Soul Catcher (24 page)

“Transactional ... relationship? What’s
that?”

“A transaction is where you trade one thing
for another. When you buy something, that’s a transaction.”

“Ahh, that’s just big words that don’t mean
anything.”

“They are words from your world,
Hoquat.”

“But they don’t mean anything.”

“They mean doctors don’t know they do it,
but still they do it: They maintain a level of illness to justify
their existence. Police do the same thing with crime. Lawyers keep
up the legal confusions. Body-talk, Hoquat. No matter what they say
they want, or how hard they work to overcome their defects, things
work out in a way that keeps them busy and justifies their
existence.”

That’s crazy!”

“Yes, it is crazy, but it is real. It is
what you see when you understand body-talk.”

“But my world does lots of good things.
People don’t go hungry anymore.”

“But they do, Hoquat. In Asia, they—”

“I mean people in this country.”

“Aren’t they
people
in other
countries?”

“Sure, but ...”

“Even in this country—in the mountains of
your East, in the South, in big cities, people are hungry. People
die of hunger every year. Old people, young people. My people die
that way, too, because they try to live like hoquat. And the world
gets hungrier and hungrier ...”

“What about our houses? We build better
houses than you ever saw.”

“And you destroy the earth to plunge your
houses into it. You build where no house should be. You are
insensitives. You live
against
the earth, not
with
it.”

“We have cars!”

“And your cars are smothering you.”

David quested in his mind for something
Katsuk could not strike down. Music? He’d sneer the way adults
always did. Education? He’d say it didn’t prepare you to live out
here. Science? He’d say it was killing the world with big bombs,
big machines.

“Katsuk, what do you mean by body-talk?”

“What your actions say. You say with your
mouth: “That’s too bad.” Then you laugh. That means you’re really
happy while you’re saying you’re sorry. You say: “I love you.” Then
you do something to hurt that person’s feelings. Body-talk is what
you
do
. If you say, “I don’t want that to happen,” and all
the while you are making it happen, which thing are we to believe?
Do we believe the words or do we believe the body?”

David thought about words. He thought about
church and sermons, of all the words about “eternal life.” Were the
words true, or did the preacher’s body say something different?
“Katsuk, do your people understand body-talk?”

“Some of them. The old ones did. Our
language tells me this.”

“How?”

“We say eat while eating, shit while
shitting, fuck while fucking. The words and the body agree.”

That’s just dirty talk.”

“It is innocent talk, Hoquat. Innocent.”

***

From a note left by Katsuk in the abandoned
park shelter at Sam’s River:

My body is a pure expression of myself.

***

Katsuk put down the chipping stone, examined
his obsidian knife. It was done. He liked the way the smooth end
fitted his hand. It made him feel close to the earth, part of
everything around him.

The sun stood straight overhead, beating
down on his shoulders. He heard Hoquat breaking twigs behind
him.

Katsuk placed the omen wood from Bee across
his knees, examined it once more for flaws. The wood appeared to
have no irregularities. Every grain ran straight and clean. He took
the smooth handle of his knife in his right hand, began scraping
the wood. Long, curly shavings peeled back. He worked slowly at
first, then faster, whispering to himself.

“A little bit here. More there. Some here.
Ahhh, that’s a good one ...”

David came and squatted beside him.
Presently, he said: “May I help?”

Katsuk hesitated, thought about the purpose
of this bow—to drive a consecrated arrow into the heart of the
youth beside him. Was Hoquat asking now to be slain? No. But this
showed Soul Catcher at work, preparing the boy for that final
moment.

“You may help,” Katsuk said. He handed the
knife and the omen wood to the boy, indicated a bulge to be
scraped. “Remove this high place. Work slowly, just a little bit at
a time.”

David held the limb as Katsuk had, resting
it across his knees. “This place here?”

“Yes.”

David put the knife to the wood, pulled. A
curl of wood formed over the blade. Another, He scraped
energetically, intent on the bulge. Perspiration ran down his
forehead, into his eyes. Lengths of shaving curled away, dropped
around his knees.

“No more,” Katsuk said. “You have fixed that
place.” He took back the wood and knife, resumed his careful
shaping of the bow.

