The Dead Go to Seattle Read online

  “Sounds interesting,” she said, adjusting herself in the chair.

  “It is. But it’s also challenging. Sometimes people don’t want to talk.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe they have their reasons.”

  “Yes, but it’s important to record the stories before they’re all forgotten.” Swanton took a sip of his coffee.

  Tova stared out at the silver water in silence. Sometimes there wasn’t anything to say. Her elders taught her that. Her silence was full of sound.

  Swanton scooted his chair closer and held out his thermos. “Refill?”

  She held her cup up and he poured it full again.

  “So where are you headed?” he asked.

  “Seattle.”

  “Seattle? But the boat docks in Bellingham.”

  “Yeah, I know,” she said, “but I’m hitching from Bellingham to Seattle, and then I’m going to get a job. Something.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  She sighed. “It’s better than sitting around Wrangell, working the slime line or in the egg room.”

  “Ah, the cannery. Lots of interesting folks work there.”

  “You mean Indians … Natives.”

  “Yes. I recorded a story about a man who—” Swanton paused, and then said, “Can I ask you something?”

  Uh-oh. Here it comes. The same stupid questions. It didn’t matter: tourists or scholars, all those from the wannabe tribe. “Sure,” she said.

  “Are you Tlingit?”

  Tova smiled. Well at least that version of the question was better than What kind of Indian are you? Or A Kling what? Or Where are your reservations and igloos? That kind of crap.

  “Yes, I’m Tlingit,” she said, annunciating the wet letters.

  “I thought so.”

  “Gee, what gave it away, my headdress, my Chilkat blanket, or my braids?”

  Swanton frowned. “I don’t mean to offend, but I’ve learned if you don’t ask, you can be mistaken.”

  “I know how that feels,” Tova mumbled.

  Swanton patted a brown attaché case beside him. “I’ve got a lot of stories to transcribe here, but I can always use one more.”

  “What kind of stories did you take from us?”

  “Take?” Swanton said, raising his eyebrow.

  “Yeah, what kind? The kind that kicks your ass when your grandma tells it to you. Or the kind your uncle tells when he’s drunk and sticking halibut gear with your dad. Or the kind your auntie and mom tell when they’re having coffee and smoking cigarettes.”

  “Oh, I recorded some traditional stories, some historical ones. And, you know, the most interesting subject kept coming up … the stories of the stallo and the koosh—”

  She held her hand up, palm splayed. “No, don’t say it. I know what you mean.”

  “The land ott—”

  “Shshh,” she said sharply. “Not here.” She nodded toward the water. She wasn’t going to chance it, being on a boat in the middle of the ocean. No way.

  “Oh, sorry. I figured a girl your age would be accustomed to talking about them. Wouldn’t worry about the superstition—”

  “It’s not a superstition and, even if I didn’t believe, why would I want to take chances?”

  “Good point.”

  “Yes, I will.”

  “Will what?” Swanton asked.

  “Tell you a story … I’ll tell you a story.”

  “A traditional one, a myth, or historical?” Swanton asked.

  “True, a true one. I’ll tell you a true one. You decide the category. I hate categories."

  Swanton took out a recorder from his satchel. He turned it around in his hands, looking at it, as if studying it.

  “No, no recorder,” Tova said, pointing to the electronic device. “Take notes the old-fashioned way. You’ll listen better. If you record it, you’ll only be half listening. You anthropologists, you always get everything wrong.”

  He set it down and then pulled out a notebook and pencil. “Well, I’m an ethnologist, and I try not to get things wrong.” Swanton tapped his pencil on the page. “Ready?”

  Tova leaned back in her chair and rubbed her neck. “Well, we first met you folks up in Lituya Bay. That’s where my uncle rode a tidal wave over an island. We thought you were White Raven and, boy, were we wrong.”

  Swanton had stopped taking notes.

  “What’s the matter?” Tova asked. “Have you heard this story before?”

  “A version, yes.”

  “But you haven’t heard mine.”

  “No,” he said. “Go ahead.” He began to scratch on the paper with the pencil.

