Raven Stole the Moon (30 page)

“They can appear as anything?”

“Pretty much. Their eyes and teeth don’t change. Usually, they move around as shadows, though. You know, you think you saw something, but when you look again it’s nothing. Or you hear a footstep and think you’re hearing things. That might be a kushtaka, too.”

This was starting to creep Jenna out. She had been seeing shadows and hearing footsteps since she got to Alaska. She gave a little shudder. David saw and put his hand on her shoulder.

“Don’t worry, you’re safe here.”

“Maybe. But in here’s not what I’m worried about. Am I safe out there?”

David stood up and offered to fix everyone lunch. And everyone quickly accepted the offer, glad to have some food and to change the subject for a little while.

D
AVID HAD TO APOLOGIZE
for the meal of cold cuts, some dense whole wheat bread, and canned potato soup, but his wife was teaching a seminar in Vancouver and, he said jokingly, he often reverted to being a man when she was away. Nevertheless, everyone was hungry and the meal was satisfying. David seemed to like the company. He chatted away endlessly about his new position at the University of British Columbia and how enjoyable he found it to commute from the big city to the small village on a regular basis. That way, he explained, neither place overwhelmed him, and he desired more of both. They talked more about the weather and the front that was moving in later in the day. David asked about Eddie’s arm and shook his head when Eddie told him of the accident. “Most dangerous job in the world,” he said. Tom maintained that fishing techniques like the kind that injured Eddie were simply more evidence of the industrial machine putting greater value on economics than quality of life. David snickered at that and wondered aloud what leftist magazine Tom had found it in. All this spirited conversation came crashing to a halt when Jenna piped in.

“I got your name from John Ferguson. Do you remember him?” she asked.

David simply stopped short. Tom dropped his fork and pushed his chair away from the table.

“I remember him, all right,” Tom said.

“Tom.” David tried to interrupt.

“Talk about putting economics over quality of life . . .”

“Tom, please.”

Tom rolled his eyes but quieted down.

“Mrs. Rosen,” David began, “I’m very sorry about what happened to your son. But, believe me, I tried to stop it. I told them that opening the resort would end up in disaster.”

“I’m not trying to lay blame on anyone. I just want to know what to do. Can’t you help me?”

David looked down at his soup and shook his head.

“I’m afraid I can’t.”

“You’re a shaman,” Jenna demanded, “can’t you make them let Bobby go? Cast a spell or something?”

David threw up his hands in exasperation.

“Why is it that people who know nothing of a different religion assume the other religion has some kind of secret magic? That’s all I ever run into. ‘Cast a spell, make it right.’ It doesn’t work that way. A shaman is a priest. That’s all. If your son had been taken to hell by the devil, could a priest go down there and get him back? I don’t think so.”

“So, you’re saying my son is in Indian hell?”

“No,” David answered, burying his head in his hands. “It’s not the same. I was trying to give you an example. The kushtaka aren’t devils. They’re spirits. Look, when you die, your soul is reincarnated. In order to be reincarnated, it has to be in the right place. The Land of Dead Souls. If you’re dead, but your soul isn’t in the right place, you can’t be reincarnated, and so you’re one of the undead. A wandering spirit, never to return to the living.”

“So, how do you get from being undead to the Land of Dead Souls?” Jenna asked.

“You don’t. It doesn’t happen.”

“The man at Shakes Island said a shaman could do it.”

David leaned back and rubbed his eye. He screwed up his face and sighed deeply.

“All right,” he said, “theoretically it’s possible. If a person had trained his entire life, bathed every morning in ice water, drank of the devil’s club, developed his strength of spirit to such an extent that he could withstand the power of the kushtaka, that person could try to do it. But the kushtaka are stronger than you think. Trust me, I’ve been there.”

David leaned back and took a drink of his soda. Now they knew. They knew he was talking from firsthand experience. He would never challenge the kushtaka again. He had done it before, and it had cost him dearly.

But Jenna still didn’t understand. If it was all so impossible, why did it seem so close? She felt as if she were standing on the answer, that it was just around the corner, but she didn’t know which corner. And David Livingstone said it couldn’t be done. She didn’t believe him.

“These creatures know I’m here,” Jenna said. “As soon as I came to Alaska, I got chased through the woods, I met a spirit helper, and a little boy tried to drown himself and me. Why?”

“They want you to join them.”

