Klee Wyck - Emily Carr [37]
A bulky object mounted the ladder, and was swallowed into the gloom. After a second a spot of dim light dangled high above. Breaths cold and deathly came from the inky velvet under the wharf. I could hear mud sucking sluggishly around the base of piles, the click of mussels and barnacles, the hiss and squirt of clams. From far above came a testy voice … “Come on, there.” There were four sneezes, the lantern dipping at each sneeze.
“Quick, go!” said Sou’wester, “Man do be mad.”
I could not … could not mount into that giddy blackness; that weazened little creature, all hat and boots, was such a tower of strength to abandon for a vague black ascent into … nothingness.
“Couldn’t I … couldn’t I crawl under the wharf round to the beach?” I begged.
“It is not possible, go!”
“The dog?”
“He … you see!” Even as he spoke, Ginger’s box swung over my head.
“What’s the matter down there? … Hurry!”
I grasped the cold slimy rung. My feet slithered and scrunched on stranded things. Next rung … the next and next … endless horrible rungs, hissings and smells belching from under the wharf. These things at least were half tangible. Empty nothingness, behind, around; hanging in the void, clinging to slipperiness, was horrible—horrible beyond words! …
Only one more rung, then the great timber that skirted the wharf would have to be climbed over and with no rung above to cling to …
The impact of my body, flung down upon the wharf, jerked my mind back from nowhere.
“Fool! Why did you let go?” “Sneezer” retrieved the lantern he had flung down, to grip me as I reeled … Six sneezes … dying footsteps … dark.
I groped for the dog’s box.
Nothing amazed Ginger Pop. Not even that his mistress should be sitting T-squared against wharf and shed … time, three a.m. … place, a far north Cannery of British Columbia.
CENTURY TIME
You would never guess it was a cemetery. Death had not spoiled it at all.
It was full of trees and bushes except in one corner where the graves were. Even they were fast being covered with greenery.
Bushes almost hid the raw, split-log fence and the gate of cedar strips with a cross above it, which told you that the enclosed space belonged to the dead. The land about the cemetery might change owners, but the ownership of the cemetery would not change. It belonged to the dead for all time.
Persistent growth pushed up through the earth of it—on and on eternally—growth that was the richer for men’s bodies helping to build it.
The Indian settlement was small. Not many new graves were required each year. The Indians only cleared a small bit of ground at a time. When that was full they cleared more. Just as soon as the grave boxes were covered with earth, vines and brambles began to creep over the mounds. Nobody cut them away. It was no time at all before life spread a green blanket over the Indian dead.
It was a quiet place this Indian cemetery, lying a little aloof from the village. A big stump field, swampy and green, separated them. Birds called across the field and flew into the quiet tangle of the cemetery bushes and nested there among foliage so newly created that it did not know anything about grime. There was no road into the cemetery to be worn dusty by feet, or stirred into gritty clouds by hearse wheels. The village had no hearse. The dead were carried by friendly hands across the stump field.
The wooded part of the cemetery dropped steeply to a lake. You could not see the water of the lake because of the trees, but you could feel the space between the cemetery and the purple-topped mountain beyond.
In the late afternoon a great shadow-mountain stepped across the lake and brooded over the cemetery. It had done this at the end of every sunny day for centuries, long, long, before that piece of land was a cemetery. Dark came and held the shadow-mountain there all night, but when morning broke, it was