The Cannibal Spirit (12 page)

Charley sat on the gunnels, and he seemed deep in his thinking. “Dream people tell,” he said at last.

Harry pondered this. “Walewid dreamed it?”

“No. Them come and go.”

“Who is them?”

“Dream people.”

“They come and go—dream people—whispering gossip?”

“Ek.”

“Spare me your hocus-pocus, man,” he said. “You know me more than that.” But Charley said nothing more. Harry gazed away down the steeply mountained inlet, the tidal waters swirling slowly, green, violet, and steel. He wanted to smash something. Pick up a paddle and go after that chickenbred savage, Walewid. Teach him a few manners before his betters.

An old woman, short and obese, shuffled away along the plankway. She disappeared into a house at the far end of the village. Harry thought of going after her. But it was the building the Temperance Society of the Anglican Mission had built for those seeking shelter from the wicked ways of drink and heathenism. Not a place in which he'd likely be welcomed.

He shook himself and jumped back on deck. “We'll cook up some food on board,” he said. “Wait for Yagis.”

The sun was low on the Pacific's horizon and the fishermen of Blunden Harbour came paddling home from the ocean in its pinkish-orange glow.

Harry and Charley sat at their ease on the deckhouse, smoking.

“Good luck take fish, this sun,” said Charley. “Same colour salmon.”

Already the women had ambled out of the forest, their baskets filled with the first wild strawberries of that season, the salmonberries that looked like raspberries, and with blue huckleberries.

When at last he could make out Yagis and his two sons in their canoe, Harry slid down from the deckhouse. He waited until they were turning in toward the steps in front of their house, three along from Walewid's, and then he called “Yoh” to them. Yagis merely raised a hand without looking, intent as he was on the business of landing. His younger son leapt, agile, from the canoe's prow and tied off against a thick support.

Yagis stepped forward along the canoe, carrying his sixty years and more carefully. He was wiry and short and with a scar he carried proudly from his childhood, livid, jagged and deep, running diagonally across his face so that his nose seemed split in two. He'd taken it resisting the Haida
slave raiders from the north who'd ranged along the coast in earlier times. So, at least, went the tale he had spun to Harry, when last they'd met.

The old man wore rubber boots, high trousers with braces, and a ragged collarless shirt. On his head was a stovepipe hat, its crown high, as if he were some brown Abe Lincoln of the fjords. Harry smiled as Yagis shrugged away a hand from his younger son and hopped, ungainly, across onto the steps.

He climbed to the plankway, where one of his two wives was waiting with a dirty white blanket. He stood staring into the distance as she draped it around him, so that now he seemed a Caesar being dressed into his toga by a slave.

When she was done he turned to Harry. His face broke into a smile, the scar a squirming snake across his face. “Hah!” he said and came toward him. “These stupid family jump like I am lord of all men.” Harry grinned. “Fat Harry, yoh.” They shook hands in the white man style. “Eat with me and talk and tell me what happen in the world.” This last he said without a smile.

There were few formalities for dinner. Harry and Charley sat to either side of Yagis, and the old man's two sons nearby. Both of Yagis's wives were aged and ample in blankets, great hoops of cedar bark in their ears, so that to Harry they looked a matching pair, seated there across the fire.

Yagis's one surviving daughter was not young herself, married twice and both husbands dead, one of disease and the other fallen drunk from a steam freighter in heavy seas and drowned. She shuffled in the firelight and silently brought mackerel and dried salmon, a small wooden trough of eulachon oil, the pasted roots of plants, and salmonberries stewed into a syrup to be slurped as loudly as was possible from the hand-sized wooden spoons they all were wielding.

“Thank you,” said Harry as she laid a small wooden plate before him on the ground.

“You want marry her, she yours,” said Yagis, waving a spoon his daughter's way. “No more chieftains rich enough for she to marry. All dead. No ceremony to give her proper. Least no ceremony we can tell the white man,
eh?” and he slapped his spoon against Harry's thigh. “And I never send her be prostitute,” he said, and proudly.

“I've a wife already,” said Harry, “and her as much as I can handle.”

