There was no sister, brother, or cousin to guard the funeral hall, to observe mourning. Only me. Me. And who would believe an island could mourn, could hold secrets like ancient glacial boulders broken down into grains of sand, could hold your blood in the crevasse of seashells.
I wore a hemlock bough in my hair, dressed in black, as I grieved the most. I’ve washed blood from broken boards, barrels cracked open. When I become a pure container through common paths, bless me to enter …
One hundred days of ceremony. We listened to the tiderush circling us, the rhythm of words, like wind through hemlock. You may have heard it like mourners’ cries.
No gold paper for your tradition, no ghost money, but I burned paper scraps that’d floated up from the sea. I burned lichen from timeworn stones. I burned old-man’s-beard moss. I burned the spruce bark, the rounds shaped like dragon scales. The essence practice of good fortune …
I told you stories, memories of old people coming downriver, then ice breaking, cracking, warming, more canoes, then more. People have turned to stone around me. Hunters, fishermen, wives, sons, even children, have lain at my feet, tumbled from overturned skiffs. These were the best prayers I knew.
At the foot of your coffin, I lit a candle and burned incense, though it was only smokewood and dried moss. My sacred vows and my commitments.
While you waited the fleeting of your soul, I wanted to tell you stories of dragons, though I’d never seen one before. But I knew a killer whale story would do. Killer whales round me every spring, hunting, hunting. Each story has given an offering.
There was no trumpet, nor flute, nor gong to recite my prayers to. I relied upon the river current, clack of rocks, wind through the trees. And take delight in the holy …
Ravens hopped along the beach, bowing, bowing, bowing. He left a clamshell on the log.
May I always find perfect teachers.
Planes and birds have circled and dipped, tipped their wings to me. Go. You are winged now. Fly among the black swifts, the pipit, the ring-billed, the mew, and kittiwake. Accomplish all grounds and paths swiftly.
One hundred days I prayed. One hundred days I kept vigil. One hundred days of stories—a bird steals the sun, a log becomes a killer whale, Grandfather Heron convinces a woman to swallow a rock. Through the blessings of the holy beings, and through the force of our heartfelt prayers …
I’ve never told anyone this, but seven days into your burial ceremony; I understood your soul was supposed to go home. That would’ve been China, yes? I imagined there was a small field behind your house. Your grandmother and sister were still there, still waiting for your return. And here, I was supposed to dust powder by the door in order to tell if your spirit returned for a visit. That day, the snow fell unusually late in the year. Your footprints were pressed into fresh snow.
May all our prayers be fulfilled.
Date: 2000s
Recorded by John Swanton
Assisted by Tooch Waterson
The Terrible Wild Children
MINA: Liv said when she came to babysit us after Momma had run off, we were like wild animals. She said I rocked back and forth in the corner pulling out my hair. She had to teach us manners.
SUVI: I caught momma in bed with that guy, Bob, and told Daddy. Momma hated me after.
RIKKA: When I was young, I didn’t remember Momma at all—it was weird. I don’t remember the cult—just images like I was being smothered by a man or someone on top of me.
VEIKO: I don’t remember her, either, because I was a baby when she ran off.
MINA: More like she got run out of town by Daddy and his friends.
RIKKA: Suvi remembers a lot. She doesn’t like to talk about it do you, Suv?
(Suvi says nothing.)
(Mina laughs.)
SUVI: I remember being kidnapped, when Momma tried to steal us from Daddy. I remember what the bushes smelled like. I remember my feet hurt in my boots. I remember the van Bob and Momma shoved us in and how scared I was.
MINA: I remember that van too. The smell. I still can’t stand the smell of rusty tools.
RIKKA: I can’t stand small dark places. Reminds me of the van.
SUVI: It’s a good thing the airline agent was a friend of Daddy’s and didn’t sell Momma the plane tickets.
MINA: What do you think would have happened if we’d gone with her?
RIKKA: We’d be begging in the airports.
SUVI: We’d be dead like the Hale-Bopp cult.
MINA: Heaven’s Gate?
