Coppermine (34 page)

“Are the spirits invisible?”

“Usually.”

“Do they ever appear in human form?”

“Yes. Sometimes.”

“And when the priests were staying with you, did you ever wonder if they were bad spirits?”

“Not Kuleavik, but we did wonder about Ilogoak. When he was angry, we could see an evil spirit in his eyes.”

MCCAUL’S CROSS-EXAMINATION
was brief.

“Mr. Koeha, you’ve described the misunderstanding between Father Le Roux and Kormik about the rifle. Kormik thought he had been promised the rifle and so he went and took it.”

“Yes.”

McCaul turned toward the jury. “One can easily picture the scene at Koeha’s camp: the two white men suspicious and alarmed but determined, surrounded by a crowd of excited Eskimos. Kormik, angry and disgruntled, sulks in his tent. Some of the Eskimos encourage him to keep the rifle, others urge him to give it up. Father Le Roux, with loaded rifle, stands at the tent door ready to shoot—a horrible position for a missionary—and finally the old mother comes out and hands over the disputed rifle. But this has little to do with the murders. The absent Kormik is not on trial here. It is the two accused who followed the weak and ailing priests up the river and killed them.”

Justice Harvey interrupted him. “Mr. McCaul, please save this for your summation. Do you have more questions for this man?”

“Yes, your Lordship. Mr. Koeha, can you please describe the day after the murders, when you went to see the bodies at Bloody Falls.”

“There were six of us: myself, Kormik, Toopek, Kallun, Agbrunna, and Kingagolik. Three men and three women. I was very, very sorry the two white men were dead. When we got to the place, I saw one man lying dead by the sled. It was Ilogoak. He was lying on his back with his head up. The snow had covered his face, all but his nose. The man that had killed him had cut him up inside with a knife.”

“And where was the other priest?”

“The other priest was far away from the sled.”

“Do you think he was running away?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. He had been shot and then his head was opened with an axe. We cried when we saw him.”

“Was his belly cut open?”

“Yes, it was cut open.”

“As you do with caribou.”

“Yes. As we do with caribou.”

“No further questions, your Lordship.”

Seventeen

Wallbridge recalled Sinnisiak to the stand to resume his story. Uluksuk was taken out of the courtroom so Sinnisiak’s testimony would not bias his own. Sinnisiak looked again to Creed for encouragement and he nodded for the young hunter to go ahead.

“I was camped at the mouth of the Coppermine River with Uluksuk, beside the camp of Koeha where the two white men were staying. We were fishing there.”

“The two white men were the priests, Ilogoak and Kuleavik?”

“Yes. The fishing was very poor. We were hungry. We decided to go south, upriver to the falls, and try the fishing there. Also to meet my cousin who was coming north, down the river. But the two priests had left camp to go back south to their home in the trees. We didn’t want to travel with the priests, so we waited two days then started out.

“We found the priests’ trail and met them on the river. They had not got very far in three days with their sled. When we found the white men on the trail they were very weak and their sled was stuck in the deep snow. Ilogoak, the big man, asked if we had food. We did not. Ilogoak told us that if we pulled their sled he would pay us in steel traps when we got to their cabin in the place of the trees. We did not want to go that far, but we agreed to help them for a while. We and the dogs pulled the sled for the rest of the day—it was hard work. On the first day the priests were not angry and we made camp and stayed with them. We were still a long way from the trees. Uluksuk caught one fish through the ice and we ate it. We made a small snow house and slept there. Kuleavik showed us again the pictures of the place above the skies and tried to tell us what it was all about. It was then Ilogoak was first angry and spoke hot words to Kuleavik, but we didn’t understand them.”

Creed considered sadly the already desperate plight of the priests in that harsh land where the margin for error was so dangerously narrow. The personal conflict only added to it.

Sinnisiak continued. “The next day we started off again. It was stormy and snowing and very tough going. We had a hard time staying on the trail. Uluksuk and I were ahead, pulling the sled, and the two white men were behind. The
Kabloona
were sick and weak. Ilogoak was saying angry things to Kuleavik, but I could not understand his talk. I wanted to turn around and go home. Then, on the edge of the riverbank near Bloody Falls, the dogs smelled something and we stopped. It was a cache that the priests had left and we all looked to see if there was food. But there was no food, only an axe and boxes of rifle cartridges. The cache had not been built very well and the food left there had probably been stolen by a wolverine. This made Ilogoak even angrier. He began to throw the cartridges into the river and yell at Kuleavik. Kuleavik tried to stop him and they pushed each other. Ilogoak had gone crazy, and that is the sign of an evil spirit.”

