Klee Wyck - Emily Carr [5]
Women sat on one side of the church. The very few men who came sat on the other. The Missionaries insisted that men come to church wearing trousers, and that their shirt tails must be tucked inside the trousers. So the Indian men stayed away.
“Our trespasses” had been dealt with and the hymn, which was generally pitched too high or too low, had at last hit square, when the door was swung violently back, slopping the drinking bucket. In the outside sunlight stood old Tanook, shirt tails flapping and legs bare. He entered, strode up the middle of the room and took the front seat.
Quick intakes of horror caught the breath of the women; the Greater Missionary held onto her note, the Lesser jumped an octave.
A woman in the back seat took off her shawl. From hand to hand it travelled under the desks to the top of the room, crossed the aisle and passed into the hand of Jimmy John, old Tanook’s nephew, sitting with the men. Jimmy John squeezed from his seat and laid the shawl across his uncle’s bare knees.
The Missionary’s address rolled on in choppy Chinook, undertoned by a gentle voice from the back of the room which told Tanook in pure Indian words what he was to do. The Lesser Missionary’s eyes popped with indignation. The Greater Missionary’s voice went straight on.
With a defiant shake of his wild hair old Tanook got up; twisting the shawl about his middle he marched down the aisles, paused at the pail to take a loud drink, dashed back the dipper with a clank, and strode out.
The service was over, the people had gone, but a pink print figure sat on in the back seat. Her face was sunk down on her chest. She was waiting till all were away before she slunk home. It is considered more indecent for an Indian woman to go shawl-less than for an Indian man to go barelegged. The woman’s heroic gesture had saved her husband’s dignity before the Missionaries but had shamed her before her own people.
The Greater Missionary patted the pink print shoulder as she passed.
“Disgusting old man!” muttered the Lesser Missionary.
“Brave woman!” said the Greater Missionary, smiling.
ONE DAY I walked upon a strip of land that belonged to nothing.
The sea soaked it often enough to make it unpalatable to the forest. Roots of trees refused to thrive in its saltiness.
In this place belonging neither to sea nor to land I came upon an old man dressed in nothing but a brief shirt. He was sawing the limbs from a fallen tree. The swish of the sea tried to drown the purr of his saw. The purr of the saw tried to sneak back into the forest, but the forest threw it out again into the sea. Sea and forest were always at this game of toss with noises.
The fallen tree lay crosswise in this “nothing’s place”; it blocked my way. I sat down beside the sawing Indian and we had dumb talk, pointing to the sun and to the sea, the eagles in the air and the crows on the beach. Nodding and laughing together I sat and he sawed. The old man sawed as if aeons of time were before him, and as if all the years behind him had been leisurely and all the years in front of him would be equally so. There was strength still in his back and limbs but his teeth were all worn to the gums. The shock of hair that fell to his shoulders was grizzled. Life had sweetened the old man. He was luscious with time like the end berries of the strawberry season.
With a final grin, I got up and patted his arm—“Goodbye!” He patted my hand. When he saw me turn to break through the forest so that I could round his great fallen tree, he ran and pulled me back, shaking his head and scolding me.
“Swaawa! Hyiu swaawa!” Swaawa were cougar: the forest was full of these great cats. The Indians forbade their children to go into the forest, not even into its edge. I was to them a child, ignorant about the wild things which they knew so well. In these things the Indian could