Soul Catcher (17 page)

“I saw a bear,” David managed. Even as he
said it, he felt that was a stupid thing to say.

“Did you now?” There was laughter in Ish’s
voice.

David blushed.

Ish said: “Came looking for you because of
Tskanay.”

“Did he hurt her?”

“Cast a spirit into her. Gave her a cramp
and she fell down in a faint.”

“He hit her!”

“Maybe so.”

“I told her he would.”

“You shouldn’t run away, boy. Get yourself
killed.”

“What’s the difference?”

Ish said: “Well, you had yourself a good
walk. I’ll show you the short way back to camp. Katsuk’s expecting
you.” He turned, strode off across the clearing, a limping old man
with the sun beating onto his gray head and shoulders.

David, too tired to cry, trailed after the
old man like a puppy on a leash.

***

From Katsuk’s “Red Power” letter to the
United Indian Council:

You call yourselves Indians! Every time you
do that you deny that you are People. Nehru was an Indian. Ghandi
was an Indian. They knew what it was to be People. If you cannot
listen to me, listen to Gandhi. He said: “Immediately the subject
ceases to fear the despotic force, its power is gone.” Do you hear
that, you fearful subjects? Choose your own name!

***

An old woman stood just outside the
curtained doorway of the big hut. She was talking to Katsuk as Ish
and the boy entered the clearing. Ish held out a hand to stop the
boy and they waited there just into the clearing.

“That’s Cally, his aunt on his mother’s
side,” Ish said.

She was a head shorter than Katsuk, heavy
and solid in a black dress that stopped halfway between knees and
ground. Low black socks and tennis shoes covered her feet. Her hair
was shiny black streaked by gray, pulled tight and tied with a blue
ribbon at the back. Below the ribbon, her hair sprayed out to her
shoulder blades. She had a high forehead, cheeks that puffed out
round and fat and dark.

When she looked across the clearing at
David, he saw remote brown eyes that told him nothing.

Cally motioned with her head for Ish to
bring the boy closer. Katsuk turned at the gesture and a smile
moved from his lips to his eyes.

“Come on, boy,” Ish said. He led David to
the pair at the doorway.

“You have a good walk, Hoquat?” Katsuk
asked. And he thought:
It is true and real—the Innocent cannot
escape me. Even when he runs away he is brought back.

David looked at the ground. He felt
miserable and lost.

There were other people around, squatting at
the lake edge of the clearing, standing clustered in the door of
another hut. David felt only a cold curiosity from them. He
thought:

This can’t be happening. These aren’t wild
Indians out of a history book. These people have gone to school and
to church. They have cars. They have TV.

He felt his mind trying to draw points of
similarity between himself and the people around him. It was a
growing-up effort, a stretching of himself out of desperation. He
focused on the tennis shoes that covered Cally’s feet. Those shoes
came from a store. She had been to a city and a store. Ish had a
rifle. He wore clothes which came from a store ... just like
Cally’s shoes did. They were people, not wild Indians.

And they were all afraid of Katsuk.

Katsuk glanced at the old woman, said:
“Hoquat is tied to me, you understand. He cannot escape.”

“You’re talking crazy,” she said, but there
was no force in the words.

To David, Katsuk said: “This is Cally, my
mother’s sister. I don’t expect you to understand that, Hoquat, but
it is from my mother’s people that I got my first power.”

David thought:
He’s talking to impress
her, not me.

David shot a penetrating glance at the old
woman’s face to gauge her reaction, found only a withdrawn
measuring in remote brown eyes. With breath-choking
realization.

David saw that Cally was proud of Katsuk,
proud of what Katsuk was doing, but had not admitted it to herself.
She would never admit it.

Cally asked: “Are you all right, boy?”

David shrugged, still caught in realization
of the power Katsuk held over this woman. She was proud.

What can I do?
David wondered. He
blinked back tears. His shoulders sagged with despair. Only then
did he realise how desperately he had hoped this woman would help
him. He had thought a woman would have softness for a boy in
trouble.

But she was proud ... and afraid.

Cally put a hand on David’s shoulder, said:
“You got yourself all soaking and cut up out in that brush. Ought
to get those clothes off you and dry them.”

