The Cannibal Spirit (33 page)

And then he had run his knife through her throat and watched her life gurgle away. That was all there was. That was the man he was capable of being. She died of his madness.

There was a night, late on a watch, some months later, the months between forgotten now. He hung off the end of a spar, far out over the ocean, a cable's rough fibres under his fingers, gazing into the water as it plunged closer and yawned farther away in the swell. He imagined it sucking him down, away from the anguish of the life fading from her eyes. He willed his fingers to let go of the cable. But he didn't have even the courage for that.

And in killing Poodlas, Harry had shown his own rage still stewed inside him. For the truth was, he could have called out, spoken with the men who had come aboard the
Hesperus
—drunk men, as he had been so often in his life, and with such results. He could have talked the situation to some resolution, instead of being drawn by his anger into violence.

There was a ship's chaplain who saw him leaning out above the ocean in the time after her murder and had the courage and perseverance, where others steered clear of his dead gaze and his swift fury, to force a few words from him. “You can forgive yourself your wrongdoings,” the chaplain told him, “but not till you have wholly recognized their gravity.” But there was no judging such an act, except in letting his fingers slip from the rope and his body disappear into the ocean. There was only recognition.

He saw again David's rotting head in the box in the forest. He understood George's passions. He had no right to judge what George had done. Harry understood the agony of death. Of horror. “I just seen too much,” George had said. This coast had black emotions laid all along it, as did the world.

He rolled the butt of his cigarette around his fingertips until the wind caught up the pieces and drew them swirling away into the night. He arched his damaged shoulder up and round. It cracked and burned. It would not be fully whole again, and there would never be the strength there had been before. But he still had his arm, still had his leg, still had his life. He knew now that there were men of miracles, and he knew his father-in-law was one. Charley had been circumspect on the details of his healing. “George use Indian way and white way,” he said. “Clever bastard.”

High in the rigging on lookout once, he'd seen a falcon far out over the sea where it should not have been. As it flew down to settle and shiver not ten feet from him, his eyes saw past its ochre body to the first faint shadow of land on the horizon. The falcon turned its head and seemed to follow where he gazed, its black beak a savage silhouette. It called out, harsh, rasping, then shook its feathers and took flight away toward the shadow. He had shouted down to those below, “Land!” and made his shilling for first-sighting.

He leaned forward in the rocking chair and rubbed at his knees, where they had chilled in the wind. He would not add to the list of his sins by deserting these people. By upping and running out on the girl he had taken for his wife. He did not have to keep on saying forever, “Here I am and this is the limit of me!” He did not have to stay the same. He had been
dead and had been made alive once more. He could be any man he chose himself to be.

Harry paced back and forth along the cannery jetty, taking his exercise, as Trelawney had warned him that he must. He watched the village fishing boats coming in with the late-afternoon tide, the orange sun behind them. He spoke a few pleasantries to the men and women working on the dock in preparation for the opening of the cannery, in a week's time.

The night before seemed almost a dream in itself now. He'd finally returned to his bed with the first light of dawn, and had not woken again until lunchtime. But he felt rested—rested in a way he could not remember ever having felt before. His wounds ached and itched, but he could give a damn for them. He felt fresh, clean somehow, ready for whatever might come next.

Looking out at the sea, he saw the blunt snout of Indian Agent Halliday's launch coming in behind the fishing fleet. He pulled himself to his feet and hobbled away down the jetty and back along the shore. He passed the women at their labours, sewing nets and drying herring or berries on great rush mats on the beach, or building cooking fires outside their homes in the fair promise of the evening. Many smiled at him, and he raised his hand or spoke a few words by return.

He came to the Indian agent's office at last, down the far end of the village, near to the Spencers'. He levered himself down on the steps out front, and sat there, blowing from his exertions.

Harry had counted back the days since he'd stood on the jetty at Fort Rupert making ready to go find George, and Halliday had voiced his threats. Ten days he had given Harry to find his father-in-law. Ten days exactly it had been to their arrival back in Alert Bay. Yet Halliday must have left for Rupert at least a day prior to that.

