The Sky Fisherman (12 page)

"People are always buzzing about something," Billyum said. "Especially when it concerns the reservation." Taking a pouch of tobacco out of his pants pocket, he pinched some and began sprinkling it over the body. "You always want to be careful about Wet Shoes," he said.

"Don't tell me you believe in that hokum," Jake snorted. "Wet Shoes and leprechauns."

"It doesn't hurt anything." Billyum zipped the bag closed and stood, then sprinkled tobacco in a circle around the body. "Kalim's grandma and old Sylvester might feel better, knowing I did this right. Anyway, Juniper would have my hide if I didn't."

"They're going to be pretty shook," Jake said. "You think Juniper will come back for Kalim's funeral?"

"Most relatives do," Billyum said.

When he tried sprinkling some of the tobacco on Jake, my uncle shrugged, but didn't jerk away. "I guess it won't hurt none."

"You still got a few things to learn, Jake." Billyum's tone was testy. He put shreds of the tobacco on my shoulders and a little in my hair. "Some of the old people believe that when a person drowns, if his spirit isn't treated right, the ghost comes back out of the water to claim another. If that happens, you hear the spirit walking around the campfire in wet shoes. When I was growing up, lots of fishermen drowned, and all us kids were told to stay close to the fire or the Wet Shoes would get us."

"I doubt Kalim drowned," Jake said, "unless it was in his own blood. That bullet never gave him a chance."

"You're right," Billyum said. "Pretty big caliber, too."

"Either that or a crayfish got him that's big enough to swallow a boat," Jake said.

Billyum grinned at my uncle's joke. "Might be." Taking a pack of Juicy Fruit out of his pocket, he offered me a stick.

"No thanks," I said, shaking my head. Shreds of tobacco clung to his fingers, and I imagined I could smell Kalim on his hands.

Jake took the offered stick and both men started chewing on the gum. "I never have liked this stretch of river," Billyum said. "Nothing but a shitpot full of trouble."

"Don't I know it," Jake said, and I thought he might have been thinking about my father.

"I appreciate you and the boy helping out." Billyum slapped my knee, a little too hard. "Grady's never much interested in missing Indians."

Jake spit at the fire. "Well, hell. I'm going to start cooking that fish." Turning to me, he asked, "What did you use, anyway?"

"Adams," I said.

Jake winked at Billyum and started banging around the cooking gear. "You're not as dumb as you look, Culver."

Billyum chose a rock close to mine and sat in silence a few minutes
while we watched as Jake put some corn meal and Krusteaz in a flat pan, then rolled the fish in the mixture. Billyum took the gum from his mouth and threw it in the fire. "Tastes funny."

Jake fried up the trout, squeezing fresh lemon juice over them, and they were delicious. When I salted the tail and ate it, the thin brittle crackled in my mouth. Inside the papery skin, the pink flesh was moist and hot. More lemon made the fish taste even better.

"You better try one," Jake said to Billyum. "They're never so good as when you eat them on the river."

"That's what you said last night," I said. It was true then, too.

"Watching you guys makes me hungry," Billyum said, helping himself to the fish. "Must have been something puny about that steak. I'm starved already."

After we finished eating, Jake poured steaming cups of coffee from the pot on the coals at the fire's edge. He took a flask of whiskey out of the cooking supplies and poured a shot and a half into each cup. Billyum took the one Jake handed him, sipping it slowly and smiling. I took one, too. It tasted good, and I began to relax.

"Times like these, I know I can never leave this river," Jake said.

"It's pretty peaceful," I said.

Billyum helped himself to more coffee and whiskey. "Did your uncle ever tell you about the time he played in the All-Indian band? Back then, he thought he was going to be one hotshot musician."

"Hell, you don't have to tell the kid everything," Jake said. He was smiling at the memory.

"Remember that little goatee you had?" Billyum asked. "All of about three hairs. He wanted to be Boots Randolph or somebody like that. How he got started was the music teacher asked if anyone wanted to play sax and he thought he said
sex.
After playing awhile, though, he got to be second chair.

"When we were out of school, my cousin Harney had this All-Indian band and they were supposed to play at Jordan Mountain, a pretty rough place. Harney thought about the crowd of loggers and cowboys and railroaders and asked if I knew anybody who wanted to be onstage. Of course, I thought of old Jake. He always wanted to be up there."

