“Fat Harry!” It was Charley. “Quiet.” Charley’s hand it was upon his mouth. “You talk you sleep. Stay wake better.” Harry rolled to his side and retched, keeping as quiet as he was able. Charley knelt above him, looking out across the low parapet, one hand on the rifle resting there, the other holding him down against the earth.
The nausea receded at last. He lay curled on his side, yet shivering hard enough to magnify the pain in his head and in his shoulder. He fell once more into unconsciousness.
He woke this time wrapped in a blanket on the tarpaulin. Beside him, Charley lay, gazing out. A cloth rag was tied about Harry’s head so that it covered his mouth, but kept his nose clear. It had been soaked in water, and he sucked at it desperately. He felt for a moment more clear than before, his fever less intense. He reached up with his good arm and drew down the cloth. Charley looked at him.
“How long?” Harry said, his voice a low rasp.
Charley seemed to understand. “Sleep three hour,” said Charley.
Now he could hear the sounds of voices raised. “What’s going on?”
“Men go on Hesperus.”
“Fuck and damnation!” Harry dragged himself up to see.
The tide was in and the Hesperus was afloat once more, rolling slightly with the inlet’s gentle waves. The oil lamp from the pilothouse was alight and resting on the deck. Two figures moved near the entrance to the hold, the door of which had been swung open.
On shore, the fire burned high and hard, great flames rising twenty feet into the air and throwing sparks farther still, which glowed amber and red before dispersing into the darkness. Most of the canoe wood seemed to have been burned, and two men were gathering timber from the old buildings.
Four of the men stood about the fire, their voices raised against its roar. They seemed caught up in some bragging contest, as Harry had seen many times before, chins jutting and chests inflated, two waving war clubs, and all dressed only in blankets knotted like skirts about their waists. They held bottles, and these they sucked on between their taunts and curses.
“Fucking heathens,” said Harry. “Perhaps we’ve a chance of getting off this rock while they’re busy with my liquor.”
“No, look,” said Charley, nodding down toward the nearer part of the beach.
There were two figures now beside the stream. The dreamer had cast off its blanket, and its black body reflected the firelight so that the skin shone like obsidian. It rested on one knee and held the war club across the thigh of its other leg. Its eyes moved over the edges of the forest, then up toward the hillock and back.
Beside it, Walewid’s squat form crouched, a cloak of cedar bark about him, and on his head was the mask of the wolf. The jaws of that great carven countenance were pointed toward the forest. Of all its painted colours only the blacks and reds of its eyes and snout were plain in the firelight.
“Christ,” said Harry. “Can we not shoot those two cocksuckers at least? We might sow enough confusion to make it to the forest.” He wondered at his own call to action, and what point there was in any of this. They had found George and he had failed to help. Failed to be anything but another dancing, headhunting savage in the wilds. Now Harry ticked on borrowed time. He might as well die up here as anywhere else.
“Not kill dreamer,” said Charley.
“Can’t kill, or won’t?”
“Not kill,” he said.
Anger was what he had still. Anger. “Well what about those fucks on board my boat, at least?” Charley did not answer. “Maybe Walewid and that black devil will hit the liquor too.”
“Not think so.”
Harry stared down through the canoe birch at them. They were both motionless except for the dreamer’s hawkish eyes. “No,” he said, and rested his head down on his forearms. His breath came so short now.
“Even should we make it off this rock,” he said, “I’d not get a hundred yards through the forest.” He panted for a time to get breath enough to speak. “You got to go, Charley. Try your luck with the cliff. Go back and get hold of George. Kick the life back into him, if you have to. Maybe he’s finished with his rage, medicine dance, whatever in all the black hells it was.”
Charley stared at him in silence.
“I’ll keep the rifle,” Harry said. “Place a slug in any of them comes after you.”
“You not shoot tree trunk front you, stupid man.”
“I’ll put the wind up them, if nothing else.”
“Wait see more time yet.” Charley turned back to watch the beach once more. “Maybe new thing happen.”
Harry did all he might to keep his focus. But the leaping fire threw crazy, dancing shadows through the canoe birch, and the drunken chants, the rolling waves of heat and cold that coursed through him, and the growing certainty of death—all furled about him, until he seemed to spin slowly up from himself, to writhe in a vertigo like that he’d felt the first time he had gone high into the rigging in a fierce swell. A lurching, tumbling loss of control.
The cries below were the howls of wolves. Their tearing teeth might close on his body. If he had only found George, not that fool in the despair of his grief up in the forest. If he had but found the man he’d known, he’d have had answers for all this, so he would.
But Harry would be taken instead by the forest, broken down and eaten. If not by the wolves and their crude predations, then by the roots of grass and fern and tree. That was right and proper to the way of things. Perhaps he had become an Indian indeed, to think such thoughts. God might take that part of him which He desired, yet the forest could have the parts that touched and smelled and tasted, that heard the breeze-blown leaves whispering … and now he could go. He could go. He could leave.
“Not die yet!” Shaking. Leaves and the whisper of the wind. “You not die yet!” And pain. Fire in his body. Heat. Water on his lips. Spluttering, but a hand clamped across his mouth. Charley hissing above him, “Not die yet. Something happen.” Pulling him up. Pulling his head around by his hair. “Open eyes!” The beach. Yes, all of this was real, and he must understand it.