“Old days all the chiefs have many wives. Marry to give crests and dances. Then marry again. And the wife as well. Four times marry and then she a famous chief woman herself. Not just for sale no more.”

“Everything's changing in the world.”

“No, I not sell my woman. Understand the white man ways. Slaves are finish now forever, and good, I say, to that. Some good things, but not enough, have come. We are less people every year and dead more and more. This one village is all the Nakwakto together now. Before we have villages all through the inlets. So many people before, Fat Harry. Now just two children who are less than ten year old in this village. Just two. A few more marry people and children other tribe and village. But we die and go and that be that. The end.” He shook his head a moment. Then he scooped a great spoonful of fish grease and supped it down and farted. “You have liquor on you boat?”

“I do.”

“Then we drink tonight.” One of his wives spoke a few throaty syllables and he replied. “She say I a mad old man and drinking make me so.” He giggled, high-pitched, sounding like a young girl. “She don't know we drink at end of world, so no problem if we mad or not.”

“Ek,” said Charley. They talked together and both of them laughed. Yagis's sons laughed as well, who before had eaten in silence, only throwing occasional looks Harry's way, so that more and more he'd come to think they knew something, and were but waiting for the subject to be addressed.

“What's funny?” Harry said.

“You the white man come with drink,” said Yagis. “You one of the killers. Like the Devil heself, eh? But you the good man white man too. Who to say what make sense any more? About anything? This make us laugh.”

“Make weep too,” said Charley, and Yagis giggled again at that.

“So all the Nakwakto villages are gone?” said Harry.

“Gone dead,” said Yagis. “I from village Teguxste, up past the rapids,” and he waved his arm vaguely toward the east and north. “But we move from there what fifteen year ago or more. All people gather here at Ba'as. First, for trade with white man. This place on edge of ocean to catch they ships. Later we say stupid be separate any more when we so few.”

“George said once, before last I came up here, that you'd not had so much contact with the white man. Least not so much as others.”

“True before. But sickness come anyway. Once people make war for slave and fur, and for sadness at dead of chieftains. And drink come the last thing. So we go slow into nothing.” They ate in silence for a while. Then Yagis said, “George he come to Teguxste when he young. Many times. You know he friend to my cousin, name Make-Alive, brother to George wife before he die. But they friend long time before that too.”

“Charley said something of it.”

“Much fire in that bugger, Make-Alive,” said Yagis. “Always shouting about something. Not enough food for people. About have medicine and things. But good for chieftain be shouting. I sorry when he die. And now this rat-prick fuck man Walewid chief, and him too many crest and name and dance he have and too young to have them. And he only shout when he in drink and about nothing of import neither.” He spat into the fire.

“So George been coming here for years, has he?”

Yagis glanced from the corner of his eye in Harry's direction, and seemed to judge him for a moment. “Teguxste where George first be paxala. Long year past.”

Harry wondered how to broach the subject of their search. Could he trust Yagis and his family with the truth? They had known George most of his life, were bonded by clan and family ties and had played it true with Harry in his trading, the last time he was here. Yagis was prone to drink though, and he liked a story. Could he keep his mouth to himself?

He caught Charley's eyes upon him. Charley twitched his head, just faintly, but enough for Harry to keep his counsel for the meantime.

Yagis pushed the trough of rank fish oil his way. “Eat,” he said. Harry made his customary refusal, and suffered the usual derision to follow. But
he saw that both the old women only watched him across the fire, their features reticent and still.

Later Harry and Charley sat outside on the steps and smoked. Clouds covered the heavens. It was dark. Fire glow wavered through the village doorways, lighting the water for fifty yards or so. From some of the houses came raucous laughter and voices raised in drink. Farther down the plankway three old men were sitting quietly, a bottle before them.

“Why not ask Yagis direct?” Harry said.

“Good man but big mouth.”

“But what is it we're hiding?”

“Many men not love George. Now maybe have reason do more than be angry. Come after him maybe. Better stay quiet.”

“So how then do we learn anything, in God's name?”

“Go back inside. Talk, drink, think.”