He had not long to wait. Soon Halliday came striding down the plankway, a canvas pack on his shoulder and a satchel in one hand, dressed as was his custom in thick black jacket and trousers, grey flannel shirt, and broad black tie, salt stains smeared across them all from his passage on the water.

When he caught sight of who awaited him, Halliday hesitated for a moment. Then he came on in determined fashion. He lifted his hand as he approached in greeting. Harry pulled himself to his feet.

“Back, then?” Halliday said. “And what news have you for me?”

“The news that I kept my end of the bargain. I hear the same cannot be said for you.”

Halliday paused at the bottom of the steps. “The men at the jetty tell me you brought George back. And he's away to Vancouver with Woolacott?”

“He is, though he'd been better tried here.”

“It warranted a state trial. It was too critical a case for a local court.”

“You took the family's property.”

“Ten days I said, Harry.”

“Aye, ten days exactly was it when we landed back here.”

“And ten days exactly was it when I made my confiscation.”

“You said to bring him to you.”

“And I was waiting in Rupert.”

“Damnation, man, I'll not believe you kept your end of things. Where have you taken them?”

“You're quick to choose yourself an Indian, Harry Cadwallader.”

“I'm more of them than your damned breed, you fucking liar.”

“Hold your temper, man. You will not curse like that to me.”

“Cursing ain't enough for it.”

“Please!” Halliday put his hand in the air, palm forward, and pointed to two wicker chairs up on the porch. “At least sit. We'll talk properly of what's to be done.” Harry held to the steps' rail and felt his head light with emotion. He thought that he might fall. “I see you're far from well,” Halliday said, placing his pack and satchel on the lowest step and looking up at Harry. “Tell me what has happened, won't you? I'm just back and know none of the details.” He came up the steps and put his hand on Harry's forearm. Harry made to pull away but then allowed himself to be steered to one of the chairs.

“Ten days,” Harry said when they were seated. “You gave no leeway.”

Halliday linked his hands in front of his face, and tapped his lower lip with his thumbnails. “Unfortunate,” he said at last. “I really did expect you
back at Rupert. That was, after all, where we parted.” He stared into the distance for a while. “There were,” he paused, “certain circumstances.”

“What are you saying?”

“Woolacott and I had two men with us. But we were only four. We waited a day. But our presence did not go unnoticed, the rumours going round. We'd have been in danger had we not acted when we did.”

“You'll forgive my lack of sympathy.”

“I'd have you understand, at least.”

“So you'll return what's ours?”

Halliday worked his fingers together, as if they were tight from work. Then he ran them through his thick red hair. “You want me to be the enemy of this story. But I'm not, you know. I am most wholeheartedly
for
the Indians.”

“Our property, man.”

“There are procedures must be followed.”

“A devil on your procedures. You're in the wrong and must make things right again.”

“It will take time.”

“Where, for the love of Christ, have you taken them?”

“Into safekeeping.”

“Where?”

“Safe.”

“Where safe?”

“Harry, how impolite must I be in saying I'll not tell you?”

“Be fucked with you, Halliday.”

“Harry, you're injured, sick, and I understand your ire, but you'll cease your cussing me. I'm Indian agent here. I will have your respect.”

“Your agency might be harder to police than priorly.”

“Is that a threat?”

“An observation. You make no friends in doing this. Did you not receive my letter through Eddlestone?”

Halliday put his palms together as if in prayer, then placed the tips of his forefingers to his lips. He said, “I did. I confess I was more disquieted
than reassured by its substance. In some ways it proved a spur to action. What was this war party to which you made reference?”

Now it was the turn of Harry to pause. The issues with Walewid were now resolved, and Halliday was the last man he wanted knowing the details of what went on out there in the wilds. “About that I was wrong,” he said. “Just drunks too liberal with their words. But I wrote we were on George's trail. Could you not have trusted that?”

Halliday said nothing in response to that. Finally, he said, “There's other things we need to talk on too.”

“Are there?”