David peered up at her. Was she softening?
No. She was only going through the motions. This would keep her
from admitting how proud she was.

She glanced sideways at Katsuk, said:
“What’re you
really
going to do with him, son? Are you going
to potlatch them?”

Katsuk frowned. “What?” He didn’t like this
tone in his aunt’s voice. There was slyness in her now.

Cally said, “You tell me he’s tied to you
and you’re the only one can cut him loose. Are you going to give
him back to them?”

Katsuk shook his head, seeing his aunt’s
fear for the first time. What was she trying to do? She wasn’t
talking to Katsuk. She was trying to revive Charles Hobuhet! He put
down a surge of rage, said: “Be quiet!” Even as he spoke, he knew
it was pointless. He had brought this upon himself with his own
thoughtless arrogance. He had said this was his aunt. Katsuk had no
relatives. It was Charles Hobuhet who had been related to this
woman.

“That’d be about the biggest gift anyone
could give,” Cally said. “They’d owe you.”

Katsuk thought:
How sly she is. She
appeals to the ancestors in me. Potlatch! But those aren’t my
ancestors. I belong to Soul Catcher.

“What about it?” Cally demanded.

David tried to swallow in a dry throat. He
sensed the struggle between Katsuk and this woman. But she wasn’t
trying to save a captive. What was she trying to do?

Katsuk said: “You want me to save my life by
saving his.”

It was an accusation.

David saw the truth in Katsuk’s words. She
was trying to save her nephew. She didn’t care about any damned
hoquat. David felt like kicking her. He hated her.

“Anything else doesn’t make sense,” Cally
said.

David had heard enough. He screamed at her,
fists clenched at his sides: “You can’t save him! He’s crazy!”

Unnervingly, Katsuk began to laugh.

Cally turned on the boy, said: “Be
still!”

Katsuk said: “No, let him talk. Listen to my
Innocent. He knows. You cannot save me.” He stared across David’s
head at Ish. “Did you hear him, Ish? He knows me. He knows what I
have done. He knows what I must do yet.”

The old man nodded. “You’ve got a bloody
look on you.”

David felt himself frightened into
stillness. His own actions terrified him. He had almost told about
the hiker’s murder. Katsuk had realised this.
“He knows what I
have done.”
Did all of these people know about the murder? Was
that why they were afraid? No. They feared Katsuk’s power from the
spirit world. Even while some of them didn’t admit it, that was
what they feared.

Katsuk stared at Cally, asked: “How could we
make the hoquat owe us more than they do already?”

David saw that she was angry now, fighting
against the realization of her own pride. She said: “There’s no
sense crying over the past!”

“If we don’t cry over it, who will?” Katsuk
asked. He felt amusement at her weakness. The past is dead!” she
said. “Let it be!”

“As long as I live it is not dead,” Katsuk
said. “I may live forever.”

“That boy’s right,” she snapped. “You’re
crazy.”

Katsuk grinned at her. “I don’t deny
it.”

“You can’t do this thing,” she argued.

His voice low and reasonable, Katsuk asked:
“What thing?”

“You know what I mean!”

Katsuk thought:
She knows and she cannot
say it. Ahhh, poor Cally. Once our women were strong. Now they are
weak.
He said: “There is no human being who can stop me.”

“We’ll see about that,” she said. Anger and
frustration in every movement, she turned away, grabbed David’s
arm, hustled him down the line of huts to the end one.

“Get in there,” she ordered. “Take off your
clothes and pass them out.”

Katsuk called after her: “Indeed, we will
see, Cally.”

David said: “Why do you want my
clothes?”

“I’m going to dry them. Get in there now.
There’re blankets in there. Wrap up in blankets until your things
are dry.”

The split plank door squeaked as David
opened it. He wondered if Cally might yet try to save him—out of
anger. There were no windows in the hut. Light came in the door. He
stepped inside onto a dirt floor. The place smelled of fish oil and
a wet mustiness that came from the fresh hide of a mountain lion
pegged to the wall opposite the door. Thin strips of something dark
hung from the rafters. There were a jumble of nets, burlap bags,
rusty cans, and boxes on the dirt floor. A pole frame in one corner
held a crumpled pile of brown-green blankets.

