Feather for Hoonah Joe Read online

  Once back in Hoonah she would sort through everything and try to understand why this man she had not had any contact with for over sixty years had chosen to leave her his meager belongings and whatever the envelopes from RSB box 7 contained. But for now, her Joey was waiting and she had a business to run with the busy tourist season almost in full swing.

  In the fall she would return to Rhinebeck if necessary, or maybe just to smell the violets now gone wild.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Back in Hoonah

  “Sal’s back,” Della shouted as she breezed through the door of Beachmoppers on her way to work. “See ya later, Uncle Joe.”

  Joe Michael raced across town, forgetting the load of trash he had stuffed into the bed of his dualie, which now left a trail of loose papers and cardboard behind him.

  “You’re back sooner ‘n I thought you’d be,” he said. “Why did ya go and take a cab anyway? Why didn’t you just call me or Mara or Doug to—”

  Sal threw her arms around him, kissing him fully on the lips.

  “You know that there’s nothing in Rhinebeck that could keep me away very long,” she said, surprising even herself at the way her childhood diction had returned, and causing Joe to momentarily raise one eyebrow at the sound of her voice.

  “Della says that Elzi and her entourage arrived yesterday,” he said, stepping back to pull out a chair for his wife at the table near the window where they usually had lunch. After he had seated her, he sat in his own chair right across from her. “Come to think of it, there’s been a bunch of city people wandering into the business for the last day or so.”

  “Ya can spot ‘em a mile away in all those brand-new outdoor catalog clothes,” Sal laughed.

  The sandwiches that Mara had dropped off for Joe earlier were wonderful. When they had finished eating, they lingered in their familiar places, sitting silently with each gazing at the peaceful grayness of the ocean.

  “I guess I could just sit here all day if I let myself,” Sal said wistfully, before getting up to take the dirty dishes to the sink.

  “There’s no better place on earth,” Joe agreed, before pushing himself away from the table that Sal had just wiped down before carrying her bag to the laundry room and emptying its contents into the washer.

  “I still can’t believe you didn’t call one of us to pick you up,” Joe said.

  “Hell’s afire, Joey, ya know and I know how danged busy you are this time a year. Don’tcha think that’s why God made cabs?”

  “It’s hard for me to believe that you have another side to you, Sal,” Joe laughed. “In spite of that swanky accent you’re sayin’ is the real you, you still sound just like the woman I fell in love with and married up here in Alaska.”

  “That’s because I am the woman ya fell in love with and married, Joe. There ain’t nothin’ about that that’s changed one iota. Besides, ya never know when that highfalutin’ accent I grew up with will come in handy. Now how about some nice hot tea and I’ll fill you in on my time in Rhinebeck.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Showtime

  Elzi LaMonte, her every move captured by a young man with a large video camera, stooped to pick up an item off one the tables inside Beachmoppers.

  “May I handle it?” she said to Mara, who had followed the entourage to see what was going on.

  “Well, I mean—yes—of course,” Mara stuttered.

  “Don’t fret, dear, I’ll use due care,” Elzi snipped.

  Elzi paused dramatically, her long silk scarf sweeping the tops of the goods that the table bore, before reaching for a glass fishing float that was an unusual color of opalescent gray. She held it up to capture the light, turning it slowly with the tips of her fingers, as the cameraman stepped closer and zoomed in on her face, her hands, and then on Mara’s face.

  “Tell me what you know about it. What you think its value is?” Elzi said, turning her back to put the float back down on the table before Mara could answer.

  When she turned back around, Doug Williams was staring down at her from his place in front of his wife.

  “I’m sorry ma’am, but we do not allow photographers inside Beachmoppers for security purposes,” he said in a firm, but gentlemanly voice, as he placed the palm of one hand in front of the camera lens to stop the filming.

  “There was no sign, young man. Is the manager here? I mean, surely that would not be you, now, would it? Someone, so—so—I don’t know, someone so—uh—obviously—well, no need to insult you.”

