The minutes passed, and still the old chieftain intoned and the fire crackled and the rain still thundered on the roof. There was only lifeless desecration on George’s face. Yet, with time, there came a different emotion in his father-in-law. And more than one. It seemed some conflict seethed in him. As Owadi droned, George’s eyes moved around the gathering and up across the roof, and then into the fire, where they stopped and stared, as if in trance to the revel of the blaze. His eyes squinted, the left drooping in its paralysis. His lips were thin beneath his moustache. The hand that did not hold the staff clasped and opened and clasped again.
Harry had worked the merchant marine all over the world. He’d spoken, drunk, fought, fucked among so many, that surely the world had lent him skills for reading men. Yet he could not read his father-in-law at this time, except to believe some torment or, perhaps, some terrible notion was rising to the surface. What was passing through the old man’s mind with such intensity? Not simply grief, nor yet the flickerings of his lunatic rage. Harry knew him enough to understand that his emotions, powerful as they often were, followed paths direct and open, so that few who looked upon his face could doubt what he might be feeling in that moment.
Owadi intoned his final words. There was a silence, just the crackle of the fire and the odd rustle, cough, or grunt. Then George stepped forward a pace to speak.
“HERE IS MY SON,” I told them as they stood about me on the Isle of Graves. “My son what is named David Hunt by the whites, and Hameselal from his mother’s father, Nemogwis in the Winter Dances, Chief of the Senlem Clan of the Walas Kwagiulth, great chief of the cannibal dancers, descendant of chieftains of the northern tribes, bearer of their crests, father to children what will take those crests and carry them in all eternity. A great man he was. A Kwagiulth he was, and now he is dead.”
And that was all the words I was going to speak, making my point to those present—and I suppose to myself—that my family was of the people, and would stay Kwagiulth forever. But then there was more; and perhaps I knew there would be, listening on old Owadi rattling on about how the world was fearful, all the youngsters dying, and everyone else, and speaking the proper words of the funeral as he did as well.
Bitterness welled up, wrapped about with grief, and fermented with rage at all those ranged against me, as I saw it. It seemed like it was the whole world. So I spoke on, and angry words they was. Words against the white men first. How they brung their diseases and their controlling ways, their Christianity. I know that made some nervous what was regular churchgoing folk. I done it deliberate, though, stoking them up, provoking, prodding and poking till I knew they’d be resenting me.
Then came words against the Indians. And there are Indians indeed who want rid of me still: for working with the scientists, for writing the secret ways of the people into the books, where there weren’t no written words before, just the memories of men, for trying to hold on to the ways of the people against the world’s progress, as they sees it. And for seeking out the witchcraft amongst them, for exposing it, for showing them the black heart of gossip and mal-intent.
Well, what words I spoke were not those of reason. Or how I told it they wasn’t, anyhow, and how far the telling went. First, I says they are weak, letting the white men walk on them. Craven for not defending their ways.
Then I goes on to tell them they are stupid for not knowing what I do for them, that when I buy up their artefacts I am handing money to them from the white men that wouldn’t never come elsewise. That those treasures go to the museums where they will be safe. I says the stories that go onto the pages I send Professor Boas are for future times, for future people to see what once we was.
I says it angry, and many I know were turned away by my hot temper as much as by the upside-down reasoning. For it was worse. Much worse. I made threats as well. Dare to stand against me. Dare! And if you do, says I, then I will tear you up, like to the Cannibal Spirit. I will eat you, swallow you, take all of you, flesh and bone and soul, until there ain’t nothing left even for the burial.
Oh, I was resting in midst of the flames that day, all the time placing more logs beneath my feet. Things that were bad already got made worse still by that speech. And then by what followed. Well, I’ll not think of it yet. All in good order. Yes. All in the right order.
