Silver Totem of Shame

by R. J. Harlick

  Louise consigned the ancient box to Eric. Becky helped her aunt, who seemed to be favouring her hip. I placed my arm around my sister-in-law and guided her after the others. As for Sherry, she could stay here for all I cared. But I thought I heard her footsteps joined by the slow shuffle of Two Finger coming behind me.

  We arrived at the gap without further mishap. Steep and narrow, it would be impossible for the two men to continue supporting Rose on either side. In fact, there was barely enough room for her on her own. But she had made it up the defile, so she should be able to make it back down. Eric came up with the idea of creating a sling for her out of Louise’s button blanket.

  “I can always have another one made,” Louise said, passing it over to Eric.

  After giving Two Finger the box, Eric, with Harry’s help, wrapped the blanket around Rose. With her son ahead of her, Rose shuffled down, her hands on his shoulders for support. Eric followed, keeping the sling tight as best he could with his sore hands to keep her from falling forward.

  Two Finger carried the treasure through the gap, careful not to let the fragile wood scrape against the rock. His brother helped Becky guide his aunt. I’d almost forgotten about Ernest until I heard his footsteps behind me and turned around to see him carrying his son’s ashes. The rest of us had become so caught up in Rose and the treasure that we’d completely forgotten about Allistair.

  My heart caught at the despair reflected in his face. I imagine he was blaming himself for his son’s death. If he hadn’t introduced François to Harry and his mother, Allistair would be alive today. So Cloë had been right after all.

  Although Cloë’s tears had stopped, she hadn’t spoken a word since threatening to kill Rose. She walked in front of me like an automaton, but shook my hand off when I tried to comfort her. Thankfully, she was stable on her feet and didn’t need support as she made her way down the uneven terrain.

  As I drew closer to the growing light at the end of the gap, I heard loud voices. I assumed Rose was causing trouble, until I emerged to see several uniformed police with their guns drawn ranged out in front of us. Two were approaching Two Finger, one with handcuffs ready to snap around his wrists.

  Louise was shouting at them not to touch him.

  With the ancient bentwood box clutched against his chest, the gaunt man swung erratically around as if looking for an escape route.

  Sergeant Galarneau shouted, “Colin Smith, I arrest you for the murder of Allistair Zahkarov.”

  “Please, he didn’t do it,” Louise pleaded.

  Ignoring her, the sergeant yelled, “Put that box down immediately.”

  “But I didn’t do it,” Two Finger said, still gripping the treasure.

  “We have evidence that says otherwise. Drop that box.”

  Two Finger appeared confused, as if uncertain what to do. The other cop came up behind him and grabbed his arm, pulling it away from the box. Two Finger tried desperately to hang onto it with his damaged hand, but was yanked back roughly. The fragile box landed on the ground and began bouncing down the incline. It caught on a rock, flipped over, and continued tumbling until it slammed into a tree. The ancient wood shattered.

  A collective gasp resounded.

  As one, we peered down the hill, anxious to see the treasure. But it was impossible to see anything other than splintered wood.

  “Becky, do you mind going down and bringing it up to us,” Louise said.

  “Madame, no one moves until we have this man fully apprehended,” the sergeant said.

  The other cop slammed Two Finger’s chest against a tree, wrenched his arms behind his back, and clipped on a pair of handcuffs.

  “Stop,” Louise shouted. “Colin didn’t kill my grandson. She did.” Her finger pointed at Rose, who was being helped down the hill by one of the other cops. Amazingly, the woman seemed to be walking with only a slight limp now.

  I read nothing but confusion on the staff sergeant’s face. Nonetheless, he ordered the other cop to stop.

  Meanwhile, Becky picked her way down the slope to the smashed box. She carefully moved the splinters out of the way, then reached down and lifted up what looked to be a Haida headdress similar to the one Harry had worn at the potlatch. It glittered. She scooped something else from the ground and tucked it away in her pocket. Holding the headdress securely with both hands, with the front piece facing her, she climbed back up to where all of us were waiting. Eager anticipation was reflected in everyone’s eyes. Finally we would get to see this treasure that had been hidden for more than a century, the treasure that had caused the death of an innocent young man and ignited the greed of others.

