The Floor of Heaven (23 page)

In the end it was George’s shot that took the moose down, his bullet traveling a remarkable distance yet still striking the animal square in the head. The giant moose fell with a sudden thud, as if his legs had been chopped from under him. He lay quivering in a powerless heap until a volley of killing shots was delivered.

George had made an impressive shot, and now that the long-hunted animal was dead, he expected to be crowded by congratulating braves. Instead, he watched as the Indians, tears streaming down their faces, danced around the fallen moose, honoring the splendid animal they’d just killed with a high-pitched chant that their fathers and their father’s fathers had sung to commemorate noble warriors. George stared in mute astonishment, until, tears in his eyes, he, too, joined the circle of braves.

GEORGE HAD accepted the Tagish ways, and now he was invited to attend the menonly tribal dances. They dressed in painted wooden masks and brightly decorated caribou-skin robes and acted out ancient myths. In the beginning, Yehl, the Great Spirit, had taken two blades of grass and created the Eagle and the Raven. Until the end of time, all people would be the descendants of these two great birds. Eagles were powerful, natural warriors. But the Ravens’ strength came from a more valuable gift: They were wise. They possessed the shrewdness that would allow them to defeat their adversaries without fighting. For the Tagish, life was a journey to acquire the wisdom of the Raven.

George, a poet himself, found a strange power in these myths. They affected him deeply. He did not believe in their literal truth, but he valued the ideals the tales expressed. He became convinced that there existed something stronger than simply friendship between himself and the Tagish. It was a bond that grew out of a shared approach to living in the world. He felt as if he’d at last found a home.

By the time winter came to the village, George had abandoned his white man’s clothes. He dressed like an Indian: knee-high caribou-skin moccasins; tight-fitting caribou-skin leggings, the fur worn against his skin; and a fur parka that reached below his knees and was decorated with drawings of eagles and ravens. The clothes kept him warm, but George also knew that wearing them was another deliberate act on his part. He understood that he was being observed, and he wanted to make his sentiments clear. He wanted to be a Tagish.

Still, when George was asked if he was willing to accept formal membership in the clan, he was astonished. He’d never expected to receive such a great honor. He agreed immediately. He wanted the new life he was being offered.

At sunrise on the day of the initiation ceremony, George was surrounded by solemn Tagish braves. With a great formality, the Indians divided into two lines and then, with George between them, escorted him to the lodge. A brightly decorated caribou cloak was draped over his shoulders, and a mask with a large yellow raven’s beak was placed over his head; then they left him. For several hours, the shaman danced around him, chanting with a fierce intensity. The songs had an undeniable power, but George had no idea what was being said. He wanted to feel different, like a true Tagish, and was troubled that he did not. Even the shaman’s powers, he feared, would be insufficient to accomplish such a transformation.

When the chanting stopped, the shaman gave George a dark potion to drink. He tasted berries and blood, but he could not recognize any of the other ingredients. He waited to feel its effect, but there was none. That was a disappointment, too.

The braves who had led him to the lodge now returned. Once again they faced him in two lines. With the shaman leading the way, the procession walked deep into the snowy woods. When they came to an open lean-to, the shaman stopped.

You will stay here, the shaman ordered. It is forbidden to eat or to light a fire, he said.

How long should I stay? George asked. He was genuinely confused. He didn’t know what was expected of him.

After the animal spirit speaks to you, then you can return, the shaman answered. He explained: For every Tagish, there is an animal who guides his life. You need to discover the animal who watches over you.

How long does that usually take? George asked, trying not to sound too desperate. Or as if he didn’t believe in any of this mumbo jumbo.

The shaman abruptly turned and walked off in silence. The braves, too, did not say a word. In two straight lines they followed the shaman toward the village. The sound of their moccasins against the crusted snow was the only noise in the immense woods.

George was alone. He wondered if his questions had offended the shaman. Perhaps they had been too bold, but he was having a difficult time taking all this seriously. It required quite a stretch of the imagination to believe that an animal would soon be talking to him.

