The Forest Lover (15 page)

Mr. Halliday rested his elbows on the table, his chin on his fist, and regarded her quizzically.

“Thank you, Mr. Halliday, for your concern. And you, Mrs. Hall, for a delicious meal.” She saw the vein in Mrs. Hall's temple swell violet. “Painting can make a body mighty hungry.”

Outside, a few minutes later, she closed the gate against Billy's nose. “I'd better not take you, Billy boy. I'll give you a good scratching when I come back.”

Billy gave her his pitiful, injured pout. She reached over the gate to touch him, and he whined in resignation.

The front door of the Halls' house opened and Mr. Halliday came out. “It's the last house in the row, the only one painted.” He held a battery torch over the fence. “Ye'll need this later.”

His concern surprised her. “Why, thank you.”

A raven swooped onto the bell tower, its black form silhouetted against the lavender sky.
Haw, haw, haw,
it croaked. A taunt. What did it know that she'd soon find out?

Picking her way on the muddy path between the white and Kwakiutl sections of the village, she heard the dock creak, and the slap-gurgle-slap of small waves on the gravel beach. Maybe she'd been seen drawing something sacred. They might forbid her to do more. She should have asked Halliday more questions. Her apprehension grated against her excitement.

Teeth, talons, flared nostrils, open wings sprang out at her from the poles in front of the bighouses. There were beaks everywhere. Straight for Raven, hooked for Eagle, she remembered.

When she saw faded red and black wings stretched across the width of the last house, she realized Halliday must have meant painted with a design, not with house paint. A massive carved pole
attached flush to the front of the house as part of its construction towered above the roof. She stopped. The lowest figure, Raven, had an enormous beak projecting out nearly ten feet over the plank walkway. No real raven's beak could be so large in relation to the head and not make the bird topple forward, but here, its attachment to the house prevented that.

Above Raven stood Bear with faces on his forepaws, a long-necked bird, a man, and Wolf crawling down the pole. At the top, Thunderbird with outstretched wings held Killerwhale in his talons. The pole made this the most impressive house in the village. The only thing was, she couldn't find the door. Was this Halliday's idea of a joke? She passed under the beak, and walked around the far corner of the house. There it was. Closed. She knocked. Nothing happened. She walked back to the front.

A loud creak issued from the raven's beak. It was opening! An orange glow issued from inside as the lower beak came to rest on the walkway, let down by ropes. Inside the lower beak was a ramp with crossbars like those on a ship's gangplank to prevent people from slipping. Her feet didn't move. The utter strangeness and the inventive design were more than she'd imagined in her wildest dreams. If Halliday was right, Claude had been here. Now, if she ever had the chance, she could tell him so had she.

She took hold of the rope and stepped onto the beak. One step, two. She placed her heels securely beyond each crossbar, and peered through the throat. Firelight softened everything. Men sat on an inner platform that ran around the central fire. Women wearing dresses and shawls of orange, sienna, and indigo sat with children one tier back. Taking one more step through the bird totem would mean crossing a cultural divide. She hesitated, not out of fear, but out of a desire to feel it fully.

Tillie, the girl she'd drawn on the beach, was sitting right inside the door. “Come,” Tillie said and led her past bull kelp hanging in coils on the walls. Strips of dried salmon draped over poles had fine striations, like the cedar grain on chests, walls, rafters, like the meticulous parallel tool marks on the platform of the menstrual hut.

Tillie brought her to a man wearing suspenders whose deeply grooved cheeks had the texture of rutted paths. He didn't smile, but his
expression was not unkind. A younger man with a smooth, shiny face spoke in English.

“This is Chief Wakias, high chief of Nimpkish Band. His crest is Raven. He also owns Killerwhale crest, powerful creature of the sea, and Bear and Wolf, strong and swift creatures from the forest. Chief Wakias gave five potlatches. He owns much wealth—thirty dancing blankets of mountain goat wool and four canoes. He owns five salmon streams, seven clam beaches, and the story of Huux-huuk, Man-eating Bird.”

