The Dead Go to Seattle Read online

  The grandfather said nothing. He stared at her for a minute as if studying her. “You know these people who come from under the clouds?”

  “Yeah, unfortunately, I do.” She thought about the People-From-Under-the-Clouds, how their blood ran through her veins. The Bureau of Indian Affairs had given her a laminated card, a historical legacy, proof of this very day.

  She wondered how she could explain it to the elders, how she really did know: she knew what was going to happen. The old men and the young ones were going to paddle their canoes out to La Pérouse’s ship. The sailors were going to give her people rice and laugh because the elders were going to think they were eating maggots.

  After that, the explorer and his men will give them sugar, which the Tlingits will assume is white sand. But the “white sand” will turn into another type of death. In future generations, they’ll hobble on severed legs and their bellies will sting with insulin shots. And worse, the sailors will give the young men a bottle of brandy, and the men will spin in circles, laughing on the deck, spinning through her family for a long time to come.

  And La Pérouse will inquire as to the locations of all the villages and ask if there are riches: sea otter pelts, copper, and gold. After this first contact, the Tlingits will head back to shore with their gifts, and the sailors will claim in their diaries they were the first to greet the savages.

  Tova shook her head. She said to her grandfather, “Yeah, I speak their language. How about I go in your place?”

  “You speak their language?” The elder questioned.

  “Ah, yeah, I can speak their language—fluently. I can say, ‘You better speak English only, you savages, because you’re lucky you get to believe in our god and go to our schools, but if you carve totem poles and eat seal grease, you can’t go to our schools, and when you finally challenge us to go to our schools, our kids will beat up your kids for generations right into the twenty-first century where kids will spray paint around town “Kill All Natives,” reminding you of the good American life: two halibut a day, free health care, a new HUD house, shares-or-no-shares in corporations not tribes, a laminated card, a degree for driving tour buses, and working at the cold storage and canneries, where we will process your salmon up in cans, ship them out to our storehouses, and then, out of the goodness of our hearts, ship the salmon back to you when you receive our commodities.’”

  “Ah,” said the grandfather. “You are fluent, granddaughter. Maybe you should go out to meet them first, ask them what they want.”

  The two young men helped Tova into the canoe. Lynn kissed her on the cheek before she shoved off. “Hey, be careful,” Lynn said.

  Tova smiled, shoving the canoe backward with the oar. She turned the canoe around parallel to the beach. She reached her hand into the pocket of her hoodie, pulling a sleek metal blade from its hiding place. She raised it slightly. Lynn nodded. The grandfather raised his walking stick up in the air. The young men on the beach nodded, raising their own knives. “I gu.aa yáx xwán—be strong—be brave,” they cried in unison.

  Tova turned and paddled out toward the schooner, its white sails let down. Oh, I speak their language, all right. She had been speaking with the slice of steel every summer at the cannery for the past ten years, ever since she was fifteen years old: cut-slice-scrape, cut-slice-scrape. She knew how it felt to stick her knife in the anus, move it up through the salmon belly, how to spread open the abdomen, rip out the entrails, scrape the backbone, and hack off its head.

  Date: 1910

  Recorded by John Swanton

  A Boat Named Coffin

  William Binkley pressed his foot on Game Warden McKephin’s chest, sinking him deep into Yellowstone’s Heart Lake. Blood spurted from the hole in McKephin’s belly. Binkley didn’t hear the curse rising up in the last bubble from the man’s lungs, but he would always remember the smell of geyser sulfur—For you and your children, the sea is your enemy. The curses of the perishing are upon you.

  Binkley slammed his fist on the counter of Diehl’s Dry Goods. “Goddamn, Diehl,” he said, flipping back his jacket to show his holstered Savage .45, “when the cows arrive on the barge, I’ll pay for ’em then.”

  The Los Angeles Examiner lay beneath the counter with Binkley’s wanted poster on page seven. Mr. Diehl thought of bringing it to the Wrangell Sentinel, but no one had messed with William Binkley since he’d sauntered off the steamship with Eva and four kids. They’d bought a place on Shustak Point and talked about farming up the Stikine River.

