The Cannibal Spirit

by Harry Whitehead

  Charley ain’t so stupid as he looks. He’d been winding what cedar bark string was left into thin rope. Now we tied it about Harry’s shoulder to hold the moss secure upon it.

  I stood up and stretched my shoulders.

  “That’s it?” The man in the yellow shirt was standing in the middle of the other men, pointing a finger at me. “Do we let you live for that? Is there no more to your medicine?” Some of the other men shouted agreement at this. Walewid said nothing.

  Charley was beside me then. “Take the sickness round the fire four times, and give it to me after,” he whispers.

  I looked down to where the rotten slivers of flesh were sitting, rank, on their cedar leaf. So I took them up and started to singing again. The men was jeering me now, though. But I kept the leaf open on my palms, and paced about the fire. When I passed by them, two of the youngest made little leaps at me, feigning violence and whooping, waving their blades in circles over their heads. I turned towards them. I held up the leaf. “Watch that I don’t blow this out upon you,” says I, “making you all feel the sickness. Bringing you all to rotting.” They kept off me then, though they didn’t stop from marking me with scornful words. I knew we was at the edge of the razor, and surviving might need more than just the fixing-up of Harry.

  I sang and I stepped about the fire four times. Charley was waiting for me at the last. Now he cried out, and his voice was that of the raven. He held up his hands and I slid the leaf onto his open palms. He kept on with his cawing, but now he hopped—like the bird as it moves about on the ground—he hopped across towards the men on the far side of the fire. Some of them laughed, but there was tension in them that I could see as well.

  Charley moved until he was no more than a few feet in front of the group of men, with Walewid still sitting, stock-still, nearby. “What sickness is this?” Charley says, shouting out the words. “What sickness is this?” Now he folded his hands so that the leaf curled in half to seal up the rotting flesh inside. He pulled his palms tight together, linking up his fingers.

  “What sickness is this?” says he, and he threw his hands out towards the men. They flinched, some of them. But there was nothing there. The leaf was gone.

  “It is nothing!” Charley says, leering, his voice a hiss. And, as they took to jabbering, Charley came back round the fire and sat down beside Harry. I dropped my old bones down next to him. He drew out Harry’s gaudy tobacco tin from his pocket and built himself a cigarette. He lit it with a coal from the fire. He blew upon his fingers where he had held the coal.

  “Make they heads crazy,” he says, in English, looking at me and twirling a finger round and round by his ear. He chuckled quietly. Then he drew on his cigarette and blew a long, slow stream of smoke into the air.

  PART III WHITE MEN

  “BRING ME HEMLOCK BRANCHES. I will make a ring with them. With that ring I will bring back the soul. I am the life maker. I am the life maker. I am the life maker. I am the life maker.” My face is daubed in red and white paint. Mud is in my hair. I am naked. I use the plants of the forest. I call down the spirit of the cannibal what dwells deep in the wilderness. The Cannibal Spirit. Red smoke rises from his house. His slaves are out gathering corpses for his dinner. His servant, the raven, devours the eyes of his master’s victims. The Hoxhok bird lives also with him, tearing out the brains of men with its long beak, and the Cannibal Spirit’s grizzly bear, who delights in killing with his bare paws. That is me. Old grizzly in the wilds, great massive paws grappling and tearing.

  There ain’t no cannibals. Put your slavering white man tongues back inside your craws. Wipe up the drool upon your chins. There ain’t no savage men on the coasts above Vancouver, chewing human flesh. There is brutality enough in us already. But I ain’t no more tasted human flesh than have you, choking down thin wine and wafers in the cold mausoleums what are the churches of your Christianity.

  I can kill a man. Yes. It is easy. But to feast on him after? Maybe it is Christianity itself makes white men so obsessed. Perhaps parts of the bodies of enemies was ritually ate, once upon a time: that fairy tale saying we invoke when it is all too grim to have been just yesterday. The past is a forest impenetrable.

