Jimmy Bluefeather: A Novel (21 page)

“I’m here with the best of intentions,” Ruby had said to Paul. As if Gracie were not.

So Paul sent the NMRS plane to get Gracie and bring her to Bartlett Cove before her sister arrived. The whole thing gave Anne dreams of insurrection, of finding Old Keb and taking him wherever he wanted to go, wherever he could be who he’d once been.

Boldness, Anne thought. Was I ever, truly ever bold? Maybe now, somehow. Maybe here.

LIVE IN HAWAII, as Anne had, and you learn about the revenge of good intentions; how Captain James Cook died at the hands of Hawaiians in Kealakekua Bay, his blood—the blood of the greatest explorer of his time—the same color as
any other man. Not a god at all. You learn about his brilliant but flawed midshipmen, George Vancouver and William Bligh, incapable from that day forward of speaking of the great man’s death. You learn about Columbus and Magellan, all the places they discovered and opened up to destruction and disease. Dig a little deeper, as Anne had, and you learn about Parry and Ross, fifty years after Cook, the Englishmen standing in the snow of Greenland and speaking through a translator to the Inuit, small squat men dressed in seal skins who stared back at the tall white strangers in their cocked hats and black boots—the same uniforms the British wore at Trafalgar—and asked, “From where do you come, the sun or the moon?”

Growing up in Juneau, it was Nancy who first put dreams of Hawaii in Anne’s head. Everybody in Alaska thinks about Hawaii, the warmth and sun and gentle breezes, the fresh fruit, perfect beaches, and Aloha spirit. We Americans took the islands from them, Nancy once said, and still the Hawaiian Natives treat us kindly.

“You must love each other a great deal,” Anne’s mother once told her. “To needle each other as you do, you must love each other very much.” They only had one bad fight, Anne and Nancy, a screaming match to take out on each other what they couldn’t on their stepfather. After that, they discovered boats and whales.

At the university many years after Nancy died, Anne heard a professor say there was no underestimating the potential for variation within a population. It struck her that the same could be said of families, all those differences tied tightly together like a knot. The harder you pull, the tighter it gets.

In bed one night, in their small, dark room, with their mother watching TV and their stepfather out drinking in a Juneau bar, Nancy said, “I think Captain Cook was a great man.”

“So do I,” Anne replied.

“They couldn’t swim, you know.”

“Who?”

“Cook’s men, sailors from England. They couldn’t swim. It’s weird, don’t you think? They sailed around the world, and they couldn’t swim.”

The same with whalers. Men who couldn’t swim killed the greatest swimmers on earth. The two girls were still awake when their stepfather came home and began yelling at their mother for all the things she was and was not. “Cover your ears,” Nancy said to Anne. “That way he won’t be so bad.” Soon after, Anne got her first journal:

You said we should forgive him

His love would see us through

I didn’t reply

Cold heart, empty sky

And you?

You said we should forgive him.

ABOARD THE
FIRN
, Anne watched Ruby interrupt her discussion with Paul to flip through the VHF radio dial, searching for chatter about the canoeists among the Icy Strait fishing fleet.
Now that’s bold
, Anne thought,
and rude
. She and Taylor stepped forward to listen with Paul and Ruby. Gracie remained seated aft, near the transom, looking out over the sea.

Voices crackled over the radio:

“There’s no easy way they could have crossed Icy Strait in that storm,” said one skipper. “With the weather on their beam, even with good freeboard, they’d have shipped a lot of water, don’t you think?”

“They probably hugged Chichagof and headed west toward Adolphus, or they found a good place to camp and hide, maybe in Flynn Cove or Pinta Cove.”

“With a strong southeaster and them having good canvas, they could clip along and cover a lot of water; it would take some fancy ruddering though, with their paddles.”

“You mean use the sail as a spinnaker? You can only run fast under sail with a narrow-beamed, flat-bottomed boat if you’ve got a deep keel, otherwise you’re gonna corkscrew.”

“Unless you got outriggers. What do you think, Deke? Did you talk to Oddmund? Do they have outriggers?”

“I don’t think so. I’ve never heard of a canoe with outriggers and a deep keel like you’re talking about. Somebody could have given them a lift, you know.”

“Fred said that some guy said that a buddy of his talked to some guy who said they saw the
Silverbow
making her way west past Adolphus early this morning.”

