Ghost Canoe (3 page)

Nathan shut the door of their new cottage in Neah Bay quietly behind him. His mother was sleeping, and even though she'd wanted to see him off, he knew it was important to let her rest. In the middle of the night, he'd awakened and found her writing a letter by the light of the kerosene lamp in her room as she muffled the sound of her cough with a handkerchief.

In a few minutes he'd put Baada Point behind him, where their cottage sat on a bluff seaward of the government buildings of the Indian Agency. The sun was rising behind him and it cast his shadow far ahead on the beach. He walked along the sweep of Neah Bay toward the Makah village. His eyes focused on the Makah canoes in the distance, between the beach and the cedar-plank longhouses where Lighthouse George
and most of the Makahs lived. Some of the fishermen were already launching their canoes.

Nathan was heading for the trading post to meet up with Lighthouse George, and he was carrying the big Makah basket that George's wife, Rebecca, had given his mother. Its bottom half was filled with clothing for his father on Tatoosh—some his mother had just made and some she'd mended—and the top half was full of baked goods for his father and the new men. Her letters to him, one per day, were tucked in between.

When Nathan arrived at the trading post, he found Lighthouse George already there, sitting at the table in front of the counter. He was having coffee with Captain Bim, the huge owner of the trading post, a bear of a man who was talking excitedly in English spiced with Chinook. Lighthouse George saw Nathan at the door. A happy smile spread across the Makah's face, which brought one to Nathan's as well. Today was the day he'd go out in a canoe with George, and Nathan could barely contain his excitement.

“Come in, come in!” cried Captain Bim, who was the friendliest man Nathan had met in his life, also the biggest talker and just plain the biggest. Even his beard, curly and gray, was enormous. A colony of swallows could nest in it, Nathan mused, perhaps without the trader noticing.

Captain Bim wasn't really a captain at all, Nathan had discovered. He just liked the name, and he liked wearing a nautical cap with an anchor emblazoned on the front. For much of the day, the trader remained seated right where he was, under the sign that read
EVERYTHING FROM NEEDLES TO ANCHORS
, where he could readily visit with everyone who came through the door. His Makah assistant, an old man who never seemed to speak, did the legwork around the place and the measuring of tea, coffee, sugar, flour, molasses, and everything else that was kept behind the counter.

Captain Bim's eyes immediately fastened on the baked goods peeking from Nathan's basket. Setting it down beside the table, Nathan brought out three sweet rolls, one for each of them. “
Muck-a-muck
,” Nathan said. Delighted, Captain Bim poured Nathan a cup of coffee, so quickly that Nathan didn't have time to explain that he didn't drink coffee. He decided to follow Lighthouse George's example, and added three spoonfuls of sugar, then waited for the coffee to cool as he savored his sweet roll, bite by flavorful bite.

“I was just telling George that I had a robbery here last night,” Captain Bim reported, picking flakes of sugar out of his beard. As he popped the flakes into his mouth and proceeded to lick his fingers, his eyes shifted back to the basket of baked goods, which made Nathan feel a little uneasy.

Nathan took a sip of the coffee. “What did you lose?” Coffee, he decided, wasn't half bad when it was this sweet.

“A Makah fishing harpoon, a whetstone, a good deal of food, some pots and pans, a long length of rope, matches, a hunting knife with an engraving of a clipper ship on the bone handle…I'm surprised about the harpoon. With all the fish harpoons around Neah Bay, I can't see why someone would have to go and steal one. I just had it up on the wall for looks. You'd
think they would've just made their own. If that's the way it's going to be, I might retire to Port Townsend sooner than I expected. I've had in mind to start an ice-cream parlor….”

Captain Bim reached across to the basket and brought out a scone. Nathan wished he hadn't set the basket so close. “Have you had burglaries before?”

“It's been a while—ten, twelve years. That's why I had such a silly little lock on the door. From now on, it will be a great big lock.”

With a determined expression, Captain Bim reached for another pastry. Nathan noticed that Lighthouse George had finished his sweet roll, and he remembered about the oil George had brought from Victoria. “Potlatch,” Nathan said to George, giving him a scone and taking one for himself.

“A beautiful concept,” Captain Bim purred, and took yet another roll with his free hand. They were disappearing as fast as berries into the mouth of a bear.

“I'll be watching everyone who comes into the store,” the trader said with his mouth full. “The thief will give himself away; that's what happened last time. The Makahs take care of their own—they humiliated him publicly, and that took care of the problem.”

“But what if the thief this time wasn't somebody who lives here?” Nathan suggested on the spur of the moment. He was already considering the possibilities, which was his nature.

“There's nobody here except who's here,” Captain Bim proclaimed. “There's nothing but the forest primeval at our backs, Little Mac. No roads in or out. How could there be somebody else?”

