The Cannibal Spirit (37 page)

I assured him I wasn't planning to.

“Go see your sister,” says he. “Mayhap she can talk some sense into you.”

So I sat with my sister at the kitchen table, those two women as helps about the house behind us. I could feel their eyes upon me.

“Your husband's full of fury at me,” I tell Annie. “Though I don't blame him for it.”

“You have made a fool of yourself,” she says, “and of us.”

“I've not money,” I says, “even should I wish to defend myself. And the family treasures taken.” I told her how the lawyer had quoted several hundred dollars as the least amount I'd need.

“Stanley won't help you,” she says. “Not again.”

“Perhaps I'm right for prison,” I says.

“Perhaps you are,” says she.

I left the house before dinner was ready and walked out on the beach, slippery with seaweed in the ebb tide. The clouds were breaking in the strong northwesterly what was blowing, and the stars came and went in bursts. It was dangerous, and dark without a moon.

I heard a seal call, probably from that rock offshore that only shows itself when the tide is low. More than one boat's had its guts ripped out by that sharp granite.

Then a voice says, “Seals calling you home?” and Halliday was beside me.

“I'm of the killer whales,” I tell him.

“I sometimes wonder if you're not truly of the seal folk, though. They come ashore on nights like this, do they not, to cause mischief among the people.” He laughed, soft, but I didn't hear no malice in it. “Truth is,” he says, “I'm glad to see you back, George.”

“Oh?” says I.

“Means bail was made and you've a chance to defend yourself.”

“I heard you argued my case to Spencer. I thought you'd rather have me shackled.”

“I do think you're bad trouble, George, I won't deny it. But that's no reason for you not to see a fair trial.”

“As long as prison's at the end of it,” says I.

But he reckoned the trial was more important than the outcome, giving chance for questions to be raised in public discourse on the way of things. “But, George,” he goes on, “I find, despite myself, that I like you. Always have done. You've passion for the welfare of the Indian. I admire your sentiment. It's just you are misguided in what you believe is best for their survival.”

“And my going to jail will help you prove it?” says I.

But, says he, hanging to the old ways does nothing but cut off the Indian further from the fruits of progress.

“So you'd tear out the Indian soul to safeguard it?” says I.

“What you call a soul I call but society,” says he. “And society must move with the times. I'm more interested in the Indian body, which must be fed, must work for its survival, must become a part of the larger body of Canada.”

“I'd see Canada recognize those what was here first.”

But the country has moved too far for that, says he, and I saw he was much moved. “Damnit, George, I am familiar with the injustice. But this is the reality. Old ways fall behind and are lost.”

“Old they may be,” says I, “but they're also who we are. They're what we have left against despair.”

“You say ‘we,' George, but look at you! Your sister's married to the wealthiest white man in the area. Your father was factor to the Company, and you're employed by famous scientists from the great universities of America! You are a success, man. Gods, you're also Indian aristocracy, if you'd have it that way round. You're an Indian success!” He paused to catch his breath then. I had no words to speak to him, for my mind was a-spin at what he said.

“Chieftains and medicine men and berry gathering!” Halliday goes on. “Do you think the world has time for such things? The Indian has to accept what is happening around him.”

I was quiet then. I was just back from the city, after all. I had seen the future. It was true.

“I must be back to my wife,” I says at last. And I realized that was about all I wanted at that moment. Old Francine beside me.

“We've convincing witnesses, George,” says Halliday. “Convincing evidence. You'll not get off these charges. Yes, go home. See what's there. Look on the poverty, the loss, the misery. Ask yourself if this is what you wish for your people.”

“What of my family's property?”

“They'll be returned in time,” says he. I ask him where they are, but all he'll say is “Safe,” even when I press him on it till I am quite irate.

“Damn you, Halliday,” I tell him.

“No,” says he, “damn you, Hunt! Damn you for not seeing the truth. Damn you for not being the advocate for change you might have been. You think you stand for your people. Instead you stand for their doom.” And he turned away and walked off along the beach into the darkness.

I heard him stop after some yards. “One other thing,” says he. “Do not think I am unaware of what it is that Charley and Harry are up to.”

“What's that?” I says, baffled. But he was gone.

I spent a wretched night. Halliday's words plagued me and I didn't know that he weren't right in all he'd said. I asked Annie where Harry and Charley had gone, but she told me they were away back to Rupert.

The next morning I hitched a ride north on a fishing boat skippered by a cousin of mine, who made show of keeping busy through the voyage, without no time for conversation.

The crew were mostly Japaners, with three Kwagiulths who also kept clear of me, muttering together and one joking loud enough for me to hear the white word
cannibal
, with low laughs to follow. I sat brooding at the prow, wondering at myself, at who I was. My great plan, boosted so in my healing of Harry, to be the voice of the people. It all seemed, then, the very depths of foolishness. I'd no money to help myself even should I wish to hope. Vancouver had put paid to all such fantasies I might have had of making a defence what justified the ways of the Kwagiulth.

Anyways, the tide was full at Rupert. The boat left me right on the jetty. I stood for a time out there, taking in the details of my home. It weren't no more than a month since I had left for Teguxste. That so short a time had passed seem scarce credible.

The sun broke through the clouds and the roofs did glisten then with dew water. I smelled first the salt wind and the sweet seaweed. But, after, I smelled the reek of the middens what are strewn so casual behind the houses. I saw the dogs scrawning amongst them, sores on their bodies, bickering over fish heads. Three of the children ran naked along the plankway, their bodies soiled, their hair in cankerous braids. Old man Moody was squatting on the beach, oozing soft shit onto the stones.

