Silver Totem of Shame Read online

  “Christ, Meg, I think someone’s trapped.” Eric pointed to a group of men struggling to lift the pole where it angled over the ground. It had landed against the sloped back of the hole. Something was sticking out from under it. A leg? A camera lay abandoned on the ground nearby.

  The sirens grew louder.

  “I’d better go help.”

  Before I could tell Eric there were more than enough men, he was racing to the hole. I followed.

  The shrieking continued. It sounded as if someone was yelling “Bo-Bo!” over and over again. I saw Eric’s sister trying to pull a woman away. Shit! It was Sherry. Her face was twisted in anguish.

  Unable to raise the log, the men scattered with the arrival of a backhoe. I recognized the grim face of Harry at the wheel. He angled the shovel under the pole and slowly lifted it up. Several people carefully pulled the body out, then Harry lowered the pole back down.

  I didn’t dare look. I already knew it was François, and given the tremendous weight of the pole, he would bear little resemblance to the elegant man I’d met yesterday. There was no way he could’ve survived.

  I ran over to where the two women stood. Sherry twisted out of Cloë’s grip and crumpled to the ground beside … Her husband? Her lover? I didn’t know which. She was slapping his face and kissing it, yelling at him to wake up. But his expression remained serene in death. His white hair was still neatly coifed, but his electric blue eyes were open, staring up as if he had registered what was about to happen. Apart from those transfixed eyes, though, there was no hint on his face of the horrible death that had befallen him.

  His body was another matter. Someone had quickly covered him with a Haida blanket. I could see the blood seeping into the beak of the raven and along its wing. Where François’ chest and abdomen should be rising from the ground, there was only an unnerving flatness. Blood started to trickle from his mouth and nose.

  People moved aside as the paramedics rushed in with their stretcher. At the sight of the body, their pace slowed. They allowed Sherry a few minutes before Cloë gently pulled her away. Eric was at her side. She collapsed weeping into his arms.

  Cloë stood forlornly beside him.

  “Are you okay?” I asked her.

  “I’ll be fine.” But she was shivering, whether from the cold or from shock, I didn’t know. I wrapped my arm around her shoulder.

  “It was awful, Meg. It took us a few seconds to realize what was happening after the ropes snapped. By then the pole was falling and François didn’t know. Someone shouted for him to get out of the way, but it was too late.” Tears were seeping down her cheeks. “I’m not exactly a fan of François’s, but to die this way…. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.”

  “What in the world was he doing under the pole?”

  “Pictures. The fool was taking photos of the pole going up. It was Ernest’s idea. He said it would be nice to have a good set to record the momentous occasion. Since François had his expensive Nikon, he offered to do it. And now he’s dead.”

  “Speaking of Ernest, where is he?”

  “He dropped us off and left. Said he’d be back in time to take us home.”

  “Why wouldn’t he want to stay for such an important occasion?”

  “Probably another deal. The only thing on that man’s mind is money.”

  The paramedics placed François’s body on the stretcher and headed toward the ambulance.

  “Meg,” Eric said. “Since Ernest isn’t here, I think we’d better go to the hospital with Sherry. She’ll need someone with her.”

  “Of course, but how are we going to get there? You left your car at the Heritage Centre.”

  “I’ll drive,” said Louise. Like the rest of us, her face was stark with shock. Fortunately she appeared none the worse from her tumble to the ground. “A terrible tragedy. Someone from my clan needs to be with this poor woman.” She glanced at Harry, who seemed more interested in talking to his mother than involving himself with the dead man.

  He stopped talking as the stretcher passed by though. For a moment I thought he was going to approach Sherry, but his mother said something and he turned his attention back to her. Louise muttered, a low harrumph, but she didn’t stop to speak to them.

  The police had arrived. Their SUV, lights flashing, was parked next to the ambulance. They were arguing with the paramedics over the removal of the body without their say-so. But since the damage was already done, they relented and let them load the dead man into the ambulance. As it pulled out, we followed with Sherry in Louise’s car.

