Soul Catcher (19 page)

“Wild?” Katsuk shook his head. “They had
their loyalties. Their world had shape. They worked it so.”

“But they were wild.”

“That is a hoquat word! Our woods, our
animals, our people had loyalties and shape!”

“Shape,” Ish said, shaking his head.

Katsuk said: “You came up the Hoh road. In
cars, by damn! You parked your cars beside those of the hoquat and
walked in here. You saw the signs of the new shapes:

WATCH FOR TRUCKS. RANGE AREA—WATCH FOR
LIVESTOCK.

Whose trucks? Whose livestock? We drive
their trucks to help destroy our land! That shingle mill down there
at tidewater where they let you work ... sometimes! That’s the
shape now!”

Ish said: “That what you learned at the
university?”

“You’re more right than you imagine, uncle.
I am the last chosen of my mother’s clan. Once we were strong and
could withstand any strain. We supported our people in their
troubles. Now ...”

“Now, you bring trouble on all of us,” Ish
said.

“Do I? Or do we merely live in hoquat
trouble we have come to accept?” Katsuk pointed to the west. “The
dragways of our whaling canoes, dug deep for those thousands of
years, line the beaches down there. Yet we must petition a hoquat
congress to tell us we can use one little piece of that land! Our
land!”

“If you’re talking about the old village at
the beach,” Ish said, “we’ll get it back. The whites are beginning
to understand our problems. They have—”

“Pity!” Katsuk shouted. “They throw us a
bone out of pity—a tiny corner of all this that once was ours. We
don’t need their pity! They deprive us of the experience and
responsibility of being human!”

Ish said: “Who cares why the whites do what
we—”

“I care!” Katsuk touched his chest. “They
come into our land—
our
land! They cut the underbrush to
decorate their flower arrangements. They pile the logs high that
should be left as trees. They take fish for sport that should feed
our families. All the while, these hoquat do the one thing we must
not forgive. They remain complacent in their evil. They are so
satisfied that they are doing right. Damn these fiends!”

“Some of them were born here,” Ish
protested. “They love this land.”

“Ahhhh,” Katsuk sighed. “They love our land
even while they kill it and us upon the land.” Guilt filled David.
He thought:
I am Hoquat.
His people had stolen this land. He
knew Katsuk was speaking the truth.
We stole his land.

That was why the two youths set to guard him
wouldn’t speak to him. That was why the room full of people around
Katsuk showed their sympathy with him even while they voiced fears
and objections.

David felt himself hostage for all the sins
of his kind. He had even sinned as his ancestors had, with a woman
of these people. Thought of Tskanay weighed him down. He felt
shattered, broken by the ruin of a life that once had seemed sweet
and constant. He stared into the hut: ruddy shadows on rafters
there, firelight in the crossbeams ... all the people—honey-red
skin, the sleek black hair, the gray hair, the old and tangled
hair. He suddenly saw Tskanay almost directly behind Ish in the
third row: round face, a purple blouse, fawn red of her skin in the
firelight. David swallowed convulsively, remembering the slither of
her clothing in the dark hut, the tangle of shadows.

Katsuk said: “You will not stop me. No one
will stop me.”

Cally stood up. She moved with slow
stiffness now. She faced Katsuk. “We won’t stop you. That’s true.
But if you kill that boy, you’ll be like the worst of them. I won’t
want to live with that in my family.” She turned away, walked into
the shadows.

Ish said: “What’s past is past.” He sat
down.

Katsuk straightened, glanced left and right.
He did not appear to be looking at his audience but to be showing
them his face.

He said: “All the past is in my words. If
those words die, you will have forgotten the moaning and misery in
our houses. You will forget what the hoquat did to us. You will
forget what we were. But I will not forget. This is all I must
say.”

He turned, strode out of the house.

Before David could move, Katsuk was upon
him. Katsuk grabbed the boy’s arm, dragged him along. “Come,
Hoquat. We go now.”

***

Sheriff Mike Pallatt:

Sure I think old Cally has seen her nephew.
Why else would she come in with all that warning stuff? She and her
gang were in the Wilderness Area. That’s where I’m concentrating my
men. I listened to her real good. Got a head on her shoulders, that
old woman. She says we should call him Katsuk, we call him Katsuk.
There’s no more Charlie Hobuhet. Somebody calls him Charlie at the
wrong moment, that could blow the whole show.