GEORGE HUNT’S EYES PICKED THEIR WAY OVER THE ASSEMBLY. He looked some brimstone preacher delivering a sermon to the unenlightened on God’s awful vengeance. Though he spoke in Kwakwala, Harry could tell he spoke simply, with clarity, each word a blade. Yet underneath, there was such fury and, as well, such agony as to make him seem something other than human. Not more. Less perhaps: ancient, animal, demonic, the long staff he held, seemingly forgotten in one hand, adding to the menace, the serpent’s heads, teeth bared, leering at each end, almost alive as Hunt shivered in his passion. Indeed, his whole body shook, and one foot stamped incessantly on the platform, as if at the next moment he would launch himself at the people before him. The flames doused his face, his teeth, his body in scarlet. They burned like blood in his eyes. The jagged edges of his nails glittered.
The rain hammering, Hunt’s voice exploding through it, the air as thick as molasses, the man’s presence imposing itself into all the space of the ceremonial house, until Harry gasped, fighting for his breath.
No one spoke or moved when Hunt finally fell silent and, breathing hard himself, turned his back to them. After some time, they rose to their feet. Most began to walk away toward the beach. Still no one spoke. The old chieftains removed their masks. They kept a distance from Hunt, and none looked at him as he sat upon his son’s gravebox and rubbed a hand down his face.
Harry wondered if he was really angry at him. If it was possible to be angry at something not properly human.
Two men stepped up on the dais, carrying thick ropes, and George spoke with them, quietly now. They turned and clambered down once more. He looked up at the chieftains and spoke something to them. The old men were silent, standing in a circle, and Charley Seaweed was there as well. Owadi shook his head. George spoke again, intense now, his face darkening. At last Owadi spoke a few words more and, though his face showed he was unhappy, he left the dais with the other chieftains and disappeared toward the beach.
“Caddie.” A voice brought Harry back into the moment. It was Grace, the other women behind, whispering amongst themselves. “Do you come?”
“What just occurred? I thought they hoisted up the body in the trees now and that was an end of it.”
“Talk father. Come to the beach after. We going now on the boat.” Harry saw her tear-shot eyes. He made to place a hand on her arm, but she walked away with the other women. So he went over to the fire.
“Charley,” he said, and the old cripple looked up from the conference he was having with another man. “What goes on?”
“Speak George” was all Charley said.
So Harry stepped up onto the dais where his father-in-law was alone, still sitting on the box with his head down. “Mr. Hunt,” Harry said.
The old man looked up, surprised. “Harry,” he said at last. The veins crept like vines across the whites of his eyes and the rawness of his lids.
“I thought you ended things simple now.”
George hesitated. “He was hamatsa. I’ll see him fully that.”
“So what’s to be done?”
“Take the women to the village.”
“You saw how angry you had Crosby. Are you doing what’s right?”
“I shit on him!” George rose to his feet. “Would you not stop prodding at me, damn you!” Harry stepped back. “Take the women.” But he spoke more quietly. He put a hand to Harry’s shoulder. “No questions.”
“I hear David was a civilized man,” Harry said, but George did not reply, even to such deliberate goading. So Harry stepped away and through the throng of silent men who yet remained. No emotion could he read in their faces, and they were very alien to him.
Out on the bea
ch, Harry trudged to his boat. His wife and the other women were already aboard. The canoes and other boats were leaving. As he’d planned, the tide had come in and the Hesperus was nearly afloat. Two men helped him heave it off the last of the pebbles and he pulled himself aboard.
The boat’s engine started reliably enough to warm away his questions for the moment, if not the damp and aching in his bones. He turned the boat out toward the open water. The rain fell so hard the village was invisible across the short mile of sea.
PART II THE WILDERNESS
HARRY CADWALLADER lounged in his weathered old rocker on the porch outside the store. The morning breeze was light and spoke of sun and humid warmth all day. Out across the bay, the trees on the Island of Graves broke the horizon. Four days had passed since the funeral, and the weather had stayed fair.
Rounding the eastern headland, he saw a steam launch coming, its prow cutting cleanly through the light swell. The ensign of the Indian Agency was at its masthead. Most likely it was William Halliday, Indian agent for this region of the coast. He was coming from the south. He’d be out from Alert Bay, passing through en route to the outer villages, part of the bimonthly trip he took to make his presence felt among the people of the coast. Harry had met him a few times. He seemed a decent enough man, as far as his task was given and his values allowed. Harry had been wary, though, knowing his trade in liquor would land him in trouble if Halliday should learn of it.
