Soul Catcher (23 page)

***

“About thirty thousand years ago,” Katsuk
said, “a lava flow pushed its way out of a vent in the middle slope
up there.” He hooked thumb over his shoulder. “Some of it fell out
in great lumps which you stupid hoquat called Indian tears.”

David peered up at the mountain, which he
could see shining in the morning sun beyond a stand of hemlocks.
The mountain was a series of rock pillars. Cloud shapes drifted
over it. There was an avalanche scar on a slope to the south. A
river ran somewhere under that slope, but the sound of it lay
hidden beneath the wind soughing in the trees.

“What time is it?” David asked.

“By hoquat time?”

“Yes.”

Katsuk glanced over his shoulder at the sun.
“About ten o’clock. Why?”

“You know what I’d be doing at home right
now?”

Katsuk glanced at Hoquat, sensing the boy’s
need to talk. Why not? If Hoquat talked here, that would keep his
spirit silent. Katsuk nodded, asked: “What would you be doing?”

“Taking my tennis lesson.”

“Tennis lesson,” Katsuk said. He shook his
head.

Katsuk squatted on the slope. He held a
length of brown-black obsidian in his left hand. He steadied the
obsidian on his thigh and chipped at it with a piece of flint. The
sound of chipping rang sharply in the clear, high air. It produced
a pungent smell which David sniffed.

“Tennis lesson,” Katsuk repeated. He tried
to imagine the boy as a grown man—rich and pampered, a romper man
first class in the playboy army. No longer innocent. Black and
white dress uniform for night. Black tie. A crew-cut, nightclub
smoke-blower. Or whatever would pass for that in his time of
maturity. It was a kindness to prevent that. It was a kindness to
preserve Hoquat’s innocence forever.

“Then I’d go swimming in our pool.” David
said.

Katsuk asked: “Do you want to swim in the
river down there?”

“It’s too cold. Our pool is heated.”

Katsuk sighed, went on chipping. The
obsidian was beginning to take shape. It would be a knife soon.

For some time now, David had been trying to
plumb his captor’s mood. There had been increasingly long silences
between them while walking around the mountain slope. It had taken
a full day. There were ten pebbles in David’s pocket—ten days.
Katsuk’s few responses during the long hike had been more and more
moody, snappish, and short. Katsuk was troubled by some new
awareness. Was Katsuk losing his spirit powers?

David did not allow himself to think yet of
escape. But if Katsuk’s powers were weakening …

A large chip flew off the obsidian. Katsuk
held it up, turned it, examining the shape. “What’re you making?”
David asked. “A knife.”

“But you’ve got ... my knife.” David glanced
at Katsuk’s waist. The Russell knife had been missing all during
the walk around the mountain, but he had guessed it was in the
deerhide pouch Katsuk wore.

Katsuk said: “I need a special kind of
knife.”

“Why?”

“To make my bow.” David accepted this, then:
“Have you been here before?”

“Many times.”

“Did you make knives here?”

“No, I guided hoquat in here to find pretty
rocks.”

“Did they make knives out of the rocks?”

“I don’t think so.”

“How do you know what kind of rock will make
a knife?”

“My people made knives from these rocks for
thousands of years. They used to come up here at least once a
year—before you hoquat came with steel. You call this rock
obsidian. We call it black fire—
klalepiah
.

David fell silent. Where was the Russell
knife? Would Katsuk give it back?

Katsuk had caught a rabbit and two small
quail in snares during the night. He had cleaned them with a sharp
piece of the brown-black rock, cooked them in an earth oven heated
by pitch balls. The pitch had made a hot fire with almost no
smoke.

David found a remnant of rabbit leg, sat
down, and chewed on it while he watched Katsuk work. The gray
striking rock in Katsuk’s right hand had one narrow end. Katsuk
struck sharply and steadily at the obsidian, using the narrow end
of the flint. Sparks flew. The sulfurous odor grew strong in the
still air.

Presently, David summoned his courage,
asked: “Where’s my knife?”

Katsuk thought:
Ahhh, the sly, clever
hoquat!
He said: “I must make my bow in the ancient way. Steel
cannot touch this wood.”

“Then where’s my knife?”

“I threw it in the river.”

Outraged, David hurled the gnawed rabbit
bone to the ground, leaped to his feet. “That was my knife!”

