Klee Wyck (12 page)

The impact of my body, flung down upon the wharf, jerked my mind back from nowhere.

“Fool! Why did you let go?” “Sneezer” retrieved the lantern he had flung down, to grip me as I reeled … Six sneezes … dying footsteps … dark.

I groped for the dog’s box.

Nothing amazed Ginger Pop. Not even that his mistress should be sitting T-squared against wharf and shed … time, three a.m. … place, a far north Cannery of British Columbia.

You would never guess it was a cemetery. Death had not spoiled it at all.

It was full of trees and bushes except in one corner where the graves were. Even they were fast being covered with greenery.

Bushes almost hid the raw, split-log fence and the gate of cedar strips with a cross above it, which told you that the enclosed space belonged to the dead. The land about the cemetery might change owners, but the ownership of the cemetery would not change. It belonged to the dead for all time.

Persistent growth pushed up through the earth of it—on and on eternally—growth that was the richer for men’s bodies helping to build it.

The Indian settlement was small. Not many new graves were required each year. The Indians only cleared a small bit of ground at a time. When that was full they cleared more. Just as soon as the grave boxes were covered with earth, vines and brambles began to creep over the mounds. Nobody cut them away. It was no time at all before life spread a green blanket over the Indian dead.

It was a quiet place this Indian cemetery, lying a little aloof from the village. A big stump field, swampy and green, separated them. Birds called across the field and flew into the quiet tangle of the cemetery bushes and nested there among foliage so newly created that it did not know anything about grime. There was no road into the cemetery to be worn dusty by feet, or stirred into gritty clouds by hearse wheels. The village had no hearse. The dead were carried by friendly hands across the stump field.

The wooded part of the cemetery dropped steeply to a lake. You could not see the water of the lake because of the trees, but you could feel the space between the cemetery and the purple-topped mountain beyond.

In the late afternoon a great shadow-mountain stepped across the lake and brooded over the cemetery. It had done this at the end of every sunny day for centuries, long, long, before that piece of land was a cemetery. Dark came and held the shadow-mountain there all night, but when morning broke, it was back again inside its mountain, which pushed its grand purple dome up into the sky and dared the pines swarming around its base to creep higher than half-way up its bare rocky sides.

Indians do not hinder the progress of their dead by embalming or tight coffining. When the spirit has gone they give the body back to the earth. The earth welcomes the body— coaxes new life and beauty from it, hurries over what men shudder at. Lovely tender herbage bursts from the graves, swiftly, exulting over corruption.

Opening the gate I entered and walked among the graves. Pushing aside the wild roses, bramble blossoms and scarlet honeysuckle which hugged the crude wooden crosses, I read the lettering on them—

SACRED OF KATIE—IPOO
SAM BOYAN HE DIDE—IPOO
RIP JULIE YECTON—IPOO
JOSEPH’S ROSIE DI—IPOO

Even these scant words were an innovation—white men’s ways—in the old days totem signs would have told you who lay there. The Indian tongue had no written words. In place of the crosses the things belonging to the dead would have been heaped on the grave: all his dear treasures, clothes, pots and pans, bracelets—so that everyone might see what life had given to him in things of his own.

“IPOO” was common to almost every grave. I wrote the four-lettered word on a piece of paper and took it to a woman in the village.

“What does this mean? It is on the graves.”

“Mean die time.”

“Die time?”

“Uh huh. Tell when he die.”

“But all the graves ‘tell’ the same.”

“Uh huh. Four this kind,” (she pointed separately to each of the four letters, IPOO) “tell now time.”

“But everybody did not die at the same time. Some died long ago and some die now?”

“Uh huh. Maybe some year just one man die—one baby. Maybe influenza come—he come two time—one time long far, one time close. He make lots, lots Injun die.”

“But, if it means the time people died, why do they put ‘IPOO’ on the old graves as well as on the new?”

Difficult English thoughts furrowed her still forehead. Hard English words came from her slow tongue in abrupt jerks. Her brown finger touched the I and the P. “He know,” she said, “he tell it. This one and this one (pointing to the two O’s)—small—he no matter. He change every year. Just this one and this matter (pointing again to I and P). He tell it.”

Time was marked by centuries in this cemetery. Years—little years—what are they? As insignificant as the fact that reversing the figure nine turns it into the letter P.

