by Don Reardon
Early praise for The Raven’s Gift
“Rearden’s fresh, new voice is a kaleidoscope of cultural collision and the astonishing landscape of the heart.”
—Ron Spatz, Editor, Alaska Quarterly Review
“A many-layered Alaskan intrigue which is gritty and engaging and an absolutely good read … all in a world, that Alaskan world—which I could believe.”
—Ron Carlson, author of The Speed of Light,
Five Skies, and News of the World
“Don Rearden’s writing is captivating and new. This is a writer who has many books in him. I predict he will be widely read, well respected, and greatly admired.”
—Jo-Ann Mapson, author of bestselling novels
Bad Girl Creek, The Wilder Sisters, and Hank and Chloe
“Take a remote Alaskan village, add a dedicated teacher, toss in a plague. The Raven’s Gift is a page turner with a message: We Alaskans are lost if we cannot find our own way.”
—Bill Streever, author of Cold:
Adventures in the World’s Frozen Places
“In The Raven’s Gift, Don Rearden has created a kind of allegory for a people and place at risk, a generous and honest portrait of Yup’ik communities. His Alaska is one you won’t yet have seen.”
David Vann, author of bestselling novels
Legend of a Suicide and A Mile Down
PENGUIN CANADA
THE RAVEN’S GIFT
DON REARDEN grew up on the tundra of Southwestern Alaska. He is a produced screenwriter, a published poet, and assistant professor of Developmental Studies at the University of Alaska, Anchorage, where he shows young writers how to develop their creative voices. His experiences with the Yup’ik Eskimo culture shape his writing, and he considers the Alaskan wilderness a major influence in his work.
The
RAVEN’S
Gift
Don Rearden
PENGUIN CANADA
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Canada Inc.)
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)
Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)
Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India
Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0745, Auckland, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published 2011
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Copyright © Don Rearden, 2011
The excerpt on page 1 is from Intellectual Culture of the Copper Eskimos by Knud Rasmussen, published by Gyldendal, Copenhagen, 1932.
The excerpts on pages 3, 115, and 201 are from The Eskimo About Bering Strait by Edward Nelson, published by the Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, 1899, 19 83.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
Publisher’s note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Manufactured in Canada.
LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Rearden, Don
The raven’s gift / Don Rearden.
ISBN 978-0-14-317333-5
I. Title.
PS3618.E32R38 2011 813’.6 C2010-905204-8
Visit the Penguin Group (Canada) website at www.penguin.ca
Special and corporate bulk purchase rates available; please see www.penguin.ca/corporatesales or call 1-800-810-3104, ext. 2477 or 2474
For Dan and the Real People of the Kuskokwim River and of course for you, Annette
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I have dreamt of the day I would write these words since ellangellemni, since I became aware that writing and stories would forever be a part of my life. And since this has been such a long dream in the making there are too many people to thank, and for that very fact I am so grateful.
Still, I must name a few important souls.
First I must thank the Yup’ik elders, tradition bearers, and families I have learned so much from, including the late George and Martha Keene, Dr. Oscar Kawagley, the Slims, Moseses, Ivans, Angstmans, Lincolns, Hoovers, Hoffmans, and Morgans (to name just a few).
Quyana to “Mikngayaq” Selena Malone for her photography skills and Yup’ik spelling assistance, and to “Piunriq” for always finding the right answers.
I owe a debt of gratitude to Yup’ik scholars and anthropologists Ann Fienup-Riordan, Alice Rearden, and Marie Meade. Without their work and the work of so many others dedicated to recording the elders’ wisdom, too much would have already been lost.
To all those haunted by the initial drafts of this novel, I thank you for the advice, criticism, and optimism. Special thanks to Shane Castle, for the incredible insight and calling me dirty names on that first copy of the manuscript. To Ben Kuntz for the killer notes and for not letting me end the story a little past Haroldsen’s. To Helena for her unending optimism and enthusiasm. To Sarah for catching, so, many, comma, errors. To Shannon for coffee walks, Arctic whaling, and zany poetic distractions.
I have had some incredible teachers along the way. I’d like to thank Ronald Spatz for pushing me and for teaching me to slow down. A heartfelt thanks goes to Sherry Simpson and Jo-Ann Mapson for always caring and always believing in my work.
Thanks to Jodi Picoult for the advice and for insisting I direct my writing efforts toward the novel.
Of course this manuscript would have died a quiet digital death in some file on my laptop if not for my amazing agents. So I offer a huge thanks to Adam Chromy for all his effort and expert advice and to Danny Baror for helping me catch a penguin and making this dream a reality.