As the boat neared the jetty, the Reverend Crosby stepped out along the boards and raised his hand to hail the incoming launch. With him was the Indian who’d been there the day of David’s funeral. He wore still the black cassock similar to Crosby’s. One of those the missionaries took in and raised in the mission schools. Harry squirmed at the thought of such a place. He knew the origin of his unease, though by Christ’s blood he would not dwell on it. Memories were best left boxed away to be forgotten over time. Now and what was to come were all that was needed by a man.
The boat drew up alongside the jetty. It was indeed Halliday, his red hair and beard bright in the sunlight. He watched the man tie off to the cleat above him, the launch low against the pillars in the ebb tide. Crosby and the Indian came up and soon the three men were engaged in conversation.
“Fat Harry.” Below him on the shingle the old chieftain Owadi stood puffing. Harry spoke a greeting. “I come to talk wealth of blankets,” said Owadi. Harry sighed. He knew what that meant: some thorny exchanges ending in the extension of credit.
“Come on inside,” he said. Owadi, wrapped in a dirty blanket and wearing knee-high rubber boots, stepped up to the porch, gingerly with age, but his chin high and proud.
Inside was gloom and cobwebs. The store’s big front windows, on each side of the front door, were filthy as always: rain, dew, the grime of engines, oil, black smoke, grease from untanned hide, dust and sea salt caking them inside and out. He kept meaning to wash them, but always the thought that soon he’d be away had stopped him from bothering.
He sat on one of the drums of engine oil that stood browned with rust in the centre of the room. He rested a boot on a broken generator head. Other parts lay scattered on the floor. He was one of the few this far up the coast who knew the workings of an engine. It was a reason George had given Harry management of the store.
Owadi stood in the doorway and examined the room, as Harry knew was protocol for any chief when visiting and on sight of another’s riches, though Owadi visited the store nearly every other day on some mischief or another.
Harry rustled in his coat and pulled forth his tobacco tin. He ran his thumb across the strutting Chinese burlesque on the narrow tin’s lid. He opened it, rolled a cigarette, and struck a match against the oil drum beneath him. Smoke spiralled, lilac and grey, into the rafters.
He followed Owadi’s eyes around the room. There was a table in front of one window on which lay greasy-fingered piles of paperwork, an abacus, some broken chocolate, and two small jars of boiled sweets. There were shelves to the ceiling on the two walls to either side. Soaps and salves for cuts (though the mission kept the greater measure of medications), cans of salmon, sardine, and fruit, jars of molasses, tea, coffee, hard biscuits, drums of cooking oil, jars of salt, and phials of pepper. The people still relied on hunting, fishing, and gathering for most of their food.
There were cotton and canvas trousers, overalls and thick woollen sweaters uncoloured or in dull green, skirts and dresses, long socks and woollen jackets in plain or plaid. There were long sailor’s canvas coats in black, oiled and waterproof, too expensive for most, silk and cotton stockings and a handful of handkerchiefs, plimsolls for the children, the rubber boots bought under-counter from the canneries’ warehousemen. Harry knew every item now, its state and price, and who might likely purchase it.
He finished his cigarette and rolled the burning ember dead between finger and thumb. He sighed and heaved himself up from the oil drum. “Owadi, great chief,” he said at last. “What can I do for you?”
Owadi seemed locked in indecision. Then he said, looking furtively through the open door first, “You have furs and blankets upstairs?”
“I do.” As the old man well knew.
“We look.”
Harry crossed the room and motioned Owadi over. A staircase went up along the rear wall. Beneath the stairs, an opening led into the back rooms where were the private places of his marriage, such few as there could be with the constant, prying company of the people. Harry followed the old man up the stairs into the shadows above. It seemed clear Owadi had words on his mind to speak and wished them secret.
