Raven Stole the Moon (27 page)

“Dad’s gonna cook the fish as soon as you get there, and Eddie said he’s real hungry so I should get you. Are you gonna drink beers like Eddie?”

“Is Eddie drinking a lot of beers?”

“Three.” He held up three fingers.

“If Eddie keeps drinking beers like that, he’s going to get pretty fat,” Jenna said, standing up and taking Michael’s hand. They headed off down the beach with Oscar following.

“Eddie showed me his scar,” Michael announced.

“He did? He never showed it to me.”

“It’s long.”

“He hurt his arm real bad.”

“A bear tried to eat him, but he beat it up.”

“Is that how it happened?”

“Yup.”

They reached a bend in the beach, and Jenna could see a bonfire not too far away. Around the fire were a lot of people, maybe a dozen or so, maybe more, adults and children, laughing and talking to each other. Michael led Jenna by the hand straight up to Eddie, who was drinking a beer and talking to a couple of the young men. Eddie turned and saw her.

“There she is,” he said, smiling. “Glad you made it, we’re starved.”

Before Jenna could really get her head straight, it seemed, there was a tremendous amount of action. Coolers being opened and closed, huge tubs of potato salad being set out, men skewering hot dogs with long sticks, fish, tied up in wooden slats, being laid across the fire, kids drinking sodas running around in circles, people talking at her, telling her things, making her sit, giving her food, laughing, eating salmon and potato chips, a bottle of Jack Daniel’s being passed around, and Jenna, in the middle of it all, not knowing if it was a dream or real, feeling a little dazed, tasting the warm, moist fish, the sun going down and the water turning into a shimmering glass pool, Eddie smiling at her, grinning, did he know these people? Had he known where they were going?

He said no. He didn’t have any idea, but when he started talking to the people, they invited Eddie and Jenna to eat with them. They thought it was funny that Jenna fell asleep on the beach. They were a family having a cookout, and Jenna didn’t know any of them. She certainly didn’t remember any of the twenty or so names she was given, but she still felt as if they were old friends. They asked how Jenna had been, as if they’d met before. They asked how long Jenna and Eddie were staying. They insisted that Jenna and Eddie leave Motherfish and stay with them. They have a hideaway bed, one of them said, and Jenna and Eddie could sleep on that. But Jenna told them that they wouldn’t want to impose and they were in to see this Livingstone guy and then they were going to leave.

“Livingstone,” one of the young men scoffed, “what a quack.”

Mom, the amply endowed matron of the family, slapped his shoulder and scolded him.

“David is very smart and a very capable young man,” she said.

“Bullshit.” One of the other young men coughed into his hand, like John Belushi and everyone did in
Animal House
when the frat was up for review at the big meeting.

“Why do you need to see Livingstone?” the first young man asked. “Are you from
The Today Show
? Are you going put him on the TV as a spokesman for his people?”

“No, I’m not from
The Today Show
,” Jenna answered.

They all waited for Jenna to tell them why she was there to see Livingstone.

“It’s kind of embarrassing,” Jenna said.

“We could hold up a blanket,” the wisecracker said, referring to when a couple of them held up a blanket so nobody would see Grandma pee. Everyone laughed.

“I need to consult a shaman about something,” Jenna said.

Mom saw no problem with that. “He’s a shaman.”

“His father was a shaman. Just because your father was a shaman doesn’t mean you have the power,” someone said.

“He has the power,” Mom defended. “He just doesn’t know how to use it properly. But he’s learning. He knows now that he can’t use the power to make money.”

Everyone thought about that, but Jenna didn’t have any idea what they were talking about.

“What happened?” Jenna asked.

A young man spoke up. “He used to rent himself out. He’d look into the future—if you believe in that stuff—he’d look into the future and tell, like, lumber companies where to cut the trees and fish companies where to get the fish.”

“The shaman’s job was always to tell the village where the fish were. That’s what the shaman has always done,” Mom interjected.

“Yeah, but Livingstone was doing it to line his own pockets, not for everyone else. He didn’t give a shit if Indians starved to death, as long as he had a Ford Bronco.”

“He found jobs for white people, not for Indians.”

“What happened to him?” Jenna asked.

