Raven Stole the Moon (41 page)

I
T WAS AROUND TEN O’CLOCK AND
J
ENNA HAD ALREADY GONE
to bed. Robert and Eddie stayed up by the fire. They were worried about David. They decided that they would call his wife the next morning if he hadn’t returned. According to what Jenna had told them, if he hadn’t made it back by then, something bad must have happened. But then they heard the kitchen door open and water running and they rushed to see if it was him.

David was standing in front of the work sink in the mudroom, naked, washing the blood and dirt off himself. He looked up when Eddie and Robert entered the room.

“Is Jenna back?” he asked.

“She got back a couple of hours ago,” Robert told him. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Is she okay?”

“Yeah. She went to sleep.”

“Good. Did she say if it went all right?”

“She said she did it, whatever
it
is.”

David smiled and dried himself off with a towel.

“I’m sure that one day she’ll tell you all about it.”

David wrapped the towel around his waist and stepped into the kitchen. He opened a cupboard and pulled out a jar of peanut butter and a box of saltines.

“I’m starving.”

He spread peanut butter on a cracker and ate it.

“Do you want me to get you some clothes?” Eddie asked.

David nodded, his mouth full.

“Do you know where they are?”

“At this point, we know where everything is in your house.” Eddie chuckled, leaving the kitchen.

Robert watched David eat more crackers. It looked as if he hadn’t eaten in days.

“So, what went on out there?”

“You wouldn’t believe it,” David said, shaking his head.

“I’ll believe it. Some things happened here, too, you know.”

David looked Robert in the eyes for several moments, nodding slowly. Then he knelt down and opened a cupboard, taking out a bottle of brandy.

“Special occasions only,” he said, standing up and admiring the bottle.

“Is this a special occasion?”

“Yeah.” David smiled. ”I think this qualifies.”

T
HE REST HAPPENED
so quickly Jenna could hardly get her bearings. It seemed to her that there should have been more to it. A commemorative ceremony or something. An ending. Closure. But there was none.

She slept through the night without disturbance. Robert woke her early in the morning, and Tom from the store was already there, anxious to get a move on. After a quick good-bye with David, Tom took Robert, Eddie, and Jenna back to town, where Field was waiting to shuttle them to Wrangell.

As they walked up the dock toward Main Street in Wrangell, Jenna panicked. This would be the only chance she would have to say good-bye to Eddie. She hadn’t had time to talk with him, to explain things. There was so much to explain. So much he needed to know about her. So much she needed to tell him.

Eddie’s truck was still parked at the dock, and Jenna was relieved that he offered to take her and Robert to the airport. There was a flight to Juneau soon, and from there they could get a flight to Seattle. They would be home by evening.

They drove silently to the airport, and as they passed the quiet storefronts, gray from the overcast sky, Jenna felt empty inside. As if she would never be by this way again. It was closure, but it wasn’t the closure she had hoped for. It was like shutting the door on an empty room. A room that was once full of life but had lost its usefulness.

The plane was waiting for them on the runway when they arrived. Eddie pulled the truck up to the terminal building.

“The plane leaves in half an hour,” Robert offered. “I’ll go take care of the tickets.”

But he didn’t move. None of them moved for a minute, as if to let the moment have its deserved weight. Then Robert offered his hand to Eddie. They shook hands, and Robert slipped out of the truck and jogged into the terminal.

Eddie turned off the engine and he and Jenna sat in silence for a few moments.

“He’s a good guy,” Eddie said. “Once you get to know him.”

Jenna laughed, and then the silence returned.

“I’m sorry,” Jenna said, finally.

Eddie looked over at her kindly.

“Don’t be. We had what we had, and we knew what it was. That’s all.”

“I know, but . . .”

He smiled at her a little too broadly, and she could see he was fighting to remain cheerful, struggling to smile in the face of loss. She forced a smile.

“I’ll miss you.”

Eddie reached into his pocket and pulled out a silver chain. He dangled the kushtaka charm in front of Jenna.

“You forgot this. I found it on the dresser in your room.”

Jenna took the necklace and looked at it closely. She wanted to keep it, but she knew she couldn’t. It didn’t belong to her anymore. She had left it for the room and for Eddie. So they would remember her.

“I want you to keep it,” she said, handing it back to Eddie. “So you won’t forget me.”

He took the necklace.

“I couldn’t have anyway.”

Again, silence softly filled the truck. It was not a time for talk. Even though Jenna felt that she wanted to say so much, words would have clouded the moment. Clever things would have been said, empty banter used to chase away the truth. They chose, instead, to spend their remaining moments together in silence.

“You’d better go,” Eddie said, gesturing to Robert, who had stuck his head out of the terminal.

Without a word, Jenna leaned over and kissed Eddie on the cheek. She opened her door and stepped out of the truck, disappearing into the building without looking back.

Eddie drove his truck to the end of the runway. He slipped on the necklace Jenna had given him and held the silver charm in his fingers, trying to remember what Jenna had felt like in his arms. He sat on the hood of his truck and waited. He wanted to see her go. He wanted to see her fly out of his life as strangely and as suddenly as she had flown into it.

He watched as the steps were rolled away from the Alaska Airlines jet. The plane taxied away from Eddie, then quickly turned and accelerated down the runway toward him, throwing itself into the sky with a thunderous roar, disappearing into the gray ceiling of clouds, far above his head.

T
HEY STEPPED INTO THE HOUSE AND CLICKED ON THE LIGHTS.
Everything was different, but nothing had changed.

It was nine o’clock and they decided to go out and get a bite to eat. Robert went upstairs to take a quick shower and change. Jenna wandered around the house, trying to refamiliarize herself with the rooms and the objects in them.

