The Forest Lover

by Susan Vreeland

  She was stunned a moment, and then ran after him. “What’s wrong?”

  He kept on walking, faster now, facing straight ahead. “Nothing. You should be proud.”

  She dropped back, letting him go. Had her painting made him leave? She returned to study it. Yes. It had promise. She had promise. She could do this. She wanted to leap and shout.

  A raven uttered a commanding kraaak, swooped over her head with an eerie kloo klak, and wheeled back into the forest. Strong talk. Approval, she hoped.

  • • •

  Other than wisps of vapor floating up the valleys, no rain or fog hid the forest and coastal villages on the trip home. Emily gripped the ship’s railing and couldn’t look away from the parade of poles slipping past, even to eat the apple and sandwich Alice was feeding her.

  “Too bad we can’t stop close to shore long enough to have a decent look.”

  “Whales a’starboard!” a crewman shouted.

  A fin broke the water, then a huge black body with white markings. Then two others, blowing out mist in breathy gushes.

  “There’s more over there,” Emily shouted.

  “Where?” Alice cried.

  Emily stood behind her to get the right angle and pointed. Alice gasped. They arced again in a slow, rhythmic gallop. First their rounded backs and fins broke the water, then their flanks, showing only part of their bulk at any one time. A moment later they flashed their flukes and dove, deep and long, all of them, and were gone.

  “And God created great whales,” Alice said in awe.

  “Mysterious things humble a person, don’t they?”

  She thought of the weird beauty of the whale totem. There were hundreds of poles just as mysterious that few people had ever seen, would probably never see. But paintings of them—that was something different. It was something she could do.

  She’d have to plunge into dark waters. Only part of the idea would be visible at any one time—a fluke, a flank, a fin—but the whole of it unfathomable. She felt the whales below pulling her, the forest nudging her, the totems tightening their grip on her.

  “I’m going to teach the children about Alaska next year,” Alice said.

  “You know, your life is fuller than you think. You have a mission, to teach all the ‘difficult’ children the public school can’t.” She linked her arm around Alice’s. “Now I have one too.”

  “I know. I knew when you didn’t come back until midnight.”

  “But it was still light. I was still painting.”

  “That didn’t mean I didn’t worry.”

  “I’m sorry.” She waited until Alice nodded her forgiveness. “Other than Hitats’uu, I haven’t found anything mysterious enough and true enough to help me say what I feel, but yesterday changed that.”

  “So, tell me. Your mission.”

  “To preserve the totem poles in paintings. That art is vanishing, Ted said. In another generation, it might all be gone. There needs to be a record of them, in their own village settings, before they rot back into the forest, or before the missionaries burn them down in some righteous Christian frenzy.”

  “Millie!”

  “The poles are reminders of past glories, of healthy communities before Indian mothers wept or turned hard when baby after baby died. It’s something I can do. To counter that sadness.”

  “You think Dede’s going to let you? Not in a hundred years is she going to release a dime from our trust fund for you to traipse through heathen villages painting their idols.”

  “Then I’ll have to earn those dimes myself.”

  “Won’t it be awfully hard to get to those places?”

  Impossible for a woman alone, Claude had said. She gazed out to sea. “Easy things don’t interest me.”

  11: Horsetail

  Emily set the chicken she’d roasted on Sophie’s table. “Where’s Annie Marie?” she asked.

  Sophie gestured toward the other room. “Sleeping.”

  Emily poked her head in the doorway and saw Annie Marie curled onto her side, thumb in her mouth, the shoes and socks she’d bought for her on her feet. “She wears them to bed?”

  “ ‘Em’ly’s shoes,’ she say. She won’t take them off inside, won’t wear them outside. ‘Get dirty,’ she say.”

  Emily chuckled as she sat cross-legged on the floor next to Sophie and held up a purplish black strand from a pile. “What’s this?”

  “Horsetail root bark.”

  Sophie wound a cedar root coil with cherry root and stitched it to the coil below it with an awl. Her fingers flew, tugged, twisted the strands. The basket was a flared rectangle decorated with a long horizontal shape worked in horsetail root stretching upward at each end with bumps along the top.

