Ghost Sea: A Novel (Dugger/Nello Series) (19 page)

T
owering flames leapt from the fire pit in the vast house, licking roof beams and igniting sparks in roof planks. Around the fire the floor was empty but the raised platforms against the walls were dense with people sitting on their haunches, wrapped in their blankets, all watching me. On the far wall above the ramps hung torn sails painted with monstrous faces blinking and snarling as they moved in the fire’s breeze, and far above them, catwalks, trapezes, and pulleys dangled from heavy ropes. Across from the entrance sat the chiefs, and at their feet sat the singers moaning a slow song, drumming on boards with long batons, or on skin drums that they held out to tighten near the flames. Only then did I notice the pack of carved beasts around me.

Enormous crude snouts encircled the door opening: a wolf with its head raised and teeth bared, standing on its tail; another with its neck twisted, snout down, jaws awry, the eyes wide open as if frozen in horror; and one, lying horizontally overhead, had its paws dangling near my shoulders. The flames died down. The two bears that had guarded the Hamatsa house, guided me down the steps, along the edge of the floor, up to our seats, on the top platform, in the shadows of a corner. Nello, Charlie, and Sayami came close behind. Near the singers, a row of solemn figures sat as still and dark as tombstones. “The family of those who died,” Nello whispered. “A mourning song for them.” It was a stumbling song, erratic like the beats of a frightened heart. The drums rolled softly as if from a place far away.

I searched every face, but the flames danced and shadows flickered and faces burst out for a moment, only to vanish in the darkness. Over the moaning a few clear words were repeated. I nudged Nello. “They’re asking, ‘Which way is he gone?’”

“Who?”

“The one who died.”

One by one more voices joined, wistful, questioning. The smoke burnt my eyes so I closed them, and with the drumming and moaning I drifted off. Tum, ta ta tum, ta, ta, tum, tum.

A
T A DISTANT
raven’s call, I awoke. The fire was down, the smoke hung in flat layers drifting on the currents. A solemn sitter rose and began to dance, head down, arms raised and swinging while circling the fire, now and then shuddering the way cormorants do when trying to dry their wings. “Shaking off sadness,” Nello whispered. One by one the sitters rose, all dancing the same way, as if feeling the same pain, shaking the same sorrow. Then the first one cupped her hands, drew water from a cedar box, and poured it over her eyes. The others did the same. The drums now beat louder, the voices grew stronger, the dancers moved freely. A bear neared the fire and hurled a pail of oil into the flames; the flames roared to the roof, and in that same instant the drumming and voices stopped.

The first great, carved bowl—in the shape of a reclining giant, bearded but with pendulous breasts—appeared in the doorway, and the fragrance of stewed meat filled the air. Four men hauled it to the chiefs, lifted the face, and served the first chief from the hollow head. The right breast was removed and the second chief was fed. They took her apart in pieces, finally scooping the contents of the hollowed trunk into small bowls and handing them to the crowd along with shredded cedar inner-bark to wipe our mouths. We ate a frothy mush that looked like melted soap that drooped when lifted with the wooden spoon.

“Seal stew,” Nello offered.

“Boiled blubber,” I said.

“Not to eat is a mortal offense. And we don’t swallow the spoon; we eat only with the point. We’re not savages.”

A little boy ran down onto the floor but a roaring bear chased him back. Long trays arrived laden with hemlock boughs and seaweed that reeked of putrid fish and had clusters of tiny pale balls all over them. “Dried herring roe, Cappy. It’s good, I promise.” Sayami loved it, and Charlie didn’t mind it, so I took a bite. The stench of it choked me and the brittle seaweed stuck in my throat.

“Dip in here,” a soft voice beside me said. “It will go down more easily,” and out of the darkness flashed the cousin’s abalone earrings as she held out a bowl of thick liquid. “It’s the most precious thing to the Kwakiutl,” she said.

It ran thickly down my fingers, so I splashed it in my mouth.

“Water,” I pleaded.

“No water,” Nello said. “Water and oil don’t mix. Make you retch.” I couldn’t answer, just tried to hold it down. The drummers started a rhythm and the cousin came back with a square wood pail. “Drink this,” she said. I started to push it away until I smelled the rum. I filled my mouth with it, then swallowed it, then filled my mouth again. I must have drunk a mug. They all laughed, and they all drank. The fire was so low it barely lit our faces. I pulled Sayami to one side and before he could say a word I took my hat and jammed it on his head. With my hat here I wouldn’t be missed. “Back soon,” I said.

