The Cannibal Spirit

by Harry Whitehead

  He stood by the window, watching the storm. Well, he’d learned to soak up the people’s taciturnity. But it showed he wouldn’t ever be a real part of their world. If he could have fled this very night, he might well have done it, and none would ever know where he had gone. But the storm made such a deed impossible. Anyhow, it would mean he’d have to go far away, since Halliday could put the word all up and down the coast that he was a wanted man. Then he’d have every damned government boat scouring for him.

  Once they were away, Charley would effectively be guardian over him for Halliday. Not that Charley would be doing it deliberately. He was certain Charley had no loyalty to Halliday, beyond the pay he’d receive. Harry was bound up for now in the fate of the Hunt family. What that might mean should George fail to be found, or refuse to return, Harry did not know. For now, though, there was nothing more to be done. All he could do was try to find George, and lay it all out before him.

  So he pressed the tobacco dead in his fingers, and returned to bed. His wife snored softly, and with the storm still battering at the wooden building, he lay on his side and watched the gentle rise and fall of her shoulders, until she sighed and her hand came up and held tight to his shoulder, and he drifted at last into sleep.

  Harry stood on his porch in his shabby long johns, yawning and surveying the world. The dawn came clear with a light wind out of the west. The air was fresh, the usual smells of the village washed for once away. A dog barked, half-hearted. Some cocks crowed. A few of the people were up and around, down on the beach.

  He sipped coffee. In the back, his wife prepared a breakfast of stewed salmonberries, mackerel, and rice, a staple for Harry after his many years in the Orient. He threw out the dregs from his cup, hawked as loud as any Chinaman, and spat a great black gobbet down onto the beach. He felt calm, resolute even. He had his role to play, and he’d perform it effectively. One thing leading to another.

  He saw Charley coming toward him. “Yoh,” Harry called.

  Charley trudged his way up the shingle to the store. “I make food for trip,” he said, stepping onto the porch. “Dry salmon. Berry, enough some box. Grease from eulachon.” He cackled. “You learn like grease on boat many day, huh? You have coffee, sugar, thing, right?”

  “I’ll bring rice and coffee and the like, and I’ll have some things to trade as we go.”

  “We make business together. Half profit me.”

  “Always a nose for the fast penny, eh, Charley?”

  “Raven.”

  “I reckon it better to look like we’re trading than for all to know our real business.”

  “Ek.” Charley nodded.

  “Let’s eat. But where are we headed after?”

  “Talk at sea. Ear everywhere. Give old George time think, not other bastard follow behind, not story go Hal’day ear too.”

  Harry shrugged. There was no one within four hundred yards except his wife, and she in the back cooking, but he knew the futility of argument.

  Several of the people came to watch them at the jetty as they made ready to leave. Harry’s wife was there, and George’s, and Charley’s missus sitting farther up the beach, shaking her head and pontificating raucously, until her husband threw hard words at her, and some of the Indians already drunk jeered him.

  Halliday came down the jetty, earnest and rigid against the muttering of the people round him. “You’re well today, Harry?” he said.

  “Well as might be.”

  “Have you a strategy as to where you’ll be headed?” Halliday looked to Charley. The old cripple took no visible notice as he stacked blanket bales on the deck of the Hesperus.

  “We’ve some thoughts,” said Harry slowly, “but none are firm. We’ll get to sea and make our plans then.”

  “Taking some trading goods with you as well. Good, good. No harm in that.” He moved closer to Harry, who was leaning against a gasoline drum. “But you’ll be focusing on the job in hand, I take it?”

  “I will. Trade goods may be useful in drawing information from some tightlip chieftain.”

  “Of course you’re right. But Harry, I’d have you certain in your quest. I want to see George back in ten days. If not, I plan to confiscate the Hunt family masks and treasures, to be held against his handing himself in.”

  “That’s a damned insult, Halliday.”