  Doug did not shrink back the way Elzi had expected him to. In her years of perfecting her dismissive demeanor, she had seldom encountered anyone who would not immediately back off when she squared her shoulders, lifted her chin, and issued whatever directive—whether succinctly stated or inferred—she issued.

  “I’m the danged manager, owner, proprietor, and the hell-fired end a your snoopin’ around ma business, Elzianne LaMonte,” Sal interrupted, walking up to face her sister full on. “And git that danged camera offa ma face ya little twerp,” she said, brushing the camera with one hand while leaning on the table with her other.

  “Oh, Sylvia, you have so deftly managed that colloquial little accent to the point that a body would almost believe you came from right here at the end of all things civilized,” Elzianne said coolly.

  “I don’t know who you are or why you have decided to come all the way to Hoonah to terrorize my wife, ma’am,” Joe Michael said evenly, stepping out from behind a partition near the table. His voice was soft and low with its monotonic accent belying the anger that was overtaking his normally gentle nature. “But you need to understand that the fact that I’m standing here talking to you at all would be viewed by just about anybody who knows me as a clear sign that you are going somewhere with your highfalutin’ pushiness that you will live to regret.”

  “Take it easy, now, Joe,” Doug said, stepping forward and placing a hand on Joe Michael’s shoulder. “Let me—”

  Joe jerked his shoulder away from Doug in a rare display of defiance. “Not this time, Doug. This time, I’ll take care of—”

  “Excuse me, Sir. Are you threatening me? Somebody call Dorland,” Elzi said, waving her arm in a dramatic sweep that sent her staff into an apparently well-rehearsed clamor to please her.

  “I think it’s best if you leave,” Mara said, trying to smooth the rapidly escalating confrontation.

  “No one, nobody, throws Elzianne Jeanette LaMonte out of anywhere!” Elzi hissed.

  “That’s not what the danged tabloids said, Elzi. Now get movin” afore I call the law,” Sal bellowed.

  Mara dared not breathe until she heard the huge wooden door to Beachmoppers thump closed. No one said anything as the few remaining tourists hurried toward the exit. Sal actually left the room, followed quickly by Joe Michael, leaving her and Doug to busy themselves straightening tables before finally following suit.

  By the next morning, Doug had hammered up a large sign that read: No cameras. We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone, and Mara had designed and printed up handouts outlining rules of conduct—including a ban on cameras—for those choosing to visit Beachmoppers.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Reflection

  When the cruise ship pulled out the next morning, Joe, Sal, Mara, and Doug all waved as if in some desperate attempt to regain the goodwill of the passengers who had all but abandoned Beachmoppers after their confrontation with Elzi.

  Doug had done his best at damage control by meeting with the cruise director to explain some of the circumstances of the altercation—an effort he polished by providing 10 percent discounts to all of that cruise line’s passengers for the remainder of the season.

  “I ain’t one ta suck up ta the touri, Doug,” Sal sputtered. “Danged, nosy, meddlin’, no-good-enough-ta-even-earn-the-name-a-sister, dysfunctional excuse fer a relative . . .”

  “What’s wrong with Aunt Sal?” Della asked her uncle.

  Joe Michael took his niece by the ar
m and led her out to his dualie.

  “How about if we go out for some coffee and I’ll try to explain,” he told her.

  When he reached for his truck keys, he felt the feather brush against his thumb.

  For just an instant, tears welled in his eyes as the significance of the feather came into his consciousness. This situation, everything that had been going on with Sal, had to be more than a simple family feud or why else would he have been given the feather? He was as tired of all the drama as everyone else he was close to had become. At his advanced age, could he even handle another battle?

  He reached for the feather again. He felt its softness held together by the quill’s strong spine. Mara had given it to him. What did that mean? Hadn’t he been the one who had first given it to her—a protector sent to cross paths with her by some unknown destiny. Mara, once a stranger and now like a daughter to him—perhaps even somehow sent to him by a greater power—now protecting him.