“More here ... and over here ... that’s
right ... now, in here ...”

David tired of watching the wood curl away
from the bow. Chips and shavings were all around Katsuk. Light,
reflected from the newly cut wood, played glowing patterns against
Katsuk’s skin.

Up the slope above them. A granite chimney
climbed toward the sky of blue patches in bulging, fleecy clouds.
David stood up, examined the slope, the outcropping of volcanic
glass below the granite. He turned, looked down into the
forest—dark down there: old-growth fir, hemlock, an occasional
cedar. A game trail angled into the trees through heavy undergrowth
of salal and wild huckleberries.

Katsuk’s voice as he talked to himself
carried a hypnotic quality. “Lovely wood ... a bow of the old times
...”

Old times!
David thought.
Katsuk
certainly lives in a strange dream.

David picked up an obsidian chip, hurled it
into the trees. He thought:
If you go downstream, you come to
people.

The rock made a satisfying clatter which
Katsuk ignored.

David hurled another rock, another. He
worked his way down the slope to the game trail, picking up rocks,
tossing them—a boy at play.

He threw my knife away! He killed a man.

Once, David paused to slash a mark in a tree
trunk, peering back at Katsuk. The murmuring voice did not change
pitch. Katsuk still paid no attention to his wandering captive.

He thinks his damned Raven is guarding
me.

David searched the sky all around: no sign
of the birds. He ventured about fifty feet down the game trail,
pulling off salal leaves, sampling a sour berry. He could see
Katsuk through the brush and trees. The sound of the obsidian knife
on the bow remained clear: a slithering that noised its way oddly
into the woods. Katsuk’s murmurous conversation with himself
remained audible.

“Ahhh, beautiful bow. Here’s a beautiful bow
for the message ...”

“Crazy Indian,” David whispered. Katsuk
hummed and chanted and mumbled at his work. David broke off a
huckleberry twig, studied his situation.

No ravens. Katsuk distracted. An open trail,
all downhill. But if Katsuk caught him trying to escape again ...
David took a trembling breath, decided he wouldn’t really try to
escape, not yet. He’d just explore this trail for a way.

Casually, he wandered down into the trees.
The neatly collected flight of a flicker dipping through the forest
caught his attention. He heard deerflies singing. A dusty sunshaft
spread quiet light on the brown floor of the woods, illuminating a
delight of greenery. David saw it as an omen. He still felt anger
at Katsuk. The anger might break the spirit spell.

David ventured farther down the trail. He
crossed two fallen trees, went under a low passage of moss-draped
limbs. The trail forked at the brink of a steep hill. One track
plunged straight down. The other angled off to the left. He chose
the steep way, went down through the trees to a long slope scarred
by an avalanche. David studied the open area. A single cedar had
survived the slide, sheltered by a prow of granite directly above
it. Part of the tree had been shattered, though—one side half
stripped away. Great shreds of wood had been left dangling.

Deer tracks led straight across the scarred
area.

David stayed on the mossy, fern-patched
forest floor, skirted the open area. Several times, he glanced
around, searching out his back trail for signs of pursuit.

Katsuk was nowhere to be seen.

He listened, could not hear the scraping of
the obsidian knife on the bow. There was only the wind in the
trees.

The avalanche had lost itself in a small,
gently rounded valley, leaving a tangle of trees and earth which
dammed a small stream. The stream already had cut a narrow way
across the slide. Water tinkled over rocks below the scarred
earth.

David broke his way through a salal thicket
above the water, surprised a spotted fawn which splashed through
the shallows.

For a moment, David stood trembling in the
aftermath of the shock at the way the fawn had burst from the
thicket. Then, he went down to the stream, pushed his face into
cold water to still his trembling. He thought:
Now, I’m
escaping
.

***

Sheriff Pallatt:

There’s a goddamned lot of horseshit around
about who’s going to get the credit in this case—us or the FBI. All
I want is to save that kid—and the Indian, if I can. I’m tired of
playing sheriff! Me ‘n Dan Gomper, my chief deputy, is gonna take
our own crew in there and find that pair. A couple of old boar
woodsmen like us can do it if anyone can. We’re gonna camp cold
so’s the Indian don’t see smoke and know we’re trailing him. Gonna
be outrageous hard work, but we’ll do ‘er.

