Jimmy Bluefeather: A Novel (30 page)

“And if I stop him, PacAlaska will use that too, as an example of a heavy-handed federal government interfering with the dreams of an old Tlingit.”

“But think about this: if he goes up to that glacier and makes a political statement, we could lose in the Ninth Circuit.”

“He’s not political.”

“His daughter Ruby is. One perfect sound bite could sway the court, believe me.”

Anne said nothing.

“Do you want corporate development inside Crystal Bay?”

“”No.”

“Exactly. Neither do I. I want you to do the right thing.”

“That’s what I’m trying to do—the right thing. I enjoyed meeting you in June. I admire you. That’s why I’m calling. I want you to understand that for me the right thing isn’t always the easy thing, or the obvious thing.”

“Then find Keb Wisting and his companions and bring them back to safety.”

Safety, another form of authority
.

“Anne, did you hear me?”

“Yes, I heard you.”

“I don’t want you to do anything wrong.”

“Wrong? Sometimes being overcautious and obedient is wrong.”

“The task force risk management team has determined there’s no room to think outside the box on this, okay?”

“The task force has a risk management team? No wonder Old Keb feels lost in today’s world.”

“Don’t jeopardize your career.”

“My career? I’m a seasonal employee with no retirement or health benefits. You told me that yourself. I have skills. I have good friends. I have a sweet man on my boat right now who talks me through storms and makes me laugh and makes me feel good about myself in ways I haven’t felt in a long time. But I don’t have a career.”

“You can. And you will, if you’re careful.”

“If I’m obedient, you mean.”

“Listen to reason, Anne.”

“Reason? With all due respect, Director Johnson, you don’t know what you’re talking about. You told me that Icy Strait is federal waters under the jurisdiction of the National Marine Fisheries Service, a sister agency of the NMRS.”

“That’s right.”

“That’s wrong. Icy Strait is under State of Alaska jurisdiction, and I’m in Icy Strait right now, not Crystal Bay. Federal laws apply here only if there’s a federal offense against the Marine Mammal Protection Act, or something like that.”

“You’re trying my patience. Stay on target. If you escort this old man into Crystal Bay without a permit—”

“He doesn’t need a permit. His canoe has no motor. Only motorized vessels need permits. And about this being a stunt: it’s not a stunt.”

“You know, whenever we argue with reality, we lose. But we only lose one hundred percent of the time.”

“Very funny.”

“Very true. All the vessels now looking for Keb Wisting, the people who want to find him and accompany him, they have motors on their boats. Do you want them all in Crystal Bay creating a huge scene? If you do what I think you’re thinking of doing, it could be a citable offense and a public relations disaster. You’ll never work for the federal government again. So here’s what I want you to do. I want you—”

Anne hung up. Simple as that. She hung up on the grandmother astronaut who walked in space and covered Africa with her finger.

“Whoa,” Stuart said. “How’d that feel?”

“Reckless and sensible, stupid and smart, condemning and liberating. No big deal.” Anne felt her stomach turn over.

“‘A sweet man who makes you feel in a way you haven’t in a long time.’ Wow. Sounds like a catch.”

“We’ll see.”

“I’d like to meet him.”

“I’ll make arrangements.”

“You’re blushing.”

“So are you.”

THE HUMPBACK WHALE mother and calf disappeared. Funny how whales do that, Anne thought. You follow them for hours and then, poof, they’re gone.

Everything stilled. Even the gulls. Anne sat at the wheel and touched the Maui Wowie through her shirt pocket. She thought about her mother, dressed in black and mourning Nancy; about her stepfather who missed the funeral and a few days later left the house and never came back. She could still feel the weight of it lodged in her heart, the ferocious grief. Was she going crazy?

Am I going crazy?

Stuart stood next to her, his arm gently brushing hers, a thousand volts surging through her. He said gravely, “I need to tell you that there’s another reason I put the ELT on the canoe.”

Anne looked at him.

“I think Charlie and Tommy are looking for the canoe too.”

Anne swallowed hard. Something about this scared her.

“The investigation on Pepper Mountain turned up evidence that Tommy found the choker-setter D-ring that broke that day.”

“So?”

“Tommy and Charlie might want to show it to James and Keb as proof of their innocence. Charlie admires Old Keb. Tommy too, in his own way.”

“I’ve heard they’re dangerous.”