  It was not as though it was the first time she had done so. There had been many instances when he had known that their destinies were entwined, starting back when her father had risked his life to save him in the Vietnam War, and later leading to his own promise on that friend’s deathbed that he would always look out for her.

  He steered the dualie into the parking lot of the local coffee shop, automatically putting it in park before walking around to open the door for Della. If nothing else, Joe Michael was a gentleman to all who knew him.

  “Well, do you, Uncle Joe?” Della asked, squinting her eyes and cocking her head to try to force an answer.

  “Do I what, Della?” Joe said, his thoughts snapping back to the present.

  “Do you think that Aunt Sal is going to be okay, what with her sister giving her so much trouble and all that?” Della asked. Hadn’t he understood the question the first two times she had asked it?

  Still, Joe Michael didn’t answer. Instead, taking Della by the arm, he led her inside.

  Something was wrong, and Della chose not to push the matter.

  “I’ll have regular black coffee,” Joe told their server.

  “And a shot-in-the-dark for me,” Della said.

  “That’s funny, the way coffee comes with names now,” Joe laughed.

  Della rolled her eyes before patting the old man on the hand with one hand while scrolling through the texts on her smartphone with the other.

  “I gotta be at work in an hour,” she announced. “And Mara says to send you over to Beachmoppers if I find you.”

  Joe watched as Della used both thumbs to type her replies. Her arm had healed well enough to allow her such use. He looked heavenward and said a silent thank you that she had recovered from the horrible ambush that had left her arm nearly destroyed by the gunshot of a conscienceless outlaw.

  He had settled that score by capturing the young man who was so evil that he had gunned down his own father before Joe’s eyes. A trial had convicted the murderer and a judge had sentenced him to life in prison with no opportunity for parole. Two appeals had failed in the courts already, and Joe Michael was certain that Carlos Antoya would never again hurt Della or anyone else, for that matter. For the good man, Santiago, whose love Carlos had repaid with death, Joe again looked heavenward and thanked God for justice.

  “There’s something I need to tell you, Della,” Joe Michael began.

  Forty-five minutes later, Della got up, kissed the old man on the forehead, and walked across the street to work.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Blue Pottery

  Things returned to normal at Beachmoppers a few days after the confrontation with Elzianne. Perhaps it was because no one had seen her around town—a fact verified when Della informed Mara that Elzi and her entourage had flown out with a private pilot the day before.

  “I’m not sure where they went,” she told Sal later, “but I did hear something about checking the coastline by air.”

  Meanwhile, Joe and Sal’s teams continued to bring in items they salvaged from the coastline, including a couple of pieces of broken pottery that had been found scattered around a perfectly intact rectangular piece that was about twelve inches square and eight inches deep that they decided was some kind of planter.

  Sal left it sitting on the stoop after deciding that it probably would only bring in a few dollars. She said she wasn’t sure, so she left it there until she could make up her mind whether to keep it or not.

  Seeing it sitting there for several days, Joe filled it with water when he saw Thor lying next to it in the hot sun one afternoon, and from that day on, it became the wolf-dog’s personal outdoor water bowl.

  “I guess it might as well get some use,” Sal said, shrugging her shoulders when she saw it.

  “I think it gives Beachmoppers more of a rustic, antique feel,” Mara said. “It just looks kind of old, you know. Gee, I hope it’s not radioactive or anything.”

  “Didn’t even think of that,” Joe said.

  Doug immediately dumped the water, and then grabbed the Geiger counter they had purchased for the business and went over the old container just to make sure. Although officials had often tried to reassure the public that none of the tsunami debris from the huge earthquake in Japan could be radioactive, few believed that to be true, so Sal had purchased the Geiger counter to check everything, just to be safe. When Doug detected nothing unusual after scanning Thor’s dish, he set it back down next to the bench and filled it with fresh water.