***

Katsuk looked up from the completed bow. It
was a lovely bow, just right for the walrus-gut string in his
pouch. He felt the notches for the string.

His chest ached and there were sharp pains
in his back from bending so long in one position. He coughed. Why
was it cold now? He looked up. The sun stood low over the
trees.

Katsuk got to his feet, sought his
captive.

“Hoquat!” he called.

Forest silence mocked him.

Katsuk nodded to himself.

Hoquat thinks to escape.

Again, Katsuk studied the sky. No sign of
Raven.

He thought:
Raven invites everyone to go
with him and be his guest, but on the new day, Raven turns against
his guests and wants to kill them. So the guests flee into the
woods. Now, I am Raven. I have the bow; I need only the
arrow.

Again Katsuk coughed. The spasm sent pain
shooting through his chest.

It was clear where Hoquat had gone. Even
from up on the slope, Katsuk saw the scar the boy had carved on the
tree beside the game trail.

Is it a new test?
Katsuk wondered.
Do my spirits test me now that the bow is completed? Why would
they not wait for the arrow?

He took the walrus-gut string from his
pouch, fitted it to the bow, tried the pull. His grandfather had
taught him to make such a bow and use it. He felt his grandfather
beside him as he pulled the bow to its fullest arc.

It was a great bow, truly a god-bow. Katsuk
lowered the weapon, stared down into the forest. Sweat drenched his
neck and waist. He felt suddenly weak. Had Hoquat cast a spell upon
him?

He glanced over his shoulder at the snow
peaks. He thought of the long night: Death lurked up there, calling
to him with Soul Catcher’s rattle. It was a spell, for sure.

Once more, Katsuk studied the forest where
Hoquat had gone. The trail beckoned him. He measured the way of it
in his memory: by shadows of trees and passages of moss. He sensed
the way that trail would feel beneath his feet: thinly flowing
dampness of springs, the roots, the rocks, the mud.

Janiktaht’s moccasins were growing thin. He
could feel the raw ground through them.

The trees—Hoquat had gone that way, trying
to escape.

Katsuk spoke aloud to the trail: “I am
Katsuk, he who buried Kuschtaliute, the land otter’s tongue. My
body will not decompose. Boughs of the great trees will not fall
upon my grave. I will be born again into a house of my people.
There will be many good things to eat all around me.”

Deadly whirlwinds of thought poured through
his mind, shutting off his voice. He knew he must go after Hoquat.
He must plunge down that trail, but lethargy gripped him. It was a
spell.

An image of Tskanay filled his mind.

Tskanay had cast this spell, not Hoquat! He
knew it. He felt her eyes upon him. She had looked upon him and
found him alien. She stood this moment amidst the perfume of
burning cedar needles, reciting the ancient curse. Evergreens arose
all around her, a green illusion of immortality.

“Raven, help me,” he whispered. “Take this
sickness from me.” He looked down at the cinnamon leather of the
moccasins Janiktaht had made for him. “Janiktaht, help me.”

The vision of Tskanay left him.

He thought:
Has the curse been taken
away?

Far away, with inner ear and eye, he heard
and saw a vaporous river speaking with its primitive tongues. He
saw dead trees, wind-lashed, sparring with eternity. Amidst the
dead, he saw one live tree, torn and scarred but still standing, a
cedar, straight and tall, straight as an arrow shaft.

“Cedar has forgiven me,” he whispered.

He stepped out onto the trail Hoquat had
taken then, strode down it until be saw the tree standing alone on
the scarred earth—exactly as his vision had shown it to him.

Cedar for my arrow,
he thought.
And already consecrated.

The hullabaloo of a raven caucus sounded
over the forest. They came over the avalanche scar, settled into
the cedar.

Katsuk smiled.
What more omen do I
need?

“Katlumdai!” he shouted.

And the sick spirit of the curse left him as
he called it by name. He went down into the scarred earth then to
make his arrow.