Jimmy Bluefeather: A Novel (33 page)

“No, I don’t think so.”

“So they’re pacing us?”

“Yeah.”

The NMRS patrol vessel
Esker II
hailed her on channel sixteen. She answered, and Ron requested that she switch to her satellite phone. She did. “Anne, what are you doing? Where are you going?”

“I’m taking Keb Wisting up the bay.”

“Up the bay? Where up the bay?”

“Up the bay, Ron. Just up the bay. I need to talk to Paul.
”

“Stand by.”

Ten seconds later. “Anne, this is Paul. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“Look, we just spoke to Deputy Stuart Ewing. We’re glad you’re safe. We need you to stop so we can make sure Keb is okay, medically. He doesn’t have his pills for his heart and other things. He hasn’t had them for days. He could be in danger. We have EMS here on the
Esker II
to take care of him.” Paul paused, to allow Anne time to respond. She made no reply. “Anne, a lot of people here are concerned. We know Keb was involved in stealing a plane and some radios and other electronics. We also know the plane was found undamaged, and the owners of the yacht are not interested in pressing any charges. We know about the apprehended arson suspects in Dundas Bay. We’ve sent personnel over there. We know you’re just trying to help Old Keb. We want to help him too, make sure he’s safe and well. We’ll put him on the
Esker II
, give him his medicine, make sure he’s okay, and run him up the bay if he’s well enough, if that’s what he wants. We’ve got his daughter Ruby here on board. She needs to see him. She needs to talk to him.”

Anne looked at James and Keb. The old man was rocking with his head down, his hands over his ears as the media chopper paced them, making a racket. James shook his head and motioned Anne forward, onward, north to the glacier. “I’m continuing on this course and speed, Paul. Keb Wisting is fine. He’s with his grandson. I’m asking that you give them a little more time together. Give them some privacy, some space. And get this damn helicopter to back off.”

Anne could hear Paul speaking to others, but couldn’t get the words. Finally Paul said with exasperation, “Anne, look, you’re creating mayhem with all these other boats following you, entering a marine reserve without permits. You have to listen. Stand by. . . .”

“Anne, this is Gary Hoffman, chief ranger of the National Marine Reserve Service in Washington, D.C., and incident commander of this task force. You need to stand down. You’re creating a dangerous situation with dozens of boats illegally entering this bay and pursuing you.”

“They’re not pursuing me.”

“Yes they are.”

“No they’re not. They’re following me, maintaining course and speed. I can track them on radar. Are you pursuing me? If you are, you’re going too fast. These are whale waters.”

“Listen, I’m ordering you to stand down. Put your vessel in neutral and—”

She turned off the satellite phone. A minute later the helicopter retreated. Old Keb lifted his head and opened his ears. Anne said to James, “I think they got the point.”

But they didn’t. Minutes later the helicopter returned, with the same goofy cameraman hanging out the door, pacing the boat at thirteen knots. Anne unlatched a cabinet next to her, pulled out her NMRS rifle, a 30.06, and handed it to James.

“You want me to shoot them?”

“It’s unloaded. You could bolt it back, open the chamber, and stand out on the open deck so they see you. Shoulder the rifle and take aim at them. Mackenzie could use that Lumix camera to photograph you and make sure the picture clearly shows the bolt is back and the chamber open.”

“No,” Little Mac said. “James could still get in big trouble for that, for aiming any rifle at a helicopter. Have you got a flare gun?”

“Yes.”

“Use that.”

A minute later James stepped out on deck and took aim. Little Mac got the photo, and the helicopter peeled away. James laughed and said to Anne, “Are all whale biologists as crazy as you?”

“No. I’m the only crazy one.”
Stupid white woman, soon to be unemployed
. “Keep that flare gun handy, in case they come back.”

“Why the photograph?” Little Mac asked.

“To show it was just a flare gun, at our trial. You know, to keep us out of jail.”

THE OTHER BOATS kept their distance, fifty or more from what Anne could tell. Not only were they following; they were forming up in single file, making a boat train. And not just government boats but boats carrying half the townspeople from Jinkaat. Maybe
all
the townspeople from Jinkaat. And from other places too. Anne asked James to take the wheel. “Don’t hit anything,” she told him.

“Like an iceberg?”