Owning a story—what did that mean? She'd ask Sophie.

The speaker gestured behind her. She turned. An awesome carved bird with open wings in red and black stood against the wall, maybe fifteen feet across. The body was shown from the front, but the head and the enormous beak were in profile, as on her drum. One fearsome black and white eye glared at her.

She gulped. “Is that the man-eating bird?” Did they have to use that term? Did its beak open too, to swallow white painters?

The speaker nodded. “Who are you?” he asked.

“I am Emily Carr, a Canadian.”

But what else?

The three boys she'd met on the beach watched her intently from the hard-packed dirt floor, knees up to their chins. They probably knew what she should say next. Give me a hint, she said with a look. They only wiggled, hardly able to contain themselves. Tillie, sitting one tier behind them, didn't give her a sign either.

“I have come to paint your village and totems, if I may. They are noble forms of great strength and mystery.”

The chief's mouth turned down. She should have asked Sophie to teach her a few more words of Chinook. That universal trading language all tribes spoke would be as valuable as trade beads. He nodded for her to continue.

“I own not so many goods. One Eagle basket made by my good friend Sophie Frank of the Squamish Band at North Vancouver, and thirty paintbrushes, some of weasel and mink and sable, quick and clever creatures from the woods. I own one bird who makes strong talk, and the story of Billy, the Dog Who Has No Tail.”

The children exploded in laughter. She tried not to smile, but to return Chief Wakias's steady look.

“Are you a friend of Agent Halliday?” the spokesman asked.

Ah, here was the crux of the matter. Stillness descended. The fire popped. What did he want to hear?

The truth, take it or leave it.

“I have met Mr. Halliday. I am not his friend.” They expected more, but what? “I am Freddy Hannah's friend.” Freddy let out a squeak. A murmur went around the room. She flipped through her sketch pad and produced the drawing of him. “I give you, uncle of Freddy Hannah, this picture.”

The younger man took it and showed it to Chief Wakias, whose face broke into a smile. “My house is open to you,” Chief Wakias said, his voice like gravel pulled by waves.

Women brought her barbecued salmon lying on skunk cabbage leaves, and bannock bread with jam. It would have to settle on top of Mrs. Hall's dumplings. She lifted some flakes of salmon, ate, made appreciative murmurs, and licked her fingers.

“The best part is the cheek,” Chief Wakias said. He held out to her a disk of dark, sweet-smelling meat.

She noticed its grain. With her finger she drew the close lines across her palm. “It's like cedar wood.” He smiled. She wished she remembered Lulu's saying that everything is one, but that would be Nootka, not Kwakwala. She picked up the fish, ate it, and made her face show that it tasted rich and flavorful.

A young woman brought her a flat basket piled with silver fish about the size of cigars that people had been eating when she came in. The three boys grinned at her. One wiggled a little silver fish, and the others scowled and nudged him sharply from both sides. Tillie tapped him on the shoulder and said some word of admonishment. One boy bit off a fish head.

“I've never eaten a whole fish before. I mean the head.” She picked out the smallest one, only a half inch shorter than the rest, closed her eyes, aimed her teeth well behind the gills, bit down, and chewed. “Hm, good.” If she didn't think about the snapping and crunching in her mouth, it tasted all right. Full of wood smoke. “What's it called?”

“Oolichan,” the young woman said.

Emily patted her belly to convince them she was full. A woman whose face was as wrinkled as a dried mushroom shuffled toward her. Her painful progress across the packed dirt floor hushed even
the children. She held out an oblong bowl carved into an animal shape. Curving up at one end of the bowl was a carved face etched with whiskers, the eyes made of inlaid shell.

“That's an elegant bowl. Is that Seal or Sea Otter?” She was glad she'd picked up from the children to drop the “a.”

The old woman raised the bowl under her chin. “Eat.”