SUVI: Yeah. They all killed themselves.
MINA: They thought they were aliens from outer space just like Momma and her friends.
RIKKA: Yeah, do you think we would have done that?
SUVI: Well, Momma’s spaceship never came to save them from this planet, did it?
RIKKA: No.
SUVI: So how were they going to get to their planet then?
RIKKA: True.
VEIKO: I don’t remember it anyway. And I don’t want to think about it.
MINA: Well, I stopped some little girls my age from playing with your penis. Momma said it was okay and I got mad. You were a baby. She said they were curious. I stopped them. I was only about five years old then, but I knew enough not to trust her or Delia’s kids either.
SUVI: I think Momma left because she was in love with Delia, her best friend. I don’t think it was about the men in the group at all.
RIKKA: (Shrugs.) Could be.
MINA: When I was little, I thought Momma was a devil worshiper, then, when I was a bit older, I thought she was following Charles Manson. Don’t you remember, if the subject ever came up, which was hardly ever, we used the word “cult.” But no one, not even Daddy or Liv, explained what one was. I figured out what a cult was when I was a teen and read Helter Skelter. I thought Momma had crazy eyes like Charles Manson. I didn’t have a photograph of her; instead I had the book cover of Manson on Helter Skelter.
RIKKA: Yeah, I was afraid of everything under my bed, in the closet. Everything.
MINA: I remember there was a children’s book about a little bird that fell out of a nest and kept looking for his mother. I remember there was a monster, but I think it was big heavy equipment or something picked up the bird. Maybe a front-end loader. I couldn’t read that damn book without getting upset. One time, I think when I was a teenager, I read that book again and I actually cried. I hate that book.
Date: nd (no date)
Recorded by John Swanton
Assisted by Tooch Waterson
Recounted by Tova Agard
Men’s Stories
1951, Winter
Helene stood on a stool at the kitchen sink, her hands in soapy water. She cocked her ear toward men telling tales in the living room. She tuned out the women’s talk at the table behind her. Beyond the kitchen window, Elephants Nose silhouetted against the moonlit sky. The moon cast a path from the strait to the harbor, and the brightest star was the Christmas star high above the island—her dad told her it was the planet Venus.
Helene, nine years old, sneaked from kitchen-talk—a recipe for deer stew, cousin’s pregnancy, a breech baby—to the living room near the Sparks oil heater where the men sat: fishermen scrubbed after a week in slime and scales from fishing the salmon grounds, dressed in black jeans and wool shirts, and rolling Prince Albert tobacco into cigarettes. She inhaled their smoky tales: UFOs—the one Jim saw, cigar-shaped—while trolling near the beach at Elephants Nose. Or the story about ball lightning zipping through the rigging, blue fire chasing Uncle Chet round his boat deck. Or talk of the landotter man jumping from the bow of her grandfather’s boat—no splash, no sound. She hated, though, the stories of drowning, and all that talk of a drowning curse in her family. Maybe she could live far from the ocean.
Sitting on a small padded ottoman near the big picture window, she turned and stared at the planet. The frost on the window formed an alien landscape of tall spires and deep valleys. She’d read about aliens in the Spaceway ma
gazine. Her aunt said there might be aliens on other planets, but she wasn’t sure. What would it be like to go to another planet? Would her skin turn green like the aliens? Would there be machines to help cook dinner, or magic unicorns? Maybe there she could be the princess of all the aliens. She’d have long silver hair, which they would brush for her every day. It would be perfect. Perfect.
Helene inhaled the cigarette smoke. She loved this visiting time—the time before television came to the island, before outboard motors, before she was bedridden with scarlet fever, before marrying young, before she learned to gather data while doing laundry, reading Worlds of Tomorrow, Thrilling Science Fiction, and Spaceway, before Father gave her psychic research, years before she starred in her own myth, before she ran off to follow the saucer people.
