The Cannibal Spirit (8 page)

Beyond the frame house, the trees were garlanded in graveboxes. The dead had been placed at every divide where boughs grew out of the main trunks, hitched up with ropes and tied off to rest among the spirits of the forest. Or some were laid in smaller houses ten feet wide and low, somewhat akin to the mausoleums of white gentry. And there were similarities, for the Island of Graves was held over for the families of chieftains; though nowadays, so his wife said, with so many dead most everyone held some sort of chiefly seat.

The people clustered in about the fire and so many were there, even in such depleted times, that some were forced to stand outside in the mounting rain. David's gravebox was placed near the fire on a low dais. The people inside hunkered down on the tamped earth. Harry stood off to one side with his back against a house support. He took off his hat and thumped it, then shook a little rain from his coat.

George was on the dais with Charley Seaweed and several of the leading chieftains of the people, who were robed in finery, and some carried masks of raven and killer whale under their arms.

The old men lining up on the dais held themselves pompous and self-important, as ever they were at such moments. He almost snorted a laugh. Yet his humour died again as quickly as it had come. This was death, whatever the rites involved and the people performing them. There was nothing good in that, excepting maybe the ending of suffering at last. But who could wish for death? There was sin in such thinking—was there not?—to wish for death prior to the utter end of all effort to remain alive?

The rain teemed now. The people who yet remained outside huddled close together, stoic in the onslaught. He looked down on the seated figures before him. They stank of fish, foul sweat, mouldering cloth.

Now the old chieftains on the dais placed their masks upon their heads, all except the leading chief of the Fort Rupert people, Owadi, bone-thin and tall, who wore a hat made of bear's fur. Owadi spoke out in the high Kwakwala of which Harry knew nothing at all. The words came cantillating from the old man's throat, the “lah” with which each phrase was always finished—that much Harry knew, at least—beating its own rhythms against the rain. The men on the dais who were wearing masks turned slowly with the words. They made small steps forward and back, their masks' fur or feathers swaying with their movement, and one long raven-like beak on its hidden cords snapping open and shut.

The minutes passed, and still the old chieftain intoned and the fire crackled and the rain still thundered on the roof. There was only lifeless desecration on George's face. Yet, with time, there came a different emotion in his father-in-law. And more than one. It seemed some conflict seethed in him. As Owadi droned, George's eyes moved around the gathering and up across the roof, and then into the fire, where they stopped and stared, as if in trance to the revel of the blaze. His eyes squinted, the left drooping in its paralysis. His lips were thin beneath his moustache. The hand that did not hold the staff clasped and opened and clasped again.

Harry had worked the merchant marine all over the world. He'd spoken, drunk, fought, fucked among so many, that surely the world had lent him skills for reading men. Yet he could not read his father-in-law at this time, except to believe some torment or, perhaps, some terrible notion was rising to the surface. What was passing through the old man's mind with such intensity? Not simply grief, nor yet the flickerings of his lunatic rage. Harry knew him enough to understand that his emotions, powerful as they often were, followed paths direct and open, so that few who looked upon his face could doubt what he might be feeling in that moment.

Owadi intoned his final words. There was a silence, just the crackle of the fire and the odd rustle, cough, or grunt. Then George stepped forward a pace to speak.

“HERE IS MY SON,”
I told them as they stood about me on the Isle of Graves. “My son what is named David Hunt by the whites, and Hameselal from his mother's father, Nemogwis in the Winter Dances, Chief of the Senlem Clan of the Walas Kwagiulth, great chief of the cannibal dancers, descendant of chieftains of the northern tribes, bearer of their crests, father to children what will take those crests and carry them in all eternity. A great man he was. A Kwagiulth he was, and now he is dead.”

And that was all the words I was going to speak, making my point to those present—and I suppose to myself—that my family was of the people, and would stay Kwagiulth forever. But then there was more; and perhaps I knew there would be, listening on old Owadi rattling on about how the world was fearful, all the youngsters dying, and everyone else, and speaking the proper words of the funeral as he did as well.

Bitterness welled up, wrapped about with grief, and fermented with rage at all those ranged against me, as I saw it. It seemed like it was the whole world. So I spoke on, and angry words they was. Words against the white men first. How they brung their diseases and their controlling ways, their Christianity. I know that made some nervous what was regular churchgoing folk. I done it deliberate, though, stoking them up, provoking, prodding and poking till I knew they'd be resenting me.

Then came words against the Indians. And there are Indians indeed who want rid of me still: for working with the scientists, for writing the secret ways of the people into the books, where there weren't no written words before, just the memories of men, for trying to hold on to the ways of the people against the world's progress, as they sees it. And for seeking out the witchcraft amongst them, for exposing it, for showing them the black heart of gossip and mal-intent.

