The Dead Go to Seattle Read online

  “Many people were afraid of the landotters. But some weren’t. They said the landotter people stutter and can’t talk like regular people. The people were making fun of the noise landotters make. Landotters can really make a mumbling sound like they are talking.

  “Well, one day, two men from the village went hunting near where there were supposed to be landotters. They went to the top of a mountain, and, when they looked down, they saw a great flood come down between the mountains and destroy their town. The lake filled up with silt and dirt and forced the water out and the village flooded. The landotters caused this because people made fun of them for stuttering.

  “We had that happen here. The old graveyard flooded because of the landslide out by the new cemetery. The land came down there. Not good.

  “There are many things to know about the landotters, like when a woman is having her period, her monthly. If the shaman is around her, it can make him weak and take away his power. You see, women are very powerful. My Jesse is a very good person. If a woman had the landotter’s spirit in her and she had her period, sometimes the shaman couldn’t get the bad spirit out of her because his spirits kept turning back.

  “There is also a story about Raven who created the animals. He told Landotter he’ll be able to live on both the land and water. Raven and Landotter became good friends. One day, they went out to catch some halibut. They both loved halibut. Raven wasn’t very good at catching halibut, but Landotter was. Because Landotter helped Raven, Raven made him a really big house that’s located on a point of land. Even today, that’s where you’ll find their houses. The landotters like breezes. On a point, the breeze blows both ways. You have to be careful of places like that, it’s like time goes back and forth, going both ways.

  “Well, Raven instructed him whenever a boat or a canoe passed by the point and capsized, he was supposed to save them and make the people his friends. Landotter had to save people from drowning. Landotter people are called ‘Point People.’

  “There are other landotter stories, but I don’t have permission to tell them to you. You can go ask Mrs. Daniels. She’s Kiks.ádi. She’ll tell you. If you want the troll stories, the ones my friend Isak knows, you have to ask him. But he doesn’t tell them. Some things I can tell you and some things I can’t. It doesn’t feel right. I have to be careful.

  “Landotters can trick us. Raven tricks us. Trolls. So can the weather, the ocean, the government. I read a lot about tricksters, you know. That’s how I know. And I listen to people. There are lots of tricksters in the world. I think there is one here, in Wrangell, right now. I think he’s been here for a while. I see him sometimes. I’m not crazy.

  “You know that dog bones can make landotters die. And landotters eat raw meat and fish. You know, they opened that Japanese sushi restaurant downtown—Tokyo Oki. Sounds like they came from Oklahoma (laughs).

  “I wouldn’t be seen in there. No, I hear people say don’t go there. But, still people do.

  “That’s all I know, all I can tell you, anyway (laughs). Now, I have to look for some cigarettes. Tobacco. I don’t smoke anymore (laughs). Hooch áwé.”

  Date: mid-late 1960s

  Recorded by John Swanton

  The Drowning Ceremony

  Karl’s seven-year-old body sank to the bottom of the harbor. His bare feet set down on the top of a large barnacled rock. He looked up through the floating kelp wands, up through the brown silty water of the Bitter Water People, up to his father’s face. His father, Ole Agard, had tossed him into the harbor.

  Karl sat on the bull rail, slivered wood against his legs. His dad stood on the rickety dock beside him, smoking a cigarette, his black hair still thick on his head. His jeans rolled up tight on his short legs and his white T-shirt pressed against his broad chest by the misting rain. Today, Karl’s dad was going to throw him and his sister Astri into the harbor without their life jackets—a familiar ceremony for the Agard family. A few years back, his dad had done the same thing to his brother Rodney. Now, it was their turn.

  Karl sat on the dock shivering, awaiting his turn. His big brother, Rodney, was still up at the house, a short walk from the dock. That morning, when his dad had finished his coffee, he’d announced Astri and Karl were going with him down to the Sea Wolf to stick halibut gear. There was that strange sound in his dad’s voice, like pilings scraping the dock in a storm. The same way his dad sounded when he explained to his mother that the sore on Karl’s head was from smacking it on the bunks in the boat. He had turned to Rodney and pleaded silently. He didn’t like to be on the boat with his dad. His dad ruled there.

