I Heard The Owl Call My Name

by Margaret Craven

  Mark went over him carefully.

  ‘I think you’ve broken a hip, Calamity. What you need is a trip to Alert Bay. If the hospital ship’s close enough, she’ll take you, and if she’s too far to get here, I’ll take you.’

  ‘Damn waste of money. First thing they’d do is take off my red long-johns and I’d die of pneumonia.’ And Mark asked of himself, ‘And what do you think you’re doing now?’

  While Mark built the fire, Jim sent out an emergency on the radio-telephone, but the hospital ship was too far away to come and the gale warnings were out and the straits too rough to cross. But it didn’t matter. It was too late for help and Mark knew it, and Calamity knew it also.

  Mark sat beside the cot.

  ‘I ain’t much of a church man, Mark. Guess you might say I’m an agnostic. I don’t know.’

  ‘There’s a good bit of agnostic in all of us, Calamity. None of us knows much – only enough to trust to reach out a hand in the dark.’

  ‘Under my pillow there’s a map of Knight’s Inlet. I put a cross on the place where I cut trees once. I always thought that when it was my time to conk out, I’d kind of like my ashes—’

  ‘I’ll do it, Calamity. It’s a promise.’

  ‘Don’t say no fine words about me; we’ll both know they’re lies. Do it in the spring, on some fine day.’

  Mark sat by Calamity through the deep night, until the hand he held slipped from his, and the period be­tween breaths grew longer and longer. At dawn the old hand-logger sighed deeply and was done. Then Mark covered the body with a blanket and returned to the boat to catch the first weather report, which pro­mised that by noon the straits might be navigable. By radio-telephone he managed at last to reach his friend, the sergeant, and tell him what had happened, and ask permission to bring the body of Calamity for cremation, and this he was given. Then he lay down for a few hours’ sleep.

  When he awakened and went out on deck to check, the weather had improved somewhat. He stepped again into one of those small unforgettable events he had come to expect. The skeletal crew in the nearest camp had picked up the news of Calamity’s death on the radio-telephone and, feeling it unseemly that he go on his last journey tied in an old tarpaulin, they had put together a proper box to hold him.

  There were six men in all in two small boats, and a third boat bringing the couple from the float store, who had picked up the news also and come to help, the wife with an old suit of her husband’s folded over the arm because she was sure that at last she was going to part Calamity from his red long-johns and send him to his Maker suitably garbed. But when Mark and Jim had caught the lines and she held out the suit without a word, Mark shook his head.

  ‘Calamity wouldn’t be separated from them in life,’ he said gently, ‘and I don’t think he’d want to change now,’ and for an instant a bit of laughter rose in the solemn eyes beneath the knit caps in all the toughened faces, and was instantly squelched.

  Two of the loggers helped put Calamity in the box, and carry it to the aft of the boat, and lash it down. Then Mark put on his cassock and said for Calamity a few very simple prayers. After the blessing Jim struck eight bells to mark the end of the watch and loosed the line, and Calamity started his last rough journey to what he had always called the happy logging country.

  When they had moved well out from the float where the last of a southwesterly funnelled up the inlet, Mark looked back to see the small group still standing on the little float on the snowy inlet side.

  He never passed the float on patrol that he did not say a small prayer for the old-timer and remembered his promise.

  ‘In the spring, Calamity. On the first fine day.’

  18

  IN THE LONG WINTER NO ONE ASKED, ‘How does it go with Keetah?’ One afternoon when Mark stopped at Marta’s house on some small errand, he found her sitting by her fire, knitting a heavy grey Indian sweater, a polar bear in white on the back, and he asked, ‘Is it for me?’ and Marta answered, ‘Not this time. It is for Keetah.’

  ‘You think she will return?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘By choice, and not by defeat?’

  ‘Yes, Mark, by choice,’ and Marta’s soft dark eyes searched his long and carefully, and she said no more.