  Mara filled the old water bucket with petunias a few days later and set that next to the bench behind Thor’s new bowl, noticing that something about the pale blue color of the water bowl seemed to acquire a new depth once the flowers were beside it for contrast.

  “I’m glad we decided to keep it,” she told Sal, taking her outside to show her the arrangement. “I really love this old pottery. Pretty interesting that it got over here without being broken, too.”

  The other pieces of pottery they had found had been more ornate, carrying complicated patterns in bright shades of red and gold. None of them had survived intact.

  “Too bad those got broken instead of this old ordinary thing,” Sal had said. “It’s jest like everything else, the cheap stuff always holds up way longer than ya ever dreamed possible or wanted to have it hangin’ around. Guess it’s good enough for Thor’s water dish though.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Settling In

  Two more cruise ships came and went without incident, and business at Beachmoppers was brisk, with many people taking advantage of the 10 percent discount offered to the cruise lines.

  Sal’s landing craft crews were staying busy, bringing in a full load weekly—enough to keep a sorting crew on two daily shifts out in the yard. Floats were the biggest sellers, especially those that contained Japanese lettering. It was reassuring to the tourists that each piece was marked “tested and found negative for radioactivity,” a concern that seemed to be universally shared.

  Driftwood was another popular item, but not as much as pieces of painted wood that had once belonged to the personal homes and belongings of actual Japanese people. For those items, Sal had set up a fund where 50 percent of the proceeds would go directly to the people of Japan, and then only if the original owners could not be found so that the item could be returned directly to them.

  Once, they had even found a small box filled with personal items and inscribed with someone’s name. The Japanese consul in Juneau was able to locate that person, whose entire family had perished in the earthquake. The box of items contained the only memories she had left, including a locket with the only remaining picture of her parents inside. The return of the box had astounded the young owner and given her strength when she needed it most.

  “No! I don’t wanna be interviewed fer no danged news story,” Sal insisted, when reporters contacted her about the story. “We found it, we gave it back, it was the decent thing ta do. Scavengin’ is scavengin’, but even us scrap pickers has gotta line we ain’t crossin�
� fer fame or fer money.”

  Business was also good at sea, with Derrk Stanley reporting that both the Driftfeather and the Storm Roamer were bringing in record catches to a highly competitive international demand for wild Alaska seafood. Mara heard Doug tell Derrk how relieved he was to hear that news. Doug had been worried about taking advantage of his friend, and now he could relax and concentrate on helping out in Hoonah.

  The summer was a good one, too, with more than the usual number of clear, sunny days—days that found Thor often sleeping outside beside his new water bowl, lifting his head occasionally to sniff the petunias that had grown into a splendid trail beside it, rolling over every few hours to stretch, and maybe even getting up to take a drink, before falling asleep in the sun again.

  Joe Michael had found his niche, too. He spent his mornings ferrying items back and forth between the work yard and Beachmoppers, and his afternoons greeting the tourists who seemed to have an insatiable appetite for talking with a real Alaska Native elder.

  Joe talked of the history of Hoonah and of the bears, otters, deer, and sea mammals that inhabited the area. Once in a while he could be seen walking among the rows of photographers, who often sat with their huge-lensed cameras mounted on tripods along the beach, pointing to the many totems on Graveyard Island.

  Mara stopped her usual brisk walk by at the sight of Joe talking to them on the beach one day. Was he showing some of them the feather? The photographers were paying no more than a polite interest in the feather, though. Still, how unusual for Joe to be so open like this.

  She asked him about it one day.

  “I can’t really say why I took it out like I did,” he told her. “Maybe I figured talking about it would help to make some sense out of why it keeps coming around. They didn’t care, though,” he laughed wryly. “It’s just a feather and all they wanted to know was if it was from an eagle, or if it had magical or healing powers. I told ‘em I couldn’t say that for sure and so they just went on to somethin’ else.”