Jenna waited expectantly for more.

“The little boy that showed himself to you looked like your son, right?”

Jenna nodded.

“Your son is one of them, now. And he wants you with him.”

Jenna thought about this for a moment. Bobby has come for her. The little boy beckoning was Bobby trying to reach her. Why didn’t he ask? Just call her name? She would have followed.

“I want to be with him,” she said, softly.

“Not like that, you don’t.”

“If that’s what it takes, then, yes, I do.”

David stood up and began collecting the dishes and stacking them at one end of the table.

“It’s out of your control,” he said to Jenna. “There’s nothing you can do. As long as you’re here, they’re going to try to get to you. The best thing you can do is leave, go home and never come back, and just forget the whole thing.”

Jenna slammed her fist down on the table, surprising everyone. David, standing at the end of the table, stopped and looked at her.

“God damn it! That’s all anyone ever says to me!”

Jenna was furious; her voice trembled as she spoke.

“For the past two years that’s all I’ve heard. ‘Forget about it. Put it behind you.’ I’m not going to put it behind me anymore. He’s my son, damn you. My son! And now you tell me he’s some kind of monster. Well, if it’s my only choice, then I’ll become a monster, too. At least then we can suffer together.”

She stood up quickly, scraping the legs of the chair on the floor, fighting through her frustration with anger.

“I’m not going to forget about him. I’ll never forget about him. Never.”

Jenna stood staring at David for a long moment. He met her gaze briefly, then gave a small nod and looked away. He sat down and fingered the tablecloth, braiding together three small strings from the fringe. Jenna sensed that he wasn’t coming clean. He was still hiding from her. She had to play her trump card. She had to make him talk.

“Tell me about your baby,” she said.

He looked up quickly, and then realized he was caught. He had bitten at the fly and couldn’t hide anymore. Everyone had seen him react. They knew something was there.

“How do you know about that?” he demanded.

“John Ferguson told me.”

David looked down and shook his head.

“You have to tell me,” Jenna said, sitting down and leaning forward on the table. “You have to tell me what happened.”

Jenna and David locked eyes. There was something between them, something unspoken. It was as if they shared something, and that feeling made Jenna both calm and uneasy at the same time. Almost as if she sensed David could read her thoughts, that she was open to him but afraid of what he might find. And she felt that he was equally afraid of her.

“They called me in to get rid of evil spirits at Thunder Bay, before it opened,” David began. He cleared his throat. “Admittedly, I did it for the money. I did a lot of things for money back then. They wanted the evil spirits chased out. The Tlingit don’t have evil spirits. There are just
spirits.
Spirits have both good and evil in them, but none are all good and none are all evil. I mean, look at Raven. He, basically, invented the world. He brought us the stars and the moon and the sun, the water and the land. Do you know how he got all these things? He stole them. Raven stole the moon and gave it to us. Does that make him evil?”

David looked out the window. The rain had started again. Tom was right.

“Anyway, I went to their resort not expecting to find anything, and I did my rituals. And, after a day of meditation, much to my surprise, I felt the presence of the spirits. It was the kushtaka. I should have known enough to stop there, but I thought I was powerful and I wanted to push it further. I wanted to make contact with them, to ask them not to bother the people at the resort. Well, they came for me. They took me to their home. And when I got there, they abused me. Any power I thought I had as a shaman was a joke. I was paralyzed and helpless. They made me into an animal with hair and claws and then they taunted me and mocked me. The dirty, foul things they did to me . . . I wished they would kill me and be done with it.

“Finally, as I lay on the ground, covered with otter feces and urine, the kushtaka shaman approached me and told me he was letting me go. He was letting me go so I could return to the world and tell them not to build the resort.”

David sat down in his chair and closed his eyes, breathing softly. The room was still for a minute, maybe two. Eddie and Tom were transfixed by the story. Jenna knew there was more. There was something else. Something he didn’t tell.

“At least they let you go,” Eddie finally offered, trying to break the silence.

“No, they didn’t,” David answered, opening his eyes and looking at Jenna. “He told me he was going to punish me by taking the life of my child who wasn’t yet born.” He paused. “Two days later, my wife lost our baby.”

There. The story had been told. David and Jenna looked at each other, understanding that they shared something after all. They had both been robbed. They had both lost something.

“I have to save my son,” Jenna said, finally.

“I don’t know how,” David said. “I’m sorry. I can’t do anything. I don’t know how to help you.”