“Your liquor trading, for instance.”

“That's over.”

“Meaning?”

“I'm through with liquor. It don't do more than serve the interests of those who seek the Indians' destruction. It keeps them slaved and beaten down, doing nothing but drink, when they should be battling to keep what's rightfully their own ways of living.” He leaned back in the wicker chair, stopped for the moment by his own eloquence.

“Ways that breed indolence,” Halliday said. “Ways that breed subversion to the progress sweeping over this country now. The Indian must change or perish, Harry.” He pushed himself to his feet and paced about the porch. “There is great tragedy in the decay of a people's society. George resists, and there is dignity in that resistance. I see that.” He turned to look down at Harry, and now his tone came flat and hard. “See it enough to fear it. When George goes visiting banned rituals, he sanctions them. If the people hold to their ways, they will sink in face of the future. They will be without hope. Will you hold back the future? Will George? It is here already, Harry. And rituals of cannibalism and savagery! Do you really think they do anything for the Indian? And what George did was not more than nihilism.”

Harry was thrown by that. “What are you talking about?” he said.

“David's funeral. Of what did you think I spoke?”

“But he is arrested for participating in a ritual of the hamatsa, ain't he? What's it to do with the funeral?”

“Yes, yes, of course.” Halliday was leaning against the porch rail, silhouetted by the low red sun behind. Harry could just about see the man's eyes upon him. “But he made more enemies in doing what he did at David's funeral than ever he did in attending a banned ritual.”

“Taking his head?”

“You do not know?”

“I heard that part.”

“It is said George ate his dead son's flesh.”

Harry felt his face burning with his anger. “Who says this?”

“Were you not there? I thought to question you on this.”

“I left. Took the women. Some stayed.”

“Well, they are the rumours. All are angry. The white community is quite up in arms.”

Harry sputtered. “Is all the world obsessed with cannibals? George is no evil man. He seeks to protect the people.”

“Oh come, he exploits them as much as does anyone. He's been piratical in the plundering of this coast.”

“The book in't like that.”

“Writing for Boas. Paid a wage by Boas. And secret myths and tales he's written that, to the Indians, were not meant for public telling. Oh, I'm sympathetic to Boas, don't get me wrong. Marking down a dying people's culture for posterity. And I understand the placing of historical artefacts into the safekeeping of museums. But don't confuse Hunt's behaviour for nobility in the service of his people. He plies a trade even as do you. Or
did
, I should say, if what you say is true.”

“You're wrong.” Harry got slowly to his feet. “I'll not believe what you say about him. George did take the head of his son away into the wilderness. That part is true. And I know he would stand up and confess to it. He buried it there in some tradition tied to the ways of his mother's people. This other. I'll hear it from George hisself or I'll call any man what speaks it a liar. And you have taken and hid what's owned by my family. In that you're as piratical as any.”

“Harry, go rest. Recover. We'll talk more on this, I promise. How did you come by your injuries?”

“Seeking my father-in-law,” he said, and he limped away toward the Spencers' house.

That evening, the white men and women of the village came to dinner at the Spencers'. It was the Reverend Hall's seventieth birthday, so Annie had informed Harry when he returned to the house.

Now Harry sat in the dining room. Places were laid along the table, and a fire roared in the hearth. Halliday arrived before the other guests, and disappeared directly into Spencer's office, deep in conference with the man. When the Indian agent emerged again into the dining room, sombre, trailing the tall, grey-suited frame of Spencer, Harry greeted him with no more than a nod.

There were eleven round the table for dinner, including Harry. Woolacott was back just an hour before off the steamer from Vancouver. He sat near Harry, with the policeman's timid, unspeaking wife between. Dr. Trelawney was there, Mr. Spencer and Annie, and William Halliday, with Maud, his wife, beside him. Directly opposite was Mr. W.A. Corker, headmaster of the residential school, and himself a former missionary, his beak nose high, and never a smile to show from that wintry face. Then there was the Reverend Alfred James Hall, honoured at the far end of the table, with his wife, low and stout and dowdy beside him.