  I am here in New York, before this black suit of armour what is the cause of so much, though I have not even reached it in my story yet. I have walked among the glass cases and the objects in this long hall. I knew all I saw, for it was me gathered nearly everything here: these masks of whale and dogfish, sun and seal and wolf, eagle, thunderbird, and bear. The cannibal birds, one with its long beak broken, as it was not when he had sent it off, and but poorly repaired. The great face of the raven, flared nostrils through which the man who wore it might see. I still can see whose eyes they was did once look through.

  There are masks with the faces of shamans, their lids half closed as they discourse with the spirits. There is an old, old mask, one I had known most of my life and even questioned in myself, as I closed up the packing lid, if it should be sent away from its home. It was one of the first I did collect, back when I did still ask myself such things, the grim, stupid, lumbering face of the Dzonokwa. And beside it is the mask of the Qomogwe, its devilfish tentacles wrapped all about its flat whale face.

  All of them seen through dusted glass, so that they seem no more than swift-dimming memories, caged here in the great granite architecture of the museum.

  I have seen that some is marked with small paper signs naming them, as often wrong as they was right. Many, though, do not have tags at all. How might they be viewed by the few white people I have passed, slowly pacing the halls? I read all the tags. I have gazed in every case and tried to recall the circumstances of their collection.

  There is a canoe laid out along the roof of one case. What a struggle it was to pack for shipment. Carved from one solid piece of cedar, fifteen foot long and painted all dainty in red and white and black at its prow. The owner was drunk when I bought it off him, and regretful after. I had to turn quite forceful in seeing the man away.

  In one case there has been set up a scene from daily life, using three mannequins, two women and one man, the women squatting, hanging bark that has been already shredded to dry upon frames. The man works the cedar with his hands. I was before the frozen scene for I could not say how long, staring at the waxen, empty faces.

  Against the walls are smaller poles and feasting dishes in design of seal and killer whale and bear, five feet long and more, carved from single blocks of cedar, filled once with steaming eulachon grease, or seal blubber, or mounds of sour-cooked fish. There’s broad spoons, as wide as hands, by which the people scoop and slop and eat at ceremony. A gravebox, still so beautifully painted in black and red. It was from Rupert itself, built only for the purpose of being sold and shipped off to the East.

  There’s button blankets. One is hung upon a wall between two high windows. It has a black background and designs of the raven in red and white. I ran my fingers along its bottom edge. It is a blanket my mother made to sell to the museum. My hand rested there on those materials her fingers spent such time upon, the complicated artistry of her own fine fingers as they did weave and sew.

  There’s rattles the shamans shake above their patients, thick cedar bark neckrings, and all manner of utensils used by the people in their everyday lives—all laid out in the glass cases of the long gallery.

  And there is a mound of skulls I took from all those islands of graves I did come upon in my travels up and down the coast. I have plundered the graves. I have shown but little respect for the holiness of such places.

  I ain’t never before killed a man, though, and I ain’t planning to do it again. But the truth of it is that it ain’t hard. I look in myself for some terror, guilt, horror at my actions. But there is none. I done what I had to. That’s it. I might be the only man I know alive still what has actually taken a head in warfare. Oh, they was famous headhunters in times past, the Kwagiulth. As was many of the tribes up and down the coast. There’s skulls aplen
ty to be found in the gravehouses of the old chieftains. And Boas is a great one for skulls. I’ve sent him dozens I have unearthed, at two dollars a piece, thank you very much. And I have taken him all around the villages of the people, measuring skulls, both living and dead. There’s science attached to it, what asks if some men may be shown to be more primitive than others by the size of their craniums. Boas thinks it bunkum, and wants to show that we all are equal under the sky, and I ain’t disagreeing.

  Still, digging out a skull from a grave is one thing, killing a man and severing his head with a machete in the mud and darkness—well, ain’t that just something else entire? I wonder if I will tell Boas this part of my story. He would love to hear it. But I can’t be sure what he’ll think of me after. Perhaps it is my own head needs measuring.

