Others hovered over each fish momentarily to shake on more salt than you would believe and stuff it with handfuls of yellow garlic and chopped onions, a surrogate for the innards removed in the casino weeks ago. Then the “lemon girl” took her turn and placed four or five slices inside each belly, all in a neat, overlapping row. Trying to clamp the cavity shut was like wrestling a suitcase. Finally, Jessica and the day’s chef, Barry McKown, each lifted one side of the foil, creating a tall aluminum A-frame. They rolled the sheet’s ends together until the fish was snug. They folded and crimped the long edges to finish the pocket. Then Wade tore more foil, and each fish was double-wrapped. “Got’a keep my juice,” Barry reminded us. “Double-wrapping helps me out a lot.”
“We are a well-oiled machine!” Jessica declared, which was not untrue. Especially considering the mayo. She had the flare and spunk of a leader. Wade began to sing—Ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone—Got’a whole lotta of love—as he drew out long crackling sheets, one after the next, and danced them forward. The foil caught the sun through the cumulus and reflected it onto the faces of the volunteers. It was like a photo shoot. “Mayo, Led Zeppelin, shiny lights—I was starting to have a little seizure,” said Wade. Again the salmon piled up, this time like silver ingots, until there were eighteen. Each lay wrapped as if in homage to its gleaming self, only, in this life, with straight edges.
Finally, the ceremonial fish: cleaned, but otherwise untouched. Still with its head and tail. This one was sacred, the core of the afternoon. This particular Chinook, of the thousands that would return to the Cole Rivers Hatchery. “We only got two of them,” said Jessica, urging caution. “Can’t be running to the store to get another one.” In case of disaster, a second entire fish was on hand, still with its head, but it was slated for a fall powwow. The tribe had grown so large—to more than sixteen hundred members—that now it hosted two intertribal gatherings each year.
The guys brought the fish before us. Its face, its robust lower jaw, was bruised and rubicund, as if the blood were welling back after the long cold spell of the casino. Its bronze eye was sunken slightly, but still bright: That you could meet the gaze of this fish did seem important; you knew whom you were bound to. We all looked into its pupil, which had seen something of the Pacific’s depth and returned to stare blankly at us.
The men held the heavy animal so that it could be blessed by Grandma Gin. She was indeed warm and grandmotherly, with deep laugh lines and eye shadow. Her bangs were coiffed, but her dyed auburn hair was otherwise long and straight down her shoulders and back. She intently wound a smudge stick—a smoldering bundle of white sage—around the fish’s body, leaving a trail of incense that carried me to the dry side of the Cascades, to the brush of the high steppe. To rain shadow. She trailed it over the pile of aluminum packets, and around each volunteer, her lips moving as she went. Once finished, she replaced the lit smudge in the warty trough of an opalescent abalone shell. The smoke would allow only good spirits.
The fish was laid on the foil and slathered in sacred mayo. Then the matron of the tribe, the eldest elder, was brought forward by Grandma Gin to formally bless the fish, as was tradition. “Okay, Kelly,” said Grandma Gin, “you want to come stand near Aunt Rena? She’s going to say her prayer.” Rena was slightly hunched and held to a smooth walking stick. She peered out from thin-rimmed tortoise-shell spectacles and pursed her small mouth. Her white hair was short, hardly longer than the lobes of her ears. She wore a pink windbreaker and a hat that said Native Pride. This year was Rena’s first as eldest, and she was trembling with emotion. She was ninety-four years old.
“Come on, my powwow princess,” said Gin, “you can do it. We love you.”
Rena sobbed and her words were a quiet babble into Gin’s ear.
“I know you do,” said Gin. “But he is here, in his spirit. All our ancestors are here in their spirit.”
Aunt Rena had lost her husband decades ago, but he was in mind, very much so. They were married before she finished high school (she’d started school late, at the age of nine). He had worked for the New Deal’s Civilian Conservation Corps before they moved to Union, on the dry side of the Cascades, for his job with the railroad.
“All right, Grandfather,” said Rena, finding strength. “I ask that you bless the people that gave us the fish. And I ask you to bless each and everyone that wrapped it . . . Thank you, God, for giving us the fish that we will partake of our elders with. That’s all.”
“Aho,” said the crowd. “Aho.”
Gin rubbed Rena’s shoulder. “There you go,” she said. “He’s here. He’s here. Come on.”
“God bless you, Aunt Rena,” said Kelly. “My dad’s here, too.”
“The brightest star in the sky last night was Buster,” Rena replied, referring to Kelly’s father. The Cow Creeks also believe that a shooting star is a spirit arriving to inhabit a newborn.
“Yeah, I know,” said Kelly. “That’s what I was thinking.”
“They’re all here, honey,” said Gin. “An eagle flew over this morning, remember, Kelly? When we raised the flag, the eagle went over.”
“He did?” said Rena.
“Yes, he did,” said Gin. “Your eagle . . . he’s here. He’s teasing you . . .”
“He didn’t come and bow to me, that rascal.”
“He will,” said Kelly.
“You’ll see him,” said Gin.
Boys had been up all night tending the pit. It had been dug in the meadow, not far from the logs, those whole trees that framed the dancing grounds, where men in full regalia would circle and stomp during Grand Entry on Saturday. Cedar billets had been thrown down and kindled, and the kids had stoked the fire through the dawn to build up coals. One boy was discovered asleep on the dirt pile from the pit’s excavation. Wade had kicked his foot away from the flaming wood (his buddies had made no motion to help). In midafternoon, the boys still hadn’t retired to their sleeping bags; in the shade, with a subwoofer, they were having a deliriously good time as local heroes.
Traditionally, salmon fillets were splayed across western redcedar staves and leaned over a fire. The cedar’s natural oils flavored the fish, while its tannins resisted flame. Now, however, a giant grate with legs had been pulled over the coals, a devilish cot, and Barry McKown laid the fish on it in two shining rows. Nineteen fish shoulder to shoulder, the way they might jostle upstream through a gauntlet, but here insulated on a pyre. I’d met Barry first in the casino kitchen. As powwow grill master, he had come for a glimpse of this year’s raw material, which met his approval. He’d worn a Hawaiian shirt then, and he wore another one now, white palm fronds on blue. Barry has a round face and mustache, and his brown locks stayed stuffed under a Cow Creek cap with an embroidered bald eagle hauling off a salmon. Of course.
Barry had been in charge as chef for twenty-six years. It was Kelly’s grandfather who had asked him if he would take over the cooking duty. “Yeaaaaaah,” Barry had replied, in his rural-dude twang. “It would be a great honor.” Each year since, he has baked roughly three hundred pounds of Chinook, about twenty fish. He flips them every half hour, for three and a half hours. Afterward he would “stack them like wood” under a tarp. “As it’s cooling down,” said Barry, “it sucks that juice back in.” His priority was wholeheartedly “my juices” and “extra