A vile smell, like stale fish oil mixed with rotten pork, assailed her. Her throat squeezed shut. A pile of translucent whitish meat lay in shiny shredded globs. She glanced up. Chief Wakias stood with his chest out, his shoulders back, watching. Should she ask now or later? She touched the moist gelatinous substance. “This must be very special. What is it?” she asked in the most casual tone she could manage. Without breathing she put a morsel in her mouth before the woman could answer.

“Seal blubber,” the woman said with a penetrating stare.

“A seal came to our beach a day ago. Died there,” the chief's speaker explained.

It didn't taste bad, meaty rather than fishy. “It's so tender. Falls apart in my mouth. How do you get it that way?”

The chief's speaker translated for the woman: “I chewed it myself this morning.”

Emily gagged. Everyone else hooted with laughter.

Some joke.

The woman touched the bowl to Emily's collarbone, her expression deadpan. The test wasn't over. Obviously the second bite had more significance than the first. Emily's obligatory laugh came out a mere croak. She put the second morsel into her mouth. The dumpling in her stomach rebelled, but she forced a smile, chewed, and swallowed. The woman nodded, and passed the bowl and everyone took a small amount, laughing.

They resumed what she supposed they'd been doing before she arrived. Children played games with pebbles. Old men puffed on pipes under lazy curls of smoke. Women twined spruce root hats and wove cedar bark mats. A grandmother with glazed eyes made a warm nest of her lap and a young woman placed a baby there. This was the way of life Halliday said was doomed?

The chief and his spokesman invited her to sit at their fire. Little
by little, the chief spoke to her himself instead of through his speaker.

“Have you been to Karlukwees?” he asked.

“No.”

“Guyasdoms?”

“No. Are there poles there?”

“Yes. Fine painted houses too.”

“How can I get there?”

“There will be a way. Mimkwamlis?”

“No. How many Kwakiutl villages are there?”

“Kwakwaka'wakw villages, we say. Many. Some for fishing. Some for potlatch.” He patted his stomach and smiled. “Hidden ones. Police get lost in the islands.” Under folds of skin his eyes gleamed. “Kwakwaka'wakw potlatches make good story.”

“They must be grand.”

He said nothing, apparently lost in memory.

Embers were glowing in the fire pit. The children had curled themselves onto piles of blankets, and hands rested unmoving on unfinished baskets. She had to ask now.

“May I paint your great Raven tomorrow?”

He tipped his head forward in a single nod.

• • •

First thing in the morning, with Billy leaning against her leg, she sat before Raven on the plank walkway in front of the houses. Raven's disdainful eye with its lid curved down at the corner bored into her, firing her desire. On his lower beak, a human face looked back, frightened in a humorous way. She'd missed that the night before. She made tight reference drawings of the face and each of the stacked figures above. But if she were to give any of the raven's detail in a painting of the whole house, she'd cut off the upper pole.

How to accommodate a form so tall? Give its lower portion dominant placement in profile in the mid-ground with the row of houses at an angle? That way she could show a retreating line of poles suggesting what she'd cut off. Maybe a canoe prow in the lower foreground for size reference? She wasn't sure if it was the best solution.
Effective composition might come with exposure to the right examples, but where could she find any?

She set to work using Indian red, Prussian blue, and black for the raven, burnt sienna blending with sepia umber for the pole's raw cedar parts, bleached by the sun. It was adequate, but it lacked the drama of the real thing.

“Billy, move.” She wanted the angle right from where he was lying. She nudged him out of the way. “To be a painter's dog, you have to be flexible.”

But I was comfortable, he said with a sigh and a whine.

“Oh, don't pout like a wilted petunia.”

To depict a thing beyond objectivity—that's what that beak challenged her to do. In it were all the croaks and squawks and clucks and rattles a raven could make. And through it, in the bighouse itself, all the stories and laughter and keening and baby gurgles and death rattles of generations. But how could a painting convey that?