  Keetah returned on a windy, bleak March day. She flew to Gilford village and one of the tribe, returning to Kingcome for the weekend from the clamming, brought her to the float.

  She came up the river sitting very straight on the narrow cross-piece of the canoe, and when it reached the beach in front of the vicarage, she did not let the men carry her to the bank. She took off her city shoes, stepped out into the cold water and waded ashore, standing motionless on the black sands of her village, turning slowly to look at Whoop-Szo rising across the river, at Kingcome mountain back of the village.

  From the vicarage, Mark heard the smaller children run to greet her, and Marta also, and he went to the window to watch, and he knew Keetah was no longer the shy, sweet, young girl who had wept at the end of the swimmer. Keetah had returned a woman.

  That evening Mark waited in the vicarage for Keetah’s knock, sure she would come to tell him of Gordon, of Caleb, of all that had happened to her in the great outside world. She did not come; no one knocked on the vicarage door, and the next day he saw her only at a distance.

  On Sunday morning Keetah was in her usual place, but when the service was over and Mark stood at the door, shaking each hand, ‘And how was the clamming at Gilford?’ — ‘And has the part for your boat come yet, Sam?’ — she slipped away without a word.

  He waited and asked no questions, not even of Jim. For the first time since the death of the woman by breech birth, it seemed to him that again the dark eyes watched him cautiously. Kcetah had returned to her people, and they knew why and accepted her as if she had not been away, but would he? It was Mark they doubted and he realized, suddenly, even yet he did not know them — perhaps no white man would ever know them — and he knew they knew him better than he did himself.

  On Saturday morning two weeks after Keetah’s re­turn, Mark carried a load of firewood to the church as was his custom, and when he had placed it in the wood box, he turned to see Keetah standing quietly by the golden eagle, and he went to her slowly and held out his hands.

  ‘I knew you’d come. You have been afraid I would not approve because you have returned to the village. Is that not it? Oh, Keetah, do you trust me so little?’ And he sat down in the first pew and she beside him, but it was a long time before she spoke.

  Caleb had been kind to her. Everyone had been kind to her. Caleb had found her a place to live and work for her board and room while she went to school. The woman of the house had been afraid at first because she had never known an Indian girl, and she had asked, ‘Is she dirty? Will she steal?’ and the woman had spoken to her as if she were in child. ‘You must take two baths a week. You must be in the house every night by half-past seven,’ though the woman had never helped with birth or death, and would have been afraid to do so. At school she had not belonged. She was older than the others, and even the two younger Indian girls had said of her, ‘What is the old one doing here?’

  Keetah spoke haltingly, never once lifting her eyes. Then she stood up slowly, and Mark also.

  ‘I could not sleep. I could not eat. I missed my village. I missed my gleena and my fish dishes. At night I dreamed of the black sands of Kingcome and of the mountains. The world swallowed me, and I knew I could not stay there because my village is the only place I know myself.’

  ‘The world is here also, Keetah.’

  ‘Each day I saw my Gordon grow more and more like the white man until even in church the white girls said, “Who is that good-looking boy?” I am too Indian for Gordon now and I know it and he knows it. He will marry a white girl who can do more for him than I can do, or he will marry an Indian girl who has lived out­side since she was very small. I lost my sister to death. I have lost Gordon to life, and this is harder. But ther
e is something harder yet.’

  ‘To come home, Keetah?’

  ‘Yes, to come home to the village I love. It is the same. I am not. I have seen how the white man treats his woman. He shares his pleasures and even his work. He does not marry her and leave her to fish. Now I know what Gordon knew long ago. To be an Indian in my own village is to be free as no white man is ever free, and it is to live behind a wall. I did not tell Gordon I was returning, but I think he knew. Sometimes, when he was not working at his books, we walked away from the town through the trees and into the woods. I stayed until I was sure that when I came home I would bear his child.’

  ‘To hold him — to make him marry you — to force him to return?’

