The Forest Lover (29 page)

Mosquitoes hovered above her watercolor. When they landed on wet areas they stuck, but tried to fly anyway, trailing color in threadlike paths across her paper. When she tried to lift them off with her brush, they came apart, wings and legs spread across the page. They gummed up her brushes, landed in her paints and writhed, distracting her from her rhythm.

Henry lumbered toward her. “Why did you choose this pole?”

She pulled down her scarf. “Because it speaks family to me.”

He looked at her unfinished work. Her stomach cramped. He'd be critical. When critical eyes crept in judgment across half-born work, the heartbeat of it always died. It was an invasion she'd have to endure. She had invaded first. She braced herself while he scrutinized the painting. He'd expect factual recording. He might even hate it.

“You are a crazy woman—”

“I most certainly am not. It's what I feel about this pole.”

“To stand by this pole all day, you are. Nobody with a brain in his head come near this pole this time of year.”

“Why?”

He tipped his head toward the bog. “ 'Squitoes.”

“I know.” She pointed to the curious top figure. Instead of a beak, it had an unwieldy encumbrance, a long narrow prong, long enough to bite through thick clothing. “A monster mosquito.”

Henry's laugh bubbled up from his belly. “That's not a mosquito. That's a woodpecker. Mosquito has only long . . .” He touched his mouth and then extended his arm. “No body. Just . . .” He made his hand look like a jaw opening and clamping shut.

She laughed until thunder rumbled.

“Why you want to make pictures of poles?”

It wasn't an idle question. The wrong answer might cost his permission and she'd have to leave. His cocked head conveyed genuine curiosity.

“Because I love even what I don't understand. Because they show a connection. Trees and animals and people. I want white people and your grandchildren's children to see this greatness.”

He seemed to be considering his reply. “Tonight you stay in my house. It will rain again.”

Warmth rushed over her. “Thank you.”

He shook his hand, blurry with mosquitoes, and reached out to pet Billy behind his ears before he left.

• • •

Hours later, Henry stood in his doorway waiting. “This is my wife, Mrs. Douse. A Nisga'a chief.”

“Hello. And thank you,” Emily said.

Mrs. Douse was a mountain of a woman whose arms barely crossed over her bosom. The skin at her throat hung like a turkey and her hair was plaited into a single braid. But it was her strong nose and no-nonsense eyes framed by crow's feet that proclaimed her the matriarch, a native Queen Victoria. She spoke no English, or didn't choose to, gave orders from a carved settee piled with blankets, and followed Emily with her eyes.

“You sleep here,” Henry said as he brought Emily into a separate room, bare but for a white-style open coffin in the center. “No worry. Empty. It's for me someday. See?” He climbed in, lay down, bent his elbows out to measure the width. “A little tight. I think I'm getting too fat. I had another, but my friend died, and so I gave him it.”

Emily didn't know whether to laugh or commend his generosity. “Well, I won't bother it. I'll sleep over here against the wall.” In the corner she found her tent and bedroll folded neatly next to her food box.

“No worry about my wife either. She doesn't like men come to take poles to museums. Last year men from Ottawa bought her father's pole from her brother. Paid cheap. Her brother went to Hazelton and spent it all. One big drunk and that was that.”

“So she sent you out to . . . ?” His scowl told her not to ask, told her she'd been argued about. Being linked with the likes of that oily buyer on the riverboat made her face burn. Somehow, she'd won Henry's trust. “Thank you,” she whispered.

• • •

Luther didn't come on the third day, or the fourth, which worried her about getting back. The hope of Claude waiting faded into disappointment. By mid-morning of the fifth day, she'd eaten everything in her food box, and had shared her last apple with Henry's small grandson. She was sitting on a stump in front of the house eating Billy's biscuits when Luther drove up.

“I thought you'd forgotten me,” she said.

Apparently he didn't think an apology was necessary.

Mrs. Douse came to the doorway and spoke rapidly to Henry.

“She wants to see all the pictures,” Henry said.

“Now?”

“Luther will wait.” He turned to Luther. “She makes pictures
with her hands, not with a box.” He pantomimed looking through a camera.

“All right. A show! Dandy.”

Then she remembered. The distortion. They'd think she made mistakes. Apprehensively, she tacked them all to trees, more than twenty of them. The few people left in the village came out to see. They touched the sketches, smelled the watercolors.

“Hailat,”
they murmured.
“Hailat.”

“What's that mean?” she asked Henry.

He held up his hands and wiggled his chubby fingers. “Person with spirit power in the hands.”

She could hardly swallow. “That's a generous thing to say.”

Luther examined each painting, turning them over to see if the backs of the poles were on the back of the paper.

Emily laughed. “I was afraid I would run out of paint if I painted the backs too.”

“You need to go to Haida Gwaii,” Henry said. “Far islands. You call them the Queen Charlottes. Poles are different there.”

“How are they different?”

“You go see. If you spoke truth about painting poles before they're gone, you'll go to Haida Gwaii.” He gave her a steady look. “Here we live with our poles. Some of us always stay in fishing season. We guard them. They don't on Haida Gwaii.” He turned away from his wife. “Tanu, Skedans, some of the best villages have nobody left. Nobody to watch the poles.”

“Nobody living there? Why?”

“Because what the
Pasisiuks
brought.”

“Pasisiuks?”

“White people. Measles here. Some other thing there.”

Having to be told this made her feel ignorant.

“Haida poles need you. Now.”

That struck her with the force of a solemn drumbeat. No one had ever said that she or her work was needed.

“They can teach you something.”