  “And I know, Mr. Cadwallader, that not all you trade is smiled on by the law. Still, you don’t sell the rotten brews, and you’re particular who you sell to. Oh, don’t think I don’t know you. But there are worse along the coast. Nevertheless, there are some would have had me bring you to the assiers before now.”

  Harry began to speak, but Halliday held up his hand. “I’ve kept my counsel till now, and mostly for your family and for your place as white man here. I’d hoped running the Hunt family store might put such trade behind you. There’s only you and Crosby in Rupert that is pure white. But know this. You fail in finding George, or do anything else untoward, and I’ll be bringing down all force upon the Hunt family. And on you, Harry. You may see your boat impounded, and you will spend time in jail.”

  “Damnation!” Harry said. “There ain’t need for this.”

  But Halliday stepped back and spoke loudly so that all might hear him. “Good, good,” he said. “I’ll be wishing you well.” And then quietly once more, “You bring him back to me, Harry. Whatever it takes. I’ll have no excuses.” He pulled at his jacket. “I’ll see you in ten days. I know Charley here will have an inkling as to his whereabouts.”

  Harry had no words to say. Instead, he turned and hefted the gasoline drum up onto the gunnels of his boat, and Charley came over and helped him.

  “A fair voyage,” said Halliday, and walked away along the jetty. Harry stared after him.

  “You find him, Caddie,” said Francine, coming to stand close by.

  “He’s threatened to take the family’s valuables if George don’t come back.”

  “You tell George,” she said. “He know what to do.”

  Grace came forward and stood beside him. He touched her hand a moment and she drew away, embarrassed probably at such public display. So he leapt across to the deck.

  He went aft and twisted the small handle of the make-or-break ignition until the engine’s single cylinder caught and chuttered. The dry-exhaust pipe rising behind him spat clouds of black smoke that grew paler as the seconds progressed. Charley untied and pushed out the prow from the jetty. Harry engaged the flywheel. He held the rudder hard to port and the Hesperus swung away from the jetty. They arced out past the headland, north and east of the Island of Graves. When he looked back, he saw Chief Owadi was standing on the plankway above the jetty with Crosby, Halliday, and the Indian, To-Cop, watching after them.

  “So, Charley,” Harry said, once the village was finally obscured by the headland. The open ocean stood to port, and the mountains and the fjords of the mainland’s coastline to starboard, a scant few miles away. “Which way? Or are you still fucking pondering?”

  Charley came aft from his perch among the bales. “I think all night,” he said, “and no place other good. Go Ba’as. Blunden Harbour, you say.” And he pointed north and a little east. “You know?”

  “I do. Why there?”

  “Have baccy?” Harry reached in his pocket and threw over his tobacco tin. Charley turned it in his hands a while and opened it at last. “Good box,” he said. “Where from?”

  Harry ignored the question. “Why’re we going to Blunden?”

  “George learn many thing of Nakwakto people when he young. He close many people there. George heart in them woods. Hunt for animal there many time. Maybe people see him. Maybe he there in village.” He struck a match and lit his rolled cigarette.

  “And Francine’s Nakwakto, is she not? I wonder he wouldn’t have mentioned it to her.”

  “He just go. Not speak first. Old George close her brother many year from when he boy. Brother die now. Same everyone. But maybe George go back there remember.�
� Charley blew a long draft of smoke. “You know old George he paxala?”

  Harry shook his head and shrugged, not knowing what the old man meant.

  “Man have medicine. Shaman, Mr. Boas call. George become paxala with Nakwakto. Think George now in land Nakwakto.”

  “Why?”

  “Know George. He like have power over thing. But cannot have power over death. He not save son, David. Before he try with paxala medicine. Maybe now go think thing from past. Have problem in head about what can or cannot do. Nakwakto—that where George become real Indian first time. Lose white blood. Now go back think about be Indian again.”

  Harry had never thought of Charley having much awareness of the workings of the mind. “You’ve more to you than you show, haven’t you, Charley Seaweed?” he said.

  Charley shrugged. “Or else George go die on sea.” He leaned over the gunnels and spat. “Killing self big thing, now you white fuck men come.”

