“Citizens of Jackson Cove, please find a place. As you can see, we’re using the main hall to give everyone space. We have seats up front for the newspaper and radio reporters, as well as for the disabled and our elders. The rest of you are welcome to stand, so long as you keep six feet distance. No one will be admitted without a mask. We have a lot to get through tonight, and Jackson KOVE is standing by, so please let’s not waste our time.”
It was Alice, Nicky saw, the same woman who had yelled at them at the harbor a couple nights earlier, speaking from behind the lectern at the front of the room. She wore her salmon mask over her mouth, and her gray curls piled on her head.
Nicky saw Josie in a corner speaking with Veronica, the two of them wearing masks but still keeping distance. Veronica looked even more beautiful in person than she had in the video. She had creamy, windswept cheeks above her Alaskan flag mask. She wore her hair in a ponytail, and dark blue jeans with the cuffs folded. The couple close to her must have been her parents, well-dressed and speaking with their foreheads almost touching. Her mother had her black hair pulled back and wore a poncho-like cape with a crest embroidered onto it.
Nicky considered going over and introducing herself, especially after Veronica had mentioned meeting at the town hall over the computer. Then she saw Uncle Cliff wave to her from the side of the room. She made her way forward, thinking that now wasn’t the best time to meet her sister’s new best friend.
She passed a woman sitting at a table of equipment, wearing headphones, then felt a tug on her windbreaker. “Hey, love!” It was Aunt Mall stretching out a long arm to bridge the distance between them.
“Hi, Aunt Mall.”
“You ready for your sister’s big moment?”
Nicky nodded. Clete waved, and she joined her cousin and uncle against the wall. In front of her, Nicky saw Sven, in oil-splattered blue jeans, his yellow hat hanging from a string around his neck. Rooster purred away in his lap. The cat looked over and blinked lazily at her, not even flinching as Alice’s gavel came down with a thwack!
“Everyone, thank you for taking time out of your busy schedules to come to this evening’s town hall and thank you to those listeners with us on Jackson KOVE, and watching over Zoom. Especially with so much worry over the virus, when so many of us would prefer to be out on our boats fishing, picking chanterelles, walking the dog, or enjoying the last of the warm weather before the fall storms hit. We appreciate your presence here tonight, virtual or otherwise. I see everyone in here is wearing masks, and I thank you.”
Nicky wondered where this calm, collected woman had been the night she yelled at them by the harbor.
“I know tempers have been flaring,” Alice continued, as if answering Nicky’s thoughts. “In the grocery store aisles, on the docks, even down at the bars. I also know that everyone in this room loves the island where we live, and we all think we know what’s best for it. Our job tonight will be to set those thoughts aside, and to listen. Rage has no place here. In order to survive, we need to trust one another. We don’t live like the Lower 48. We can’t just drive off and get away. There are ten miles of road—the rest is rock, ice, and trees. This vote coming up on Friday is about the trees. It’s also about hearing one another, and putting others in front of ourselves. Along with us adults speaking, we’re going to have Veronica Deschumel and her friend, a newcomer to Shee Island, give a speech.”
“Everyone knows whose side they’re on,” someone grumbled. “Don’t see why we have to sit through it.”
“Because these two girls have the guts to stand up here and talk about it,” a voice Nicky recognized growled back. It was Sven’s.
“Up to the microphone with you if you’d like to share,” Alice snapped. “Three minutes. State your name.”
Uncle Cliff stepped forward, his hands shoved in his pockets as he made his way carefully around the chairs to the front of the room.
“Good evening,” he said. The microphone whined, sending feedback into the speakers. Alice leaned over to adjust it to account for their height difference. “Kéet yóo xat duwasáakw ku.aa Dleit Káa X’éináx Cliff McCleod. My Tlingit name is Kéet, and my English name is Cliff McCleod. Gooch naax xat sitee. I belong to the Wolf clan. Yéil naax siteeyín ax éesh. I’m a child of the Raven moiety. Yáax’ yéi xat yatee. Jackson Cove-x’. I live here, in Jackson Cove.”
He took a deep breath and swallowed. The crowd was silent. Nicky turned to Clete, and whispered, “Do you also speak Tlingit?”
He smiled back at her and leaned close. “S’áaxwshaan and my grandmother tried to teach me. It’s hard.”
“Ladies and gentlemen, I’ll be brief,” Uncle Cliff said. “This is not a difficult equation we have in front of us. If the mill where I work as crew foreman isn’t given access to the big timber in Sky River Valley, then this town is done for. It’s as simple as that. At least, the town for working people and families. It will become a place for rich people from Seattle and Juneau and Anchorage to build second homes, especially those wishing to escape the city as a result of this pandemic. The people who live and work here, the majority of people in this room, will be priced out. I will need to move my family down south. Jackson Cove will be transformed, and not in a way that I believe my parents, and their parents before them, and their parents before them, would appreciate.”
He stared over the crowd, nodding slightly.