When the Indians told me about
the Kitwancool totem poles
, I said:

“How can I get to Kitwancool?”

“Dunno,” the Indians replied.

White men told me about the Kitwancool poles too, but when I told them I wanted to go there, they advised me—”Keep out.” But the thought of those old Kitwancool poles pulled at me. I was at Kitwangak, twenty or so miles from Kitwancool.

Then a halfbreed at Kitwangak said to me, “The young son of the Kitwancool chief is going in tomorrow with a load of lumber. I asked if he would take you; he will.”

“How can I get out again?”

“The boy is coming back to Kitwangak after two days.”

The chief’s son Aleck was shy, but he spoke good English. He said I was to be at the Hudson’s Bay store at eight the next morning.

I bought enough food and mosquito oil to last me two days; then I sat in front of the Hudson’s Bay store from eight to eleven o’clock, waiting. I saw Aleck drive past to load his lumber. The wagon had four wheels and a long pole. He tied the lumber to the pole and a sack of oats to the lumber; I was to sit on the oats. Rigged up in front somehow was a place for the driver—no real seat, just a couple of coal-oil boxes bound to some boards. Three men sat on the two boxes. The road was terrible. When we bumped, the man on the down-side of the boxes fell off.

A sturdy old man trudged behind the wagon. Sometimes he rode a bit on the end of the long pole, which tossed him up and down like a see-saw. The old man carried a gun and walked most of the way.

The noon sun burnt fiercely on our heads. The oatsack gave no support to my back, and my feet dangled. I had to clutch the corner of the oatsack with one hand to keep from falling off—with the other I held my small griffon dog. Every minute I thought we would be pitched off the pole. You could seldom see the old man because of clouds of yellow dust rolling behind the wagon. The scrub growth at the road-side smelt red hot.

The scraggy ponies dragged their feet heavily; sweat cut rivers through the dust that was caked on their sides.

One of the three men on the front seat of the wagon seemed to be a hero. The other men questioned him all the way, though generally Indians do not talk as they travel. When
one of the men fell off the seat he ran round the wagon to the high side and jumped up again and all the while he did not stop asking the hero questions. There were so many holes in the road and the men fell off so often that they were always changing places, like birds on a roost in cold weather.

Suddenly we gave such an enormous bump that we all fell off together, and the horses stopped. When the wheels were not rattling any more we could hear water running. Then the old man came out of the clouds of dust behind us and said there was a stream close by.

We threw ourselves on to our stomachs, put our lips to the water and drank like horses. The Indians took the bits out of their horses’ mouths and gave them food. Then the men crawled under the wagon to eat their lunch in its shade; I sat by the shadiest wheel. It was splendid to put my legs straight out and have the earth support them and the wheel support my back. The old man went to sleep.

After he woke and after the horses had pulled the wagon out of the big hole, we rumbled on again.

When the sun began to go down we were in woods, and the clouds of mosquitoes were as thick as the clouds of dust, but more painful. We let them eat us because, after bumping for seven hours, we were too tired to fight.

At last we came to a great dip where the road wound around the edge of a ravine shaped like an oblong bowl. There were trees growing in this earth bowl. It seemed to be bottomless. We were level with the tree-tops as we looked down. The road was narrow—its edges broken.

I was afraid and said, “I want to walk.”

Aleck waved his hand across the ravine. “Kitwancool,” he said and I saw some grey roofs on the far side of the hollow. After we had circled the ravine and climbed the road on the other side we would be there, unless we were lying dead in that deep bowl.

I said again, “I want to walk.”

“Village dogs will kill you and the little dog,” said Aleck. But I did walk around the bend and up the hill, until the village was near. Then I rode into Kitwancool on the oatsack.

The dogs rushed out in a pack. The village people came out too. They made a fuss over the hero-man, clustering about him and jabbering. They paid no more attention to me than to the oatsack. All of them went into the nearest house taking Aleck, the hero, the old man and the other man with them, and shut the door.

I wanted to cry, sticking alone up there on top of the oats and lumber, the sagging horses in front and the yapping dogs all round, nobody to ask about anything—and very tired. Aleck had told me I could sleep on the verandah of his father’s house, because I only had a cot and a tent-fly with me, and bears came into the village often at night. But how did I know which was his father’s house? The dogs would tear me if I got down and there was no one to ask, anyway.