  On the dock, his dad had made him and Astri strip down to their underwear. Karl had not watched Astri’s flight into the ocean. He’d stared at his bony knees. Astri screamed and thrashed in the water. She was five years old, and the rule was by the time you were seven you could go on the boat fishing with Dad, but you had to learn to swim. Grandpa Agard always said knowing how to swim could save your life around these islands. More likely, you would respect the water if you knew the shock of having the air forced out of your lungs and felt the cold seeping through your pores.

  Astri flailed her arms at strange arches, her hands clawing the green-gray water, trying to reach out for the creosote bull rail. She reached her hand up and Ole grabbed her and flung her backward. “Go away. Not yet,” he laughed.

  Astri swam farther away from the dock, barely treading water. “Dog paddle. Dog paddle,” Ole yelled. Astri arched her arms and paddled with her head and chin up out of the water, her eyes wide, heading for the dock again. This time, she smiled. She reached the dock and her father’s muscular arms pulled her from the water up over the bull rail. He flopped her like a halibut onto the dock, where she lay still, flat on her back, smiling. And then, the shivers came.

  It was Karl’s turn next. He wanted to leave his body, to take his spirit and run down the dock, jump over the electrical cords, the old blue tarp, and the small bucket filled with rotten bait and rainwater. But what good would it do. He’d be yanked back into his body by his hair anyway. Instead, he got up and walked to the rail, chattering in his underwear. The force of his father’s arm flung him through the air. It sounded like breaking glass as he crashed through the surface of the water. His small body sank. His feet touched the hard crusty rock. He tried to push himself up, and then tried to walk, but his legs were like heavy rubber. He didn’t know what to do, so he did nothing. He stood there tiptoeing on the rock, looking up.

  Above him, the red cherry from his father’s cigarette dropped and sizzled on the water. Then, as his father leaped, Karl imagined a sea lion, a large blubbery creature with its fat flippers heaving itself through the water after a fish. He’d seen that sight a hundred times in the few years he’d been alive. Though maybe he’d been alive longer than five years. Everything around him seemed familiar. He understood all the mechanisms on his dad’s boat: the beam trawl they used for dragging for shrimp, the davit they pulled crab pots with, the girdies they hauled in salmon with. And, strangely, he knew how the current moved in front of his house, the way the brown water from the Stikine brought the salmon to Back Channel, or to the black can, how the river water and ocean swirled around Deadmans Island.

  Karl’s head tugged painfully sideways. Maybe the bull kelp had wrapped around him. He turned. His father swam beside him and he was being pulled to the surface. When they broke the surface, he relaxed and his dad heaved him onto the dock. Karl’s legs scraped the dock and he rolled over onto his back and closed his eyes. Rodney stood above him.

  This time Karl was sure he was running down the dock, the other direction this time, away from the house, over and around the orange electrical cords, the piles of dog shit, the harbor cart. The only thing at the other end of that dock was the ocean again. He didn’t want to go back in. He didn’t want to breathe stingy, salty water. He heard a boat engine whine, maybe a puller starting up, or a boat’s radio crackling. His chest was heavy, like he’d sucked in the sound
. He opened his eyes. He lay on the dock, his sister, Astri, and his brother, Rodney, cried beside him. His dad rolled him onto his side. He felt a big smack on his back, then another one. He opened his mouth and puked up water from his mouth and nose, and his stomach heaved. He took several deep breaths and held his stomach, whimpering.

  After a few minutes, his dad jerked him by the arm and sat him upright, slapping him hard on the back. “You scared the shit out of me. Why didn’t you swim like hell?”

  “I don’t know,” Karl said softly.

  Rodney took off his jean jacket and wrapped it around Karl. “I take it you didn’t learn to swim?” Karl leaned into his brother. His jacket was hardly warm, but it was dry at least.

  “Astri did,” his dad said, nodding to Astri. “She’s little, but she swam good. But I had to jump in to get Karl. I guess he wanted to go live with the landotter people, right Karl?” His dad laughed and then reached into his jacket, which was lying on the dock, and pulled out his pack of cigarettes. His hands shook as he took a cigarette from the pack. He lit it and inhaled deeply. He frowned at Rodney. “Don’t tell your mother. She doesn’t need to know.”