“Get a wiggle on,” Cally said. “You’ll catch
your death in them wet clothes.”

David shuddered. The hut repelled him. He
wanted to run outside and beg the people there to save him.
Instead, he stripped down to his shorts, passed the clothing out
the door.

“Shorts, too,” she said.

David wrapped up in one of the blankets,
stripped off the shorts, and passed them out the door.

“These’ll take a couple hours,” she said.
“Wrap up warm and get some rest.” She closed the door.

David stood in the sudden darkness. Tears
began running down his cheeks. All the alien strangeness of people
and place weighed in upon him. The young woman had wanted him to
escape. Old Cally seemed to want to help him. But none of them
would really stand up to Katsuk. Katsuk’s spirit was too powerful.
David wiped his face on a corner of his blanket, stumbled through
the confusion on the floor to the pole bed. Pulling the blanket
tightly around him, he sat down on the bed. It creaked.

As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he saw
that the door did not shut completely. There were cracks and holes
all around to admit light. He heard people moving outside, low
voices. At one point, there was a sound like young boys playing—the
sound of a stick hitting a can.

Tears continued running down David’s cheeks.
He stifled a sob. Anger at his own weakness overcame him. He
thought:
I couldn’t even escape!

Katsuk had power over birds and people and
his spirits all through the forest. There was no place to hide.
Everything in the forest spied for crazy Katsuk! The people in this
camp knew it and were afraid.

Now they held Katsuk’s captive trapped
without clothes.

David smelled smoke, meat cooking. There
came a shout of laughter outside, quickly silenced. He heard wind
in the trees, people moving about, low conversations with the words
unintelligible. The blanket around him smelled of old perspiration.
It was rough against his skin. Tears of despair ran down his
cheeks. The sounds of activity outside gradually diminished. There
came longer and longer silent periods. What were they doing out
there? Where was Katsuk? He heard footsteps approaching his hut.
The door squeaked open. Tskanay entered with a chipped bowl in one
hand. There was an angry furtiveness about her movements.

As the door opened wide and she stepped
inside, the light revealed a blue bruise down her left jaw. She
closed the door, sat down beside him on the pole bed, and offered
the bowl.

“What’s that?”

“It’s smoked trout. Very good. Eat it.”

David took the bowl. It was smooth and cold
against his fingers. He stared at her bruised jaw. Light coming
through the cracks in the wall drew stripes down across the mark on
her skin. She appeared restless and uncomfortable.

David said: “He hit you, didn’t he?”

“I fell down. Eat the trout.” There was
anger in her voice.

David turned his attention to the fish. It
was hard and chewy with a light and oily fish flavor. At the first
bite, he felt hunger knot his stomach. He ate a whole trout before
speaking, then: “Where’re my clothes?”

“Cally’s drying them in the big house. Be
another hour at least. Charlie and Ish and some of the others have
gone out hunting.”

David heard her words and wondered at them.
She seemed to be saying one thing but trying to tell him something
else. He said: “He doesn’t like you calling him Charlie. Is that
why he hit you?”

“Katsuk,” she muttered. “Big deal.” She
looked toward the door as she spoke.

David ate another of the trout, licked his
fingers. She was acting uncomfortable, shifting on the pole bed,
picking at the blankets beneath them. He said:

“Why’re you all afraid of him?”

“I’ll show him,” she whispered.

“What?”

Without answering, she took the bowl from
David’s hands, tossed it aside. He heard the clatter of it in the
shadowy center of the hut.

“Why’d you do that?”

“I’m going to show that
Katsuk!
” She
made the name sound like a curse.

David felt a surge of hope, quickly
extinguished. What could Tskanay do? He said:

“None of you are going to help me. He’s
crazy and you’re afraid of him.”

“Crazy wild,” she said. “He wants to be
alone. He wants death. That’s crazy. I want to be with someone. I
want life. That’s not crazy. I never thought he’d be a stick
Indian.”

“Katsuk doesn’t like you to call him
Indian.”

She shook her head, setting the string-tied
braids in motion. “Fuck Katsuk!” It was low and bitter.