  From the back it didn’t look like much, pieces of dried-out fur pelts hanging from a circular frame. Rising above the pelts were spikes of varying length that reminded me of extra long porcupine quills, but which I learned later were sea lion whiskers. Becky kept the front piece from view as she passed the headdress to Louise.

  She examined it closely. “Ah,” was all she said before turning it around to show the rest of us.

  For a moment there was stunned silence as each of us took in the square piece of cedar with the carved hooked beak of an eagle, as befitted the headdress of a chief of the eagle clan.

  “Hey, where’s the gold and emeralds?” Sherry shouted, voicing the question that was foremost in the rest of our minds. “I want François’s thirty-thousand down payment back,” she shouted at Rose, who was being firmly held by two cops.

  Yes, indeed, where were they? The eagle carving was surrounded by something that glittered, which at first did look like gold and emeralds. But the tiny hole in the centre of each of the tiny circles betrayed them. They were sequins, gold and green sequins. I almost let out a laugh, but caught myself in time. One broke loose and fluttered to the ground, followed by another and another.

  I picked one up. It was definitely a sequin, something that might have been prized by a culture that had never seen such glittering objects.

  “You betrayed us!” Rose shouted, trying to break away from the cops. “You matriarchs lied and pretended it was valuable.”

  “Look to your own ancestors. Seems to me betrayal runs in your genes, not mine.”

  “But Auntie,” Two Finger said. I could see that he was almost as upset as Sherry and Rose were. “What about the old stories of Old Chief bringing back gold and sparkling green stones? Aren’t they true?”

  She shrugged. “I guess we’ll never know, unless another bentwood box is hidden deep within these forests.” I thought her smile had a slight secretive twist to it.

  “I also found this inside the box.” Becky held out her hand. Resting on the palm was an earring. Although badly tarnished, the gleam of silver shone through. It was in the shape of a salmon.

  Louise held up the earring Rose had left beside Allistair’s body. The two earrings matched.

  Sixty-Five

  We were a sombre group of people squeezed around Siggy’s long, narrow dining table, which looked more like a door that had floated onto a nearby beach, if the faint Japanese characters at one end were anything to go by. We were finishing the dinner Siggy and Eric had prepared. Although Siggy had insisted he didn’t need help, Eric, unable to sit still, dove in anyway.

  It was a delicious meal of rockfish caught earlier by Siggy and vegetables fresh from his greenhouse garden. But it was a meal mostly ignored. None of us had much of an appetite. It was also a meal eaten in silence. We were all trying to come to terms in our own way with the traumatic events of the afternoon.

  Cloë sat between Eric and me. Thankfully, she’d come out of her zombie-like trance and was responding to the world around her. She no longer felt the need to keep her son’s ashes within reach. She’d let Ernest bring them to Siggy’s house in his own boat. Throughout dinner she cast only an occasional glance at the bentwood box resting on a nearby table. I felt this was her way of saying goodbye to her son.

  Rose had been so busy trying to convince the cops she wasn’t guilty of
murder that she forgot to tell them about her own attempted killing, and none of us were going to mention it. It was an event best forgotten. Maybe someday it would be resurrected in a Haida story.

  Eric had used Siggy’s satellite phone to call and delay his flight to Ottawa. He had decided his sister needed him more than the Grand Council. The two of us were going to stay with her until we felt she was strong enough to continue on her own.

  Louise sat with the same serenity she had displayed throughout the ordeal. Nonetheless, she couldn’t hide the tremor in her hands or the exhaustion in her face. So far she’d made no comment about the day’s events or the impact it would have on her clan. But she had insisted that both Harry and Ernest come to Siggy’s house. She now sat between the two men, so perhaps the healing was beginning. Tomorrow at dawn we were going to Llnagaay to put her grandson to rest; another step in the healing process.

