Soul Catcher

  Why didn’t it hurt?

  It outraged David that the wound did not hurt. He had wanted it to hurt. Cuts always hurt. But Katsuk had spirit protectors. Maybe it really didn’t hurt.

  David turned his attention to the obsidian knife taking shape under Katsuk’s hands. The blade, about four inches long and sharply wedged, was held flat against Katsuk’s thigh. With quick, glancing blows, Katsuk broke tiny flakes from the edges.

  The knife did not appear long or slim enough to stab anyone. The cutting edges were serrated. But it would cut an artery. He thought again of the hiker Katsuk had killed. That hiker had not asked to be killed. But Katsuk had murdered him anyway.

  David found his mouth suddenly dry. He said: “That guy ... you know, on the trail ... the guy you ... well, he didn’t ask you to ...”

  “You hoquat always think mouth-talk is the only talk.” Katsuk spoke without looking up from his work. “Why can’t you learn body-talk? When Raven made you, did he leave that ability out of you?”

  “What’s body-talk?”

  “It is what you do. A thing you do can say something about what you want.”

  “That’s crazy talk about Raven.”

  “God made us, eh?”

  “Yes!”

  “It depends on what you’re taught, I guess.”

  “Well, I don’t believe that about body-talk and Raven.”

  “You don’t believe Raven keeps you tied to me?”

  David could not answer. Raven did do what Katsuk wanted. The birds went where Katsuk ordered them to go. To know where the birds would go—what a power that was.

  Katsuk said: “You are quiet. Did Raven take your tongue? Raven can do that. Your stupid hoquat world does not prepare you to deal with Raven.”

  “You always say stupid when you talk about my people,” David accused. “Isn’t there anything good about our world?”

  “Our world?” Katsuk asked. “Your world, Hoquat.”

  “But nothing good in it?”

  “I see only death in it. The whole world dies of you.”

  “What about our doctors? We have better doctors than you ever had.”

  “Your doctors are tied to illness and death. They make as much illness and death as they cure. An exact balance. It’s called a transactional relationship. But they are so blind, they do not see how they are tied to what they do.”

  “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 ...” r />
  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.


  ***

  Charles Hobuhet’s dream, as recounted by his aunt:

  When I was small I dreamed about Raven. It was the white Raven I dreamed about. I dreamed Raven helped me steal all of the fresh water and I hid it where only our people could find it. There was a cave and I filled it with the water. I dreamed there was a spirit in the cave who told me about creation. The spirit had created my cave. There were two entrances, a way to enter and a way to leave. There was a beach in the cave and waves on it. I heard drums there. My dream spirit told me there really is such a place. It is clean and good. I want to find that place.

  ***

  Katsuk sat with his back against a tree, praying for the earth to forgive him. The bow lay in his lap with the arrow and it was dark all around him, a cold wind blowing dampness onto his skin. The bow was not as well made as those of the ancient people. He knew this, but he knew also that the spirit in the wood of this bow would compensate for the way he had hurried the making of it. The arrow in his lap had been fitted with the stone tip from the beach village where his people no longer were permitted to live. The ancient times and the present were tied together.

  Clouds hid the stars. He felt the nearness of rain. The cold wind made his flesh tremble. He knew he should feel the chill of that wind, but his body possessed no sensation except the loss of Hoquat.

  Hoquat had run off. Where?

  Katsuk’s mind slipped into the spirit chase of which his ancestors had spoken. He would search out Hoquat’s spirit. That would lead him to the boy.

  Katsuk stared into the darkness. There was a small fire somewhere and he could not tell if he saw it with the inward vision or outwardly. Flames from the fire cast ruddy light on raw earth and a tangle of roots. There was a figure at the edge of the firelight. It was a small figure. Now, Katsuk knew he was having the spirit vision.

  Where was that fire?

  Katsuk prayed for his spirit to guide him, but nothing spoke to him from Soul Catcher’s world. It was another test then.

  A small animal ran across Katsuk’s outstretched legs, fled into the darkness. He felt the tree behind him growing, its bark searching upward. The damp earth and the cold wind moved all through him and he knew he would have to fight a spirit battle before he could reclaim Hoquat.