A light snow had started to fall, but George was not concerned. He’d wait and see what happened. Besides, he couldn’t return to the village just yet; that’d be insulting. In the meantime, his parka kept him warm, and he’d mittens made of rabbit skin and the rabbit-fur hat that covered his ears. And he had gone without food before. He was no stranger to sleeping in the outdoors. Or, for that matter, to spending time with only his thoughts for company.

He passed the first night without incident. Despite the cold, he was glad that it was winter and the bears were hibernating. He’d rather freeze than have to deal with a grizzly, especially since his only weapon was the knife in the scabbard beneath his parka. He’d used the spruce boughs that lay across the earth floor of the lean-to as a blanket and had settled in. But he did not sleep. He lay awake listening to the night noises and wondering if an animal would really come to speak to him. If it did happen, he hoped it’d be a raven. The more he thought about it, the more he grew to fancy the prospect. Yes, he told himself, that’d be something. A wise ol’ raven appearing for a chat with George Carmack.

For two days and two nights, he waited for the raven to speak. George heard nothing. Only now he had grown light-headed. And despite the cold, he was sweating. He remembered the potion the shaman had made him drink, but he quickly dismissed it as the cause of his condition. If it were meant to have any effect, he certainly would’ve felt it before now. No, he told himself, he was suffering the effects of not having eaten for days. Out in the cold, weak from hunger, it was no wonder he’d caught the grippe.

That night a storm blew in. Snow fell in great white torrents, and a shrieking wind pounded the lean-to like a hammer. With sweat pouring off him, George lay immobilized on the ground. He wanted to get up. Walking would help him keep warm, but he couldn’t get to his feet. He did not have the strength. Even thought itself seemed beyond his power. He felt as if he were stretched out flat against the giant glacier that hung over the Chilkoot Pass. His entire body felt that cold. Yet he continued to sweat, too. He lay motionless, unable to move, as drifts of snow began to cover him; and then he fell into a deep, deep sleep.

When the dream came, it seemed too real to be anything but something that had actually occurred. He knew it was impossible for a frog to talk, but he’d been engaged in such a vivid conversation that it was also difficult to believe that his mind could’ve played such an elaborate trick on him. He remembered: He was sitting cross-legged in the snow, and across from him a green frog not much bigger than his fist spoke to him in a clear and steady voice. It was a woman’s caring, patient voice. The words were in Tagish, but for some reason he had no trouble understanding. I am your protector, the squaw frog said. My spirit will guide you to your future.

When George awoke, he was covered in snow. But he was no longer icy cold, and his fever had broken. As he recalled the dream, his first reaction was disappointment. He would’ve preferred to have been visited by the wise raven or the mighty eagle. Nevertheless, he felt that something out of the ordinary, something beyond all his previous experiences, had occurred. It left him puzzled. But it was time, he decided, to return to the village.

When he entered the lodge, Jim was waiting. You gone long time, Jim said.

A few days, George agreed.

No, said Jim. Six nights.

George was shocked. It hadn’t seemed that long at all. A moment passed in silence. Then George revealed that a frog had spoken to him in a dream.

No dream, said Jim.

George considered that, but he was still too much of a white man to believe what Jim was saying. Rather than argue, though, he shared his sense of regret. It would’ve been much more to my liking, George told his friend, to have an eagle or a raven as a guiding spirit.

No, Jim said, frog very good. You will see. Frog is Wealth Woman.

AS A Tagish, George was given a new name: Kahse. It translated to “seeker,” but George wasn’t sure if it was meant to define him as a prospector or as a white man who had sought out a different way of life. Perhaps, he decided with an easy shrug, it meant both, and that was all right, too.

Now that he was part of the tribe, George thought it would at last be proper to act on an impulse that he’d been restraining with a growing difficulty. Jim’s entire family lived in the lodge, his four married sisters, his two married brothers, and all their spouses and children. In the course of the long winter, however, George had come to focus his attention on only one of Jim’s siblings: a young unmarried sister. She had large dark eyes and hair as black and shiny as the feathers on a raven’s wing. Her name was Shaaw Tiaa, but George took to calling her Kate, and that always made her laugh. Like her mother, she spoke her mind. As with the mother, this trait brought to George’s mind his sister, Rose; and that only increased his admiration for the young girl. At night, though, his thoughts would take another turn. Jim’s entire clan would huddle down on bearskin sleeping robes in a single compartment in the lodge. George had his corner, too. There was no privacy, but the Tagish did not even try to be discreet about their intercourse. They saw no reason to. Night after night George would lie awake hearing the distinct sounds of their couplings. He’d listen, and look across the way toward Kate. And she’d be staring back at him, her blazing eyes fixing him with an unmistakable frankness.

