Jimmy Bluefeather: A Novel

Jimmy Bluefeather: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

Book: Jimmy Bluefeather: A Novel Read Online Free PDF
Author: Kim Heacox
Tags: Fiction, Coming of Age, Family Life, Native American & Aboriginal, Skins
hospital cafeteria, a knot of people sitting solemnly beneath sterile white lights. Old Kebshuffled up behind his youngest girl and touched her. She turned to bury her face in his tattered coat. He held her shaking head with his bent fingers and didn’t tell her it was going to be okay. He just hummed the way he used to when she was impossibly small, hummed until he could feel her mind close around the sad truth of it.
    Without a word, Ruby grabbed a meal tray and got in line for something to eat. Coach Nicks stood and thanked Old Keb for coming. Three basketball boys who had flown down with Ruby, Keb, and Little Mac joined their teammates at the table, grabbed the last of the French fries and wiped greasy fingers on their baggy pants. Built like rails, they had no hips that Keb could see. Shunned by Ruby, Little Mac stood in reserved silence, her dark eyes without reflection. Coach Nicks said the surgery had taken two hours. James was in post-op. The doctors would see him and Gracie in ten minutes or so to “give a prognosis.”
    Prognosis. Old Keb remembered the word. He remembered the hospital too, the shiny floors and bright lights, the clattering of metal gurneys and the strange, sweet smell of antiseptic, the green Jell-O and purple potato salad, the absence of wood smoke and birdsong and children playing and the sky leaping to every horizon. Nurses who woke you up to feed you a sleeping pill.
    Keb had to pee. He had to pee so often he reckoned his bladder was the size of a thimble. Big ears, small bladder, bad teeth. These were his rewards for achieving old age and outliving his wife, his friends, his brothers and sisters, and hardest of all, his three sons. Only Ruby and Gracie were left, tested by God to see beyond their differences.
    Keb followed the others as they made their way up to intensive care, and waited. So much waiting, people holding each other, staring into the distance, turning the pages of glossy magazines but seeing nothing. An hour later Coach Nicks broke the news. None of James’s injuries was life threatening. The MRI—whatever that was—showed no brain damage. The punctured lung would heal. No sign of infection. But the knee was gone. Old Keb watched the color drain from Coach Nicks’s face as he heard Coach say, “James will never play basketball again.”
    One of James’s teammates let out a wail, his voice so hurt-filled that it nearly knocked Old Keb off his feet. Another boy reached for him but Coach Nicks said, “Let him go,” as the grief-stricken boy bolted and ran down the hall. The others stood firm, fighting back tears. Coach Nicks pulled them into a huddle, football style, and said things Keb couldn’t hear.
    Nearby, Gracie and Little Mac held each other and cried.
    The old man shuffled to the window where Ruby stood facing outside, away from him, her elbow on the wall, one hand running through her long gray-streakedhair, the other gripping one of those little phones. “It’s not good,” he heard her say, probably to Günter, her husband.
    Günter was talking now, the good German engineer who tried to fix everything. Ruby had met him at Princeton, dated him for one month, and married him.
    “You’re not hearing me,” Keb heard Ruby say, as if she were arguing with the window. “Beyond basketball, James’s dreams end, his life will be over now, as far as he sees it. . . . He’s going to be lucky if he ever walks again without a limp or a cane. . . .”
    Keb felt the world spin. He wanted to reach for Ruby and find her through the distance of years, through the thousand things that made them different to the one or two things that still made them the same. He turned and caught Coach Nicks looking at him. “Keb,” he said, “you want to join us?” One step at a time, the old carver approached the huddle. It opened to take him in. The boys kept their heads down and shoulders low. Keb didn’t have to bend down like them. They were at his height now. “Is
Read Online Free Pdf

Similar Books

Beautiful Antonio

Vitaliano Brancati

Submitting to the Boss

Jasmine Haynes

Moffie

Andre Carl van der Merwe

The Irish Upstart

Shirley Kennedy

Meghan's Dragon

E. M. Foner

IceAgeLover

Marisa Chenery

The Scent of Blood

Tanya Landman

The Shadow Woman

Åke Edwardson