It floats beneath a branch where a kingfisher is perching. The bird cocks its blue and white crested head to study it. But not for long.

Pathetic. Nothing like any real fish living or dead.

The kingfisher hops off the branch and flies off across the river. Its rattling call drifts back to me. It sounds as if the bird is mocking me.

Maybe I should just jump in the river and let it carry me back toward the east along with that horrible carving I just threw away.

The call of a kingfisher sounds again. But this time it is from right behind me. I turn my head so quickly to look that I almost fall over.

My father is standing there. Despite his limp, despite the fact that my ears are keener than most, he came up so silently that I did not hear a single footfall. His kingfisher call was so perfect that it would have fooled the bird itself. Name any sound in nature. My father can mimic it perfectly. I suddenly remember that from my childhood. It is one of my happiest memories from back then.

Sequoyah smiles down at me.

He raises one eyebrow, nods his head.

Shall I sit beside you?

I move over a little.

He leans down, placing both palms on the ground. Then, in one motion, he shifts his weight to his right arm, lifts his left arm, and swings his stiff leg forward so that he ends up sitting right next to me.

He reaches across me with his left hand to pick up one of the pieces of pine I was trying to carve into a fish.

“A good start,” he says.

“It is nothing,” I say. “The only thing it looks like is a piece of firewood.”

My father shakes his head.

“Everything is something. Just as everything has a voice. Everything talks. You just have to listen.”

He holds the piece of wood up near his ear as if it is speaking to him. He purses his lips and nods. The look on his face is so funny that it makes me laugh despite myself.

“So what is it saying?” I ask.

My father lowers the piece of wood from his ear and looks at it. It seems as if he is not looking at it, but into it. Then he reaches back and picks up his knife from the flat stone.

He makes one cut, then another. The blade moves easily along the grain, shaving off little curls. The wood doesn’t resist as it did when I tried to shape it. It almost seems to be helping him, giving itself to him as a shape emerges.

He pauses, studies it, turns it, weighs it in his hand. Then he begins working again, pushing the blade away with his thumb, pulling it back toward him with his strong index finger.

“Here.”