Totem (11 page)

The Village

“Better take the canoe across the bay first, just to see how she holds out. Why don't we visit the old village?” Tom McCutcheon suggested. “After that, you two can take it down river.”

The farm dogs raced ahead, searching for anything worth disturbing, while Jonny, Ernie, and Tom carried the dugout to the shore.

“There were some photographs of the village taken around the 1860s,” Tom told them as they pushed it into the water. “The records show the village was abandoned sometime at the beginning of the nineteenth century.”

“A lot of the villagers got sick,” Jonny said, as he looked off into the distance.

“You know your history,” Tom McCutcheon said, looking at Jonny with respect. “The records say the final abandonment was because of an influenza epidemic.”

They pushed the canoe into the water.

“I saw the photographs at the museum in the city,” Tom explained. “There were about twenty lodges and five hundred people.”

They stood on the other side of the bay looking at what remained of the village. The framework of the Chief's lodge had been reduced to moss-covered logs. The rest of the village was mere stumps, all bleached like bones.

“I always wondered what kind of chief he was,” the farmer said. “My grandfather had great respect for him.”

“Probably the kind of guy that never ran short of gifts,” Ernie said with a grin.

As they walked the beach, they came upon two men standing by the river. One carried a clipboard, the other a small box-like camera. Hearing their approach, they turned and smiled.

“There is supposed to be an Indian graveyard somewhere,” said the rough-hewn man with grey wiry hair that stood up on the back of his head.

“It's just beyond that stand of trees,” Jonny said, pointing to the narrow slight-sunken path above the river.

Tom raised his brows in surprise.

The broken pole near the mouth of the river caught Jonny's eye. He kneeled and ran his hands along what was left of the great carved beak. Even in ruins, to Jonny the power of the carving was clear.

“I guess the rest of it rotted away,” said the man with the camera. His pale blue shirt covered his shorts, but not his white hairy legs and long bony feet. He took a photograph with his Brownie camera. Compared to Agnes's camera, this tiny box reminded Jonny of a mousetrap.

A chorus of birds chattered above their heads. Jonny thought about the notes Agnes Atkinson used to write during her visit. He often looked over her shoulder to read her words.

“The whole forest is vocal with the birdsong. If the mosquitoes were not so bad I would spend hours among the trees. I was fortunate to get a picture of the nest of the white-throated, sparrow with her two young. It was shown to me by a medicine woman called Silver Cloud.”

“Aren't these poles just signposts for a family?” The man with the camera asked.

“Sometimes they honour the dead,” Jonny explained. “The chief had an eagle pole at the entrance of his house to tell everyone that he and his family were of noble blood.” Jonny rose from the ground. “There was a Thunderbird at the top of this one.”

“How would you know that?” demanded the second man. He peered at Jonny over his gold-rimmed glasses with skepticism.

Jonny stood up and shrugged. “I know the traditions. I could carve one just like it.”

“Make one like what?”

“That pole,” Jonny said pointing to the prostrate figures on the ground.

“That totem pole?” the younger man asked. “Probably wouldn't be exactly like it.”

“You just got to know what you are doing,” Jonny said, ignoring the younger man, speaking directly to the older one. “Look at the beak,” he said. “Eagle has a curved beak. Raven has a straight beak, and Hawk has a beak that curves nearly all the way back.”

The older man looked at the younger one. “He seems to really know his stuff,” he said.

“We're doing research about the area,” the man in the blue shirt said.

“Do you have any samples of your work?” the older man asked.

“My grandfather and I worked on something a while back,” was all Jonny could think of saying, “but it's in a village far away.”

“Oh, it's a family tradition,” the man with the glasses said. “That's even better. You know, you could make a couple of hundred bucks a pole. What's your commission?”

Ernie jabbed Jonny in the ribs and grinned.

Jonny smiled. “I'll find a cedar plank and make you a mask.”

“We could get one from a lumber company,” the man said, removing his glasses and wiping his brow with his handkerchief.

“That's all right,” Jonny said. “I prefer to cut my own.”

The boys left the chicken farmer with the two men to walk along the beach.

Beside the circular rock fireplace, under a mound of moss that used to be Kalaku's shelter, they found two shell and copper disk necklaces.

“Are they Kalaku's?” Ernie asked.

Jonny nodded, unable to speak for the tightening in his throat.

Ernie lifted the necklaces and drew them over his friend's head. “He would want you to have them,” he said.