In the kitchen, Jenna got herself a glass of water. As she let the water run, she noticed the empty yartzheit candle glass sitting on a plate next to the sink. A mere lifetime ago. It all seemed so far in the past. Only now has it been put behind us.

She sat down at the kitchen table and fingered through a pile of unopened mail, mostly junk, and scattered newspapers, feeling that she had taken a wrong turn somewhere. She knew that there was no other choice she could have made. She had to find out if her life would return to normal. She had to know if the distance between Robert and her was incidental or essential, and it wouldn’t be right to assume one way or the other. Besides, you can’t throw away your old life just like that. Still, there was something wrong. There was something missing, an emptiness inside her.

She knew what it was. It wasn’t a mystery. It would fade with time. She had made a choice, and there was no use looking back. But there had been something there, and it would take a while for it to go away.

His telephone number was on a piece of brown paper stuffed in her wallet. She unfolded the paper and looked at it. She should throw it away. What good would it do her? What good would come of using it? The idea of hearing his voice, his bright and cheerful voice, made her think of calling. Robert was still in the shower; she could hear the water running. He would never know. Maybe she could call him and try to tell him all those things she had wanted to say in his truck. All the explanations she wanted to make about who she was and why she did the things she did. She owed him that, after all. She owed him so much. He had saved her. When no one else would, he saved her, and she loved him for that. That might not help him to know. It probably wouldn’t make him feel better, but he should know it. And also, she’d never said good-bye. She had been afraid to. She thought it would be too final, too permanent. She should call and tell him good-bye, if nothing else. Tell him she got home safe. Tell him she missed him already.

She dialed the number and it rang three times. She could see him, walking down the hallway in his worn jeans and old T-shirt. Reaching for the black phone in the living room.

There was no answer. Four, five.

Standing in the kitchen, turning off the heat under the frying pan, wiping his hands on the dishcloth. Stacking the pancakes on a plate before he picks up.

Seven, eight.

In the shower, drying his lean body quickly with only one arm, bright and fresh after a good scrubbing, rushing down the hall naked, a towel clutched to his chest.

Eleven, twelve.

A house, sitting empty, quiet. A hollow shell, its silence marred by the clanging of a little black box that rings and rings. Hoping, wishing that someone, anyone, would pick up.

Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen.

When my publisher offered to release a new edition of
Raven Stole the Moon
, which had been out of print for many years, I was pleased but somewhat nervous: Would I look back at my first novel, written thirteen years ago, and feel the need to rewrite vast portions of it?

Fortunately, the answer was no. Other than restoring the sequence of the first two chapters to the order I had originally intended, I found the only changes I wanted to make were to cut much of the vulgarity in the first edition. (I don’t know why, when I was thirty-one, I found cursing such a crucial form of expression. Perhaps now that my children are older, I’d prefer they have a gentler view of their old dad . . .)

In preparing the manuscript for this edition, I did laugh out loud at the absurdity of certain things—a world without cell phones? No Internet? It’s hard to believe, sometimes, that 1996 was really the threshold of the digital revolution. We seemed so proud of our technology back then, though now a phone the size of a credit card has more memory than a room full of Pentium PCs. I didn’t update these technology issues, however, as I felt that
Raven Stole the Moon
benefits from retaining the innocence of the pre-digital era.

I would like to make a brief comment on the use of my Tlingit heritage in this novel:

My mother was born in Wrangell, Alaska; my grandmother was born in Point Ellis. My great-grandmother, a full-blooded Tlingit, lived in Klawock, though her place of birth is unknown. I was not born in Alaska; nor was I raised with any Tlingit culture in my household; still, my blood quantum is verified, I am registered with the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, and I am a Sealaska shareholder. Simply put, I am a Tlingit more by blood than by culture.

Because of the policies of the United States government regarding Alaskan natives, there is a generation or more of Tlingit who were deprived of their cultural ties. This is not to say that Tlingit culture no longer exists; there are many Tlingit who have maintained the wonderful tradition of language, ceremony, and art that, with the help of the Internet, is spreading to younger generations of Tlingit who may have lost touch with their past.

I am not an authority on Tlingit theology, and my ideas of certain rituals and ideas as portrayed in this novel are based on reading I have done and by listening to the stories my uncles and aunts told me when I was young; Alaskans are famous storytellers, and my uncles and aunts were no exception. I apologize if the liberties I have taken cause offense.

There are many books available for anyone interested in a more traditional account of Tlingit myths and legends, such as
Shamans and Kushtakas
and
Heroes and Heroines in Tlingit-Haida Legend
, both by Mary Giraudo Beck; and
Tlingit Myths and Texts
, a collection of native stories recorded by John R. Swanton.

My objective in writing this book was to tell a compelling story, like those I heard when I was a kid at the campfire with my extended family. Those stories sent chills down my spine, raised the hair on my neck, and yet made me crave the next camping trip when I could hear them again. With that in mind, I want to acknowledge the greatest narrative influences in my life: my mother, Yolanda Ferguson Stein, and her siblings: Billie, Margaret, Jean, Hall, Valentine, Robin, Steele, and Thorne.

Garth Stein

Seattle, 2009

GARTH STEIN
is the author of three novels, including the
New York Times
bestseller
The Art of Racing in the Rain
and
How Evan Broke His Head and Other Secrets
, and a play,
Brother Jones
. He has worked as a documentary filmmaker, and he lives in Seattle with his family.

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RAVEN STOLE THE MOON.
Copyright © 1998 by Garth Stein. Copyright renewed © 2010 by Bright White Light LLC. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

ISBN 978-0-06-180638-4

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EPub Edition © 2009 ISBN: 9780061969515