“This island where I grew up, where I married, where I had my boy—this place is special. Spiritual. My ancestors knew it, just as the Russians knew it when they first crashed on our shores. They wanted to enslave us, to force us to hunt otter for them, as they had with the Aleut and Aleutiq tribes up north. History has noted how the Tlingits stood up for themselves and for their way of life on this island. Katlian, a Tlingit war chief, fought the man cast in bronze outside this town hall. After the Russians left, the anthropologists from universities arrived, wanting to study this island, to make a record of our language and our ways of subsistence. In more recent years, people have been coming by boat or plane to shoot our brown bear and catch our salmon. In short, to take. Now, with this pandemic ravaging the world, we find ourselves at a turning point. Cities in the Lower 48, and across the world, empty out as people search for community, for a more pure, and simple way of life. People realize that we have food up here, from the forest and the sea. We also have peace, because we are self-sufficient. We don’t need others, because we have the resources to sustain ourselves and our families.”
Uncle Cliff gripped the sides of the lectern and dropped his head. He breathed in, then looked up again.
“People on this island know me. They know my uncle S’áaxwshaan, and the stories he told of the Lady and the Volcano. They know my parents, and my grandparents. We have always been in favor of subsisting on what we have, rather than inviting others to ruin it. This approach to life only becomes more necessary at times like these. We cannot continue to encourage people to come to our island, even if it means jobs. Because it’s putting ourselves, and our children, at risk. We need to keep ourselves safe, and our children safe. I do not want people arriving by plane from Seattle and even Japan or wherever else. We have had not one case of Covid-19 on this island. I want to keep it that way. We know that the flu in 1918 all but destroyed many of the Native villages in this state. Let’s band together in this tough moment, hunker down, and protect. If we are allowed to cut Sky River Valley, this will give us another five years at least of running the mill, to sustain us while this virus passes. We will be able send wood out rather than bring tourists in, who might be sick. I don’t want to be the one who, after ten thousand years of my family on Shee, has to look my boy in the eye and tell him that we put his island in danger. Or—worse—that we have to leave the island home that we built with our own two hands. Don’t make me be this person. Please vote in favor of cutting Sky River Valley, to allow us, as community members of Jackson Cove, to continue our way of life by working with the land, in the mill, without putting ourselves and our children in danger. Gunalchéesh, yéi áwé. Thank you. That is all.”
Uncle Cliff threaded through the room as it erupted in applause. From the back of the room, Lars yelled, “Here, here!”
Across from her, Sven rose, walked to the lectern, and turned to face the audience. Rooster crouched on his shoulder, surveying the crowd with his golden eyes.
“Most of you know me as that crabby old fisherman with the black cat who doesn’t talk to no one, but my name is Sven Ruger,” he said. “I have no silver tongue, at least not like my friend who spoke before me, or my brother, Lars, in the back there.” He lifted his chin in a sarcastic gesture of greeting.
“Great-grandfather Ruger arrived here more recently than Cliff’s kin, back in the 1850s, chased out of Norway for religion. And I’ll tell you one thing: he didn’t come searching for a land where people told him what to do. No siree. Anyone who’s ever gone up against my brother knows as much. But I been back to Norway. You go into the hills, the first thing you notice—there’s hardly a tree left. They don’t have no more wild salmon because all they do is farm fish. They messed it up—all of it. Their mountains as well as their streams and oceans. Let me tell you, folks. I stare out at them trees every night before sleep, thanking them for the work they do to give us the salmon that keep me and Rooster busy. Thanking them for the work they do breathing for us, sending us oxygen. That old yellow cedar out there, it’s been making a nursery for the salmon for well over a thousand years. In fact, those trees do just what Mr. McCleod was discussing—allow us to subsist without the help of others. I’m sure your ancestors weren’t in favor of mowing down a bunch of forest that made sure you had fish to put up in the fall,” Sven said, looking at Cliff. Rooster arched his back as Sven reached up to pet the cat.
“Now, my ancestors from Norway came here to find a place in the gloom where they didn’t have to answer to no kings knocking on their door telling them how to pray. Where people could do as they wanted. But I’ll tell you, what we’ve come up against here is something larger than we can control. Like it or not, we’re experiencing climate change. I see it every day out on the water, catching tuna alongside salmon as the oceans warm. We’re in some sort of hurry to chop down the trees that breathe for us? It makes about as much sense as reaching in with a knife and slicing out our own lungs.. The forest and the fish depend on each other. My brother knows it, but he’s just too darned stubborn and scared, and greedy, to make a change. One look at his house up there on that rock tells you as much. Don’t do it. Save these trees. That’s all I have to say about that.”
As Sven limped away from the lectern, a few people clapped, including Nicky. Though she had to admit, he didn’t speak as powerfully as Uncle Cliff did.
“Okay. Thank you, Mr. Ruger. I’d like to invite Veronica and her guest, Josephine Hall, up to the podium.”
