The Cannibal Spirit (23 page)

He turned his eyes away. He thought he should feel nausea, should feel horror. But he'd seen too much already in his life. He looked over to Charley. “This?” he said, pointing into the box. “He did this?” Charley said
nothing. Harry rose to his feet. He spun about one way and then another. “He cut off his fucking head?” Charley looked down at the ground.

Harry laughed, hard enough that pain shot through his shoulder. “He cut off his head, put it in a box, and brung it here in the wilderness! Jesus good Christ almighty.” And now Harry felt a rage of his own flaring up, rising as if from some leprous pool deep in his guts. “Pagan fucking … ” He pointed at Charley. “I come half across the world looking for him. I'm sliced like a fucking pig carcass. You say go back? He ain't here? He's there, man!” He stamped away toward the lake.

Charley called after him. “George not here now. Gone be wild.” But Harry wasn't listening to any more of their black bullshit. He came up on his father-in-law, who was standing on the narrow shingle beach.

“George!” But he did not even turn toward Harry. “Damn you. George!” He stepped round in front of him. Harry was tall, but George was near half a head taller again, though now he was hunched so that their faces were nearly level. He clutched both hands still at his stomach. In his eyes, which stared now into Harry's, there was shock, the whites showing all round the black pupils. Horror even—but nothing of recognition.

“It was me,” George said, bringing his face close to Harry's, his voice a low murmur, as if secrets were being spoken, his breath foul like putrefying fruit. “The blood on my teeth.”

“George,” Harry said. He stepped backward, hearing his foot splash as it went into the water, his anger for the moment daunted by the pain in the man's voice, the agony in his face. “Do you not know me? It's Harry. Wake up, man.” He put a hand on the man's upper arm.

But George shook him off. “I tore them out! His guts. Mine. The blood on my teeth.” He stared away over Harry's head, across the lake. He called out, “Lagoyewilé!” Then he looked down at Harry again. And now he snarled, his teeth showing black. “That blue-eyed devil don't believe,” he said. “He can't believe. That's what's wrong with it all. He don't believe.” He whirled about and strode back toward the fire.

“You cut the head from your own dead son, you fucking barbarian!” Harry called after him, but he had no more energy to follow. He watched
George squat down beside the wooden box, glancing once toward Charley, then ignoring him completely to stare in at the box's contents.

Harry's breathing came short. His whole body felt frozen. His heart raced and now such a spate of nausea came over him that he went down on his knees and vomited bile onto the cold stones. He saw blue eyes glaring from a demon face, black tusks too fat for the mouth from which they sprang. He saw David's rotting head in its box. He had not smelled its stink only because he was grown so accustomed to the stink of his own rotting flesh. He fell sideways, his breath coming shorter and shorter, his shoulder and his brain now aflame with suffering. He longed for sleep.

But he would not give it up. Sleep was death. And he'd not die in this place of madness. He forced open his eyes. The lake lapped gently not a foot away. He stretched out a hand and felt the cold of its waters on his skin. He wiped his hand across his forehead. Then he scooped water toward him so that it splashed across his face. He crawled forward and laid his face in it. He moved his head from side to side and he thought it the most uplifting sensation he had ever felt in his life.

He pushed himself to his hands and knees, and then got his feet under him and rose slowly up to his feet. The nausea racked him again, but he refused it, gulping back the bile. He let the anger take hold of him. “I come too far for this,” he whispered. Then he placed one foot in front of the other and made his way back to the fire.

Charley had not moved. He still was sitting with his head bowed. George stared into the box, muttering something to himself. He took no notice of Harry as he dropped down upon a reed mat beside the fire.

“Charley,” he said, his voice not more than a ragged croak. “This man's no help to me, is he?”

Charley lifted his head. “Not man,” he said. “No man here.”

“We come all this way. To find this!” He threw his hand in George's direction, who was staring now into the flames, voicing something that could not be heard. “Do we wait? Ain't there a thing to be done?”

“No thing to do.”