There was nothing else to say, then. Jenna and Tom put on their damp clothes, and with Eddie and Oscar the spirit helper, they hauled themselves up the muddy wall outside David Livingstone’s house and drove back to the world of humans, where four posts of wood could offer them no protection from the spirits that hid in the shadows and brought men to their knees.

J
OEY LEANED BACK AGAINST THE WALL OF THE TERMINAL BUILDING,
trying to stay dry under the awning. The drizzle was light, but the wind blew it around in such a way that it felt as if it were coming from all over, not falling from the sky. Joey looked toward the mountains where he had seen the last plane emerge from the clouds to land, and sure enough, he soon saw another Alaska Airlines jet drop out of gray sky and hang in the air over the mountains. Slowly and quietly it crept closer, making its way toward the airport, growing larger and louder until it finally touched down in front of him. It rolled to a stop, its engines still whining, and two men pushed a portable staircase to the forward door. Four people got off the plane; the last was Robert.

Nothing was said between the two men in the car on the way to town. Robert was feeling a little disoriented from the bumpy flight and he didn’t quite have a handle on how to treat Joey. Was he a colleague or a guide? Shouldn’t he have some kind of written report to present to Robert? Whatever. Robert didn’t really care. He was very nervous about his impending confrontation with Jenna and didn’t want to think about how to behave in front of a guy he was paying a lot of money. So he closed his eyes and leaned back in the seat.

After a short trip the car stopped in front of the town hall. Joey paid the driver, got a receipt, and he and Robert climbed out of the car. They went into the vestibule of a standard-issue government building, complete with pale green walls and cheap gray carpeting. To the right was a glass door with a sheriff’s star painted on it.

“Where are we going?” Robert asked.

“To see the sheriff.”

“Why?”

“You want to find your wife, don’t you?”

Joey threw open the door to the sheriff’s office and went inside.

Robert was confused. He thought his wife was here in town. Now they don’t know where she is? Reluctantly, he followed Joey into the office.

Joey was talking with a receptionist, an older woman, who listened to his complaint. He was holding up his bandaged hand as if it hurt quite a bit, although this seemed to be an act, as he hadn’t paid any mind to it in the taxi.

“. . . The dog bit me, and now I can’t find the woman or the dog. I think they left town. I have to find them so they can test the dog for rabies.”

The woman looked at the bandages closely and shook her head skeptically.

“Do dogs even get rabies anymore?”

“It seemed like a rabid dog to me, all frothy at the mouth and with such a quick temper. I reached down to pet it and it bit me.” Joey turned to Robert. “And this here’s the woman’s husband. He’s concerned that the dog may turn on his wife and attack her. I think it’s real important that we find them.”

The woman screwed up her face in thought, then she excused herself and went to the door behind the front counter that said S
HERIFF
L
ARSON
on it. She knocked and stepped inside.

Joey turned to Robert.

“Play along. You two are on vacation. She came up first and you were supposed to meet her, but now she’s gone and you’re worried.”

Robert nodded. They could hear two muffled voices discussing the problem, and then Sheriff Larson appeared in the doorway.

“Was it a shepherd?”

“Yes, sir,” Joey answered. “Looked real friendly, but nearly took my thumb clean off.”

“Did you go to the hospital?”

Joey looked down and shuffled his feet.

“Yes, sir, but I don’t have any health insurance and a doctor at the hospital told me that rabies shots cost a lot of money, but a vet could test the dog for only twenty-five bucks.”

“Who are you?” The sheriff turned and leveled his sights on Robert. Robert panicked.

“I’m Jenna’s husband.”

“Who’s Jenna?”

“She’s the lady with the dog,” Joey explained.

“She’s the one who’s staying with Eddie Fleming?”

“Yeah, that’s his name. Eddie. Yeah.”

“So, what’s the problem? Go get the dog tested,” the sheriff said, simply. “You pay for it,” he added, looking at Robert.

“But they’re gone.”

“Gone?”

“They took off in an airplane yesterday.”

“Where did they go?”

“That’s why we’re here. We don’t know. But I saw this old guy fly off with them in a seaplane and then he came back alone, so he must know where they are. But he won’t tell me. He says it’s top secret.”

“That must be Field,” the sheriff said.

“We thought maybe you could ask him. You know, tell him it’s important. We figured maybe he’d listen to you. My hand really hurts, and Robert, here, is worried about his wife alone with that rabid dog.”