Walewid was on his feet by the stream. The dreamer crouched beside him, looking like a dog that scented quarry. Its face was pointed toward the forest. Walewid spoke something to it. It leapt up, its club swinging circles. It ran toward where the stream broke from the undergrowth.
Charley raised up the rifle. Before Harry could come to his senses enough to make a judgment of his own, Charley fired in the dreamer’s direction. The rifle’s bark exploded in Harry’s ears. He ducked sideways, clutching at his head. Before he slid away to the ground, Harry saw the dreamer plunge into the deep woods. Just before it disappeared, its head turned back toward them, a grin of triumph on its face.
“Christ almighty,” Harry said, lying back down on his side and hacking coughs, bloody spittle running out the side of his mouth and onto his hands. “I thought you weren’t to kill the fucking dreamer.”
“Think George come. Dreamer know,” Charley said. “Now them know we here.”
“You don’t know it’s George. It might have been a wile to flush us into the open.”
“Then good wile,” Charley said.
“If it is George, he’ll have heard the rifle shot at least. Will he not still be too crazy to understand?”
Charley said nothing.
Harry heard shouting. “What’s that now?”
“Walewid run back to fire. Men stupid drunk. Walewid shout. Now them grab thing go back hide by pole.” A moment later, Harry heard a low hiss above him in the trees, and a rifle shot rang out. “Them shoot us,” said Charley.
“Shoot back.”
“No. Shoot again, them know place on hill we be for sure. Stay quiet now.”
Harry lay on his side, curled in a ball, and tried to remain conscious. Every minute or so a rifle barked, and a bullet would thuck into the stand of trees, or hiss through.
“Stupid drunk men fire.” Charley was watching the beach below. “Keep us here
till day come.”
All was quiet for a time. Then Harry heard something else. It sounded like an Indian chant, but far off and muffled. He would have taken it for his imagination if Charley had not tensed beside him.
“What is it?” he said, but the old Indian ignored him.
Harry tried to lift himself from the tarpaulin, but he couldn’t do it. After a moment, Charley took hold of his biceps and heaved him up until he was propped once more on the wet moss.
All was consternation among the Indians on the beach. Though they sheltered behind the owl pole, Harry saw the shaking of their heads and their arms gesturing. They seemed caught up in dispute. He could not make out details, nor could he see which might be Walewid. Meanwhile, the chanting continued, more clearly now, though he could not pinpoint from where it might be coming.
“Am I hearing that?” he said. Then the voice became clear to him. “Christ!” he said. “Is that George?”
“Ek.”
“What’s he singing?”
“George sing hamatsa song.”
“Where is he?”
“Forest.”
Harry scanned the edges of the trees. “I don’t see him.”
“No.”
Harry coughed. Blood sprayed out across his forearms. He cursed softly, and Charley looked at him.
“Die soon,” he said.
“You been saying that for a while. I’m still fucking here, though, ain’t I.” The singing grew louder, as if it were just within the tree line. Then it stopped. George called out in Kwakwala.
“What’s that?”
“Say, what happen here for rifle shoot?”
“What about the dreamer? He’s still in the forest. Warn him!”
“Ek.” Charley made as if to shout down, but now Walewid leapt up from his hiding place, his wolf mask on his head still. He clambered on the fallen pole and called out at length in passion.
Charley translated. “Say George family kill Walewid family. Say revenge. Say George do bad at funeral, make bad name all Indian. Say revenge. Say George come out now, maybe not kill everyone.”
George spoke again, his voice a question. This time, however, Charley called out himself. George called back. Harry watched as Walewid spun and pointed up in their direction. He saw one of the warriors aim his rifle toward them.
“What did you say?”
“Tell George we here, but say we have three rifle watch Walewid men. Say dreamer in forest. George say dreamer not problem. Now George speak Walewid, better all come talk together.”
“He ain’t crazed no more?”
“George back.”
Walewid had climbed down again and was talking with his men. After a while, he turned and shouted. George responded.
“Walewid say not believe we three rifle. Say we shoot more if we three rifle. He not stupid Indian. But George say anyways he have rifle too. He say he see Walewid burn canoe. Big insult.” There was a pause. Then, “Walewid now say talk better.”
George spoke, and Charley called in response. “Ask what happen. I say same story I speak him before, by lake. Say you die soon.” George’s voice came from the forest, and now its tone was thick.
“George say he come out now. Tell Walewid not fire. Walewid say yes not fire.” Charley pointed near the stream. “Look.”
The undergrowth trembled, and then a figure emerged. It looked some part of the forest itself, as if the wilderness had taken bodily form and stepped down onto the shore. Red cedar branches were tied about it, and upon its head were strapped fern fronds. Its face was painted black and it came in a half crouch, as if it were partway between animal and man. In one hand it clutched a machete and in its other something swung like a pendulum. The figure chanted in a gruff monotone that barely sounded human to Harry’s ears.
“Hamatsa come back from wild,” said Charley.
“What’s that he’s carrying?”
