keb grabbed a final load and was making his way across the tide flat when he seized up and fell hard. Something’s wrong. The world was cattywampus, everything upright was on its side and everything level was running up and down. And the pain, oh God, beyond anything from before, a terrible tightening in his chest, his lungs clawing for air. He lay there for—how long? Paralyzed. Mud on his face. Legs and arms twitching. Bessie? Oyyee . . . I miss you. So much music, light, and love. Time had no passage and somehow he was above himself, floating without pain or the ability to speak, watching as the others ran to him and lifted him and carried him up the beach into the forest. Bless their hearts. They carried him so gently. He was no sack of potatoes, but precious cargo as they lowered him onto a bed of moss under an ancient seet, a Sitka spruce large enough to make a canoe. Little Mac put his head in her lap and stroked his white hair with tears in her eyes, a loveliness about her. The same loveliness Ruby and Gracie had long ago in another life, almost.
“Come back,” Little Mac was saying. “Don’t die, Keb. Please don’t die.”
Am I dying? Dei xat googanáa. . . . I’m going to die.
He saw Kid Hugh reach over and touch James, a gesture he would have thought beyond him. James knelt and put the raven feather on Keb’s chest. He held his hand. “We’re here, Gramps. We’re all here.”
But many are there. I have to go. How strange to feel nothing and feel all things at once, to feel aglow, radiant, free, so present at the moment of absence, a time of loss. Their loss. Of me? Was he breathing? Am I breathing? Floating higher, he could see himself attached to the Old Keb below. Attached by hundreds of thin strings, some broken, others breaking, many yet to break. Strings made of memories? Regrets? He didn’t know. Strings made of all the important events in his life—stories, promises, prayers. “He’s still breathing,” he heard Little Mac say.
No more pain. This was better than the morphine the army gave him.
Uncle Austin appeared in some vague way and said, “If this is your land, tell me your stories.”
And Keb was descending now. No. Yes. No. Pulling him back into himself as more strings reattached. Such pain. Great Raven. He saw himself move, heard himself moan as he slipped back into what he had been, a calcified old man. No words. Oyyee . . . such a mighty hurt. He felt very small, pinned to the ground by the knowledge of it all. He opened his eyes and took a sharp intake of sea and sky. Little Mac was crying. James held his hand, fiercely. “Gramps, it’s okay, we’re here.”
HOW MUCH TIME? He couldn’t say. Spokes of light fell through the seet. The earth smelled rich, moist. Whatever vitality Old Keb had before was gone, though something else was there, something beyond defining. He was a bag of bones, more husk than human, his mouth open, finding no words. Part of him heard Yéil make its liquid call, as though Raven were dropping a pebble into a pool. How much time? Part of him heard the gentle birth and death of clouds. Another part heard Little Mac tell James and Kid Hugh about—what? About a thingamajig in her daypack like the one Torp had on the Terry Mae. She had seen it days before and thought nothing of it, until now. Until she saw Torp’s. How had it gotten there, in her pack? “I didn’t put it there,” she said. “If Tommy put it there before we le
ft Jinkaat, then he’d know where we’ve been all this time, wouldn’t he? He’d be tracking us. He’d know where we are.”
James and Kid Hugh looked at her, their eyes holding stones.
“Turn it off,” James said.
“I did.”
Raven called, insistent now. It called from the tops of the trees. Kid Hugh said to James, “You stay here with Little Mac and Keb. I’ll go check the beach.”
“Take Steve,” James said. “Check the meadow and the old fox farm too, from a distance. Stay in the forest, for good cover.”
Kid Hugh nodded and was gone.
LITTLE MAC MADE soup over their small stove. James brought a bowlful to Old Keb who sat with some effort against the great tree. “You need help with this, Gramps?”
An hour ago, yes, but not now. Things were beginning to work again. Keb got the soup down one spoonful at a time. “The canoe,” he said. “Where’s the canoe?”
“It’s fine, Gramps. It’s okay. Just rest now.” James sat next to him, the rifle by his side as he sharpened a hunting knife.
