Soul Catcher (22 page)

Carrying the omen wood reverently in his
left hand, Katsuk went to where Hoquat lay asleep against the
stump. The boy awoke when he felt Katsuk’s shadow, stared up at his
captor, smiled.

The smile heartened Katsuk. He returned it.
Hoquat’s dream spirit had been subdued.

The boy yawned, then: “What’re you going to
do with the stick? Are you going to fish?”

“This?” Katsuk lifted the limb. His whole
arm throbbed with the power in the omen wood. “This was sent by my
spirits. It will do a great thing.”

***

From a story in the Seattle
Post-Intelligencer
.

Sheriff Pallatt said he is concentrating his
searchers in the virtually untracked Wilderness Area of the park
(see map at right) and that he is instructing them to move with
extreme caution. He said: “This is no ordinary kidnapping. This is
a crime of revenge against the white race by an embittered young
man who may be temporarily deranged. I am convinced Hobuhet knows
what he is doing and is acting according to a plan. He’s still in
those mountains with that boy.”

***

Katsuk lay stretched face down on a shale
ledge, staring along his own arm immersed to the elbow in clear,
cold river water. The omen wood for the bow was beside him. His
hand in the water appeared wavery and distorted against the mossy
rock. He could feel the pulse at his elbow. Intense awareness of
the world around him permeated his being.

He saw two long gray logs high on the
flood-scoured bar at the river bend across from him. Their shadows
mingled in a staggering track across the bar, long, flat shadows in
the low afternoon sun.

A scuffling sound behind him told Katsuk the
boy had moved. Katsuk glanced back. Hoquat squatted beneath a
big-leaf maple juggling his day-counting pebbles. There were eight
pebbles now: eight days. A limb above the boy was strung with fuzzy
moss, dirty green and straggling. It dangled above the blond head
like wool on a sheep’s belly. The boy was sucking on a grass
stem.

Katsuk turned away, concentrated once more
on his hand in the water.

The river was clear and deep here. He could
see periwinkles on the bottom: irregular black marks against the
varicolored rocks. For some time now, he had been observing the
progress of a big fish as it worked its way along the mossy side of
the ledge. It was a native whitefish—
kull t’kope.

Katsuk mouthed its name under his breath,
praying to the fish spirit and the water spirit.

Kull t’kope’s
tail wriggled
spasmodically as it concentrated on eating insects from the
moss.

Katsuk felt the presence of the fish and the
river all through him. The river was called

Sour Water in his own tongue. A strange
name, he thought. The water was sweet to the taste, clean, and with
a musty edge of snow in it.

The chill water made his arm numb from the
elbow down, but Katsuk remained motionless, waiting. He allowed his
thoughts to contain only friendliness toward the fish. That was an
old way, older than memory—from First Times. He had learned it as a
boy from his Uncle Okhoots.

The fish encountered the barrier presence of
Katsuk’s arm, swam gently around it, nosed the moss beside it.
Gently, slowly, Katsuk raised his hand. He stroked the fish along
its belly. Motion set his hand tingling painfully and he felt the
cold softness of the fish—stroking slowly, softly, gently ...

It was slow work ... slow ... slow ...

His opened fingers went under the flexing
gills.

Now!

Grabbing and lifting in one motion, Katsuk
leaped backward, hurled the fish over his shoulder, whirling to
watch where it landed.

It was a big fish, almost as long as a man’s
arm, and it hit the boy full in the chest, sent him sprawling. Boy
and fish went down in one big, writhing tangle on the
riverbank—legs, arms, flopping tail.

Katsuk was on them in a scrambling, bounding
dash. He pinned the fish with both hands over the back of its head,
thumb and fingers of one hand in its gills.

The boy rolled away, sat up, demanding: “Did
we get it? Did we get it?”

Katsuk lifted the still struggling fish,
broke its neck.

The boy exhaled wordlessly, then: “Wow! It’s
a big one!”

Katsuk took the fish in one hand, helped the
boy to his feet, leaving a smear of fish blood across the
jacket.

The boy stared at the dead fish, eyes wide
and fixed. His arms, hands, and the front of his jacket presented a
splotched mess of fish slime, scales, sand, mud, and leaves from
the mad scramble on the riverbank.

