Looking for Alaska (17 page)

“The people that we saw driving the nicest cars, in the yards of the finest houses, all seemed to be blond and tan. We went through a Mexican neighborhood and they seemed to have little houses and old cars, lots of people in each car. They looked more like Haidas.

“I remember we went to a hamburger place, I was so excited, we didn't have anything like that on Prince of Wales then. Didn't even have a road to get out of Hydaburg. The waitress was Mexican. I was so in awe of all the people and the shiny cars and this restaurant. I guess I looked like someone who had just crossed the border. Anyway, she spoke to me in Spanish. When I obviously didn't understand, she asked me in English what country I was from.” Tina reached out and turned off the music.

“See, our grandmothers told us our whole lives we were the first people in this country. We had our own world, creating beautiful art, hundreds of years before all the people's relatives I was seeing in San Diego got here. Our Grandma Helen told us Haida stories all our lives; she showed us rare Native artifacts and pictures she had collected. In California I felt like we were treated like second- or third-class people, not first-class people. It was like no one wanted to know who I was.” Something ferocious rose up in Tina, remembering.

“It was confusing to me. It made me angry. I went home to Hydaburg feeling like maybe there was something wrong with us Haidas. After that I didn't feel like the world was waiting for me to see it. I didn't leave this rock much after that. That world was a shock.”

It suddenly started to pour, gray rain overwhelming the windshield wipers, which were on high. Tina turned on the air-conditioning and defroster so we could see.

“I remember thinking back on all that happy sun in California and being around that happy world and thinking that maybe being Native was not what I needed to be. There was so much sadness sometimes. I wanted to be happy and bright like in California, I thought.”

On both sides of the road now the trees had not been cut, so it was dark and dense. The farther we drove, the more this place seemed to me to have the same kind of spiritual qualities that the Navajo lands do, the feeling it had been lived in forever, unchanged, spirits everywhere, although the two places could not have looked more different. I kept expecting Carlos Castaneda to appear, standing in the middle of the road.

“It wasn't long after I got back from California that my mother left. When I was fourteen years old and my sister Jody was nine, my mother, explaining nothing to us, went to the ferry and a doctor's appointment in Ketchikan. She didn't come back for ten years. We found out later, she went through woman's counseling, got a job and another relationship. My father was postmaster then.”

We passed another bear, this time a small one, lying in a ball on the side of the road. Tina slowed down; it lifted its head. She thought that the mother must have been run over and the Hydaburg people were dropping off food to the little one here.

“I don't know why I have had so much confusion in my life. I have tried so many ways to answer my questions, to solve my problems. There is no preacher or pill that has helped me figure it all out. I've tried them all: counselors; self-help books;
Oprah;
pastors. Seems like I've taken all the pills: Librium, Valium, amitriptyline, lorazepam. Nothing I've tried seems to help me as much as being Native does: cutting strips [salmon], picking berries, going hunting, walking on the beach, being in the village with my people, doing my art. All that other stuff I tried from the non-Native world just dulled the pain. It came back worse. I drive down this road and I can feel me coming back to life. There is a place just back there on this road where the rest of the world drops away. That spot is a place of peace for me. Why don't I come here more often!”

Tina was so consumed in the telling of her life, sometimes I felt that she didn't remember I was there. She'd be going forty-five, then slow down to fifteen miles per hour. Going that slow on this road felt bizarre. Physically we were traveling in slow motion when we should have been speeding; we had the road all to ourselves. Yet Tina could not make herself go any faster.

“A lot of my depression and my anxiety, and I think this every time I come back here, comes from my disconnection from my people and nature. I need to go back, or I try to go back to nature every day, because that is where God is every day, all the time.”

I wasn't sure what Tina was fumbling around in her purse for; she again said she hoped we did not see any more bears. She pulled out a small, battered white envelope. She pulled the car over; we had only seen one other car the whole time we'd been on this road. She opened it and pulled out a black braid of hair.