  It didn’t look like words. Maybe he wasn’t taking notes. Just being polite. She didn’t care, though. There were stories in her head, always swirling around like the tide rips in front of Petroglyph Beach. She told him about snails and puffins and bear spirits. And people traveling down beneath and over the ice, following frozen rivers to the sea. She told how her clan broke from another and how some had lived in Glacier Bay and how they’d been run out by ice and later by the government. She told him how her great-grandparents were punished for speaking the Lingít language. And how her great-grandma was raped by a military man, how her white relatives came from Norway and Finland, and how they once had their own clans and spirits.

  After a while, she paused. Swanton had stopped writing. He stared out at the water. She’d seen that hypnotized look before: moving water pulling the spirit from its shell.

  Tova stuck her hand down into her backpack and pulled out two diet Cokes. “Here, want one?”

  He took it and held it in his hand, looking as if he’d never seen one before.

  “What? It’s Diet Coke.” she said.

  “Well …”

  “You from Canada?” She frowned.

  He didn’t reply. Instead, he set the Coke down beside him on the deck. “Go on.”

  She led Swanton through ten generations, through a cycle of ice and seashore, and when it came to her own generation, there wasn’t a break in the cycle. It was like the Raven stories. The stories kept coming, wave after wave. Her words caught up in the ferry’s wake, pulling and dragging like a huge anchor. There was a shifting. The boat groaned as if time had aged it. It had.

  Date: 2000s, June

  Recorded by John Swanton

  Assisted by Tooch Waterson

  She continued, “And so I hitchhiked to Seattle and got a job at a head trauma rehab center where the patients threw shit at you, when they weren’t playing in it. Then I enrolled at UW and got my bachelor’s degree. Before that, I spent a semester at the University of Alaska in Juneau. Now, I’m going back home to see my family. Back to Wrangell.”

  Swanton stopped writing. “We’re going south. Not back to Wrangell.”

  Tova cocked her head. Swanton looked confused. His eyes glazed over, like he’d popped a tranquilizer. What was he talking about? “No, this is a northbound boat,” she said, pointing to the houses coming into view. “And there’s the Elephants Nose. We’re coming around Woronofski now. We’ve come around the back side.”

  Swanton stood up, setting his notebook on the chair. He walked to the railing, leaned over, and turned his head to the right, and then left. He turned back to her. “It’s happening again.”

  Tova shrugged. Again? Was he referring to the tides? Whatever. She had something to attend to. She got up from the deck chair and rummaged through her backpack. She pulled out a small pair of scissors and held them at her side. “Excuse me,” she said to Swanton, “I have to conduct a ceremony before we get to the dock.”

  She walked to the starboard side of the stern, near the far railing. She lifted her long, dark hair from her shoulders, dividing it in sections. She held it in her fist and started to cut. Each section fell off into the ocean.

  Afterward, she brushed her shoulders with her hand. Her hair now hung below her ears. She turned to head back to her chair. Swanton took notes. Oh, great. What will he say about this?
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  Tova grabbed her backpack. “See you—” The announcer interrupted her: “Thirty minutes to Wrangell. Thirty minutes to Wrangell.” She lugged her backpack into the back corner of the solarium, to a small bathroom with a couple of toilets and shower stalls, and headed over to the small two-basin sink. She took out her scissors again and trimmed her hair further until it was above her ears. Slipping her shirt over her head and setting it down on the small bench behind, she stood in front of the mirror in her tank top and removed a box of red hair dye from her bag. Tova put on the plastic gloves from inside the package, mixed up the goop, spread it around in her hair, and waited ten minutes. She took off her tank top and pants and set them on the bench then stepped into the shower stall and washed off the dye.

  Tova dried herself off with her tank top and dressed. She patted her hair with the roll of rough brown paper towels sitting on the corner of the sink and then frowned at the mirror, running her fingers through her hair. “Fuck.” Her hair was pink, not red. Uneven hair stuck out all over her head. She leaned into the mirror, turning her head this way and that and shrugged.