  Thirty

  Old Chief

  He caught a rare sight this morning, the dorsal fin of a killer whale slicing through the water just outside the lagoon. Given the height of the fin, he figured it was a good-sized bull. From the way the fin flopped over it’d been through a few battles too. He’d read somewhere that the bulls were momma’s boys. As long as their momma was around they thrived. It didn’t sound all that different from the Haida. Though the men strutted around like bulls, there was always some damn woman behind them pulling the reins.

  The elders say people who die at sea come back as killer whales. Whenever he saw a big bull like this one, he liked to think it was his dad. Poor bugger drowned more than twenty years ago when his foot got caught in a net. A hell of a way to go.

  Some believe seeing an orca brings good luck. He sure hoped so. He needed all the luck he could get if he was going to get this damn story finished in time. He sure hoped Scav didn’t get ornery drunk while he was in Charlotte and blab about him and the log to a drinking buddy. You never knew who might get angry and try to stop him, or worse, call the cops.

  He wasn’t worried about somebody turning up out of the blue. There was no reason for anyone to come to Llnagaay. There was nothing to see. Nothing to steal. Anything of value left when his people left, or more likely when the museum guys stole them. No one had been here in years, apart from himself. And he never told anyone he came, except Scav. Many of his people were afraid to step on these shores, afraid the ghosts of shame still lingered. But he didn’t care.

  Sure there were ghosts. He felt them last night. Heard their whispers in the trees. Felt them brushing the sides of his tent. But given all the people who died after the smallpox came, there had to be a lot of spirits hanging around.

  Nanaay said that before the Iron Men came, over five hundred people lived in Llnagaay. When his people were forced to leave, only about sixty remained, many of them children. They couldn’t survive on their own, so they went north, to where the survivors from the other villages in the southern islands went, to Skidegate, another clan’s village where the Methodists had set up shop.

  But his people didn’t go there straight away. They didn’t want to live with the Iron Men. And they didn’t want to live in another clan’s village. They were a proud clan. They didn’t want to admit defeat. So they set up a new village down the inlet from Skidegate, but it didn’t work out. People still died. After a few years they went to the missionaries, to their medicine and food.

  Old Chief never saw his clan’s defeat. He died a few years before people starting dying. He was the last great chief of the clan. Chief Greenstone was his official name, but everyone called him Old Chief because he was the chief for such a long time. He took it over as a young man barely out of boyhood, when his uncle, the chief at the time, was killed in a raid on a rival clan’s village.

  The carver picked up his marker and began drawing what he would later carve using the forms that were central to Haida art. He started at the top of the pole where the story began, and the story began with Old Chief. He’d make him a proud and powerful eagle worthy of his clan’s chiefdom and not the figure of shame the Blue Shell Ravens had made him out to be.

  From what Nanaay said, he’d been a good chief until that shameful moment. Though she didn’t really know, since she’d been born in Skidegate long after Old Chief died. It was her nanaay who told her he brought great prosperity to Llnaga
ay, making it the most important village in the southern islands. But this wealth wasn’t all good. It made other clans jealous.

  He boldly outlined the shape of the eagle’s head, at an angle to command respect. The eyes he made sharp and intelligent using the circle within the S-form that defined Haida eyes. He added another interior circle to show wisdom. The beak was blunt and curved like an eagle’s, but he drew it larger than the eagle’s head to emphasize Old Chief’s power. When carved it would protrude at a commanding angle from the eagle’s body. The wings stretched down on either side of the eagle’s body. And since you can’t have empty space in Haida art, he filled them with ovoids and split U-forms to represent feathers.

  Nanaay had told him that the clan’s wealth came from the great sea voyages Old Chief undertook with other clansmen to distant lands. So he drew the long, pointed bow of a dugout canoe sticking out from under one of the wings. She thought they might’ve gone as far as Hawaii, because the old stories spoke of mountains of fire and wondrously coloured birds.