Stuart shook his head. “Those brothers have had a hard run. Their father was wrongfully accused of robbery, and spent three years in jail. They were just kids, but I think it screwed them up. It’s a fate they didn’t deserve.”

“You have a kind heart.”

Stuart shrugged. “I’m just me.”

“Don’t change.”

“Okay. Anyway, I’ve been investigating the burning of Keb’s shed. At the big celebration the night before, a few people saw Tommy emerge from the forest in a sneaky manner, grab Little Mac’s pack, and put something in it.”

“Really? What?”

“A beacon, I’ll bet. Tommy’s always been obsessed with knowing Little Mac’s whereabouts. A canoe journey felt imminent that night, at least for Old Keb and James. And who would James want to bring along?”

“Little Mac.”

“Exactly. Tommy’s not stupid.”

“You think the Gants have the same advantage we have; you think they know where the canoe is?”

“I do.”

“Oh—this isn’t good, Stuart. You should have stopped Charlie and Tommy.”

Stuart lowered his head; hair askew, badge heavy on his chest. Anne regretted her sharp words. After so many wrong men she needed to find the right wrong man. He could do with a comb and a bath. So could she. She watched him sit on the transom where the raven had been.

“I’m sorry, Stuart. I’m just tired and a little scared.”

“Me too.” That smile.
Dear God
.

Anne got to her feet. “Where to, then?”

“Lemesurier Island, north shore, toward Dundas Bay.”

“You hungry?”

“No.”

“You sure? Because I know I am.”

“Okay, I’m hungry.” That smile again.

Anne motored west while Stuart made burritos. At one point he handed her an olive and she took it with her mouth. His fingers brushed her lips and she felt faint with desire, so free she could fly. Who needs magic when life itself is magical? Whales, burritos, bears, birds, butterflies, and newborn babies, this wet, spinning blue-green earth, a grand design of land and love and sea and sky, not a bad place to be.

Ahead lay dark water under the deepening night, full tides moving over the reefs of right and wrong.

“There’s beer in the cooler,” Anne said.

She took the badge off her shirt and felt better. If Stuart had put his hands on her just then, she would have taken her shirt off, too.

FALLING ASLEEP WAS an effort. Old Keb had lain down to let the long night take him, deep in his canoe, but the air was high-voltage. The sea, fragrant. And the motion, what a sensation, almost sensual. James and Kid Hugh and Little Mac had put their backs into it until their arms and paddles were extensions of the sea. They paddled for hours and more, sometimes on their knees, other times sitting on the thwarts. “The tide’s against us now,” James said at one point.

“Hug the shore,” Keb told him. “You’ll find a countercurrent there, better going.” And they did. “Listen for rocks,” Keb said. “A light swell heaves waves against exposed rocks.” And it did. Something growled and splashed in the night, very near. “Taan,” Keb said. “Sea lions.” Behind the canoe, they stirred up a trail of phosphorescence, lighting the inky sea. Little Mac said they were a comet now. Nothing was going to stop them.

Keb remembered how he and Bessie would lie on the forest floor, under great trees with outstretched arms, her body tandem with his; she of the soft skin and artful hands, her warmth like the sun. Her cleansing laugh. All the rough edges of his mind made smooth. That’s how he felt now in the canoe, if only a little. For an old man, a little is a lot.

“The feather!” he said in the middle of the night, waking up so restless it failed to convince him he’d been sleeping at all, “T’aaw. The feather?”

“I’ve got it, Gramps,” James said. “You want it?”

“Yes. No—you keep it.” The pain moved, undecided about where to lodge. First his hips ached, then his legs, neck, stomach, groin, head, hands, feet, all pulled into one long moment. His pills were on the
Etude
. Pills prescribed by doctors who died too. The sea would be his medicine now.

All that night—the night they left the
Etude
—they had paddled until an
hour before dawn when they off-loaded on a small island and covered the canoe in a bed of kelp, just offshore. That day, yesterday, they slept all day under watchful trees as planes sliced the sky and busy boats moved back and forth, some very near. Keb’s bones seemed to grow more brittle by the hour. His heart acted funny. He felt a throbbing in his neck.