Le Roux had lost control, Creed thought. It all seemed so suddenly, overwhelmingly familiar to him. He now understood why it had happened. Why the priests had been killed. He understood the contagious nature of losing control, of having nothing left to hold on to. Of reacting violently. Of having no choice.

“Uluksuk and I were scared and wanted to go back home. We began to walk away from them, but Ilogoak had the rifle in his hand. He was mad at us and he pointed the rifle at us to stop. I asked him, I said, “Are you going to kill us?” and he nodded his head. He made us go back to the sled and get into the harness. We were scared, but we began to pull. Ilogoak put his rifle on the sled and walked beside it. We went a little way and Uluksuk and I talked about what to do. They were going to kill us. They said so. Every time I tried to talk, Ilogoak came to me and put his hand over my mouth. He was mad and pushing us with his hand and pointing the rifle at us. I was thinking hard and crying and very scared and the frost was in my boots and I was cold. I wanted to go back home, but I was afraid. I got hot inside my body, and every time Ilogoak put his hand on the rifle or on his knife I was very much afraid. I spoke to Uluksuk and said, ‘I think we have to kill him before he kills us. We have to be strong or we will never see our families again.’”

In the courtroom, everyone strained to hear Angituk’s translation of Sinnisiak’s testimony. A squeak from one of the electric ceiling fans broke the silence. Angituk took a breath and continued her translation.

“We came to a small hill close to the falls and we stopped there. I took off the harness and went to one side. Ilogoak ran after me and pushed me back to the sled, but I said I was going to relieve myself and he let me go. I did not want to relieve myself. I went around behind him. I looked at Uluksuk, then I stabbed Ilogoak in the back with my knife. Ilogoak tried to get the rifle and Uluksuk went after him. The other white man wanted to come back to the sled. I had a knife in my hand and he went away again.

“Uluksuk and Ilogoak wrestled for the rifle and it fell in the snow. Uluksuk had to finish up Ilogoak with a knife. He stabbed him twice and he dropped down beside the sled. I asked Uluksuk, ‘Is he dead?’ and he said, ‘Yes.’ When Kuleavik saw Ilogoak die, he turned and ran away. I said to Uluksuk, ‘Give me the rifle.’ The first time I shot, I did not hit him. I put in a new bullet as I had seen them do and shot again, and missed. The third time I took my time and got him. The priest sat down after the bullet hit him.

“I dropped the rifle, picked up the axe and knife, and went after him. Uluksuk came too. The white man was sitting in a shallow creek. When I got close to him, he got up again. I had the knife in my hand. He looked at us and said something. Uluksuk told me, ‘Go ahead and put the knife in him.’ I said to Uluksuk, ‘Go ahead you. I fixed the other man already.’ Uluksuk tried to stab him but missed the first time. The second time he got him. The priest lay down on his back. He was breathing a little, lying there. I hit him across the face with the axe I was carrying. I killed him dead.”

Sinnisiak looked to Creed for reassurance, but Creed was gazing up at the creaking ceiling fan. In his mind, having heard Sinnisiak’s precise description of Rouvière’s death, he was fifteen hundred miles away, imagining what the end had been like for Rouvière at the top of the world.

As
they headed south, Rouvière would have been starving, ill, and terribly cold. His nose hairs would have been frozen, his lips cracked, and he would have felt the marrow in his bones congealing. For perhaps only the second time in years he would have been deeply, almost hopelessly depressed by his plight. He had failed his Church and his God. There was nothing else to call it. After three years he had finally made it to the mouth of the Coppermine. Then came the business with the rifle.