  Binkley’s son, nine-year-old Albert, warmed his hands by the woodstove in the corner. Binkley tugged the kid up. “Get your ass out there and load up the Coffin.” When Wrangell old-timers heard what the Binkley kids named their skiff, they shook their heads. It was young Al’s idea. It came to him in a dream smelling of blood and sulfur.

  Now they loaded up the cart, rolling it down the boardwalk to the beach where the Coffin bobbed against the rocks. Binkley sat in the skiff while the kid rowed toward the point. “Faster,” Binkley bellowed, “the tide’s catching us.”

  Binkley stuck a pinch of tobacco in his mouth. Wrangell was the perfect hideout. After all, Soapy Smith used to hole up here. In fact, Binkley chuckled to himself, Wrangell was so rough ‘n’ tumble that a few years back, Wyatt Earp left town because the place was wilder than Tombstone.

  The wind and rain picked up as they rowed the Coffin from the harbor. The boat pitched and a wave rolled inside, wetting their feet. “Steer into the waves,” Binkley yelled.

  “But, Pa,” Al said, “the waves are coming from everywhere.”

  Binkley spit out his tobacco. He tasted blood. Sonofabitch. Must have bit the inside of my cheek, he thought. The swells slapped the boat. The smell of sulfur mixed with salt spray. “Damn this tub,” he grumbled.

  Behind him, an arm reached up from the water and pulled down the stern. The sea poured into the Coffin.

  Date: 2000s

  Recorded by John R. Swanton

  Assisted by Tooch Waterson

  NOTES: I prefer traditional stories rather than nostalgias, but these two coffee partners are worth recording. It appears bear stories are a favorite of these two men. Mr. Nillan Hetta is sixty-nine, and Isak Laukonen is seventy years old.

  Mr. Nillan Hetta is part Sámi with other ancestry from Scandinavia, possibly Norwegian. He is retired from the US Forest Service.

  Mr. Isak Laukonen is Finnish with some Sámi heritage. Mr. Laukonen was a full-time fisherman on his boat, the Miss Janet, plus worked occasionally at log salvaging. He now fishes only occasionally with his son, Veiko.

  Old Men Who Speak of Bears

  SPEAKER: Nillan Hetta

  “When my grandpa Matti was young he used to spend a lot of time up on the Stikine River. He’d spend seven months out of the year trapping on the Canadian side. He said one time he was camped out in the middle of a lake on the ice and woke up one morning and stepped outside his tent. It was real cold and crispy outside. He was in his long wool underwear. He stepped out, raised his arms, stretched and yawned, and when he looked down, he saw big brown bear prints in the snow. He looked across the lake and saw the bear had traveled all the way across the lake. The bear’s paw prints walked all the way around his tent and then walked off in the other direction. All the while he was asleep. He didn’t know he had been checked out by a large brown bear.”

  SPEAKER: Isak Laukonen

  “When my dad was courting my mother in the early days, they were up on the flats walking around. I’m not sure what river, if it was the Stikine or Aaron’s crick or Bradfield. Well, they were walking across the grass flats, and my dad spotted a big brown bear out there digging roots. So he told my mom to get on this big stump, a snag. She got up on the stump and my dad snuck down along the slough to where that bear was digging roots. He snuck up on the bear through the grass and kicked him right in the ass. And that bear reared up on its hind legs, whirled around, and my dad stuck the gun right in its mouth and pulled the trigger. K
illed him instantly, of course. Shot him right up through the brain. He thought that was great, showing off for my mother. He got back to where my mother was, and he didn’t expect her to be mad at him. She was not impressed. She chewed him up one side and down the other. ‘You son of a bitch,’ she said. ‘What would happen if that bear had gotten you, and I’m left sitting up here on that snag. That would mean I’d be next.’”