“The
Silverbow
? What’s Marge doing at Adolphus when the Lisianski fleet’s working the Fairweather Grounds?”

“Hey, does anybody know what Marge is doing half the time?”

“Kenny Marston knows what she’s doing at least some of the time because he’s doing it with her.”

That brought a tide of cheap replies. Paul switched the radio back to channel sixteen as Ruby sat down. Anne watched her write
Silverbow
in her iPhone, then begin texting. Paul stepped onto the aftdeck and Anne heard him say, “How are you doing, Gracie? Can I get you anything?”

Anne watched Ruby answer her cell phone. Soon Paul and Taylor were on their cell phones. Only Gracie remained, still facing the sea. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” she said softly as Anne joined her. “The sea, how it picks up the clearing storm, the sky blue and black. See the way the light moves through the clouds this time of year? It’s beautiful.”

“Yes, it is.”

The last day of August. Cottonwoods beginning to turn gold. Geese kettling their way home. Phalaropes spinning about. Young gulls diving for fish, feasting on the final bounty of summer. Somewhere below, a whale. Somewhere above, a raven.

Anne heard Paul talking about a possible aerial hunt for the canoe . . . a dragnet across the entrance into Crystal Bay . . . spotters on Feldspar Peak . . . nothing so far. . . .

Anne smiled to herself. All these rangers searching for the boy Ron predicted would end up flipping burgers at McDonald’s, out there with his grandfather. What must it be like for a mother with an overstuffed heart to look into her son’s eyes and see the universe, all that light and possibility, all the darkness and room for things to go wrong? Anne asked Gracie, “Are you scared?”

“No.”

“When was the last time a Tlingit from Jinkaat paddled a canoe into Crystal Bay?”

“Oh my . . . a long time ago.”

It wasn’t Gracie’s voice that Anne heard just then, it was Nancy’s, soft in the bedroom late at night, speaking low as sisters do when they’re supposed to be asleep. Nancy, three years older than Anne, had written a school report on Captain Cook, and told Anne that when the great explorer first arrived on the Big Island, he sighted a hill the Hawaiians called Mauna Loa. That’s what it looked like, a hill. Cook ordered a company of men to go climb it. The men returned days later, footsore and weary, and reported that after all that travel on black volcanic rock, the hill appeared no closer than it had before. It wasn’t a hill. It was a mountain, a great shield volcano ten times taller and farther away than Cook had assumed. The geography was so new to him, the land and distances so difficult to comprehend that he gave goofy orders. Anne and Nancy laughed about that. Captain Cook. Goofy orders. They giggled themselves silly. All these years later, Anne wondered if the great captain held out his hand at arm’s length, and measured it. Did he cover the trickster hill with his finger, as a space-walking astronaut might one day cover Africa? Are we any wiser today than we were two centuries ago?

It isn’t the object that deceives. It’s the eye.

Paul was still on his cell phone, talking about the search, when Anne said to Gracie, “I met your father once.”

Gracie stared at her.

“I was eight. My sister and I were in a skiff off Shelter Island and got caught in a storm and –”

“Oh, my gosh, that was you? You were the little girl he saved?”

“Yes.”

“And your sister—she died?”

“Yes. Nancy.”

“I remember that. Oh, my gosh. Pops was written up in the papers for that.”

“Was he? I don’t remember.”

“You were probably in shock, you poor thing, losing your sister like that.”

Ruby stepped from the wheelhouse. “I just got off the phone with Channel Four in Juneau. They’re flying out to Strawberry Flats and will be here in two hours. Gracie, you and I are scheduled to give a press conference. Paul, I’d appreciate it if you could drop us at the dock and help us arrange transportation to the city library, that’s where we’ll be interviewed.”

“A press conference,” Gracie said, “about what?”

“About the safe return of our father and your son. We need to ask local communities to help us find and return the people we love. It’s nasty weather out there, they have no protection. And somebody needs to apprehend the Gant brothers, or give us a tip about where they are, where they’re headed. They’re wanted for arson. They could be dangerous.”

Gracie took a deep breath, as if what she was about to say would take everything she had. “Dad spent hundreds of hours in open boats when he was a kid, Ruby. You know that. It made him who he is today. He’s fine.”

Ruby didn’t protest, as Anne thought she would. Instead, she hung her head.