Nello grabbed at me but I slipped away along the dark wall and out the door into the night.

I
T WAS BRIGHTER
outside than it had been in the house. Thick snow covered the walk, the beasts, the canoes; it stuck to the walls, molded the bushes into one, and weighed down their branches; the only thing it couldn’t hide was the darkness of the sea. It crunched in singsong under my feet. When I heard voices behind me, I jumped between two houses and watched as young men came out with empty trays and walked away into the next house. I moved along in a deep crouch. When the rum hit me, I leaned against a wall.

I thought I saw the ketch through the falling snow, then it was gone and reappeared near the far tip of the cove, and at the end I wasn’t sure if I had seen her at all. Perhaps she had dragged anchor and had been blown out to sea. Who knows, who cares? I thought, too drunk to give a damn. “Let her go, Cappy,” I whispered. “Let her go.”

A gust came through the trees and swept snow onto me from the roof. I got up to go but couldn’t think of where to, until the snow melted on my neck and I remembered—her. I headed for the house the bears had guarded. In the next gust, an owl took flight and swept over the cove. “While the owl lives, the soul lives,” I muttered, and pushed on. The drums behind me had faded to a drone.

With the bears gone, the Hamatsa house was unguarded, but its door padlocked. I tried forcing it with my shoulder; it wouldn’t budge, but a barely perceptible moaning rose inside. I went between the houses to the back but there were no other openings and there was no way to the roof. At the house next door I climbed onto a pile of firewood stacked high against the wall, grabbed a roofboard and pulled myself up. But the Hamatsa house was a good three strides away. On all fours, I scrambled to the gable; the gusting wind almost blew me down. With all the balance I could muster, I ran down through the snow and, spreading my arms and legs, hit the roof across the way. Splayed, I began to slide; I clawed until my nails dug into the wet roofboards and held. I slithered sideways to the back wall, trying roofboards until I found one that gave, and slid it aside. It was pitch black down below. Wedging my toes between the corner post and wall planks, I climbed down until I slipped and fell face down in the dirt. Light filtered feebly through the hole above, and I could make out shapes. Someone moaned close by.

Wooden masks with enormous beaks, and hemlock wreaths were piled around me. The moaning rose again and, with an arm extended, I moved toward it until I touched boards. The moaner seemed to have difficulty breathing. I was running my hands along the boards, feeling for an opening, when I heard footsteps in the snow. A key slid in the lock, then the smooth sound of the tongue sliding out, and a knock as it was lifted. Torchlight fell into the house and I looked for a place to hide, but there was nowhere, except a sheet covering long lumps on the floor. I crawled under it and tried not to breathe. The torchbearer took a few steps, slipped another lock, and at once the moaning became a menacing growl. The torchbearer gave gruff orders and the growling stopped. Then the torch neared and the sheet over my face turned bright and lit up the corpse that lay inches from my face. It was a dry, hollow-skinned, long-dead corpse, who stared curiously at me. The tip of his tongue stuck slightly out, as if, in the last moment of his life, he had been tasting something memorably good. I lay there in a drunken swoon, wondering if the deadman was me.

Doors thudded shut and locks slipped into place, but the torch remained. I pulled the sheet aside and raised my head. The main part of the house was empty, but inside a cage-like room something moved. Stepping among the masks and piles of cedar bark, I approached. Inside were two naked youths, their eyes wild, their carriages distorted, beastly. I started back toward the hole in the roof when, on an impulse, I stopped at the sheet, drew back a corner, and saw the other long-dead corpse: a woman. Her parchment-skinned face—salt-air-dried, wind-dried, sun-dried—had the eyelids drawn with deep folds as if she were dreaming. Her nose—a long miracle of rises and curves—was sculpted and delicate; her cheek bones were surrounded by shallows, and her eyebrows were raised, as if in surprise. There were swirls like whirlpools painted on her cheeks. She was beautiful; someone who must have loved and been loved all her life. The torch flared, then flickered out. Moonlight drifted in. I sat down beside her on the cold earth.

T
HE SNOW HAD
stopped falling. The moon shone bright on the edge of a cloud and threw dark shadows of the carved beasts on the snow. The ketch huddled white on the dark waters and the islands lay in paling layers until they blended together in the distance and the mist. I sneaked along the wall back to the big house.

