‘What have you done to us? What has the white man done to our young?’ and they waded into the icy water and climbed into the canoe, and because, to keep them here, someone had removed the outboard motor, one of the old men poled into the centre of the river where the current took them, the paddles lifting and falling. Not even Keetah looked back.
They were larger than themselves. They belonged to the great and small hegiras of the self-exiles of this earth, clinging fiercely to a way that is almost gone, as the last leaves fall at last gently and with great pride.
‘What have you done to us?’
The words lingered in the wind, in the spruce, in the drizzle that had begun to fall, and Mark turned from them in pain and saw old Marta. He said, ‘Marta, what can I do?’ and she said, ‘You can wait,’ and he stumbled past her and up the path and into the church.
That evening he wrote the Bishop and when the answer came two weeks later, he took it to the church, afraid to open it. Had he failed? Was it his fault?
The letter was short : ‘I think it is time you knew of Tagoona, the Eskimo. Last year one of our white men said to him, “We are glad you have been ordained as the first priest of your people. Now you can help us with their problem.” Tagoona asked, “What is a problem?” and the white man said, “Tagoona, if I held you by your heels from a third-storey window, you would have a problem.” Tagoona considered this long and carefully. Then he said, “I do not think so. If you saved me, all would be well. If you dropped me, nothing would matter. It is you who would have the problem.” ‘
10
IN THE COLD, BLUSTERY DAYS of February and March, when the men could not pursue the fish and the game, the life of the tribe turned in upon itself. The faces, once so much the same, grew clearly defined. Even Mark’s ear had begun its attunement to the strange tongue. One weekday when the men were away clamming, and the younger matrons gathered at Marta’s house to make new altar cloths, he dropped in to find them, heads bent on their work, talking softly in Kwákwala, and he realized, with almost a sense of shock, that the words no longer sounded like the click of knitting needles, and that they were speaking of him.
‘Wait a minute,’ he said. ‘I didn’t say that at all,’ and they looked up startled, then burst out laughing, and never, never again did they discuss him in Kwákwala in his presence.
When Ellie, the lost one, slipped home to her father’s house before daylight, Mark knew now from whence she came, and when Ellie’s mother sat sewing with the other women, totally unresponsive, in her vague, sweet way, Mark knew also that she was probably in a drunken stupor because Sam had beaten her again.
Twice, when Mark did not need him on the boat, Jim left the village, and though he did not say so, Mark knew he had gone to see Keetah and the oldsters of her family.
‘And how is Keetah?’ he asked him.
‘I told her that some day she would marry me, and that I would build her a fine house with a pink bathtub. No woman in the tribe has seen a pink bathtub.’
‘And what did she say?’
‘She said I had no manners. She said when I want coffee, I bang on the table. She said I want a wife only to keep my house,’ and he laughed, then sobered.
‘She is worried about her sister. All the time she is worried. It is more than two months and there is no word of her. There is no word at all.’
‘I am going to Alert Bay to see if there is any way I can get Ellie away from her parents and into the residential school. We will ask the RCMP there to find the sister.’
In Alert Bay Mark visited the residential school and saw Gordon and the other children from the village who were there. At the headquarters of the RCMP Mark discussed the problem of Ellie with the sergeant in charge of the detachment, a man past middle age and wise, and from him Mark learned that to take Ellie from her parents without their consent was not easy. Then Mark told the sergeant about Keetah’s sister, the older man listening carefully and without interruption.
‘It is possible the man learned of the giant mask from some dealer who had tried to buy it,’ he said. ‘The dealers have a genius at knowing when the fishing is poor, which family is needy. With the Indians it is easy come, easy go. This goes back to the days of the great potlatches. They do not budget what they have, and even when times are excellent, they get into debt. It is then the dealers pick up their best carvings.’
‘I cannot believe the girl had any part of it. Her family is one of the finest in the village.’
‘Then there was trouble when she found out about it. I’ll watch for her. I doubt if the man has married her. When he tires of her, she will be alone in a world for which she has no preparation. I’ll find her.’
In late March the tribe prepared for the coming of the óolachon, the candlefish, a season so deep in the tradition of the people that all the taboos and superstitions were remembered, and followed. No pregnant woman must cross the river. No body must be transported upon it. The chief of the tribe must catch the first fish.
On the night before the run began, there was a great feast in the social hall to which everyone came — except the schoolteacher, of course — and when the meal was done, the chief related the first myth of the óolachon : ‘And Khawadelugha, the older brother, built his house here at Kingcome and carved its house posts with human figures, and one day when he walked to the river’s edge he saw many small fish in the river and he was afraid. But the man who came from the moon said to him, “Fear not. This fish will come year after year, and it will be the great wealth of your tribe,” and the fish was the óolachon, and the older brother called his tribe the Tsawataineuk, which means the people of the óolachon country.’