“Be still,” Katsuk said.

“My father gave me that knife,” David said,
his voice tight with fury. Angry tears began running down his
cheeks.

Katsuk peered up at him, weighing the boy’s
passion. “Could your father not buy you another knife?”

“That one was for my birthday!” David shook
tears off his cheeks. “Why’d you have to throw it away?”

Katsuk looked at the obsidian and flint in
his hands.

A birthday gift, father to son: a man’s gift
to a man.

Katsuk experienced emptiness at the
certainty that he would never have a son to receive the gift of
manhood. The obsidian felt heavy in his hand. He knew he was
experiencing self-pity and it angered him.

Why pity anyone? There could be no
reprieve.

“Damn you!” David raged. “I hope your Cedar
sickness kills you!”

Awareness blazed in Katsuk. There lay the
source of the curse! The Innocent had found a spirit to work his
curse. Where had Hoquat found this spirit? Had he received it from
Tskanay? Then, where had she found it?

Katsuk said: “I was warned by Bee to throw
away that steel knife.”

“Stupid Bee!”

Katsuk jerked his chin up, glared at the
boy. “Careful what you say about Bee. He might not let you live out
this day!”

The glazed look of madness in Katsuk’s eyes
cooled David’s anger. He felt only the loss now. The knife was
gone, thrown into a river by this madman. David tried to take a
deep breath, but his chest pained him. The knife would never be
found again. He thought abruptly of the murdered hiker. That knife
had killed a man. Was that why it had been thrown away?

Katsuk went back to his chipping.

David said: “Are you sure you didn’t hide my
knife in that pouch?”

Katsuk put down the obsidian and flint,
opened the pouch, exposed the interior to the boy.

David pointed: “What’s that little
package?”

“It’s not your knife. You can see I do not
have the knife.”

“I see.” Still angry. “What’s that
package?”

Katsuk sealed the pouch, went back to
chipping his obsidian. “It is the down of sea ducks.”

“Down?”

The soft feathers.”

“I know that. Why do you carry a stupid
thing like that?”

Katsuk noted how anger spoke in the boy,
thought:
The down is to sprinkle on your body when I have slain
you.
He said: “It is part of my spirit medicine.

“Why’d your spirit tell you to throw away my
knife?” David asked. Katsuk thought:
He is learning to ask the
right questions.
“Why?” the boy demanded.

“To save me,” Katsuk whispered.

“What?”

“To save me!”

“You told Cally nothing can save you.”

“But Cally does not know me.”

“She’s your aunt.”

“No. She had a nephew named Charles Hobuhet.
I am Katsuk.”

And Katsuk wondered:
Why do I explain
myself to my victim? What is he doing that I must defend myself? Is
it the knife I threw away? That was a link with his father, the
father he had before he became Hoquat. Yes. I threw away his past.
It is what those drunken loggers did to Janiktaht ... and to
me.

“I’ll bet you’ve never even been in a heated
pool,” David said.

Kasuk smiled. Hoquat’s anger darted here and
there. It was like a creature in a cage.
Tennis lessons, a
swimming pool.
Hoquat had lived a sheltered life, a life of
preserved innocence in the fashion of his people. Despite Tskanay,
he remained in that delicate transition place: part-man-part-boy.
Innocent.

Sorrow permeated David. His mouth felt dry.
His chest ached. He felt tired, frustrated, lonely. Why was crazy
Katsuk making a stone knife? Why was he
really
making it?
Had Katsuk lied?

David remembered reading the Aztecs had
killed their sacrificial victims with stone knives. Aztecs were
Indians. He shook his head. Katsuk had promised.
“Unless you
tell me to do it, I will not kill you.”
The stone knife had
another purpose. Perhaps it was just to make the stupid bow.

Katsuk said: “You are no longer angry with
me?”

“No.” Still sullen.

“Good. Anger blocks the mind. Anger does not
learn. There is much for you to learn.”

Anger does not learn!
David thought.
He climbed deliberately close to Katsuk, went a short way up the
slope, and sat down with his back against the bole of a hemlock.
Bits of obsidian littered the ground around him. He picked up a
handful, began throwing them past Katsuk at brush and trees down
the slope.

The bits of obsidian made a clattering sound
when they hit a tree. They went flick-flick in salal leaves on the
forest floor. It was a curious counterpoint noise to Katsuk’s
chipping. David felt his anger pouring out in the exertion of
throwing the rocks. He threw harder, harder.