  “What’s the design?”

  “Canoe.”

  “Ah.” The bumps were heads. No bodies. Just heads. Seven of them peeping out of the canoe like peas in an open pod. Under it was a band of peaked waves. “Why is the middle head bigger?”

  “That’s Annie Marie.”

  Sophie’s children, all seven of them living and dead, embarking over the waves to the unknown.

  Sophie looked at the place where the basket cradle had hung and her eyes filled with tears. Emily lay her hand on Sophie’s wrist. Sophie dropped the awl in Emily’s lap, went into the other room, and came back with the drawing of Tommy under the Ancestor.

  “Little baby I didn’t even get to know, but Tommy’s still in my heart so he stay on the wall.” She hung it again opposite the Virgin Mary.

  “That’s good, Sophie.”

  Sophie sat beside her again and held the unfinished basket in her lap but couldn’t seem to begin work on it again.

  “I remember when he taught me the three-pebble game on the beach,” Emily said. “He was so happy when I finally threw the stones quick enough so they all landed, plop, at the same time. He squealed and jumped in the shallow water so much he got us both wet.”

  Sophie smiled in a far-off, misty way. Maybe she’d said too much. Emily gave her back the awl. “Is that made of stone?” she asked, trying to bring her back.

  “Bone. Bone of an ancestor.”

  “A human bone?”

  “No. An animal ancestor.”

  How could Sophie believe that and the Bible?

  “This was my grandmother’s awl. It has wise stories.”

  “Does everything you use have a story?”

  “Most everything. You don’t have a story for every color?”

  “There’s a feeling for every color. Red for passion. Yellow for happiness. And green, oh, green—the glory and spirit of growing things.”

  “Stories come from feelings. In the old time, all the grandmothers told stories.”

  “Why don’t they anymore?”

  “Nobody listens. No bighouses, so not a lot of people around one fire. Now the church priest tells stories.”

  “That’s not the same, is it?

  “No. Singing not the same either. My grandmother said at the first mass the nipniit told everyone not to sing anymore the old songs. They go to hell.”

  “Did she stop?”

  “No.” A sad smile streaked across her face. “She sang when she felt a hurt inside or a heat.”

  “Sometimes it’s important to do what you feel, no matter what.”

  “When I was little, she sang to my baby brother because he was sick. He couldn’t sleep because crows kept to cawing in the salal bushes so I threw a stick at them. They cawed more loud and flew into a tree. She took me there and said to the crows she was sorry her granddaughter did that. Now that she knows better she won’t throw things at crows again.”

  “Did you?”

  “I hope not, but I loved my brother. In the story time before humans, Crow was the basket maker. Now he helps basket makers.”

  “Does Crow help you?”

  Sophie tipped her head. “Hm. Yes. Like this. My grandmother told me her grandmother saw a crow. He cawed at her all day. She asked him why he kept
to cawing that way. Crow said once he could make lots of sounds, like Raven, but he lazy. He only made one. Then he want to make different sounds. He tried. Nothing. Only that ugly one. So now I make each basket different. That’s how Crow helps me.”

  Her fingers started to move again, as if by their own will, holding the coils together, poking in the binding strand. She pulled it taut with her teeth.

  “Do other basket makers make each basket different?”

  “No.” She rolled down her bottom lip, and screwed up her nose. “Same ones over and over. Puts a person to sleep. Me, this is only one with a canoe. Now you tell me a story. Tell me about Alaska.”

  “I thought you’d never ask.” Emily shifted to stretch her legs. Out spilled everything about Sitka and the totem poles. “Each pole is different, you’ll be glad to know. I wish you could see them, you and Jimmy.”

  Sophie straightened her back. Had she blundered?

  “I want to paint the poles, all of them, before they disappear. They make strong talk. There should be a record.”

  Sophie’s expression darkened, and Emily felt an invisible wall rise between them.

  “What? Is it wrong to do it?”