Halliday's words kept at me till I wondered if I might be better just waiting for the next boat to moor up, stepping onto its deck, and never coming back.

But in the end I walked shorewards and along till I stood outside my home. I looked on my ancestry what is written on the great pole there. The paint is chipped and weathered now already, though it ain't been up so many years. It seemed then as if it didn't have no import, mouldering relict
of a dead-end time, like a rabbit born with three legs that has somehow lasted to maturity, till, at last, a wolverine does bury fangs into its neck to bring about its rightful end. So the white fangs at our necks. Fangs made out of engines, great ships on the oceans, streetcars, libraries of books, museums. But even as I thought those things, they shamed me out of words, so that I hung my head as I stepped inside.

Old Francine was sitting by the fire. Her eyes came wide at the sight of me. Then she waddled over and gripped my forearms so tightly. “Devil's back,” she said. Her fingers ran across the patch upon my eye. “You're no more than trouble to me,” says she, and I believed it, though she gripped me harder as she spoke the words.

THE ENGINE PUTTERED SOFTLY,
keeping the boat's position steady on the faint swell. Across a half mile of black water, just a few lights still showed at Alert Bay. It was late. By the height of the stars Harry reckoned it close to midnight. Soon, then. He watched the shore. Charley murmured slow litanies to himself, a monotonous dirge beyond comprehending.

They had made swift progress south and west down the Queen Charlotte Strait, past Malcolm Island and into Johnstone Strait. This was as far north as Harry had travelled in past trips trading whisky, before he'd come farther last October to land up in Rupert. They'd passed Campbell River at the south end of Discovery Passage. Charley had raised his hand and hailed those he knew so many times in the canoes they passed that Harry wondered if there was anyone at all along the coast was not acquainted with the old cripple. The wind kept strong off the starboard quarter as they sailed right down the middle of the Strait of Georgia. So strong, the
Hesperus
listed, the mast creaking, sails cracking like rifle shots at every small adjustment. The town of Comox was an orange glimmer against darkness the second night, as they travelled on, taking turns to sleep. The following morning, Nanaimo and Gabriola Island were hardly visible away to the south as they rounded Lasqueth Island and turned east.

Charley told him how he'd been to visit the village where the ritual for which George was accused had happened. But there were none there willing to speak for George. Word had come to the village that he had blackened the good name of the people with his son's funeral. Even the chief, whose name was Big Mountain, had refused point-blank to honour his long affiliation with George's family.

“I have big secret 'bout him. I say will tell all people,” Charley told Harry. “Still, he don't want help.”

“You've secrets on us all, have you not?” Harry said, recalling how Charley'd been on to his plan to leave Rupert and be gone.

“Not secret strong make chief come help.”

Charley told him To-Cop had been present at the ritual as well. In what position, Charley would not say. But when Harry spoke of his encounter with the man at Alert Bay, just as they were leaving, Charley shook his head. “Bad. Watch that fuck man. Make trouble sure.”

“But who is he?”

“Bad man from bad paxala family. But he go priest school. Bad twice now.”

After that, they barely spoke the whole way. The westerly gusted ever stronger, if never quite turning to a gale, Harry at the tiller, Charley seeing to the sails on Harry's orders, unable as he was himself to do much with his one good arm, the other still in its sling, and likely halfway to crippled for good. But the landscape exhilarated him in a way he could not recall ever feeling before. The vast inlets of the mainland, the great snowtipped mountains in the far distance, both on the mainland and west on Vancouver Island, the jade green of the forests plunging down the sharp hillsides to the water's edge. They saw pods of killer whales. On a granite outcrop, seals barked and bustled like dowdy madams at the market.

They made it to New Westminster in three days. Harry's man in that busy port town was a foreman with the stevedores. Through three short hours of an evening, they traded and put aboard the cargo. “Not blue vitriol, nitric acid, nor jack else evil, guaranteed as always,” the man promised. Harry tasted a keg to be certain anyway.

The trip back went as smoothly, the same strong wind serving them equally well for both legs of the trip. They kept alert for signs of the government gunboats, which plied the waters all up and down the coast searching for such as they. Charley cackled to himself a few times en route. “Smuggling good business,” he said. “Me you. Big future.”

Harry had few thoughts of the future any more. “I'll be happy enough just to be back at Rupert,” he said.

Grace. It seemed incredible to him now that all that time of his desire to be away, he'd barely given thought to her. Here was a gift the world had offered up, and him too blind to see it given.

And Charley had known all along of Harry's plans to be away. Had George?

Well, here was Harry now, bobbing on the water a mile offshore in the darkness, waiting on a sign from Dan Copperhand. Harry Cadwallader: a man full capable of standing up and doing what was right. Though it was strange, sure enough, that doing right meant doing the very thing he had decided was wrong. Fifty kegs of whisky in his hold. Halliday would drool if he knew what was floating out here at this moment.

A light came on near the cannery. It winked on and off, then twice more.

“There it is,” Harry said. He uncovered his own lamp and repeated the signal. He watched the light flash twice in acknowledgment before it was extinguished.

Twenty minutes later, they lay some four hundred yards off the southeast corner of the island. Harry killed the engine and let the anchor drop down through the shallow water.

They heard the engine of Dan's swift ketch shortly after. Harry showed his lamp again, since thicker clouds had now drawn over the new moon and the night was blacker than a bucket of tar.