***

It began to rain intermittently soon after
they left the clearing of the huts: rain, then moonlight, rain,
moon. It was raining steadily and hard before they reached the old
mine shaft. There was distant lightning and thunder. David,
allowing himself to be dragged along in the darkness, wondered if
Katsuk was creating the trail one step at a time out of his magic.
Katsuk could not possibly see his way in the wet blackness.

All the way up the hill, Katsuk chanted and
raged.

David, his heart palpitating, heard the
word-ravenings and understood only the rage. Wet branches clawed at
him. He tripped on roots, slipped in mud. He was drenched by the
time they reached the shaft.

Katsuk’s mind was in turmoil. He thought:
It was the truth. They know I told them truth. Still they fear.
They do not give me all their thoughts. My own people are lost to
me. They do not want the powers I could give them. My own
people!

He pulled Hoquat into the shelter of the
mine shaft, released him. Water ran from them. Katsuk pressed his
hands against the chilkat loincloth. Rivulets ran down his legs. He
thought:
We must rest, then go on. Some of my people are fools.
They could tell the hoquat where I am. There must be a reward. Some
have the hoquat sickness. They could do it for money. My own people
deny me a home in their thoughts. There is no home. My own people
turn away. No one will come to meet me. I am truly
homeless.

How could he rest here? Katsuk wondered. He
could feel his own people down there by the lake—restless,
disturbed, divided, arguing. They had heard his words and felt his
meaning, but all in a language which blasphemed what he held
sacred.

No darkness will ever rest in me. I will be
a ghost spirit. Not even Tskanay supports me.

He thought of how Tskanay had looked at him.
Her eyes had seen him and found him alien. She had given her body
to the boy, trying to swallow innocence. She had thought to make
Hoquat unfit. She had failed. Hoquat’s shame reinforced his
innocence. He was more innocent now.

Katsuk stared into the black emptiness of
the old mine shaft. He sensed the dimensions of it with his memory,
with his skin, his nose, his ears. There were ghost spirits here,
too. The boy’s teeth chattered. Hoquat’s fear could almost be
touched.

The boy whispered: “Katsuk?”

“Yes.”

“Where are we?”

“In the cave.”

The old mine?”

“Yes.”

“Are y-you g-going t-to b-build a
f-f-fire?”

Lightning gave a brief flicker of
illumination: the cave mouth, dripping trees, rain slanting down.
Thunder followed, close, a crash that made the boy gasp.

Katsuk said: “Perhaps we have too much
fire.”

The world suddenly was shattered by a barren
plume of lightning so close they smelled the hell fragrance of it
as the thunder shook them.

The boy whirled, clung to Katsuk’s arm.

Again, lightning flickered against wet
blackness, this time near the lake. The thunderclap came like an
echo of the one before it.

The boy trembled and shook against
Katsuk.

“That was Kwahoutze,” Katsuk said. “That was
the god in water, the spirit of all the regions brought together by
water.”

“It was s-so close.”

“He tells us this is still his land.”

Again, the lightning flashed—beyond the lake
now. Thunder followed, rumbling.

The boy said: “I don’t want to steal your
land.”

Katsuk patted his shoulder. “And
I
was going to over-proud my enemies. This land does not know who
owns it.”

David said: “I’m sorry we stole your
land.”

“I know, Hoquat. You are truly innocent. You
are one of the few who feel why this land is sacred to me. You are
the immigrant invader. You have not learned how to worship this
land. It is my land because I worship it. The spirits know, but the
land does not know.”

Silence fell between them. Katsuk freed
himself from the boy’s grip, thinking:
Hoquat depends upon me
for his strength, but that can be dangerous for me. If he takes
strength from me, I must take strength from him. We could become
one person, both of us Soul Catcher. Who could I sacrifice
then?

David listened to the sound of falling rain,
the distant progression of lightning and thunder. Presently, he
said: “Katsuk?”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to kill me ... like your aunt
said?”

“I use you to send a message.” David chewed
his lower lip. “But your aunt said ...”

