The Spirit Keeper (30 page)

Hector’s smile was immediate and vastly amused. “My mother would kill anyone who beat me,” he said with certainty.

“What about your father? Did he beat you?”

Hector’s smile became a sneer. “My father would kill anyone who
threatened
to beat me.”

I stared into the fire for a long moment. “I can’t e’en imagine what that would be like,” I said, as much to myself as to Hector. “I honestly cannot imagine what it would be like to have parents who would protect me. Nobody e’er protected me from anything, ’til . . .” I looked up, our eyes met, and fire sizzled between us. “’Til you saved me.”

Hector looked off down the river. “Your father, he beat you, too?”

“My father was too . . .” There was no word in Hector’s language for “drunk,” so I said, “Too distracted to care much about his children. He did beat us, but it was different with him. Mother used to hit us all the time for no reason, but Father . . . he made a ritual of it, to teach us a lesson. If he caught one of us lying, for example, then he’d line us all up and beat us one at a time. It wasn’t easy, waiting for your turn. You had to watch the others get theirs, and you had to listen to them scream and cry, and you just knew that would soon be you.”

Hector was watching me openly now, as he’d ne’er done before, that look of sympathetic horror still shining in his eyes. “And did you learn not to lie, from his rituals?”

“No, I did not,” I said, keenly aware of just how dangerous this particular subject was. Still, I went on. “If anything, his beatings achieved the opposite effect. We learnt how to lie well enough not to get caught, and we learnt how to cover for each other when we did lie. We learnt how to be really good at lying.”

A shadow passed o’er Hector’s face. “Have you ever lied to me?” he asked.

I looked at him, trying to assess why he would ask such a question. My heart was pounding and my lips were dry. I lifted my chin. If this was it, so be it. I was ready. “Yes,” I said.

He smiled his half-smile. “If you had said no, I would have known you were lying.” He tipt his head as he shifted his eyes back to the ground. “But that was when you did not know me. Now that you know me, you will not lie to me anymore.”

I suddenly thought I might vomit. “But Hector—surely you’ve lied before. Everyone lies. You must have lied to your parents at one time or another. Didn’t you?”

Hector looked at me gravely as he said, “I would die before I would ever deliberately lie to my parents.”

“God in heaven!” I exclaimed in English before switching back to Hector’s language. “You’re a man of extreme views, aren’t you? Do you have any opinions that don’t end in someone dying or being killed?”

Hector smiled into the fire. “My parents gave me life. I respect them and honor them. I would not lie to them.” His eyes shifted up to me. “And I will not lie to you. Please do not lie to me.”

The warmth I had been feeling toward Hector iced o’er like a pond in winter. He really hated lies. If he e’er found out I had been lying to him all along about Syawa giving me his Spirit, I believed he might just kill me. After all, his people apparently responded to the slightest provocation with cold-blooded murder, and he himself just told me he was impulsive and violent. Besides, if e’er anyone deserved to be killed it was me.

I had ne’er liked myself very much. But at that moment on that riverbank I truly despised everything about myself and the world I’d grown up in. I was embarrassed, ashamed, and immeasurably sad. Hector was so open, so honest, so trusting. I suddenly understood the cruelest thing I could e’er do would be to encourage him to love me.

And so I resolved to leave him alone.

 • • •

A strange thing happened later that night. Hector unrolled his sleeping fur whilst I got the hatchet for my turn at watch, but instead of lying down as I expected, he went back to the fire and poked ’round it for a moment. He finally pulled out a small stick, the end of which was burning like a candle. He came to me and held that light up between us, nervous, as if afraid of the stick he held.

“What is it?” I asked, trying to see if there was something on the stick he wanted to show me. “Is something wrong?”

“I just wanted to see if you . . . if you want anything more,” he mumbled.

Puzzled, I stared at him and his stick and said no, no, I was fine, thanks—he could sleep now. I thought he must be remembering all the things I’d told him about my childhood and just wanted to make sure I was taken care of, which was such a sweet gesture I started to melt again. Then I remembered my resolution and forced myself to say no more, to smile no more, to resist the urge to throw myself on him and start rolling ’round in the mud.

