Primal Scream

by Michael Slade

  "Hear me, white man," spat Winterman Snow. "It was you who denied me revenge. You killed Corporal Spann's kid before I could. All you whites do is steal from us. You stole our land. You stole my life. And you stole my revenge.

  "Hear me, white man," spat Winterman Snow. "I have her and I have you, and this is my land. I'll treat you no worse than you treated us. First I'll hack your arms off so you can't defend yourself. Then I'll strip your culture from who you are inside. Then I'll have your ass like the reverend did me. Then I'll hunt you down like the animal you are, and like we should have every white who set foot on our land. I'm the hunter. You're the hunted. And may Saint Sebastian be with you at the end."

  "Let her go," DeClercq said. "This is between you and me."

  "Learn to share, white man. Learn to potlatch your wealth. You can have her head to mount atop your totem pole."

  "NOOOOO!" yelled DeClercq as the knife swept down, his body leaping from the snow as every muscle strained to hurl him across the gap, the snowshoes tearing from his feet as he sprang, while blood exploded like a halo around Katt's head, and a crack that must be a vertebra smashing shattered the brittle air.

  Katt's body tumbled to the blood-spattered snow as DeClercq lunged for the kidnapper ducking behind, seizing him by the neck as he had that kidnapper long ago, crushing vessels that fed life to the brain, eye popping out of both sockets and tongue sticking out of the mouth. Then hands encircled his legs fron below and clung for dear life, and blood squirted on of the holes in the head staring vacantly back at hir

  Cyclops eye in the forehead.

  Back of the skull blown away.

  "You came," Katt gasped as she clung tightly to him, and Robert released his grip on the dead man embrace her.

  Dumbfounded, he watched the body crash back the snow.

  The White Man was white man Rafe "Bush" Dodd

  Then turning to sight back along the trajectory the shot, he saw the source of the crack he had thought was Katt's spine smashing, for there at the edge of the woods sloping up from the frozen rive below, standing behind a silent dog sled halted in the trees, rifle to his shoulder for a hell of a shot, was Mountie in the winter dress of the Force.

  The son of a Yukon trapper raised in the wood Ed "Mad Dog" Rabidowski could take the eye out a squirrel with a .22 at one hundred feet before he was six.

  Sometimes even in real life the cavalry comes ove the hill in the nick of time.

  Sundown

  Hazelton

  They watched the news, the three of them, on TV in Ghost Keeper's hospital room.

  "Sundown saw the end of the sundance at Totem Lake today. Rebels in the armed camp walked out peacefully, finalizing the largest police operation in the 125-year history of the RCMP. Twenty rebels, two of them whites, were led out of the stronghold by four native spiritual leaders. They were advised of their Charter rights and searched at a checkpoint near the Kispiox Road, before police drove them to New Hazelton Detachment. There, as the rebels were ushered into custody, they were greeted by chants and beating drums as supporters raised their fists in a power salute or waved eagle feathers along fence lines draped with flags from the Mohawk Warrior Society. The militant known as Grizzly, who had vowed he would leave the camp in a body bag, did. Moses John, the spiritual leader whose sundance led to the showdown with police, also came out dead."

  The camera cut from the talking head of the BCTV reporter fronting the scene at the detachment to one of a native with black shoulder-length hair in braids. He wore a leather jacket painted with an image of Almighty Voice.

  "Nothing is ended. The issues remain the same. But now the Horsemen have martyred two shot brothers to the cause."

  "Wrong," said Chandler to the TV. "Bush Dodd shot Moses John."

  "We know that for sure?" asked DeClercq.

  Chandler nodded. "The first thing Ident did at the camp was dig the bullet that killed John out of a tree by the lake. The Firearms tech who serviced our weapons matched it to the rifle found in Dodd's plane. Irony is it's the same gun Bob grabbed to shoot Grizzly from the air. One way or another, we'd have recovered both slugs from the camp, giving us ballistic evidence tying Dodd to the crime."

  "For years extremists in the Indian movement have hoped for a martyr killed by a bullet from the Canadian government," Ghost Keeper said. "Now they have Grizzly, and his face can replace Almighty Voice on that brave's jacket. Too bad the media know who shot Grizzly. From the ballistics, they might conclude that Dodd made both shots."