Jonny removed one and drew it over Ernie's head. “You too,” he said in a raspy voice.

He went to the ledge where he had left his small carved box. “My tools,” he whispered as he lifted the lid. Inside he found his carving tools and his small, smooth, owl stone.

“Look,” he said to Ernie.

“Kalaku must have found it by the fire and brought it back here,” Ernie said.

“Which means he didn't go to the village,” Jonny said. “He didn't get sick.”

“It doesn't matter anymore,” Ernie said in a tired voice. “None of it matters anymore.”

After dinner, Jonny and Ernie offered to clear the table and wash the dishes while Tom and his wife sat out on the porch.

“What do you think those guys are going to do over there?” Jonny asked Ernie.

“You know white guys,” Ernie said. “They won't be happy until they even have the bones in our burial grounds.”

Jonny scraped the remains of their chicken dinner into the garbage. He turned to Ernie. “We should go back and see the school,” he whispered.

The fire had destroyed the dark wood-paneled walls, long narrow windows, and rows of beds. Where there had once been classrooms, a chapel, and a kitchen, there was only black timber and rubble. The heavy planked floors that shone like glass were gone. So were the giant front doors and wide empty corridors.

Jonny and Ernie crawled up and over the crumbled charred walls of Redemption Residential. They made their way to where the basement had been. A pair of metal handcuffs dangled from a charred iron bedstead.

“I didn't think those stories about kids getting chained up in the basement were true,” Ernie said. He picked up a rock and hammered the cuffs free. “I thought it was just older kids making up stories to scare me.” He put the cuffs in his back pocket.

Totem

Tom McCutchen carried a cot into the old wooden shack while his wife handed Jonny a stack of sheets and blankets. “When it gets really cold, you must sleep inside,” she insisted.

People were coming from all over to watch him carve. He worked best in loose pants and a shirt of woven homespun. His feet were most comfortable in flat moccasins. Sometimes Jonny told them how people long ago wore mountain goat cloaks and skirts of shredded bark. Sometimes they sang songs of the figures he was carving.

Jonny ran his hand along the prepared pole. He breathed in the sweet woody aroma of freshly cut cedar and smiled. With the lightest of movements he made the outline of a face. He could picture the heavy brows and large eyes of the great image, waiting to be free. Jonny picked up his antler wedge along with the stone chisel. “If you used a steel chisel, you'd split those boards a lot faster,” someone would always suggest as they watched him work. Jonny would just smile and carry on.

One young woman came often. Sometimes her slender, fine-boned fingers traced the faces that Jonny made. Today, she paused with one hand shading her eyes from the sun. Her hair blew back, away from her neck. To his surprise, Jonny recognized the small white pendant in the shape of an owl she wore around her neck.

“Is that carved from bone?” Jonny asked.

“Yes,” she said holding it up for him to see. “It belonged to my grandmother.”

“Hmm,” he murmured, remembering the very day Kalaku had given it to Silver Cloud. “Does your grandmother live around here?”

“She lived for many years in a village upstream until she died of old age.”

Jonny stared off in the distance and smiled in remembrance. “Her medicine was very strong,” he said. “She would not let her soul be chased away easily.”

The young woman looked into his face and creased her brow.

Jonny admired the girl's high cheekbones, thick black hair, and deep black eyes.
She is very beautiful,
he thought, holding out to her his small box of sandwiches.

“My name is Sarah,” she said extending her hand, “Sarah Bottle.”

Jonny watched her take a small bite, chew, and then set the sandwich down in the palm of her hand. She was obviously not hungry, just being polite. He decided he would carve her a hair comb with the face of a wolf.

The Wild Woman of the Woods lay before them on a trestle. Her rounded lips pursed beneath her half-closed eyes. Her giant black body with pendulous breasts had fingers thrust into the mouths of two small human heads.

“Whatever made you carve the Wild Woman of the Woods?” Sarah asked.

“It's a reminder for parents to keep their children close by,” Jonny replied.

“They all say that's what happened to the missing boy.”

“He escaped from her,” Jonny told her with confidence. “He is with another family.”

“Our family has a story something like that,” the girl told Jonny. “My father told me he once found a white child in the woods.”

Jonny put down his chisel as his heart began to pound. He kept his head down.

“Was he lost?”

“Oh no,” she said. “He was swinging in a hammock from a tree branch.”

“Did his parents just leave him there?” Jonny asked with a dry throat.

