The Raven's Gift Read Online Free PDF Page B

stinky blackfish!” Marylynn retorted.
    “No name-calling,” their mother said. The kids fell silent again.
    The cab pulled back on the roller coaster road. Anna tapped the driver on his shoulder and asked, “Hey, what’s the deal with those giant tanks? Are those fuel tanks?”
    Off to the right of the road sat a complex of huge white containers, at least a dozen of them. It reminded John of pictures he’d seen of oil complexes in the Middle East.
    “They don’t drill oil here, do they?” Anna asked.
    Their driver laughed. “Here? No way. I wish. We wouldn’t be so damn poor then. That place, we call the tank farm. It’s our local fuel supply. All of our gas and heating oil for the whole town and all the river communities is stored there. They bring it up the river on a fuel barge. The last barge will be here in a few weeks, before freeze-up. My new taxi, a sweet 2004 Buick, will be on this next barge. That’s the jail, and that is YK, the regional hospital, right there.”
    He pointed off to a yellow space-age building on his left. Like almost all the buildings it sat high off the ground on stilts of some sort, except this one had rounded walls and windows that looked like portholes.
    “It looks like a submarine!”
    “Yellow submarine, they call it. Like the Beatles song. Classic. They’re just starting to remodel and repaint it. Locals are sorta pissed. We like to be a bit different here in Bethel.”
    Molly laughed with him as the cab hit another giant heave in the road.
    “Yeah, different, for sure,” she said. “So many kinds of people. Everything is so expensive. I wish we could have just stayed in the village. No jobs there, though. Too depressing.”
    The cab took a hard left and pulled into a dusty parking lot and stopped.
    “Here’s the cultural centre,” he said.
    John started to unload their bags while Anna went to pay the driver, who stayed in his seat.
    “How much do we owe you?” she asked.
    “Fourteen dollars.”
    “What? It says seven.”
    “The trip from the airport to town is seven. You and him equals fourteen.”
    “I told you things was a rip-off,” Molly said.
    “Hell,” the driver said, “if this is your first time in Bethel, the ride’s on me.”
    “Really? Thanks,” Anna said. “What about them?”
    “Yeah. My ride better be free then, too. I’m new to Bethel, too,” Molly said.
    “Yeah right, lady.”
    “We’re paying for them, then,” Anna said. “How much?”
    “Twenty-five,” he said.
    “What?”
    “Five of them.”
    “Pay him,” John said as he pulled his backpack from the rear seat. “They said they’d reimburse us.”
    “But twenty-five?”
    “Just pay him for us,” John said.
    “No, I’m paying for them .”
    She ducked back in the taxi, paid the driver, shook Molly’s hand, patted the kids on the head again, and closed the door extra hard. As the cab drove off, she tucked her wallet back into her satchel. “The least I could do was help her,” she said.
    “You’re generous to a fault, you know?”
    “There are worse faults to have, Johnny,” she said, pinching his butt.
    He stretched and took a deep breath of the air. It smelled heavy, wet; a cool, swampy dampness hung in the breeze. A few mosquitoesbegan to gather around their heads and she swatted at them. Houses and buildings were the only thing between him and infinite horizon on all sides of the town.
    THE NIGHT BEFORE he found the girl, the night before he planned to start walking, he tore the shrink wrap off a ream of notebooks and took the top one, a red-covered lined one, and opened it to the first page. He took a No. 2 pencil, pre-sharpened, from a box of office supplies in the corner, and tried to write. He didn’t know why he felt like picking up the pencil, or what compelled him to do it, but when he had the paper there in front of him he couldn’t do a thing. No words. Nothing came to him.
    He set the graphite tip to the page. Just enough moonlight came through