Bone River (13 page)

I looked up at him. “How did you know...? Why were you so sure the spirit had a reason to be vengeful?”

He paused. “It is not good to disturb the dead.”

“But she’s so ancient—”

“It is best to leave such things alone. Rebury her,
okustee.
Don’t trust
kamosuk
given by foolish women. Give the body peace.”

I looked down at the twine peeking from my sleeve. “Bibi said that the spirit would not rest until she had what she wanted from me.”

“
Okustee—
”

“And I can’t rebury her,
tot
. I can’t put a discovery this big back into the ground. You must know that. My father would be ashamed of me. I’d be ashamed of myself.”

Lord Tom’s upper lip thinned almost to invisibility, and I felt his disapproval like a heavy cloak. “It is bad to fight this,
okustee
.
Skookum tomawanos.
It will get worse until you bury her. More
dleams
. More bad luck.”

I was surprised at his mention of my dream. Junius must have told him. And then I thought of today, of the menace that had me running, putting on the bracelet. I thought of Daniel—Junius’s warnings and Bibi’s, and my sense of him last night.
Bad luck.

“I don’t believe in bad luck,
tot
,” I said firmly, as much for myself as for him.

He opened his mouth to say something, but just then there was a noise on the porch—Junius and Daniel returned. Junius
had a heavy bag over his shoulder. As they came inside, he said, “We got it, Lea. The whole McKenna collection—or at least what he had left of it.”

I forgot bad luck and everything else for the moment. “McKenna—you don’t mean Robert McKenna? You didn’t tell me it was
his
collection.” Robert McKenna had made a trip to the Bela Coola years ago, and the rumor was that he’d returned with rare ceremonial masks.

“I didn’t know myself,” Junius said as he set the bag on the floor and pulled off his boots. “Not till we got there. He’s fallen on some hard times.”

Daniel closed the door behind them. “He was drunk. It looked to be a common thing.”

“Alas, yes.” Junius didn’t sound the least bit sorry for it as he strode to the stove where there was a pot of oyster stew keeping warm. He ladled some into a bowl. “Sold his whacks to Crellin. Said he was leaving on the first schooner that would take him, but I doubt he’ll be sober enough to recognize when that is.” Junius gestured toward the bag. “Unfortunately, there’s not much there worthwhile. But he did tell me the story of some settler who was in town a few weeks ago. Sanderson or something, up near Stony Point. I guess he’d found a cave full of relics. I thought perhaps we should go talk to him. Maybe tomorrow, if the weather holds.” Junius motioned toward Daniel. “Come and eat, boy. I know you’re hungry.”

Obediently, Daniel did as his father asked. I watched Daniel surreptitiously, trying to read his mood, to discover how they’d got on during the day, if Junius had made any inroads with his son, if he’d even tried. But when Daniel caught me looking at him, I glanced quickly away again. My fingers crept to the twine about my wrist. When I realized it, I let it go.

“Don’t you think we would already have heard of a cave like that?” I asked.

“Depends on how well it’s hidden, and who doesn’t want it to be found.” Junius reached for the jar of pickles. He glanced to Lord Tom, who had moved with his cup of coffee to the rocker by the oil lamp. “You haven’t even said hello, my friend. Should I take that to mean you’ve still got the cursed headache?”

Lord Tom glanced at me, and I looked away. He said, “White men’s drink
hyas cultus
.”

Junius laughed. “Just remember it’s no good the next time we go into Bruceport.”

He sank into a chair at the table, pushing his hand through his hair. He gave me a careful look and reached into his pocket, pulling out a folded piece of paper. “I had a letter from Baird today. I picked it up in town. They want Indian skulls and skeletons to be procured
without offense to the living
. Especially sugarloaf skulls.”

I couldn’t hide my repulsion. “Bodies?”

“Not bodies. Bones.” He glanced at Lord Tom, who had gone still as stone. “Everyone’s doing it, it seems. The prices they’re offering are good: five dollars a skull and twenty for a skeleton.”

“But...what are they doing with them?”

“Studying them,” he said with a shrug. “They’re scientific specimens of a dying people.”

Lord Tom spat something—furiously angry and in Chinook.

Junius glared at him, saying sharply, “We’re trying to preserve your heritage, if you’d but see it.”

