The Cloud Atlas

RONNIE IS NOT CATHOLIC. Nor is he Russian Orthodox. Nor Moravian Protestant. Nor Baptist, nor a member of any of the other churches that crowd vulnerable Bethel. As a result, it was somewhat difficult for me to obtain for him a position as assistant chaplain at the hospice some time ago, but it was certainly easier than getting him a position titled, say, “staff shaman.”

It's not that people would have frowned on the term shaman. (Or maybe they might have; it's a white man's word, and imprecise the way white men's words are. Angalkuq

is the Yup'ik term.) Shamans, or angalkut, served many functions in times past, but a chief duty was healing, and even the hospital in town incorporates such traditional medicine into its care today.

But people did frown on Ronnie. He was, way back when, an angalkuq of some note. Mostly because he was a final, and absolutely unrepentant, holdout against the missionaries. As such, he merited a certain amount of respect, even from those God-fearing Natives who no longer sought his services-so much of the old ways had been lost, but in Ronnie they had a time capsule, a treasury, an unassailable fortress.

Until a tide of alcohol flooded it.

Ronnie's abilities had waned during the war, it was said, maybe before. Some said it happened gradually, some said abruptly. Some said Ronnie had done something, and others said something had been done to him. But every version of the story I heard turned out the same way: the war had brought soldiers; the soldiers, alcohol; and alcohol, for Ronnie at least, brought fleeting glimpses of the ethereal provinces he once visited regularly.

By the time I met him, he lacked both powers and respect. To my shame, I did nothing to help him. I thought an enfeebled foe made my job that much easier. Though Ronnie's various attempts to run me out of Alaska, or out of this world altogether, were occasionally frightening, withstanding them seemed to burnish my reputation in the community.

But eventually, I'd had my fill of respect. And I'd come to like Ronnie-in part, because no one else did. So I went to him. I worked with him, as much as he'd let me.

He should have been long dead by then, and I think he knew this. I say that because I can't think of any other reason why he would have let me help him as much as I tried to. Except for one. I'd suggested a dozen times he enter a treatment program, but he didn't agree until I- or a mischievous God putting words in my mouth-announced that if he stopped drinking, I would as well. I wasn't an alcoholic, but-well, drinking wasn't improving me, either.

In any case, I could see in Ronnie's smile gratitude for someone joining him on the difficult road ahead-and also delight that he had found yet a new way to discomfort me.

We've had a truce, a delicate one, with alcohol ever since. But a strange thing happened when Ronnie sobered up: he had nothing to do. He'd had nothing to do when he was an alcoholic, but being drunk was itself a kind of occupation: you had duties and obligations, like being disorderly, you had an office-in Ronnie's case, a jail cell-where you could reliably be found.

So for the past three or four years, before this most recent set of ailments put him in bed instead of beside one, Ronnie has worked with me at the hospice. I suppose I could have tried to get him a place at the hospital in town, but they were already staffed with Native healers (with far finer reputations than Ronnie's), and besides, I wanted someplace quiet. Out of the way.

Ronnie has insisted that his powers have dimmed to such a degree that he's of little use to anyone, but even I can see that certain patients, certain families, get a measure of peace from our visits. They don't look to Ronnie for a cure any more than they do the hospice. Rather, they just want some sort of assurance that the one who is ill will pass through death and into the next life more easily.

Unfortunately, other families want Lazarus-level care, and this leads to disappointments. I know-I thought we all knew-that sometimes people get better, and sometimes they don't, especially in a hospice, but I guess some people expect more of Ronnie. And so when patients he's visited with die-though they were going to die anyway (we all die)-it counts against Ronnie.

And lately, me. I'd thought my role was innocent enough, just nudging Ronnie into spending his last years more productively, more spiritually, but no. Ronnie visits, a patient dies-a parishioner, no less, albeit one who always dozed through Mass-and word spreads around town. Maybe two others outlive their diagnoses for a month or two, but another dies suddenly, maybe another, and maybe to those who haven't stood beside Ronnie and seen the-for lack of a better word- peace he brings, it all adds up wrong.