Well, what words I spoke were not those of reason. Or how I told it they wasn't, anyhow, and how far the telling went. First, I says they are weak, letting the white men walk on them. Craven for not defending their ways.

Then I goes on to tell them they are stupid for not knowing what I do for them, that when I buy up their artefacts I am handing money to them from the white men that wouldn't never come elsewise. That those treasures go to the museums where they will be safe. I says the stories that go onto the pages I send Professor Boas are for future times, for future people to see what once we was.

I says it angry, and many I know were turned away by my hot temper as much as by the upside-down reasoning. For it was worse. Much worse. I made threats as well. Dare to stand against me. Dare! And if you do, says I, then I will tear you up, like to the Cannibal Spirit. I will eat you, swallow you, take all of you, flesh and bone and soul, until there ain't nothing left even for the burial.

Oh, I was resting in midst of the flames that day, all the time placing more logs beneath my feet. Things that were bad already got made worse still by that speech. And then by what followed. Well, I'll not think of it yet. All in good order. Yes. All in the right order.

GEORGE HUNT'S EYES PICKED THEIR WAY OVER THE ASSEMBLY
. He looked some brimstone preacher delivering a sermon to the unenlightened on God's awful vengeance. Though he spoke in Kwakwala, Harry could tell he spoke simply, with clarity, each word a blade. Yet underneath, there was such fury and, as well, such agony as to make him seem something other than human. Not more. Less perhaps: ancient, animal, demonic, the long staff he held, seemingly forgotten in one hand, adding to the menace, the serpent's heads, teeth bared, leering at each end, almost alive as Hunt shivered in his passion. Indeed, his whole body shook, and one foot stamped incessantly on the platform, as if at the next moment he would launch himself at the people before him. The flames doused his face, his teeth, his body in scarlet. They burned like blood in his eyes. The jagged edges of his nails glittered.

The rain hammering, Hunt's voice exploding through it, the air as thick as molasses, the man's presence imposing itself into all the space of the ceremonial house, until Harry gasped, fighting for his breath.

No one spoke or moved when Hunt finally fell silent and, breathing hard himself, turned his back to them. After some time, they rose to their feet. Most began to walk away toward the beach. Still no one spoke. The old chieftains removed their masks. They kept a distance from Hunt, and none looked at him as he sat upon his son's gravebox and rubbed a hand down his face.

Harry wondered if he was really angry at him. If it was possible to be angry at something not properly human.

Two men stepped up on the dais, carrying thick ropes, and George spoke with them, quietly now. They turned and clambered down once more. He looked up at the chieftains and spoke something to them. The old men were silent, standing in a circle, and Charley Seaweed was there as well. Owadi shook his head. George spoke again, intense now, his face darkening. At last Owadi spoke a few words more and, though his face showed
he was unhappy, he left the dais with the other chieftains and disappeared toward the beach.

“Caddie.” A voice brought Harry back into the moment. It was Grace, the other women behind, whispering amongst themselves. “Do you come?”

“What just occurred? I thought they hoisted up the body in the trees now and that was an end of it.”

“Talk father. Come to the beach after. We going now on the boat.” Harry saw her tear-shot eyes. He made to place a hand on her arm, but she walked away with the other women. So he went over to the fire.

“Charley,” he said, and the old cripple looked up from the conference he was having with another man. “What goes on?”

“Speak George” was all Charley said.

So Harry stepped up onto the dais where his father-in-law was alone, still sitting on the box with his head down. “Mr. Hunt,” Harry said.

The old man looked up, surprised. “Harry,” he said at last. The veins crept like vines across the whites of his eyes and the rawness of his lids.

“I thought you ended things simple now.”

George hesitated. “He was hamatsa. I'll see him fully that.”

“So what's to be done?”

“Take the women to the village.”

“You saw how angry you had Crosby. Are you doing what's right?”

“I shit on him!” George rose to his feet. “Would you not stop prodding at me, damn you!” Harry stepped back. “Take the women.” But he spoke more quietly. He put a hand to Harry's shoulder. “No questions.”

“I hear David was a civilized man,” Harry said, but George did not reply, even to such deliberate goading. So Harry stepped away and through the throng of silent men who yet remained. No emotion could he read in their faces, and they were very alien to him.

Out on the beach, Harry trudged to his boat. His wife and the other women were already aboard. The canoes and other boats were leaving. As he'd planned, the tide had come in and the
Hesperus
was nearly afloat. Two men helped him heave it off the last of the pebbles and he pulled himself aboard.

The boat's engine started reliably enough to warm away his questions for the moment, if not the damp and aching in his bones. He turned the boat out toward the open water. The rain fell so hard the village was invisible across the short mile of sea.