“Or a rock.” She told him to put the Marble Islands off his starboard at half a mile, and make a heading up the West Arm. At Geikie Rock, turn ten degrees north, and off Blue Mouse Cove, another ten degrees north. It’s all on waypoints entered into the GPS. After that, stay mid-channel up the east side of Russell Island, past Tea Cup Harbor and up Tarr Inlet to the glacier. “You got that?”

“Yep.”

“Watch for whales.”

“Yep.”

“Good man.” Anne pulled out the joint and lit it. She took a drag and held it . . . took another drag and was soon stoned. She sat down next to Keb and said, “I think my career with the National Marine Reserve Service just ended. You want a hit?” Keb nodded. She handed him the joint. This startled Mackenzie, Anne could see. A plane flew high overhead, circled to the north, and flew over again.

Keb fumbled the joint in his bent fingers but got it to his lips and took a small puff, thinking about Angola.
Will I ever see him again?
And Marge on the
Silverbow
? He coughed on the joint.

Anne took it back and said, “Maui Wowie. It’s the number one cash crop in Hawaii and it’s illegal. Men can get fall-down drunk on whiskey and beer and ruin their lives and their families and never get arrested. But I can’t smoke this joint.” Keb studied her: the burnished hair and long fingers. Somebody told him once that gray eyes meant wisdom. Or was it blue eyes? This woman had both, eyes gray-blue, the color of late winter, early spring, the last patch of snow. “Why are you doing this?” he asked her. “Why are you giving us this ride?”

“I don’t know. I never had a real father, or a grandfather.”

Mackenzie thanked Anne again for the ride, for helping Keb.

“Everybody else is worried about his heart medicine,” Anne said, “and I’m getting him stoned.”

“You study whales?” Keb asked her.

“Yes.”

“You have stories about whales?”

“Yes, many.”

“That’s good. Stories are medicine, you know, small doses of good things. When you tell them . . . the stories, they release the medicine.”

The next thing Anne knew, she was telling stories. Stories that ran together in no set order, stories of her mom and Nancy, of boats and whales. She told about a humpback that was struck and killed by a cruise ship. “More than one hundred volunteers cleaned the bones and helped to rearticulate the skeleton for a new outdoor pavilion in Bartlett Cove. That’s what they call it, you know, when you put a skeleton back together, you ‘rearticulate’ it. As if it can speak.”

Keb had to agree with her, whatever it was she said.

He felt airy, elevated, serene.

“When the pavilion was finished and the whale was mounted,” Anne
added, “it got a Tlingit blessing that was very powerful. My friend Taylor told me about it.”

Yes, Keb knew of this. He had wanted to attend the opening ceremony, but could not, for reasons he couldn’t remember. Distant events were more vivid than recent ones. He told Anne that many years ago, after he and Uncle Austin would catch the first salmon of spring, a big king, they would share it with family and friends, mostly elders, and put the bones back on shore in thankfulness, near where the fish had been caught. “That salmon had a story, too. It gave us a lot.” Keb spoke about the yellow cedar canoe paddles, how Kevin Pallen made them to go far, so far that the moon exhausted itself and the stars made no sense. “The paddles are perfect, you see, the points and the ribs and the shapes of the blades that make them good to go, good to hunt. Fast and quiet.” He handed her one. She admired it and handed it back. “No,” he said. “It’s for you.”

“I can’t accept this,” Anne said.

“You must,” Little Mac told her with an earnest look. “You must, it’s a gift.”

Keb said, “My people had many names for Crystal Bay. One name reaching back to when Great Raven created it. Another from when the glacier came. Another from when the glacier left and the bay was reborn. Names for rivers and coves, good places to hunt and fish and pick berries. Oyyee—places to fall in love.” He pointed to starboard and said, “Over there is Xóots Xh’oosi X’aa, Brown Bear Paw Point. Good memories. Makes me feel at home again.” He offered Anne a second paddle and said, “Do you know the fisherwoman?”

“Who?”

“Marge, the fisherwoman who gave us a ride. She was good to us. She made good cornbread. You need to give her this for me, if you can. Can you?”

Little Mac said, “I’ll get it to her, Gramps. She told me she often spends her winters in Seattle. I’ll find her down there.”

“Now you only have one,” Anne said to him. “One paddle.”

“Yes, one . . .” His voice trailed off as he lost himself in the mountains, their flanks rising higher as the
Firn
approached the glacier.

