Free Jimmy Bluefeather: A Novel by Kim Heacox Page B

voice. “What are you doing?”
    “Making a canoe.”
    “You want breakfast?”
    “Already ate.”
    “That the gunwale sweep you’re working on?”
    “I guess.”
    “You working toward the front or the back?”
    “Front, I guess.”
    “You better decide. Get it wrong and it’ll go through the water like a salmon in a gillnet. It’ll fight you every stroke.”
    James took another swing, another dig.
    “That’s good,” Keb said. Truth be told, he feared James. It hurt and was no easy thing to admit that the boy rubbed him wrong. James’s father had been a dog-whipped, smoky-eyed son-of-a-bitch who treated Gracie like a mule until one day she gave him what she got and whacked him back. He whacked her and she buckled to the floor, mouth bleeding, and told him to get the hell out. This time he did. He grabbed the stashed cash, got into the Ford Bronco they had just paid off, drove onto the ferry and left her with the mortgage and credit card debt and four kids. He moved back to Denver and nobody saw him after that. His son wore his shadow, though. In ways more apparent each year—his walk and talk—James echoed the man who beat his mother. For that, Old Keb had a mountain to climb. It’s no easy thing to see a man you despise in your grandson’s face. “You’re beating on something, that’s good,” Keb said to the boy, thinking: better a piece of wood than somebody’s head.
    James looked at him with eyes gleaned of expression. “You’re not going to tell me what everybody else tells me?”
    “What’s that?”
    “That it could be worse? My leg, my career, me, I’m lucky to be alive?”
    “No.”
    “Good. I hate it when people tell me that.”
    “The Haida,
Deikeenaa
, they chose this tree, long ago.” Keb patted the log. “You have to treat it with respect. You have to be quiet, and at peace, and purify yourself.”
    James ran his thumb over the cutting edge of the adz.
    “You have to get rid of your bitterness, your anger. Throw it away before you work on a canoe. Or else it won’t be right. You have to meditate and give thanks.”
    “I thought you—”
    “Shhh . . .” Keb said. “We’re meditating now.”
    James leaned against the log, put down the adz, and picked at his knee brace. After awhile he said, “Are we done yet?”
    “No.”
    “When then?”
    “Soon.”
    “How soon.”
    “Later.”
    “Later than when?”
    “Later than now.”
    “How much—”
    “Shhh—we’re meditating.”
    Keb sat still while James picked at the knee brace.
    Remember Gavin Timmerman, the hoity-toity lawyer with the syrupy eyes of a dreamer? He came to Alaska to make something new of himself. A painter, he told Keb that the best art pieces are the ones that continue to have a conversation with you long after you create them. He had a painting in his home that showed a group of people staring at the sea beneath the stars. A caption on the frame said, “The people stared at the sea and the stars, and forgot themselves.” This canoe could be that, an art piece. The sea and the stars, a place to forget some things but to remember other things. How many minutes passed by then? Keb lost track. He took a deep breath and said to James, “You got the right tools?”
    “What?”
    “That adz,
x út’aa
. You want it?”
    “Sure.”
    “You have to hold it just right. Two-handed, near the blade, like this, and get low, on your knees.” Keb grabbed it cross-handed, made a cutting motion,and took a bite into the canoe. “This position gives you better consistency when cutting along the hull. You ever watch a crossbill eat seeds from a spruce cone?”
    “No.”
    “Watch sometime. Same technique.” Keb handed the adz back to James, who made a couple cross-handed practice swings. “You can have it,” Keb said, “but first you need to learn the language.”
    “The language?”
    “Tlingit.”
    James looked away. Keb knew what he was thinking. It was an old people’s language. The boy turned back