His voice was reedy and deep, the words were measured and slow, but he had spoken. He knew. He understood.
“What happened?”
Ferguson struggled to adjust himself in the bed as best he could, trying to prop his head up so he could see Jenna better. His wife tugged at the pillows to help, but he couldn’t seem to get comfortable. Finally, he relaxed.
“The shaman came and we waited together for something. I don’t know what. It was a bunch of craziness to me. But he got in an outfit and he danced around and we waited.”
He paused for a breath.
“Where was this?” Jenna asked.
“Thunder Bay. He came to chase away the spirits. I hired him.”
“Go on.”
“I went down to the water to check on my plane, and when I got back he was gone.”
“Gone?”
Ferguson nodded.
“I waited around. I thought he was doing some Indian magic or something. I was in the main house with the fire. There was nobody else within miles. And I waited and waited all night, but there was nothing. Then, the next night I was still waiting, and the woods went crazy. I heard noises. It sounded like they were crawling up the walls.”
“Who?”
“Everywhere, scratching and clawing. I didn’t know what it was. Then I heard a big thump and the noises went away. I went outside to see what was going on out there. And I found him.”
“Who?” Jenna asked.
“It was like nothing I’d ever seen before,” he answered.
For the next twenty minutes, Ferguson told Jenna everything. About finding Livingstone. About the transformation. About cutting his hand. It was an agonizing story because it was so hazy and unclear. Ferguson rambled about details that Jenna thought meant nothing. He took long breaks between sentences. It was frustrating for Jenna, and she imagined that it was frustrating for Ferguson as well. He was a test tube person, after all. A person who was still alive only because he lived in a time in which extending life was the ultimate goal. Twenty years earlier, and he would already have been dead. Twenty years later, Jenna thought, and he would most likely be dead as well. As we grow smarter, we must understand that sometimes life-support machines are more for the well than for the sick. Jenna realized that she wanted a living will. Do not resuscitate.
“I stood there looking into its eyes. Black eyes.”
“Black eyes?” Jenna asked.
“Black like coal. ‘Untie me, John,’ it said. My heart almost stopped beating. It wasn’t David’s voice anymore. It was my father.”
“Your father?” Jenna asked. Ferguson was fading. He was slowing down. She needed to know more. He closed his eyes.
“Your father?” she asked again.
“I think he’s too tired—” Mrs. Ferguson started, but John interrupted. He wanted to finish.
His story continued. He told of David’s report and of his changing it. He tried to explain that he didn’t think any harm would come of it. What could happen? But when he stood on the boardwalk at Thunder Bay that evening two summers ago and watched as Jenna got off the powerboat, shivering so badly it seemed she was chilled to the bone, with a lost and faraway look in her eyes, at that moment, he realized it had all been his fault.
“When I flew you to Ketchikan to get your plane, I wanted to die,” John said.
“You flew us?”
He nodded.
“I watched your plane take off and I wanted to die.”
He closed his eyes and breathed heavily. Several minutes passed. Mrs. Ferguson moved to the side of the bed and picked up his hand.
“I’ve never heard that story before,” she said. “The doctor said he might hallucinate on these drugs.”
“He’s not hallucinating. He’s remembering.”
Mrs. Ferguson laughed and shook her head. “Oh, I don’t believe so.”
Ferguson’s eyes popped open. He grabbed Jenna’s wrist.
“Why did you come?”
Jenna was shocked by the sudden move and surprised by the question.
“I need to find the shaman,” she said, nervously.
“I’ve been waiting for you.”
Jenna shook her head. She looked to Mrs. Ferguson. “I don’t understand.”
“I think you should go now,” Mrs. Ferguson said. She began to fuss with Ferguson’s sheets. He pushed her away.
“Why did you come now?” he demanded.
“I want to find my son.”
“He told me it would happen. He told me.”
“Who?”
“He told me to stop the resort. He told me something would happen.”
“What did he say?”