"Can you blame me?" Jake asked. "The good-looking women always go for the band guys."

"He figured as soon as he stepped on the stage, women would faint, but there weren't any good-looking women at Jordan Mountain. Just a lot of double uglies, the kind you might invite to tractor pulls, if you
didn't have a tractor. And you should have seen the look on your uncle's face when he saw Harney's half-brother Bruno was already there playing saxophone."

"They didn't want me to play anything," Jake complained. "They just wanted a white guy to keep the drunks off the stage."

Billyum cut Jake off. "It's my story. He was supposed to play the folding chair. His job was to stand up on the stage with this heavy metal chair and bash any loggers or cowboys that tried to scramble onto the stage and grab the mike away from Harney. Meantime, those local boys were getting liquored up and shouting, 'Do you Redskins know "Ira Hays?'" or 'I can play better than any goddamn Indian.' One drunk cowboy had buddies that tried pushing him onto the stage five or six times."

"I've seen some tough hombres," Jake said. "He was the worst. After I clobbered him a couple good ones, they carried him out for stitches, but he promised to come back the next week and kill me."

"If you were Indian," Billyum said, "his buddies would have killed you right there."

Jake shook his head. "The next weekend, that rowdy bastard showed up stone sober. He came after me with an ax handle out behind the dance hall. I rolled under a pickup and yelled bloody murder to keep him from beating me to death."

Billyum nodded. "We heard this screaming inside the dance hall and rushed out to save your uncle. That cowboy had the hardest head I ever slugged." He held up his fist and flexed it. "We packed the band and cleared out before things got really ugly."

"He got in a few solid pokes with that ax handle," Jake said. "My ribs hurt for months." He laughed. "I figured a musician's life was too dangerous, so I took up guiding."

"Taking a bunch of slick dudes fishing," Billyum said. "Old Easy Money." He sighed, leaning back against the rock.

"Harney played a pretty fair guitar and his singing wasn't half bad," Jake said. "I thought maybe he'd make it to Reno or something."

"Me, too." Billyum turned the cup in his hands. "Come back with a big old Caddy and a couple of blond showgirls."

"Couldn't he make the music business?" I asked.

Billyum shook his head. "He got shot up near the Yakima Reservation. This guy who worked swing shift at the fruit-packing plant lipped off once too often and got fired. Came home early, double bent, and found Harney with his wife. Harney ran like hell, but there's no cover
around there, and the guy shot him with his deer rifle. Maybe he was a good guitar player, but Harney couldn't keep his pants zipped."

Jake shook his head. "Too damn bad about Harney. Tough luck. Drunks don't usually shoot straight, except around Yakima."

Just then the moon peeked over the basalt rim, bathing the river and canyon in a cold light. Nobody said anything for a few minutes while we watched the moonrise. Then I asked, "You suppose that's why Kalim got shot? Maybe he was involved with some woman."

"The kid might have something there." Jake half winked at Billyum and a look passed between them that I couldn't fathom. "You suppose Kalim couldn't keep his zipper up?"

Billyum stood and stretched. "You know the rez. Anything's possible. But all this yammering has made me sleepy. I'm gonna throw out my bedroll."

"What about the dishes?" Jake asked. "The kid caught the fish and I cooked them. That means you wash up."

Billyum groaned. "I'm too damn tired. Make you a deal, Culver. You wash up and I'll take you to a couple secret lakes on the rez. We got fish to drool over, but you gotta have a special invitation to get in."

"It might be worth it," Jake told me. "They do have some blue-ribbon trout."

I began gathering the dirty dishes, figuring I could wash up in twenty minutes. "Sounds good." After carrying the dishes and flashlight down to the riverbank, I began scouring the frying pan with sand to cut the grease. The wind was coming upriver, and away from the fire I grew chilled.

Jake and Billyum teased one another as they rolled out the sleeping bags. Billyum looped a horsehair rope around his bag to keep snakes away, and when Jake wisecracked about the Wet Shoes, I turned to watch.

Billyum half swung at Jake, but he ducked away and both men laughed. Everything appeared okay, just a couple of old friends making camp and kidding around. But when I noticed they had put my sleeping bag closest to Kalim, I shivered.