  Karl nodded. Astri did too. They knew how to slip hints to their mother. Rodney could turn an arm just right to show a blue bruise peeking through. Astri might complain of a headache or a scalp problem. Rodney and their older cousins hinted a lot after returning home from a two-month summer fishing trip with their dad, as if months of setting halibut skates in Glacier Bay didn’t scar them enough: hooks stabbing their thumbs, rope burns, sliced open chins from falling on the boat deck. And there were the usual skinned knees from gathering seagull eggs from the cliffs, and the blisters, the calloused hands. They were his dad’s deckhands because no one else in town could tolerate him. Experienced deckhands would be hired and then quit after a short time.

  Back at the house, Karl climbed into the bottom bunk and pulled the granny-square quilt up to his chin. His warm pajamas soothed his skin. Rodney slept in the top bunk. The quilt let in the cool night air, which is how he liked to sleep. He fell asleep listening to his dad and uncle Bernie playing cribbage in the kitchen: “ten,” “fifteen for two,” “twenty-two,” “twenty-eight for three.”

  In his dreams he walked alone on the beach, the woods calling to him. He’d been told not to go into the woods alone, but it was still daylight. The spruce and hemlock surrounding him wept with old-man’s-beard moss. Stumps resembled trolls resting in the shadows. He sat down beside a huge mossy stump. The rest of the tree had long since fallen and now thrived as a nurse log for smaller seedlings. Nearby, a large hole waited like a gaping mouth where the roots had rotted away. He got down on his knees and looked into the dark hole. He needed something. But he couldn’t remember what. He stuck his arm down into the hole, touching a long hairy tail like the tail of his dog, Gus. Why would a dog be hiding in a stump? A story prowled in the back of his head. He thought of his grandfather’s cigarette smoke, his uncle’s laughter woven into story, a cadence of words and numbers: ten—fifteen for two—twenty-two—twenty-eight for three—drowning, human, landotter, don’t. Don’t.

  A hand curled around his forearm and yanked him into the stump, his mouth filled with moss. There it was, the thing he’d forgotten: the warning, the warning. It was a story. He’d forgotten it: creatures, otters, and trolls, who took people into the forest or into the sea to live with them. Wake. Up. Now. He grabbed his blanket, strung his fingers through his grandmother’s granny-square quilt. He could feel it, like a rope he had to hang on to climb up. He stuck his bare toes into the quilt and started to climb up from the hole. He awoke suddenly and sat up. He leaned over in his lower bunk and puked a belly full of salt water onto the floor.

  Recorded date: 1908

  Recorded by John Swanton

  Recounted by Old Town Jim

  The Man Who Married a Tree

  1879

  I made short excursions to the nearby forests … causing wondering speculation among the Wrangell folk.—John Muir, Travels in Alaska

  John Muir kneeled in the grass near the Presbyterian Church counting tree rings. Missionary Young had recently cut down the large spruce to make way for the new manse. In his notebook Muir recorded dendro-memory, layers of wood cells. The old tree had chronicled rain, temperature, and wind velocity for over a hundred years.

  Soon Muir became aware of Wrangell folk peeking out their doors at him. By midday locals gathered to watch the strange man talk to himself. From behind him someone said, “There’s an even bigger live tree up the hill.” Muir turned. A local Tlingit, Old Town Jim, stood pointing his wide hand beyond the steeple. “I’d guess he’d be over two hundred years old,” Jim said.

  Muir found the large tree near the edge of a clearing. He circled the tree, running his hand along its bark, noting the dragon-like scales. Suddenly, he had an urge to hug the tree. “May I?” he asked, reaching his lanky arms around, leaning in, his cheek pressing its scratchy hide—rough like whiskers, he thought. He closed his eyes, inhaling its wet scent. He stepped back and poked his finger into the pitch globbing from beneath the bark. He sniffed it, then stuck his finger in his mouth sucking the sticky substance.

  For two more weeks Muir visited this tree, discovering its inner stratum. He learned to strip a small tree root and brewed nettle tea. He even climbed to a top branch, straddled its knobby arm to look out over Zimovia Strait to snowcapped Woronofski Island.