  The ferry blew its whistle as it approached the Wrangell dock. Below deck, Swanton stood in the crowd waiting for the ramp to lower. Tova approached him. He smiled at her. With a quick flick of her hand she flung her nonexistent hair. The ramp clanked to the deck and the crew motioned the crowd forward. Swanton lugged an old brown suitcase, and Tova adjusted the straps to her backpack. At the top of the ramp, the crowd dispersed. Tova turned to Swanton and nodded, “It was nice meeting you.”

  “Yes, nice to meet you too,” Swanton said. He held out his used passage ticket in his hand, turning it over. “Looks like I have to get another ticket.”

  “Don’t worry. In a week, the ferry’s going south again.”

  “I already tried,” he said, scratching his head.

  “Maybe your story’s not finished yet.”

  “My what?”

  “Your … story,” she said, as if talking to a child. “Sometimes our stories take more than our lifetime to tell, you know. They cycle around like the Raven stories, over and over, winter and summer, and they keep on adding to one another, like towing a log caught on a patch of seaweed, how it gathers up some old rope and a plastic thingy, and then pretty soon you have a big story to tow home with you. You can tell where you’ve been and who you are and who you’ve become by the story you take with you.”

  Swanton smiled and nodded. “Sure. But I’m tired. I’ll check into the B&B again.” He pointed to the big yellow house on the corner. Without looking back, Swanton headed across the parking lot, waving his hand in the air.

  Tova trudged to her mother’s waiting car where her mother stood, leaning against the open car door.

  She reached her and leaned in for a hug, her backpack wobbling on her back. “Hi, Mom.”

  “Oh, it’s so good to have you home,” Mina said.

  Tova breathed in her mother’s scent. She could tell that her mother, the same height as her, did the same. She released her and then peered into the car. “What, no Pops?” she asked.

  “You know your father …”

  “No, actually I don’t.”

  “Tova,” Mina said, helping her off with her backpack. “You have to stay with Auntie Suvi.”

  “What?” She heaved her pack into the trunk of the car. She got into the passenger side, as her mother sat down in the driver’s seat.

  “It’s your Dad, Tova. I can’t go against him.”

  “It’s been years, Ma.”

  “I know, kiddo, but he’ll ask.”

  “Like he asks every time I’ve tried to talk to him … ‘Are you still a homosexual?’ It ends the conversation.”

  Mina clasped her seatbelt and put the car in reverse, looking behind her. “Why don’t you lie to him? Tell him what he wants to hear.”

  “No way. He has to accept me the way I am.”

  “With pink hair, Tova? You push all his buttons, don’t you?”

  She rolled her eyes. She didn’t want to cause problems for her mom; for her dad, another matter. “Okay, I’ll stay with Auntie Suvi.”

  “Good, I’ll drop you off there, and when your father’s at work, you can come by the house.”

  Later, Tova tried to call her father so they could talk. Maybe if she talked to him, she figured. Didn’t bring up lesbians or sex, he wouldn’t freak out. But as always, the conversation trail led to: “Don’t let me catch you at the house.”

  The next day, Tova found herself in front of her parents’ house. Her dad’s truck was gone. Her mother’s old Ford Taurus sat in the driveway. She knocked. Her mother answered, looking around with her eyes. “What, am I gonna get spanked?”

  Her mother laughed. “No, I … come in.”

  Once inside, Tova walked through the house she grew up in, touching a wall here and there, fingering an old sealskin doll, a deerskin drum hanging on the wall, tracing the base of her grandmother’s butterfly lamp.

  “Don’t worry,” her mother said, following her. “You’re still here.”

  “Doesn’t look like I ever lived here,” Tova said, noting her old bedroom was now an office and a guest bedroom. Photos of her brother hung on the wall in the living room: Jorma learning to ride a bike. Jorma sitting in his first snow in a blue snowsuit. Jorma’s graduation from high school three years after her own. None were of Tova playing basketball for the Wrangell Lady Wolves or commercial fishing with her father. Nothing. Not even a smiling baby picture.

  Suddenly, the ache in the walls swelled inward, forcing her backward like she was being spit out of the house. “I gotta go, Mom,” she said, rushing out the door.

