Chapter Twenty
Every summer, Hekwaw and his good friend Katelo spend a day or two making repairs to the fishing weir, and this time, because they are old enough now to learn how it’s done and even lend a hand, they bring their sons Yaha and Nataq along with them.
After they arrive, the men stand on the riverbank and point out to the children all the places where the weir’s been damaged by the winter ice, and then Hekwaw wades out a little way and shows them how to make a good repair.
“If there’s even a small gap, the fish will swim through it,” he tells them, “so we need the weir to be solid and strong.” Nataq, who’s always full of questions, asks who built the weir in the first place, and Hekwaw tells him it was built so long ago that no one knows.
“The names have been forgotten,” he says, “but whoever made it knew what they were doing. They did a very fine job, so if we mend it properly every year it will still be standing when you two are as old as Owliktuk is now.”
The boys think Owliktuk is ancient, so the idea that they’ll ever be as old as he is makes them laugh.
They start talking in old men’s voices and squashing up their faces to make them wrinkled.
The two adults leave them to play while they put up the tent, but then they call them over and explain that it’s time to start the work.
“Take off your boots and roll up your leggings,” Hekwaw says in a stern voice. “We can lift the big rocks and you two can lift the small ones.”
At first, the two boys enjoy the work and treat it like a game, but after a while they get tired and bored, so their fathers let them go off with their catapults to hunt for ptarmigan.
Both men remember how much fun they had fishing at the weir when they were young.
A man earns his reputation hunting deer because hunting deer is harder and more important than fishing, but they both agree that when it comes to simple pleasures, a day at the weir is hard to improve on.
When the boys come back, it is clear right away that something unusual has happened.
They are no longer chattering and laughing together.
In fact, they both look pale and afraid.
They’re best friends most of the time, but they argue occasionally, so Hekwaw assumes they must have had another fight.
He takes Yaha aside to ask him what the problem is, expecting it to be something small and childish.
After looking shamefaced and denying that anything is wrong, Yaha finally confesses.
While they were off looking for grouse, they met one of the Indians.
“You mean you saw him at a distance?” Hekwaw says.
“Not at a distance,” he says. “Close by. We were busy playing, and he took us by surprise.”
All the children in the village have been warned many times about the Indians.
They have been told again and again that they are dangerous and should never be approached or spoken to.
Hekwaw is angry that the boys were so easily caught off guard but at the same time relieved that both of them are safe.
“After you saw him, did you run away like I said you should?”
“I tried, but I was so scared I couldn’t move my feet and neither could Nataq.”
“And what did the Indian do? Did he say anything or try to touch you?”
“He did say something, but I couldn’t understand what any of the words meant. He didn’t try to touch us, but he offered us some pieces of dried meat.”
“But you didn’t take them, I hope?”
Yaha shakes his head.
“Nataq wanted to, but I said no.”
Yaha looks scared and embarrassed, so Hekwaw tells him it’s not his fault and he’s done nothing wrong.
“Those Indians are cunning,” he says. “They can take anyone by surprise, and if you couldn’t run away, he probably put a spell on you.”
“Nataq couldn’t run either, so he must have put a spell on both of us,” Yaha says.
“That’s right. He probably did.”
Although Katelo is easygoing and doesn’t fear the Indians as much as some, even he is alarmed when he learns exactly what has happened.
He asks Hekwaw if he really believes the Indian put a spell on the boys and Hekwaw says that although he wishes it wasn’t true, there’s no other sensible way to explain what happened.
“I’ve told Yaha a hundred times to run away whenever he sees an Indian, and I know you’ve told Nataq the same thing. They’re clever lads and they knew the right thing to do, but when they tried, they couldn’t do it.”
“At least they didn’t come to any serious harm,” Katelo says.
“Nataq has no marks or cuts on him and your lad made sure they didn’t eat any of the meat, I’m glad to say, so despite their carelessness, it looks as if they’ve escaped with nothing but a bad scare.
Let’s hope they’ve learned a lesson and won’t get caught out again. ”
They spend that night camped beside the weir as planned, then in the morning they finish the last of the repairs and start walking back toward Ox Lake.
Yaha and Nataq are still feeling subdued and nervous, but as soon as they catch sight of the tents they run on ahead to find their friends.
When Hekwaw and Katelo arrive, the two boys are already boasting about their adventures with the strange solitary Indian, telling the other children as they stand around with open mouths how brave and clever they were to survive and how they might just as easily have been killed, then chopped up into lumps of meat and eaten.
When Keasik tells Nabayah that she is carrying a child and there is a chance the child might not be his, he tries to shrug it off at first by reminding himself that he’ll be getting a different wife soon anyway, so if this child is a half-breed it won’t matter very much, but then a day or two later, he starts imagining what other men in the band will say when they learn what has happened, how they’ll look down on him because of it and laugh behind his back, and the more vivid and detailed his imaginings become, the more maltreated and resentful he feels.
Whatever I try to do, he thinks, and however clever or hardworking I am, there’s always some new obstacle thrown across my path.
Ever since they first found me as a boy abandoned in the woods, I’ve had to fight every day to get some small portion of the respect that other men are given as their birthright.
If I wasn’t an orphan, if I had a proper father and mother of my own, then the others would have to take me seriously, but as it is, I’m the one they can look down on and laugh at, the butt of every stupid joke, and after this it’ll only get much worse.
One afternoon about two weeks after Keasik told him the disconcerting news, while he’s out hunting, Nabayah comes upon the two esquimaux boys playing together intently, so absorbed by their game that they don’t even realize he’s watching.
How peaceful and happy these two young ones look, he thinks when he sees them.