  "Thank God you shot Grizzly and saved Rabidowski," said DeClercq. "Had you not saved the Mad Dog, Katt and I would be dead."

  "Amen," said Chandler.

  "Dodd was cunning," Ghost Keeper said. "The day he and Spann landed on the lake, he overheard me tell her Moses John had denied anyone in camp had shot the headless man frozen in the ice. He knew someone from the rebel camp had seen him stalking Vanderkop in the woods above the falls just before the freeze. From what the witness was doing at the time, he guessed it was the spiritual leader we were off to meet. So after we helped unload his snowmobile and supplies from the plane, instead of heading for Zulu base along the road to the west, Dodd angled northwest to the woods near the Sundance circle just beyond and outside the rebel camp. It was snowing, but the wind opened sightlines. When he saw Moses John talking to Spann, he shot the spiritual leader through the head. The Sundancers and Doomsdayers were at odds in camp, so not only did the bullet shut Moses up, but it made us think Grizzly or one of his ilk pulled the trigger."

  "Dodd had horseshoes up his ass. The noise of your snowmobile approaching camp masked his. The curtain of snowflakes hid him. The roar as your snowmobile escaped drowned out his. And soon the snow covered his tracks," said Chandler.

  "He may have planned to kill Spann, too," DeClercq said, "but missed the shot when his sightline from the sundance circle closed. Not only would her death avenge his hate for Corporal Spann, but killing her would also erase what John told her."

  "Dodd reached Zulu base ahead of us, and was there when I brought in Spann. As we were standing around the body cut from the ice, the Mad Dog said, 'I know lots of bow hunters who'd shoot this arrow, and all of them are white.''

  Ghost Keeper related the conversation that took on new meaning now:

  "That jibes with what John told me just before he was shot,' Spann agreed. 'He said he may have spied the archer hunting above the falls at twilight prior to the freeze. When I asked who, she said, 'the last thing he said was "The white man . . ."

  " 'The white man?' I said.

  'Not a lot to work with. But maybe someone knows a Caucasian who bow-hunts near here.'

  "That's when Dodd said, 'Unless he meant the White Man. In which case you're looking for a native trapper with lines around here.'

  "A native called the White Man?' said Spann."

  "And Dodd said, 'He's albino, and whiter than you or me.'

  " 'Real name?' I asked.

  " 'Winterman Snow.'

  " 'Met him?'

  " 'A few times, when I landed hell and gone in the bush. He's a lone wolf who survives off the land. Comes out occasionally to sell furs.'

  "Then Spann said, winking at Dodd, "The good old' days might not be over yet. We may get to bush-hunt our own Mad Trapper.' Evidently, in the plane, while flying north, they'd discussed the 1930s' manhunt for the Mad Trapper of Rat River."

  On-screen, the camera cut to a Gitxsan elder withi a wrinkled face.

  "Our children have been taunted and bullied," said the chief. "Members of our community have been beaten up. Others have received serious personal'm threats. Now we are left to pick up the pieces. We must work to heal the rifts among both Indian people and whites caused by the standoff."

  The camera cut back to the BCTV reporter.

  "Events at Totem Lake have exposed deep divisions within First Nations over leadership, spiritualism, anam militancy as the means to the end. Future battle lines seem to be drawn between traditionalists and the triba
l councils elected under the Indian Act."

  "You're right, Bob," agreed DeClercq. "Cunning is the word. Dodd wasn't original. He was sly. Dodd picked up and used whatever was at hand. He heard! the story of an Alaskan businessman who forced women to satisfy him sexually and, if they didn't,! hunted them naked through the woods. Using that M.O. to avenge childhood abuse at the reverend's school, he kidnapped or waylaid stand-in white menT to bugger and bow-hunt in the northern woods. When Moses John witnessed 'the white man' on the hunt, that white man slyly turned our attention to the albino boy he'd known at school, and aged him into 'the White Man,' Winterman Snow. Then Dodd adapted the legend of the hunt for the Mad Trapper of Rat River to launch a modern manhunt for another Mad Trapper who was actually him."