He nodded and started to pull away, then held the glowing stick in front of me again. “You are sure?” he asked, moving the stick back and forth, as if daring me to take it.

“I think I’m sure,” I said, laughing in spite of myself.

When I laughed, he smiled and slipt away, tossing the glowing stick onto the fire. He crawled under the canoe and rolled himself in his sleeping fur. I shook my head at his strangeness and stared at his back.

I sighed and spent most of my watch that night imagining what would happen if I jumped on him and we began rolling ’round in the mud. Leaving him alone was going to be the hardest thing I’d e’er done.

 • • •

O’er the next few days I tried not to look at Hector if I could help it, but I couldn’t resist sneaking peeks whene’er he wasn’t looking my way. I responded if he spoke, but I did not trust myself to initiate a conversation, fearing I would become a stuttering simpleton again if he smiled. Luckily, we soon arrived at a village. When we told them of the ruffians, they were so outraged they didn’t e’en care about our other story—they just wanted to go after the outlaws. Someone who said he was related to Three Bulls gave Hector a new bow and arrows, to replace those he’d lost, and everyone assured us the people here would see to it the ruffians harassed no more travelers.

As we continued north, the river grew smaller, with portages growing more and more frequent. When I said I longed for a wagon to carry the canoe, Hector asked what I meant, and I explained it was like a canoe with wheels. I drew an example in the mud, but Hector thought it looked like more work to build such a thing than just to carry the canoe. I didn’t disagree, but still—I got sick of carrying that canoe.

Hector made new spears, and the fishing was as good or better than e’er. In the evenings we talked about our families. He told me his was a large one—an older brother and two sisters, one older, one younger. I smiled to myself as I said that before the attack on our farm, I had two sisters and three brothers who were older than me as well as two brothers and two sisters who were younger. I told him I couldn’t e’en remember how many others had died or how many stillbirths and miscarriages my mother had.

Hector was astounded, wondering if such an enormous family was normal amongst my people. I said it was. “But how do they feed all those children?” he asked.

“Not well,” I smiled ruefully. “Before I met you, I think I was hungry every day of my life.”

“Now you eat well.” It was a statement, not a question, said with a certain pride.

“Now I usually have too much to eat!” I declared, and he looked concerned ’til he realized I was teasing. “If I ate all the food you provide, I would be as big and fat as my old cow!” He tried not to smile, but I could see how this pleased him.

Oh, it was so hard not to put my arms ’round him and thank him for taking such good care of me! But I didn’t. I gritted my teeth and stared into the flames.

One evening he asked me to tell a story, and I considered my options. My people tell a lot of stories, from the Bible to fairy tales to histories to literature. Then I remembered my father’s all-time favorite story, the play we must perform at least once a year: Shakespeare’s
Hamlet
.

Hector leant back on one elbow, watching with his head cocked sideways in exactly the same pose he’d always assumed whene’er Syawa told a tale. I took a deep breath and started. I’ve read this play at least a dozen times, but it ne’er occurred to me before that evening how similar was my predicament to Hamlet’s. He was haunted by his father’s Spirit; I was haunted by Syawa’s. Hamlet and I both wrestled with guilt and uncertainty, and neither of us could figure out what was the right thing to do.

Hector was fascinated, right from the start. I began by summarizing the story and describing events, but before I knew it, I was pacing the riverbank, trying to translate the lines as I remembered them. I used different voices and mannerisms for the different characters, talking to myself or arguing, as the case required.

Hector watched me, but I tried not to look at him, for e’en his half-smile was intoxicating. He had to stop me during the “to be or not to be” soliloquy, because he wanted to know who Hamlet was talking to. When I said he was talking to himself, Hector asked if Hamlet was crazy. I laughed and said no—these were just thoughts going on inside his head which he had to say aloud or we wouldn’t know what he was thinking.

Satisfied, Hector sat back again and watched and listened. He got impatient with Hamlet’s indecision, but he loved the sword-fight in the end, when I used a stick as a sword and jumped back and forth between the characters. He considered each death with a frown of concentration.

When I was done, I bowed and sat down by the fire.