  If it ain’t simple killing a man, it ain’t so simple neither to bring a man back from the point of death. A man what has his blood filled up with corruption. Harry lying in my arms, his breath a faint mist, the particles of his soul dispersing, my grizzly paws at his neck. “My supernatural power restores life. My supernatural power makes the sick walk. I have the strength of the Cannibal Spirit. No one can stop me.” Such are the words of my shaman’s song. Voicing a few choice words and hoping for the best of it. There on the beach at old Teguxste, I sat by Harry through the rest of that night, crooning my song to him, on and on, holding him up betimes and feeding him the brew we had made from the chokecherry plant. I had to stroke his neck to make him swallow, so far gone was he. Charley stripped out the green inner bark from the devil’s club he had taken from the forest, and put it to boil as well. I sent him off for spruce, cedar, hemlock, and alder bark to add to the concoction too.

  It is said by the people that souls have no bones, they have no blood, for they are just like smoke or shadows. They have no house besides the body in which to reside. When that house is razed, so the soul goes out and is blown away to nothing. Harry burned. I used the rest of the peat moss to soak water and bathe his body as it raged with the fever. I did battle to safeguard the house of his soul.

  Those soldiers of Blunden Harbour had pretty soon drunk theirselves to unconsciousness. The fight had been took out of them by Charley’s prestidigitating. They’d done no more since than grumble and gossip and throw the occasional high comment our way. So by the time the grey, clammy dawn found its way across the waters, it was just me and Charley and the unspeaking Walewid left. He had barely moved those past hours in his watch over us.

  Through the night and through the day following, I passed hemlock rings over Harry, I sang the songs of the shaman, I cleaned out his wounds, and, once I’d seen there wasn’t no more of rottenness in there, reapplied the dressings. I fed him the brews. I worried at him, trying to make him show some sign of wakefulness. I whispered to him that he was my son. I spoke soft words in his uncomprehending ear like I might to a child. I trawled through my memory for anything else that might serve to help him.

  Charley clucked and pottered. He wouldn’t let off till he had applied some of the remedies to my own face. The men of Blunden Harbour slowly came awake in ones and twos, farting, muttering, going off to take a shit. Their interest in the matter seemed muted now. Even Walewid had rolled hisself up in a blanket and snored like some bull elephant seal.

  The men ignored me, wandering along the beach and in amidst the broken houses. Harry was insensible. Even Charley slept, making noises to match Walewid. But still I played out the role of shaman. Chanting, calling on the Killer Whale Spirit, the Cannibal, other spirits of the wood and water, hurling logs on the fire and calling up its flames, running hemlock and cedar up and down Harry’s body and pacing about him in ritual parade. It was for me that I kept on. To shore up that failing belief what I believed had proved fatal to so many I had sought to save. I must believe for Harry to live. So was the impulse what drove me.

  And then, sometime after Walewid had coughed and hawked and grumbled hisself up again, early in the afternoon of the day, as I imagined it—for the cloud had come down low above us, and all was flat and grey and seemed outside of time—at last Harry took to spluttering. I rolled him to his side. He coughed black bile, though he did not waken. After that, he breathed much heavier, drawing in great gulps of air, wheezing when he exhaled once more. I pulled blankets over him, for he came to shivering now. Sweat began to pour off him, where before his skin had been cold to the touch and dry. There was the faintest trace of blood come into his face. I cooed and whispered in his ear. He mumbled, as in a dream, but did not wake up.

  When I looked up, Walewid was staring over at me. There weren’t no expression on his face, but he gave me a small nod. Then he stood and called out to his men, cursing them all for idling idiots and telling them to pack up their gear into the canoe and make ready for the off.

  Charley was beside me. He rested his hand on Harry’s forehead. “He ain’t there yet,” says he.

  “Oh, we’ll have him back,” says I. And I knew it to be true.

  “There’ll be a feast,” says I to Walewid. “You will be my guests. I will give away much to you. We will be as family to each other.”