  From the St. Sebastian file of the RCMP task force investigating abuse allegations at residential schools. DeClercq withdrew a witness statement and a photograph. The photo was the one George had studied on the wall of the task force office before he flew north. Snapped in 1955, it was the class photo for that year. The sullen Indian kids dressed in uniform were flanked by Reverend Noel and the white families who ran the school. A boy with Indian features and skin as snow white as his hair stood at the end of one row of native kids, next to a white boy of the same age. Standing guard in the photo was a Mountie in Red Serge.

  "Dodd was more successful at deflecting us than he knew." DeClercq placed the class photo on the bedspread where all could see. "There is the White Man, Winterman Snow." His finger touched the albino boy. "There is the white man who abused him." His finger moved to Reverend Noel. "There is the white man who turned a blind eye to return runaways to worse abuse." He indicated Corporal Alfred Spann. "And there—named on back of the picture as 'Myrtle Dodd's son'—is the boy who grew into the white man who tricked us."

  His finger moved to the white boy of the same age beside the albino.

  "I did some reading between the lines in the file. Myrtle Dodd was the widowed sister of Reverend Noel. As matron of the school, she resided there with her only child, Rafe. Mrs. Dodd died from a stroke in 1956, the same year Winterman Snow vanishes from subsequent class photographs.

  "Reverend Noel, his uncle, took charge of the boy, and no doubt was soon bending him over that desk in his office, too.

  "Winterman Snow, a sickly lad, ran away that year. There's no indication that he returned to the school. A logical conclusion, based on what Dodd told us, is the albino boy grew up as a woodsman trapping in the bush, attacking white men to avenge abuse by a white man at the school.

  "But that's not what the chief at Gunanoot told me happened, based on rumors whispered among other kids at the school. When Winterman Snow ran away he was caught by Corporal Spann, who—sexually warped himself—took the runaway back to Noel. The file contains a witness statement by another boy, which I suspect tells us what became of Snow."

  DeClercq read from the same statement Ghost Keeper had read in the task force office:

  "My name is Simon Joe. . . .

  "One day I ran away, but the local Mountie caught me. He called my story lies, and dragged me back to the reverend. The reverend put this knobbed ring around his cock, and told me boys who tried to escape suffered the arrowhead.

  "One boy couldn't take it.

  "He drowned himself in the river.

  "The reverend called it an accident and buried him on the bank.

  "The boy who drowned," said DeClercq, "was Winterman Snow."

  Inspector Zinc Chandler appeared on TV.

  "As officer in charge of this investigation, I am extremely gratified that with the orderly evacuation of the Totem Lake camp, this tense and dangerous situation', has been resolved peacefully. It has been our objective, from day one to avoid confrontation and bloodshed. Only when fired upon did we fire back. With the prisoners safely out of camp and our Members out of danger, I am glad to say we achieved our goal. A peaceful resolution is what we always want, and if we think we can get one, we will always demonstrate that we are a patient Force. I wish to pay tribute to the Gitxsan spiritual leaders and the keeper of the Sundance ceremony who negotiated a peaceful end. Today we saw the important role native spirituality can have in solving disputes. Violence and the Doomsday aspect led some of those in camp away from their spirituality—their inner selves, if you like. The spiritual leaders brought them back to their spiritual side, which was, I think, essential."

  "Good Lord," said DeClercq. "How long till you and your silver tongue run for Parliament?"

  "You'd rather I fired a few rounds with a hearty 'Yee-haw'?"

  DeClercq placed another photo from the file on the bed. Reverend Noel sat writing a sermon on the desk in his office at St. Sebastian School. Side by side on the wall behind were pictures of Saint Sebastian pierced by Roman arrows and Rector Noel draped in the headhunting blanket.

  "Boys raped over the desk faced those images. They combined to warp a headhunting archer, the Decapita-tor. Somehow, native spirituality seized Dodd. What Katt saw him do in the cabin indicates he became Winterman Snow. Artifacts relinquished to Rector Noel last century were halait naxnox. Each was imbued with a powerful spirit. Though most were sold to rich collectors, obviously the rector kept the best naxnox for himself, and those came down to his great-grand-nephew Paul Noel. The reverend, being a pedophile Catholic priest, died without kids. Rafe Dodd inherited Noel's estate and found the naxnox hidden away, "including the headhunting blanket."