  Harry angled the Hesperus north toward the thirty miles or so of sea that separated them from Blunden Harbour. He tied off the rudder and stood. “Pull to it,” he said. “We’re as well to raise sail, with the wind so fair on our quarter. You’re not just here as guide. You can labour too. And I’ll be pleased if you’ll throw me back my baccy.”

  Charley pulled it from his pocket. He smiled. “Nice box,” he said and tossed it back.

  The sky stayed clear and the wind still in the south and west. They made the deep inlet, at the entrance of which lay Blunden Harbour, in five hours, much of it with the tide. Harry had been here some six weeks before, trading.

  Twelve houses stood against the forest’s looming spruce and cedar. Several were the newer, smaller framed houses of the white man’s design. There was evidence of the modern world in the milled lumber and the glass windows of many of the houses, even here in one of the more remote Kwagiulth villages. With the tide in, there was no beach. The houses were stilted, built out over the shingle itself where it sloped so steeply into the water. A plankway ran along in front of the houses, and here and there along it, steps led down to the water.

  As they drew closer, Harry watched to see if he could make out George’s canoe among the many others tied against the steps. But all the designs along their sides were of wolf and bear and seal, and nowhere could he see the killer whale.

  “Not have George canoe,” said Charley.

  “We’ll tie off before the house of Chief Walewid,” Harry said.

  “Black-soul,” Charley muttered. He walked forward to get the mooring rope. “Better we speak Cousin Yagis.”

  “No trade this time,” shouted Chief Walewid from his doorway as Harry leapt from the Hesperus to the steps in front of the chieftain’s house. The young man emerged into the light, black squinting eyes and jagged yellow teeth. He leaned against the totem pole out front, bare but for the wolf’s head high at its apex. “Too much trade already with you, Fat Harry. Go fuck off. Come back few months.”

  “Can we moor here the evening then, Chief? Visit with the people of our clan?”

  “No white man clan here.” He spat down into the water, insolently close past Harry’s feet.

  “Yoh,” said Charley from the boat’s prow. He spoke a few words in Kwakwala. Walewid glowered some, but he flicked his hand behind his head in dismissal and then his bulky, violent form vanished back inside. No other people were there to be seen. A thin dog, missing clumps of its fur, barked at them from farther along the plankway. “Them all away fish, and berry gather season start now,” said Charley. “Back tonight.”

  “Well Walewid’s not gone anywheres. And deep drunk as well,” Harry said.

  “Bad fucking man,” said Charley.

  “He ain’t usually so savage.” Harry thought on the liquor in the hold. Alcohol had been a mainstay of his income since he’d come north from San Francisco. It had its ill effects on some, right enough. Still, he was hardly its only source for the Indians. Many of the traders made a profit quietly from its sale to the brown men. Harry wasn’t a missionary, nor any sort of do-gooder, to be changing the world, ugly though that world might very well be.

  “Maybe he know already,” said Charley, pointing his nose toward Walewid’s home.

  “What? About George? He was only charged yesterday. The storm would have stopped anyone on the water till now, and we the first out from Rupert that I saw.”

  “Not about white man charge. About funeral.”

  “Christ almighty!” Harry had pestered Charley for answers already, but he’d only shake his head, mumble “Just thing,” and shrug. “Something went on out there, and none of you black bastards will tell me what.” Harry stood on the plankway glaring down at Charley. “Even though it’s I looking for George, and it don’t help me nothing at all that I don’t know.”

  “Not important what happen. Important what people say happen.”

  “So what the fuck are people saying happened?”

  Charley just looked away. Harry sighed. As likely pry an oyster open with a baby’s fingernail as draw information from this cocksucker. “So the gossip’s passed already up this way, has it? I’ve not seen anyone out from the village, nor heard of it. The fishermen don’t usually travel out this far, nor in this direction. They sail oceanward.”

  Charley sat on the gunnels, and he seemed deep in his thinking. “Dream people tell,” he said at last.

