The Forest Lover (25 page)

Whatever they did at potlatches, it had to do with totems, Claude had told her. If she was ever to paint the poles with expression or understanding, she had to find out what they meant to the people who created them. Whether potlatches were illegal or not, she'd be a fool not to go.

“What's the chief's name again?”

“Chief Tlii-Tlaalaadzi.”

“That's quite a name.”

“Means great big bonfire,” Beatrice said. “What do you do if you are too close to a bonfire?”

“Back away.”

“That's what other chiefs do too if they want to give a potlatch. They know they can't give one big like he can. You will see. Many things he will give.”

• • •

At each tide, family by family left, as if they were going fishing, or to their summer berry-picking lands. On Sunday Reverend Hall would look across empty pews and see only the infirm and the residential school children from St. Michael's. His beard would tremble in anger when he gave the invocation. If William Halliday happened to be here, he'd bolt out of the church, head south in his gas boat to the BC Provincial Police. Without knowing where this potlatch was among dozens of islands, it was unlikely that the BCPP would arrive in time to stop it—she hoped.

Only after Tillie's father pushed off their canoe two days later and they were well out into Johnstone Strait did anyone mention the name of the place—Mimkwamlis on Village Island up Knight's Inlet.

Toby arched his back and said, “Mimkwamlis mean Village with Rocks and Islands in Front,” a slight tone of showing off in his voice. He giggled at Emily's expression and added, “The Mamalilikala Band of the Kwakwaka'wakw people live there.”

Emily whistled at the words. “Thank you, Toby. Now I understand. But aren't most potlatches in winter?” Emily asked.

Toby turned to his mother. “One year ago the chief at Mimkwamlis died,” Beatrice said. “A disgrace if the new chief does not raise a pole for him now. He can't have old chief's rights until he does.”

“The police won't expect one now,” Mac added.

Emily looked at the two boys nestled asleep against Billy in the canoe, Jack, maybe four years old, and Alphonse, a little older, Tillie's cousins. “Are their parents already there?”

“No. They were arrested for potlatching so they can't come.”

“You mean they're in jail?”

“No, just can't go to potlatches. No worry. They don't put white people in jail. Yet.”

Something in Emily's look made them all laugh. Worry crept up her spine.

The family sang the paddling song,
“Si-whwa-kwa, si-whwa-kwa,”
to keep the rhythm across open water until they entered a narrower waterway. Mac tipped his head in the direction of a great blue heron feeding in the shallows. He let the canoe glide toward shore, small waves licking its sides. “We camp here tonight.”

Emily looked at the sliver of beach frilled with foam and scattered with dried sea lettuce, a rough-textured rocky outcropping at one end, a snag rippling the current at the other. Drooping folds of hemlock sheltered this long-necked bird balanced gracefully on legs delicate as fern stems. When the canoe touched the shore, it flew off with a loud
grak.

“A blue heron always does a person good,” Emily said.

Mac smiled. “A good sign.”

• • •

They approached Mimkw
a
mlis late the next morning. Boats came from all directions. “Won't they know it's a potlatch with all these boats?” Emily asked.

“They'll hide some, and we have lookouts,” Mac said. “Meanwhile, everybody has plenty good time.” He looked at his son. “And Toby sees his first pole raising.”

Sixteen poles, one in front of each bighouse, reached above the rooflines, facing the beach. One house had an enormous raven, bigger than Halliday's gas boat, sitting on the roof peak. A single male figure with outstretched arms, and an oversized head, wearing a tall, tapered hat, stood separate, close to the shore.

“Is that the new pole?” Emily asked.

“No. It's a speaker's figure,” Beatrice said. “You'll see.”

The minute their canoe touched the white clamshell beach, she heard words chanted in Kwakwala coming through the figure's wooden mouth. Billy barked back at it and they all laughed.

Tillie put her arms around Billy's neck. “It's only to welcome us, Billy.”