Suddenly something at the other end of the village attracted the dogs. The pack tore off and the dust hid me from them.

Aleck came out of the house and said, “We are going to have dinner in this house now.” Then he went in again and shut the door.

T
HE WAGON
was standing in the new part of the village. Below us, on the right, I could see a row of old houses. They were dim, for the light was going, but above them, black and clear against the sky stood the old totem poles of Kitwancool. I jumped down from the wagon and came to them. That part of the village was quite dead. Between the river and the poles was a flat of green grass. Above, stood the houses, grey and broken. They were in a long, wavering row, with wide, windowless fronts. The totem poles stood before them there on the top of a little bank above the green flat. There were a few poles down on the flat too, and some graves that had fences round them and roofs over the tops.

When it was almost dark I went back to the wagon.

T
HE HOUSE
of Aleck’s father was the last one at the other end of the new village. It was one great room like a hall, and was built of new logs. It had seven windows and two doors; all the windows were propped open with
blue castor-oil bottles
.

I was surprised to find that the old man who had trudged behind our wagon was Chief Douse—Aleck’s father.

Mrs. Douse
was more important than Mr. Douse; she was a chieftainess in her own right, and had great dignity. Neither of them spoke to me that night. Aleck showed me where to put my bed on the verandah and I hung the fly over it. I ate a dry scrap of food and turned into my blankets. I had no netting, and the mosquitoes tormented me.

My heart said into the thick dark, “Why did I come?”

And the dark answered, “You know.”

I
N THE MORNING
the hero-man came to me and said, “My mother-in-law wishes to speak with you. She does not know English words so she will talk through my tongue.”

I stood before the tall, cold woman. She folded her arms across her body and her eyes searched my face. They were as expressive as if she were saying the words herself instead of using the hero’s tongue.

“My mother-in-law wishes to know why you have come to our village.”

“I want to make some pictures of the totem poles.”

“What do you want our totem poles for?”

“Because they are beautiful. They are getting old now, and your people make very few new ones. The young people do not value the poles as the old ones did. By and by there will be no more poles. I want to make pictures of them, so that your young people as well as the white people will see how fine your totem poles used to be.”

Mrs. Douse listened when the young man told her this. Her eyes raked my face to see if I was talking “straight.” Then she waved her hand towards the village.

“Go along,” she said through the interpreter, “and I shall see.” She was neither friendly nor angry. Perhaps I was going to be turned out of this place that had been so difficult to get into.

The air was hot and heavy. I turned towards the old village with the pup Ginger Pop at my heels. Suddenly there was a roar of yelpings, and I saw my little dog putting half a dozen big ones to rout down the village street. Their tails were flat, their tongues lolled and they yelped. The Douses all rushed out of their house to see what the noise was about, and we laughed together so hard that the strain, which before had been between us, broke.

T
HE SUN
enriched the old poles grandly. They were carved elaborately and with great sincerity. Several times
the figure of a woman that held a child
was represented. The babies had faces like wise little old men. The mothers expressed all womanhood—the big wooden hands holding the child were so full of tenderness they had to be distorted enormously in order to contain it all. Womanhood was strong in Kitwancool. Perhaps, after all, Mrs. Douse might let me stay.

I sat in front of a totem mother and began to draw—so full of her strange, wild beauty that I did not notice the storm that was coming, till the totem poles went black, flashed vividly white and then went black again. Bang upon bang, came the claps of thunder. The hills on one side tossed it to the hills on the other; sheets of rain washed over me. I was beside a grave down on the green flat; some of the pickets of its fence were gone, so I crawled through on to the grave with Ginger Pop in my arms to shelter under its roof. Stinging nettles grew on top of the grave with mosquitoes hiding under their leaves. While I was beating down the nettles with my easel, it struck the head of a big wooden bear squatted on the grave. He startled me. He was painted red. As I sat down upon him my foot hit something that made a hollow rattling noise. It was a shaman’s rattle. This then must be a shaman’s, a medicine-man’s grave, and this the rattle he had used to scare away evil spirits. Shamen worked black magic. His body lay here just a few feet below me in the earth. At the thought I made a dash for the broken community house on the
bank above. All the Indian horses had got there first and taken for their shelter the only corner of the house that had any roof over it.