“You’ve changed,” Keb said to him.
James looked up.
“Your eyes,” Keb said. “They’re older.”
They shone as the forest settled in around them. When James spoke, his words didn’t hit Keb as much as their tone. He set the knife aside and pulled out a small rounded rock, egg-shaped, salt and pepper in composition. “Granite,” he said, “from George Island. Little Mac gave it to me after Pierre gave it to her.” A keepsake. Geology is more than the study of rocks, Pierre had said. It’s the study of time. Keb had listened as best he could. James said the rock was made of crystals. “See? Some are black and some are white and others are orange-ish and silver. It used to be molten, this rock. It used to be magma deep in the earth. But it never burst out like lava in a volcano. That’s what Pierre said. It cooled deep down, slowly, so slowly that the minerals had time to move through the magma and find each other before it hardened. They made crystals, see?” He turned the rock in his hands. “The minerals made crystals and the crystals made the rock hard.”
“Crystals?” Keb heard himself say.
James nodded.
Was that it, then? We find each other, but it takes time. Things have to happen slowly, and deep down. Keb could see himself in that rock, his entire family, the light crystals, Norwegian; the dark, Tlingit. “I can’t be like you,” James said, as if confessing. “I can’t be everything you want me to be, Gramps. I can’t live your life.”
Keb shook his head. He remembered a winter hunting trip with Uncle Austin when he was a small boy doing his best to follow in deep snow. “I can’t walk as big as you,” he complained. “You don’t have to walk as big as me,” Uncle Austin told him. “You just need to walk quiet.” Had Keb told James that story? He needed to say so much right now, and nothing at all. Kids these days, you can’t talk them into change; you have to listen them into change.
“You thinking about your mother?” Keb asked him.
“Yeah.”
“Your Aunt Ruby, you know, she tells you what you want to hear. But your mom, she tells you what you need to hear. She’s a good mom.”
“I know.”
Keb could see him thinking hard on something. “What is it?”
“My name . . . you know, my new name, Jimmy Bluefeather. It’s not really a Tlingit name, is it?”
“It depends.” To bestow a name was a serious matter.
“Did Mom tell you? After my accident my dad wrote me a letter, from Denver? He said he was sorry. He has a new job and a new son. He got remarried. And he hasn’t touched alcohol in two years.”
“That’s good.”
“He wants me to meet my little brother someday.”
“That’s good too.”
“You know . . . maybe my new name is Arapaho, Jimmy Bluefeather, from my dad. Or maybe it’s from my mom and dad both, part Tlingit and part Arapaho.”
“And part Norwegian.”
James smiled.
After a minute, Keb said, “My shoes . . . off.”
James helped him take off his shoes and socks, and said, “Barefoot, eh? It’s good.”
“Oyyee . . .” Barefoot. Bearfoot.
THE HOT CHOCOLATE was ready.
Little Mac poured it into an insulated mug and was walking it over to Old Keb when she stopped, stricken. Not fifty feet away stood Charlie Gant, and behind him his brother Tommy and their sidekick, Pete Brickman, dressed in camo. Keb felt James go stiff at his side, ready to spring. He was not as quick as he used to be, with his bad leg. Keb held him back.
“Hey, Keb,” Charlie said, “it’s good to see you.”
Keb tried to get his tongue to work.
Nobody said a thing.
“We don’t mean to frighten you,” Charlie added, his words measured. “We just want to show you something . . . something important.” He motioned to his brother who stepped forward with a mangled piece of light metal in his hand.
“What’s that?” Keb heard himself ask.
“I know what it is,” James said as he climbed to his feet and hobbled forward to take the piece of metal from Tommy. “It’s a D-ring used by choker-setters. This is what broke, isn’t it?”
Tommy nodded and looked forlornly at Little Mac.
“You got any more hot chocolate?” Charlie asked her.
“This thing’s not even steel or cast iron,” James said. “It’s not even titanium. It’s heavy aluminum.”