On shore, two lines of men formed to carry the thirty-foot canoe into the woods. Emily kept Billy on a short leash so he wouldn't get in the way. She lifted his chin to face her. “Now don't go putting your nose into everything. We're guests.”

He blinked, struggling to be patient.

“I can hold on to him if you want to draw,” Tillie offered.

“Thank you. He thinks everyone is gathered here for him.”

She set to work on a watercolor sketch of the welcome figure, then found another one, without a hat, standing near a crazily crooked staircase up to the bighouses. “This place is spectacular. Everywhere I look, I see another painting subject.”

They climbed the stairs and dodged some boys playing games to get to the new pole resting on blocks and covered by tarps. That was disappointing. She would have loved to get a close look. It lay flat on the ground, the base overhanging a fifteen-foot slanted trench. Ropes were draped loosely over a temporary scaffolding erected near its base. She couldn't think how such a heavy weight could be brought upright.

In front of Chief Tlii-Tlaalaadzi's bighouse, hundreds of folded blankets were stacked as high as the roof. Next to fifty-pound sacks of flour and sugar, there were crates of china, pillars of buckets and wash basins, twined and painted spruce-root rain hats, carved and painted bentwood boxes, baskets, gramophones, even treadle sewing machines. Apparently, if the police boats came this far, no amount of hiding goods would help. There was food too—baskets of dried salmon and halibut, five-gallon cans of oolichan grease, baskets of bannock and berries.

“Blackberries, Saskatoons, black gooseberries, and stink currants,” Tillie said, gesturing to each proudly.

In front of the stacked goods, men wearing bowler hats and suspenders, some with gold watch chains, and women in colorful print dresses faced two men and a third who had some function between them. “It's
haana-aa,
I Will Change Your Mind. A game. They bet about where are the bones.”

The players were stoic, but the people watching, urging one choice over another and giving warnings, were laughing. No one was trying to hide what he or she was doing. That did not make Emily relax.

A matron whose jacket buttons were ready to pop served whipped soapberries from a two-foot canoe. The girl standing beside her handed out small paddles that people used as spoons. A toothless man wearing suspenders slurped up the froth and grinned. “Indian ice cream. Easy to eat,” he said. Emily dipped her paddle into the
canoe for a dollop of the soft pink foam. It tasted bitter and sweet at the same time. Toby and Alphonse and Jack came running to get their share.

Tillie laughed. “Afraid they'll run out?”

Emily stood at the edge of a crowd surrounding several chiefs whose headdresses were carved animal faces. They wore elaborate blue and green blankets edged in red and decorated with hundreds of mother-of-pearl buttons in Raven and Eagle patterns. She recognized Chief Wakias, and wished she could ask him to pose, but he seemed unapproachable wearing the regalia.

Beatrice pointed out Chief Tlii-Tlaalaadzi, a wide-faced older man whose Eagle headdress had ermine tails hanging from the sides. His speaker stood beside him wearing a bark head ring and button blanket. Holding a heavy carved staff with Eagle at the top, he spoke in Kwakwala, and the crowd of men and women opened around the pole to be raised. Men sitting behind a hollowed-log drum began to beat a rhythm, slowly at first, then faster and louder. With great ceremony, men lifted the tarps. The crowd murmured approval and then sang their joy at seeing the carving. Although Emily couldn't see the top of the pole because of the crowd, the Raven, Bear, Killerwhale and Wolf that she did see were magnificent. The carving was surprisingly sharp-edged, the wood smooth, the figures heroic, full of meanings she could not grasp.

Toby nodded toward a man moving through the crowd, speaking to everyone as he passed. His skin was furrowed by time like the great old poles at Alert Bay. “My uncle,” Toby said. “Hayward James. He carved that pole.” Toby did a proud little hop.

She realized with a flush of excitement—the toddler at Alert Bay years ago who knew he'd be an artist because one of his eyelashes was put in his uncle's paintbrush, that was the same Toby.

“I can't see,” he said.

“You will,” Beatrice said, lifting Alphonse to see while Tillie lifted Jack. “You'll remember this for a long time.”