The sheriff ran his hand over his face and stifled a yawn. He scratched his cheek.

“That dog has been more trouble than it’s worth,” he said.

“Will you come and talk to Field?” Joey encouraged.

“Yeah,” the sheriff said, exhaling, “I’ll come.”

J
ENNA HAD BIGGER PROBLEMS
than that. Bigger problems than those that could be solved by a dish of macaroni and cheese with hot dogs cut up in it. Her problems were foundational. About faith and belief. Did Moses part the Red Sea? Did Christ heal the infirm? Is there room for more than one religion, or is it all the same and people just interpret it differently? What makes it reasonable to believe that otter creatures steal souls? Is it the possibility of salvation? If so, whose?

Eddie ate his macaroni and cheese.

“How much of this do you believe?” Jenna asked him.

Eddie looked up from a hot dog chunk and shrugged.

“You don’t believe any of it, do you?” she said.

Eddie shrugged again. “I don’t know. How much do you believe?”

“I don’t believe any of it. I’m beyond belief. Belief is an option and this isn’t an option for me. It’s real. I don’t
believe
any of it. I
know
it.”

Eddie nodded and continued eating, but Jenna wasn’t going to let him duck out of an answer.

“So, all that stuff David told us,” she said. “You don’t believe any of it?”

“Come on, Jenna. I mean, you’re talking about a religion that’s basically extinct. If I told you that Zeus had stolen the soul of your son, would you believe it?”

“Maybe. If the context was right.”

“Well, there you go,” Eddie said. “I wouldn’t. So you’re a believer and I’m a disbeliever. That’s okay. It’s what we call religious tolerance. We practice it in the United States.”

“Okay then, smart guy, if you don’t believe it and you’re just exercising your religious tolerance, why are you here?”

Eddie smiled and put down his fork.

“You don’t know?”

“I don’t know.”

He gazed into her eyes for a moment. “Well, you think about it and try to figure it out yourself.”

Jenna squinted at Eddie. So strange. He looked so familiar to her. She could draw a picture of his face with her eyes closed. But she knew nothing about him. On what level are people attracted to each other? Is it looks or personality or something else? Something invisible. A force that we don’t know about. Some organ in our bodies can sense energy fields and that’s what draws people together. Maybe it’s the appendix. Or it’s pheromones. Maybe they really work.

“Who are you?” she asked Eddie, suddenly.

“Me? I’m just a man,” he said.

“Give me the details. Give me the background.”

“Born and raised in Alaska. I have a brother who lives in Tacoma. I fish for a living.”

“Parents?”

“Dead.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be. I didn’t like them anyway.”

“That’s not nice to say.” Jenna was surprised at how cold Eddie sounded with that comment.

“Yeah, maybe not,” he said. “But then, if they had been nice to me once in their lives, maybe I would be nice to them now that they’re dead. As it is, I have no fond memories, so . . .”

“What do you do in your spare time?”

“Nothing. I have no friends, no family, no hobbies, nothing.”

“You’re a cipher.”

“What’s that?”

“A nonentity. A blank page.”

“That’s right. I’m a cipher.”

“That sounds boring.”

“No, it’s good to be a cipher,” he said. “No commitments, no obligations. I don’t have to smile at people I don’t like. I just am.”

“Like a monk.”

“Exactly like a monk. That’s it. I’m a monk. Sometimes I sing chants, but otherwise, I’m a cipher.”

Jenna looked into Eddie’s eyes for a long time. His face was neutral, but his eyes were smiling, and she knew he was putting her on.

“I don’t believe you.”

“You don’t?”

He folded his napkin and set it next to his plate of macaroni and cheese.

“So, what’s the next step?” Eddie asked.

Jenna shook her head. “I have no clue.”

She looked out the window. Through the painting of the blue fish holding the knife and fork, Jenna watched an old Indian man trudge up the muddy street, his hair in his face, and she admired his sense of purpose. He had a destination; she could tell by his steps and the way he examined the ground before him as he walked. It was not a question of where he would go, but how he would get there. Jenna wanted to feel that sense of purpose. She had thought she had found it and that David Livingstone would lead her through it, but he had failed her. And now she was back where she started, feeling the dread of knowing her past life was reaching out for her, grabbing for her. The past week had been a series of forward- and backward-looking moments, a series of peaks and valleys, the travel of which was made more difficult by her not knowing if the end was in sight.