“But what about the footprints? The footprints that were found at the time of the shipwreck?”

The trader chuckled and poured Nathan another cup of coffee. “A budding detective! Haven't you heard, young man, that the territorial marshal who came to investigate said those probably were just Makah footprints?”

“What do the Makahs think about that?”

“They say they didn't make the tracks,” Bim huffed impatiently, “but who else would be walking barefoot on the beach?”

“Somebody who kicked off his shoes trying to swim to shore!”

Captain Bim laughed as he reached for two more rolls at once. “You have quite an imagination, young man. Don't forget, the ship sank so fast the crew wasn't able to launch any lifeboats. No one
could
have survived, not in those waters. Not a chance. Not a remote chance.”

“So who killed the captain?”

“A mutiny, perhaps? The captain could have been a madman. We'll never know. As they say, dead men tell no tales.”

Nathan glanced into the basket. Only two rolls left. As a defensive measure, he took the last two. He gave one to Lighthouse George and kept the other for himself.

Lighthouse George caught Nathan's eye and tapped the mailbag lying against his chair. “S'pose we go to Tatoosh?”

“I'm ready!” Nathan declared, standing up quickly. His nerves were buzzing with caffeine.

“Come back soon, Red,” the big man declared, standing up as well.

Nathan looked around, confused. “Who's ‘Red'?”

“Why, you are.”

“I barely have any red in my hair,” he protested. “It's mostly brown.”

“Aye, but there's red in your cheeks, like your father's. You're a Scot, and Scots are Reds in my book.”

Suddenly Nathan felt as though Bim was goading him. Maybe there was something about the jovial trader that wasn't entirely good-natured. It might not be a good thing to let Captain Bim think he lacked a backbone. Keeping his voice as level as he could, Nathan corrected him: “My ancestors were Scots, and I'm proud of it, but I'm an American.”

When the huge man replied with a snort, Nathan added, “And please don't call me Red. I just don't like that name.”

Bim countered, “I suppose I daren't call you Little Mac, then, since you're too much in your father's tall and sturdy mold to be called little by any means. Will Young Mac do?”

Nathan laughed, and wondered why he'd been so annoyed. Maybe it was the coffee. “Anything but Red!”

He turned to go, but made the mistake of glancing back at the trader. With a friendly slap on Nathan's back, Captain Bim started up again. “It's marvelous having two more English speakers in Neah Bay. You know, I've been here twenty-two years and I don't understand three words of Makah. It's the most difficult language you can imagine. Their own name for them
selves is entirely unpronounceable. It's supposed to mean ‘People of the Cape and the Seagulls,' which seems rather mundane to me. Makah's a name other people gave to them, and I myself find it far more poetic….”

The trader had talked so fast he'd winded himself, and now he raised his hand to signal them to stay a moment longer.

“Does the word
Makah
mean something?” Nathan asked, to give the trader the chance to draw another breath, and because he wanted to make up for being short with Bim a few moments before.

Captain Bim was pleased that Nathan had postponed leaving for the time being. “It's some nearby tribe's name for them,” he continued. “I hear it means ‘generous with food,' which they certainly are in my experience. You'd make a good Makah, Young Mac,” the trader added with an approving chuckle.

“I'm glad so many people around here speak the trading language, not just Makah. I think I can learn enough of it to talk to people—”

“Ah, that dreadful Chinook,” Bim interrupted. “The easiest and most grotesque of languages. All of human expression reduced to a handful of words that mean anything and everything! I try to get George here to use his English when he talks to me—he's one of the few Makah that knows any—but I can't get anything out of him but Chinook. It looks like you've already had better luck!”

Nathan caught a glimpse of George smiling at him. “I'll be back later, Captain Bim,” Nathan said cheerfully, scooping up the big basket. But he thought: Not with so much to potlatch next time!

As they rounded Koitlah Point, Lighthouse George pointed the canoe west along the rocky, storm-carved shore of Cape Flattery. At the front of the canoe, Nathan paddled with a high heart. Here he was, paddling on the Strait with Lighthouse George in the mailman's dugout canoe! To make everything perfect, it was one of those rare days—the Pacific was living up to its name, the sun was shining, and there was almost no wind.

Lighthouse George guided the canoe outside the line of swells that rose and broke as waves upon the reefs and cliffs along the Cape. Above the shore, white-headed eagles kept watch on the waters from their perches in the tall cedars on the slopes of the mountain. Around the next point, hundreds of gulls were screaming, and Nathan could hear the barking
of sea lions. Ahead, like a mighty fortress at the entrance of the Strait, loomed treeless Tatoosh Island. Even on this calm day, its jagged gray cliffs fronted the breaking white attack of the relentless sea. Nathan glanced over his shoulder. George was smiling as he pointed with his face toward the island and said, “Tatoosh.”

