Jimmy Bluefeather: A Novel

by Heacox, Kim

  Rene and Monique ushered the fivesome down the steps to the passageway and into the spacious lounge, next to the galley.

  “We have to get out of here,” James said.

  “Tonight,” Kid Hugh said.

  But how? How to get the canoe? Three days ago Kid Hugh and Quinton, Marge’s son, had anchored it out of sight in a small sea cave at the base of a cliff several hundred yards away. Could Kid Hugh swim to it from the yacht? Keb didn’t think so. It wasn’t the distance that would defeat him, it was the cold water. They stayed topside, talking. Voltaire the cat walked the rail with his ears up, as if eavesdropping. Steve snarled and sent him scurrying below.

  Kid Hugh said, “The Cessna pilot is looking at us funny.”

  Keb focused his one good eye. Sure enough, the pilot stood forward on the plane float with his head in the engine, doing repairs, partly obscured by the cowling that was hinged back. It was easy to see his head pop out now and then to look their way, his manner more distracted by things around him than focused on a problem at hand.

  “He’s onto us,” Kid Hugh said. “He knows who we are. We might have to take him out.”

  Take him out? Keb wondered. Out to where?

  DARKNESS CAME RELUCTANTLY. At twilight Jacques and Pierre, still on George Island collecting rocks, called by radio for a ride back to the yacht. Monique bounded topside to hop into the skiff, and ran into James, who offered to do her a favor and run the boat to shore himself to pick up the Frenchmen. That would give Monique more time with her friends down below. She smelled of cigarettes, garlic, and wine.

  “No,” she said to James.

  Just then Angola emerged. “Jambalaya’s on,” he announced. “There’s plenty for everyone.” He spoke in French to Monique, and added, “Go on down and eat. I’ll go get Jacques and Pierre. I could use the air.”

  Monique weighed the offer with her serpent eyes. Somebody laughed from down below. A flood of French phrases sailed up the passageway. More laughter. The pilot had gone below half an hour ago, followed minutes later by Little Mac, who had listened from out of view to hear what he might say about the old man and the canoe. He had said nothing, so far. Maybe he was just a shifty guy who looked at them suspiciously but in truth suspected nothing. Keb had stayed topside to welcome the darkness, and now coughed, sitting in his cold, aching bones. Little Mac wrapped him in a blanket. They listened to Monique speak French with Angola, and watched her point to the skiff, perhaps to tell him something about the outboard.

  More laughter from below.

  Monique headed down.

  “Time to move fast,” Angola said. He told Kid Hugh to take the small inflatable and get the canoe. Angola and James would take the skiff to get Jacques and Pierre. Angola would bring the Frenchmen back and leave James on shore to get the tents. Kid Hugh would pick up James in the canoe, pulling the inflatable behind, and return to the Etude to get Keb, Little Mac, and Steve. So many instructions. Keb’s head was spinning. He reached for the raven feather on his chest and found no feather, no chest either, not like it used to be, barrel-full, when his arms were like fulcrums, swinging the adz.

  He had to lie down.

  Remember Barney What’s-His-Name? He had had big arms, too. Barney the electrician who fell off a rafter and landed on his head and became a halfwit. Went from 220 to 110 just like that. He got in the army, though, a true patriot. When his sergeant ordered him to paint a jeep and Barney asked how much of the jeep he should paint and the sergeant said the whole damn jeep, you idiot, that’s what Barney did, he painted the whole damn jeep, the idiot. Seats, tires, steering wheel, headlights, gearshift, windows, dash, everything. He painted everything and never got promoted. Went to ’Nam just in time to get shot and killed. It didn’t seem much different these days, kids going off to fight in places with names only the politicians could pronounce. Why does an old man remember the dying of the young? The returning of the wounded? Why the rocks . . . why remember sleeping on the rocks to avoid sleeping in the mud? Some men look only at their feet after that, one after another, taking them home.