Now again, for an entire night, they paddled ten hours and more with Little Mac digging in as hard as James and Kid Hugh, her jaw set. A crazy east wind beat them back and forced them to find a lee, where they rested. At one point Keb caught Kid Hugh napping. How tenacious he appeared, even when asleep, illuminated by a small flashlight, his body a pretzel; legs over the side of the canoe, his head against the hull, long hair over his face. Angola had said that most people who protest against authority take it only so far, until they find out prisons have no pillows. Not this kid. He’d never break. Never be for sale. That same resistance was in James, too. It might take more time. What had the dark-faced Latvian told Keb the night of the steaming?
If a thousand beliefs are destroyed in our march to the truth, we must still march on
. Paddle on. Nature will tell you who you need to be. Keb knew. It was time to move by memory, the smells of things you cannot find in books. Stay low. Move with the water when no one is looking; go in the middle of the night, like a bat, or
tlénx’ sh
x
’aneit
, a small owl. If the authorities find you they might take you to Juneau, put you in a hospital, or worse, down to coffee-drunk Seattle for packaged blood, green Jell-O, and purple potato salad, the nearest nagoonberry pie a thousand miles away.

At one point Kid Hugh caught Keb looking at him and said, “You’re not afraid of dying then, old man?”

“No.”

“Me neither.” He cleaned his teeth with a broken piece of deer bone.

“I’ve been dying for twenty years,” Keb said. “I’m taking my time so I don’t miss anything.” He thought this was funny. Kid Hugh stared at him with his cold arctic eyes.

“My dad almost died a few years back,” Kid Hugh said. “They had to cut off his leg. Too much whiskey and fat.” He shrugged. “I don’t care.”

Keb thought: If only he could sing, this kid. It’s not a luxury; it’s a necessity, like good food and water, an unfolding, the wind blowing from the beginning. Uncle Austin used to say that all of our joy and suffering comes from the same single sacred utterance; that we live by being wounded and healed and wounded again, and healed, one day at a time. Angola said something similar, during one of his philosophy talks. He said you have to meet the outer world
with your inner world to keep your soul anchored. If not, existence will crush you. He talked about a Nigerian man who traveled for many years until one day he sat down and didn’t move. That was it. He was staying put. Days later, when another traveler came by and asked why he sat so still, the Nigerian said he’d been moving too long. It was time to sit and wait for his soul to catch up.

THAT NIGHT, THE darkness made itself more oppressive with weasel winds and strange liquid voices even Keb didn’t know. He held his hand at arm’s length and saw nothing. He heard James and Kid Hugh arguing in low voices over what to do, where to head. They paddled for hours and huddled over a map, then paddled more. They refrained from using bright flashlights that might shine over dark water and give them away.

A light did come at them, though. Not a red or green running light, as you see on boats underway, but a single white light. Despite every effort they made to evade it, paddling this way and that, the light grew nearer. “It’s the tide rip,” James said. “It’s pulling us toward it.”

The sound of a diesel engine bore down. Keb could see the vessel now, an old rumrunner from the Stikine River, re-outfitted in a familiar way, working hard, coming at them. “Li-gaaw,” he mumbled. It’s loud. A boy stood on the bow with the powerful light, near tall white lettering:
Terry Mae
. Keb felt his heart jump. It was Torp Dezkorski, the mill operator from Strawberry Flats who had more yellow cedar logs than any one man in Alaska. He must be pulling a large raft of them, the cable low in the water. On the bow must be Torp’s son. Oyyee . . . he’s grown. Keb raised a hand.

“Gramps, what are you doing?”

The powerful bow light hit them with fierce inquisition. The engine throttled back. A man in a sou’wester stepped out from the pilothouse and waved. “Keb, is that you?” Ten minutes later they were alongside. Keb made introductions.

Kid Hugh asked the skipper, “What kind of name is Torp?”

He had arms like thighs, and bootlegger’s eyes from the Russian steppe. He gave Kid Hugh a hard look, almost severe, as though the softest thing about him were his teeth. A boreal man, his features were invested in the northern forest. He spoke through a bird’s nest beard and a boxer’s nose that occupied three-fourths of his face. “When I move slow,” he said, his voice high-timbered, “they call me Torpid. But when I move fast, they call me Torpedo. Nowadays I’m mostly torpid. But I had my torpedo years, didn’t I, Keb? I didn’t sink any ships, but I decked some cocky sailors.” Keb nodded with difficulty. The left side of his
body had gone numb. Torp said, “Galley Sally told me they’d never find you. Looks like they haven’t yet. I suppose you’ll be wanting a ride?”