“Unless you tell me to do it, I will not
kill you.” Relief flooded through David. He drew a deep breath.
“But I’d never tell you to—”

“Hoquat! Why do you prefer mouth-talk to
body-talk?” Katsuk moved into the shaft. Rebuked, David stood
trembling. The old madness had returned to Katsuk’s voice.

Katsuk found the pack by smelling the
mustiness of it. He squatted, felt the fabric, removed matches, a
packet of tinder. Presently, he had a small fire going. Smoke
drifted in a gray line along the ceiling. The flame cast raw
shadows on old beams and rock.

David approached, stood close to the fire,
trembling, holding his hands out to the warmth.

Katsuk gathered the cedar boughs of their
bed, spread the sleeping bag. He stretched out on the bag with his
back against a rotting beam.

The boy stood with his head just beneath the
smoke. The gray line above him was like a spirit essence drifting
toward the dark entrance into the world.

Katsuk withdrew the willow flute from his
waistband, touched it to his lips. He blew softly. The clear sound
circled upward into the smoke, carrying his mind with it. He played
the song of cedar, the song to placate cedar when they took bark
for mats and clothing, for rope and net string. He blew the song
softly. It was a bird singing deep in the shade of cedar
boughs.

Sweetly on the song, he sensed a vision:
Janiktaht carrying a basket piled with curling shreds of cedar
bark. And he thought:
This is better for Janiktaht. I should not
be forever seeking her face among the faces of strangers.

The words of the song echoed in his mind:
“Life maker cedar ... fire maker cedar ...”

The vision of Janiktaht moved within him.
She grew larger, larger, older, uglier. The basket of cedar bark
shriveled.

Sweat broke out on his forehead. His mind
stumbled. He dropped the flute.

David asked: “Why did you stop?”

Katsuk sat up, stared at the evil flute
beside him. He shook his head. The movement was like wind swaying
cedar boughs. The cedar band around his head pressed into his
skull. He knew it might crush his head. He could not remove the
band.

“Keep that sickness away from me,” he
muttered.

“What?”

“I don’t want to be killed by that
sickness.”

“What’s wrong?”

Katsuk glared across the fire at the boy.
“What has made me so unlucky?”

“Are you unlucky?” David didn’t understand
the conversation but felt his participation being demanded.

“I am overcome by it,” Katsuk said. “I have
been found by Short-Life-Maker.”

“Katsuk, you’re talking awfully funny.”

“Evil words have been sent against me!”

“What words?”

“I have enemies. They have cursed me. They
wish me to die quickly. My own people! They have no mercy.”

David moved around the fire, squatted beside
the sleeping bag. He touched Katsuk’s flute. “I liked the music.
Will you play some more?”

“No!”

“Why?”

“Because I have discovered my omen
tree.”

The boy stared at him, puzzled.

Katsuk closed his eyes. He pictured a cedar,
a great cedar with bulging roots, glossy needles, a cedar deep in
the forest, sucking at the earth’s belly and piling its boughs
high, a skirt of long boughs at the bottom that leaned outward into
a thick bed of leaf mold.

“My omen tree,” Katsuk whispered.

“What’s an omen tree?” David asked.

Katsuk said: “I was my mother’s firstborn.”
He opened his eyes, stared upward into the ruddy smoke, “Her
brother carved a little canoe for me. He made a tiny fish spear. He
made a rattle box. He made all of these things from cedar.”

“That makes an omen tree?”

Katsuk spoke in a distant voice: “My parents
were in a cedar canoe when they died. Janiktaht stole a cedar canoe
when she ... The splinter! I was very sick that time with the
splinter in my knee. They said I could lose the leg. It was a cedar
splinter. All this is very clear, Hoquat. Someone in my family has
offended cedar. That is the end of me, then.”

“Do you really believe that stuff?”

“Don’t tell me what I believe!” He glared at
the boy.

David recoiled. “But ...”

“We have burned cedar, carved her. We have
made rafts of cedar, kindling wood, long planks, and shakes to keep
off the rain. But we did not show how thankful we were to her.
Cedar’s heart aches. We have stepped on her roots, bruised them,
and never thought about it. I rest on cedar right now! How
stupid!”