But Charley didn’t answer.
NO SENSE … No sense … Blackness and lightning strikes to burst open my body, and then darkness comes again. Finally, a golden flickering at my eyelids and they come open. A roof. Flames. The burn of heat to my skin. A face. A man with his face black-painted, like he’s a demon out of night. His eyes are blue. Wrong for that. Must be a breed. A man I ain’t about to believe in, pretending like he is an Indian. The face comes down toward me, eyes close to mine then sweeping down along my body. A sucking at my stomach, like as if I am being drawn on by some furied whirlpool. White flame is in my guts. I would scream if I was able. But I am mute. Something coming out from my stomach, drawn through the cables of my intestines up towards the surface. The tug of teeth at my skin till I feel my stomach coming open. I can see the roof again. The breed man’s face comes before me again. Blood all about his mouth. The mouth spitting. Blood, black in the firelight, blood on his mouth and chin, blood over all his teeth. My hands going now for my stomach. It is opened up, bleeding. My guts could spill across the floor were I to move. I have to hold them in. Blue eyes over me. Triumphant. If I move, I lose my entrails.
And now, behind that blue-eyed Devil’s face, high above him into the roof, filling all the air, there are the magnificent, holy body of Killer Whale, of Lagoyewilé, twisting up in the smoke and flames, as if it has leapt out from the waters. It hangs, massive, above everything, and I call for it to come crashing back down and crush the Devil with his tearing teeth beneath it. But then I see only the blue eyes as the Devil hisself leans across me. His hair hangs as a curtain all about my face, till I can see nothing else. He is closer now. Closer till his lips will touch mine and I will taste the blood of my own stomach on his teeth.
Darkness.
No sense.
Then pain like a blow from a hatchet through my hand and along my arm. I jerked. I smelled the foul stench of hair and skin burning. My arm had been in the fire whilst I was in my vision.
For that is what it was: a vision. So I do absolutely believe—still now, even here, in the City of Reason that is New York, in this very Cathedral of Reason, the American Museum of Natural History, no less. This place that I have made my choice and I have come to, as might be said, in pilgrimage. This place what is testament to my decision of myself. But even here I do state that what I saw that night beside the lake was more than just the delusions of some battered lunatic, his brain all mashed from rage and loss. No. Those teeth at my stomach, the feel of the blood sliding off the canines of the Devil above me to slither hot onto my cheek, so that, even with my arm burned and half-conscious by the fire, I must wipe in horror at my face till it feels clean again, so that I must feel across the aged muscles of my stomach for a rent, and lie like a baby still inside its mother’s womb for fear of the skin tearing. So immediate was that vision, and so violent its impact on me and on my actions after, that I have no choice but to call it such.
The wooden box was open by the fire. I shuffled over on my knees. The syrup-reek of corruption. The nose had sunk back into the face. The skin was black now, and the closed eyelids concave where the eyeballs was melting away beneath. I ran my burnt fingers down across David’s face, lightly, for I feared he might crumble in an instant away to nothing.
But still no tears did come, as they had not since first I heard of his passing.
I woke the following morning to the dew soaking through me, and the calls of the ducks out on the lake. I made coffee, the first for many days. I sat beneath the old killer whale pole. I took up a wrap of dry salmon. The smell of it made me near to fainting. My stomach moaned as I chewed.
I see the details of that morning like they is here before me now. I was feeling how it was also such a cloudless morning after rain the night before, clear and cool and empty. Clear to think. Even my burnt forearm throbbed with a clean, pure pain that helped me in my clarity, as if in the burning there had been some sort of purging, some clearing away of the refuse what had been clogging up my soul.
Tiny pieces of salmon was caught in the calluses of my fingers. I stood and stret
ched till my age cracked through my shoulders. I walked on bare feet through the grasses to the shore. Away around the lake I heard wood being dragged through brush, a slap of tail on water, cubs chirruping, the industry of beavers. In the sunlight, the water ran through my fingers like streaming gold.
David’s head had rotted. I should have laid it in running water till all the fat and brain and blood was washed away. That’s the way of it. At least, it was the way of my mother’s people for those of chiefly blood: the corpse opened at the pelvis, the entrails pulled out, then held in a fast-flowing river till clean, and after placed in the sun to dry.
The Kwagiulth ain’t got no such practice. Their only mummies are those put up on the branches of trees, which by some fortune dry out in the wind, instead of putrefying. I could still see a few broken shapes of boxes, up in the trees close by the lake, where some of the old shamans had chosen to be buried in secret from the tribe, perhaps to lend mystery to their legend, or to those of their sons what might follow them, or some for belief in the power of the place, or in their own immortal souls.
Oh, I know it: the question what begs answering. What can be in a man’s mind to have performed such a deed? To have chopped the head from his own son. Perhaps it is there in the story of Shaiks, in the story of the origin of the box. The Tlingit do keep such trinkets. Or once they did, at least. But there ain’t no such tradition among the Kwagiulth of taking body parts of family for keepsakes. They used to go headhunting up and down the coast in times past, like many of the tribes, but for trophies and glory, or for revenge. Not like this.
The Cannibal Spirit Page 18