  “I got better,” says Charley. He went aboard the Hesperus, calling the soldier in the yellow woman’s blouse to come with him. This man was slow and bleary-eyed today, without the fire in him from the night before. The two of them took to unloading what was in the hold of the Hesperus. There was blankets and some clothing. There was tinned foodstuffs. And there was a couple of cases of whisky left as well. Others of the men came to help, and they loaded these goods across from the Hesperus into their war canoe.

  Eventually, when all was done, they took up the last of their gear and boarded the canoe. Walewid stepped in last. As they was making ready to leave, I hurried over.

  “What of that?” says I. I pointed along the beach to where the dreamer’s head still lay on the shingle.

  “It was taken in war,” says Walewid. “He is gone. He is yours.”

  “There will be a feast,” I says to him.

  “I will come with my secrets for you,” Charley says.

  The men at the rear of the canoe pushed off. They paddled away. They did not look back.

  “A deep swamp we have walked out from,” Charley says, “and come up clean.” He laughed and clumped me on the shoulder.

  Five days later, we rounded Cormorant Point and came in sight of Alert Bay. It was the middle of the afternoon and the sun was bearing down so the sea could hardly be looked at. I felt such expectation, such confidence in myself, that I could but barely stop from shouting out across the water to the people in the village: “Prepare yourselves! I have much to tell you!” Like a child I am at times. For what we all had spoken—Charley and me, and even Walewid, on the beach there in Teguxste—had run round and round in my head, getting crafted further into form, until I was almost bursting to speechify.

  When we snuck out through the Nakwakto Rapids—those treacherous waters for once proving kindly enough to let us pass without incident— the killer whale did follow us through. Its great dorsal fin rose up like the shadow of fatefulness against the forests behind. It must have seen our hull as alike to itself and so was led back through. Still, you might imagine the ways I chose to read that portent after, on the journey south.

  As we came closer to Alert Bay, I gazed on those two cannery buildings, what are the lifeblood of that small town. Now they reared over us, with their high sloping roofs and all those windows in long lines, the sharp angles of the stilts holding it all up above the water, like some great caterpillar on legs what seem too gangling to bear its weight. There weren’t but little activity as yet, so early in the year. The thunder of those steam engines, the hammering tin cutters, the explosions of the steam retorts that boom out across the bay all summer. I thought: here is a monster still dozing, waiting to come awake. We must feed it fish till it be satisfied. But Indians don’t have to be slaves, feeding the maws of white men. Though, it is mostly Chinese and Japaner
s what Spencer employs nowadays.

  It was Spencer what truly founded Alert Bay. And, after, he took my sister Annie for his wife and become as well my brother-in-law. It was about thirty years back now, and Reverend Hall moving his mission from Rupert some years later, once he’d come to realize the Rupert Indians was proving unpliant to his sermonizing. I used to stand there next to him each Sunday, in my best Sunday smarts, doing the translating. I’d hear the people murmuring to theirselves about how preposterous was the things I was saying, even as Reverend Hall was getting all fired up with the righteousness of his God.

  We steered in towards the jetty beside the canneries. We tied off by old Dan Copperhand’s fishing sloop, and everyone clustered round to witness our return. So I yelled for help in carrying Harry along to Doc Trelawney’s. I could see all knew there was events afoot. The wry looks of many. None responding to my good graces. Still, it did not dint my enthusiasm. Halliday might be awaiting me with his iron cuffs, and I did know that there were those arranged against me for all the wrongs they did consider I had done upon the people, all bundled up into the charges what was arrayed against me. And I would soon come at the heart of what those charges was. Charley had laid out all he knew to me about the charges against me, whilst we was waiting on Harry to be well enough to travel from Teguxste, and I had a pretty good notion by now of what they must be constituted, if yet I did not know for sure. Arrest me, then! Let me stand up in the courthouse here in Alert Bay, in front of all of them, and speak my piece on who I was, the spokesman that I was for the people. Let them decide: the people, packed in, as I envisaged them, to hear my words. I’d make old Reverend Hall blush for lack of passion when he saw me delivering what it was I’d have to say about the great wrongs done the people, about who it is we are!