Gracie said, “Remember all his stories about time in a wooden boat with Uncle Austin? I’ll bet he’s more alive right now than he’s been in a long time.”

“He’s not a kid anymore, Gracie. He’s an old man. He gets cold and confused and he’s always in pain, sometimes acute pain with his arthritis, especially when he’s cold.”

“It’s August, not January.”

“And blowing a gale, and almost September.”

“He’s a tough old man, tougher than you think.”

“And if he dies?”

“Then he’ll die doing what he loves.”

“And his death will be on our hands, Gracie. Please, do this with me. Help me find him.” Tears welled up in Ruby’s eyes.

Gracie said softly, “Isn’t this what you want? An old Tlingit headed home in the old way, with his grandson and his favorite dog?”

“Not like this.”

“He is going to die one day. You know that, right? He can’t live forever, none of us can.”

Ruby rocked back. Paul reached out, but she recovered and said, “Gracie, I’m going to do this press conference, and I’d . . . I’d like to have you with me, okay? Please, do this with me.” She stepped back into the wheelhouse to make another call. Paul joined her.

Taylor fired up the
Firn
and began to motor toward the Strawberry Flats Public Dock, less than a mile away.

Gracie stood and faced the sea, her hands on the gunwale, fingers strangely purple and swollen, face drawn, eyes sad. “It’s crazy, isn’t it?” she said. “This journey, this life.”

“Yes,” Anne said.

“I told my sister once that she’s just an angry Indian, beneath all her bluster, so high and mighty, that’s all she is, an angry Indian. She’s much more accomplished than me. She has a good husband, a strong marriage, lots of fancy titles and degrees. I guess I’m a little jealous. Maybe a lot jealous. I don’t know. But she’s at war with herself, and it’s sad, it breaks my heart. You know what I told her once? I told her that she lives in resentment, and it’s eating her alive, it makes her bitter and blind. She’s so resentful.”

“What’d she say?”

“She resented it.”

They laughed. The next thing Anne knew, Gracie was leaning into her.

“You’re lucky, you really are,” Anne told her, “to have such a good father.”

“I know . . . I just wish they’d let him go wherever it is he feels he needs to go, in his canoe, his last canoe. I just wish they’d let him go.”

“So do I.”

“Then do it,” Gracie said, suddenly facing Anne. “You have a boat. You have authority. You have free will. Help him.”

“I have something else, too.”

“What?”

“A debt to repay.”

DAWN WAS HOURS away when a seine skiff throttled deep and low through the darkness toward the
Silverbow
. James told Keb to get his things together. They might have to move soon, push off in the canoe. Keb tried to think:
Get things together? Dry socks? Do I have my dry socks
?

Marge signaled Morgan and Quinton to kill the running lights as she monitored her VHF radios. Several times other vessels had hailed her and she refused to respond. When the skiff came alongside, she said, “Wait here,” and went out on deck to have her rendezvous.

Keb could hear the shadows of things said between her and the man in the seine skiff, but not the things themselves. From the expressions of James and Kid Hugh, they didn’t get the words either, and this made them nervous. Was the
Silverbow
adrift? Keb tried to remember the anchor chain going down. He stepped outside and approached Marge.

James reached for him, “Gramps, don’t—”

“Hey, Keb, is that you?” a voice called from down in the skiff. Keb stopped. “It’s me, Cobb. Cobb Reed.” The man climbed up the metal ladder and shook Keb’s hand. Keb wondered: Do I know Cobb Reed? As they stepped into the galley, Cobb said, “We have to talk. We don’t have much time. It’s good to see you, Keb. Everybody’s talking and taking bets.”

“Taking bets?” Little Mac asked.

“On you, Keb. Where you are, where you’re headed in your canoe, if you’re okay—you know, still alive.”

“He’s alive,” James said.

“I can see that. Damn, it’s good to see you. So, if you don’t mind me asking, what’s your destination?”

Keb didn’t like this Cobb man. His eyes were too close together, his teeth too far apart. He smelled like fish, and bobbed his greasy head when he spoke. He had a voice like a forklift, a prying mind.

Nobody answered him.

“No matter,” Cobb said. “They’re onto you. They know you’re on this fishing tender.”

Kid Hugh stepped outside to stand guard.

“How?” Marge asked. “How could they know that?”