I Heard the Owl Call My Name by Margaret Craven

Author:Margaret Craven
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2017-11-14T05:00:00+00:00

PART THREE

Che-kwa-la

TWELVE

The men of the village tore down the vicarage. The old boards were cut and shared with all for firewood. The foundation for the new house was prepared according to the blueprints which the Bishop sent, and Mark went to live at Marta’s house where she spoiled him with Indian delicacies, berry sprouts cooked with alder and salal, and salmon eggs baked with milkweed, topped with fern. Usually Jim dined with them, and often Keetah, and the times Mark liked the best were the long summer twilights when the elders dropped in to speak of the old culture.

They were all alike, the old, tied by a common bond. “We are the only ones left who remember the old ways and if we do not speak now, they will be forgotten.”

Sometimes Mark was appalled at how much was gone, how little they remembered from their long past, and he encouraged Keetah to write down the small treasures that floated up in the old minds:

“And the little girl of the family took the bones of the first halibut to the water’s edge, and gave them back to the sea, and she said, ‘Come again, Mr. Halibu-u-u-u-t, come again next year.’ ”

“And the young men strolled through the village singing the old love songs, and the songs were always of absence and of sorrow, and they spoke from the heart.”

“I went with my mother to strip the bark from the young cedar and I remember that she spoke to the tree. She said, ‘Forgive me because I seek your dress. I will not leave you naked’, and she told the tree what she would make from the bark—a blanket, and a pillow for her baby’s head.”

“I was afraid of the hamatsa dance. I was afraid of the men who looked so fierce with their heads wreathed with hemlock, and their bearskins tied with cedar rope.”

“We went in the sixty-foot canoe to buy gifts for my uncle’s potlatch, and we spent all we had, and gave away all our blankets. That winter we were cold and the children cried.”

The first week-end Gordon was home from fishing with his uncle, he came to Marta’s house, bringing three boys who had been with him at the Indian school and who wished also to board with a white family and go to school in a white man’s town.

When Gordon was there, Jim did not come or the elders. Gordon was not interested in the past. His mind reached only ahead with that urgent intensity which makes youth seem selfish, and is so necessary to difficult accomplishment.

“Do you think I can do it?” he would ask Keetah. “What do you think?” and she would answer, “I know you can. Of course you can.”

When Gordon returned to the fishing, the elders returned, Keetah’s dark head bent again to her notebook, and Jim reasserting the old role of the tribal male, pounding on the table when he wished coffee, and Keetah, putting down her pen to wait on him without a look, without a word.

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