The Raven's Gift - Don Rearden [63]
“I don’t even know why I’m talking to you,” the boy whispered. “Didn’t sleep last night. Couldn’t.”
John had been waiting for a chance to talk to the boy alone, to make a serious connection, and he could feel it coming.
“My cousin in Kuigpak died,” he said with almost no emotion.
The boy kept his head down, but John could see tears dripping onto the shiny grey surface of the desk. He reached a hand out and patted the boy’s back.
“I’m sorry.”
“He hanged himself in the maqi. He put on his basketball uniform and tied an anchor line around his neck inside the steam bath. My older brother lives in Kuigpak. He found him.”
John got up and got some Kleenex from his desk. He set a handful on the desk. “Here,” he said.
“He emailed me, two days ago. Never said shit about wanting to die. Just said I could have his old autographed Kobe Bryant poster next time I went over. I just thought he didn’t like Kobe no more.”
Alex wiped his face and turned to John. His eyes were bloodshot, angry.
“You know how many funerals of people who did this I been to in my life?” he asked.
John shook his head.
“Too many. One time I tried to add them all up. I stopped at thirty-two and lost count. And you know what? We’ll all go there, to Kuigpak, the whole village will go. I’ll miss a week of your classes, and no one will say it’s wrong. Not one person will stand up at his funeral and say he shouldn’t have done that. No one will say we need to stop killing ourselves here. No one will. Not one single person. And then someone else will do it. We’re like the Arawak people after Columbus came to their island, man. We’re killing ourselves to avoid this shit life.”
“Why do you think that is?” John asked.
“It’s our culture not to talk about it, they say. We don’t talk about the dead. We don’t say bad things about the dead. You don’t say anything about them. But I don’t think the Yup’ik people lived here for thousands of years by killing themselves.”
“Maybe you should write about his loss, then. Write how you feel and share this burden.”
Alex stood up and wadded up the tissue into a tight ball. “Write? Write about what? What good will that do? Maybe some kass’aq like you is going to fly in here with a new program and save us from ourselves?”
He put his cap on, flipped the desk over, and stomped toward the door.
“No,” John said softly, “you’ll need to save yourself first and then help save the others.”
“Save this!” he said, stopping at the doorway and holding up his middle finger.
He leaned his forehead against the door jamb and took a deep breath. “Sorry, John. I’m just hurting inside, you know? I’m going to go to his funeral and then I don’t know what. I need a break from all this, this place. Maybe go to Anchorage or Bethel for a while. Maybe stay in Kuigpak with my bro. Help him out. He’s a wreck. Worse than my cousin was.”
“You’re not dropping out, are you?”
“No, I’ll come back. You’ll see me again. You’ve been a pretty cool teacher, John. I learned more from you than in my whole high school days put together. Sad thing is, what I learned is that I don’t know nothing about my culture and that I can’t trust yours, theirs I mean, but still, that’s more than I’ve ever learned. I guess that’s something. See you, man.”
The boy gave a half-wave and disappeared down the school hallway.
“THE BIG MOUTH BABY is a monster everyone knows about,” the girl said as she tucked her grass weaving away and pulled her sleeping bag up to her chin. “I’m surprised you never heard about it. Maybe one of the scariest of our stories.”
“I’m not really into hearing a bedtime story,” he said, “especially not a scary one.” He wiped at the frozen balls of snot beneath his nose with the back of his hand. His knees hurt and his toes ached from hunching over the small pile of kindle. He’d spent too much time and energy trying to get the thin green willows to ignite, and