  The ancient headdress was propped against Allistair’s box, where Becky had placed it, along with his orca carving. The fabled glitter had mostly disappeared. During our walk down to the beach, many of the sequins had dropped off, leaving a sparkling trail in their wake. Perhaps some distant day, a venturesome soul will follow the flashes of gold and green up to the clearing and the cave. Maybe the stories recounting today’s events would draw them. Or maybe it would be the lure of Old Chief’s treasure, for I suspected the full secret had yet to be revealed.

  Neither Two Finger, Johnnie, nor Sherry was with us. While we stood on the beach watching Rose being half-pulled, half-pushed into the police seaplane, Sherry managed to cajole them into taking her with them as well. Even though the sale of the ancient headdress would’ve caused great pain to the Greenstone Eagles, it wasn’t a criminal offence, so Sherry Anne was free to go. Hotly declaring that she wasn’t going to spend “one more fucking second in this fucking hole,” she’d jumped into the police boat without so much as a backward glance, let alone a goodbye.

  After Ernest declared that the totem pole had been a gift, the police couldn’t charge Two Finger with its theft. So Louise’s nephew took off in the grey fibreglass boat moored next to Siggy’s. Louise told us that he was returning to Llnagaay to complete a project. We would get a chance to see it tomorrow when we visited the village.

  As for his brother, Johnnie, the man suspected of killing François, he had disappeared. In the melee of apprehending Rose and discovering the true treasure, he’d slipped away. We forgot about him until we were all standing on the beach with the police waiting to leave. I’d noticed first Two Finger glance around as if looking for someone, then Louise, and finally Becky. I counted heads and, realizing one was missing, whispered to Eric.

  He whispered back, “Let the Haida deal with him. I’m sure they have their traditional ways for punishing a person who has not only killed a man but in doing so has brought shame to the clan.”

  So we kept mum, as did Harry and Ernest. I doubted Cloë even noticed he was missing. And Sherry was far too busy extricating herself.

  Most of us were still toying with Eric’s apple crumble when Louise put her fork down beside her empty plate and, turning to Ernest, said, “Please, tell me about my daughter.”

  The carver shrugged. “There’s not much to say. Mary … I guess I should call her Lizzie … was a high point in my otherwise dismal life. I didn’t know how much she meant to me until I lost her.”

  “Cloë said she was living on the streets.”

  “We both were. We were just a couple of drunken Indians trying to make sense of the world and not succeeding. That was before I found carving and turned my life around. At that point I was only interested in the next drink.”

  “If you loved her so much, why weren’t you at the hospital when she died?” Cloë asked.

  “I was in the clink. I’d been caught shoplifting. Funny enough, it was some maternity clothes for Lizzie. I only found out after I got out four months later that she was dead and the baby adopted.”

  “Did you try to find the baby?” Louise asked.

  “What was the point? I had no way of taking care of him.”

  “Did you even think to look for us, her parents?”

  “What good would it’ve done? I felt the kid would have a better chance with the rich people who adopted him. Besides, I figured Lizzie’s parents were probably a couple of drunks too. There had to be a good reason for her running away.”

  Louise sighed and ran her fingers over the silver bracelet. “Yes, they were difficult times … and painful. I don’t like to think of it now. But that’s when my husband’s drinking was at its worst. Drink brought the violence out in him. It was hard on Lizzie, but at the time I could only think of myself. After she ran away, it took me a few years to accept he was probably the cause. That’s when I divorced him. Still, I am very sad I never knew my grandson, or held him in my arms, or laughed and played with him, or had a chance to teach him our Haida ways.”

  “I’m real sorry, too, that I only got to know him at the end,” Ernest said. “I could see his step-parents had done a good job of bringing him up. He was a good kid. The kind of kid any man would be proud to have as a son.” Ernest acknowledged Cloë with a smile. She reached across the table for his hand and squeezed it.

  He finished by saying, “Allistair would’ve made a good Chief Greenstone.”

  Harry spoke next. “Auntie, I don’t feel right holding the name any longer, but I’m not sure how I resign. I figure you as the Matriarch should know.”