  ‘No! He does not know. He will not return for many years, and when he does, no one will tell him. Not to hold him. To let him go. To keep a part of him here in his village with his own people so they can last, so I, too, can live.’

  Then she waited, her eyes fixed on his.

  What she had done was logical to her, and if he told her it was wrong, he would destroy her.

  ‘What you have done is strange to me, but I think I understand it. You will grow over the wall. You will remain as long as the village lasts, and someday you will take Marta’s place and become one of the great women of your tribe, and I shall always be proud of you.’

  That night, over supper, Mark said to Jim, ‘Keetah is going to have Gordon’s child. Did you know?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And does this change you?’

  ‘A child is always welcome,’ Jim said. ‘When I marry her, her child will be mine.’

  19

  ON A SUNDAY IN LATE MARCH there occurred another of those small unforgettable happenings Mark had grown to expect. The snow had gone. Day after day the rain had fallen patiently. When Mark shook up the fire in the big round stove and rang the church bell, he noticed that the leaden sky, which had overhung the village all winter long, seemed less dark and gloomy. During the communion service, just as he spoke the old, old words, ‘Therefore, with Angels and Archangels and with all the company of heaven,’ bright light suddenly filled the church and all the bowed heads lifted to see the sun glistening on the snows that crowned Whoop-Szo and it seemed to Mark that he felt the burden of the winter lift as from a common shoulder, and heard the sigh of gratitude rise from a common heart.

  When the service was over, the tribe poured slowly from the church, lingering in little groups on the path by the Cedar man at the foot of the great totem.

  ‘How thin we are,’ said old Peter. ‘We are like the bear when he leaves his den, and stands blinking in the light.’

  They all agreed, nodding that the cruel winter had been hard on them all. Then T. P., the elder, grand­father of Gordon, went up the steps of the church, lifted his arm and cried, ‘Quiet. Be still. I have some­thing to say of importance. When the clamming is done, and the fishing has not yet begun, while we are waiting for the óolachon, I am giving a dance-potlatch for Jim, my grand-nephew, to pass to him the rights, the ceremonies of my family. All our tribe is invited and our relatives in other villages, and there will be a feast and gifts for all.’

  One of the older men, distantly related, climbed the steps also to stand beside the old man, and he said to T. P.: ‘If it is pleasing to you, my branch of the family will give a feast also in honour of your family, and we will dance in honour of your nephew.’

  ‘It will please me.’

  Now everyone began to laugh and to talk in Kwákwala, the young women drawing around Mrs Hudson, who would undoubtedly be asked to estimate the food which must be brought in by boat and to help choose the gifts. The younger men formed another group, and the older men a third.

  ‘We will have at least three hundred people in the village. How will we feed them?’

  ‘Let us do the Dog Dance. Let us do dances that were created here in our own village.’

  ‘Then we must check the masks. We must make sure the strings work properly so the fins of the fish can move and the mouths open.’

  Under a green spruce Marta stood by herself, her eyes on the young vicar. How thin and white he was How long had it been there — that look on his face she had seen many times in her long life and knew well? It was not the hard winter that had placed it there. It was death reaching out his hand, touching the face gently, even before the owl had called the name.

  While the others were still talking of the potlatch, Marta returned to her house and slowly, and with much care, she wrote a letter to the Bishop:

  ‘My lord, it is your friend, Marta Stephens, who keeps her promise now. When T. P., the elder, gives a pot­latch for Jim Wallace you come. It is time you come then. God bless you.’

  For three weeks the village was busier than Mark had ever seen it, except during the building of the new vicarage. At night in the social hall the elder men checked the masks. After school the children practised the dance steps at their play. The younger men cleaned the big house, built plank seats for the visitors who had been asked, and gathered wood for the great fire which would burn in the middle of the dirt floor.

  Mrs Hudson checked the ceremonial robes to be sure the abalone shells and the ancient buttons were still sewed tight, and she and the women of Jim’s and Gordon’s families made two trips to Alert Bay for the gifts and food.

