Ghost Sea: A Novel (Dugger/Nello Series) (22 page)

A
woman’s voice hummed softly as if in a dream. I opened my eyes. The big house was empty. Only the dead lay about, in odd shapes where they’d fallen, with Kate rolled up like a sleeping cat beside me.

Nello was gone.

In the middle of the floor sat Sayami: legs crossed, hands on knees, back bowed as if from fatigue, his head fallen forward, lifeless, on his chest. His rifle lay before him on the ground.

The dead were everywhere, dangling, twisted, crumpled, or splayed like children playing angels-in-the-snow. And one, as in repose, before the shattered mirrors with his head cocked to the side, eyes wide open, staring at the glass as if he just couldn’t get enough of seeing himself dead. And, in all that silence, an old woman hummed as she swept the platforms with a slow and even motion, sweeping around the edges of the dead as if they would—like the stairs and walls—remain there for a long time.

There was movement at the top of the steps, and I could make out, standing there, the captain of the yacht. He slammed his shoulder against the door twice, but to no avail, then yelled something incomprehensible at the planks. When there was no reaction from outside, he came down and sat on a sack of flour beside Hay, who was slumped dead on his knees with his forehead to the ground.

There were voices outside. Chains rattled and a key turned in a lock. The door swung open and let in moonlight and a flickering red glow as if from a fire. One by one the chiefs filed back in, Nello’s cousin among them, then came men carrying two big wooden boxes, and others dragging weighty boom chains on the ground. At the end was Wina’lag with his sword in hand, leading Nello tied at the wrists with a cord.

The chiefs all took their places as before; only the one who walked on water and the cousin remained standing. He held up his right arm as he did in the sea, and began. At first the cousin didn’t translate, but then started with, “We do not want anyone interfering with our customs. We were told that a man-of-war would come and destroy our villages if we should continue to do as our grandfathers and great-grandfathers have done. By what right? Is this the white man’s land? Where was the white man when our God gave this land to our great-grandfathers? Do we ask the white man, ‘Do as the Indian does’? Let your king rule with his laws; we will rule with ours. We don’t want your man-of-war to stop our dancing, or stop us giving away what our hearts want to give; to hoard is a shameful thing among our people. And we don’t want your man-of-war to tell us how to punish those who killed. We have our fathers’ laws for that. There has been much death today, much sadness. May what we do now ease the long sleep of the dead.”

He lowered his arm. No one moved. Then he gave a quiet command. The cousin didn’t translate.

The men with the chains turned and walked toward the captain of the yacht. They held him down and began wrapping the chains around him when Nello yelled out, “Leave him alone; he only hid,” then broke into Kwakiutl, but Wina’lag yanked the rope and pulled him to the ground. The chiefs conferred; the chain-wrappers slowed. A short command rang out. The chain-wrappers looked up. They unwrapped the chains from the captain, turned, and started toward me.

At the yelling, Kate sat up; all angles. I tried to reach out to touch her, but my right arm wouldn’t move and I was lying on the left, so I struggled to one knee just as Nello jerked the rope loose from his keeper and lunged toward us. He was nearly there, ready to help, when Wina’lag caught him, and I saw a cold glitter as the sword blade shot ahead and plunged into his back. Nello stopped. His arms flew toward me as the blade came out his chest, tenting his shirt, and, as if a rain poured down on him, it turned, dot by dot, a somber red. He fell to his knees.

The men wrapped the chains around me, and I fought with one good arm, kneeling on one good leg, but they held me down with their feet and wrapped the chains tight and hooked them tightly together. Then they carried me like a dead man to the steps. My head dangled; the world was upside down. They dragged Kate, shouting, and bent her over a wooden box. The chiefs gathered around her. The sword went up and came down like a scythe. Her voice fell silent. We went jerkily up the steps as they threw a blanket over her and stuffed her in the box. Then the box into the flames and poured the oil. As we turned out the door, they dragged the other box to Nello.

My head dangled in the moon-filled night.

T
HERE WAS A
steady banging that I remembered from long ago and I could smell the tide. We were in a canoe in the center of the cove and there was moonlight on the village still covered with snow. People lined the beach, some holding a flame, but there was a great red glow on the houses behind them. I twisted around; near the island, her masts against the sky, stood the ketch. On fire. The foredeck was aflame and there must have been a fire below, because the portlights, like blazing eyes, glowed yellow in the dark. With her anchor line burnt through, she was drifting out to sea.

They lifted me wrapped in the chains, shouted, held me up for all on the beach to see, then threw me with a great splash into the black water. I sank.

I
dreamt I was back in school with the pool of water on the roof rippling in the sun, then it glowed red and up leapt flames and it burnt, the roof burnt, and I could never dream again.

I opened my eyes. The sails were set, even the mizzen, and I saw the fog, swirling, thinning as we sailed over long hillocks of smoothly heaving sea, then a faint light coming through—the break of dawn. And from far, far away, as faint as a song remembered from the cradle, half hummed, half sung, came
Oi vita, oi vita mia.
I turned my head. Nello stood at the wheel, his coat flapping, his shirt caked with dried blood. He leaned down and let out on the mainsail. He must have heard me stir, because he turned to look, and seeing my eyes open said, “Morning, Cappy,” in a whisper as if not wanting to wake me. “How about I make you a lovely heap of flapjacks?”

The wind pushed us on a reach but the ketch had a strange motion: long calm runs, descending, descending, then slower, gentler risings as if we were sailing in long swells. I pushed myself up. There was no land in sight, only the empty waters of the open ocean. On the starboard cockpit seat, bundled in blankets as in a cocoon, with only her auburn hair sticking out, was…and I couldn’t breathe. Then Nello leaned down and whispered, “She’s asleep.”