Turning back to the dishes, I saw one of the tin cups floating away. It bobbed toward the boat, just out of reach. "Shit," I said as it filled with water and sank. Picking up the flashlight, I waded out to the spot, but it was deeper than I thought and the cold water swirled around my thighs. Playing the beam onto the river bottom, I didn't see the cup, but I was startled to see a large crayfish scuttle between rocks, dragging a piece of fish gut. Stepping back, I bumped my arm against the boat. The flashlight fell into the water, winking out.

I reached for it, but stopped when my fingers touched the water. I was afraid to grope among the dark rocks at the river bottom. The Wet Shoes business was just a crazy superstition, I knew, but I felt as if some icy hand could reach up from the river bottom and claim mine. Standing in the cold water, my legs grew numb and I grabbed the boat, clutching its side for balance.

I wanted to call out, but waited until my fear passed, leaving me with emptiness and disappointment. Deep in the marrow of my bones, I felt that nothing was going to turn out as we had hoped, and I felt sick for all of us, especially my mother.

T
HAT SUMMER
lightning ignited so many fires it seemed half the West was burning. Everyone remembers the big Montana fires, because of the destroyed wildlife, and the Hell's Canyon burn that charred a lot of eastern Oregon and Idaho, but there were hundreds of others, too, so many the smoke-jumping Hot-Shots couldn't get to half of them. Smoke from the fires close by drifted over Gateway skies, dimming the sun and hanging like a pall.

A rash of mysterious barn fires erupted across the West, isolated wooden barns blowing like tinderboxes. The work of arsonists, according to the authorities. Some farmers lost their structures and hay but others lost the stock. One described the horrible smell of burning horseflesh.

Timber and grass fires swept across the reservation, and some Gateway residents said the Indians set them on purpose, trying to make firefighting jobs for themselves, but Jake said that was just mean talk, although he acknowledged the Alaskan natives were known for that. Everybody worried about the cold deck at the plywood mill, and the company kept giant sprinklers circulating on top of the stacked logs soaking the top layer's bark, even though the lower layers were so dry a carelessly tossed cigarette would ignite the entire deck. Mule Mullins claimed once those logs started, nothing could stop them until the entire deck was destroyed.

The ground was parched as baked clay, and puffs of dust rose from my feet wherever I walked. The fires kept me jittery thinking about Riley. Our house was so hot we slept with the doors open, although we kept the screens locked for security.

Some nights I'd dream I was choking on smoke. Riley hunched over a square metal can pouring kerosene and the thick fumes filled the room. He shuffled along, dousing the floors and furniture. Turning in my direction, his eyes danced with reflected flames, while outside, beyond the smoke-darkened windows, fires consumed so many houses, I could tell this place was larger and more dangerous than Griggs.

When Riley held out the can, I seized it, inhaling the fumes. He led me to the bedroom he'd shared with my mother and showed me where to pour. After he stripped back the covers, I soaked their mattress, then the clothes hanging in their closet, finally the gaping bureau drawers that held her nightgowns and underwear.

Suddenly the entire room was burning, although I never struck a match, and when I turned to run from the fire, they were all watching: Riley, my mother, Jake, even Dwight and his wife. Someone else, too, an obscure figure backlit by the flames. The shadowy face could have been my father's.

I'd awaken with my heart boxing my chest, my hand jammed in my mouth to stifle a yell. After a few minutes I'd go into the kitchen and let the water run a long time, splashing some of it onto my face to make certain I was good and awake. Then I'd just listen awhile and hear a train off in the distance, and I'd think, yes, that's the three-eighteen night freight coming to the trestle. And even though I knew by then it was just a dream, I sometimes smelled kerosene on my hands after I awoke, and I washed them until they smelled like the lemony dish soap we kept in the kitchen.

I was glad none of these episodes woke my mother, for she was a heavy sleeper most of the time. Some nights I'd stand at the doorway to her bedroom, listening for her steady breathing and gentle snore, watching the easy rise and fall of bedcovers. Then I'd return to my bedroom hoping everything was all right for now but knowing Riley could show up at any time. And wondering, too, who was setting fire to those barns all across the West with no regard to property or life, imagining someone out there as wild and unhinged as Riley, maybe not a bad man, really, but one who was pushed by circumstances beyond his limits.