The Cannibal Spirit by Harry Whitehead Page A

priest’s face. But, after a moment, he opened his fingers, and instead he pushed Crosby away. The man flew backward to sprawl on the plankway.
    There were gasps, but also a few low cheers from the drunk among the people on the beach. Harry knelt to help Crosby up, but the priest’s acolyte was there before him. The Indian’s face was writ with a fury that seemed entirely out of keeping with his position. The man helped Crosby scramble up, ungainly, to his feet. His cassock caught on the rough plankboard, and a section at its base tore loudly. He clutched it into his hands, and then hewas rolling back along the plankway in the direction of the mission, with his attendant following.
    Crosby turned, once he had put some distance between them. “Don’t any of you think that such offences go unpunished,” he said, his voice a bird’s squawk. Some men on the beach jeered, but others swiftly hushed them.
    â€œYou’ve took the souls from us already, you rat bastard!” George Hunt shouted, his spittle flying. Harry knew better than to seek to calm him now. “I’ll eat my son’s flesh before I’d see him consumed in your fucking purgatories!” But the priest was away along the beach and gone.
    George span and stamped, his fists clenched so his knuckles shone pink against the grey pallor of his skin. Pale froth formed at the corners of his mouth and he groaned and growled, inarticulate and feral.
    â€œMaxu,” Hunt’s wife spoke softly from the darkness of the doorway. Harry wondered if her intervention would but increase his fury. Yet the old man squatted down on his haunches, both hands clutching the staff, his head hanging forward to rest against it, great stuttering breaths coming from him, and his hands trembling against the planks beneath him. At intervals, he let forth low moans, midway between grief and fury, until finally his breathing began to slow. At last, he looked up at his son-in-law.
    â€œAnd you!” he said. He rose slowly to his feet. He spoke coldly now, and slow, if loud enough for all to hear. “You think yourself a part of this family? You turncoating, weaselous fuck. You’re no more of a Christian than am I! And your sham marriage rites with that limpdick priest? You think I respect them? You think I trust you with what is mine?”
    Now Francine stepped in front of her husband. She spoke hard, low words to him, until his face unscrewed some of its tension. There were sniggers down on the beach, and Harry’s name was spoken. He felt as if the morning mists slunk in through his ears to roil inside his head, until he could not see, did not know what he should do, what he should think.
    Then a hand touched his face. A voice said, “Come take us the island.” It was Grace. He blinked and she was there before him. George was gone, and Francine, and everyone else. He turned and looked at the beach.
    George was making his way through the people toward the waiting canoe in which David’s gravebox was now placed. “Hamatsa,” said one, and another chanted, “Hap hap hap!” Then many others took it up. They gathered in around the old man, until only his head was visible above them. A few looked back toward him. Harry knew himself a stranger.
    His wife smiled a little, and whether it was in reassurance, or in that mocking Indian humour, he could not now be certain.

THERE WAS SHADOWS ON MY HANDS as they rested upon David’s skull, like ghosts come crawling. I had a task to perform and it was terrible to me. My child dead, and perhaps ritual is all that holds a man from the darkest pits of torment in such times. It was the great test of me, which skin I chose to wear. White son of a Christian father buried back of the family store in ground hallowed by the mission. Or Indian son of a mother what raised him heir to her crests and to her ancestors.
    Well I chose her blood that day, and I done so since David