Suddenly it was essential that Toby see everything. Emily spotted an empty crate and fetched it for the boys to stand on. “Try not to hop,” she cautioned.

Lines of men, Mac among them, squatted by the pole to shoulder it from underneath. A hush spread through the crowd. Ropes creaked
and the pole raised several inches. She knew she was witnessing something few white people understood. Halliday would call it a senseless tug-of-war with a dead tree, yet the rapt attention of every person here showed that in that tree lived history and pride and ancestry and love.

Hayward James crouched beside Toby and whispered. His gestures spoke lovingly of the wood, its grain and texture, its fragrance. He'd lived with the cedar, studied its character, responded to its spirit. Here, at this moment, art was being transmitted. She hoped Toby understood the responsibility.

Raw energy pushed up the column inch by inch until pairs of smaller supporting poles crossing like scissors could be propped under it. Children who'd never seen this before and old people who'd seen it many times all stood still and silent, as though they all were holding their breath. The men rested four times, while the chief's speaker recounted events in the lives of the dead chief and his ancestors. Raven, Bear, Killerwhale, Wolf, and the top figure, Eagle, rose higher and higher against the sky. The line of men pulled ropes over the scaffolding, and in ten minutes, start to finish, it was up. Incredibly, it was up—Eagle, wings outspread, soaring. A sigh whooshed like wind through the crowd.

Men filled in the hole with boulders and tamped down dirt. No shout of hurrah went up when the ropes were released. It was an occasion deeper than cheers, a moment of reverence. Toby tipped his head back. Emily put her cheek close to his. “Someday you'll make a fine work of art like that.”

The chief's speaker announced that they would give out the blankets right then. Mac and Beatrice exchanged serious glances. Emily asked what it meant.

“Most times they don't give out anything this soon,” Beatrice said.

One by one, the blankets were presented to people whose names were called. This, she guessed, was the beginning of the potlatch. Emily looked over her shoulder to see if BCPP boats were bearing down on them.

Drummers carried the log drum into the bighouse, and drumming started again as people filed in. Emily tied Billy's leash to a tree, and gave him water and food. Hemlock bows decorating the doorway brushed her cheek when she entered with Tillie, and
wood smoke stung her eyes. A quavering hollow rattle startled her. Raven, all beak and tarred bark feathers, swooped across the room on a cord. A man poured grease onto the fire, which crackled more and lit up the room.

Emily and Tillie's family sat where they were directed to. She felt the bench vibrating beneath her. A whistle hooted like a ship's horn. Panic seized her. Was it the BCPP? She whirled around. No. Only Dzunukwa carved on an interior house post, her cavernous cheeks familiar yet fearsome. Somehow the whistle sounded as though it were coming right through her fat, open mouth. Then the room grew ominously quiet, like the silent tension before the rising of a theater curtain.

Chief Tlii-Tlaalaadzi walked once around the floor, his arm a steady scythe through smoky air. White down and feathers floated out of his headdress like swirling snow. With statuesque grace, he saluted Chief Wakias, the thirteen other chiefs and dignitaries, the guests from other bands, and finally the Mamalili
ka
la people. His speaker planted his staff into the ground and gave the welcome, accentuating certain words by gesticulating with both hands, tilting his head, raising his eyebrows, bobbing up and down, bending his knees, shaking his clenched fist. It was a ritualistic world, foreign, forbidden, and utterly fascinating.

The chief sat with a man wearing a bear-claw headdress shaped like a candelabra. Beaks hung from his robe. Emily thought he must be a shaman. She visualized him rattling his bear claws over a sick woman's stomach, chanting syllables linking her with earth and seasons, breathing down her throat the steam of herbs and skunk cabbage roots.

Silhouetted against the open door, a man decorated entirely in hemlock branches crouched. He wore a head ring of branches, a skirt of branches. Branches crisscrossed his chest and hung from his shoulders. Except for circles around his eyes, his face was blackened with charcoal which, together with his expression, made him look possessed.