Soul Catcher (12 page)

Had Katsuk gone down there to get more
fish?

There was a sign by the bridge: FOOT OR
HORSE USE ONLY.

Game was thick along the river trail. They
had seen two does, a spotted fawn, a brown rabbit running ahead of
them for a space, then darting into the wet greenery.

David thought:
Maybe Katsuk put out a
rabbit snare.

Hunger knotted his stomach.

They had climbed under a drizzle of rain. It
had come down in thin plumes from catch-basin leaves to bend the
ferns flat. There was no rain now though.

Where was Katsuk?

David peered out of the shelter. It was a
dawn world of cold and dampness with the sound of ducks quacking
somewhere. It was a ghostly world, a dark dawn. No bright cords of
light, just a twisted, incoherent gray.

He thought:
I must not think how that
hiker was killed.

But there was no escaping that memory.
Katsuk had done it in full view of his captive. A splash of light
on steel and then that great gout of blood.

David felt his chest shaking at the
memory.

Why had Katsuk done that? Because the hiker
had called him Chief? Surely not. Why then? Could it be the spirits
Katsuk kept referring to? Had they commanded him to murder?

He was crazy. If he listened to spirits,
they could order him to do anything.

Anything.

David wondered if he could escape in this
foggy morning. But who knew where Katsuk was now? The hiker had
tried to leave. Katsuk could be waiting even now for his captive to
run.

After the murder, all during that day,
David’s mind had rattled with unspoken questions. Something had
told him not to ask those questions of Katsuk. The death of the
hiker must be put behind them. To recall it was to invite more
death.

They had come a long way from that terrible
place of murder. David’s legs had ached with fatigue and he had
wondered how Katsuk could keep up such a pace. Every time David had
lagged behind, Katsuk had motioned with the hand which had wielded
the knife.

David remembered how he had welcomed
nightfall. They had stopped perhaps a half hour before dark. It had
been raining. Katsuk had ordered the boy to wait beneath a cedar
while the shelter was built. The river valley had filled with
liquid darkness that flowed into it from shadowed hills. The sodden
woods had fallen silent. At dark, the rain had stopped and the sky
had cleared. Sounds had grown in the darkness. David had heard
rocks laboring in the river bottom, the noises of a world become
chaos.

Every time he had closed his eyes, his
memory had filled with that blood-wet, gaping neck, the knife in
its brutality flashing.

For a long time, he had kept his eyes open,
peered out of the shelter into the bower of darkness. A gray bulk
of rock had emerged, hanging on the river’s far slope, released
from the night by moonlight. David had stared at it. Somewhere in
that fearful staring, he had gone to sleep.

What was Katsuk doing?

Dragging the sleeping bag around him, David
crawled to the shelter’s opening. He poked his head out: cold,
drifting fog everywhere. There was only one thing outside, a bulk
of surrounding gray, wet and full of dull shapes, as though the fog
tried to hold onto the night.

Where had Katsuk gone?

The man materialised then out of one of the
dull shapes. He walked from the fog as though brushing aside a
curtain, thrust a rolled bark cone into David’s hand, and said:
“Drink this.”

David obeyed, but his hand trembled so that
he spilled part of the cone’s milky liquid onto his chin. The stuff
smelled of herbs and tasted bitter. He gasped as it went down. It
was cold in his mouth at first, then burned. He gulped
convulsively, almost vomited.

Shuddering, David held out the cup of bark,
demanded: “What was that?”

Katsuk pulled the sleeping bag from David’s
shoulders, began rolling it. “That is Raven’s drink. I prepared it
last night.” He stuffed the sleeping bag into the pack.

“Was it whiskey?” David asked.

“Hah! Where would I get the hoquat
drink?”

“But what …”

“It is made from roots. One of the roots is
devil’s club. It gives you strength.” Katsuk slipped the pack
straps over his shoulder, stood up. “We go now.”

David crawled out of the shelter, got to his
feet. As he cleared the entrance, Katsuk kicked a supporting limb
for the shelter. The bark structure fell with a clatter, sending up
a puff of ashes from their fire pit. Katsuk took up a limb, went to
an animal burrow above the shelter, scattered dirt over the area.
When he was through, he had created the effect that the animal had
moved the dirt.