  At last all was ready. The gill-netters and the seiners began to arrive at the float from the other villages, and hour after hour the canoes moved up and down the river bringing the guests. When the last canoe arrived two of the Indians stepped into the cold water in their Kingcome slippers and carried the Bishop ashore and a little whisper of excitement ran through the spruce, as the children spread the news. ‘The Bissop is here. The Bissop has come.’

  That night there was a great feast in the social hall. Then the tribe walked to the big house where T. P. and his family greeted the guests and seated them. Then there was nothing in all the world but the shadows of the carved house posts, the swirling ermine-tailed robes, the flickering of the great fire; no sound but the beat of the drums, the rhythm of the rattles, the chanting of the songs. Mark and the Bishop sat to the right of the fire in the place of honour and saw the Dance of the Fish and the Dog Dance. They saw Jim do the dance of the angry man lost in the woods; his bird mask was so big that another dancer had to guide him lest he fall ‘in the fire. It was all that was left of the famous hamatsa.

  At dawn when the dancing was done and the guests served refreshments, gifts of linen, towels and shirts were distributed, and at the end as the guests left, each was handed a bright silver dollar.

  On the second day there was another great feast and more dancing, and on the third morning the exodus began. When the canoes had taken the last guests down the river, the Bishop lingered in the quiet village. Once Mark saw him talking to Marta by the river’s edge. When he walked to the end of the village on an errand, he saw the Bishop sitting with Peter, the carver, on the porch of the last house. In the late afternoon he saw him go into the church by himself.

  ‘Something worries him. He has taken his problem into the church as I have done so many times, and put it down at the altar.’

  At dinner in the vicarage, the Bishop spoke little, and early next morning the two of them left the village in the speedboat to go to the float.

  When they entered the inlet, the Bishop motioned Mark to stop the engine.

  ‘Let’s not hurry,’ he said. ‘It’s so seldom I have a few hours to myself.’

  The breeze was gentle with the first promise of spring. They could see the float moored to the inlet side and beyond it they could see the jagged scar of the great slide.

  ‘Always when I leave the village,’ the Bishop said slowly, ‘I try to define what it means to me, why it sends me back to the world refreshed and confident. Always I fail. It is so simple, it is difficult. When I try to put it into words, it comes out one of those unc­tuous, over-pious platitudes at which Bishops are expected to excel.’
/>   They both laughed.

  ‘But when I reach here and see the great scar where the inlet side shows its bones, for a moment I know.’

  ‘What, my lord?’

  ‘That for me it has always been easier here, where only the fundamentals count, to learn what every man must learn in this world.’

  ‘And that, my lord?’

  ‘Enough of the meaning of life to be ready to die,’ and the Bishop motioned Mark to start the motor, and they went on.

  On the three-hour trip to the float store, they took turns at the wheel. Once the Bishop left the cabin and Mark could hear him in the galley banging the pots and pans. When he returned he carried a plate of sand­wiches and two mugs of coffee. When they came at last to the store, the two raccoons greeted him with their strange whirring sound, and the Bishop fed them the crusts.

  It was not until the seaplane set down on the water that the Bishop spoke.

  ‘I will begin at once to seek a replacement for you, Mark. Your work in the village is almost done. When I have found the right man to take your place, I shall write you, and when you come out, you will come to me.’

  ‘Yes, my lord.’

  20

  WHEN THE LITTLE SEAPLANE LIFTED and was gone, Mark turned back to his boat, checked the oil and water, and started to Knight’s Inlet to keep his promise to Calamity Bill. Already nothing looked the same because it was going to end, because he was going to leave it, and the thought filled him with a twinge of sudden anguish and the little, unexpected fear that precedes any big change, sad or joyous.

  How would he live again in the old world he had almost forgotten, where men throw up smokescreens be­tween themselves and the fundamentals whose existence they fear but seldom admit? Here, where death waited behind each tree, he had made friends with loneliness, with death and deprivation, and, solidly against his back had stood the wall of his faith.