“They killed his baby. They did it. He told me they did it and that they would take others.”
“Take who?” Jenna pleaded. She didn’t understand, but she had to find out. It was hard to understand him. He was struggling, trying to climb out of the bed. Mrs. Ferguson was holding him down.
“You’ve come to bless me.”
Jenna was confused. She stood up. Ferguson was floundering in the bed.
“You really have to go,” Mrs. Ferguson said to Jenna. But Jenna couldn’t go yet. She wasn’t finished.
“What was his name?”
“He told me to stop it. I didn’t.”
“What was his name?”
“You have to go. Please. Look what you’re doing to him.”
Mrs. Ferguson was holding John’s shoulders and pushing him down onto the bed. He fought against her, trying to pull her hands off, trying to sit up, but he was too weak. He reached out for Jenna. His thin arm reaching out.
“You’ve come to bless me,” he said.
“The shaman,” Jenna said. “David. What’s his name?”
“Bless me,” Ferguson cried meekly, falling back onto the bed and gasping for air.
“For the love of God,” Mrs. Ferguson shrieked, letting go of John and confronting Jenna. “Get out!” she shouted. She jumped up and ran from the room.
Jenna leaned down and stroked Ferguson’s forehead. He calmed down. His monitors were going crazy. The heart rate machine was speeding far too fast to be healthy. Jenna held him.
“Bless me,” he pleaded.
She leaned down and kissed his forehead.
“God bless you,” she said.
His face relaxed. “Livingstone,” he gasped. “Livingstone.”
“Where is he?”
“Klawock.”
“Where is that?”
But it was too late. The doctors ran in. The orderlies. The interns and nurses. Mrs. Ferguson came in. They all ran in and surrounded John Ferguson. They all stood over him. They all worked to keep him alive.
Jenna went up to Mrs. Ferguson. “I’m sorry.”
“Please,” Mrs. Ferguson begged, turning to Jenna with tears in her eyes. “Please leave us alone.”
Jenna left the room. From the hallway she could see all of them in their green pajamas and white jackets. All of their good intentions secreting from their pores. But there are some things you can’t stop.
Jenna walked slowly toward the elevators. She could hear his heart monitor beeping away, so he wasn’t dead yet. She wanted to make Mrs. Ferguson understand. But there was no way she could explain it to her. There was no way Mrs. Ferguson would want to understand. She was consumed with saving her husband and didn’t want to know about spirits and the other world.
And as she walked toward the elevator that would take her outside, Jenna felt sad. But she questioned her sadness. Why should she feel sad? Because another person would soon die? Ashes to ashes. Everyone has a time, and when that time is gone, it’s gone. She was sure that John Ferguson had had a long and happy life and wherever he was going would be good to him.
“Mrs. Rosen,” a voice called out. Jenna turned. Mrs. Ferguson was hurrying down the hall toward her. “Mrs. Rosen, he wanted me to make sure you knew something.”
Mrs. Ferguson caught up to Jenna and touched her arm.
>
“He made me come after you. He wanted me to make sure you knew something. He says he’s sorry. He wanted you to know that he’s very sorry.”
Jenna was caught off guard. She didn’t know what to say.
“It wasn’t his fault,” Jenna said. “It’s just something that happened.” She paused. “Tell him.”
Mrs. Ferguson smiled kindly at Jenna.
“I’ll tell him.”
Mrs. Ferguson retreated back up the hallway. Jenna watched her disappear into the room, and then she took the stairs down to the lobby. She didn’t have time for an elevator.
Chapter 29
AS JENNA MADE HER WAY BACK TO EDDIE’S HOUSE, IT OCCURRED to her that it was Saturday. She had left Seattle almost a week earlier, but it felt like only yesterday. It felt like yesterday that she left, but it also felt like she’d been in Wrangell for a year. Weird. And now she was off on another adventure. Going to a place more remote than Wrangell to find a shaman. Why? She felt that Robert was slipping away, becoming more and more like a memory, but that Bobby was closer than ever, almost like he was alive. And she had to go with her feelings. At a certain point, everyone has to rely on instinct.