Great piles of pots, blankets, pails, and mirrors were being carried in. Singing and drumming filled the air. The rum must have made its rounds, because many weaved and bobbed merrily as they sat, and others had bright twinkles in their eyes. Sayami’s eyes were barely open, Nello wore a blissful smile, and Charlie too must have had her share, for her head lay heavily on his shoulders. No one seemed to care that I’d returned or even noticed that I had gone.

They had stacked all the gifts to be given away—bales of sea-otter skins, mink skins, and blankets, boxes of biscuits, pots, pails and kettles—in enormous piles on the ramps on both sides of the door, squeezing us farther and tighter in the corner, blocking our escape unless we descended to the floor. Trays of sweet steamed cakes of dried fruit came around: cranberries, crabapple, salmonberry—trailed by that cursed bucket of oil, of which I took only an empty spoon, but made up for it with long, long gulps of rum. I was handing the bucket back to the cousin when she leaned close and asked, “Where did you go?”

“The Hamatsa house,” I said. “She wasn’t there.”

She smiled in case anyone was watching. “At dawn we’ll find the shaman’s shack. We can follow his footprints in the snow.”

I took another slug of rum. People ate with fervor and no one seemed to notice that the beat of the drums had grown louder and as quick as the thumping of a heart.

Women pulled pails of ash from the fire and spread them around on the dirt, leaving a drifting ash cloud in their wake. The mirrors, waist-high, dozens of them, had been put side by side all around the house, leaning against the lower rise around the floor, creating infinite images of flames. The ash cloud was settling when a wild cry from outside filled the night. The crowd fell silent, the drums barely thudded.

Across the way, a corner roof board was ripped aside and in glared flashing eyes. Then footsteps on the roof, and the roof board above us slid open. A low wail-like wind over a hollow log—surrounded the house. A gust of icy air swept through as a giant wooden mouth on the back wall yawned wide and into the house leapt—over the chiefs, landing in a cloud of ashes—one of the half-beasts I had seen in the Hamatsa house. He was naked as before, but now one side of his face drooped in a demented snarl as he crouched. People drew back from the edge of the lower ramp; only the chiefs managed to sit still. Near them, a man stood up, raised a white skull in each hand, shook them, making a rattling sound, took a step forward, and the half-beast stood still. The man climbed over the mirrors down to the floor. The half-beast cocked his head. Nello pulled Charlie close, turned her head away, and seemed to look around for an escape but we were blocked in by the mounds of gifts; the only quick way out was the hole in the roof. “You might not want to watch,” Nello whispered. “Hamatsa. Cannibals.”

“You said it was theater.”

“Some is. This isn’t.”

The man shook his skulls, and the Hamatsa, coiled low, howled. The man made a triumphant half turn to the crowd, and in that instant the Hamatsa flew with jaws open wide and knocked him to the ground. He sank his teeth deep in the man’s neck. Blood squirted in an arc and splattered in the ash. Screams rose from the crowd. Men leapt to the floor with sticks, yanking the Hamatsa back, while others forced a stick between his teeth.

A woman appeared, her bare breasts glowing crimson, her skirt stirring the ashes, leaving low clouds in her wake, and she danced toward him, her palms up, as if she held some power. He grew calm.

Then, with great effort and a howl, he tore out of their grips and leapt into the crowd, clawing, biting bits out of whoever he reached. In the doorway, shrieking,
“Ha ap, hap hap,”
the other Hamatsa appeared. He was much older, fined-boned, light-skinned, almost white, with a limp, frail figure slung over a shoulder. He stopped on the steps.

“Half English,” Nello whispered. “He helped Boas collect things—like corpses.”

The white Hamatsa descended with his load—the long-dead corpse of the man I had seen before. He brought down the corpse—all dark, the skin shrunk into the hollows—and flung it to the floor. The first beast came and sniffed the thin legs, then leapt to a mirror. Awed by his own face, he glared and then smashed it with a violent blow. He watched the blood drip from his knuckles, then took a long, curved piece of the broken mirror, wrapped some shredded cedar bark around one end to make a handle, and waved it in wide arcs in the firelight. Staring at his splintered reflection, he came back to the corpse, lay the shard like a long blade on its chest, and then he sliced. He held up the long piece of flesh like a trophy in the light. The crowd gasped. The other grabbed it from his hand and they fought, snarling, like starved dogs feeding.