McKean S02 Blood Tide Read Online Free PDF

wooden staff with totemic animals carved on it, and we discussed the circumstances of Billy Seaweed’s death. As we talked, a bald eagle called several times from a snag tree across the river on a little island. Two more eagles flew overhead and the first eagle flapped off to follow them toward the mouth of the Duwamish River, flying under the gray rainbow of the West Seattle Freeway bridge.
    “That’s a fledgling,” remarked Henry George. “Joining Mom and Dad for his first hunt, going fishing along Alki Beach. Maybe Billy Seaweed’s spirit is in that eagle.”
    “Too bad about Billy,” McKean sympathized.
    “Billy’s buried now in the white man way,” George murmured. “Highpoint Cemetery. He should be over there on Muddy Island, left in a canoe until the birds pick his bones clean. Then you put the bones in a cedar box and maybe make a totem. Billy wasn’t rich or famous enough for a totem, I suppose.”
    We stood in silent contemplation until the old man said, “Look at Muddy Island, over there. White men cut it in half, shrank it, polluted it, gave it a white man’s name, Kellogg Island. Treated it just like they treated the Duwamish people. We’re a little polluted island of Indians in a white man’s world nowadays. New things like freeway bridges and Microsoft computers and Boeing airplanes and Amazon books go right over our heads.”
    “I’m sorry,” McKean consoled. “You strike me as one who could benefit from leaving here for a reservation where you’d be better accommodated.”
    The old man laughed and answered McKean with a question. “Why don’t you leave Seattle and go live some other place?”
    For once, McKean seemed at a loss for words. After a moment’s thought he said, “I get your point.”
    “You don’t need to feel sorry for me,” George went on. “You see, the old ways aren’t all dead yet. The river still snakes past here like A’yahos. It goes this way and that with the tide,” he made slithering motions with a hand. “Billy proved A’yahos’ medicine is still strong. Now, President Bush, he took his pen and wiped us Duwamish people off the map but we’re still here and there’s another president. A’yahos knows better than presidents. The tide will turn again.”