  SOMETIME LATER, LITTLE Mac shook Old Keb by the shoulder and told him she had to go below to get her guitar and daypack, and Keb’s belongings. They’d be leaving soon. Angola and the Frenchmen had returned, but not James and Hugh. Soon, hopefully.

  Lying there half-frozen, Keb raised himself. Had he fallen asleep? Right on the deck? It was dark, but the yacht was brightly lit. Little Mac told him to stay, but he followed her down the stairs, hands shaky on the rail. Twice he nearly fell. In the passageway he saw her pressed against the wall, listening to the lounge chatter. She was in a place that allowed her to see Angola in the galley, and for him to see her. Could the others see her? Keb didn’t think so. It felt like espionage. He heard men and women talking, drinking, eating. He smelled Angola’s jambalaya, a rich aroma that made his legs weak. The lights of the lounge threw bold shadows against the rose-painted bulkheads and teak trim. Little Mac turned to see Keb behind her. She motioned him to stay still, stay quiet. Somebody was playing her guitar. Keb heard Rene say, “They were here when we got here, on the island, three days ago.”

  Another man said, “Maybe it’s not them, but it sure could be.”

  “It’s them.”

  “You got cell phone coverage out here?”

  “Off and on. It’s better near Elfin Cove.”

  “How about a satellite phone?”

  “I got one in the plane. We could call and find out if he is who we think he is.”

  “Just use the VHF. Call Bartlett Cove or Jinkaat. Or ask the commercial fishing fleet.”

  “Their pictures are probably on the Internet.”

  Monique said, “They’re topside right now. Go ask them.”

  “The old white-haired guy, I mean, you have to wonder what he’s thinking, right?”

  “If he’s thinking at all.”

  “He really did carve a dugout cedar canoe?”

  “Yep, with help from others.”

  “So . . . where is it? Where’s the canoe?”

  Other voices moved over words Keb couldn’t understand, followed by laughter and the sound of somebody opening a bottle of champagne. A cork bounced off a wall. More laughter.

  Little Mac had crawled behind a sofa all the way into the galley, where Keb could see her hunkered down as she dismantled a radio, with Angola’s help. Yes, he thought, get the radios.

  The dinner party was a party all right, with everybody laughing and slamming down jambalaya. At one point Jacques—or was it Pierre?—got up and came around the corner and stood before Old Keb, pasta-legged, moon-eyed, shit-faced. Without a word, he turned and walked back. Had Keb seen something in his eyes, a conspiratorial wink?

  Minutes later Keb and Little Mac were topside in the wheelhouse where Little Mac took all the radios and two small computers. They worked their way into the science lab and Rene’s cabin, where they found three more handheld VHFs, two cell phones, two iPhones, an iPad, a handheld GPS, and two computers. “Take it all,” Keb said. He had never made a habit of stealing. Seemed like a good time to begin. They had to render the Etude incapable of outside communication . . . for a while at least. One phone call could bring a team of troopers and federal rangers who would pamper Keb, speak of safety, and end his journey.

  Back on deck, Keb and Little Mac found James and Kid Hugh off the port stern, under one wing of the plane, in the canoe, talking quietly and organizing gear, securing lines, arranging totes. Steve was already aboard, ready to go, up on the foredeck in his position as scout. Keb’s heart jumped. “How is it?” he asked quietly.

  “How’s what, Gramps?”

  “The canoe?”

  “It’s good, Gramps. Hurry, we have to go.”

  Little Mac handed down her pack, then Keb’s pack, and a small duffel filled with their loot. She climbed in and helped the old man do the same. Her guitar would have to stay. Just touching the canoe made Keb feel better, stronger, his hands on familiar wood,
an old friend. Angola was on deck, watching. That’s when Voltaire appeared, his back arched and tail high, amber eyes gleaming. As if to foil the escape, he meowed. Not an ordinary meow, but a bleating, deep-throated, fat cat cry, one to wake up all of Alaska.

  In one swift motion Angola grabbed the cat by the nape of the neck, dropped it into a compartment box, and latched the lid.