“Well, if you believe all of this, the spirits didn’t like what he was doing so they broke him down. They taught him a lesson.”

“How?”

“His wife had a baby, a son, and it was born dead. He told everyone that it was his punishment and he would only work for his people from then on.”

Click, click, click. Jenna heard the tumblers fall into place in her head. A baby born dead. Ferguson had said that. He was delirious when he said it and Jenna didn’t really understand at that point. But this made it clear. Something was going on.

“So why do you want to find him?”

They all looked at Jenna. She had almost avoided an answer, but they weren’t going to let her get away. It was getting darker and people’s faces were beginning to fade, so Jenna cleared her throat and answered the question.

“My son drowned at a resort and I think he may know something about it.”

A big silent hole opened up, filled only by the crackling of the fire and the cool air. Jenna looked over to Eddie to see what his reaction was, but he just stared into the fire. One of the men started laying fresh pieces of driftwood across the flames.

“Thunder Bay?” he asked.

Jenna nodded.

“Welp,” he said, “Livingstone knows something about it, all right.”

Mom produced a brown paper bag from nowhere and started digging inside. The kids knew what she was doing, and they immediately gathered around her. She took out a bag of marshmallows and started feeding them onto the roasting sticks, which the children carefully held near the flames.

“Do you believe?” Dad asked the question. He had a deep voice and had been quiet until then. It was hard for Jenna to make out the generational lines at this party. She couldn’t tell if it was one immediate family or cousins or what. But Mom and Dad were obviously the ones in charge.

“Do I believe what?”

“Well, you said you came to find out if he knew anything about what happened. What do you figure he’s going to tell you?”

“About the kushtaka,” Jenna answered, softly.

One of the kids stuck his marshmallow too far into the fire and it lit up, turning into a flaming ball of sugar. The other kids laughed, and the one with the flames said he wanted it that way.

“Kushtaka!” One of the young men snorted. “How about try using a life jacket.”

“Samuel!” Mom snapped, reaching out and slapping the young man hard across his face. “Show some respect!”

“Hell, Mom, we all had jobs there before it happened, before Livingstone scared everyone off with his evil spirit crap.”

“Samuel!” Now it was Dad. “You stop using that language or you can leave right now.”

The young man stood up quickly. “Fine, I’ll leave. I’m the only one who’ll tell the truth around here, and you all don’t want to hear it. Go ahead, butter each other up with your bullshit. It’s still just bullshit.” He stormed off into the darkness, toward the trees.

Mom fed another three marshmallows onto a stick and handed it to Michael while pointing to Jenna. Michael brought Jenna the stick, which she halfheartedly held in the fire. Try using a life jacket, Samuel said, as if Jenna had never thought of that before. Everyone uses a life jacket. Bobby had a life jacket, until he took it off.

“Don’t beat yourself up about it now, honey,” Mom said. “What’s done is done and you have to do whatever you can to put it behind you.”

“I never thought about all the jobs,” Jenna said.

“That place was bad luck from the beginning,” Mom went on. “It was doomed to fail. Everybody here got excited about it, and they were disappointed when it didn’t happen. But that’s how it works sometimes.”

“
All
the time,” Dad corrected. “That’s how it works
all
the time. When people start thinking the world exists for their own comfort and pleasure, that’s when the end is coming. Nature takes its course, and we’ve got to accept everything we get, good and bad. That’s all.”

And that was all. The darkness fell as hard as it could, but a full moon soon rose above the trees and lit up the sky with a blue light. The kids stuffed themselves with marshmallows until they fell asleep by the fire, and the older people sat quietly watching the flames and passing around the Jack Daniel’s. Jenna tried to hold her watch at an angle toward the flames so she could see the time, but she couldn’t tell. She didn’t want to leave these people, they were so warm, but she wanted to get to her next destination. She was anxious to move on.

Eddie saw Jenna check her watch.

“Want to go?”

Jenna nodded and they stood up.

“We’re going to head back,” Eddie announced, shaking hands with the men and calling Oscar to his side.

Jenna went up to Mom.

“Thanks for the food, it was great.”

“Sure, honey, anytime. And don’t worry, you’ll find what you want to find if you look hard enough.”