Jenna stepped up onto the porch and her heart sank when she looked through the window and saw Eddie busily setting the table for two. He took a handful of little yellow flowers that were in a jelly jar and placed them on the table. She sensed the pending clash of intentions, but she went inside anyway.
“Hey, you’re back,” Eddie said, pulling out the chair for Jenna. “Have a seat.”
He hurried over to the stove and turned on the gas burner under a griddle. He poured a cup of coffee and set it down in front of Jenna, then returned to the stove and poured pancake batter onto the hot pan.
“I assume pancakes are okay,” he said.
Jenna nodded feebly. She didn’t want breakfast; she wanted to leave. She needed to get out. She thought of running. Bolting for the door and heading off down the street to the airport. She and Eddie were on two different schedules, two different planes, and Jenna didn’t understand why Eddie was moving so fast and cooking so much food. He dropped a stack of pancakes on her plate and brought over another plate with crispy little strips of bacon laid out on a napkin dark with grease spots. He turned back to the stove and poured more batter.
“Eat ’em while they’re hot. I’ll be there in a sec.”
She took a bite, but she had no appetite. Eddie sat down and ate with her. He was being cheerful, but almost too much so. He seemed to be working hard at it. He chatted on about taking Jenna for a walk on the beach, or going for a ride in his boat up the Stikine River. He talked about the hot springs up the river that were wonderful but full of mosquitoes. He laughed and drank coffee and ate more pancakes until she couldn’t look at him anymore because of all the dread she was feeling.
It wasn’t Eddie; it was Jenna. She had changed overnight into a different person. Her priorities were all different now. Yesterday she was trying to get away from something. Today she had to get to someplace. And this urgency affected the way she saw things and interacted with them. She listened to Eddie and looked around the room and she felt bad because she noticed for the first time that there was something stale in the room. She didn’t know what it was, and she guessed it had always smelled like that and she was just noticing it now. But it was stale and musty, like some mildew was under all the carpeting or something. Like the windows hadn’t been opened in a long time. Like there was too much carbon dioxide in the room because no fresh air got in. She realized that she couldn’t tell if the paint on the walls was meant to be a brownish white or if it was white a long time ago and had aged to a brown tone. Everything seemed to be yellowed, like an old, oxidized newspaper. Eddie, too, seemed to blend in with the walls and the carpeting. He was distant and removed, and Jenna had the feeling that he was like this from the beginning and that she had been fooling herself, looking through bright new eyes into an old world, seeing things shinier than they actually were, polishing things with a coat of enthusiasm and hope, taking things that everyone saw as brown and looking at them as white and clean. Even the lightbulbs, which Jenna had thought were white, looked now like they threw a yellowish brown light. Jenna’s life was going through a brownout.
“What did you go to the hospital for?” Eddie asked casually. Too casually. He was acting, Jenna could tell. He was afraid something was going on that he didn’t know about. That’s why he had cooked an elaborate breakfast. Jenna thought it would be best to get things over with.
“I’m leaving.”
Eddie froze in mid-bite and looked up at her.
“You’re leaving? Now?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
Jenna shrugged. “My mother always said leftovers and houseguests spoil after three days. So my time’s up.”
“I guess I never thought of you as a leftover.”
They tried to smile at each other, but Jenna could see the disappointment on Eddie’s face.
“Really,” he said. He wanted the truth.
“I went to the hospital to see a man who could tell me about this shaman I need to find. Now I’m going to find him.”
“You’re serious?”
“Yes.”
Eddie laughed and dismissed her with a wave of his hand. “Whatever.”
“Whatever, what?” Jenna said, a little irritated.
“I thought you didn’t really believe in this legend crap.”
“No, you don’t believe in it. I never said I didn’t believe in it.”
“Ah, I see.”
“Eddie, I’m sorry, but I have to go. I need to see this whole thing through to the end.”