They’ve got no problems or worries weighing them down like I have.
They’ve not been injured or humiliated or played for a fool.
He wishes for a moment that he were young again, but then he remembers that when he was their age he had already been abandoned by his parents, and he feels an extra surge of sadness and bitterness at the memory.
I never had a chance to play like they are playing, he tells himself, without a care in the world, or if I did, I can’t remember it anymore.
He walks closer to see just what they’re up to, but then they notice he’s there and stand up and stare back at him, suddenly looking afraid.
“I won’t harm you,” he says in a calming voice. “I just want to see what game you’re playing. What’s that you have in your hand? Some kind of rawhide or twine, is it? Are you making a doll?”
The boys don’t answer, and when he points to show what he means, the one holding the twine puts his hand behind his back to hide it.
“You two have no idea how lucky you are. When you’re old like I am, then you’ll realize, but now you think this is the way things will always be.” He smiles at them, but they don’t smile back. “Here,” he says. “Have a piece of dried meat. You’re probably hungry.”
One of them, the taller one, reaches out to take it, but the other says something and pulls his hand away.
“You don’t trust me,” Nabayah says. “I understand. You’re right to be careful.”
Why am I talking to them like this, he asks himself, when it’s obvious they have no idea at all what I’m saying? They both look frightened and confused. They probably think I’m some kind of demon, or if not a demon, then a lunatic.
“You go back to your game now,” he says, putting the uneaten meat back into his pouch. “Enjoy yourselves while you can. I won’t bother you anymore.”
He waits there a moment longer, still hoping for a response of some kind—a smile, perhaps, or some other small sign of understanding or friendship—but when none appears, with a sigh and a renewed feeling of sorrow and disappointment, he turns and walks away.
For the rest of that afternoon, instead of looking for deer as he should, he wanders the moors aimlessly, brooding on his various misfortunes and turning over in his mind all the slights and indignities he has had to endure.
He can recall the wrestling match at Crow Lake so clearly it’s as if no time has passed at all.
He remembers how it felt being mocked and jeered at by the suitor’s friends when he lost, and afterward, the deep shame of learning that John Shaw, who was old and gray, had succeeded where he had failed.
That weird old seer let me down, he thinks, but even if John Shaw was dead, I wouldn’t be free, because after the half-breed child is born, even if I have another wife, I’ll have to see it every day and be reminded of where it came from.
It’s not right that I should have to suffer as much as I do, he thinks.
It’s neither fair nor just, but I get no sympathy or understanding at all, so how can I help being angry?
By the time he gets back to the camp in the evening, after ruminating in this hectic fashion for hours on end, his mind is such a stew of rancor and indignation that when John Shaw notices that he’s returned empty-handed and makes a casually disparaging remark about some people in their party working a good deal harder than others, instead of ignoring it or answering back, Nabayah pulls the knife from his belt and rushes toward him.
Shaw grabs a hatchet from the ground and is ready to do battle, but Datsanthi, who is standing close by and realizes what’s about to happen, throws himself between them.
Nabayah, his eyes wide with fury, tries to push his father aside, but Datsanthi stands firm and the two men tug and grapple for a minute until Nabayah, exasperated, relents and steps away.
“What’s got into you?” his father shouts at him. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing now?”
“I won’t let that arrogant bastard insult me again,” he says. “I’ve had enough of his lies and his boasting.”
Datsanthi shakes his head as if the comment makes no sense to him at all, then, after taking a moment longer to catch his breath, speaks again.
“You’re behaving like a great fool,” he tells his son. “It’s a careless remark he’s made, that’s all. He didn’t mean any harm by it. There’s no need to take offense and throw a tantrum.”
Nabayah, unappeased, falls silent briefly, then looks across at Shaw, who is standing with the hatchet still clutched in his right hand and a broad, complacent smile on his face. He finds my hatred entertaining, Nabayah thinks bitterly, and he takes my deadly anger as nothing but a childish joke.
“I should never have agreed to come out here,” he spits back at his father. “This whole journey is a sham and a disgrace. You call yourself a chieftain, but really, truthfully, you’re nothing but the Englishmen’s cheap whore.”
Datsanthi, although by nature calm and slow to anger, bridles at this public insult, and when he speaks again, his tone is rigid and severe.
“You watch your tongue, my lad,” he warns him.
“Don’t try my patience. I didn’t force you to come here, and if you don’t want to be with us, you can leave at any time.
I won’t beg you to stay, you can be sure of that, and no one else will beg you either.
We’re all too tired of your thin-skinned whining. ”
When he hears these stinging words, Nabayah’s hatred of Shaw, deep and abiding though it is, is subsumed by a sudden sense of his father’s treachery.
So that’s what he really thinks of me, he tells himself.
After all these years, the whole truth is out at last. He stares back at Datsanthi, wounded and amazed, then pushes the knife into his belt and, stooping, steps inside the tent.
When he comes out again a minute later, he’s carrying a rolled-up blanket under one arm and has a leather satchel slung across his shoulder.
He tells Datsanthi that he’s had all he can take and would rather live alone than be forced to endure another day as a servant to a man he despises.
“Let him run away like a little girl if that’s what he wants to do,” Shaw calls out. “He’s become a troublemaker anyway. We can manage just as well without his kind.”
Nabayah looks at Datsanthi once more, to see if he will take his part this time at least and dare to disagree with Shaw, but he doesn’t speak.
Feeling that this cruel banishment has been forced upon him against his will by his father’s callousness, he picks up his musket, and without attempting another word of explanation or farewell, as Pawpitch and Keasik look on helplessly, he strides away, past the boundaries of the camp and into the wild indifferency beyond.