The Raven's Gift

by Don Reardon

  “How so?” she asked.

  “That world just might not want me.”

  “It will, John. I know it will.”

  He set his coffee cup on the windowsill and scratched the thin stubble on his chin. He hadn’t shaved in a few days and the sparse bristles added something to the sense of adventure awaiting them.

  SOMETIMES, WHEN THE GIRL grew tired of asking questions, she would just talk while twisting and braiding the three strands of yellow grass over and over and he would watch and listen. He never told her to shut up because he didn’t like the silence of the night either. Once in a while, especially on those nights before they left Nunacuak, he would just say, “Shh,” and just listen for a moment or two. He didn’t want to become so lost in her tales of life before the sickness that he wouldn’t hear someone or something approaching.

  The night before they left the village to start their trek up the river, as they curled up in the sleeping bags, she told him something he wished he’d never heard.

  “I lost my vision when I was just little,” she started, and he should have stopped her there, but he didn’t. “And I don’t really remember how. But I remember what things used to look like. I remember going down to the river and throwing old black cherry Shasta cans into the swirling water. They never told us not to litter back then, so we didn’t know better. My brothers used to like to throw cans in and shoot them with rifles. I loved watching the cans spin on top of that green water as they sank and the water exploded around the cans with each shot. I still see things like that in my head, you know. I see my memories, but once my eyes failed, they stopped seeing. I don’t remember if they got blurry or if they just went white one day. I remember the clinic flew a woman out here, an eye doctor, a pretty half-Japanese and half-kass’aq woman is what my little brother Yago told me, and she held my face and looked into my eyes and said it was too late, ‘Sorry. I’m just so, so sorry,’ she kept saying, and I remember how sad she sounded, I think because if they could have sent me into Anchorage, maybe even to Bethel, in time I might have never went blind. I remember her hands on my face, though, they were warm and soft, and she told me I would learn to see in other ways.”

  The girl stopped for a while, then continued. “And I did. You know? You know how I can smell and hear things you can’t? But sometimes I still think that I see things, too. Even with my eyes open in the summer, I can stare right into the sun and not see the light, but still, sometimes I think that I see things. Shadows mostly, but that doesn’t make sense. If you stared into a black room, you wouldn’t see something move, would you? I remember hearing someone in a movie say once that being blind is like being in a cave. If you were in a cave, would you know someone is out there waiting for you, hunting you?”

  “Quiet for a moment,” he said, pretending to listen, but only hearing the wind outside. He didn’t want to imagine shadows moving in the darkness.

  “Before the sickness came, I saw something. I never told anyone this. I was sitting on the steps of our house. Plucking feathers from a crane my brother caught. I saw a flash of white and I looked up in the sky. I saw two lines of white light like geese or ducks in a V in the blue sky. Then the white started to fall apart, crumble sort of, and then fall like rain and the light burned my eyes as it fell, so I closed them and when I opened them up my eyes worked again, but only for one blink. As soon as I blinked them everything went black again.”

  The girl said nothing for a while, and he thought she’d fallen asleep.

  “I want to tell you what I saw when I blinked, okay?” she asked. “Are you still awake? I want to tell you what I saw when I blinked, okay? Are you still awake?”

  He was, but he couldn’t say anything.

  10

  The other entrance to the school, the back door to the gym, wouldn’t budge. He thought about trying to shoot the lock, but he knew better. No amount of bullets would do the trick. He’d have to go through the double inside doors and it would take an axe or a torch if he could be so lucky.

  Thoughts of the man on skis kept him searching the horizon as he started down the steps toward the small brown outbuilding that held the school’s generator and, if it was anything like the school’s maintenance building in Nunacuak, a small shop. If that building had been left alone like the school, he’d find what he needed to get through the door.

  The sound of crunching snow startled him. He turned, with the pistol drawn. The girl stood at the edge of the school building, her left hand bare and gripping the silver metal fencing that enclosed the school’s underbelly, steadying herself.

  “I didn’t mean to scare you,” she said.

  “You didn’t scare me. What the hell are you doing out here?” he asked as he tucked the pistol back into his parka pocket.

  She started toward him. Her feet moved slowly through the snow, each footstep a little more confident than the last.

  “I told her I wouldn’t let you go in the school. She says you need to stay out of there.”

  “Go back and wait with her. Go.”

  When she was within an arm’s length of him she stopped, and then took one final step. “I’ll go in with you,” she whispered. “You can’t go in there alone.”

  He took hold of her sleeve and turned toward the outbuilding. She lifted her arm and took his hand.

  “Come on,” he said, gently squeezing it. Her fingers were cold, but the inside of her palm felt warm against his.

  To the west the wide grey sky had a dark line of blue near the horizon, threatening another snow squall. He hoped it wouldn’t bring too much precipitation. A heavy snowfall would mean slow going without skis or snowshoes, and the new layer of insulation would guarantee the river ice wouldn’t thicken.

  “This isn’t the school,” she said.

  “It’s the maintenance building.”

  They climbed the steps and stopped at the open door. A light skiff of snow covered broken glass and debris on the corrugated steel floor. Nothing like the orderly school.