Harry cursed, suddenly infuriated by the man, by the village, by everything. “You go. I can't take no more.” He stood. “I'm aboard the
Hesperus
awhile.” He left Charley and walked along the plankway to his boat. From inside Chief Walewid's greathouse came the sounds of intoxication. There were loud voices and he heard scuffles and shouts from the women, and also laughter. Quietly, he stepped aboard the
Hesperus
. The tide was out and the boat was partly grounded, so that the deck listed maybe twenty degrees.

Harry needed solitude. Every word he spoke felt tested. Ridicule could cover threat, and threat might mean no more than sarcasm. A smile could be a warning, and a grimace acknowledgment of friendship. Words were rarely honest or solely as they seemed, even from such an affable man as Yagis. He felt drawn taut with fury, like a cable pulled so tight it whined.

He walked aft around the pilothouse and ducked through the doorway. Not bothering to light a lamp, he opened a small cupboard by his feet. He felt for a saucepan. He'd brew up some coffee and clear his head.

After dinner, he had brought in two bottles of liquor. Harry did not personally favour drink, except when duty and respect demanded it of
him. Not any more. But this night he had partaken of more than he had in some years.

They'd talked of trade and hunting, fishing and trapping. Yagis said he was reluctant to go this year and join the other men at the canneries.

“Making cash is one thing, and good maybe. But on what do we spend it if we here on reserve and only you few white men come past now and then? In summer we find food for winter. That is what we do. If we in the factory, still we must find food for winter.” Yagis slugged at the bottle, his Adam's apple furious. “Who take time to catch and trap and gather? We try, but not time enough before men go to work again.”

He passed the bottle to his son. “Last time, I buy fish grease from
you
, Fat Harry! Indian buy grease from white man!” Charley grunted at this. “And now salmon are less each year, and big fishing boat from Japan, America, and England even, God save Queen, make it so.”

“Tell me what it is you want,” Harry said, surprised by his own question.

But Yagis said only, “I want much, Fat Harry,” and after that he was silent for a time.

Crouching in the deckhouse, Harry took the saucepan, opened another low cupboard door, and his fingers felt for the coffee jar. He heard a sound outside, like a brush swept lightly across a surface. He listened but heard nothing more. He brought the coffee from its hiding place and then he heard a footfall close outside, and another. Someone was on board. He made to call, but instead stayed quiet. There were further sounds then, and terse whispers in Kwakwala.

He heard a rattle and realized it was the chain that held the latch to the forward hold, which was not locked, just tied about itself, from where he'd visited it earlier. Harry stood slowly, without a sound, just enough to see through the glass to the forward deck. Against the firelight ashore, two silhouettes were visible, one stooping, the other standing. The one standing held a whalebone killing club, more than three feet long and curved into a thick knot at its end.

Fury pressed at Harry's stomach, so that he almost gagged. He took down the machete from above the door, still watching the men on deck. Quietly then, he stepped out through the doorway, keeping low. The men
had swung open the door to the hold, and now one began to lower himself inside. Harry watched over the roof of the pilothouse as he moved silently around it, his left hand resting on its wall, supporting him against the sloping deck. In his right hand was the long blade.

From the hold there came an exclamation. The man inside appeared. He was holding two bottles of liquor. He placed them on the deck and disappeared again. The other laughed, stooped down and lifted one bottle up. Harry heard a voice back on the plankway, and he understood there were at least three men intent on burglary. He stopped in indecision. Then the man on deck spoke, slurring in his speech. In amongst the garbled language, he heard his own name, spoken with a sneer.

Harry stepped out from behind the deckhouse, but the other man heard him. He spun more swiftly than Harry would have imagined possible, thinking the man too far gone in drink to be so sharp-witted. He swung his club and Harry shied sideways. The club hit him on his left shoulder.

The agony of it near made him pass out, but he jabbed upward with the machete. The blade went into the underside of the man's upper arm and jagged against the bone before it carried on into his armpit. Harry's reach gave out and he pulled the blade back. The pain in his own shoulder made him go down to his knees.