  SPEAKER: Nillan Hetta

  “Yeah, Isak, women and bears. We take our chances, don’t we? I once went hunting with a girl when I was younger. I was gonna marry her, but after I didn’t ask her. The gal was packing a gun. I was in the lead. We started up on this rise, and here come this black bear on the rise in front of us. I told her to hold it and told her to back down a ways. I kept my eyes on the bear all the time. And the bear had a cub with her. The bear was beside a tree alongside the trail, where she’d shooed the cub up the tree. The bear, she stood right there on the trail. I reached back without taking my eyes off the bear and told the gal to give me the gun. And I expected the gal to slap the gun in my hand. No response, no gun. So I turned around and I looked and the gal still had the gun on her shoulder and was staring ahead. I said, ‘Give me that gun.’

  “You ain’t got much time to react if the bear is charging. So I grabbed the gun away from her and chambered a round, and said, ‘Let’s back down the trail.’ And we backed down enough so we could see over the rise. The bear, she watched us for a while, and, when she thought it was safe, the bear made a noise, woof woof, and called her cub out of the tree. The cub came scampering down out of the tree and the bear and her cub took off and ran up the trail and disappeared. I didn’t marry the gal. I would rather have married the bear. She had more sense. That’s the story of that.”

  SPEAKER: Isak Laukonen

  “We were young. So was she. When we’re young we don’t have sense at all. Well, my grandpa told me when he was young he had two brown bear cubs. They had a big family, eight kids in the family. They were raising these two brown bear cubs, and they would be wrestling with them all the time. And he said the cubs of course were growing like weeds and they finally got pretty big. They wrestled with them out in the yard. Eventually, the bears would haul off and bat them, and they’d bat the bears too, and the bears would bat them back. The bears got so strong they didn’t know their own strength. They’d bat the kids clear across the yard. Finally, my grandfather said that’s enough. They are getting too dangerous. They caged them up and sent them on the steamboat to the Seattle Zoo. I don’t know if they sold them. But they probably sold them. That’s what happened to the brown bear cubs. They were good pets, but they got too strong, and they didn’t know their own strength.”

  SPEAKER: Nillan Hetta

  “Lots of bears Back Channel.”

  SPEAKER: Isak Laukonen

  “Sure are. I remember when we stayed at Old Bradfield Jack’s place.”

  SPEAKER: Nillan Hetta

  “Yep, how could I forget? Scared me good, that one.”

  SPEAKER: Isak Laukonen

  “Yeah, we were in the living room area, remember, and we had a big fire going in the fireplace. We were pretty comfy, you know. All of a sudden, we heard some racket in the kitchen. There was a bear in the kitchen. It’s all brown bear country there. And man, we barricaded that door between the kitchen and the living room area and sat there fully awake with our guns ready in case that sucker came through that door. But he didn’t. He milled around, tore things up in the kitchen, and left again. He had been in the kitchen before. Apparently, he came back to check it out once in a while and smelled us too. We didn’t get much sleep that night.”

  SPEAKER: Nillan Hetta

  “No, we sure didn’t. We didn’t. Scared the crap out of me, that one did. And I was scared a lot when I worked for the Forest Service. We ran into bears all the time. Anyway, when I worked for the Forest Service, I was coming down the trail from Conch Lake one day, me and my crew, Anders, Gary, and Martin. I had them up close. I always told them if there’s a bear around you can smell them, which you can. Anyway, my friend Anders was right in front of me and he had the rifle. And then there was me and the other guys behind us and we were pretty close together. And pretty soon Anders said, ‘You smell that, Nillan?’

  “I said, ‘Yeah there’s a bear close around somewhere. He’s gotta be somewhere close because I can smell him pretty strong.’

  “We no more got the words out of our mouths, and Gary yelled, ‘Bear!’ There was these bushes right alongside the trail. And he whirled the gun around and looked and the bear’s head was sticking out of the bush and the tip of the barrel was about six inches from his nose. And the bear’s eyes got big and wide and we got big and wide-eyed. Martin jumped off the trail over the cliff area. I jumped and grabbed the little tree next to us and Anders stood there. Gary had his gun on the bear and the bear pulled his head back in the bushes and took off up the trail.

