I Heard The Owl Call My Name

“It is only the grave trees. In the old days each family had its own trees. The lower limbs were cut off as protection against the animals, and the boxes were hoisted by ropes and tied one above another in the tops. Many have fallen as you can see, and the grave sheds that were built later have fallen and most of the old carvings.”

Jim explains the dilapidated appearance of the old burial ground as he and Mark go to bury the weesa-bedó. Mark earns the respect of the tribal elders when he leaves after his Anglican service to give them privacy as they perform tribal rites. After the tribe members assemble Mark’s new vicarage, they ask for his help fixing up and consecrating the burial ground. This reciprocity shows each party’s respect for the beliefs and customs of the other.  

“In the teacher’s house the only other white man in the village did not think of the vicar at all. He didn’t even know he had arrived; he didn’t even know he was coming. This was the teacher’s second year in the village. He did not like the Indians and they did not like him. When he had returned from his summer holiday, a seaplane had deposited him at flood tide under the alders on the far side of the river, and he had stood there in the rain yelling loudly, ‘Come and get me,’ and T.P. had announced, ‘If he cannot be more polite let him stay there.’ […] The teacher had come to the village solely for the isolation pay which would permit him a year in Greece studying the civilization he adored.” 

The teacher rarely figures into the story, and when he does his insularity serves as a counterpoint to Mark’s attempts to integrate into the village. As a consequence of his close-mindedness, the schoolteacher doesn’t change, while Mark does.

“It was always the same. The sad eyes. The shy smiles. The cautious waiting. […] How must he prove himself? What was it they wished to know of him? And what did he know of himself here where loneliness was an unavoidable element of life, and a man must rely solely on himself?” 

Unequipped to transport and build the new vicarage that the Bishop has offered to send, Mark notes how distant he feels from the Indians. Here he shows that he has not yet understood the true nature of the village, believing that every man relies solely on himself. He will come to learn that each man relies on the other for survival.

““The whole life of the swimmer is one of courage and adventure. All of it builds to the climax and the end. When the swimmer dies he has spent himself completely for the end for which he was made, and this is not sadness. It is triumph.’” 

Mark consoles Keetah over the death of the salmon by reframing it as the victorious end of a brave and arduous life. Unaware of his impending death, Mark does not recognize that the salmon’s life is a metaphor for his own. 

“The snow lay thick on the shoulders of the Cedar-man; the limbs of the young spruce bent beneath its weight. He saw the lights of the houses go out, one by one, and the lanterns begin to flicker as the tribe came slowly, single file along the path to the church. How many times had they traveled thus through the mountain passes down from the Bering Sea? […] For the first time he knew them for what they were, the people of his hand and the sheep of his pasture, and he knew how deep was his commitment to them.” 

As Mark watches the village’s arrival for midnight mass on Christmas, he realizes that every household is gathering in his church and sees this gathering as a continuation of ancient migration patterns. The weight of this history awakens Mark’s sense of purpose and responsibility towards the tribe. 

““You do not understand. My grand-daughter goes to a world of which she knows nothing. It will destroy her and I cannot help her. To watch her go is to die a little.’” 

Mrs. Hudson predicts the downfall of her granddaughter, Keetah’s sister, who ultimately dies of a drug overdose. Mrs. Hudson and the other elders of the village seem to have a sense of which young people are equipped to handle the outside world—namely, Gordon—and which are too connected to the village to survive outside of it. 

“This was the time of year when the deepest beliefs of the tribe were relived in dances; no stranger asked, no photographs permitted. When Mark walked along the path past the long house, he could see masks in readiness, but he asked no questions and was told nothing.” 

Even as his friendships in the village deepen, Mark still maintains a respectful distance from the tribal rituals that are not willingly shared with him. Although he strives to be a shepherd to the villagers, he also wants them to preserve their own customs. 

“Tagoona asked, ‘What is a problem?’ and the white man said, ‘Tagoona, if I held you by your heels from a third-story window, you would have a problem.’ Tagoona considered this long and carefully. Then he said, ‘I do not think so. If you saved me, all would be well. If you dropped me, nothing would matter. It is you who would have the problem.’”

