Seaweed Under Water (4 page)

Two cars stood in the lot: a 10-year-old blue Impala and a late-model black Viper. Henry got into the Impala. I deliberated about going over and speaking to him, decided the time wasn't right and watched him drive off toward the wax museum. The Viper, I reflected, had cost its owner $80,000 or more, and probably belonged to Karl Berger. If it were actually Karl's vehicle, he was either more affluent than appearances suggested or was living way beyond his means. I began to wonder what the profitable sidelines Karl had bragged about might possibly be.

After that, I took a walk, because sometimes I need reminding that Victoria is one of the world's most beautiful and picturesque waterfront cities. Mountainous high-rises shouldered skies of unsullied blue, partially obscuring my view of the Inner Harbour but providing welcome shade. I sat on the patio of a bar on Belleville Street, watching the passersby, some of whom were young women dressed in the flimsiest of garments, and for no reason at all I began to think about a woman called Felicity Exeter. A head waiter who looked like—and was dressed like—King Edward the Eighth when he gave up the crown to marry Mrs. Simpson gave me a menu and snapped open a linen napkin, and he didn't lose his smile when all I ordered was a lowly beer. Another catamaran ferry had just arrived from Seattle. Passengers were streaming ashore near B.C.'s Legislature. Green hills and snow-capped mountains rose majestically all around. I love it here. No wonder people come here from all over the world.

CHAPTER FOUR

I live in a two-room cabin on the Warrior Reserve just west of Victoria, B.C. I built it myself; it's fairly rustic, there's no piped hot water. I manage all right, with an airtight wood stove. A couple of years back I installed a 20-amp electrical system, enough to power a few lights and an apartment-sized fridge. My outhouse is a classic one-holer, half-concealed in a cedar grove.

When I returned home that night, I put the kettle on, stripped off the sweaty clothes I was wearing and had a good wash. I put on fresh underwear, cut-off jeans and a loose cotton shirt, and puttered around barefoot for a few minutes. I poured myself a cup of Earl Grey, carried it outside and was sitting on a log on the beach below my cabin, enjoying the evening, when Chief Alphonse came down from the band office to join me. The log was an ancient Douglas fir, big enough to accommodate 20 fat butts, but I shuffled a couple of inches to one side and said, “Welcome, Chief. It's good to see you.”

“It's not good to see you looking so gloomy,” the old chief replied, letting himself down onto the log stiffly, because of his lumbago. Gazing into my eyes he said, “Something's wrong. What is it?”

I told him about the odd feeling of irritability I'd experienced in James Bay.

“You were picking up vibrations. I feel 'em myself in James Bay,” Chief Alphonse said. “Did you know there was a smallpox epidemic there in the 1850s?”

“I vaguely recall hearing something of the sort.”

“Our ancestors tried to outrun it by moving to James Bay and hiding in the woods. It didn't do them any good. Missus Pox followed them over there and laid her hands on 'em. Nobody knows how many Indians died—thousands, most likely. Pox decimated the population, Indians
and
white folks. There's parts of James Bay that's one giant graveyard.”

We watched the sun sink beneath the horizon. The chief moved restlessly. “Folks say that smallpox was introduced by white men, back in the 1700s. It may be true, only I have my doubts. I think there was smallpox here in ancient times.”

Earlier that evening, the chief had been introducing Warrior children to Coast Salish Vision Quest mysteries. He was still wearing a traditional woven cedar bark cloak and a cedar bark steeple hat. He took his hat off and looked inside it. Perhaps he saw what he was looking for, because he said, “There's something else on your mind. What is it, Silas?”

“Boss Rollins,” I answered. “He's mixed up in a case I'm working on.”

“What do you know about Rollins?”

“Nothing much, rumours mostly.”

“You got anything pressing to do right now?”

I shook my head.

“All right,” the chief said, glancing sideways at the clothes I was wearing. “Give me a minute to change out of these fancy duds. And you'll need to put some shoes on. Then we'll take a little drive.”