  Sophie shrugged and pursed her lips into a tight wound.

  “Sophie, it’s something I can do. Do you understand? Like when your brother was sick and you threw a stick at the crows. To help him.”

  Sophie’s hands stopped working.

  “Would it make any difference between us if I painted in other villages?”

  “We used to have totem posts,” she said sharply. “In the old days before I was born. Inside houses. Long time ago a logjam made the river flood. All the houses and posts washed away. The church wasn’t washed away, so people here don’t make them more.”

  “Because of that?”

  “What do you think? Of course because of that.”

  “Will it be hard to find them all?”

  “Yes.” The word shot out.

  “Impossible?”

  “Maybe.”

  “A fur trader told me that it’s impossible for a woman to travel alone to native villages in the north.”

  Sophie yanked a binding strand roughly.

  “My sister Lizzie, the missionary one, says some villages don’t want white visitors. Is that true?”

  “Yes. Frank’s brother, he knows. He went north to work for white man logging job. He knows.” She scowled and pulled in her lips into a wrinkled wound.

  “What’s wrong? Do you think I shouldn’t do it?”

  Sophie gave her an irritated look. “You just said it’s important to do what you feel. So do it.”

  “But do you think I should do it?”

  Sophie held the cherry root strand between her teeth, making her wait. Mrs. Johnson’s words, Don’t expect so much, rattled in Emily’s mind.

  “How much you want to give up?”

  She felt reckless with words. “Whatever it takes.”

  “Then I think you can do anything.”

  That wasn’t as specific as she wanted, but at least it was something.

  She noticed a picture next to the Virgin Mary, Moses and the tablets of stone with the words Thou shalt have no other gods before me printed below it. “Is that picture new?”

  “Father John gave me it when I told him about you.”

  “About me?”

  Sophie smiled in that abashed way of hers, turned the basket to do the corner, and held it with her feet. “You aren’t Catholic. At mass he said anybody had other gods go to hell. He said that mean anybody not Catholic, so I don’t sleep for nights. I told him you love my babies and you’re a good white woman. He said that don’t matter. I said you paint the Holy Spirit. Then he said maybe it’s all right.” Sophie’s face glowed with triumph.

  “Paint the Holy Spirit? I’ve just been talking about painting animal ancestors. Is that why you wouldn’t answer when I asked if I should do it? Because totems aren’t the Holy Spirit?”

  Sophie hugged her basket to her chest. “I was afraid for you.”

  “How can you say I paint the Holy Spirit? You’ve never seen any painting of mine with God or any saint or angel.”

  “You know. Green.” An impish grin flickered, her eyes shot through with sparks, so pleased she was with herself. “Like you said. Glory and spirit of growing things.”

  12: Bear

  “Come on, Billy. Up!” Emily said from the rickety dock. “We’re here! Alert Bay, so snap to it.”

  Billy whined in the bobbing shore boat.

  “What is it? You’ve got the wiffle-woffles?” The shore boatman tossed her the leash. “Up!” she ordered.

  On the peak of a swell he gave Billy’s rump a firm push. Billy got the idea and scrambled up onto the dock. He shook himself, looking smug, as if it had been his own idea all along.

  At every swell raising the boat, the crewman handed up another thing—her small carpetbag, sketch sack, food box, and the strapped bundle of her folding watercolor easel and stool. The large canvas knapsack was the last. He grunted and heaved. “What do you have in this? Lead weights?”

  “Yes. Bibles.”

  She strapped her easel and stool onto Billy’s back, the knapsack onto hers, and hoisted her bags, out of breath already. This village on tiny Cormorant Island, two hundred and twenty miles up the east coast of Vancouver Island, and the people she’d meet, would either launch her project or kill it. Jimmy had said as much.

  “One week,” the boatman called, and revved up the motor to head back to the steamer.

  “I’ll be waiting.” She walked with wide footsteps trying to keep her balance, always a problem. Billy pulled at the leash, only too glad to get off the dock. “Slow down and act respectable. We’re guests,” Emily said.