“George!” He shouted, then again. “Why don't he hear?” Charley did not respond. “All right then, but I'm fucked if I will die in such a place.”
His body shook so hard he wondered that he remained sitting upright. “Will you lead me out from here?”

“Go back beach. Wait beach.”

“I'll wait on my dying anywhere but here.”

“Wait beach.”

Charley got up, lifted Harry to his feet. “Walk?” he said.

“I will walk out from here, by the Christ.”

Charley turned then to George. He spoke in that high tone Harry knew was reserved for ritual talk in the Indian tongue. He heard his own name mentioned. George looked up for a second from the flames, staring toward Charley as if he heard sounds from that direction but saw nothing. Then he looked across at Harry.

“He don't believe,” George said, and he spoke as if he were completely sane. Then he looked away and down again into the box.

“Go now,” said Charley.

Of that return through the forest, Harry remembered almost nothing. The dawn came soon and he could see Charley's hump before him or, when he faltered—as he more and more often did—Charley's arm about his torso, propping him up. He mumbled words to himself, most of which he could not comprehend. He asked Charley, “Why?” over and over. But the old cripple spoke no words at all. He had so many questions they just fell in together until there was not one clear thought he could hold to. He wanted his anger now, but it was gone. Instead, there were only George's words. Who did not believe? Why? What did he not believe? What blood?

Charley was breathing hard as well, where the added weight of a dying white man bowed him down. There were times when Harry found himself on the ground, the decomposing leaves of the forest floor sopping wet against his face. Now and then a waterskin was at his lips, liquid in his mouth. Nausea had him retching it straight back up.

He saw David's rotting head, watched it imploding slowly as the maggots finished their work, eating from the inside out, from the root of the brain to the ears. He saw a perfect, polished skull in a velvet-lined box, and all around the box, naked brown men hollered and whooped and their blades
were sharpened for his own neck. He did not mind. His flesh was made corrupt. Let them choke on the poison of him.

Then he was lying on a tarpaulin and a wet rag was being wiped across his face. He shook water from his eyes and forced them to open. Before him, a pebble beach swept down to the waters of the inlet. To his left the
Hesperus
moved in the tide where it was half afloat. He blinked several times and there was Charley.

“Why did he do it?” Harry said.

“Who know? Not me. Not same what Kwagiulth do. Maybe do same he family mother from Tlingit people north,” and he waved his arm away vaguely in that direction. “Maybe not. George wild man. Sad man.”

The old Indian was, himself, near to exhaustion. Heavy bags ringed the underside of his eyes and his lids were red about the rims. His round shoulders seemed to slump even further forward than usual.

“Charley?”

“Ek?”

“Thank you.”

Charley shrugged. “Why you not dead?”

“Be fucked with being dead.” And at that, Charley smiled, the lines of his crooked face making all sorts of strange patterns. Harry shut his eyes.

“Fat Harry! Wake now.” Where was this? “Must go forest, quick.” Charley. Charley speaking to him. Nausea. His breathing stunted. His whole body fed to the flames, burning. “Fat Harry!”

He was pulled upright and shaken, until it felt as if a spear had passed through his shoulder and was being twisted there. He cried out. The gum gelling his lids together tore apart and his eyes came open.

Charley was kneeling over him. “Walewid come,” he said. “Must go now.”

Harry shook his head. Walewid? He tried to look around. “Where?” he said, but he could not focus. Sweat poured into his eyes. He coughed, hard and agonizing, but Charley pulled him to his feet.

“They come canoe. Out on water. Soon see us. We go now!”

He blinked and spluttered and did his best not to pass out. Charley slung the rifle across his shoulder, then lifted the tarpaulin on which Harry had been lying and brought its four corners together, with all that had been resting on it clattering inside. He spun it round until it resembled a sack. Then, half dragging Harry behind him, he jogged away along the beach. All Harry could do was stumble behind Charley, whose hand at his wrist drew him on.

Within a minute Harry's legs collapsed under him. He lay on the pebbles and gasped for air. His head swam until it seemed he heard the crash of waves against the base of cliffs, and him tumbling in a burning tide like molten iron. Then he felt himself heaved up. He retched, his stomach crushed somehow, and he knew he was draped across Charley's crippled shoulders.