≈  ≈  ≈

Victoria's Gorge Waterway—a wide tidal river a couple of miles long—flows between the Inner Harbour and a tidal lake known as Portage Lagoon. At Tillicum Road, where there is nowadays a four-lane highway bridge, the river encounters Gorge Narrows, the site of Canada's only reversing waterfall. When the tide rises, there is a waterfall running from south to north. When the tide ebbs, the water reverses its direction. At certain spots along the Gorge, treacherous currents and whirlpools are strong enough to tip unwary boaters.

I parked my car on Gorge Road and followed the chief as he scrambled on foot down a narrow, bushy, little-used trail. After a bit, we reached a ledge of grass in the shadow of a high bank and sat down. When Chief Alphonse got his breath back, he pointed to the Gorge's swiftly flowing waters and said, “This is a tricky spot for canoeing, even now. It was worse in the old days. Before they dynamited some of them rocks under the water, there was a huge whirlpool four times a day. You couldn't take a boat through here. The whirlpool was . . . enormous. There's one big rock left—you can see it at low tide. That's where Camossung lived. She was a young girl who got turned into a stone by Hayls, the Transformer. At Vision Quest time, Songhees youngsters who had been ritually prepared would dive into the whirlpool and try to gain spirit power.”

Pointing to a chunk of smooth granite, about 20 feet above the water, Chief Alphonse continued, “That's the very rock our Vision Questers dived off, down and deep into the whirlpool. Some went down and never came up again—at least not in this lifetime. Some stayed underwater long enough that people thought they'd drowned, before they came back to the surface. There might have been a dry tunnel underwater; a refuge where people could breathe and find their power. Maybe that refuge still exists, I don't know. Maybe there's no refuge at all. Them Questers that survived the dive never talked about it. For them that got it, Camossung power was very big power. A lot of old shamans went in for Camossung power.”

The chief stopped talking, reached inside his shirt and brought out a little cotton sack dangling from a cord around his neck. He produced a stubby soapstone pipe, stuffed it with kinnikinnick and lit it with a match. To me, the smoke smelled foul—like smouldering grass—although the chief seemed to enjoy it. Grinning slyly, he offered the pipe to me. I declined.

The chief's smile faded as he wrestled heavy thoughts. By the time he had finished his smoke, the evening's shadows had lengthened. He put his pipe and tobacco away and said, “Camossung power was
wisdom
power. Them that got it were happy to have it, and the power was used wisely, for good purposes. However, as we know, there are other kinds of power. Power is sometimes used for evil.

“Now, you were talking about Boss Rollins, and here's what I have to tell you. The Rollins were members of the Mowaht Bay band. There's less than a hundred people belong to that band nowadays. Them Mowaht Bay folks have always been clannish; they don't have much to do with the rest of our nation. As young people, neither Boss Rollins, nor his sister, what's her name?—”

“Tess Rollins.”

“—That's right, Tess. Neither Boss nor Tess were interested in Vision Quest as youngsters. They didn't spend any time in the Longhouse, because they were more interested in basketball and high-school dances. They did the bare minimum of ritual to keep themselves in good standing with their band, and no more. They say that along the years, Harley changed. Now he's Boss Rollins.”

The chief looked at me inquiringly and asked, “He'd been a mechanic of some kind?”

“A welder. Harley took welding courses at Camosun College.”

“So that's what he was, a welder. I don't think I knew that detail,” the chief said, baring his teeth in a humourless grin. “At all events, a number of years ago Harley went through some kind of crisis. All of a sudden, after years of ignoring and even sneering at Coast Salish mythology and religion, he became obsessed with it. He developed a special interest in Earth Dwarfs. He came and pestered me a few times. I sent him away, because all Harley wanted was power. Harley talked to other local Coast Salish chiefs and shamans, but they all treated him the way I did. Didn't want no part of him. So Harley ended up going down to Washington State, where a witch called Unthame threw bones in the air and told Harley how to get the power he wanted.”

Chief Alphonse pointed to the Gorge waters, where fallen leaves and twigs were floating in slow lazy circles. He said, “Unthame told Harley to look for power right here, deep in the Gorge. That's where Harley dived in.”

“How do you know all this, Chief?”

“Because there were witnesses,” the chief said. “Harley's sister Tess was one. The other witness was Billy Cheachlacht.

