by Garth Stein
“Officer? Are you sure you don’t want a box of mints? They’re good.”
He stopped and turned. He had a pretty profile and a pretty smile. His name was McMillan. His name tag said it. He shook his head.
“No, ma’am, but thanks for the offer.”
He got into his car and turned off the flashing blue lights. Jenna shifted into drive and pulled back out onto the road. The phone rang again. She didn’t answer it, but when it stopped ringing, she imagined a computer-generated voice that picked up.
“We’re sorry, the cellular phone customer you are trying to reach is unavailable. You may leave a message by pressing one . . . now.”
Chapter 6
SHE GOT OFF THE FREEWAY IN BELLINGHAM FEELING TIRED and hungry. She pulled into a gas station to get some fuel for the Machine, and she picked up some Corn Nuts and a Coke—fuel for herself. This trip suddenly had the feeling of an all-night drive. Standing under a canopy of fluorescent bulbs. Artificial sunlight. Electrified reality. Everyone would be asleep if they weren’t plugged in.
Jenna inhaled the heady fumes as she watched the numbers tick by. There’s something about the smell of gasoline that’s comforting. Maybe it’s that gas always smells the same, no matter where it is. Or maybe it’s that the smell of gasoline represents man conquering nature. Digging deep down into the crust of the earth, pumping black goo up to the surface, cooking it in aluminum containers so it can be used in a BMW. The evolution of Man smells like gasoline.
It was two thirty and Jenna headed into downtown Bellingham not really knowing what her next move would be. Home or a Days Inn? As if to answer her question, signs directed her toward the waterfront. It was a running theme. Brand-new blue signs telling everyone that they would find what they wanted at the waterfront. So, Jenna followed the signs, finally pulling over on Harris Avenue, about a block away from her assigned goal. She could see that there was some life on the piers; there’s always life on a waterfront. Boats coming and going, loading and unloading. But she didn’t go any closer. Not because she didn’t want to. She definitely wanted to explore the waterfront. See what all the signs were talking about. But she was a little afraid to wander around down there by herself. She would have to wait for morning to explore.
She reclined the seat a bit, opened the Coke and the Corn Nuts, and laughed to herself. So this is the road trip you never took?
You’re supposed to do this in college. Get in a car and drive. Sleep in the car, eat junk food. Jenna felt a little young to be recapturing the lost moments of her youth.
Her eyes got heavy and she yawned. A street sign in front of the car pointed straight ahead to the Alaska State Marine Highway, the ferry system that connected Alaska with the lower forty-eight states. Jenna had forgotten it was in Bellingham. Gram used to take the Alaska State Marine Highway back when it left from Seattle. A blue ferry with the Alaskan flag on the smokestack—the Big Dipper and the North Star. The Columbia was the name of one of them. Gram would sit in a big chair in the lounge for the three-day trip. She loved it. She would talk to people nonstop, making new friends, listening to other people’s lives. Gram never took a plane until she went up to Wrangell for the last time. They had to take the backs off the seats because she was on a stretcher. Jenna wasn’t there, but she could imagine it.
They had cut off Gram’s foot. She had gangrene and they had to amputate. She was also riddled with cancer. That’s what the doctor said. She had lived with a lot of pain for a long time. Jenna imagined her organs full of holes. Jenna wheeled her around the floor of the hospital. Just to go for a ride. She yelled out, Hey, Man! Hey, Man! Mom said she was calling for God. Asking Him to take away the pain. Hey, Man. God was Man. Man smells like gasoline; God smells like hospital disinfectant. There were so many old people, all of them in pain. All of them drugged to delirium. One doctor said they would have to cut her leg off at the thigh. Jenna’s mom said no. The doctor told them it was less than a fifty percent chance she would come out of anesthesia. Probably wouldn’t stop the gangrene and she might not come out of the surgery. She might go to sleep and never wake up. She was ninety-six. She had led a full life. Mom said if the doctor wants to euthanize her, he’s going to have to forget it. No doctor is going to put my mother to sleep like a dog. Hey, Man, please stop the pain.