“No,” Sarah said. “My father said the family's cabin burnt to the ground. It was a good thing the little boy had been put outside to sleep in the shade.”

Jonny put his hand to his forehead to stop the vision of the burning cabin.

“Are you all right?” the girl asked. “Maybe it's too hot to work in the sun today.” She turned to another pole on a trestle. This pole had only one totem, an eagle, head slightly raised and turned, wings folded.

“What colour are you going to paint this one?”

“I won't,” Jonny replied. “I'll let it weather. It's for the burial grounds across the bay.” He didn't want to pester the girl, but Jonny couldn't stop thinking about what she had just told him. He didn't want to hope, but couldn't help it.

“Did your father know the people with the burnt cabin?”

“Oh yes,” she said. “He visited them often. The woman was white. The man was an Indian trapper. I think my father used to call him White Wolf.”

Once again Jonny's heart pounded with anticipation. He worked at making his voice sound calm. “Why did he call him that?”

“The man trapped a white wolf one winter, but kept the pelt instead of selling it. It would have brought him more money, but he didn't have the heart to let it go,” she said. “I also know he smoked a pipe that was in the shape of a wolf's head.”

It was all too much for Jonny. He threw down his tool in anger. “How do you know that?” he asked in a gruff voice. “You're probably just making it all up.”

The girl's eyes filled with pain and she took a step back. “I know because my father watched him carve it. He made one for him as well.” She flipped her hair away from her shoulders in anger.

Before Jonny could apologize, Tom McCutcheon called out from across the field. He and his wife were hurrying toward Jonny.

“Hey Jonny,” he said. “I found this in the barn rafters when I got down the canoe.” He took a metal box out from under his arm and placed it on the worktable.

As soon as Jonny saw the biscuit tin, he remembered Agnes giving it to Tom in exchange for his sou'wester.

“It's rusted shut,” Mrs. McCutcheon said. “Give it a tap with your wedge.”

Tom, his wife, and Sarah Bottle stood in anticipation as Jonny pried the rusty tin open. In it there were three yellowed envelopes, some dried cedar cones, and a small green disk.

Mrs. McCutcheon lifted the top envelope. She removed the photograph between the thin pieces of writing paper with care. It was of two women sitting on a pebbly shore. Both wore cedar bark capes. Across their chests woven braids held square reed baskets to their backs. Small plugs of wood pieced their lower lips. Strands of dark hair escaped from their thick heavy braids and danced across their faces, as they stared out across the waves.

She turned the stained black and white photograph over and read,
Women on shore, Northwest coast. A. Atkinson.
With a smile, Mrs. McCutcheon handed the photograph to Tom as she unfolded the accompanying note. “This note is addressed to your grandfather, Tom,” she said to her husband. “It's got to be at least seventy-five years old. Take care handling it.”

Dear Tom,

I hope this small letter and photograph reaches you via Inland Packet as you recommended. This is one of the photographs not used in my presentation. Apparently the jewellery caused offense. How I miss the times when my dinner cloth was over a hard rock with a white-headed eagle flying above.

Agnes Atkinson

“Agnes?” Tom asked in surprise. “You mean the photographer was a woman? That must have caused quite a stir among the Natives.”

“Which ones?” his wife asked, raising her eyebrows.

The second envelope contained a single photograph. A woman dressed in furs stood on a beach. Several warriors sat at her feet with carved, pointed paddles raised in salute. Mrs. McCutcheon read the inscription,
Silver Cloud, medicine woman, Northwest Coast.

Sarah Bottle gave the sound of a huge intake of breath. “That was my grandmother.”

Mrs. McCutcheon held the photograph up to the young girls face. “Must be,” she said with a grin, “the resemblance is uncanny.” She handed Sarah the picture.

The last envelope held a photograph of Old Tom himself standing beside his dugout canoe, grinning. Two boys stood on either side of him holding the paddles.

“Let me see that,” Tom McCutcheon said, taking the photograph from his wife's hand.

“It's got to be Old Tom,” his wife replied. “It's the very same canoe.”

“Oh it's him all right,” Tom said with a puzzled look on his face. “But look at the two kids standing beside him. They look exactly like Jonny and Ernie.”

Jonny picked up his knife and went back to work. “I guess all of our families come from around here,” he said as he bent to cover his huge smile. “By the way, Sarah,” he said, “I didn't mean to offend you. I'd really like to meet your father.”