  NOTES: Tooch is trying out a newfangled digital recorder. I told him to take notes too because I don’t trust that thing. After quite a storytelling session, I had Tooch stop the recording and we bought Isak and Nillan some blueberry pie before we left. I asked them about the taboo about talking about bears and saying the name “bear.” Isak said the restaurant wasn’t the woods so they were okay. They had to do “respectful talk.” I asked them if they thought their stories were “respectful.” Isak thought for a moment then said softly, “Yeah, I guess.” Then Nillan looked around as if looking for something and said, “Please forgive us Grandfather and Grandmother. We were just telling stories. You know how a couple of old farts are.”

  I probably won’t include these stories in my submission to the Smithsonian since they are not traditional stories, just old men talking about bears.

  Date: Distant Time

  Recorded by John Swanton

  Speaker: Mina Agard

  The Woman Who Married a Bear

  The forest calls to her. She packs some food, water, and a blanket and sneaks off into the woods. After several miles, the woods darken and she sits down near a tree. She pulls out a piece of bread from her satchel, tears a piece off, and eats it. So far, her three brothers haven’t followed her. They would never guess she’s gone by way of the woods, figuring she would’ve walked the small road to another village. They are wrong. She chews her hard-crusted bread, recalling her brothers’ cruelty: the way they made her wait on them hand and foot, the way they made her sleep on a thin pile of straw on the hard floor, the way she had to wake up at all hours to stoke the fire while they slept comfortably in their beds.

  Her brothers have been raising her since she was five years old, after their parents died from the illness that swept through the village. Over the years, the mistreatment worsened. They resented having to care for her, that is, except for the youngest brother. Her youngest brother, although influenced by the older ones, was the kindest to her. He often slipped her extra bread. It was he who stood at the window, saying nothing, as she sneaked out while they were eating breakfast. Her other brothers assumed she was outside stacking wood in the woodshed.

  Now she makes her way over stumps, through marshes, wandering on forest paths. After a while, she slows down, feeling the comfort of the woods. She sits down on a large tree root, and it starts to rain and blow. The branches above her sway and creak in the wind. She’s getting cold and wet and night is falling. She should find a place to rest. She gets up from her resting place and walks up over a knoll and discovers a bear den.

  Carefully, she enters the den. As her eyes adjust to the dusk, she sees a bear slumbering in the corner. She speaks softly, “I’m not here to hurt you. I just need a place to rest for awhile.” She walks over to a mossy bed and collapses with exhaustion. At night, she dreams of her horrible brothers and wakes up crying. She can’t stop thinking about how she’s been treated all her life—she cries herself to sleep again. In the morning, the bear is sitting up looking at her. Cautiously, she gathers her things while the bear
watches her. Before she heads out the door, she turns to the bear and says, “Thank you. You’ve been kind to allow me to sleep here. I shall be going now.”

  The bear moves toward her. She presses herself against the cave walls. The bear says, “Tell me, young woman, why were you crying?” Startled, she is speechless, but, in the bear’s eyes, she sees he’s kind. She tells him about her mean brothers, how her eldest brothers are very cruel, and her youngest brother tries to be kind, but he’s bullied by his older brothers. Often, he tried to stop the older brothers from hurting her but was unable.

  The bear tells her she can join him in his den for the winter, until she feels safe enough to go back home. During the winter, they pass the time telling stories. They share meals and listen to the heavy snow cracking tree branches outside. In order to survive the coldest months, she curls up next to the bear for warmth. In the cave, her body thickens, her hair grows long and shaggy. Claws protrude from her hands, her jaw lengthens, her teeth sharpen—she becomes a bear.

  Eventually, the bear and the young woman become husband and wife. The Bear-Husband is kind to his Bear-Wife. He provides her with the best food: meat, berries, fish, and roots. They live happily together throughout the seasons as she makes the forest her home. Outside the den, she can become a human and meander through the forest. Often, she wanders close to her old house, checking on her youngest brother—they never see her.

  One winter, the Bear-Wife gives birth to a son. When the boy is in the bear’s domain, he looks like a bear. When he’s out with his mother picking berries, he looks human. Over the years, the son grows to be a fine young man—he’s half bear and half human. According to custom, the Bear-Wife decides to send her Bear-Son to be instructed by his uncles who still live in the same house. She feels her son has had plenty of time to learn how to be a bear. Now, she wants him to learn how to be a human.