Looking at the watercolor of Frog Woman, Mrs. Douse spoke several sharp words to Henry in Gitksan.

“That pole belongs to my wife's family,” he said.

“It's a wonderful pole, so full of humor and life.”

“My wife wants that you leave the painting with her.”

Emily stifled a groan. She'd only done one of Frog Woman.

Mrs. Douse squinted at Frog Woman's eyes, which Emily had enlarged to show the babies' faces in the mother's pupils. Mrs. Douse's expression softened, as though she were seeing herself looking at her children. Henry turned from his wife to give her time with the painting. Mosquitoes swarmed around all of them. No one moved to brush them away.

Luther looked at Emily and tipped his head toward Mrs. Douse, as if to give Emily a sign. Right here in Kitwancool was perhaps the most important person ever to want one of her paintings.

“It's not a good one. Tell her I will paint a bigger, better one on a board with paint that will last. I will send it to her at the Hudson's Bay post in Kitwanga.”

She knew that was asking more than mere permission to paint in the village. It was asking for trust.

Mrs. Douse aimed her eyes with their dark eye pouches at her. Layer by layer, as though peeling an onion, Mrs. Douse was judging her character, right down to her vitals. Emily wanted to scratch her neck where a mosquito had feasted, but no one else moved. She stood still until Mrs. Douse turned to her and nodded, shaking decisively the loose skin under her chin.

Emily nodded back, a ceremony of agreement, and then nodded to Henry, with another meaning. Haida Gwaii. She would try.

Emily offered a five-dollar bill to Luther for the ride back.

He shook his head. “One five-dollah, two ways.”

He let her ride with him on a plank resting on empty oil drums. It slid whenever they went around a bend, and once she fell off. After that she sat in the wagon bed facing into the sun, holding on to Billy, scratching through her blouse. She waved away mosquitoes until her arms ached and she gave up. Billy scratched too.

“Mean little devils, eh?”

Billy scratched harder in agreement.

At every lurch of the wagon her head throbbed. Seven hours and nothing to support her back. She felt achy, thirsty, feverish. Watching ruts in the dirt road stream out from under the wagon bed, she entered Kitwanga backward. Billy leapt off the wagon as soon as it stopped.

“Mademoiselle Courageuse!” she heard behind her, and turned to see Claude with his arms raised, wagging his head.

“I'm no more courageous than a bowl of jelly. I've just been jostled to kingdom come.”

“But you've been to Kitwancool and back.”

“Did you turn to stone right here in the road? This is exactly where I left you.”

“I went to Hazelton.” He rested his hand on the laces of her men's hunting boot. “If you hadn't come back today, I would have set out to find you.”

“If I hadn't come back today, you wouldn't have recognized me. I've been attacked by an army of carnivores. Every mosquito in Kitwancool cut its teeth on my flesh.”

“Your face is pocked like a giant strawberry.” He reached up with both hands and helped her down. Her legs buckled under her, but he kept her from falling.

She thanked Luther, who nodded an acknowledgment while Claude unloaded her gear.

“What you need is a hot bath and a steaming fish dinner, but
La Renarde Rouge
only has enough fuel right now to take care of one thing. Which will it be?”

Bath? Her hair was matted and dirty, but on the deck? The mere thought—

“Supper. I'm already a blazing furnace.”

“Ah, you're hot, mademoiselle?” His eyebrows popped up.

“I mean, from the sun, the mosquitoes.” She fanned her face. “Supper.”

“Then you're hungry,
oui?
”

His grin told her he knew he'd trapped her again.

She grinned back. “Painting hard requires food. I worked hard. The carvings were marvelous.”

“It's you who is marvelous.”

They carried her gear to his boat. She landed on the deck with an “Oof,” off balance, arms flailing, dropping her gear. Far from a marvelous maneuver. Billy whined on the riverbank.

“Convince yourself, Billy. I can't carry you across.”

“Does he like mush?”

“After a week of doggie hardtack, mush would be caviar. To both of us.”

Claude produced a pot of leftover mush from the top of the boiler, waved it in front of Billy's nose, grasped his collar and urged him across. “See? Monsieur Bill likes
La Renarde Rouge.
” He poured water from a skin bag, set the pot down for Billy, and arranged some pelts for her on deck.

“Tonight we put them below deck for you, with mink too, yes? For me, the skiff. A promise. But now, take a little nap. I'll be right back.” He kissed her on both cheeks, his beard smelling of tobacco, his brown eyes bright with anticipation.

She lay down with a groan, positioning her face in the shade cast by the tin hat on the stovepipe. Every joint creaked. Now if she could only stop scratching. She closed her eyes and let the boat's motion lull her. Did she really know what sort of a man Claude was? What he had in mind ought to make her nervous, but it didn't. She had no energy for nerves. If he mentioned her running out of his tent in Vancouver, should she tell him that she'd come back that next morning after he'd left?

No.

He'd called her marvelous. How could this man be attracted to her? She was graceless, fat around the middle, not dainty like Alice, or statuesque like Clara. Apparently there weren't many beauties of the two-legged variety in the wilderness. Was what she'd eliminated from her life, with acceptance, suddenly plopping into her lap?

His heavy foot jostled the boat and she jerked upright. One by one, he lifted his purchases out of a gunny sack—two fish, a cauliflower, potatoes, bannock bread, an Indian squash, and two large, dark, unlabled bottles. “Indian brown ale. The finest in the wilderness. Don't move. I cook for you.”

She leaned back against the furs with a sigh. She must have been holding her back and shoulders tense for five days. Having someone—
him—cook for her, take care of her, melted her stiffness. The trip was harder than she had anticipated.