T.P., the elder, related the second myth:
‘And one year the óolachon did not come, and the young laughed, and cared not. One of the old men painted his canoe red, and he paddled towards Knight’s Inlet until he came to Twin Falls where the óolachon were living. “What do you want?” asked the óolachon. “Come back to the river. Treat the young as they have treated me.” And the óolachon said, “Have you brought eagle feathers and goat fat?” “Yes, I have them here.” “Then return to your river and prepare your nets,” and the old man did so, and the good members of the tribe filled their nets with óolachon, but the nets of the bad ones broke.’
The next day the men placed their nets in the river, gathering them in by canoe, and the brailing began, shoulders lifting and falling, and the air filled with the mewing of thousands of gulls, and the little children leaning over the bank to catch fish in tins.
The males who came up the shallow side of the river were dried on V-frames, smoked and canned. But the females, richer in fat, who came up the far, deep side of the river were rendered into gleena in huge wooden vats over a small slow fire. Day after day after day it lasted, and when Mark escaped on the boat to another village, he found the odour had permeated his clothes and went with him, and when he returned and the rendering was over, it lingered.
One day the RCMP sergeant came unexpectedly up the river in a small boat, and Mark saw him from the vicarage and went to the river’s edge to meet him.
‘I’ve been dreading that smell all day,’ said the RCMP officer cheerfully. ‘It’s just as bad as I remembered it. You know, when I was younger — and considerably more stupid — I came once to take pictures of the óolachon fishing. I knew the Indians did not permit pictures, but I figured they couldn’t stop me.’
‘And did they?’
‘Oh, no, they were polite. They welcomed me. They helped me back to my boat. But you know, in doing so, one of the young men managed to drop my Camera in the river. All the way down the path to the float I was sure I could hear them laughing, and when I got home I found I had to bury my uniform and pay for a new one myself.’
Mark led him to the vicarage, put on the coffee pot and prepared sandwiches, and when they had finished lunch at the kitchen table — the rain pattering on the roof — the sergeant took a photograph from his
pocket.
‘Is this the girl? Look at it carefully.’
Mark did so.
‘Yes. There’s no doubt about it. This is Keetah’s sister.’
‘The man didn’t marry her. When she found out about the mask, she objected, I suppose. He left her in Vancouver, penniless, and he disappeared. I don’t suppose she’d ever seen a paved street, or a train, or a telephone. There was no place for her to go, no work she was trained to do. She drifted to the only place where she was welcome.’
‘A beer parlour?’
‘Yes. The money men paid her kept her alive. No one knew to what tribe she belonged. Even if she’d had the money to charter a plane, I suppose she would have been ashamed to return to her village. Soon she was taking dope — it’s what is apt to happen — and one night she took too much, deliberately, probably, though we’ll never know. You’re sure of the identification?’
‘Yes, I’m sure, but I’d like Jim to see the picture also. He’s not here today.’
‘Dead in three months — well, it doesn’t take long. You’ll tell the family?’
‘I’ll have Jim tell them.’
Mark went with the sergeant to the river’s edge and watched his boat head downstream to the inlet. He did not know that when he turned back in his own eyes was the depth of sadness which he had begun to understand.
11
WITH SPRING THE LEADEN SKIES BROKE, the winds lightened, the rains softened, and the eagles and the robins returned to the village. High in the skyways wild geese called exultantly on their first early passages back from the south, the wise old crow cawed over the river, his wings flapping loosely and slowly, and the sleek black raven, who stayed all year, nested in the tall alders.
With spring the first buds began to swell, and the fresh green needles of the spruce. The bracken and the fern reached out the tips of tender fronds, the devil’s club put out small new leaves for the deer to nibble, and the bears emerged from their dens, thin, blinking in the light. In May all the men readied the boats for the fishing, and the banks were piled with gill-nets to be mended, their white and green floats fresh with paint.
In May the boats left to gig for halibut, Mark and Jim accompanying them for two days’ fishing in Knight’s Inlet, a wild, lovely and lonely land, the boat rolling in the tidal sweep, the seals disputing each fish. When Mark and Jim returned to the village, they brought with them an orphaned baby seal, who repaid his bottle feedings by dusting the floors of the vicarage carefully with his flippers. When he was old enough, Mark taught him to swim in the river and let him go.
In June the men of the tribe went north to gill-net for salmon in River’s Inlet. Now Mark was busier in the village than he had ever been, picking up the freight, the mail, the supplies; handling any accident or emergency that occurred in the village.
One night in early June he awakened to the sound of feet running on the path, to the calling of his name and fists pounding on the door.
‘Come quickly — come quickly.’
He pulled on his pants and his shoes in the dark, and snatched his jacket, and followed the Indian who had come to summon him into the night to the house of Gordon’s mother, up the steps and in the door.
All the relatives waited in the front room, the dark eyes of the children big with wonder. Mark pushed past them and went into the bedroom.
On a blood-soaked bed lay Gordon’s mother. At forty-six she had borne her sixth child, which Marta held wrapped in a blanket. All the other births had been normal, and although the native midwife was absent from the village, no difficulty had been expected. But this was a breech birth. This was abnormal, and even Marta was afraid to have anything to do with the abnormal because of the RCMP. ‘She is bleeding to death,’ Marta said, ‘and there is no time to get help.’
Mark took the woman’s cold hand. The nails were white, the face ashen, and the eyes fixed on his face. He bent to her.