“You’re a mess,” Katsuk said. “Go splash
that stuff off you while I clean the fish.”

“Are we going to eat it right away?”

Katsuk thought:
Trust the hoquat to think
only of his stomach and not of the spirit in what we have
killed.

He said: “We will eat at the proper time. Go
clean yourself.”

“Okay.”

Katsuk retrieved his omen wood. He searched
among the beach rocks until he found a large one with a slim,
jagged edge. He went to the shallows, sawed the head off the fish,
pulled away the gills. He reached into the fish then, pulled the
entrails out, cleaned the cavity in running water. A sharp stick
through there and
kull
t’kope
could be cooked over
coals.

As he worked, Katsuk mouthed the prayer to
Fish, asking pardon that this thing must be done. He heard the boy
splashing below him.

The boy shouted: “Hey! This water’s
cold.”

“Then wash faster.”

Katsuk picked up fish and omen wood, started
back to the ledge. The boy scrambled across the rocks, trotted
beside him. He was dripping, shivering, and there was an odd look
on his face.

“What are you thinking?” Katsuk asked.

“Did you mean for that fish to hit me?”

“No. I was just making sure we didn’t lose
it.”

The boy grinned. “Did I look funny?”

Katsuk chuckled, felt oddly relieved. “You
looked funny. I couldn’t tell which was fish and which was
boy.”

They came to the rim of the ledge where
grass and moss began. Katsuk put the fish on moss, placed the omen
wood gently beside it. He thought how it must have been for
Hoquat—a big flash of silver as the fish tumbled through the
air.

What a shock!

Katsuk began to chuckle.

The boy closed his eyes, remembering. Katsuk
had said he was fishing, but it had looked stupid: just waiting
there ... waiting ... waiting ... Who could expect a fish to come
from such inactivity? No pole, no line, no hook, no bait—just a
hand in the water. Then: whap!

Katsuk was laughing now.

David opened his eyes. His stomach began to
shake with laughter. He couldn’t suppress it. The cold, flopping
surprise of that sudden fish!

In a moment, boy and captor were facing each
other, laughing like idiots. The noise brought a flock of gray
jays, black-crowned camp robbers. They circled overhead, alighted
in a stand of alders high up on the riverbank. Their querulous
calls made a wild background for the laughter.

Katsuk doubled over with mirth. His mind
held the entire compass of that scene: boy, legs, fish, the
brown-green riverbank with its overhanging moss, that insane tangle
of feet and fish. It was the funniest thing Katsuk could remember
in all of his life.

He heard the boy laughing, trying to stop,
then laughing more.

The boy gasped: “Oh ... please! I ... can’t
... stop ... laughing.”

Katsuk tried to think of something to stop
the laughter
The pursuers!
He thought of searchers coming
upon the pair of them at this moment. He thought of the puzzlement
this scene would create. How ludicrous it was! He laughed all the
harder. His sides ached from laughter. He struggled up the mossy
bank, flopped on his back, sent great peels of laughter at the
sky.

The boy scrambled up to sprawl beside
him.

Man and boy—they lay there, spending
themselves on laughter until fatigue overcame them, not daring to
speak then lest it release new mirth.

Katsuk thought of the laughing game he had
played as a boy, as the boy Charles Hobuhet. Make each other laugh,
that was the game. Whoever could not control his laughter lost the
game.

A spasmodic chuckle shook him.

The boy lay silent. Hoquat had won this
game.

For a while after the joy of that laughter
had subsided, they lay on the warm ground, catching their
breath.

Katsuk grew aware that the sky was
darkening. Clouds covered the low sun. The clouds moved upriver on
a cold, raw wind. Katsuk sat up, stared at the clouds. They hung
above the trees, unsupported, mysterious gray turrets with the last
glowing stripe of day beneath them.

He slapped the boy’s arm. “Come. We must
make a fire and dry you out.” The boy scrambled to his feet. “And
cook the fish?”

“Yes—and cook the fish.”