  One night Muir settled beneath a bark shed, covering himself with his blanket. The tree sheltered him as he dreamed of his youth: skinny-dipping with his friend Scott in Blossom Lake. Afterward, they’d lie naked, drying on the rocks. But one day, Scott brought the girl who lived on the neighboring farm to swim—after that, Muir never went swimming at the lake again.

  Now, Muir slept late and awoke beneath the great spruce, its erect pendant cones dangling, its female cones swelling purple. He felt the pith at his center, the xylem, his cambium layer. He got up and ate hardtack crackers, listening to the tree moan its stories. The tree told of first contact with whites, Russian rule, explorers, and gold seekers. Near nightfall, the winds gusted and branches snapped. “Storm coming,” Muir said. Since he’d first stepped off the boat in Alaska and discovered the spruce and hemlock forests, he sensed a change—a celebration was needed. “A marriage, yes,” he said to the tree.

  Muir dragged dead branches and dry grass to the center of the clearing and built a small fire. He added more tree limbs until the fire roared. The large spruce dropped pine cones at his feet, and he tossed them into the fire. The sky darkened and it started to pour. Around him, the forest creaked. Sparks danced like crazed fireflies. He wiped tree pitch on his face, his lips, and then stomped around the fire, arms twirling. He kept heaping branches on the fire until his skin flushed with heat.

  Below the storm-dance, Missionary Young awakened to the rap of frightened Tlingits at his door. The hill glowed behind the church—St. Elmo’s Fire? A madman perhaps? Then Young remembered the strange Mr. Muir, wandering around town mumbling to himself. Such actions, he figured, likely meant Muir was smitten with a local girl. Yes, he chuckled, looking up at the sky-fire, lances of gold aurora streaking upward—a madman indeed.

  Date: nd (no date)

  Recorded by John Swanton

  Assisted by Tooch Waterson

  First Contact in Lituya Bay Revisited

  Tlél tsú dleit káa yá Alasgi awuskú. … Aadéi yóo at kaawaniyi yé shukát wé shgóona shudultee nóok.

  No white man knew of Alaska. … That’s the way things happened in the beginning when they awaited the schooner.—J. White, Jeenik, “Raven Boat” (1786)

  Surrounded by spruce trees, Tova stood on the hill dressed in knee-worn Carhartts, a blue bandana wrapping her shaved head, stinking of salmon roe and slime. Her girlfriend, Lynn, nuzzled her neck. Lynn grabbed Tova’s hand. “You smell like money,” she laughed.

  Tova let go of Lynn’s hand. She lifted the pair of binoculars tied to
a string around her neck. “I have to see.”

  “See what?” Lynn asked.

  “See if they make it over the rocks, through this god-awful tide.” Out on the horizon, the People-From-Under-the-Clouds sailed into the bay. Tova waited for the legend, for the Monster-Who-Lives-Underneath, to shake the Fairweather fault and create a huge wave that would smash La Pérouse’s ship against the rocks. Already, she’d heard he’d lost two longboats with twenty-one men on board, trying to get across the entrance to Lituya Bay. This time, no such luck: the schooner stayed beyond the island at the mouth of the bay.

  “Damn,” Tova said, as the ship readied to drop anchor. She let go of the binoculars. They pressed heavy against her chest. She walked to a narrow opening in the stand of spruce trees, where an old deer trail led down the steep hillside to the beach. She headed down the trail, brushing past devil’s club and Indian celery. Lynn stumbled behind her, trying to keep up. At the bottom, Tova stepped out onto the sand, where several elders and two young men waited.

  “Hey,” one of the young men said, nodding to her.

  “Hey,” Tova said, nodding back. One of the elders stood next to a canoe as if ready to paddle out and greet the schooner. Tova walked up to the elder, the one she knew to be her ancestor. “Hey, Grandfather,” she said.

  “Grandchild,” he said, beaming.

  The elder put his hand on her shoulder and pulled her close. She caught the scent of freshly tanned deer hide.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  “I’m, ah … me and my friend, we’re taking a smoke break. Been working in the cannery and saw the ship coming. I thought I could help.”