“This is my sister's hair, my older sister. She committed suicide. She went through such a deep time of sadness and confusion; I spoke to her the day she died. I couldn't tell what she was planning to do. We believe that if you have someone's hair, their spirit is always there.” The life seemed to go out of Tina's face for a moment, then returned, albeit weakened.

“This place has always had some kind of hold on my family. My grandfather ran away from Indian boarding school in Oregon when he was twelve, made his way to Seattle, then worked his way on a fishing boat from there to Hydaburg.”

When we finally got to Hydaburg, there was no sign, just a couple of dirt streets. The main road, Main Street, ran along the water, Sukkwan Strait. On it were Tina's auntie Martha's house and the ANB (Alaska Native Brotherhood) community center, where they have memorial dinners for people who have died, play bingo, host traditional Native dances. Because of all the twists and turns of the bays, roads, and mountains on the collection of islands in this part of Southeast, if you didn't know exactly where you were, it would be impossible to tell from looking at the mountains or the coastline whether you were on the main island or one of the smaller surrounding islands. It seemed to me like an intricate maze. Suddenly, Tina stopped, not pulling over to the side; she just put the car into park right in the middle of the “busiest” road in Hydaburg.

“I have this amazing sense of smell, everyone who knows me knows that. I remember that in summer we were all barefoot, running right through here. I can still smell the dust and the way it mixed with the ocean smells. In summer, all us kids would be on the creek snagging salmon. There was only one little store, Grant's; they had chains for your chain saw, penny candy.” About three young boys, followed by two mixed-collie dogs, ran in front of us. One carried a fishing pole with a snagging hook on it.

“My grandma Violet, I remember so well the smells of her perfume and smoked salmon. Sometimes one was stronger than the other. I never knew which one would win out when I opened her door. She was the one who lived to fish, catch, and put up the Native foods. I remember, she had her own skiff; one of my favorite things was to go out with her and gather driftwood. We could get almost everything we needed from the ocean. It even brought us our wood. In summertime, we'd get the best blueberries and thimbleberries, and then us kids, we'd go swimming. During the summer we ate lots of crab, salmon, all kinds of shellfish.”

Across from Hydaburg are several large islands—Dall Island, Goat Island, Sukkwan Island, and Suemez Island—and hundreds of tiny islands: Lone Tree Island, McFarland Island, and on and on. The summer has the most sun, and though there are sometimes large snowfalls in the winter, the dominant weather is rain. Haidas always built their villages to face the southwest to take as much advantage as possible of the sun's drying power.

“In the winter, snow could be deep sometimes, the creek would freeze up. We would get Nana's high-heel shoes and put 'em on. I'd zoom on top of the frozen creek. We would get in lots of trouble; they were her favorite shoes and she could not afford to get more. I think back now and I wonder where she wore those high heels around here.”

The Haidas that live here order almost everything from catalogs. The world comes to them in catalogs on the mail plane. They get tired of explaining to the order-center people in Arizona or Nebraska that they don't live in igloos, that they aren't Eskimos, that there are no polar bears, and that they only get mail three times a week. The mail comes in on a floatplane, and it is not unusual for mail to be delayed by weather; sometimes they go four days without it. Always the people have to explain that everyone has a P.O. box in Hydaburg. When asked for a street address for something to be delivered, they just make up a street and number. Everyone knows where everyone lives. Tina and Jody are related to about a fourth of the town, and they are not one of the larger families. (The Edinshaws are.)

Most of the houses have been built a few at a time by some government agency. Few people plant gardens or flowers or have fences. Every few years there get to be so many free-ranging dogs that they have to hire someone special to come in and get rid of the ones that aren't registered. Black bears raid just about everybody's garbage, that's just part of it. Few people have decks; there are far more smokehouses in backyards to smoke the salmon. There is one store, the Haida Market, now owned by Jerry's mother, and two gas pumps, one for regular gas and one for diesel, run by the village Native corporation. There are two churches, one Presbyterian—which has a red neon cross and is next to a totem park, in front of the school—and an Assembly of God. The Presbyterians have more people as they were the first missionaries here. There are no places for the public to drink alcohol, but when you think of it, there is no “public” here at all—it is all personal.