“It was years ago, night, in the middle of August, a thunder and lightning storm was raging when Harley and Tess got here. They didn't know it, but Billy Cheachlacht was here too. They thought they were alone. Billy Cheachlacht's dead now. Before he died, he told me that the air that night stank like rotten eggs. Spooky, hellish lightning strikes fell all around. Billy was right here at the Gorge, praying to Camossung, something he did every year. I was Billy Cheachlacht's chief. Billy came straight to me and told me what he'd seen.”

There was a soft glitter in the chief's eyes as he said solemnly, “Billy saw
something
. Harley dived into the whirlpool and was underwater for a long time. When Harley came up from his dive, Billy Cheachlacht said a horrible little dwarf came out of the water with him. The dwarf came up, walked around, stayed talking with Harley and Tess for a while, then went back down into the water again.” The chief added, “What Billy saw wasn't a dwarf, it was a ghost.”

I thought about that. Coast Salish ghosts sometimes have human forms, but lack human souls and substance. I asked, “And you believe Billy Cheachlacht actually
saw
this thing, whatever it was, instead of just imagining that he saw it?”

“What I believe and what I don't believe doesn't matter. Maybe Billy Cheachlacht had been eating mushrooms, I don't know. I'm just telling you what Billy Cheachlacht told me.”

“If Harley Rollins did get power, some of it must have rubbed off on Tess Rollins.”

“And that's another weird thing,” the chief added. “It's unusual for a woman to accompany her brother on any kind of quest, very unusual indeed.” The night was now dark and moonless, but full of stars. There were no clouds at all.

The chief stood up and said, “It'll be pissing down in two days.”

CFAX's weatherman was predicting a continued drought. The chief has second sight and many other queer ideas, but he's not always right about the weather.

Smiling, he spat on the ground and said, “Silas. It's time we went home.”

≈  ≈  ≈

It was late when I got back to my cabin. I put on a Gatemouth Brown record and opened a can of Foster's. It was still hot inside. I left my doors and windows wide open, wandered outside to the beach and sat on a log, listening to the Gatemouth's blues guitar. Red-necked grebes were hunkered down on the beach. A dozen of the birds showed me their yellow bills and ruffled their
feathers before going back to sleep. The sea was ablaze with bioluminescent plankton; the lights of Victoria were strung like jewels across the dark horizon. Pebbles crunched toward me along the beach. It was a dream called Felicity Exeter, wearing a lavender pantsuit with an ivory silk scarf around her long white neck, and her hair, loose and flowing in a fall of golden moonlight. We'd known each other less than a year, and I still didn't understand what a rich, accomplished, beautiful and sexy woman like her saw in a Native only three generations removed from hunter-gatherers with bones through their noses.

She sat beside me and said, “I've been waiting for you. I saw you earlier, talking to Chief Alphonse, but I thought you'd come back. I'm glad you did.”

“Feel like a beer?”

Felicity shook her head. Grebes entertained us by diving for fish in the shallows. After a while Felicity took my hand and kissed it without saying anything. I put the empty Fosters can down and said, “In the olden days, when the sea glowed like this and diving birds started feeding at night, my ancestors would put spotters on the roofs of their houses, sharpen their harpoons and watch out for the tuna that used to swim into this bay. Giant bluefins, you could see 'em gliding through the phosphorescence in the dark. The way we caught them, we carried fires aboard our canoes to lure them in. If that didn't work, we'd paddle our canoes quickly away from where they were feeding: our canoes created paths of light moving through the phosphorescence. Bluefins would follow us, come right up to our bows where we'd harpoon 'em. Big powerful fish. They'd tow us a mile, sometimes, before they went belly up. Once in a while they'd play possum. We'd drag 'em aboard before they were fully dead, and they'd thrash around, break a few legs.”

“Halibut do the same,” Felicity said. “My dad hooked a 100-pounder once, beat the hell out of it with a club. He told me that he would have sworn it was dead when we pulled it aboard, but it wasn't.”

“Right, halibut are mighty fish. But there never was a halibut the size and strength of a bluefin tuna. The Salish name for bluefin tuna is
Silthkwa
. Silthkwa means
like the bow-wave made by a fast boat
. It's the way surface-feeding bluefins look.”

“How big were they?”