Eddie stood up and collected the breakfast dishes, shuttling them to the sink.
“Hey, look, whatever. You have to go. I understand that. You have to do what you have to do. I shouldn’t even care. It’s just that I got used to having you around. But that’s me being selfish. You go do what you have to do. Good luck and God bless.”
He pulled the cast-iron pan into the sink and began washing it with his back to Jenna. She sat for another minute wondering if there was more that she should say, but there wasn’t. Eddie stopped scrubbing the burned remnants of pancake from the skillet and let the water run, his shoulders slumped over the sink. Jenna felt bad for him, she really did. She knew she had let him down. But she was feeling that urgency again. That need to get the hell out. The same thing she had felt at the party with Robert. She was crawling inside her own skin because there was a part of her that was incomplete and until she could complete herself, she didn’t have time for other people.
Jenna silently went into the bedroom and stuffed her clothes into her backpack. She stood in the middle of the room and looked around. She wanted to remember it. She seemed to be leaving places a lot lately, and she wanted to be sure to remember what they all looked like. And then she thought that she didn’t merely want to remember the places she had been, she wanted the places to remember her. So she took off her silver kushtaka charm and set it on the dresser. Then the room had a part of her in it. Something to prove she had been there. Now she could leave.
Eddie was still at the sink washing the dishes. Jenna took sixty dollars out of her wallet and walked up behind him.
“Look, thanks for everything,” she said. “Let me give you something for the room.”
She handed the money to Eddie, but he pushed it away and shook his head.
“We had a deal. You keep me company, you get the room. A deal’s a deal.”
He didn’t really look at Jenna. He didn’t engage. He was a kid now. A kid who lost something and felt bad for himself. Jenna leaned forward and kissed his cheek.
“Take care of that arm.”
He laughed. “Yeah.”
“I’ll give you a call in a couple of weeks. We can talk about the old days.”
“Yeah.”
Jenna called for Oscar and snapped on his leash. They headed for
the door.
“Look, Eddie, I’m really sorry. But I have to go.”
He looked up at her with those blue eyes and nodded.
“Yeah.”
Jenna closed the door and headed off toward town with Oscar at her side.
EDDIE STOOD BEHIND his closed door for several minutes, feeling like some kind of animal that had been locked up in a cage. He took off his shirt and looked at his feeble arm that was tied to his ribs with a tight sling that strapped behind his back. A straitjacket. He couldn’t deal with the overwhelming sensation that he had been rendered mute, slammed down into a deep well with a door shutting out all the light after him. Squeezed tightly into a vice that made it hard to breathe and made him ache with the desire to move about.
He tore off his sling with rage and lifted his left arm into the air. It was weak with the atrophy of a month without movement. Decay is an unstoppable process. Atrophy in muscles, entropy in everything else. The entire universe is victim to entropy, but why did it all have to manifest itself in his arm? Why did the energy loss on Venus have to take itself out on his weak left arm? He turned his palm toward his face and looked down at the purple scar with its red cross-stitching. Frankenstein monster. The doctor had taken the stitches out a week ago and it still felt as if he could easily pop the whole thing open again. He made a fist. No pain. He had been using his left hand for a while. He couldn’t feel much in it, but at least it was a tool. Like Vise-Grip pliers. He could lock his fingers around something and hold it while his other arm worked on it. He brought the fist toward his body, curling his arm upward. The biceps bunched up until his arm was a right angle. He clenched his teeth and continued bringing the arm toward him. He felt the tissue straining. The glue was not dry. The scar that held his skin together had not yet set and it protested his movement. He felt a prickly pain along the scar, and then the feeling that every blood vessel in his arm would burst open in an act of solidarity. The pain was unbearable. He started to sweat. To curse the limitations of his own body. Finally his hand was close enough to him that he could touch his chin with his fingers and he relaxed, letting his arm unhinge and dangle from his shoulder. He slumped into the kitchen chair and lit a cigarette.