  “Tova! Tova!” her mother called after her.

  Tova lugged her backpack down to the cement dock in front of town and sat down. At 1:00 a.m., the sky faded to blue dark, but it wouldn’t be dim for long. She reached into her backpack and took out two sets of ankle and wrist weights she borrowed from Aunt Suvi. She strapped them on and put up her sweatshirt hood. She scooted over to the edge of the dock at the space between the bull rail sections.

  She sat for a long time in the cloud-covered night, inhaling the ocean. A strong breeze blew out of the south. She turned her face toward it. An orange wind sock fluttering on the end of the dock made her think of the Corpse Eater, the Wind Giant. After all, it took the shape of an eagle, and eagles were always sitting on the pole that held the wind sock.

  Then the wind changed and from out of a short gust came her mother’s voice calling her name. “Tova … Tova …”

  She quickly tucked the wrist weights beneath her sweatshirt sleeves and made sure her pant legs were pulled down over her ankles.

  Her mother sat down beside her and didn’t say anything for a minute. The wind breathed against them and for them. “Nice night, isn’t it?” her mother finally said.

  Tova didn’t answer. It wasn’t nice. That was a pleasantry that wasn’t pleasant: a dumb thing to say.

  Her mom spoke softly, “Did I ever tell you about the day you were born?”

  “Yes, I’ve heard my birth story.” Tova didn’t want to hear a story now. She wanted this ache in her gut to stop. She woke up with it, ate with it, and had studied the last five years in college with it. It was her companion. Always. She wanted it to stop. She was tired. Like that guy she met on the ferry, Swanton. He’d said it. He was tired. Sometimes don’t people get tired when it’s time to go?

  “Well, let me tell you,” her mother said, “it was one party, when you came out. You were blue, you know.”

  Tova shuddered. The wind cooled her skin. She’d heard the story before, yes. But a “party” version. This was a new one.

  “The doctor and nurses scrambled,” Mina said, “but I yelled at you to wake up. ‘Wake up, Tova!’ I don’t know why I said that because you weren’t sleeping, and you weren’t dead or anything. You went from water to air and forgot how to be human. Grandma Liv says it’s because you were still underneath the tec
tonic plates looking up through a hole in the earth. Boy, you sure shook them when you were trying to come out.

  “So when I yelled ‘Wake up!’ you coughed and turned pink.”

  Mina reached to touch Tova’s hair. “And when I brought you into my room, there were grandparents and friends and friends of friends and balloons and gifts. Your baby book bulges with all the cards. I think someone brought some beer too, said it would help my milk come in.

  Tova chuckled. Oh, great. Drunk at a few hours old. That figures.

  “I was only sixteen years old, Tova, and I thought all births were like that.”

  Like what, Tova wondered, like pink balloons and sparkly cards or earthquakes ripping open the muskeg. Maybe all of that. “Ma,” she sighed, leaning toward her mother.

  “You, Tova, are a celebration … Your dad, he’s at Waters Inn. I piled his clothes on the floor and told him to pack them himself.”

  “What?” She wasn’t sure she’d heard what her mom said. It took a second to process it. She pictured her dad, flipping through the hotel’s TV channels, a twelve-pack of beer on the bed beside him.

  “It’s time to go home.” Her mom stood up and held out her hand. Tova took it, and it was cold from the night air. Her mother pulled her up, weights and all. As she rose, Tova’s weight shifted to her mother, like the landscape around them, rising and moving in all directions.

  Date: mid 2000s

  Recorded by John Swanton

  Assisted by Tooch Waterson

  Speaker: Charlie Edwin

  His Spirits Kept Turning Back

  “I’m going to be respectful here. I’m going to offer them tobacco when I’m done. I don’t want anyone to forget the stories I learned when I was young.

  “A long time ago, we had shamans and they were very powerful. Lots of folks had them. My friend Isak, he said his people, the Sámi, they had them. We don’t have them anymore. Well, I should say we don’t point out the people who have the talents. They would go into trances, and whatever they saw was supposed to happen did. One time, there was a powerful shaman. Once, he said something was going to happen to a big town by a lake.