“If we’re going back tonight, we should go before the rain comes, if the rain is coming,” Eddie said, interrupting her thoughts.

“What if the rain doesn’t come?” Jenna asked.

“I’m all for staying. As a cipher, I can be happy anywhere. But I sense that your mind is somewhere else, figuring out where the next shaman will come from or something. So, you tell me. I’ll call Field and he can be here in forty-five minutes, or we can go upstairs and fool around.”

“As much as I’d like to go fool around, my mind is somewhere else—”

“I knew that.”

“So I guess we should go back.”

“I figured.” Eddie stood up. “If you see Motherfish, ask her for a piece of that blueberry pie, will you?” And he headed off toward the back of the bar where a pay phone hung on the wall.

It was five o’clock and far from being dark. The constant daylight was starting to wear on Jenna. She longed for the fall and the freshness of its air, the early darkness that would signal it was time for pumpkins and squashes and all the fall vegetables she loved so much. But that was far in the future. A lot had to be done before she could reach the fall.

Eddie returned to the table with a somber look on his face.

“What’s wrong?” Jenna asked.

“Well, it looks like you’re going to have to make another decision. It seems that your husband is in Wrangell and he and that wise-ass kid went to Field’s house with the sheriff to find you and the dog.”

“Oh.”

“Field didn’t tell them anything. But the sheriff was pretty mad, and your husband and the kid are staking out Field’s place.”

“Oh.”

“So, what do you want to do?”

Jenna sat dumbfounded. Robert had come. Well, it wasn’t like she hadn’t expected it. He came to have it out with her, no doubt. To win her back. To show his love. But she didn’t want that. He was an obstacle now.

“Oh, Eddie, you know what I want to do is disappear. I’m tired, and I thought this shaman was going to tell me something, but he didn’t. So what do I do now? Give up?”

“What do you want to do?”

“Find Bobby. That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do.”

“So, fine. We’ll go back to Wrangell, tell your husband to back off, and then find a shaman who can help. Trust me, there are plenty of shamans around. It’s just finding one who isn’t a quack.”

“That’s it? That’s the plan? Just go back?”

“Well, you don’t want to stay here, do you?”

“No.”

“And you don’t want to go somewhere like Ketchikan or Juneau, do you?”

“I guess not.”

“Then take the bull by the horns. The only way to make a problem go away is by facing it.”

“I’m not sure Robert will go away like that. He just got here.”

“Then I’ll talk to him.”

“Oh, that’ll go over big. ‘Robert, my lover wants to talk to you.’ ”

“Is that what I am? Your lover?”

Jenna flushed. The word sounded so strange coming out of Eddie’s mouth. Lover.

“Maybe,” she said.

Eddie smiled.

“That’s cool.”

He reached across the table and took her hand. She smiled at him.

“So that’s the plan, then, huh? Go back and take the bull by the horns?” Jenna asked.

“Take it by the horns.”

Eddie stood, leaned over the table, and kissed her. Then he turned and walked back to the phone to call Field. As he dialed, Jenna was relieved that he was around to lend his man-ness to the situation: the ability to make snap decisions without second-guessing or regrets. Although she wasn’t looking forward to meeting up with Robert again, she knew it was just a matter of time, and that time might as well be now rather than later.

T
HE WHOLE PLAN
hinges on making them believe you’re still in the house. So you leave the TV on full blast. Turn the set a little so they can see the flicker of light from the street. Then you have to be clever, like that Macaulay Culkin kid in that home movie. What you do is you sit in the chair near the front window. How do they know you never sit in that chair? Then you get up and leave the room, and then come back and sit in it again, you know, being obvious so they see you moving around. But the last time you sit down, kind of turn the back of the chair around so they can’t really see if you’re in it. Then you can slide down the chair onto the floor and get away. The last thing they saw was you sitting down, so they’d figure you were asleep. They wouldn’t figure you left out the back.

Right behind your house are tons of blackberry bushes. And if you slide along the garage, then hunker down and scramble to the bushes, you can just make it without being seen from the street. From there you have to wiggle through the bushes, which can be difficult because of the stickers. But it’s summer, so the thorns are still soft, at least. Then, you follow the tree line behind all the houses and make it to Church Street. From there it’s a straight shot to the docks and your plane.