That spring, as a shining sun melted the snow and the first purple pasqueflowers appeared, George agreed to go back to Dyea with Jim and Charley. Kate announced that she wanted to work as a packer, too. Her mother protested, but Kate, always willful, had her mind set. She lived with her brother and cousin in the lean-to by Healy’s trading post. George slept in his tent. The four of them found lots of packing jobs. Working as a single crew, they made many trips over the Chilkoot Pass that summer.

When the season turned and Jim decided it was time to go back to their Yukon village, George said he wouldn’t be returning. Jim couldn’t understand until Kate explained that she’d be staying, too.

The two Indians delayed their departure long enough to help George build a ten-by-twelve-foot log cabin. There wasn’t a stick of furniture, not even a chair. But Kate had brought with her a bearskin sleeping robe. George spread it out on the dirt floor, and it was all George and Kate seemed to need that winter.

WITHIN A year, their daughter was born. Kate named the baby Ah-gay, “the daughter of the lake.” George complained that he had a difficult time pronouncing the Tagish name, but truth was, it didn’t feel right to him. He wanted his child to appreciate that she was a white man’s daughter, too. So he called the girl Graphie Grace, after a character in a book he’d borrowed from the reverend up at the Protestant church at Fort Selkirk. Graphie Grace—that was a name he could say with a smile.

Now that George had an Indian daughter and Indian wife—although they were never formally married—the white men started calling him “Siwash George” or simply “squawman.” It annoyed Kate that George was the object of their derision. He insisted that he didn’t mind. In fact, he’d a plan that would one day give him the last laugh. It was a matter of Tagish law that the chief of the tribe was chosen from the female descendants of a chief. Kate’s mother had been a chief’s daughter, so Kate, of course, was a chief’s granddaughter. And that made her spouse a suitable candidate for chief. Those old sourdoughs will still be looking to pan their first nugget, George told Kate, and there I’ll be—chief of the Tagish nation.

That kind of talk pleased Kate. She was glad she’d found a white man who accepted her and respected the ways of her people. She might have felt differently, though, if she’d read what George wrote to his sister in Modesto to announce the big changes in his life: “My wife is Irish and talks very broad English, but I have the prettiest little daughter you ever saw.”

GEORGE NEEDED money. With a wife and child, there were always new expenses. In the harsh months when there were no packing jobs, George had to find other ways to support his family. For a while he worked on the new church that was going up at Fort Selkirk. Then he heard they were at last hiring again at the Treadwell mine.

He got work in the machine shop, and that was how he happened to be around to save some poor fellow from getting his hand busted up by one of the hydraulic stamps. The man was truly grateful; he couldn’t seem to thank George enough. All of which made George uneasy. When this Davis fellow made a point of seeking him out in the dining hall the next day, George decided there was something disturbing about him. He asked too many darn questions. George worried that maybe this Lee Davis had seen him in Sitka in his military uniform and now was thinking he’d claim a sizable reward for turning in an AWOL marine. Then who’d take care of Kate and little Gracie? Besides, George told himself, he’d spent enough time in Juneau away from his family. And with spring coming, the prospectors would soon be wanting packers to help ’em across the pass. It was high time, he decided, to head on back to the cabin in Dyea.

EIGHTEEN

nd where was Soapy while Carmack and Siringo were meeting up under precarious circumstances at the Treadwell mine? He was just across the channel in Juneau, only he wasn’t having a much better time of it than either the undercover detective or the would-be Indian chief. And like Charlie, he, too, was going under an alias. Not that it did him any good. Regardless of the name Soapy was sporting, people were already raring to run him out of town.