Veronica’s parents clapped as she and Josie made their way forward. Veronica moved with the same self-assurance she had shown in that video they saw on the ferry. Her father, who had chestnut skin and close-cropped silvery hair, squeezed Veronica’s wrist as she passed. Her mother took down the hood of her poncho and said something to Veronica, who nodded and smiled.
As the two girls approached the front of the room, the woman from the radio fooled with a few knobs, then nodded at Alice. Her father’s decision to stay back at the house made no sense to Nicky. She shut her eyes and wished, with all of her heart, for her mother to appear somewhere in the room, cheering on Josie just as she cheered the Ironmen baseball team, loud and obnoxious.
At the podium, Josie and Veronica squared their shoulders to the silent room. Alice brought a step stool over so that Josie could match Veronica’s height.
“Good evening, Jackson Cove,” Veronica said in a rich, smooth voice. The rolled cuffs of her jeans just touched the tops of the swirl of the pastel octopus legs on her turned-down XtraTufs. “I’d like to offer a warm welcome to all present. As many of you know, I am a seventh-grader at Shee Middle School, and I run the Drama, Debate, & Forensics Club. My father helps with Jackson Cove Convos, and my mother makes traditional Tsimshian clothing. I’m proud to live here in Jackson Cove. I’ve spoken on behalf of the youth for so many of these events. Tonight, I’d like to make an exception and introduce my new friend Josephine Hall, who arrived here last week. She is from Pennsylvania, and has come here with her father and her twin sister, Nicky.” Veronica gave a friendly wave to Nicky, accompanied by a smile. “Josie and Nicky are nieces of Mallory and Cliff McCleod, as I think many of you know.”
People around the room clapped as Veronica stepped aside. Josie leaned forward and angled the microphone toward her.
“Thank you, Jackson Cove, and Veronica.” Josie’s voice was soft. Nicky’s heart revved, and her palms began to sweat. She watched as Josie’s fingers fumbled with her phone. Josie prided herself on memorizing her speeches, and never, ever, read them. Something was wrong. Josie lifted her head to face the crowd again.
“Thank you to my friend Veronica for letting me speak to you about this important issue facing Shee Island today. I’d like to speak on the subject of deforestation, which is when we log our natural forests. We cut down trees to make land for housing, and to get wood. This creates jobs, just like my uncle said before.”
Nicky stole a glance at her uncle. He stood with his back straight, wearing a serious expression as he watched Josie.
“The mill at the end of the road needs wood to continue to work. We understand that. The problem is that the earth is running out of forests to log. Especially the older trees, like the ones in Sky River Valley that Mr. Ruger spoke of. These trees take the carbon dioxide we breathe and give us back oxygen. The forests also create an important habitat for whitetail deer, bear, mountain goats, and salmon, like Mr. Ruger said.”
“Mountain goats don’t need trees,” someone scoffed.
“No whitetail deer here either.”
Alice hissed at the crowd. “Quiet!”
Josie looked down at her phone again. “As many of you know, trees cover almost one-third of the globe. By cutting the trees in Sky River Valley down, we disrupt critical water cycles, accelerating soil erosion and climate change.” She picked her head up from the phone. “Plus, even if the mill where my uncle works closes, there are other things people can do. Seattle isn’t far. Tech jobs don’t require anyone to cut trees. That’s an obvious one. Humans are built to improvise and dream up different ways of doing things. For example, you can make things on Etsy out of shells you find on the beach, and pine cones.”
Josie’s voice sounded squeaky. Her eyes scanned the crowd and met Nicky’s. Never had Josie looked so scared and unsure. Nicky regretted not standing beside her in the back of the room, even with Veronica there.
“When there’s overpopulation, then houses require heating, and people cut the forest. Land is also cleared for livestock as people demand milk and meat products.”
A deep voice chimed in from the back of the room. “Only two thousand people, and no cows or pigs on the island.” It was Lars.
Uncle Cliff swiveled around. “Hey. She’s a kid. Lighten up.”
People shifted. Alice took a step closer to the podium. Nicky could see from Josie’s expression that she knew the speech wasn’t going well. Lars had rattled her with his heckling, and his news of their father.
Josie straightened her back and lifted her chin. “In conclusion, forests like the one in Sky River Valley are the lungs of the earth. Just like the fishermen said, who slices out their lungs? No one. That’s who. So neither should you. Thank you.”
She stepped down, ducked her head, and walked toward the back of the room. Veronica trailed behind, her brightness gone. If her sister had never been embarrassed before in her life, then this was her first time. As Josie passed by her, Nicky reached out to squeeze her wrist, as Veronica’s mother had done for her. Josie brushed by, knocking her hand out of the way.
“Thank you, Veronica and Josephine,” Alice said. “Let’s take a break before hearing from a couple more folks. Please remember that the vote is two days away, on Friday. Come here to cast your ballots. Let’s meet back in fifteen minutes.”
Uncle Cliff rose, and so did Clete and Nicky. At the back of the room Nicky saw Josie rip out her buns and head for the door. Veronica took off after her. In the lobby, Josie shoved open the glass doors and stepped into the night, with her new best friend close behind.