Gram wanted to go back home to Alaska. Everyone thought it was stupid but Mom. Mom said she knows she’s going to die and she wants to do it at home. Who would deny her that? The woman’s been living in the same house for ninety-six years. All eleven of her children were born in that house. Her husband died in that house. Why in hell shouldn’t she be allowed to die there?
So they put her on an airplane and she made the trip. She died about nine months later. In her home.
WHEN JENNA AWOKE, it was six o’clock and the sun streamed in through the back window of the car. She brought the seat back up to its upright and locked position and climbed out of the car. Her back was stiff and she stretched, breathing the clear morning air. She spied a Starbucks across the street and headed to it.
Jenna sat at the long counter that looked out onto the street, drinking a coffee and eating a muffin. People stood in line to fire off their orders. Super-tall-low-fat-no-foam-double-mocha-decaf-cappuccino-in-a-bag-no-sip-lid, please. Damn. How do people find out what they like? It could take years to narrow down the possibilities. And then, how do they remember? People coming in and shooting off orders to the girls behind the counter. And the girls remembering! It’s like a Greek diner. Double-D-mochachino-skinny-ixnay-on-the-oamfay-goin’-away! Yikes! Have an idea? Make a billion dollars.
A young hippie couple sat at the counter next to Jenna. Birkenstocks and backpacks. Just kids, probably eighteen or so. They seemed confused and anxious. The boy was furiously going through the girl’s backpack.
“It’s not in there.”
“Well, it’s got to be somewhere!”
“I looked. It’s gone. What are we going to do?”
The boy hippie scratched his head.
“Damn it, Debbie. It’s got to be somewhere.”
“It’s gone. I know I lost it. I know it.”
Debbie started to cry. The boy tried to console her.
“We’ll hitch our way up. The Alcan Highway. We’ll hitch a ride in a Winnebago.”
“Oh, Willie, I’m so depressed.”
Debbie cried more. Willie awkwardly held her.
Jenna realized that she was staring. She and Willie had locked eyes in kind of a glazy way, and it occurred to Jenna that Willie should make a face at her, try to get her to mind her own business, but he didn’t.
“How much is the ticket?” Jenna asked suddenly.
Willie was startled. He hadn’t been looking at her at all. He hadn’t even noticed she was there.
“What?”
“How much do you need?”
Willie looked at Debbie, then back at Jenna.
“It’s a little over two hundred dollars to Skagway.”
“I’ll buy you a ticket.”
Debbie looked up through her hair. Willie crinkled his brow and shook his head.
“Why?”
Jenna shrugged.
“Because you may never be back this way again. And if you miss the boat, your life will be completely different. And I can’t have that on my conscience.”
Debbie laughed a short burst and sniffed loudly. She smiled like an angel up at Jenna. Kids. Bobby would have done that one day. He would have gone with a girl on the ferry for a couple of months, getting off and on the boat in depressing little towns, eating crappy food, sleeping in tents in the rain. Having the time of his life.
The trio left Starbucks and headed down toward the ferry terminal. Jenna and Willie walking side by side, the girl trailing behind. It was warming up into another beautiful day. The waterfront looked crisp and colorful, the waves sparkling in the sun. Jenna smiled to herself when she realized that she probably looked like a crazy woman—dressed in a wrinkled black suit,
with yesterday’s makeup on her face—offering to buy some girl a ferry ticket.
Willie led them into the ferry terminal, a vast, freshly painted room with a small counter against one wall. Above the counter was a huge logo of the ferry system. On other walls were murals of Northwest Indian totems. The room was lightly populated—someone slept in a chair, a family sat on the floor with their bags piled around them, a janitor silently mopped the floor in one corner.
Willie stopped and looked at Jenna skeptically. Debbie sidled up to him and looked at Jenna also.
“Are you really going to do this?”
Jenna nodded.
Willie looked at her for a long moment. He nodded, turned, and walked up to the woman behind the sales counter. Jenna and Debbie watched as he spoke and gestured. The woman took something out of a drawer. She filled out a ticket book. She calculated some figures. She spoke back to Willie. Willie nodded. He turned to Jenna and waved her over.