  Harry pondered this. “Walewid dreamed it?”

  “No. Them come and go.”

  “Who is them?”

  “Dream people.”

  “They come and go—dream people—whispering gossip?”

  “Ek.”

  “Spare me your hocus-pocus, man,” he said. “You know me more than that.” But Charley said nothing more. Harry gazed away down the steeply mountained inlet, the tidal waters swirling slowly, green, violet, and steel. He wanted to smash something. Pick up a paddle and go after that chickenbred savage, Walewid. Teach him a few manners before his betters.

  An old woman, short and obese, shuffled away along the plankway. She disappeared into a house at the far end of the village. Harry thought of going after her. But it was the building the Temperance Society of the Anglican Mission had built for those seeking shelter from the wicked ways of drink and heathenism. Not a place in which he’d likely be welcomed.

  He shook himself and jumped back on deck. “We’ll cook up some food on board,” he said. “Wait for Yagis.”

  The sun was low on the Pacific’s horizon and the fishermen of Blunden Harbour came paddling home from the ocean in its pinkish-orange glow.

  Harry and Charley sat at their ease on the deckhouse, smoking.

  “Good luck take fish, this sun,” said Charley. “Same colour salmon.”

  Already the women had ambled out of the forest, their baskets filled with the first wild strawberries of that season, the salmonberries that looked like raspberries, and with blue huckleberries.

  When at last he could make out Yagis and his two sons in their canoe, Harry slid down from the deckhouse. He waited until they were turning in toward the steps in front of their house, three along from Walewid’s, and then he called “Yoh” to them. Yagis merely raised a hand without looking, intent as he was on the business of landing. His younger son leapt, agile, from the canoe’s prow and tied off against a thick support.

  Yagis stepped forward along the canoe, carrying his sixty years and more carefully. He was wiry and short and with a scar he carried proudly from his childhood, livid, jagged and deep, running diagonally across his face so that his nose seemed split in two. He’d taken it resisting the Haida slave raiders from the north who’d ranged along the coast in earlier times. So, at least, went the tale he had spun to Harry, when last they’d met.

  The old man wore rubber boots, high trousers with braces, and a ragged collarless shirt. On his head was a stovepipe hat, its crown high, as if he were some brown Abe Lincoln of the fjords. Harry smiled as Yagis shrugged away a hand from his younger son and hopped, ungainly
, across onto the steps.

  He climbed to the plankway, where one of his two wives was waiting with a dirty white blanket. He stood staring into the distance as she draped it around him, so that now he seemed a Caesar being dressed into his toga by a slave.

  When she was done he turned to Harry. His face broke into a smile, the scar a squirming snake across his face. “Hah!” he said and came toward him. “These stupid family jump like I am lord of all men.” Harry grinned. “Fat Harry, yoh.” They shook hands in the white man style. “Eat with me and talk and tell me what happen in the world.” This last he said without a smile.

  There were few formalities for dinner. Harry and Charley sat to either side of Yagis, and the old man’s two sons nearby. Both of Yagis’s wives were aged and ample in blankets, great hoops of cedar bark in their ears, so that to Harry they looked a matching pair, seated there across the fire.

  Yagis’s one surviving daughter was not young herself, married twice and both husbands dead, one of disease and the other fallen drunk from a steam freighter in heavy seas and drowned. She shuffled in the firelight and silently brought mackerel and dried salmon, a small wooden trough of eulachon oil, the pasted roots of plants, and salmonberries stewed into a syrup to be slurped as loudly as was possible from the hand-sized wooden spoons they all were wielding.

  “Thank you,” said Harry as she laid a small wooden plate before him on the ground.

  “You want marry her, she yours,” said Yagis, waving a spoon his daughter’s way. “No more chieftains rich enough for she to marry. All dead. No ceremony to give her proper. Least no ceremony we can tell the white man, eh?” and he slapped his spoon against Harry’s thigh. “And I never send her be prostitute,” he said, and proudly.