A ball of heat radiated from the drink in
David’s stomach. He felt wide awake and full of energy. His teeth
had stopped chattering.

Katsuk threw aside the digging stick, said:
“Stay close behind me.” He climbed around the animal burrow into
the fog.

David, stopping to pick up a pebble—his
third, to mark the third day—thought of putting his footprints in
the raw dirt. But Katsuk had stopped above him and was
watching.

Skirting the burrow, David climbed toward
his captor.. Katsuk turned, resumed the climb.

Why do I just follow him?
David
wondered.
I could run away and hide in this fog. But if he found
me, he’d kill me. He still has that knife.

A vision of the slain hiker filled his
mind.

He’d kill me sure. He’s crazy.

Katsuk began reciting something in a
language strange to David. It was a low chant that went over the
same syllables again and again.

“Crazy Indian,” David muttered. But he spoke
in a low voice which would not carry to Katsuk.

***

Chief Park Ranger William Redek:

Well, you have to realise how big and wild
this country really is, especially in the Wilderness Area. For
example, we know there are at least six small aircraft crashed
somewhere in there. We’ve never found them, although we’ve
searched. Have we ever searched! Not even a clue. And those
aircraft aren’t actively trying to hide from us.

***

“Why do you pick up those rocks?” Katsuk
asked.

David held up four pebbles in his left hand.
“To count the days. We’ve been gone four days.”

“We count by nights,” Katsuk said.

And Katsuk wondered at himself, trying to
teach this essential thing to a hoquat. Four pebbles for the days
or four pebbles for nights, what difference could it make for a
hoquat? Night and day were only separations between degrees of fear
for this young man’s people.

They sat in another bark shelter Katsuk had
built, finishing off the last morsels of a grouse Katsuk had
snared. The only light was from the fire in the center of the
shelter. It cast ruddy shadows on the crude structure over them,
glistened on the knots tied in rope made from twisted willow which
supported the framework.

It was full dark outside and there was a
pond which had reflected molten copper in the sunset. Now it was a
haunted pond full of captured stars.

Katsuk had taken the grouse from a giant
hemlock near the pond. He had called it a roosting tree. The ground
beneath it was white with grouse droppings. The grouse had come
sleepily to the hemlock branches at dusk and Katsuk had snared one
with a long pole and a string noose.

David belched, sighed, put the last of the
grouse bones into the fire pit as Katsuk had instructed him. Pit
and bones would be covered up and disguised in the morning.

Katsuk had spread cedar boughs under the
sleeping bag. He stretched out under the bag with his feet toward
the dying fire, said: “Come. We sleep now.”

David crawled around the fire, slid under
the bag. It felt clammy from not being hung to dry in the sun.
There was an acid smell to it which mingled with the smoke and
burned grease, perspiration, and cedar.

The fire burned itself down to a few coals.
David felt the night close in around him. Sounds took on fearful
shapes. He felt the cedar needles scratching. This was a place so
utterly foreign to the sounds, sights, and smells of his usual life
that he tried to recall things from other times which would fit
here. All he could bring to mind were the tirehumming whine of a
car crossing a steel bridge, the city’s smoke, his mother’s perfume
... nothing fitted. One place rejected the other.

Softly, he slipped across the border of
awareness and into sleep, there to dream. A giant face leaned over
him. It was a face much like Katsuk’s—broad, prominent cheekbones,
a mane of thick black hair, wide mouth.

The mouth opened, said: “You are not yet
ready. When you are ready, I will come for you. Pray then, and a
wish will be granted you.” The mouth closed, but the voice
continued: “I will come for you ... come for you ... for you ...
you!” It reverberated in his skull and filled him with terror. He
awoke trembling, sweating, and with a feeling that the voice
continued somewhere.

“Katsuk?”

“Go to sleep.”

“But I had a dream.”

“What kind of dream?” There was alertness in
the man’s voice.

“I don’t know. It scared me.”

“What did you dream?”

David described it.

His voice oddly withdrawn, Katsuk said: “You
had a spirit dream.”

“Was it your god?”

“Perhaps.”