Date: nd (no date)
Recorded by John Swanton
Assisted by Tooch Waterson
Recounted by Tova Agard
The Woman in the Final Frontier
1968, Summer
Helene followed her oldest child, Suvi, and her middle daughter, Mina, up the trail to the top of Mount Dewey. Suvi and Mina each carried a Folgers coffee can on a string around their necks.
“Over here, over here. This is the best spot, Momma,” Suvi said, skipping to a big patch of salmonberries.
Helene had left her toddler, Rikka, and the baby, Veiko, home with Grandma back at the house on the hill. Now, farther up the hill, the town below came into view. She helped her girls pick their salmonberries, filling up one can nearly halfway, although Mina’s was nearly empty because Mina couldn’t stop eating the berries.
She spread out her wool halibut jacket on the ground for the girls and herself to sit on. All around them, the old spruce trees were draped with old-man’s-beard moss. A raven chortled in the branches. She took out two peanut butter and jam sandwiches from her pocket and gave each girl a half and ate one of her own.
She pointed to the island directly in front of town. “There’s Elephants Nose.”
“Yeah,” Suvi said. “It does look like an elephant.”
“Yes, hon, and did you know that’s where the spaceships are, too. You know, like the one Captain Kirk flies.”
“I like Captain Kirk,” Suvi said.
Mina flung a pinecone off the coat. “Do you think he can take us for a ride on one?” She asked.
Helene closed her eyes. The forest smelled old. She wandered the same small road by their house, driving the same few miles on the island. “I don’t know. They say space is the final frontier.” She recalled her last channeling from Albert Einstein. He explained to her how flying saucers were propelled. She had written it all down. “Yes, people are going there, way out there, away from here.”
“How come you want to leave us?” Mina asked.
“Leave? No honey, I don’t want to leave you. I want …” Helene said, her voice trailing off.
She thought about the voice in her head repeating: Delia and your destiny are together. Delia and your destiny are together. No, not a voice, but something in her gut, deep down, spreading warmth. It ached in her chest, too. Delia was so smart, different from any friend she’d known. Delia claimed one of her children had lived another life on a planet made of metal. Imagine that: metal. What would the planet sound like?
There were other men and women who hung out with Delia. Sometimes she felt jealous, but she wouldn’t admit that to anyone. Every morning was new and exciting. She’d practically leap out of bed in the morning to get the kids ready after Isak went to work. With the kids, she’d head over to Delia’s, leaving the laundry and dishes. At home all day with Suvi and Mina and Rikka and Veiko, things were stressful. She shook her head. How awful her fingers had felt around Mina’s little neck. How Mina looked at her with those big trusting blue eyes. “I’d like to kill you,” she’d scream.
Helene sighed. “Yes, I want to leave,” she said to the girls. She reached into the coffee can setting beside her and took a handful of salmonberries. She enjoyed spending time with her two oldest girls. She loved reading them stories, like “Snow White and Rose Red.”
When Helene was a teen, her friends liked to hang out with her because she’d tell them her imaginary stories. Then, later, she’d read the ones she’d written in her notebook. Now, the town of Wrangell lay below. She was on the edge like that Star Trek episode, “The City on the Edge of Forever.” The ancient ring in the television show was like the one Father used to communicate with her and Delia. There it was again, that temporal disturbance she’d been feeling lately. Isak told her she had to stop staring off into space. “Spacing out,” he called it. But that space she went to … lovely and silver and shiny with the dishes stacked neatly in the dish rack without her getting her hands soapy. And the diapers were all folded and the children’s toys put away. How could she, after knowing all this, and seeing all this, allow time to resume its shape and leave all as it was before.
Date: nd (no date)
Recorded by John Swanton
Recounted by Tova Agard
Escape from Planet Alaska
1971, May
In the dusk, Helene climbed out of an orange van and trudged up the trail to her former house on the hill to kidnap her children. Last night, their spaceship, Starlighter, failed to arrive. The Family of Caeli Lumen figured they must have misinterpreted the data they had channeled from their god, Father. Now, new data revealed the Starlighter was going to land in Oregon.