They had only been in Koeha’s camp at the mouth of the Coppermine a few days. Their important work was only beginning. Why hadn’t Le Roux let Kormik, who had replaced Hornby as guide (because of Le Roux’s imprudent actions), keep the rifle? They had a second one. Rouvière had not heard the promise of the rifle to Kormik, but it was not an unreasonable gift, as the hunter had guided them safely to the mouth. But no, on some arrogant point of principle Le Roux demanded the rifle back, and to Rouvière’s horror he had pointed the second rifle at Kormik. From Kormik’s point of view he had been lied to and humiliated in front of his people by a white man, and his life had been threatened at the point of a gun in his own tent. Rouvière could not believe that the hand of a Roman Catholic priest could do such a thing. He did not at first believe that Kormik was capable of killing Le Roux, but by the urgency in Koeha’s insistence that they leave, Rouvière realized it was quite possible.

It had all been a terrible mistake. Rouvière had seen the hostility and disillusionment in those Eskimo faces as he and Le Roux left the camp. Banished. Three days after that, God provided. They chanced upon two hunters from Kormik’s camp, Sinnisiak and Uluksuk. The hunters agreed to pull the sled in exchange for traps.

The hunters caught a char and built a snow house, providing them with food and shelter. The fish would get them through to the next day, when they would make it to a small cache offood they had left up the river. The two hunters had responded well to some Christian teaching that night, but when Rouvière had asked the taciturn Le Roux to help with a point of translation, Le Roux ignored him and then exploded in front of the hunters.

“Don’t you realize it’s a hopeless effort? How can we articulate the abstractions, teach the subtleties of the mysteries—the Immaculate Conception, the Holy Trinity, the Resurrection—with only hand gestures! But then, look at these two primitive, ignorant creatures. What use is it to offer them salvation? Even if we were fluent, they would still have no idea what we’re talking about.”

Rouvière could see that the hunters were upset by Le Roux’s anger. They got as far from him as they could in the little snow house, and a tense silence fell over them. In the morning Le Roux was adamant they continue south.

The two hunters and the two dogs pulled the sled. Rouvière and Le Roux walked behind. One of the dogs was tending off the track, where something had his attention. The sled came to a stop.

“It must be the cache,” Rouvière said, and they all went to find it through the swirling flakes. It was a pile of rocks Father Rouvière had built. When they pushed away the drift of snow, they found it had been disturbed, several rocks pushed aside. The packets of fish and caribou meat were gone. All that was left were several boxes of rifle cartridges and a small axe.

“Goddamnit, Rouvière. You can’t even build a cache properly. Now what are we going to do?”

“I don’t know. Keep going.”

Le Roux grabbed a box of cartridges. “Maybe we can eat these! Should we eat these?”

Rouvière was startled by the subtle beginnings of hysteria in his companion’s voice.

“Don’t do this, Guillaume.”

Le Roux opened the box and began to take handfuls of the shells, throwing them through the falling snow down into the river.

Rouvière tried to grab his arm to stop him. “Don’t! We need them.”

Le Roux pushed him back. “What for? You couldn’t hit a caribou if it came up and bit you on the ear. You are hopeless, Rouvière! We’re going to starve to death, don’t you understand?”

Sinnisiak and Uluksuk were very upset by the fighting between the white men and began to back away from them.

Le Roux turned toward them. “Where do you think you’re going? Get back to the sled!” He raised the gun and pointed it at them. They stopped. “Didn’t you hear me? Get back to the sled!”

The hunters stared at him and the rifle, wide-eyed, until Le Roux pushed Sinnisiak hard toward the qamutik, gesturing to the traces. Sinnisiak and Uluksuk returned to the sled, put the rope harnesses over their shoulders, and began to pull again. Le Roux placed the rifle on the sled and walked beside it.

Father Rouvière heard the two hunters talking quietly to one another as they walked together through the deep snow, straining against the sled. Father Le Roux sprinted forward to Sinnisiak and put his hand over his mouth.

“Stop talking!”

Father Rouvière continued walking in the deep furrows left behind the sled. He had been shaken by the incident at the cache. Not only was the food gone, but Le Roux was beginning to lose control. The snowstorm was not letting up and it made him wonder how much longer the flesh could go on.

Up ahead, the sled stopped and the younger hunter took off his harness. Rouvière watched as Le Roux pushed the hunter back to it. The Eskimo made a gesture. Apparently he had to relieve himself. Rouvière leaned against a rock to the right of the qamutik to catch his breath, thankful for the stop. For the first time he noticed, over the wind, the distant roar of open rapids and realized they were very close to Bloody Falls. They should stop to fish.