“What does it mean, Katsuk?”

“You are the only one who can tell.”

Katsuk struggled with an empty feeling in
his breast.
A spirit dream for Hoquat!
Was it Soul Catcher
playing an evil game? There were stories about such things. What a
disturbing dream! Hoquat had been granted the right to a wish—any
wish. If he wished to leave the wilderness, Hoquat could do it.

“Katsuk, what’s a spirit dream?”

“That’s where you get a spirit guide for
your other soul—in the dream.”

“You said it could be a god.”

“It can be a god or a spirit. He tells you
what you must do, where you must go.”

“My dream didn’t tell me to go
anywhere.”

“Your dream told you that you aren’t yet
ready.”

“Ready for what?”

“To go anywhere.”

“Oh.” Silence, then: “That dream scared
me.”

“Ahhh, you see—the hoquat science doesn’t
liberate you from the terror of the gods.”

“Do you really believe that stuff,
Katsuk?”

His voice low and tense, Katsuk said:
“Listen to me! Every person has two souls. One remains in the body.
The other travels high or low. It is guided by the kind of life you
lead. The soul that travels must have a guide: a spirit or a
god.”

“That isn’t what they teach in church.”

Katsuk snorted. “You doubt, eh? Once, I
doubted. It almost destroyed me. I no longer doubt.”

“Did you get a guide?”

“Yes.”

“Is Raven your guide?”

Katsuk felt Soul Catcher stirring within
him, said: “You do not understand about guides, Hoquat.”

David scowled into the darkness. “Can only
Indians get—”

“Don’t call me Indian!”

“But you’re—”

“Indian is a fool’s name. You gave it to us.
You refused to admit you hadn’t found India. Why must I live with
your mistake?”

David recalled Mrs. Parma, said: “I know a
real Indian from India. She works for us. My parents brought her
from India.”

“Everywhere you hoquat go, the natives work
for you.”

“She’d be starving if she still lived in
India. I’ve heard my mother talk about it. People starve
there.”

“People starve everywhere.”

“Do real Indians get guides?”

“Anyone can get a guide.”

“Do you do it just by dreaming?”

“You go into the forest and you pray.”

“We’re in the forest. Could I pray now?”

“Sure. Ask Alkuntam to send you a
guide.”

“Is Alkuntam your name for God?”

“You could say that.”

“Did Alkuntam give you your guide?”

“You don’t understand it, Hoquat. Go to
sleep.”

“But how does your spirit guide you?”

“I explained that. It speaks to you.” David
recalled the dream. “Right in your head?”

“Yes.”

“Did your spirit tell you to kidnap me?”

Katsuk felt the boy’s questions as a
pressure, stirring up wild powers within him. Soul Catcher moved
there, stretching.

David pressed the question: “Did your spirit
tell you?”

Katsuk said: “Be silent or I will tie and
gag you.” He turned away, stretched his feet toward the warmth
remaining in the rocks around the fire pit.

“
I am Tamanawis speaking to you
...”

Katsuk heard the spirit so loud he wondered
that the boy could not hear it.

“
You have been given the perfect
innocent.”

David said: “When does your spirit speak to
you?”

“When there is something you need to know,”
Katsuk whispered.

“What do I need to know?”

“How to accept my sharp and biting point,”
Katsuk whispered.

“What?”

“You need to know how to live that you may
die correctly. First, you need to live. Most of you hoquat do not
live.”

“Does your spirit make you talk crazy like
that?”

Katsuk felt hysterical laughter in his
throat, said: “Go to sleep or I will kill you before you have
lived.”

David heard intensity in the words, began to
tremble. The man was crazy. He could do anything. He had
murdered.

Katsuk felt the trembling, reached back, and
patted the boy’s shoulder. “Do not worry, Hoquat. You will yet
live. I promise it.”

Still the boy’s trembling continued.

Katsuk sat up, took the old flute from his
belt pouch, blew softly into it. He felt the song go out,
smoke-yearning sounds in the shelter.

For a few moments, Katsuk imagined himself
in some old, safe place with a friend, with a brother. They would
share music. They would plan the hunt for the morrow. They would
preserve the dignity of this place and of each other.