She kissed Jenna on the cheek, and Jenna knew that Mom was right.

Dad told Jenna and Eddie to take the road back to town, it would be faster than the beach, so they left the family by the fire and walked quickly up a narrow path in the woods until they found a dirt road. They turned left and started back toward town with the full moon providing enough light so they could see the way in front of them.

Jenna put her arm around Eddie’s waist and leaned her head against his shoulder as they walked, and Eddie wrapped his good arm around her. It felt good to be under Eddie’s protection. The woods were cold and dark, and Jenna was glad she had someone to be with. She was glad he was there.

“So, do you regret coming with me yet?” Jenna asked.

Eddie pulled away slightly.

“Why would you ask that?”

Jenna tightened her grip on him.

“I don’t know. I know you think this whole thing is crazy.”

“So?”

“So you don’t hate me?”

He laughed to himself.

“Yeah, I hate you.”

“You do?”

“No, I’m kidding, I don’t hate you. I
wish
I hated you.”

Jenna stopped and turned to Eddie, but she could only see the outline of his face.

“Why would you say that?”

“I guess I don’t, really. But if I did, this would all be easier.”

“Poor Eddie,” Jenna said. He was so sweet, standing in front of her like a ghost, a dark shadow in the woods, stripped of distracting details like his blue eyes and his little ears, he was just a voice and a body, and Jenna wanted to be with him now. She wanted to be
within
him, to climb into his shell and find out what it felt like to walk around inside him and to think his thoughts. She moved closer to him until they touched, and then she moved closer still. Their legs, their hips, their chests were pressed together, and Jenna lifted her head and kissed him. And that kiss grew, became deeper and deeper, until Jenna felt as if some of her was getting inside of him, that he was letting her in, and she wanted to be inside, to climb into his mouth and slide down his throat and curl up into a little ball deep down inside.

But then he closed the door. He pulled away from her, retreating into the darkness. “It’s not fair,” he said.

“What’s not fair?”

“
This.
This whole thing. I don’t know. You’ve got something going on; you’re here on a mission, right? Find the shaman, whatever, it doesn’t matter, that’s why you’re here. And when you’re done, you’re going to go back to the life that you left to come here. But I’m not. This
is
my life. When you leave, you’re going someplace with a house and a car and a husband and all of that, and I’m staying right here with nothing. It’s not fair, that’s all.”

“I’ll leave you Oscar,” Jenna offered hopefully.

“It’s not funny. I’m serious. You’ve been playing with me for days now, being all flirty and everything, and I don’t know what to do, because I really like you. I mean
really
.
More
than like you. If I had my choice of anybody in the world, you’d be my choice. But I know you’re leaving, so why should I let myself get sucked in so I can be disappointed in the end?”

He stood in the darkness looking at her. Jenna hadn’t realized. She hadn’t thought
ahead
. Her life had not been about thinking ahead lately. It had been about acting. Eddie wanted to know, he had a right to know. But know what? What could Jenna tell him?

“Do you understand what I’m saying?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“And?”

“And what? You’re right.”

“So I shouldn’t let myself get sucked in?”

“What do you want me to say, Eddie, that I’ll marry you and we’ll live in Wrangell happily ever after?”

Eddie dropped his shoulders and started walking toward town, and Jenna immediately cursed herself. Why did she say that? God damn it. How did Eddie manage to make the whole thing so complicated? Why couldn’t it all be easy?

“Eddie, wait,” Jenna called out, following Eddie with Oscar. “I’m . . . I’m not . . . I don’t know what I’m doing about anything, so I don’t know where that leaves us.”

“It leaves us about a mile from town, that’s where it leaves us.”

Well, that was a conversation-ender if Jenna had ever heard one. They walked the rest of the way in silence. Jenna didn’t know how they got from kissing warmly to marching icily, but the transition had been made. Jenna couldn’t blame Eddie for trying to see the future, but how was that possible? What if they ended up not liking each other? Just because you have a romance doesn’t mean you’re going to get married. Sometimes, the best romances are those with a finite ending. They exist as a hot flame and then they burn out. Why did Eddie have to expect more from Jenna? Why did Jenna have to commit to Eddie before they had even slept together?