“Is that why you collect all this?” Daniel asked. “To save his people?”

“To save his
culture
,” Junius answered. “His people are mostly gone already.”

Lord Tom made a rude sound.

Junius ignored him, saying to Daniel, “All cultures evolved similarly—from savagery to civilization. Tom’s people haven’t evolved in a hundred years. They’re still primitives. By studying
them now, before they die out completely, and before their culture is completely corrupted by contact with settlers, we can gain an understanding of cultures that have already disappeared.” He glanced again at Lord Tom, who was still bristling. “Dammit, Tom, your people are living fossils. Without us, without museums, there will be nothing to show you even existed.”

“But we aren’t going to dig up bodies,
tot
,” I said quickly, aware of how avidly Daniel was watching us. “Are we, June?”

“It’s a direct request,” Junius said. “I can’t just ignore it. And how would it look, Lea, if I was the only ethnologist in the area who refused? Collectors are crawling out of the woodwork. McKenna says there are some from Germany here, trading with the Bela Coola up north.” He threw another glance at Lord Tom. “Baird would find someone else to give him what he wants. Twenty years of collecting would go up in smoke. But”—he took a deep breath and met my gaze steadily—“I suppose if we had something better to send...”

“No. No, June. You promised I could study her. You
promised.
”

His lips tightened. “I know what I said, but this was before Baird’s letter. If you won’t send her, then we’re going to have to do what he asks. I don’t want to be digging up bones either, but we’re going to have to give him something.”

“The canoe. I’ll talk to Bibi. I’ll go tomorrow.”

“A canoe isn’t a skeleton. It isn’t what he’s asking for.”

Desperately I rose, going to the bag he’d left on the floor. “Perhaps there’s something in here that will work.”

Junius snorted. “I don’t think so. Those masks aren’t secret society, no matter what McKenna said.”

“Secret society?” Daniel asked.

“An elite group. They dealt in secret rituals. Like Freemasons,” Junius explained. “Or the Knights Templar, I guess would be the closest thing. Very ceremonial.”

“And hard relics to get,” I said, digging through the bag, pulling out two masks—one a thunderbird and one a raven,
with articulated mouths, painted in reds, blacks, and whites. But Junius was right; they were nothing special. “Secret society relics belong to the whole clan. No one is authorized to sell them.”

“You mean these are stolen?” Daniel asked, nodding toward the masks.

I shook my head. “Not these. McKenna talked a lot about how he’d managed to get secret society masks, but that’s not what these are. I suppose he must have had some others.”

“How would he have gotten them if no one could sell?”

“Just because you’re not
supposed
to sell doesn’t mean they don’t. There’s always someone willing, you just have to find him. Maybe he’s just converted to Christianity. Maybe he’s run out of money or didn’t keep enough food for the winter. Men like that aren’t hard to ferret out.”

Junius said, “When you see a weakness, it’s no crime to exploit it.”

“Is that how you ended up with those? Exploiting weaknesses?” Daniel pointed to the wall, to the Bela Coola masks that hung there.

“My father brought those back from the northern islands,” I said. “I don’t know how he got them. He wouldn’t allow me to go with him.”

“Are they secret society?”

“He said they were.”

“Why aren’t they in a museum? Aren’t they worth anything?”

“They’re worth a great deal,” I said quietly. “But I won’t sell them. They were the last things he brought back. His last trip.”

“There you are, boy,” Junius put in. “You’re looking at the best trader on the bay, and she’s sentimental as any woman.”

“It’s more than sentiment,” I said.

“You like them,” Daniel said.

I looked at him, searching for mockery, but his tone was matter-of-fact and I heard no sarcasm. I nodded. “Yes, I do. They’re beautiful in their way. So...fierce.”

Daniel’s eyes narrowed as he looked at them. I knew what he would say, what everyone said, even Junius. That they were primitive and barbaric, unsettling.

But his voice fell to a murmur as he quoted, “‘Tell that its sculptor well those passions read, which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things.’”

And that astonished me. That so few words explained something I had never been able to, the way these masks held the spirits of their creators, how passion and belief, savagery and solace still lived within wood and bone and paint—and that
he
, this young, angry man who disliked me, should understand it, was more than I expected. “What did you say?”