“That was a good story,” he said as he sat up to rest his arms on his knees. His dark eyes were warm as he studied my face. “Thank you for telling me.”

I nodded, smiling, but couldn’t look at him because I wanted so much to crawl o’er and kiss him. I’d always felt sorry for Hamlet, but now his problems seemed simple, compared to mine. All Hamlet had to do was avenge his father’s murder. I had to pretend to carry inside me the soul of a man I once loved so that his best friend, the man I was now hopelessly in love with, wouldn’t be alone.

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all.

 • • •

The next day we made camp early because we had seen some huge deer-like creatures run from the river and Hector was eager to try out his new bow and arrows. The deer—he had some other name for them—were so large I couldn’t imagine what we would do with all that meat, but naught I said could dissuade him, so off he went.

I set up camp and wandered about gathering herbs and roots as I found them. This was the first time I had been alone for any length of time since leaving my family’s farm—and e’en before then I was pretty much ne’er alone—so the sudden solitude was strange and more than a little unnerving.

My thoughts began swirling. I thought about Hector and how kind he was and how accepting he’d become and I thought about myself and what a liar I was and what a monster I was because on some level I secretly agreed with the Spanish ambassador in thinking the Indians were all like children and I was so much smarter than them—e’en Hector. The more I thought about it, the more I convinced myself I wasn’t really lying to Hector so much as I just couldn’t explain it all to him. If I couldn’t get him to understand what a wagon was, how could I get him to understand that a simple mistake in translation had led to this huge misapprehension between us? Hector would think I was saying he was stupid, but that wasn’t it at all. It was just that I couldn’t explain.

I thought of Syawa on his deathbed and his apparent inability to explain his thoughts. I was beginning to understand why it had been so difficult; translation requires something much more than just an exchange of words.

The sun set. I sat and waited for Hector. It got dark. I was still alone. More time passed. I added wood to the fire and paced the riverbank, holding the hatchet in my hand. The moon rose and moved steadily across the sky. I waited and waited, imagining all sorts of calamities that might have befallen my friend. I imagined a bear attacking him. Then a panther. Then the outlaws. I imagined a terrible accident befalling him, wherein he broke his leg or his arm or got his foot caught under a rolling rock. I imagined him lying out there somewhere, helpless and dying, with no one to protect him from blood-thirsty scavengers. I swung the hatchet back and forth as I paced, wishing I knew where he was and how to help him.

I heard a noise in the brush. I froze and peered in that direction. I heard another noise. I took a few steps that way, squinting through the darkness. I saw a shadow, then recognized Hector’s familiar walk as he approacht, carrying a large, heavy pack on his back.

I dropt the hatchet, cried out his name, ran to him, and threw my arms ’round him before I knew what I was doing. He dropt his pack and held me lightly, clearly very surprised. “I think you missed me,” he muttered as I presst my face hard into his neck.

“I did!” I laughed, pulling away, embarrassed. “I’m sorry, but I was so worried! You were gone so long!”

He covered his own embarrassment by kneeling before his bundle as he explained he had killed one of the big deer, but the pursuit had been long and tricky. “I kept asking myself, ‘Should I shoot my arrow or not?’” He opened the hide to display an unbelievable quantity of meat.

I looked down at him, baffled. He seemed quite serious as he added, “I finally shot my arrow and saw it hit, but then the deer said, ‘To be, or not to be . . .’ It took him a long time to decide not to be.”

I laughed, and as I got the full scope of the joke, I laughed more, and then more, and then more. I laughed so hard I actually had to sit on the ground, but Hector continued teasing me, saying the real delay was that he kept having all these complicated thoughts he had to stop and say out loud to himself.

“You did not!” I screamed, but he assured me he did, and after we began peeling the meat into thin strips, which we hung o’er a blazing fire, we each performed numerous silly soliloquies just to make the other laugh.

Neither of us slept that night, so we took turns sleeping most of the next day as well as the next night, whilst our meat dried. We were lucky no predators came to steal our meat because, during my turns at watch, I could do naught but stare at Hector’s sleeping form, remembering how good it felt when he held me in his arms. Oh, I wanted him to do that again . . .