The Bishop replying to Mark’s concern about Keetah’s family after they leave Kingcome, acknowledging that the burden for their well-being falls not on themselves but on Mark, who will feel the relief if they return or failure if they don’t.

“‘I want to pursue the swimmer like my father. I want to hunt the bear like my father. When I am grown my father will lack nothing.’” 

The song Marta sings to the young boy illustrates the passing of traditions from the older generation to the younger, but also the material importance of these traditions. By learning to take his father’s place, the boy in the song also ensures that he will be able to care for his father in his old age. 

“‘You suffered with them, and now you are theirs, and nothing will ever be the same again.’”

The Bishop understands that Mark’s request for the new vicarage means that the village has accepted him as their own. Beyond this acceptance, however, the Bishop understands that Mark too must have changed in order for the Indians to offer him this help.

“‘Young man, for the past century in England this band has been known as the Quackadoodles and as the Quackadoodles, it will be known forever.’”

The British anthropologist resists Mark’s correction of her mispronunciation of the tribe’s name. Mark is trying to bridge the gap between the tribe’s culture and the misunderstandings of white outsiders but is unable to do so. The inflexibility of the Americans, the schoolteacher, and the British anthropologist all underscore how unusually adaptive Mark is as an outsider.  

“And how did he handle the growing materialism in which so many people feel no need of faith and consider the church almost an anachronism? Mark answered that in an Indian village the challenge was obvious to all, to stay alive men had to depend on each other, and that everyone came to church, even the agnostics and atheists. They came out of respect for the church itself and for the man who served it, and because there were few settlers in a six thousand square mile area who had not been done kindness by the church, its hospital ship, its men, and repaid it.”

Mark feels how disconnected he is from white society, unable to even relate to the social problems his friends identify. Here he articulates his idea of the church’s importance in the First Nations communities: it serves a practical role of providing aid and facilitating interdependent communities.  

“[T]he cannibal man asked why he had come, and the young man answered, ‘Because I want to be as you are.’ […] And then the cannibal man went behind a screen and came out with a body, and he gobbled up one, and he gobbled up two, and he gobbled up four, because that is the ceremonial number, and a lady followed him around and put the bones in a basket. Then he danced four times around the house and disappeared up a pole, and he put into the young man the whistle which makes the cannibal cry, and he tied hemlock branches to his wrists and ankles to protect him, and the young man did the dance as he had been shown, and returned to his village.” 

The myth of the cannibal man potentially shows the consequences of improper initiation into manhood. The young man who seeks knowledge outside his village is instead possessed by a malevolent spirit that terrorizes it. 

“‘I want to be the first of my people to enter a profession. When I left here it was like taking a knife and cutting a piece out of myself, but to tell my grandfather I do not wish to come back to stay—that is to take a knife and cut through the flesh and bone of my own people.’” 

Gordon reveals that his decision to leave the village has painful repercussions for the entire community. The imagery of cutting the flesh and bone of his people echoes the hamatsa myth of the young man who returns to his village to feed on its people.

“‘But you have forgotten something. They have one splendid friend who understands them and will stand by them. They have men like you, Caleb. Don’t you know that in life you have been to this tribe what the Cedar-man was to them in the myth?’” 

Mark, after agreeing with Caleb’s assessment that the tribe is dying, insists that their work in the village still matters. In this way, Mark shows that he values the fleeting human connection in the village more than trying to preserve it. 

“To keep fed, to keep warm, to keep alive. No woman said, ‘I am sorry. I have only enough fuel for my own family,’ and no man said, ‘It is true that I have shot a deer. I am freezing what I do not need now. I cannot share with you, friend.’” 

A difficult winter disproves Mark’s earlier assessment that every man in Kingcome must rely only on himself for survival. Mark and Jim discover the body of Calamity Bill while on patrol, and Mark promises Bill that he’ll scatter his ashes in the spring at a spot he has marked on a map, further illustrating Mark’s interconnectedness with the village.