“It’s part of a poem,” he said. “‘Ozymandias.’ Shelley wrote it.”

Junius sighed. “Your mother’s influence, I see. She was reading poetry to you before you could speak.”

Daniel glared at him. “It took the edge off hunger.”

My husband ignored that. He looked wary as he fished a pickle from the jar on the table and jerked his head at me. “There’s only one thing in there worth anything.”

I went back to the bag, pulling out several decorated horn spoons, three etched silver bracelets that were worthless—pretty, but made for tourists, hammered from coins. I put them aside and pulled out the rest: two salmon hooks, a wooden bowl rimmed with the broad character lines of a raccoon, a blubber jar of watertight reeds, expertly woven. All good, but we’d sent dozens of things just like this before.

There was something else, deep within the bag. I reached in until I had my hand around it—hard and smooth. Another horn bowl, I thought, and pulled it out.

A skull.

I dropped it in shocked surprise. From behind me I heard Lord Tom’s gasp.

“It’s Chinook,” Junius said calmly. “Sloped forehead, you see? Sugarloaf—just what Baird asked for.” He looked at Lord Tom. “And I don’t want to hear any bullshit about dead bodies or spirits coming to steal back their dead. This is science, pure and simple.”

“Where could he have got it?” I asked.

“Stole it from a graveyard, most likely,” Junius said matter-of-factly. “At least now it can go to a museum. A
museum
, Tom, where they’ll take good care of it.”

Lord Tom’s expression had gone rigid, and my revulsion was almost as strong. I tried to tell myself Junius was right. It was only a relic, something worth studying from a dying culture, but—

“You don’t mean to keep it in the house, at least,” I said.

“I don’t want it out in the rain until I can send it off,” June said firmly. He rose and took his dishes to the sink. He raised his voice. “And it’s about time his lordship got rid of those superstitions of his. We’re living in the nineteenth century, Tom, in the event you hadn’t noticed. No one believes in ghost stories anymore.”

Lord Tom stood. Without a word, he went out the door, closing it hard behind him.

Junius sighed. “Damn him, anyway.”

“You can’t ask him to ignore what he believes,” I said quietly.

“He’s been with us more than twenty years. You’d think he’d be more white than Indian by now.”

I said, “It’s his blood, you know. I don’t think you can unlearn things like that.”

“Don’t you?” Junius gave me a sharp look. “I guess there are a hundred Spencerians who agree with you. It doesn’t matter. We need to find more skulls like that, and you know it, Lea. It’s either that or your damned mummy. There’s no canoe and nothing else worth sending, and this is
science
, for Christ’s sake. Hell, they leave the bodies out in the open air in canoes. How much can
they care? I’d think they would be relieved to have them out of the way.”

“You don’t believe that,” I said.

He shrugged. “It’s research. The Indians will be gone soon enough, but we can at least save something of them.”

“I don’t like the thought of robbing graveyards.”

“What else were you doing when you dug up that mummy?”

I went quiet. I could not argue that.

“Sometimes we must all do things we don’t like, Lea. For science. A body is a body. Even Lord Tom would admit the soul is gone. What does it matter whether the bones sit in the ground or in a museum? Your father would agree with me. You know that.”

Yes, I did know it.

Junius’s glance went to my wrist and he frowned. “I see you decided to wear the widow’s bracelet.”

I saw the way Daniel’s gaze leaped to it as well.

I said, “
You
told me to placate her.”

He exhaled and put a hand through his hair. “I guess I did. It’s been a long day. I’m for bed. You coming?”

I said, “In a minute. Just let me put all this away.”

Junius nodded, and then he turned and went up the stairs. I began putting the collection back in the bag, the horn bowls first. At the table, Daniel was quiet and still.

“You aren’t tired as well?” I asked him.

“I’ve a letter still to write.”

“To your fiancée?”

He nodded.

I picked up the raven mask, waggling the articulated jaw, the long beak opening and closing and I found myself saying, “What you said about these...that quote...it was perfect.”

“I didn’t write it.”

“But you knew it. You understood enough to come to it.”

“That’s what comes of an educated mother.” He laughed a little self-deprecatingly.

Then he said, “Why did you marry him?”