  “I’ve wanted to do that for a long time,” he said with a smile. He reached down and handed Little Mac a container of jambalaya. “You’d better get going. This jambalaya is clean, not the same stuff that I spiked with bang butter and fed to the others.”

  Keb found one of the yellow cedar paddles carved by Kevin Pallen, and handed it to him. “This is for you.”

  Angola got down on his knees. He kissed the paddle, put it aside, and clasped his hands together in prayerful thanks. He reached two-handed for Old Keb, who reached back from the canoe. “Both hands,” Angola said to him. “You hold a true friend with both your hands. Go now, old man. You have important work to do.” The last Old Keb saw of him, Angola was descending back down into the passageway.

  HOW GOOD TO be back in the canoe, to smell the cedar and feel the rhythm of the paddles. All the same, the canoe seemed sluggish, burdened by a great weight. Even with three paddlers—James, Kid Hugh and Little Mac—digging in hard, the canoe was fighting them. Something’s wrong. Why? Not until he looked aft did Keb see a great winged shadow following them, darkening all things already dark. Moving through the night. Great Raven. They were pulling the plane. “We’re pulling the plane,” Keb said. It sounded ridiculous. Nobody replied. They just kept paddling, stroking hard and building momentum. If they stopped the plane would run them down, hit them like a harrier on a vole. “We’re pulling the plane,” Keb said again. He couldn’t believe his own words.

  “That’s right, Gramps.” The plane was about thirty feet behind, affixed by triangulated lines running to cleats on the plane’s floats, with a single line running to the canoe. A good job, Keb had to admit; the lines and knots arranged to keep the plane on track directly aft, not drifting side to side. A gentle swell made the plane rise while the canoe dropped, and the canoe rise while the plane dropped, further creating an image of the plane as a living thing, a great night bird flexing its wings.

  “Why?” Keb heard himself ask. “Why bring the plane?”

  “We had to get the satellite phone.”

  Keb shook his head. He didn’t understand.

  “In the plane, Gramps. The satellite phone and the radio. The plane’s locked. If we left the plane at the yacht, the pilot would make one satellite phone call and we’d be found. So we took it. We took all the radios and all the phones. We need to get you to where you need to go. Get back, remember? Get back to where you once belonged.”

  “We took the whole plane?”

  “Yeah, the whole plane. It was either take it or break into it.”

  So there it was. James’s voice was low and certain, the kind you don’t question. They took the whole plane, the floats and wings and tail and all, like a great prehistoric bird, something from the past and future both. Not half the plane. They took the whole plane. If only Uncle Austin could see them now. Oyyee . . . Maybe he could.

  After awhile the kids began to laugh about it, laugh with crazy abandon, and Keb laughed too, at the idea of a canoe pulling a fancy Cessna with the pilot back on a French yacht, stoned on jambalaya.

  Somewhere deep into the night they let it go, many hours after they’d worked their way north to the Inian Islands, riding the currents. A soft wind whispered from the west, off Cape Spencer, running with the swell and the flooding tide that would carry the plane to—where? They didn’t know. They didn’t care. They put the radios, phones, and computers in a sealed plastic bag inside a watertight tote, lashed the tote to one of the plane’s floats, and let it go.

  Now they made good time, keening the night, northbound, then east. They set both masts and raised sail. “Haa gooxlas’ées,” James said. We’re going to sail.

  Keb was too exultant to sleep. He could sleep when he was dead. He gave Little Mac a break, took her paddle and began digging in as they clipped along in a light rain.

  Back on the Etude, Keb had asked Angola if he thought the world would ever be without poverty and war. No, Angola said. But it was important to imagine a world without poverty and war. Imagination is a powerful thing. Angola then asked the old man whose life he expected to save on this canoe journey. It caught Keb off guard. To save a life is no easy thing. It’s hard to measure. Whose life did he expect to save?

  nobody went home

  WHAT IS THIS place?

  A place of water, with illusions of land.