And to Adrienne Kerr, my editor extraordinaire, writers dream of having an editor like you who understands and shares their vision. I can’t thank you enough for your guidance and your faith in this story.
Thanks to Daniel Quinn for being my coach and for daring to save the world with Ishmael. With this story, I am doing my best to become B.
To my amazing family and to Annette, thank you for never doubting me.
Finally, quyana to the people of the Yukon-Kuskokwim River Delta for sharing with me the way of the human being.
PROLOGUE
Don’t you hear the noise? It swishes like the beating of the wings of great birds in the air. It is the fear of naked people, it is the flight of naked people! The weather spirit is blowing the storm out, the weather spirit is driving the weeping snow away over the earth, and the helpless storm-child … Don’t you hear the weeping of the child in the howling wind?
—BALEEN, COPPER ESKIMO SHAMAN, 1920s
PART I
The
Bones
of the
Mammoth
The bones of the mammoth are found on the coa
st country of the Bering Sea and the adjacent interior … the creature is claimed to live underground, where it burrows from place to place, and when by accident one of them comes to the surface, so that even if the tip of its nose appears above the ground and breathes the air, it dies at once.
—AS RECORDED BY EDWARD NELSON, 1899
1
He crawled on his stomach through the snowdrift and lifted his head over the edge of the riverbank, just enough to see the first few houses, charred black and dislodged from the wood blocks and tall steel pilings meant to hold them off the tundra’s permafrost. Below the bank, the girl sat in a plastic orange toboggan, waiting. Her eyes stared back at him as white as the wisps of snow covering the thin river ice beneath her.
“They’re all gone here, too?” she asked.
He stopped short of shaking his head and half slid down the hard frozen embankment, holding the rifle on his lap.
“I’m going to check it out,” he replied. “Maybe stay for a few nights and rest. Let the ice firm up. Find shelter. Hopefully something to eat.”
She pointed her brown fur mitten upstream. “The riverbank is not so steep a little ways up. You can pull me up there. By the school,” she said, and then asked, “Are there any more tracks?”
He surveyed the light blanket of white covering the river, searching for the two strange snakelike lines he’d encountered at the river’s edge three days earlier. “No,” he said.
“Good,” she said. “I don’t like those tracks.”
“Me either.”
He reached down, wrapped the yellow rope around his waist and began pulling her up the river of ice. His feet were numb with cold. He slipped with each step, the fresh snow making the going slick and dangerous. He knew better than to be walking on the river ice so early, but they had to keep travelling. They had to beat the colder weather on the way, and he didn’t feel safe if they weren’t moving.
“Do you see the graves yet?” she asked.
He did. High up on the river’s bank a cluster of leaning and listing white wooden crosses poked out from the long straw-coloured grass that the snow hadn’t completely covered.
“That’s where you can pull me up,” she whispered, “between the graveyard and the school.” She turned her head away from the village, as if she could see the sweeping flat expanse of white nothing. “You know, I never liked coming to Kuigpak, for basketball games, or for anything, really. Even now, I don’t like it.”
The cut in the high dirt wall of riverbank was right where she said it would be. He strained to pull her up the embankment, imagining what life had once been for her, the sounds of a basketball game, sitting at the edge of the court with her legs crossed, her head following the hollow twang of a bouncing ball against the gym floor, a player dribbling, driving toward a hoop, silence as the ball floated up, the swish of the nylon netting against the leather, the small gym choked with cheering, with life. He wondered why, of all villages, this one she openly disliked.
“You smell that?” she asked.
He stopped halfway up the fifteen-foot-high bank. He crouched and turned back toward her. She lifted her chin; her small nostrils quivered and her milky eyes seemed to search the grey sky.
“Not like that evil smoke,” she whispered. “This is just wood, driftwood smoke. I think there’s someone good here, John! Someone safe.”
He pulled the rifle off his shoulder and bear-crawled, with the sled in tow, toward the top. Just before he reached the crest he dropped down and pressed his body into the hard frozen mud, the rifle in his right hand, the toboggan line in his left. Her weight, what little there was, tightened the thin rope wrapped around his glove.
“It’s coming from over that way,” she mouthed, pointing to her left.
He chambered a round while his eyes scanned the few remaining chimneys of the houses on the north side of the trail that cut the lifeless village in two. The carnage was the same as in the other villages. The shack houses had been burned or pilfered and what remained made little sense. Out of the broken window of one house dangled a large black television, its cord running up and into the darkness beyond the window frame, as if somehow holding on.
THE JOB INTERVIEW took all of twenty minutes, with the questions geared more toward whether they were serious about teaching in the middle of Nowhere, Alaska, than whether they were competent educators. Gary Brelin, the personnel director, a handsome, fit runner type in his late forties, looked the two of them over, tugged at his earlobe for a moment, and scanned their résumés one final time.
