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“He’s Navy,” Pop said. “Or merchant marine. A young man, like all the rest of you.” Pop’s voice, although loud enough to be heard over the wind, had a slight tremble.
“Don’t worry about it, old-timer,” the Cutthroat said. “He’s just another dead guy now. Seen plenty of those.”
Pop got down on one knee beside the body. “Not on this islan
d,” he said. “Other than sporadic casualties generated by bad bomber landings, Adak has been relatively death-free.” He gingerly touched the dead man’s face and tilted it to one side far enough to expose the back of the head. The skull had been crushed by a large rock that was still underneath. The dark stuff on the rock looked like what Pop had coughed up earlier.
Feeling sick, I turned away and stared at the Cutthroat. I tried to read his face, the way I might try to read an opponent’s in a boxing match. I’d been told that you could tell what another fighter was about to do, and sometimes even what he was only thinking about doing, just from the expression on his face.
The Cutthroat gave me a scowl.
“Don’t look at me, kid,” he said. “I would’ve done a better job than that.” Pop opened the dead man’s coat, exposing a blue Navy work shirt. I could see his hands shaking slightly as he did it. “I believe you,” he said. “Whatever happened here was sloppy. It may even have been an accident.” He opened the coat far enough to expose the right shoulder. “No insignia. He was just a seaman.” He opened the shirt collar. “No dog tags, either.”
Then he reached into the large, deep coat pockets, first the left, then the right. He came up from the right pocket clutching something.
Pop held it up in a shaft of gray light from one of the ceiling holes.
It was a huge, dark-brown feather, maybe fourteen inches long. It was bent in the middle.
“That bird,” Pop said, “is turning out to be nothing but trouble.”
VII
WE LEFT THE BODY WHERE IT WAS AND WENT BACK INTO THE LARGER ROOM. The wind was still furious overhead, so we were stuck there for the time being. Pop and I sat back down against the wall at the far end, and the Cutthroat lounged on the earthen shelf along the long wall to our right.
Pop didn’t look so good. He was pale, and he coughed now and then. I think he was trying to pretend that the dead man hadn’t bothered him. He had probably seen death before, but not the way the Cutthroat and I had.
Still, this was different. In battle, death is expected. Back at camp, when the battlefields have moved elsewhere, it’s something else. So I was a little shook up myself.
The Cutthroat didn’t seem bothered at all. His mind was already on other things.
“This goddamn williwaw might take that eagle away,” he said. “If it does, I won’t get my feathers. I should have come in the other way, like you guys did. I saw you there with it, but then I felt the wind coming. I didn’t think you two were gonna make it here.”
“Neither did we,” Pop said. “But if you want an eagle feather, you can have the one I took from that young man.” He reached for his jacket pocket.
The Cutthroat made a dismissive gesture. “That one’s bent in the middle. It’s no good to me. The power’s bent now, too.”
“What sort of power do you get from feathers?” I asked. I immediately regretted it.
The Cutthroat gave me a look too dark to even rise to the level of contempt. “None of your fucking business. In fact, I’m wondering what you and your damn lieutenant colonel wanted with the eagle in the first place.”
Pop coughed. “The private and I wanted nothing to do with it at all. But the lieutenant colonel seems to be curious about who killed it, gutted it, and staked it out like that. He incorrectly assumed I could help him discover that information.”
The Cutthroat sat up straight. “Somebody killed it on purpose?”
“That’s what it looks like,” Pop said. “Couldn’t you see it from over here?”
The Cutthroat’s brow furrowed. “I just saw you two, and the eagle’s wings, and then the wind hit me before I could come any closer. You say somebody pulled out its guts?”
“Yes.” Pop’s color was getting better. “And staked it to the earth with nails. Does that mean anything to you?”
The Cutthroat scowled. “Yeah, it means that somebody’s a fucking son of a bitch. I ain’t heard of nothing like that before.” He scratched his sparse beard. “Unless maybe a shaman from a mainland tribe was here, trying to do some kind of magic.”
Pop leaned toward the Cutthroat. His eyes were bright. “Why would killing an eagle be magic?”
The Cutthroat’s hand came down to rest on the hilt of his knife. It made me nervous.
“The people along the Yukon tell a story about eagles,” the Cutthroat said. “It’s the kind of story you white people like to hear us savages tell. I even told it to some officers one night on Attu. Took their minds off the fact that they were getting a lot of kids killed. Got a promise of six beers for it. They paid up, too.” He gave Pop a pointed look.