Kasuk said: “If you wish to throw a rock at
me, throw it. Do not play games with your feelings.”

David leaped up, anger flaring. He held a
sharp-edged piece of obsidian the size of a quail’s egg in his
hand. He gritted his teeth, hurled the rock at Katsuk with all of
his strength. The rock struck a glancing blow on Katsuk’s cheek,
left a red slash from which blood oozed.

Terrified by what he had done, David stepped
backward. Every muscle was in readiness to flee.

Katsuk put a finger to the wound, brought it
away, examined the blood. Curious. The cut did not hurt. What could
it mean that such a blow caused no pain? There had been a brief
sensation of pressure, but no pain. Ahhh, Bee had blocked off the
pain. Bee had interposed a magic to make the blow ineffective. It
was a message from Bee. The Innocent’s spirit would not
prevail.

“
I am Tamanawis speaking to you
...”

David said: “Katsuk? Katsuk, I’m sorry.”

Katsuk looked up at him. Hoquat appeared
ready for flight, his eyes wide and bright with fear. Katsuk
nodded, said: “Now, you know a
little
of how I felt when I
took you from the hoquat camp. What a hate that must be to want to
kill an innocent for it. Did you ever think of that?”

Kill an innocent!
David thought. He
said: “But you promised ...”

“I will keep that promise. It is the way of
my people. We do not tell hoquat lies. Do you know how it is?”

“What?”

“When we were whalers, whale had to demand
the harpoon. Whale asked us to kill him.”

“But I’d never ...”

“Then you are safe.” Katsuk returned to his
chipping.

David ventured a step closer to Katsuk.
“Does it hurt?”

“Bee will not let it hurt. Be quiet. I must
concentrate.”

“But it’s bleeding.”

“The bleeding will stop.”

“Shouldn’t we put something on it?”

“It is a small wound. Your mouth is a bigger
wound. Be quiet or I will put something in your mouth.”

David gulped, wiped his mouth with the back
of his hand. He found it difficult not to look at the dark scratch
on Katsuk’s cheek. The bleeding stopped, but coagulation formed a
ragged lower edge to the wound.

Why didn’t it hurt?

It outraged David that the wound did not
hurt. He had wanted it to hurt. Cuts always hurt. But Katsuk had
spirit protectors. Maybe it really didn’t hurt.

David turned his attention to the obsidian
knife taking shape under Katsuk’s hands. The blade, about four
inches long and sharply wedged, was held flat against Katsuk’s
thigh. With quick, glancing blows, Katsuk broke tiny flakes from
the edges.

The knife did not appear long or slim enough
to stab anyone. The cutting edges were serrated. But it would cut
an artery. He thought again of the hiker Katsuk had killed. That
hiker had not asked to be killed. But Katsuk had murdered him
anyway.

David found his mouth suddenly dry. He said:
“That guy ... you know, on the trail ... the guy you ... well, he
didn’t ask you to ...”

“You hoquat always think mouth-talk is the
only talk.” Katsuk spoke without looking up from his work. “Why
can’t you learn body-talk? When Raven made you, did he leave that
ability out of you?”

“What’s body-talk?”

“It is what you do. A thing you do can say
something about what you want.”

“That’s crazy talk about Raven.”

“God made us, eh?”

“Yes!”

“It depends on what you’re taught, I
guess.”

“Well, I don’t believe that about body-talk
and Raven.”

“You don’t believe Raven keeps you tied to
me?”

David could not answer. Raven
did
do
what Katsuk wanted. The birds went where Katsuk ordered them to go.
To know where the birds would go—what a power that was.

Katsuk said: “You are quiet. Did Raven take
your tongue? Raven can do that. Your stupid hoquat world does not
prepare you to deal with Raven.”

“You always say
stupid
when you talk
about my people,” David accused. “Isn’t there anything good about
our world?”

“Our world?” Katsuk asked. “
Your
world, Hoquat.”

“But nothing good in it?”

“I see only death in it. The whole world
dies of you.”

“What about our doctors? We have better
doctors than you ever had.”

“Your doctors are tied to illness and death.
They make as much illness and death as they cure. An exact balance.
It’s called a transactional relationship. But they are so blind,
they do not see how they are tied to what they do.”