  He was going to draw a fiery mountain inside the other wing, but decided not to in case it wasn’t true. But there were stories that Old Chief’s ceremonial blanket was made from thousands of tiny red and yellow feathers taken from birds that sure didn’t fly around these islands. So he thought, what the hell, if he drew a fiery mountain inside the wing it would become part of the Old Chief’s legend whether it was true or not, so he drew it. He liked the idea of the ancestors paddling thousands of kilometres to Hawaii and back. He stuck a feather in the beak of the eagle. After it was carved he would paint this bright yellow, a colour rarely used on Haida totem poles. But he wanted this feather to stand out so people would know how great Old Chief was.

  At the time of his death, Old Chief’s potlatch pole was supposed to have eight rings on it, meaning he had accumulated enough wealth to hold eight different potlatches. But Nanaay never mentioned if the clan had erected a memorial pole or mortuary pole after Old Chief died, as was his right as Chief Greenstone. He expected it had to do with the shame.

  He figured if there had been a mortuary pole it would’ve disappeared pretty soon after the village was abandoned. All those museum guys looking for treasure. And if a feather blanket had existed, it vanished along with everything else. No one knows if anyone got the real treasure, because no one knows where it was hidden. He only knew no one had seen this treasure, let alone talked about it, in over a hundred and fifty years.

  To make sure no one ever forgot Old Chief’s important status, he drew a potlatch pole with eight rings rising from a top hat sitting squarely on the head of the eagle. At the eagle’s feet he placed a large ovoid filled with ever smaller ovoids. Later, when he finished carving, that is if he were lucky, he would paint it another non-traditional colour, a bright shiny green, the colour of the eelgrass that swirls in the water of the estuary across the channel from Llnagaay.

  This would be the greenstone, whatever it was. He had no idea what the greenstone was or what it looked like. He’d never seen a green stone or rock anywhere on Haida Gwaii, let alone at Llnagaay. When he’d asked Nanaay why the clan was called the Greenstone Eagles, she would only say that it had always been the name. But she did tell him that when she’d asked her own nanaay the same question, she’d been hushed and told never to ask that question again.

  Thirty-One

  The hospital visit was short. It turned out Sherry was only the girlfriend and had no official connection to François. His current wife, whatever number she might be, was on a cruise in the Mediterranean and the only person authorized to handle arrangements. After tearfully giving the cops the contact information for the dead Frenchman’s office, Sherry climbed back into Louise’s car and drove with us to the Eagle’s Nest.

  She may have only been his mistress, but she clearly loved the man. Her tears hadn’t let up since the accident. Her mascara ran in blackened streaks down her cheeks, while her hair had collapsed. She’d shredded more tissues than she’d used. But she still teetered undeterred on her spiked heels and clattered up the front stairs of our shared cottage without the need to lean on Eric. Rather than retreating to her suite, she remained with us in the front room.

  She downed a healthy measure of Eric’s single malt scotch, as did Eric, Cloë, and Louise. With his hands encased in thick bandages, applied at the hospital, Eric couldn’t hold on to the bottle properly, so I poured. He could barely manage the glass either, but stubbornly refused my help.

  I was very tempted to join them, but I gritted my teeth and put the kettle on for a cup of tea instead. I wasn’t going to let the unnerving death of François get me drinking again.

  After the scotch, Sherry kicked off her heels. “I guess I don’t have to wear these anymore. Bo-Bo liked me wearing these things. Said they made me look statuesque.” She raised her hands above her head as she stretched out this last word. She rubbed first her left foot, then her right, before tucking her feet under her as she sank back into the floral cushions of the rattan chair.

  “Five years we’ve been together, Bo-Bo and me. Jeez, I still can’t believe it. I don’t know what I’m gonna do without him.”

  She told us how she’d first met François at a bar in Whistler where she’d been working. It was love at first sight and he hadn’t looked at another woman since, except, of course, for his wife. But she didn’t count. She was just some stuck-up bitch — her words not mine — he could parade in front of his company’s board and at cocktail parties. Besides, he didn’t sleep — my word not hers — with her anymore.