***

From a scrap of note left at the Sam’s River
shelter:

When I am confused I listen with as much of
my being as I can allow. This was always what my people did. We
fell silent in confusion and waited to learn. The whites do a
strange thing when they are confused. They run around making much
noise. They only add to the confusion and cannot even hear
themselves.

***

For a long while that night, Katsuk lay
awake in their shelter thinking. Hoquat, breathing beside him with
the even rhythm of sleep, remained a disturbing presence. Even
asleep, there was a spirit in the boy. It was like the times when
the hoquat first arrived and some said they must be the descendants
of Seagull, who had owned the daylight. Grandfather Hobuhet had
recounted the tale often. The hoquat squawked and ran around like
Seagull; so the confusion was understandable. This boy, though, no
longer ran around and squawked. He remained silent for long
periods. At such times, the spirit could be sensed growing within
him.

The spirit grew even now.

Katsuk sensed the spirit speaking to the
boy. The spirit stood there in the darkness in place of the man
this youth would never become. It was a thing of excitement and
peril.

The spirit of the boy spoke then to Katsuk:
“You see this, Katsuk? In this flesh there are good eyes and a mind
that has seen something you have not.”

Katsuk felt that he must weep, must punish
his senses for this recognition of Hoquat’s spirit. But the
revelation demanded that he deal with it.

“This is flesh that made something happen,”
the spirit said.

Katsuk fought to remain silent. He
shuddered. If he answered this spirit, he knew it would gain power
over him. It might pick him up and shake him. Katsuk would rattle
in the Hobuhet flesh like a stick in a basket.

“What folly to think you can ignore me,” the
spirit said.

Katsuk clenched his teeth tightly. What a
seductive spirit this was. It reminded him of the hoquat world.

“I give you back your own knowledge of what
the world knows,” the spirit said. Katsuk groaned.

“I make you really know what you only
thought you knew,” the spirit said. “You think there is no place in
you to receive this? Whether you say aye or nay, something is
driven into your heart by the thing itself. This boy’s hand and
your eye have met. He has said something and part of you listened
... without compromise. If you have as good an eye as his, you can
look directly through his flesh and see the man he would become. He
has shared this with you, do you understand?”

Katsuk rolled his head in the darkness,
holding fast to his link with Soul Catcher.

“Where does such a thing begin?” the spirit
asked. “What made you believe you could master this matter? Do you
not see the wonder of this youth? Bring your sight back to the
surface and observe this being. How do you dignify yourself in
this?”

Katsuk felt sweat drench his flesh. He was
chilled inside and out. The temper of this hoquat spirit was
emerging. It was looking far back into deeper things. It was
primitive and tyrannous. Its concepts spanned all time. There was
no greater tyranny. It struck through to the ultimate human. He
felt vibrations of color in the night, sensed something wonderful
and terrifying about these moments. The spirit had netted a piece
of the universe and shaken it out for observation. The thing had
been said without decision and without any concern for Katsuk’s
desire to hear. It was merely said. The spirit invited him to do
nothing except listen. The message was brought to him as though
painted on wood. In a time of madness, it said a simple thing:

“If you carry out your purpose, it must be
done as a man to a man.”

Trembling and awed, Katsuk remained awake in
the darkness.

Hoquat rolled over, mumbled, then spoke
quite clearly: “Katsuk?”

“I am here,” Katsuk said.

But the boy was only talking in his
sleep.

***

From a paper by Charles Hobuhet for
Philosophy 200:

The fallacies of Western philosophy
fascinate me. No “body English.” Words-words-words, no feelings. No
flesh. You try to separate life and death. You try to explain away
a civilization which uses trickery, bad faith, lies, and deceit to
make its falsehoods prevail over the flesh. The seriousness of your
attack on happiness and passion astounds the man in me. It astounds
my flesh. You are always running away from your bodies. You hide
yourselves in words of desperate self-justification. You employ the
most despotic rhetoric to justify lives that do not fit you. They
are lives, in fact, not lived. You say belief is foolish, and you
believe this. You say love is futile and you pursue it. Finding
love, you place no confidence in it. Thus, you try to love without
confidence. You place your highest verbal value on something called
security. This is a barricaded corner in which you cower, not
realising that to keep from dying is not the same as “to live.”