  Anne awoke fully dressed, her mouth dry, her hair knotted and disheveled over her face. Her mind, blistered from the day before, was gathering now, a little. Gathering in the chill-making dawn, the gray sky and spitting rain. Hardly a postcard picture of Alaska. But a day nonetheless, filling its lungs. She’d take it.

  And her boat? Still afloat? Apparently so, on its anchor in the Sisters Islands. The Sisters. Four small islands, according to the Icy Strait topographic map and nautical chart. Did all blessings come with such names?

  Thrashed badly in yesterday’s storm, all Anne could do was throttle into her turn and beat the swell as Stuart recommended. Take it on the nose. Taste her own fear, the bile in her stomach. So much of her had wanted to get back to Jinkaat, to follow her senses and animal dreams and see Stuart again, sit in his office and drink bad coffee; banter and laugh and see in his eyes a good man who regarded her as pretty. As much as she didn’t want to turn off her animal self, she did. She put her trust in digital maps that took instructions from satellites high in the thinness of space. Her GPS didn’t lie. It was technology Cook and Vancouver never dreamed of, and it saved her. Together with Stuart’s steady voice.

  Like angels, the islands appeared and she gained their lee. What hour was it when she finally dropped anchor? Exhausted, she had radioed Stuart, “I’m okay,” and collapsed into a dreamless, leaden sleep, too hungry to make dinner, too tired to undress. Ranger Ron, the safety fanatic, had warned her about Alaska storms. Yes, well, it wasn’t the storm that got her. It was her carelessness. Same as when Nancy died.

  If only our hurt helped us heal. She found her journal and found that finding it, touching it, holding it to her chest, made her whole.

  If only

  I would

  be myself again

  and awaken from a dream

  I just missed remembering

  to be myself again

  if only.

  SHE HAD BURNED through a lot of fuel. What to do? Icy Strait was settling down. She could make the run to Bartlett Cove. Or head back to Jinkaat. Face a rebuke from Ranger Ron? Or a smile from Deputy Stu?

  Easy, Taylor would tell her. Forget the head; follow the heart.

  Follow the magic, Nancy would say.

  When Captain Cook returned to the Big Island after breaking a mast, the Hawaiians, who had earlier welcomed him as a god, saw him for what he was, a man. Nancy said he changed the world. He made it smaller and bigger at the same time. He and his men practiced science, but also left enough room in themselves to believe in mermaids and unicorns, and best of all, magic.

  Nancy loved magic. Nancy was magic.

  Anne was thinking too many things as she slipped into the Jinkaat Boat Harbor. Stuart was on the upper pier. He waved.

  She had expected it to be quiet. It was not. At least forty people moved about the floating dock loading gear and all kinds of boats: trollers, seiners, skiffs, runabouts, gillnetters, go-getters, rust buckets, Nordic Tugs, fancy Bertrams, big Bayliners, sloops, ketches, and funky old Boston Whalers. All kinds of people too: Tlingit and Norwegian, German and Latvian, dark and white, men and women, rich and poor, old and young, some dressed in cotton as if going on a Sunday picnic, others dressed in camo as if headed out on a hunt. Animated people with coolers and totes, dogs and c
ats, grandparents and kids, barbecues and baby seats, all calling back and forth: “Hey, are you taking this? Don’t forget that.”

  They all stopped to watch Anne approach. The rain fell soft and steady, counting time. A teenager with a ball of tobacco under his lip manned the fuel pump, eyes big with surprise. “Fill her up?” he asked as Anne eased in and put her fenders out. She killed her engine and stepped onto the dock to cleat off her stern line while he held the bow.

  “Please,” Anne said as she thanked him and handled the beam line.

  “Credit card or cash?”

  “Credit card.” She handed him her federal government card.

  “We all thought you was dead, going out in a storm like that.”

  Stuart walked down the ramp and gave her a hug. Anne was overcome with a desire to kiss him. “It’s nice to see you,” he said, playing it cool.

  “It’s nice to see you, too. What’s going on?”

  “People are crazy excited. There’s been a sighting of Old Keb and the canoe.”