The Cloud Atlas

This is another reason why I always visit Ro

“There's no one left,” he said again. “No one for me, no one for you.”

I shook my head, and he repeated the line, louder. My hearing is lousy; a wartime blast took half of it and age has slowly been claiming the rest. I compensate well-I'd understood Ro

“No one!” Ro

“We have each other, Ro

No smile. “This is what we must talk about. You and me,” Ro

RONNIE WANTED several things. First, twenty dollars. Then, my signature on a form. And most important, my promise that I would help him die. I gave him the twenty. I signed the form without looking, but then took it back when he made that last request about helping him die. I may not be the Church's best priest-actually, there's no confusion on that point-but I wasn't about to help a man, my friend, commit suicide.

“Not suicide,” Ro

“I take ‘everything’ to mean the twenty I just gave you.”

Back in his drinking days-or, let's call them what they were, decades-Ro

He started again. “This is what they told me: you sign this, you make decisions for me. When I can't.”

“Like always,” I said. Like when it was time to leave a bar. Like when it was time for him to finally see the doctor.

“These are my wishes,” Ro

“Ro

He waited a long time before replying. He closed his eyes, and for a moment, I thought he'd gone to sleep. “I don't want you to let them save me,” he said, opening his eyes once more.

“Ro

I've introduced Ro

Absolutely not. He needed the money to pay for a special bracelet from Alaska 's Comfort One program. The program is for the very ill; the bracelet indicates that you do not want to be resuscitated. Paramedics and other medical professionals have to honor it. I've seen the bracelets at work-it's like a magic charm. Say a crisis occurs. Say people automatically rush to deliver aid. Then they spot the bracelet, and it's almost as if they bounce off the patient.

Ro

I tried to tell Ro

“It's not for me,” he said. Then he took a deep breath, the effort of which seemed to drain his face of the smile. “It's for the wolf.”

RONNIE'S PASSING WAS no minor thing, not in his mind. As he saw it, he was the last shaman, the last in the area to possess his gifts, or his knowledge. Generations of missionaries had driven what magic they could from the land, but the spirit had persisted. Now modern life-airplanes, college educations, government jobs-was removing what remained.

I told Ro

Ro

And it was more than that. He had something to tell me, he said. A particular story. A secret. Something I should know, “after all this time.”

He closed his eyes.

I patted Ro

“Ro

Ro

I settled back. I have heard multiple stories of creation in Alaska, but in the begi

Upon this land, Raven created a man of stone. Formidable and strong-a man designed to survive in the harsh climate of southwestern Alaska. But then spring came, and the snows melted, the soil turned to mud, and the stone man sank deeper into the tundra with every step.

So Raven tried again. This time he molded a man of clay, or dirt. More fragile, more vulnerable-true; but more adaptable and better suited to travel the land he had sprung from.

It's a sign of how long I have lived here that I know Ro