  Sherry had accepted that François would never marry her. Divorcing his current wife had been a nonstarter. She had too much money. Besides, there were the three kids. Spoiled brats, she called them. If she and François had married they would’ve been a part of her life. This way the wife got to deal with them, while she enjoyed François all to herself.

  She punctuated this last remark with giggles, which soon turned to tears as she remembered this would no longer be the case. I wondered if she realized that in death they would be even further separated, for the wife would take up her place as François’s chief mourner and pretend that Sherry had never existed.

  While Sherry was recounting her story, I watched Cloë carefully, worried about the effect this tale would have on her, a tale that so closely paralleled her own — except in her case she was the scorned wife. I could see Eric was equally worried. When his sister asked for more scotch, he insisted I dilute it with a generous amount of water. But apart from taking frequent sips, she showed no outward reaction. Instead she seemed to be genuinely commiserating with Sherry’s distress. Maybe Cloë felt a certain affinity to Sherry, since both their loved ones had died violently.

  The bereaved mistress was regaining control of her emotions when Harry MacMillan and his mother arrived at our front door. “I’ve come to pay my respects to Mrs. Champagne and to say how sorry I am about the accident,” Harry said.

  “We are so sorry, dear,” his mother chimed in. “Such a terrible tragedy.”

  Sherry, not bothering to correct Harry’s mistake, invited the two of them to join us with all the dignity of a grieving widow.

  For a moment Harry seemed a bit taken aback to see Louise sitting in one of the rattan chairs, but he quickly recovered. “Glad I found you, Auntie. We need to talk.”

  She nodded. “It can wait till later.”

  “I think you could do with some of this.” Eric pointed at the scotch with his bandaged hand. “Please, help yourself.”

  Harry shook his head. “Thanks, but I haven’t had a drop in ten years. As upsetting as this is, I’m not going to start now.”

  I gave him the thumbs up, one reformed alcoholic to another. “How about a cup of tea?”

  “I’ll have some scotch.” Rose poured herself a more than generous amount and dropped into a rattan settee designed to seat two, but which barely contained her ample frame.

  Resplendent in a muumuu-style dress, she no longer wore her button
blanket or other Haida regalia, nor did Harry. This morning’s death had obviously affected him, for he looked somewhat ragged around the edges. His khaki pants had lost their crease and his checked sport shirt was smeared with dirt.

  Harry grabbed a kitchen chair and pulled it up beside the settee where Eric and I were sitting. “You’re Eric Odjik, aren’t you? The new Grand Chief of the GCFN.”

  “Hoping to be is more like it. The election isn’t until next year,” Eric replied. “And this is my wife, Meg. I’m sorry we’re not meeting under better circumstances.”

  “Yes, an unfortunate and terrible accident.”

  “Have the police determined what caused the ropes to break? They looked relatively new to me. Thank God.” He held up his bandaged hands. “Old ropes would’ve made mincemeat of my hands.”

  “Damn, I never thought. I guess the other guys will have rope burns too. Look, Eric, I feel really badly about this. Is there anything I can do?”

  “Don’t worry about me. My hands’ll be back in shape in no time. I just find it strange that two of the four ropes would break like that.”

  “I can’t for the life of me figure out why either. They were mooring ropes, supposed to be only a few years old. Denny, the carver, got them off a friend’s boat. They should’ve been able to handle the weight of the pole.”

  “Don’t you find it curious that both broke at the same time? I could see one going, but two?”

  Sherry straightened up. “What are you saying? That someone killed my Bo-Bo on purpose?”

  “No, not at all,” Harry jumped in. “It was an accident, nothing more.”

  “Maybe those guys at the restaurant killed Frank,” Sherry continued as if she hadn’t heard. “They sure hated his guts. You guys saw how they treated him last night. That skinny bastard even spat on him.”

  “I know feelings can run deep around here, but not enough to kill. This was just a horrible accident. I believe your husband was unfortunate enough to be standing in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Harry said.