“It’s two sixty-five with tax.”
Jenna smiled to the woman behind the counter. She opened her purse, took out her wallet, and handed the woman a Visa card. The woman ran it through the machine and Jenna signed the paper. And that was that. Willie took the ticket and the three stepped outside.
“Thanks a lot. If you give me your name and address, we’ll pay you back when we get the money.”
Jenna smiled.
“Don’t worry about it.”
Willie shuffled his feet. He thrust out his hand and Jenna took it.
“Well, thanks a lot, then. Thanks.”
He gestured to the big blue and white ship that was tied to the dock. Debbie looked up at Jenna. She seemed relaxed, relieved to have everything settled. Jenna reached out and touched her cheek.
“You kids have a good trip.”
Willie and Debbie headed off down the dock, toward a group of other young wanderers who were sitting on their backpacks, waiting for the loading to begin.
Jenna walked back toward the street. When she reached the end of the boat slip, she looked back. The ferry was nosed into the slip and its prow arched high out of the water. The Columbia. The same boat her grandmother had taken. The same boat Jenna was on when she was in high school and made the trip with her friend, Patty, and they stayed with Gram.
Jenna wondered what had happened to Gram’s house in Wrangell. No one lived there, she supposed. It was so old it had probably fallen down. On Front Street, down from the dock. A big old two-story house. The top floor had been closed off when Jenna and Patty went. It was too run-down, and Gram couldn’t make it up the stairs anyway. But Jenna hadn’t seen it since then. Seventeen years ago. She had wanted to stop by Wrangell when she and Robert and Bobby went on that fateful trip to Thunder Bay two years ago. But the trip was cut short.
Jenna checked her watch. It was seven thirty. She was suddenly taken with an impulse to get on the boat and go up to Alaska. See Wrangell again. Wander through the streets of the little town. Why shouldn’t she get on the boat, go on vacation to the place of her mother’s and grandmother’s birth? She could tell Robert she had to get away for a few days. He would understand. Well, he might not understand, but screw him.
Jenna chewed on the inside of her lip for a minute, looking out to sea, watching the gulls circle menacingly overhead. Then she abruptly turned and marched back into the ferry terminal and up to the ticket counter.
Chapter 7
“SO HOW DOES IT REALLY WORK?” FERGUSON CALLED OUT FROM his perch on the edge of the fire pit. The heat from the flames felt good on his back.
David was wandering around the other side of the community house, occasionally giving his rattle a shake as he examined the walls, ceiling beams, and windows.
“How does what work?”
“The shaman stuff. The magic.”
“Now you want a primer on shamanic technique?”
Ferguson shrugged. ”I don’t know. What are you doing now, for example?”
“Right now? I’m looking at the craftsmanship of the building. They did a nice job with these beam joints.”
“I don’t get it. Aren’t you going to cast a spell?”
David laughed and started toward Ferguson, weaving through a maze of dinner tables covered with upside-down chairs.
“Not yet. There may be no need. We don’t know what’s out there.”
David reached the fire pit. He took a chair off one of the tables and sat across from Ferguson.
“I’ll try to explain. The world is full of people and spirits which all give off a certain energy, although most don’t give off very much and not many can feel it. As a shaman, I give off a lot of energy and I can feel others’ energy. So, what I’m doing now is giving off energy. I’m like a sonar. I’m sending out waves, and if my waves are detected by a spirit that feels I’m invading its space, it will let me know.
“You, on the other hand, don’t have as much energy as I do, so that same spirit may not notice you. But when a lot of people like you get together, like a whole town’s worth, you will become noticeable, and that’s when there could be a problem. Am I making sense?”
“Sure,” Ferguson said, even though he wasn’t that sure. “But how come you give off so much more energy?”
“Because I’m a shaman. During my apprenticeship, I came into contact with a lot of spirits and I took their energy from them. They’re my spirit helpers, called yeks. And I keep their energy in my pouch.”
David lifted the leather bag around his neck.
