Soul Catcher Read Free Page B

total innocent. You must
kill an innocent of the whites. Let your deed fall upon this world.
Let your deed be a single, heavy hand which clutches the heart. The
whites must feel it. They must hear it. An innocent for all of our
innocents.”
    Having told him what he must do, Bee took
flight.
    His gaze followed the flight, lost it in the
leafery of the vine maple copse far upslope. He sensed then a
procession of ancestral ghosts insatiate in their demands. All of
those who had gone before him remained an unchanging field locked
immovably into his past, a field against which he could see himself
change.
    Kill an innocent!
    Sorrow and confusion dried his mouth. He
felt parched in his innermost being, withered.
    The sun crossing over the high ridge to keep
its appointment with the leaves in the canyon touched his
shoulders, his eyes. He knew he had been tempted and had gone
through a locked door into a region of terrifying power. To hold
this power he would have to come to terms with that other self
inside him. He could be only one person—Katsuk.
    He said: “I am Katsuk.”
    The words brought calm. Spirits of air and
earth were with him as they had been for his ancestors. He resumed
climbing the slope. His movements aroused a flying squirrel. It
glided from a high limb to a low one far below. He felt the life
all around him then: brown movements hidden in greenery, life
caught suddenly in stop-motion by his presence.
    He thought: Remember me, creatures of
this forest. Remember Katsuk as the whole world will remember him.
I am Katsuk. Ten thousand nights from now, ten thousand seasons
from now, this world still will remember Katsuk and his
meaning.
    ***
    From a wire story, Seattle dateline:
    The mother of the kidnap victim arrived at
Six Rivers Camp about 3:30 P.M. yesterday. She was brought in by
one of the four executive helicopters released for the search by
lumber and plywood corporations of the northwest. There were
tearstains on her cheeks as she stepped from the helicopter to be
greeted by her husband.
    She said: “Any mother can understand how I
feel. Please, let me be alone with my husband.”
    ***
    An irritant whine edged his mother’s voice
as David sat down across from her in the sunny breakfast room that
overlooked their back lawn and private stream. The scowl which
accompanied the whine drew sharp lines down her forehead toward her
nose. A vein on her left hand had taken on the hue of rusty iron.
She wore something pink and lacy, her yellow hair fluffed up. Her
lavender perfume enveloped the table.
    She said: “I wish you wouldn’t take that
awful knife to camp, Davey. What in heaven’s name will you do with
such a thing? I think your father was quite mad to give you such a
dangerous instrument.”
    Her left hand jingled the little bell to
summon the cook with David’s cereal.
    David stared down at the table while cook’s
pink hand put a bowl there. The cream in the bowl was almost the
same yellow as the tablecloth. The bowl gave off the odor of the
fresh strawberries sliced into the cereal. David adjusted his
napkin.
    His mother said: “Well?” Sometimes her
questions were not meant to be answered, but “Well?” signaled pressure. He sighed. “Mother, everyone at camp has a
knife.”
    “Why?”
    “To cut things, carve wood, stuff like
that.” He began eating. One hour. That could be endured. “To cut
your fingers off!” she said. “I simply refuse to let you take such
a dangerous thing.”
    He swallowed a mouthful of cereal while he
studied her the way he had seen his father do it, letting his mind
sort out the possible countermoves. A breeze shook the trees
bordering the lawn behind her.
    “Well?” she insisted.
    “What do I do?” he asked. “Every time I need
a knife I’ll have to borrow one from one of the other guys.”
    He took another mouthful of cereal, savoring
the acid of the strawberries while he waited for her to assess the
impossibility of keeping him knifeless at camp. David