  On firm ground, she took a look around. What a weird, wondrous sight. A congregation of birds, wolves, bears, saw-toothed sea creatures, all carved and painted, some stacked on poles, some on roof peaks. A ferocious zoo! Sophie would love this. If they had voices, they’d be howling, croaking, screeching, growling. Was that the kind of reception she’d get?

  She headed away from the row of bighouses toward the mission where she’d arranged to stay. Three clapboard houses and a two-story school hugged the Anglican church. Emily screwed up her face. A crenelated roof and a frieze of wrought iron? What in the world was it trying to be? A white picket fence bravely separated the mission from what it was supposed to save.

  Billy stuck his nose into a soggy hole. “Billy, no!” She yanked his leash. “At least for a first impression it would be nice if you’d be clean.”

  In the parlor decked with doilies and embroidered Bible verses, Reverend Alfred Hall welcomed her and introduced his gaunt wife, and bird-like Miss Winifred Crane, missionary-in-training with a pointed nose and an unfortunate name. She was making a chart of the occupations of Jesus’ disciples, the fishermen printed boldly in red with a drawing of a salmon by each appropriate name. Emily unloaded the slates and chalk from Alice and twelve pounds of used Bibles from Lizzie.

  “Oof! One pound for each disciple.”

  Mrs. Hall gave her a censuring glance, but didn’t turn them down as payment for room and board. “Would you like tea while we tell you about our missionary work at Saint Michael’s School?”

  “No. Thank you. I’d rather get right to my work.”

  Mrs. Hall squared her shoulders. “Indeed.”

  “While there’s still good light. You can tell me at supper.”

  “Five o’clock. Do you have a watch?” She smoothed a crocheted antimacassar on the back of a chair.

  “Yes.”

  • • •

  The pebbled shore made walking difficult. “Don’t you wish you could wear men’s clodhoppers like mine, eh, Billy?”

  She itched to get close to the poles. Take things slowly, she told herself. She unfolded her camp stool and flat easel. From here she could get a village panorama, and then work her way closer to the totems. In the left foregro
und, two handsome canoes had birds in flight painted on their hulls. Wings in dark red and green, beaks in yellow-orange and scarlet, she wrote on the edge of her drawing paper. The ropes of kelp at the same diagonal would lead the viewer’s eye across the beach to two women trussing salmon on frames in the middle distance and to the mounds of clamshells and the cannery on the far right. In the background, the houses and poles and forest would give context.

  Three boys dragged the kelp out of the angle she wanted it and cut it into lengths using the edges of clamshells. So much for leading the viewer’s eye, she said to herself. She caught them peeking at her, and they giggled.

  “Hello,” she called. She should have asked Mrs. Hall for the Kwakwala word.

  The children looked down the beach at an older girl, maybe ten or eleven, as if checking for permission to come closer.

  “Long seaweed, eh? What are you going to do with it?”

  “Play cannery. I cut it and sell it,” the older boy said, “and he buy it.” The smallest boy uncurled his sandy palm to reveal a few pebbles.

  “Can you tell me what bird that is?” She pointed to a large wooden bird sitting on a roof. “He’s ready to fly down here and get me.” She flapped her arms and pretended it landed on her head. The children laughed. “Is he an eagle?”

  “No.”

  “Is he a raven?”

  They shook their heads and said no even louder.

  “Then what is he?”

  “He’s Cormorant,” they shouted.

  “A coal goose! I should have known.” She noticed them watching Billy absorbed in sniffing a dead bird. “You want to touch him? He likes children.” Instantly six hands were all over him, and he was doing a jig of happiness, trying to get in more than his share of licks. He woofed and posed in a play bow, head low and hind end high.

  “Why he don’t have a tail?” the middle boy asked.

  “See that big wooden sea creature over there? Who’s that?”

  “He’s Killerwhale.”

  “Well, one day Billy was sleeping on the beach and Killerwhale sprang out of the sea and bit off his tail, snap, like a crab.” She snapped her hand closed right in front of the middle boy’s nose. He backed away and laughed.