“What’s in it?”
“Tongues. Not whole tongues. Pieces of tongues. Enough to signify that I have their power. If I ever take off my pouch, I’ll lose my power.”
“Can I try it on? I want the power.”
David laughed.
“If anyone other than a shaman wears his pouch, that man will go insane.”
“Really? How insane?”
“Stark, raving. You’d find yourself running through the woods naked with wild hair. You’d eat frogs for food. People in the village would tell stories about you at the campfire. Children would be afraid.”
“Okay, forget it. I don’t want to scare the children. But then what? After the spirits feel your sonar, what happens? Then you cast a spell?”
“It’s not really a spell thing,” David said, screwing up his face in an effort to figure out how to explain it to Ferguson. “There are spells, but they’re really for spirits of lower energy, spirits a shaman can dominate. This would be something different, most likely.
“Let’s say a spirit inhabits this area and wants it for himself. He can make your life very difficult by scaring away animals so you can’t find food, haunting the place, things like that. If that happens, I’ll try to broker a peace. I’ll try to placate the spirit by offering homage. You know, every year the resort will make a sacrifice of such and such, like that.”
“And if that doesn’t work?” Ferguson asked.
“Well, then we make a choice. Call the whole thing off, or I go into battle. If I go into battle, I’ll call on the spirits in my power for help—the spirits whose pieces of tongue I have in my pouch—and we’ll slug it out and hopefully I’ll win.”
“I see,” Ferguson mused. He briefly wondered if David was making this all up. Maybe it was all a crock. Although it was interesting enough. Indian spirits were much more tangible than Christian spirits. Hand-to-hand combat with a spirit. He couldn’t ever imagine a priest doing battle with the devil. Although it happened in The Exorcist. So maybe it was the same after all.
“I see,” Ferguson repeated. “Now, for instance, that logging company you told me about. With the owls. How did that work? Did you apologize to the spirits?”
“Yes.”
“And did it work?”
“No. The company was doing it to make newspaper copy. They didn’t hold up their end of the deal and offer sacrifice.”
“So what happened?”
“A mud slide took out their whole operation.”
“Really?
” Ferguson exclaimed. “The spirits did that?”
“Yes.”
“So were they evil spirits?”
“No.”
“But they destroyed the logging operation.”
David sighed. There were a lot of questions, and each answer opened up more questions. Still, he thought, education is the road to ending ignorance. At least Ferguson wanted to know.
“The Tlingit don’t have good and evil,” David explained. He stood up and threw a couple more logs into the fire pit. “Let me tell you another story . . .”
THERE WAS A VERY powerful chief who kept the sun, moon, and stars locked up in three boxes, which he never let anyone touch. Raven had heard many stories of these boxes, and wanting them for himself, he devised a plan to get them.
Raven knew that the chief loved his family above all other things. The chief had a daughter whom he cared for very much and guarded very carefully. Raven realized he could get to the boxes if he became the chief’s grandson.
Since Raven could change into any form, he turned himself into a blade of grass. He let himself down on the rim of a bowl from which the daughter was drinking, and when she drank, she swallowed Raven. The daughter knew she had swallowed something, but it was too late. She became pregnant, and when the time came, she gave birth to a boy. Nobody suspected that this boy was Raven.
The grandfather took great joy in his grandson and loved the child more than anything. So when Raven cried and cried for one of the chief’s valuable treasure boxes, the grandfather could not refuse. Raven took the box outside to play, and when he opened it, all the stars jumped into the sky, leaving the box empty. The grandfather was sad to lose his prize, but he did not scold his grandson.
Raven cried again, this time for the second box. The grandfather reluctantly gave the box to the boy, warning him not to open it as he had the last box. Raven, again, took the box outside and opened it, releasing the moon into the sky.
The grandfather firmly refused to give his grandson the third box, for it contained the sun, his most valuable possession. Raven’s cries and wails could do nothing to persuade the chief. But when Raven stopped eating and drinking and became ill, his grandfather could not refuse. He gave his grandson the box, this time with the strict warning that he would be punished if he opened it.