  “What did she tell you about the school?”

  “She said no one goes in there.”

  “Sit down here.” He picked up a black metal folding chair and set it beside the doorway. She sat down and he surveyed the small room. The workbench had been flipped over, the toolboxes rummaged through. Tools covered the floor, but nothing useful jumped out at him. No hammers, crowbars, not even any long screwdrivers. Someone had probably picked through anything that could be used to get wood loose for fires or break into other places. Except the school. Of all places, why had they left it unmolested?

  “What are you looking for?” she asked.

  He turned toward her and saw what he needed. Leaning against the inside of the door jamb was a long steel ice pick, taller than the girl, with a yellow piece of rope tied to the handle and a thick, double-welded chisel four inches wide at the base.

  “I think you just helped me find it.”

  “What?”

  He hefted it and thumped the pick against the floor. She reached out and wrapped her hand around it. She smiled.

  “A pick? You going ice fishing? My dad had one just like this. You wrap this rope around your wrist, so it doesn’t break through the ice and plump! Gone. Here.”

  She took his hand and slid the rope loop around it and closed his fist on the icy metal. She held her warm palm over his and then quickly took it away.

  “We’ll need this on the trail,” he said.

  “Are we going into the school now?” she asked.

  He took her by the sleeve and helped her out the door, down the steps, and toward the school’s entrance. The long pick slung over his shoulder like a lumberjack’s axe.

  “You want me to take you back?” he asked.

  “No. But I’m scared,” she said. “First the hunter and now this.”

  She stopped just inside the front doors and would go no further. He waited for a minute for her to say something, and when she didn’t he started for the gym.

  “It
doesn’t feel right,” she whispered.

  He stopped, and slowly set the point of the ice pick to the thinly carpeted floor. He turned back to her.

  “You want me to walk you back?”

  She shook her head. “Why isn’t the place wrecked up like everywhere else? Why does it feel so normal?”

  “How can you tell it’s not?”

  “I just can,” she whispered. “It feels like it did when I came here before the sickness. Except cold. Something isn’t right. Trust me. I can just feel it. Maybe we should listen to her. We shouldn’t be here, John. This is a mistake.”

  “Well, we’re here, and there might be food. I have to check. We can’t rely on dinner to fall from the sky.”

  He lifted up the pick and continued toward the gym. He could hear her boots on the carpet behind him, her hand running down the side of the hall. At the door to the gym he stopped. If the pick didn’t work he would tear the building up looking for a key. He hoped he had enough energy to pry the double doors open.

  “Stand back a bit. This is going to be loud for you,” he said.

  He pushed the wedge end of the pick between the two doors where he hoped the latch met on the other side. He gave one hard push to get the point in as far as he could get it and then rocked his body against the bar. The right door popped open a crack and a rush of air hissed past him into the blackness of the gym. The girl stepped back and covered her ears. He pushed the heavy steel pick into the crack and pried again. The gap widened a little more, and he heard the familiar clink of chain links.

  “Come on. Come on,” he said.

  This time he slammed the bar in and groaned as he pushed against the door. It gave slightly, just enough for him to see the chain links on the swing-arm handle. He remembered the yellow flashlight in his pocket and pulled it out. He held it to the crack but couldn’t see into the thick darkness in the gym.

  “What’s in there?” she whispered.

  “I can’t tell.”

  “The door’s chained, too?”

  “Yeah. From the inside.”

  “How are you going to get in?”

  “I need to think for a minute.”

  He pulled the pick out and slipped his arm into the darkness. He grabbed the chain, gave a quick pull, and knew it wasn’t going anywhere easily. He slid it toward him and tried to do the same on the push bar for the left door. Then he pulled his hand out quickly, as if something or someone on the other side was about to grab it. He pulled on the door and it gave a little more.

  The girl stepped to the entrance and felt the edges of the opening. He could feel the air sliding past them into the gym, but she was still trying to smell what was on the other side. She checked the size of the gap.

  “Can you get it a little wider?” she asked. “I could try slipping inside.”

  From her voice he could tell she was scared. Scared, but trying, in her own way, to help.

  “If I can find something to cut the chain,” he said.

  “Just try. Open it a little more and I’ll go in. Maybe the kitchen won’t be locked. I can pass food through the door here. I’m not afraid. I’m not.”

  She stuck her hand in through the crack and rattled the chain to prove her point, or to prove something to herself.

  “We can try. You’ll have to take your parka off.”

  He needed some sort of fulcrum to lever against, so he slid a metal waste can near the opening. She pulled off her parka and stood beside him. He rested the pick against the can, slipped the point into the crack, and threw his weight against the bar. The gap widened slightly. He slammed against the bar again, this time pushing and holding his weight against it.

  “That’s as far as I can get it,” he said.

  She stepped past him, felt the edges, rested her head against the closed door, and pushed it forward toward the crack. She pulled with her hands. John strained and pushed the bar harder to give her more room. Her head slipped through and then she began pulling her shoulders through. He hadn’t seen her sideways like that, her body so slender, a skeleton, covered with a threadbare red T-shirt and thin black jeans tied about her hip bones with a blue nylon cord of some kind.

