Jimmy Bluefeather: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

Pasternak, who, together with Myrtle Applewhite, a chicken wrangler, owned the Rumor Mill Café. “Keb, we’ve got hermit thrushes singing up here.”
    “Oyyee . . .” Keb loved thrushes. He loved Helen Pasternak too, her cooking anyway, and the way she looked in an apron and might look in only an apron. But she was too young for him, in her sixties. He had never had a woman since Bessie. Never would.
    Helen said, “Hang on, Keb. Truman wants to say something.”
    “Hey, Keb, you staying out of trouble down there?”
    “I guess.”
    “I finished another chapter in my war novel.” Truman was always writing a war novel, what he called “a John Steinbeck–Joseph Heller kind of story,” a sequel to
Catch-22
.
Catch-23
maybe, or a prequel,
Catch-11
, only half as good but still damn good. “You know what I mean?” he would ask.
    Keb had no idea what he meant. But he liked Truman, and listened, and imagined eating the “death by chocolate” ice cream that Helen ordered special from Sitka. It never tasted as good as the stuff he had with little Christopher inCalifornia, but he would eat it all the same and thank Helen, and maybe put off dying for a while. Maybe get out of bed each morning to move his bones and live another day. Maybe hear another story down at the Rumor Mill, or Vic’s Barbershop, or Nystad’s Mercantile, or Mitch’s Garage, or Albert Bestow’s Measure Twice Cut Once Fine Carpentry and Cabinetry, another story from another friend that made him laugh and helped the sun rise in his eyes.
    “Hey, Keb,” said Dag (maybe it was Oddmund), “Daisy’s kicking our butts in cribbage. You’d better get back up here and put her in her place.”
    “I’ll do that,” Keb said, suddenly tired.
    Dag told him that Steve the Lizard Dog had eaten one of Truman’s books. Truman wasn’t so mad about it because the dog had literary taste. “Get it? Literary taste, eating a book?” Keb didn’t get it.
    “Give James our best,” Helen said. “And Gracie and Little Mac too.”
    They hung up. Ruby had gone out. Where was Little Mac? Keb tried to turn off the phone. Too many buttons. He put it in his pocket and pulled out the feather. Standing, he felt dizzy; he’d forgotten to eat and drink. He saw James glance his way and turn back to the TV. They were alone now, grandfather and grandson. But the advertising man on TV did all the talking: “You can’t get by without it. The new Resolve, the aftershave you’ve always been waiting for. It’s everything you need.”
    Everything you need?
Wasn’t it enough, Keb wondered, to feel the wind in your face, to drink the rain and pet a friendly dog and know the softness of a woman’s thigh? Wasn’t it enough to hear a wolf howl, to build a morning fire in the kitchen cookstove, to taste the first nagoonberry pie of summer, to carve a spoon from alder? Wasn’t it enough to feel the tide run beneath your boat, a boat you built with hand tools and great heart? Keb put the feather on his grandson’s bed, and made for the door. “What’s this?” James asked, his voice flinty.
    “It’s for you, to help you get well. It’s from Raven.”
    “I know it’s from a raven.”
    “No, not
a
raven. It’s from Raven, Yéil.”
    James turned back to the TV.
    “What color is it?” Keb asked.
    “It’s black.”
    “Look closer.”
    “It’s black, Gramps. I’m not stupid.”
    “Look closer.”
    “What? What am I supposed to see?”
    “Something to help you get better.”
    “Get better? How am I supposed to get better? My life is ruined. It’s over. I might as well be dead.”
    His words broke bones. Keb’s hand went heavy on his cane. Part of him faltered, another part straightened. A seventeen-year-old boy? His life over? Keb wanted to thump him over the head. No need. Little Mac did it for him. She came into the room and said, “Shut up, James. I’m sick of your bad attitude. We all are.”
    James’s mouth fell open.
    Little Mac began to cry. “We