  “It’s an unusual situation and I’m afraid I don’t know myself,” Louise said. “I will ask the other matriarchs. In the meantime, I think it best you leave Haida Gwaii. After you pay off all your bills, I think you should look to providing financial help to those in our clan who need it the most. Perhaps in time you will earn the right to reclaim the name Chief Greenstone.”

  Harry, nodding in agreement, crossed his arms. “That won’t be a problem. If I need to, I’ll put the company up for sale.”

  “Good. But first thing tomorrow morning, I want you to get in your fancy boat and go directly to Queen Charlotte, where you will surrender yourself to the police. You assaulted this poor woman and stole the pendant.”

  “It doesn’t hurt so much now.” Cloë touched the back of her head.

  “I’m very sorry. I never meant to hurt you,” Harry said.

  “That’s okay. I won’t press charges. I imagine your mother pushed you into it. But tell me, what happened to the pendant?”

  Louise reached inside her sweater and brought out the greenstone. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to keep it, but please take the bracelet.”

  She slipped the silver band off her wrist and passed it to Cloë, who brought it to her lips and kissed it. “My son.” She wrapped it around her wrist and caressed it several times before removing it. She held the bracelet out to her son’s girlfriend. “Please, I want you to have it. I know he loved you dearly.”

  Becky hesitated. “No, I can’t.”

  I imagined thoughts of that fateful evening when she turned it down were foremost in her mind.

  “Please.” Cloë pushed it closer to the young woman. “I know I didn’t always treat you fairly. I’m very sorry. When you’re back in Vancouver, I want you to visit me. I’d like us to get to know each other better.”

  Her eyes brimming with tears, her fingers trembling, Becky reached for the bracelet and gently slipped it onto her wrist. “I’d like that,” she said barely above a whisper.

  Louise clapped her hands. “Perfect. You ladies are going to have more than Allistair to talk about.”

  Confusion spread across Cloë’s face, while Becky blushed.

  “Come on, Becky, if you don’t tell her I will,” Louise said.

  “I’m pregnant,” was the young woman’s simple reply.

  Sixty-Six

  Harmony Restored

  Though the pain wasn’t so bad today, he knew it was only going to get worse. The doc said there were drugs he could take. But he figured he coul
d live with it for now. Besides, a good bottle of rye went a long way to dulling everything. Six months, the doc said, before the cancer killed him. That was four months ago. Whether he took the drugs or not, it didn’t matter. What mattered was he was here where he belonged, in the land of the ancestors. When the time came, if the Queen Charlotte hospital didn’t have the right drugs, he would do without. There was no way he was going back to Vancouver to die.

  After lying awake most of the night, he’d finally fallen asleep, only to have his brother wake him up. He’d seen his brother sneak off without the police noticing, so he’d been half expecting him to come to Llnagaay. Still, when Bro crawled into his tent, it had scared the hell out of him. It’d taken several nips of rye to settle his nerves.

  The first thing Bro said was, “I killed that guy. I never meant for anyone to get hurt when I cut those ropes. I only wanted to shame Harry.”

  “I know,” Two Finger answered. “But it doesn’t matter. What matters is someone died because of you.”

  “What am I suppose to do? There’s no way I can go to jail. I won’t last six months.”

  Two Finger nodded. He knew how his brother felt. During his time in the asphalt jungle of Vancouver he’d lived with this dull ache in his soul. It only disappeared when he sighted the mist-shrouded islands of his people’s land and inhaled the rich, cleansing air. He’d flung his arms wide to embrace the forest-covered peaks and the bountiful seas and felt the sense of freedom flowing into his soul. Bro was right. He’d wither and die in jail.

  He felt really sorry for his brother. But not only had he killed someone, he’d also brought shame to the entire clan. So he had to be punished. Tradition dictated it.

  Though he hated to do it, he had no choice. Auntie had told him what to do if his brother came. Now that he was here, Two Finger was forced to pass sentence on his closest kin. But Bro saved him from having to say the damning words. Instead he passed sentence on himself.