  Her hips slid through the crack. He let off the bar a little.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  She whispered back to him through the crack, “I don’t like it in here. It’s cold.”

  “I know, but you’re in. You need to go across the gym to the kitchen. See if it’s open.” He shoved her parka to her through the gap. “Take this.”

  “I think they’re in here, John. I can feel them.”

  She put her hand back through the crack. He took it.

  “Just go across the gym to the kitchen. Go.”

  He let go and she pulled her hand back.

  “Go,” he said. “You’ll be okay.”

  He could hear her footsteps move slowly away from the door, and then the screaming started.

  THE WEATHER BROKE at four in the afternoon. The wind died. The rain stopped, and suddenly the sun came through and the dull grey day transformed. In minutes the phones were ringing and the boy had his hands full. Taxis began pulling up, unloading people carrying shopping bags and cardboard boxes full of groceries.

  A slender young man sauntered in carrying a can of Coca-Cola and tugging at the carefully creased brim of his baseball cap. He pulled an aluminum clipboard off a nail in the wall and turned and pointed to the two of them.

  “You two are headed to New-num-chuck,” he said with a slow southern accent. “I gave up trying to pronounce these village names a year ago, ’bout the time I got here. You ready? Grab your gear and let’s start flapping. I’m Randy.”

  The two of them stood up, grabbed their bags, and followed Randy out the door. As they walked out on the tarmac, Anna mouthed to John, “How old?” He smiled and shrugged.

  Randy stopped at a blue and white Cessna 185. He opened the back and looked at their bags. He lifted each one carefully and then started stuffing them in. “You can hop right in that seat there, Missy. I’ll need the big guy up front with me, in case I need to take a nap mid-flight. From the looks of it you guys never flown in a small plane before.”

  They both shook their heads.

  Randy took Anna’s hand and helped her step up into the plane. “Me neither.”

  Before they had any more time to be nervous about their young pilot, they were taxiing down the runway. John sat in the co-pilot’s seat staring at the controls, while Anna looked from side to side out the windows. Bethel stretched off in the distance on one side of the runway, and on the other the lake-pocked land seemed to have no end. The little plane picked up speed, and Randy pulled back on the yoke. The plane lifted off the runway and banked hard right, the earth falling away beneath them, flattening and stretching out all around them for as far as his eyes could see. John’s stomach dropped as they gained altitude.

  Randy pointed at a pair of headphones hanging on the console. John took them and slipped them on his ears. The pilot’s voice crackled over the headset.

  “Ever laid your eyeballs on anything like that?” Randy asked.

  He pointed at the horizon, a panorama speckled with lakes and rivers that extended in every direction. “See that drive-in movie screen–looking thing? That’s White Alice, Cold War radar, meant to catch invading Russkies. Quite a view from the top of it. Almost like flying. Out there, to the west, that’s the Bering Sea. You can just barely see it. That shimmer there, that’s the sea. Off to the left here—that giant bitch of a river, that’s the Kuskokwim—a mile wide in some places and well over five hundred some miles long. Those mountains out that way, south, are the Kilbucks, the Alaska Range on the other side—nothing but mountains forever that way. Nothing but bare open tundra to the north for a long, long ways. You can sort of see the Yukon River over there. That river’s even bigger than this bugger. You’re really in the middle of nowheres.”

  They flew along the edge of the Kuskokwim. John looked back at
Anna. She grinned and widened her eyes to show her excitement.

  “Whatcha think?” Randy asked. “Pretty damn desolate, eh? First time I saw it, I just kept saying to myself, Why, there ain’t nothing here. Ain’t no reason anyone, even Natives, oughta live in a place like this. Now look at me.”

  John nodded. He didn’t know what to say. So he just smiled.

  “It’s great flying, though. I get plenty of hours, and don’t have to worry about running into too many mountains.”

  John spotted a cluster of plywood shack-like buildings at the river’s edge.

  “Is that a village?” he asked, pointing at the decaying structures passing beneath them.

  “Fish camps,” Randy said. “The folks here set up camps in the summer and prepare salmon. Those are smokehouses and camps. There’s one village, right there. Yours is a couple more down.”

  He pointed to a settlement at the confluence of a small river and the huge greenish-brown swath of the Kuskokwim. The two rivers mixed together like a thin stream of creamer in coffee. “That’s Kwik-pak, as I like to call it. Had an old girlfriend from there. I can’t even pronounce its real name.”

  The houses stretched in two rows away from the river. A small runway sat west of the village, and John guessed that the larger structures were the school buildings. The entire layout of the village seemed to be organized around the school. What surprised him most, at least from the air, was the starkness of it all. A few big satellite dishes, a few winding paths through the village, with a pickup or Suburban, boats along the river, but that was it. A few dozen homes packed together within a hundred yards of each other with no backyards, lawns, or individuality. From the air, the place looked half planned, like some strange form of Alaskan urban sprawl but without the garages, fences, or pools.

  The village had hardly passed them and Randy pointed at the horizon. “There she is,” he said. “You’re twenty minutes by air, probably forty minutes by boat or snow machine from Kwik-pak. An hour or two to Bethel.”