‘Help Gordon get an education,’ she whispered. ‘He will need it.’
‘I will.’
He held her hand until she died, and she died quietly and quickly. Then Marta cleared the front room of the relatives, and gathered the woman’s children to the bedside where Mark said the Lord’s Prayer.
Then they closed the bedroom door, because nothing could be done until the RCMP came, and they undressed the children and put them to bed. In the early dawn Mark and Jim went down the river to the boat to summon the police by radio-telephone and to send word of the death to the fishing boats in River’s Inlet, so that the male relatives would come, stopping first at Alert Bay for the box in which to bury her.
When Mark returned to the village he noticed there were no professional wailers with scratched faces and he asked Marta why.
‘She did not want them.’
The RCMP came in the late afternoon by boat. He was the constable who had come for the weesa-bedó, as cold as the first time. Mark showed him the body and called the relatives that he might take the statement of each. When the questions were all asked and the statements signed, the constable issued the burial permit and left.
Then he and Marta were alone in the bedroom with the ugliness of death.
‘Marta, what do we do now?’ and she told him. Mark closed the eyes, straightened the limbs and packed the orifices of the body against further seepage. He and the men of the family carried the body into the tiny vestry of the church, and Marta and the women bathed it, powdered it, and dressed it in its best clothes, and when the box came from Alert Bay, they put the body in it, closed it, and they placed it by the golden eagle, by the Christ with the dark, sad eyes holding the little lamb.
Everyone in the village shared the death. Here death could not be hidden or pushed aside. Here death was normal. The women were busy in their kitchens preparing food for the relatives and the guests who would come from the other villages. Two canoes, spliced together, bore the coffin carefully up the river. The older men went to the new burial ground, a mile from the village, to dig the grave, and the older boys followed them, cutting away the bracken, the devil’s club, that had grown over the narrow path. Even the small children went into the woods to seek wild flowers and green fern fronds which the younger women needed for the wreaths. The older women swept and dusted the church. And Jim and Peter, the carver, made the long trip to the residential school to bring Gordon.
On the morning of the funeral Mark tolled the bell, and the tribe gathered in the church for the service. When it was over, he left the church first, leading the way down the aisle, down the steps to the path that led through the deep woods to the new burial ground. Behind him six men carried the burial box, another six following to take their places when they tired. Behind them, single file, came the tribe.
Sometimes the path was so narrow that the men who carried the box had to tilt it, manoeuvring it carefully through the trees, and in deep shadowy woods there were puddles that never dried, and here Mark held up his cassock and felt on his bare head the wet drops that fell from the dark firs from the last rain. An eagle accompanied them, soaring and returning in great, wide arcs, and once they surprised a doe and her little fawn. The doe carefully nudged the fawn off the path, keeping herself between it and them. When the path made a turn, Mark looked back and saw the tribe stretched through the cedar and the hemlock coming slowly and silently, except for the footfalls on the soft duff.
Thus he went, the air fresh from rain and filled with the sweet smell of fir, the sky blue and white with cloud. On the top of Whoop-Szo above the timber line, snow lay waiting for the warm suns of July to send it sliding downwards with a rumble that would fill the village. And it seemed to Mark that death belonged here as the mountains belonged, as the eagle belonged, and the little scurrying squirrels that peered at him from the fir boughs. And it seemed to him that the ugliness of death was as unimportant here as the fir needles which made the path soft beneath his feet, or last year’s windfall in the thick underbrush.
When Mark led the
way into the glade of the new burial ground, the six men set down the box, the tribe gathering quietly in a circle around it. The committal was brief, and when Mark had said the last words, ‘Rest eternal grant unto her, O Lord, and let light perpetual shine on her,’ each man of the tribe helped fill the grave with a spade of earth while the women sang in Kwákwala the first hymns the tribe had been taught sixty-five years before.
Then the wreaths were placed on the grave. T.P., the elder, stepped forward. He spoke in the ancient Elizabethan Kwákwala and the children, tugging at their parents, asked, ‘What does he say?’ and though Mark did not ask him, Jim translated.
‘He says she was a mother of the tribe. She spoke little and only when asked, and the men listened to her counsel.... He says she was one of the first to choose her own husband ... and he says that her husband, as a boy, was the first to have shoes, and that he hung them on a tree for all to see but did not wear them.... And he says she was good.’
Mark walked back to the village with Gordon and when the path widened enough that they could walk side by side, they talked briefly.
‘Now I will have to come home and care for my brothers and sisters, and for the new one.’
‘No — I have given this much thought. The older ones will go to the residential school where you can be with them. The younger children we will care for here, and the new one also. Your mother wanted you to get an education. I told her I would help you.’
The next morning Mark stepped from the vicarage into the first lovely day of summer. Sitting on a log near the river’s edge was Marta, the small boy and girl who had been his first friends kneeling at her feet. As he approached he could hear her singing to them in Kwákwala.
Wake up, small daughter, wake up.
The sun is high and the tide is out.
All the other children are playing in the water.
I Heard The Owl Call My Name Page 6