“‘It is the same. I am not. I have seen how the white man treats his woman. He shares his pleasures and even his work. He does not marry her and leave her to fish. Now I know what Gordon knew long ago. To be an Indian in my own village is to be free as no white man is ever free, and it is to live behind a wall.’” 

Keetah has mixed feelings upon her voluntary return to Kingcome. Although she feels her identity is inextricably tied to the village, she also admires some of the more egalitarian customs of the “white man.”

“Under a green spruce Marta stood by herself, her eyes on the young vicar. How thin and white he was! How long had it been there—that look his face she had seen many times in her long life and knew well? It was not the hard winter that had placed it there. It was death reaching out his hand, touching the face gently, even before the owl had called his name.” 

Marta has been a maternal, attuned figure for Mark throughout the book, knitting him a hat, cooking for him, and housing him while the new vicarage was being built. Her bond with Mark gives her the ability to see he is dying, even before Mark himself realizes it. 

“‘[F]or me it has always been easier here, where only the fundamentals count, to learn what every man must learn in this world.’

‘And what is that my lord?’

‘Enough of the meaning of life to be ready to die.’” 

Even after Marta asks him to visit, the Bishop still does not tell Mark directly that he is dying. Instead, he alludes to his reason for sending Mark to Kingcome. Not long after, Mark pieces together the Bishop’s behavior with his growing fatigue and realizes he will die soon.

“How would he live again in the old world he had almost forgotten, where men throw up smoke screens between themselves and the fundamentals whose existence they fear but seldom admit? Here, where death waited behind each tree, he had made friends with loneliness, with death and deprivation, and, solidly against his back had stood the wall of his faith.” 

Knowing that he will die soon, Mark finds it even harder to leave Kingcome, where death feels natural and not partitioned from the life. Mark acknowledges his disconnect from his old way of living and now feels more attune with life—and death—in the Quee village. 

“In the night the heaviest of the spring rains fell in torrents as the young vicar struggled with the one fact of his life about which no man has doubt and yet is never ready to meet. One of the thoughts that comforted him was from his life here on the up-coast, the simple memory of the many times on the boat when he and Jim had seemed to be heading straight into a cliff or a steep island side only to find at the last moment some little finger of the sea waiting to lead them on. But almost as big as the fact of death was the thought of leaving. How could he return now to that far country he no longer knew, where, while awaiting death, he would be a stranger?” 

Mark rehearses his death by comparing it to moments navigating the boat with Jim that seemed disastrous and final but wound up revealing new paths. In this sense, he has made peace with his impending death and has accepted it. 

“‘When I am no longer in the village, take care of Keetah. When you want coffee, don’t bang on the table. Say please and when she hands you the cup, say thank you. […] And when you build Keetah a house, let her plan it with you. And don’t leave her alone in the village too long. Take her and the children with you sometimes on the fishing, and each year take her outside until it is familiar to her. Someday, when the village is no more, you too must cross the bridge.’” 

While Mark and Jim on patrol looking for a drunk logger, Mark, out of concern for Keetah’s happiness, instructs Jim on how to compromise by adopting some of the “white man’s” egalitarian habits that Keetah admires. Mark imparts this wisdom knowing that he will soon die, and he is attempting to extend his affection for Jim and Keetah before he does so. 

“Keetah’s great-great-grandmother had […] come to this spot to watch for the returning canoes, to see if her husband was in his accustomed place. And she had called loudly upon all the gods, the guardian spirits of the tribe to help her. ‘Come wolf, come swimmer. Come raven, come eagle’; even upon the cannibal who lives at the north end of the world. But Keetah could not choose between Mark and Jim. She prayed for both, waiting hour after hour.” 

The tribe has heard the landslide and Keetah, at risk of losing them both, confronts her feelings for Jim and Mark. We learn for the first time that she loves them equally, though it isn’t clear whether her love is romantic.