Charley it was now whose breathing came in rasps and, very soon, as Harry heard the splash of water, he was lowered to the ground. They lay now together upon the ground, struggling for air.

After a few moments, Harry forced himself to roll to his side and open his eyes. He was lying by the stream on the beach, Charley beside him, just sitting up now himself. Harry knelt and threw up thin bile.

“We go now,” said Charley.

“No.” Just speaking aloud made Harry shudder and retch. “No more.”

He slumped down and simply tried to breathe and to stay conscious.

“Now.” Charley's hands were upon him again, pulling at him. “Soon we stop hide.”

“No.” But Charley heaved until he came up into a low crouch. He shuffled forward like that, all the time retching, and now they were struggling up a steep hill through thick undergrowth, using hands as much as feet. Harry's eyes stayed closed now against the effort, leaves and small branches scratching at his face and body. Eventually Charley stopped, and Harry collapsed, panting.

“Look,” said Charley.

Harry opened his eyes and, for a moment, they came clear. He followed Charley's pointing finger. He was seeing out through ancient, broken plankboards, from some height above the beach, as high as the tallest trees
along the forest's edge. Far out on the still waters of the inlet, near the headland off which the funeral island stood, a canoe was turning toward them. It was still more than a mile away, and Harry could not see who might be directing it. Then he slumped down on his side and passed out.

When next Harry came to consciousness, it was to find himself alone in some strange place, with no memory of how he came to be there. A waterskin lay by his hand and he swigged and spluttered. He was propped against a loose pile of mossy timber that might once have been part of an Indian house. Now, salal and great fronds of bracken and swordfern grew thick about him. The light was thin and it seemed twilight. He looked up toward the sky, but that brought him near to passing out once more.

A bundled tarpaulin lay near him, its corners drawn up into a bag. He came to coughing, hard, racking sounds, and then he smelled the terrible stench from his shoulder. He recalled that there was danger all around, if he could not yet remember what that danger was. So he stifled his noise as best he could until the fit calmed down again. His hands were spattered with dark droplets. He knew that it was blood from his lungs.

His body burned. His skin itched so that he thought he might go mad with its insistence. He dribbled water on those parts that suffered most, his inner arms, his crotch, his legs, the wound upon his shin. But he had no energy to move around and see more of where it was he lay.

He had been here with someone. Charley was dead. No, Poodlas was dead, stupid name and comical. Fah Wei was dead in Hong Kong, and her name stupid too. But he was not to think on that. That door stayed shut. Everyone was dying, and him as well, rotting from the outside in. Where was Charley? David was dead. George mad crazed up in the wilds—wild man. Sad man.

He saw again the slump of Poodlas's shoulders—slumping like Charley's—as the blade went in. He saw the eyeball burst in a bar in San Francisco. His body flinched with every memory. He saw the agony in George's eyes. He knew it. He understood all of it.

As the light faded, Harry fought his fever. He mumbled songs beneath his breath: songs that sailors sang when working, rhythmic and monotonous,
meant to keep a mind in focus. He hummed as well the tune that was his own litany.
I am fixing to leave. I am fixing to go, and where I am going, well you won't never know.
He thought, I am fixing to go indeed, if a mite further than I was planning. And that made him smile.

Sounds came to him now, a rustling as of branches parted. He blinked and peered and saw Charley's craggy face.

“Still live, huh?” said Charley, his voice low. His words came as if from the far distance.

“Where you been?”

“Off look. Can move?”

Harry stretched. His shoulder screamed to him. “If I have to,” he said.

“Good. Maybe go when dark.”

“Where are we?”

“In place where people hide, on hill on beach. Very close Walewid. Come look. Not speak.” Harry rolled on his front and pushed himself up. Charley held one arm. He had the rifle in his other.

The light was nearly gone but, on his feet, Harry could see they were on top of a small hillock. All around were broken timbers, though there seemed some vestige still of fortification at the hillock's rim.