The Haidas of Hydaburg let it be known that if you're not Haida, then don't think about moving here. You probably don't even want to come visit, unless you are related to someone. At least one Native village in Alaska does not allow whites to spend the night, though it is not Hydaburg. The Haidas have always been considered the fiercest of all coastal Natives. Now, they just want their own community, they want no one else coming here telling them how to live or what to believe. Some people are afraid of the place. When the village did not have a village public safety officer, a VPSO, and there was no one to keep the law, basketball teams, their fans, and the refs had state trooper escorts to get in and out of the village. Now since they have a VPSO, a white woman who worked in some prisons upstate, they only have to call the state troopers for serious crime.

On the way into town I had noticed a large sickle-shaped skid mark that began on the left side of the road and went across the centerline and then off the road. I could see where something had skidded through the dirt shoulder. Tina was in a trancelike flashback then; I'd hoped no deer or bear ran out in front of us. I thought about asking to drive a few times to free her up to concentrate on her stories.

We were headed for Jody's, Tina's younger sister's house. Both have black hair, but they look nothing alike. They're close, though, clearly—Jody had four or five of Tina's paintings hanging on her walls.

When we arrived, there was almost no time for any greeting or introductions.

“Tina,” Jody said, “did you hear?”

“What?” Tina's voice could change whole octaves and get low.

“The other night when we were all at the Hill Bar, Lori, from here—you know, the one you always see in town taking her little kids for a walk—well, she died in a car crash.”

“What?” Tina seemed spooked.

“She was rushing to catch the ferry, had her three kids in the car, they were going to Ketchikan to buy school clothes. One of the kids may have been squirming around, no one knows—she lost control of the car, anyway, and rolled it. She was the only one without a seat belt on, and she died.”

“Oh, God, maybe this is why I was thinking of death on the way here. Is that why there are all the cars across the street?”

“Yeah, the body is over in the house.”

Tina got up, walked across the dirt road, said she needed to go pay her respects.

Jody's boyfriend, Tony, came out from a back room. He is a massive young man, seven years younger than Jody. Tony was an Alaska state heavyweight wrestling champion; he has hands twice my size. He seemed like a gentle giant or just a man who knew he had nothing to fear and could always be relaxed. He is a gifted carver, Native-designs painter, drum-maker, hunter, fisherman. Tony can be standing in a river on the island and catch ten cohos while three tourists catch one between them. He can see the fish, while they see only rushing water. He can call deer to within fifteen feet of him using a piece of grass.

Tony explained that the Alaska State Troopers had already done their investigation and there was no foul play. Lori never hurt anyone, he said; she didn't drink or smoke dope. When you saw her, her kids were always with her. She took care of an elder, bathed her and cooked her meals. She was one of those uptight lady drivers, Tony said, always drove with both hands on the wheel. Her body would never leave the Hydaburg area. She would be laid out and never left alone in the house across the street.

According to Tony, village men, about ten to twelve guys, would go over in a boat to a small island across the bay and dig her grave by hand. Then after the church service, someone with a seine boat would put the casket and the family on the big boat and the rest of the town would go over for the service in their own skiffs. Sadness often visits Hydaburg, as it does every place; it's just that here everyone feels it.

Tina stayed visiting for a long time. When she returned, we went to her auntie Martha's. She sat at her kitchen table in her small wood home, with a cigarette in one hand and a beer in the other. She had a smoker's voice and a skinny, skinny body. She was taking care of one of her grandsons, who had just taken a bath. He had splashed around so much the water had run under the bathroom door. Auntie Martha was confrontational, the life of her own party that never seemed to end, and knew everything that was going on in Hydaburg. She and Tina spent some time catching up with each other while I sat quietly and listened.