“I love the sea,” Nathan told him.

“The sea is my country, too.”

“Where did you learn to speak English?”

“On a whaleship,” George replied, with obvious regret in his voice and in his dark eyes. “I was young. I thought, I will go for a year to work on a whaleship. That's what they said—one year—when they took me. Five years later I got back home. They let me off at Vancouver Island—the Nitinat people paddled me home across the Strait.”

“Were you ever in the South Seas?”

“Oh yes—all over.”

“What job did you have on the ship?”

“Harpoon.”

“Harpooner! That's really important! Did you kill a lot of whales?”

Lighthouse George looked away, and when he looked back, his usually amiable face had clouded over with memories that made him look suddenly much older than his years. “Too many, Tenas Mac. Too, too many whales—the seas were red with blood. I was so happy to come back home—never leave again, never, never.”

“At least you saw the world,” Nathan suggested.

“I saw too much.”

The fisherman fell silent as Tatoosh neared. Nathan was hoping this wouldn't be his last day on the water with Lighthouse George.

As they paddled for the tiny beach in the cove on Tatoosh Island's east side, Nathan discovered what a feat it was to bring a canoe through the breaking surf. He paddled, to add speed, but it was George's paddle that knew the language of the waves, not his.

His father, who'd been watching their approach, helped them beach the canoe. Nathan bailed it out with George's small canoe bailer, fashioned from lightweight cedar like everything else the Makahs used, from spoons to great canoes. Nathan had so many things to tell his father, but he began by praising the canoe.

“These canoes are a marvel,” Zachary MacAllister agreed. He gave a broad smile. “Their lines are virtually identical with those of the most advanced clipper ships. Look at that long, clean run,” he said, with a sweeping wave of his hand. “Look at the hollow entrance, the beautiful shear. I once heard it said that the clipper ships might have been developed from a design that Captain Cook's men brought back from his last voyage. Cook visited these shores almost a hundred years ago when he was searching for the Northwest Passage.”

The three ate a meal with the new assistant keepers—two short, one tall, all with mustaches—all looking slightly seasick and hardly more talkative than Lighthouse George, who among strangers was mute as a tree. Nathan was disinclined to talk with the assistant keepers as well. Though he wouldn't have
admitted it, he was jealous of their doing the job he had done alone with his father, even if he was happy to be free of it.

Nathan talked softly with his father. He told him how he'd already turned over the soil for his mother's garden, how she was teaching at the Agency every day, showing the Makah girls how to sew on a sewing machine, and how his mother had an order in with Captain Bim for flower and vegetable seed. A steamship called the
Anna Rose
brought supplies once a week from Port Townsend, ninety miles to the east. They should get their seed by the middle of May.

His father was pleased to hear the news. Nathan made him even happier as he went on to tell how his mother and Lighthouse George's wife, Rebecca, had become friends over the sewing machine. Rebecca brought clams she had dug and fish from Lighthouse George, and she wanted to do all the washing for his mother, as well as any other heavy work she could do.

Then Nathan thought of the pastries, and told his father their sad history. His father, who had met Captain Bim previously, enjoyed a hearty laugh, with only mild regret showing in his eyes for the sweet rolls and scones that might have been.

Nathan suddenly remembered the biggest news of all—the burglary of the trading post the evening before—and blurted it all out. “Do you think there might be a connection between the burglary and the murder of the
Burnaby
's captain?” he concluded breathlessly. “What about the survivor, the man who made the footprints?”

Nathan's father glanced at Lighthouse George, who had been listening but was showing no interest or
emotion, and then he stroked his silver beard thoughtfully and said to Nathan in measured tones, “It's not impossible that there's a connection, I suppose, but it's highly unlikely. As strange as the wreck of the
Burnaby
was, I can understand that it's troubling you. But let's not leap to conclusions, such as the existence of a survivor. Facts will turn up; they almost always do.”

Nathan listened politely, but he couldn't help feeling disappointed. His father was so cautious, and Captain Bim lacked all curiosity and had no imagination. It didn't seem right, either, that the marshal who was supposed to investigate had already left. “But Father,” Nathan said. “Fourteen men dead, fifteen counting the captain!”

His father nodded soberly. “Strange circumstances, certainly. Strange goings-on. And the burglary at the trading post…I want you to be careful, Nathan, and don't be letting your curiosity get the best of you. Someone may be up to no good in the village, and you must be prudent about where you spend your time.”

Lighthouse George, listening intently, interjected, “He's pretty good with that paddle, Cap'n Mac. I could use some help in the canoe….”