“Tell him, Pete,” Charlie said.
“It wasn’t my doing.”
“Tell him, Pete.”
Only then did Keb see that Pete had that stupid baseball bat, the Louisville Slugger. What’d he expect to do? Hit a homer?
Charlie said, “Pete has a confession to make, an apology. Go ahead, Pete.”
Pete fired back, “You and Tommy were the ones who yanked the cable from up on the yarder.”
James hobbled over to Pete and stood before him. With no apparent fear he said, “But you were the choker-setter. You weren’t cutting that day, were you? You weren’t down the line with a saw. You were right in front of me. You were the choker-setter and you used only one stupid aluminum D-ring to cable the logs. You should have used three at least, all of them steel or cast iron, but you only used one.”
Pete froze.
Again, for a long moment nobody spoke. James turned the D-ring in his hands.
Keb was trying to get to his feet. No easy task.
Little Mac said, “Tommy, you want some hot chocolate too?”
Tommy flashed with anger. “You almost shot me with a pellet gun.”
“I missed you on purpose.”
“Not by much.”
“By enough. I could have hit you easy.”
“You hate me.”
“I don’t hate you, Tommy. I don’t hate anybody. You taught me to play the guitar and to sing. I’ll always be grateful to you for that.”
Tommy’s face twisted with confusion. Keb could see that he seldom heard such kind words.
Little Mac said to him, “I learned that Paul McCartney song you told me about, the reverse ‘Blackbird’ song.”
“‘Jenny Wren’? Was I right? Does he tune his guitar down a half step?”
“A full step. Some of the chords are real dissonant, but beautiful. Do you want hot chocolate?” This time Tommy nodded and mustered a small smile.
“There’s more,” Charlie said. “Pete and Tommy burned down your shed, Keb. They didn’t mean to, but they did. They were drunk and picking up pieces of burning wood from the campfire after everybody left that night, and throwing them around like goofballs, and one broke through your window, and with all the shavings on the floor, it just exploded and really took off. They’re sorry.”
“I am sorry, Keb,” Tommy said as he scuffed the ground with his boot, his head down.
“It was Tommy who done it,” Pete said, defiantly.
“Was not.”
“Was
too.”
Pete raised the bat and James took a step back, the mangled D-ring still in his hand. He caught his leg on a root and fell. It happened so fast, Old Keb felt himself pass through a single drop of water and into the black eye of Yéil.
Raven.
ANNE WAS IN the woods, forty feet away, when she saw the wolf—no, a coyote—no, a crazy stub-tailed dog charging straight at a man who raised a big baseball bat, a dog coming in from behind with blistering speed.
Pete turned but was too late. Steve hit him like a falcon and in seconds had him pinned to the ground, a mouthful of sharp teeth around his neck. Pete went pale as a mushroom.
Stuart walked into camp, picked up the bat, and helped James to his feet.
Keb blinked, and Yéil was gone. He heard Pete taking small rapid gulps of air, fighting back pain.
“Call off your dog,” Stuart said to Kid Hugh.
Anne walked directly to Old Keb, where the Chinese girl was already kneeling at his side, holding his hand in an obvious expression of love. “Keb Wisting,” Anne said, also kneeling beside him. “Stuart told me I should greet you in Tlingit, but I haven’t had time to learn a greeting, or even common names, I’m sorry.”
“Lyee sakoowoo saawx’ ch’a tleix ee jeedax goox la hash ee koosteeyi,” Keb said.
James spoke: “Gramps says ‘Language is everything. If you don’t know the names of things, your Tlingit way of life will drift away forever.’”
“Forever is a long time,” Anne said. “I don’t have any cornbread either.”
Keb brightened. “Cornbread?”
“Stuart recommended that I have some cornbread for you, and venison stew, but I don’t. Maybe another time. I do have a fast boat, though.”
“You’re the ranger . . . in the plane.”
“Yes, in May, when we flew from Jinkaat to Juneau, I was the ranger in the plane, sitting next to you. I’m really not a ranger, though.”