Up in the loft, Harry stood blinking as his eyes adjusted. Cobwebs hung thick across the single window to the front and there was little light, if just enough to see by. To his left a wall divided the attic in two. A locked door kept the produce of real value secure—tobacco, hats, ammunition, a couple of rifles.
To his right were scattered a few boxes, cans of aging foodstuffs, and the hides and skins from trade among the people. There were hair seal, raccoon, black bear, wolf, mountain goat, elk, marten, deer, and even two land otter skins, stacked into the canted, spider-ridden corners. And there were blankets piled everywhere, great mounds of them, slowly moulding.
“Many blankets,” Harry said.
“Blankets is wealth,” the old chief said.
“Though they ain’t what they were, now the ceremonies have been banned. And we’ve more than we need already, you can see.” Once they had been virtually the coin of the coast. Harry’d been offered them in exchange for his whisky many times, great rotting stacks of them, of little use to anyone nowadays.
“Old ways change. Always worse,” said Owadi.
“Right enough.”
Owadi lapsed into a ponderous silence.
So the old man wasn’t here to trade blankets. He watched the chieftain from the corner of his eye, erect, stiff, his eyelids half-closed in thought. “The world comes always faster,” Harry said, “even here on the coast.”
“Killing people as it comes,” said Owadi.
“Aye, and sad it is. Even for me, if I ain’t more than a white man.”
Owadi looked at him then, and Harry realized he rarely met the eyes of any Indian man. “What can we do against you?” the old chief said at last.
Harry chose his words and was careful in voicing them. “I’m proud being a part of the Kwagiulth through marriage. I hope I’m to be trusted by you, that I’ve shown myself an ally to the people.” Though he looked to the floor as he spoke the words.
Owadi nodded faintly, gazing sharply at him. “Fat Harry,” he said slowly, “old George family is great among us. But for many, they is not Kwagiulth. You know George father, he was white, from England. And George mother Tlingit tribe, from the north. We had three hundred years of war with them people. When George marry with first wife Lucy, Tlingit and Kwagiulth come together and that was the war’s end, lah.” Owadi’s head bobbed in ritual acknowledgment as he spoke. “For that we gratef
ul, though there be some might think still of glory in killing men.
“To many, George is good man to stop war, to write our stories for us, and to make our history in books for white people to see.” He stopped to cough, a long phlegm-filled rasp. He said, “For them to see we is real and forever—same as them, important as they is in life. But George has took many thing of us and sold them, told secret of us, and he is enemy in some people mind.” He looked up again and into Harry’s eyes. “You understand?”
Harry was undone by such forthright words. He was more used to burrowing hard for meaning in the Indian’s usual indirection. He said, “Something is occurring?”
“But old George gone now. Flown. Gone.”
“Yes.”
The night of the funeral, Harry and the women had returned through the rainstorm to the village. They had ducked toward the greathouse and his wife had made it clear that that was where they’d sleep the night. Many came to join them at dinner, but the talk was low and sparse. Harry spluttered down a little of the foul black oil of the eulachon fish they so favoured, with his salmon, and some bitter stew of berries. The sun fell and the rain ended. Eyes were kept lowered and there were none of the usual jokes and tales told around the fire. More than with ritual grief or with solemnity, the air felt pregnant that evening with reservation and with doubt.
He walked out after dinner. Across the water, fires burned on the Island of Graves, where the men who had stayed on with George were still at whatever it was they were doing. But he knew no one would tell him what was happening there. So he shrugged and spat and smoked, and went to his bed among the fifteen others who slept that night on the platforms about the greathouse’s inner walls.
Late in the night he awoke. The cinders of the fire cast a wine-red glow across the timber ceiling. Soft voices muttered. He saw George at the doorway talking to someone outside, and turning then into the room. The old man stamped across to the fire and squatted before it. He was carrying a wooden box, about a foot and a half on each side, that seemed carved with intricate details, though it was impossible to make them out in the gloom, and which he placed down and rested one palm on its top, firmly, as if he must not ever lose it from his touch. He took up a half-burned faggot with his other hand and pushed at the embers, his fingers almost in the flames as they flickered lazily to life.
The Cannibal Spirit Page 6