James said from the helm, “There’s a million people following us, Gramps. A line of boats as far as I can see, a bunch of them from Jinkaat, I think.”

Keb said, “Tell them to bring the children, at yátx’i.”

ANNE FOUND HERSELF falling through memory to a time when her mother took her and Nancy to a zoo in California to eat ice cream and look at curious creatures and lose themselves in other worlds. She remembered how people said the zoo animals were lucky because they lived longer in cages than they did in the
wild, how that was good, as if any price, even captivity, was worth living longer. Is that why she and Nancy grew up to admire whales in the wild, off Auke Bay and Shelter Island, whales dancing in the sea? Living and dying free?

“You rescued me, long ago,” Anne said to Keb. “My sister and me, off Shelter Island, in a storm. We capsized and you came along and pulled us out of the water.”

Old Keb stared at her.

“Do you remember?”

“Your sister died.”

“Yes.”

“That was you?”

“Yes.”

“Where have you been?”

“Hawaii.”

“Oyyee . . . nice place.”

“Not as nice as here. Not as wild.”

“No glaciers.”

“No, no glaciers.”

“Your sister . . .”

“Her name was Nancy. She had given me the better life jacket that day. She was older than me. She always wore cotton skirts with bright flowers and believed in everybody. My stepfather left home after she died; he never came back.”

“Maybe he was brokenhearted,” Little Mac said.

“Maybe.” Anne shrugged. “I guess you have to give your family permission to be imperfect, don’t you? Otherwise you go insane.”

Yes
, Keb thought,
imperfect, even terribly flawed
.

“You don’t remember me, then?” Anne said to Old Keb.

“I remember you. You were a little girl.”

“I was eight.”

“You were small.”

“Yes.”

“You were also big. I knew you’d be okay.”

“You did? How?”

“Your mother. She was strong. I remember her. You remind me of her. You’re all grown up now.”

“In some ways I am. In other ways I’m not.”

“My two daughters, my girls, Ruby and Gracie, they’re sisters and they’re hard on each other.”

“Nancy was my only sister.”

“She’d be proud of you today,” Mackenzie said.

“Would she? I’m not so sure. I’m about to get fired from a really good job. Maybe I could be a poet, or a community activist, or a whale biologist in Kansas. Do they have whale biologists in Kansas?”

THE GLACIER WAS still there, made of crystals, flowing into the sea.

Keb watched Anne take the helm and navigate through thousands of glittering pieces of floating ice—sunlight dancing off each one—until their boat was half a mile from the glacier’s massive tidewater face.

“Tsaa,” Keb said quietly. Seal.

“I don’t see any, Gramps.” James scanned the ice for harbor seals. Mother seals gave birth to their pups on the ice, near tidewater glaciers, in early June.

Keb climbed to his feet, with Little Mac’s help, and listened.

Anne killed the engine to let everything go quiet. Not silent. Nature is never silent. But without noise, that’s the trick, the hunter’s way.

“We hunted seal,” Keb said. He could see Uncle Austin’s features in beautiful detail, the hands and eyes of a hunter, a teacher.

The glacier tumbled down the mountain in deep crevasses and tall towers, now and then giving up parts of itself with cracks and rumbles, calving icy shards into the bay as it did when Keb was a boy. Look how it stands in defiance of a warming world. Keb knew then as he’d always known:
Glaciers give us ice, and ice gives us seal
. Oyyee . . . thinking about seal steaks made his mouth water. Yesterday was every day, not a billion Coca-Colas ago. It was ice and rock, the brisk air of youth, when Keb’s mind was sharp as a whetted knife and he felt capable of anything, even greatness. Men talk about change, how everything must change, how it’s inevitable, and so they bring about change with their own greed, seeing only what they want to see. But do they themselves ever change? These men? Maybe one day, in the presence of something like this.

Keb watched James and Little Mac sit on the gunwale with their legs over the side, facing the glacier, laughing in the icy air, Anne too, their eyes filled with all things possible. James had his shoes and shirt off, the feather on his bare chest. Seeing it filled Keb with feelings beyond words. He recalled Uncle Austin, shoeless in a bay of new beginnings long ago, how he would bathe in icy water and drink the sky and say to young Keb, “You see, nephew, we leave open space because we are small and not certain. We leave room to learn.”