Nathan didn't know what to say, but he broke into a smile. He didn't know exactly what George was offering him, but he knew the mailman and his wife had become true friends of their family, had adopted all three of them, it seemed. He hoped George meant for him to help with the fishing—his heart beat fast at the thought. He'd work hard, they'd see. He knew he could learn fast.

Before Nathan left with Lighthouse George, he was
able to give his father the rest of the report on his mother. She loved the cottage and working with the Makah girls, and she was as optimistic as ever, but in truth, Nathan reported, her health didn't seem to be improving yet.

“The warmer weather's coming soon,” his father said hopefully, and then added, to Lighthouse George, “Thank you for bringing my son as well as the mail. I hope he'll be some help to you.”

The brawny fisherman replied with a simple nod of his head.

Nathan helped George launch the canoe into the surf and looked over his shoulder once to catch sight of his father, who was waving good-bye. Then Nathan concentrated, putting all of his strength into his strokes. He wanted to look good for his father. There was a fierce pride burning within him, the pride of being his father's son and feeling at home on the sea.

Instead of heading for Neah Bay, Lighthouse George turned them south through the tricky, tidedriven currents, rough as rapids in a river, that were surging into the Strait and around the tip of Cape Flattery. “
Skookum-chuck
,” George commented, combining the Chinook words for “powerful” and “water.” Nathan was amazed to be where he was in such a small craft. “
Skookum
,” Nathan repeated, eyeing the surf breaking against the steep headlands.

They paddled toward the most striking of all the monumental rocks standing offshore. Nathan had often admired it from Tatoosh. It was called Fuca's Pillar—not Two-ca's Pillar as he'd first thought when he'd heard it. A tower of stone, it was named after the Spanish explorer who was given the credit for discov
ering the strait that now carried his name. The pillar stood like a massive chimney more than a hundred feet above the sea foaming around its base. When he was still on Tatoosh, Nathan had discovered through a spyglass that its flat top was covered with a thick carpet of grass.

Once past Fuca's Pillar, Lighthouse George guided them closer to the cliffs, to a spot where the sea was washing over a reef. Between the canoe and the reef, sea otters were floating on their backs and grooming their fur. One was using a stone to break open a sea urchin. South of the reef, as they paddled the surf line opposite a small sand beach, Nathan saw something barely sticking out of the sand. When they got a little closer, he realized what it was. “A ship's wheel!” he cried, pointing it out to George.

They paddled to shore, and Lighthouse George watched as Nathan dug the wheel out of the sand. None of the steering handles were broken off. The name of the ship
—The Queen of Malabar—
was barely legible in the corroded metal plate at the center of the wheel. “It's old,” Nathan said. “I'll bet it's been buried in the sand a long time.”

“Let's put it in the canoe,” George said. “Cap'n Bim will pay you for old stuff like that.”

As they paddled north back toward Cape Flattery, they noticed that a light schooner had anchored offshore and that a rowboat was bobbing in the swells at the base of Fuca's Pillar. A sailor was working the oars, skillfully keeping the rowboat off the rocks, while a man in gentleman's clothing was climbing around on the lowest reaches of the pillar. “What would anyone be doing out there?” Nathan asked as
he squinted to get a better look. “It looks like he's searching for something.”

“
Mesachie mitlite
,” Lighthouse George said disapprovingly. “That's a place to stay away from. No one goes there.”

“Why is it a place to stay away from?” Nathan wondered, watching the man's poor attempts at climbing.

“Something happened there, a long time ago. Before the Boston men and the King George men came in boats big as houses, before that, the Makahs had a contest there. Every year.”

Lighthouse George pointed indirectly toward the pillar with a motion of his thumb. “Young men would climb up there.”

Nathan took a dubious glance up and down the walls of the pinnacle. He wondered if it might be possible for a climber to wedge himself into the vertical cracks. “Is that possible, to climb the pillar?”

The fisherman shrugged. “Maybe. Boys still climb in cliffs to find eggs.”

“I used to do that myself, near the lighthouse where we lived before, but I always started from the top, and I had a rope. I'd bring the eggs for my mother. What kind of a contest was it that they used to have on Fuca's Pillar?”

“The boy who climbs highest, he plants a sign of his clan. Then his clan has good luck for the next year.”

“So why is it a bad place?”

“Once, a boy climbed so high, he couldn't go back down. He knew if he tried to go down, he would fall. So he just climbed all the way to the top.”

Nathan was staring up at the top of the pillar. He was picturing the Makah boy stranded on its grassy
top. He could imagine the boy's fear as he stared straight down, a hundred feet, to the rocks below. It wouldn't have been possible to dive clear of the rocks. “What happened to him?”

“People tried to get him. They even tied rope to birds, hoping a bird would fly over and drop the rope. No luck.”

“Couldn't they save him?”

Lighthouse George replied with a mournful shrug. “The boy died up there. That's why it's a place to stay away from.”