“Impressive,” he said. “Your reference letter from your mentor teacher nearly brought a tear to my eye, Anna. ‘The kind of spirit all teachers should have.’ For first-year teachers, you both have striking résumés. You know, we get three types who apply to teach on the tundra. Teachers no one else will hire. Teachers looking for an adventure. And then those who are running from something. You running from something?”
“I’m in it for the adventure. John here? We figured Alaska was the only place anyone would hire someone as goofy-looking as him,” Anna joked.
Gary laughed. “Let me ask you, have you, as a couple, experienced anything like this, remote living, like Alaskan Bush life?” he asked.
“We’ve travelled abroad quite a bit,” Anna replied. “And my husband likes to go on the cheap, so we know all about zero-star accommodations. We’re open to adventure and cultural experiences. We’re tired of the whole urban sprawl thing. Plus, this guy here isn’t a fan of confined places. The open tundra will be perfect for him. I think it’s in his blood. He’s already part Alaskan.”
John shook his head at Anna’s attempt at humour. She often tried to make light of his not knowing.
Gary took the bait. “I saw you marked ‘other’ on the application, but I’m not supposed to ask about those things, of course. You’re Alaska Native?” he asked.
John shrugged. “I don’t know, that’s why I just check ‘other.’ My father was a product of the war, I think. My grandfather was stationed somewhere up here during the Japanese occupation of the Aleutians. He stayed here for a while afterwards, doing studies for the Atomic Energy Commission. I never met my grandmother.”
Gary nodded, as if this was commonplace. “Probably not Amchitka. I wonder if you were a Project Chariot baby?” He turned to Anna. “Does he glow in the dark?”
“Project Chariot?” John asked.
“A genius government idea back in the fifties to detonate a nuke to create a deep-water port in Point Hope. We actually dumped radioactive waste there, just to see what the effects would be, and as you might expect, the Inupiaq villagers there have some of the highest rates of cancer in the country. Amchitka, well you’ll have to research that for yourself. Let’s just say that in the late sixties the government detonated three nukes in Alaska, one of which was the most powerful bomb the U.S. has ever detonated. You will appreciate, as a history teacher, John, that our state has quite a colourful record.” He stood up and stretched, then walked to the window and looked out at the sweeping postcard view of the wall of mountains that buttressed the east side of Anchorage.
“You’ve got to understand something,” he said. “We’ve had the most qualified of teachers refuse to get off the airplane when they arrived in their assigned villages. The place you’ll be going will look as familiar as the moon to you. Flat. Barren. Not like this, I can tell you that. The weather is usually brutal, and the housing situation, to be honest, is less than perfect. Pretty shitty, actually. The best part is you’re going to be immersed within the Yup’ik culture. Really, it’s one of the last places in America where children grow up speaking their Native tongue. Nicest people in the world, but like any indigenous population struggling to adapt to this world …”
He turned back to them, sizing them up as if to pick teams for a dodge ball game in gym class.
“We’ve done quite a bit of research on the area,” Anna said. “It fascinates us, really. The chance to live somewhere so e
xotic, in our own country—and help out some kids who really need it. We both love teaching. And he’s excited to do some hunting and be outdoors twenty-four seven.” She rolled her eyes. “That’s in his blood too.”
“If hunting is allowed. If not, that’s fine,” John added, not wanting to spoil the interview.
“Well, you’re in luck, John. The Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta is home to one of the world’s largest waterfowl refuges, and one of the last living subsistence cultures in North America—which, if you’re a fan, equates to quite a bit of bird hunting and salmon fishing. So if you like fishing or plucking ducks, you’ll be just a little north of heaven. Plus, you could be hunting so much you get sick of it. Last spring the National Guard unit in the area got a fifteen-month deployment to the Middle East. Over a thousand of the leaders and hunters in the villages are out in the desert somewhere. I suspect you’ll be able to hunt for as many elders and hungry families as you want. Not a ton of game in the winter, though. The pickings can be pretty slim.”
“And big game?” John asked.
Gary ran a hand through his hair and then stretched his lower back. “Big game hunting is another story. Moose and caribou take some serious travel, usually by boat or plane or snow machine—you guys probably call them snowmobiles. From most of our villages, you’re looking at a hundred, maybe two hundred or more miles to reach big game hunting. But sometimes a big herd of caribou can just show up, and let me tell you, that’s a magical thing to witness.”
“The guns are already being sent north,” John said.
“Should you accept.” Gary looked back toward the mountains.