  "You think Dodd was possessed by Winterman Snow by means of the relics?" Chandler asked.

  "How the psychology worked, I don't know. But when I return to Vancouver, I know who to ask. Dodd embarked on a campaign of revenge. With his bush plane he could fly anywhere. Who knows how many woodsmen and loners he trapped over the years to stalk as sexual stand-ins for Reverend Noel? And if not for the Totem Lake rebels, we still wouldn't know about him." The TV reporter was back on-screen.

  "The Totem Lake encampment has been sealed by RCMP to gather evidence. Those who shot at the Mounties will be charged with attempted murder. It's doubtful whether others will be charged with trespass or mischief, since Herb McCall, the legal owner of Totem Lake, quitclaimed the land to the Gitxsan Nation before the rebels threw down their AK-47s and came out. We can expect—legal experts say—that any trial of the issues will take a long time in court. Trespass involves interfering with the lawful use of property without legal justification, excuse, or color of right In returning the land to the Gitxsan, McCall may have given the rebels a defense in law."

  "The white men raped and hunted were mental I stand-ins for Reverend Noel. But Dodd had an ax to grind with Corporal Spann, too, for returning him to Noel when he ran away. For years Katherine Spann had worked abroad for Special X. Then I brought her back to groom as head of Operations B, and sent her north to investigate the Decapitator.

  "Suddenly, Dodd found a stand-in for her father in his plane. Cunning, he never killed if suspicion shone on him. First, he lost the opportunity to shoot her at the lake with Moses John. Then she was continually with other Members of the Force. Then I called her south to rework the Headhunter case. And finally, revenge eluded him when I shot Spann.

  "But not for long.

  "In the aftermath of her death, what did Dodd hear through the media? That Alfred Spann had been my mentor when I joined the Force. That he entrusted me with Wilfred Blake's gun, which I passed on to his daughter in the Headhunter case. That I had dedicated my history of the Force to him. And that when my daughter, Jane, was kidnapped, I tried to save her alone.

  "Denied revenge through Katherine Spann, Dodd went after me.

  "Suddenly, he found me and my 'daughter,' Katt, in his plane. Sly, he never killed when suspicion pointed at him. So Dodd dropped us at Gunanoot and flew out of sight, then doubled back on his snowmobile to abduct Katt. When I called on her cell phone, he answered hi a native voice, and—with no noise in the background—told me how to get her back."

  "The call we intercepted," Chandler said.
>
  "A minute later, I called Dodd by radio phone, and he had the plane engine going as if in the ah". Or was it the snowmobile, which I mistook for his plane? Dodd returned for me with Katt drugged, bound, and hidden in the hold behind the rear seat. His return witnessed by natives in the village, who could later describe the series of events, Dodd flew off to drop me at the mouth of the Headless Valley."

  "Infrared and sonar picked you up. Rumor was more weapons were coming in by air," Chandler said, "so we had the military tracking every plane in the north. We went so far as to ask Vancouver bush carriers to frisk for skyjackers."

  "Dodd did what he did when he ambushed you and Mad Dog on patrol, Bob. He flew to the northern end of the valley and hid the plane, then snowmobiled south to the cabin with Katt to be there when I arrived. The Mounted was already on the hunt for Winterman Snow, and I was on a rogue hunt of my own, so when Dodd returned next day after being commandeered by me, you would believe I ordered him—as the most superior officer around—not to reveal what I was doing under threat of obstruction or worse charges if Katt got killed. It was a repeat of my failed effort to save Jane, except this time Winterman Snow got both Katt and me."

  "Why the ruse of luring you into the valley," said George, "when he had you and Katt in his plane? Why not land and do it there?"

  "Because I was to be the ultimate hunt. In me he had a stand-in for both the reverend and the corporal. A white man. A Mountie. And Alfred's friend. He wanted to savor every moment and make it last. The joy for the hunter is the hunt before the kill. Dodd would make me pay and pay and pay . . . which I would have, Zinc, had you not sent the Mad Dog."