He saw me staring at his blood-drenched shirt, and he laughed a silent laughter. “We’re all dead,” he said. “The ketch burnt. The yacht’s captain saw it. The whole world knows we’re dead.”

Then the wind gusted and he closed his jacket against the cold. “Give us some credit, Cappy,” he said. “Eight thousand years of long winter nights.”

I tried to get up but everything was stiff, everything ached. My arm and a leg were bandaged. Nello looked concerned. “Those are real,” he said. “But you’ll be all right.”

The ketch ran down the long back of a swell, her tall rig catching the wind even in the trough, then she rose and sailed with an exuberant surge up the face of the next hillock. I struggled across the cockpit and pulled back the blankets an inch at a time. With deep even breaths, as calm as a child, Kate slept. She was as pale as the dawn, the hollows of her cheeks deeper than before. She shuddered slightly, opened her eyes with a start, then, seeing me, the unease left her face.

“Good morning,” Nello said.

The wind picked up, the mist thinned, and the sky and the sea filled with that all-deluding pink light. Kate sat up, rebundled her blankets, and looked around, but there was nothing to see but water.

“Where are we headed?” she softly asked.

Nello looked at the sails, then down at the compass, then, without looking at her, said, “West.”

Kate smiled. She reached out her hand and cupped my face. “What’s west?” she asked.

Nello eased the jib before he answered. “The East.”

CHAPTER

1. Joseph Conrad,
Youth
(1902)

2. James Boswell (1759)

3. Claude Levi-Strauss,
Gazette des Beaux-Arts
(1943)

4, 20. T.F. McIlwraith,
Field Letters
(1922-24) Franz Boas,
Kwakiutl Tales
(1910)

6, 28. Franz Boas,
The Kwakiutl of Vancouver Island
(1909)

8. Franz Boas,
The Social Organization of the Kwakiutl
(1895)

9. Franz Boas,
Ethnology of the Kwakiutl
(1921)

10. Franz Boas,
Kwakiutl Tales
(1910)

11. Aldona Jonaitis,
From the land of the Totem Poles
(1988)

12. James Teit,
The Lillooet Indians
(1910)

13, 25. Franz Boas,
The Social Organization and Secret Societies of the Kwakiutl
(1895)

15, 16, 17, 21, 22. Franz Boas,
The Religion of the Kwakiutl
(1930)

18, 21. 23. Franz Boas,
Ethnology of the Kwakiutl
(1921)

26, 27. Bill Reid, Courtesy of The Royal British Columbia Museum

NOTE ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS

The drawings at the chapter heads, by Candace Máté, are mostly based on exhibited pieces, or historical photographs from the archives, of the Royal British Columbia Museum, Victoria, Canada

My most profound thanks to the Kwakiutl Nation in whose islands and ancient villages I spent so much time, and from whom I learned so much. Their lives and traditions inspired a large part of this novel.

This book would not exist without the thirty years of field-work (1886 to 1930) and the many volumes of scholarly tomes by anthropologist Franz Boas. His
The Social Organization of the Kwakiutl Indians, The Kwakiutl of Vancouver Island, Kwakiutl Tales, Ethnology of the Kwakiutl, The Religion of the Kwakiutl Indians, Kwakiutl Culture As Reflected in Mythology,
and
Kwakiutl Ethnography,
edited by Helen Codere, make up the ethnographic core of this novel.

Other contributing anthropological and ethnological works were: Clellan S. Ford’s
Smoke from Their Fires,
Jim McDowell’s
Hamatsa,
George Clutesi’s
Potlatch,
Aldona Jonaitis’
Chiefly Feasts
and
From the Land of the Totem Poles,
Bill Holm’s
Smokey Top,
Audrey Hawthorn’s
Kwakiutl Art,
Claude Levi-Strauss’s
The Way of the Mask,
Pamela Whitaker’s
Kwakiutl Legends,
and Hilary Stewart’s
Indian Fishing
and
Cedar
.

Most helpful were important Nothwest letters and narratives such as Wolfgang G. Jilek’s
Indian Healing,
Hughina Arnold’s
Totem Poles and Tea,
T.F. McIlwraith’s field letters
1922-4 At Home with the Bella Coola Indians,
Carol Batdorf’s
Northwest Native Harvest,
The U’mista Cultural Society’s
The Living World,
and
Tales from the Longhouse,
by Indian children of British Columbia.

The soul of the book came from one of the finest Kwakiutl wood carvers, Sam Johnson of Health Bay. Without his long days of companionship and story telling, these pages would have no life. The personal help of Alan Hoover and Dan Savard and many of the staff of the museum and archives of The Royal British Columbia Museum, New York’s Museum of Natural History, New York’s The Museum of the American Indian, and the University of British Columbia’s Museum of Anthropology, were an indispensable contribution.

Authors traditionally thank their editors but this is a different thanks. Few authors can claim their editor as a dear friend; I have that privilege. Starling Lawrence, Norton’s Editor-in-Chief, not only magically turned some of my phrases from Hungo-Saxon into English, but he also, most patiently, taught me how to get out of the story’s way. And his merciless editorial comments had me in stitches when I most needed a laugh.

Then of course, there was always Candace, who for years sailed with me in the magical solitude of the Kwakiutl Islands. Her editorial criticism, her companionship, not to mention her steamed clams with wine and garlic, made life worth living. And our son Peter, who, from the age of five, rowed us tirelessly against tide and current to discover the mystical, long-abandoned Kwakiutl villages.