As usual, Wrangell Island folks left their doors unlocked. Helene roused her four children while her ex-husband slept. The Family told Helene her children were spiritually asleep. It was her job to wake them, to raise them in the Family. She carried her toddler son across the yard toward the salmonberry bushes. Her three young girls, Suvi, Mina, and Rikka, followed behind.
Suvi’s feet slipped inside her rubber boots. She stopped. “Momma, where are we going?” she asked.
“We’re going to Oregon,” Helene said, grabbing Suvi’s hand.
“Why?” Suvi asked.
“Well, we get to ride on a spaceship,” Helene explained.
“Is Daddy coming?”
“No, hon, Daddy’s asleep, and he won’t wake up.”
“Why?” Suvi asked again. Her final why went unanswered.
Halfway back down the trail, Helene looked out toward Woronofski Island’s silhouette, wondering about the lights often seen zipping over the treetops. These sightings were common in Wrangell lore. Local fishermen often saw them, her grandfather had seen them, she’d seen them. She convinced herself the lights proved the existence of alien spaceships, and the Starlighter would soon rescue the Family—displaced gods and goddesses—and transport them back to their planet. She imagined her planet like the utopias in Worlds of Tomorrow magazine.
Inside the van, her new lover, Bob, smoked a joint, listening to the radio blare Count Five’s “Psychotic Reaction.” The children climbed into the back of the windowless van. They held hands and sat among oil and black mold. Rusty tools clanked at their feet.
They drove to the airplane pullout. Soon, the Grumman Goose would be landing on Zimovia Strait and crawling up the ramp. The Goose was the only way off the island—other than hitching a ride on a troller—to Ketchikan in order to take another plane to Oregon. But Alaska’s gravity was already folding in on her—sensing a kidnapping attempt, the airline agent refused to sell her the tickets.
Near the event horizon, Helene stood outside the small airline shack with her four children, not realizing the lights flickering above the island would never reach her. The flash of insight would eventually come, but light cannot escape a black hole and neither could she—for the next twenty years—the alien goddess from the universe called Home.
Date: nd (no date)
Recorded by John Swanton
Recounted by Tova Agard
The Girl with Demons All Around
1971, August
Jesse sat with little Rikka on her lap. Rikka’s red hair stuck up i
n all directions and snot dried on her cheeks. A few minutes before, Jesse had tried to rinse the child’s face with a wash rag but Rikka had started to cry. Now, Rikka rubbed her eyes.
Jesse held Rikka’s pale fingers in her own brown ones and touched the monster on the book cover. “See, it can’t hurt you. This is a funny book. He has people feet and big horns. And see that boat there? The monster is going to meet a wild little boy very soon.”
Rikka’s sisters, Suvi and Mina, played outside Jesse’s house on the swing set. Jesse and Charlie’s son, Ray, had outgrown it.
Jesse scooted her rocking chair over to the large picture window so she could watch the kids play. The girls had come down Mount Dewey through the trail ending across the street from her place. Typically, they’d run around all day at Petroglyph Beach beside their house. Now Rikka, the littlest girl, had tuckered out. Rain or shine, she always played outside in her boots, clomping around behind her big sisters, making them carry her whenever she tired. Jesse loved this about Rikka.
Jesse draped a small granny-square quilt she’d made across her lap, covering Rikka’s skinned knees. The little girl leaned in against her, nuzzling Jesse’s chest.
Jesse opened the book and started to read.
Rikka fussed and turned her head. “What’s wrong, honey?” Jesse asked.
“Did momma leave because I’m ugly?”
“God, baby. Ugly? Who told you that?”
“They did, sort of,” a child’s voice said from behind.
Jesse turned. Suvi and Mina stood there. Suvi had helped herself to a glass of Kool-Aid, like she’d done a half-dozen times at Jesse’s house. Suvi walked over, glass in hand, a red mustache above her lip. She said, “Bob, Momma’s boyfriend, he told Rikka to sit on the couch all day and not to move. She minded him. We were at school, Mina and me. He told Rikka she had demons in her, and the demons were all around, and they were going to get her if she got off the couch.”
The Dead Go to Seattle Page 7
