Jimmy Bluefeather: A Novel (36 page)

She watched Gracie run her hands along the posts and beams, the frame-and-panel double doors that opened wide enough to move large carving projects—future dugout canoes—in and out of the shed. “I like the scalloping on these beams,” Gracie said.

“Jimmy did that cross-handed with the adz,” Ruby said, “same as he did the canoe.”

“Pops would love this,” Gracie said. “You think so, sis?”

“Absolutely.”

OLD KEB HAD lived his final days alone in Ruby’s house, on the edge of the clearing, trying his best to beat Daisy at cribbage. He never missed the chance to eat nagoonberry pie. Helen and Galley Sally brought him slices all the time. So while he lived alone, he seldom
was
alone. Visitors were constant. He never locked a door. He died one night in his sleep, the night he managed to get up from his bed, leave the house, walk barefoot to the canoe, climb in, and lie down for the last time under a Chilkat blanket, Keb Zen Raven, Nine and a Half Toes of the Berry Patch.

They found him in the morning. Doctors said he died of no one thing and everything, his entire body worn out by a lifetime of full living. On a small piece of paper found in his hand he had managed to write
kayéil’
, meaning “peace, calm.” Anne loved the word because Tlingit for raven was
yéil
; she liked to think that
kayéil’
was Keb’s peace raven, the one that lifted him onto its back and took him into another world.

“My grandfather, du daakanóox’u,” Jimmy said at his memorial, fighting back tears as he looked out upon an ocean of faces, a sea of beating hearts, hundreds of people, maybe a thousand. “He had no money, but he wasn’t poor. He was—” Jimmy choked up.

Ruby was a basket case, and Gracie not much better. Anne was tempted to come to Jimmy’s rescue, but it was Little Mac, then a medical student in Los Angeles, who stepped up and took the paper from Jimmy’s hand, the eulogy he’d written. “He had no money,” she said in a firm voice, “but he wasn’t poor. He wasn’t poor because he had you and this land, this forest, this sea. He had his home, his friends, and family, his place in this world, this life and beyond. He had stories. He knew who he was and where he belonged, what he stood for. It was everything to him. He was the richest man in Alaska.”

Little Nancy was only one year old then. Anne remembered holding her so tight she thought she might crush her. Dear God. On this generous and brilliant home we call earth, we have life and death and the mysterious cycle of things, we have knowing, understanding and comprehension, and a grand design we can simply accept and find in that acceptance not surrender, but achievement. It might quench our thirst for understanding, this acceptance, but does it ever satisfy the desire for
more
? If from death comes new life and rebirths and fresh starts and all that, a linear, circular, triangular, organic whatever, then what does it mean to die? Is Keb the raven in the trees, the eagle on the iceberg, the wolf in
the meadow, the bear on the beach, the flower in the forest? If perishing is no more than preservation of some kind, then why is it so hard to say good-bye, to let people and ideas and romance die?

A child of Woodstock, Truman loved to sing the Joni Mitchell song of the same name and put gravel in his voice that he said made him sound like Stephen Stills, though others shook their heads. Still, they sang along, and pounded out a beat. Even Coach Nicks would tap his tool belt.

LUNCH ENDED. EVERYBODY was getting back to work, the Skilsaws and chop saws starting up—Albert cutting compound angles at fifteen and twenty-two and a half degrees—when Stuart drove up. The door flew open and Little Nancy came running. “Mama!” She vaulted off a small wooden box and launched herself at Anne, who caught her like a leaf and spun her around, drawing her near. “Sweetie, you’re back.”

“I’m back. I’ve been away with Papa, and now I’m back. I’m home, I’m home.” Skinny as a wire, with wheat-colored hair, a sensitive face, dusty blue eyes, and a get-anything-she-wanted smile, Little Nancy looked everything like Stuart and nothing like Anne. Another one of life’s mysteries. “I brought you a present. Oops, I forgot, it’s supposed to be a surprise.”

“Okay, I’ll be surprised.”

“I missed you.”

“I missed you, too.”
You are my everything, my world
.

Stuart walked up, a look of deep satisfaction on his face. He kissed Anne.

Little Nancy said, “Is Rebecca here?”

Truman answered, “She’s behind Ruby’s house, playing. She’s expecting you.”

“Can I go see Rebecca?” Little Nancy asked her mom.

“You don’t want to spend time with me? I haven’t seen you in a whole week.”

“I know, I will, Mama. I’ve missed you, but I have to see Rebecca.”

“Of course you do.”

Anne put her down and watched her run across the clearing to the house.

“She’s a firecracker,” Vic said.

“She’s an only child,” Ruby said, and people laughed, Stuart included. He spoiled her and made no apologies for it.

Anne put her arm around his waist; he put his around her shoulder. “C’mon,” she said, “let me show you what we’re doing here.”

USED TO BE it was hard to live and easy to die. Not anymore. Nowadays it was the other way around. Anne smiled in Stuart’s embrace, walking through the shed, pointing things out, thinking, yes, there are many questions, some of them aching questions. We really don’t have a choice to participate or not, do we? We engage in the mystery and the wonder, the journey and drama, the living, loving, and dying. It’s a choice nobody gets to make. It doesn’t matter why it works this way. It only matters that it
does
work. If we want to inhabit wonder, we’d better learn as many languages as we can. We’d better meditate on light and leaves and birds and salmon and rain. And whales, of course. Always whales. The world is not ours to be mastered, only cared for. All in all, it’s a pretty good deal. This gift of guardianship.

“Hey, Stuart,” Jimmy called from atop a ladder, “could you hand me up that four-foot level, and that hammer and chisel?”

Stuart did, and said, “It’s looking really good, Bluefeather.”

“Oyyee . . . I think Gramps is here with us today, don’t you?”

“Yes, he is.”

“I have to get these joints just right.”

“Yes, you do.”

It’s all so mysterious, Anne thought. Some days are harder than others; that’s just the way it is. But on days like this, it’s very clear why we are here, why all of us are here.

The following is a list of Tlingit words in addition to those found in the story.