I Heard The Owl Call My Name

Marta tells Mark that Keetah is returning to the village by choice, and she arrives in March. He observes that she has become a young woman, and notices that she is avoiding him. Mark realizes that she and the rest of the village are unsure if he will approve of her return. He finds her in the church one day, and she explains that Caleb had helped her and how everyone had been kind, although the white woman she lodged with was suspicious of her at first and spoke to her like a child. However, she describes suffering being away from the village: “The world swallowed me, and I knew I could not stay there because my village is the only place I know myself” (138). She describes witnessing Gordon becoming increasingly more like the white man and says she has lost her sister to death and Gordon to life. However, she also admired the way the white man treats his wife, sharing “his pleasures and even his work. He does not marry her and leave her to fish” (139). She tells Mark that she deliberately became pregnant by Gordon so that she could keep part of him in the village, and that Gordon would never know. Mark predicts Keetah will become like Marta, one of the great women of the tribe. Mark tells Jim about Keetah’s pregnancy, but Jim already knows and is unfazed, saying that “[a] child is always welcome” (139)and that it will be his once they are married.

T.P. announces that he is giving a potlatch for Jim to pass him the rites and ceremonies of the family. From a distance, Marta observes Mark and sees the look of death “reaching out his hand, touching his face gently, even before the owl had called his name” (141). She writes a letter to the Bishop inviting him to the potlatch. When the Bishop arrives, Mark notices that he is worried and goes into the church by himself, as if to pray. When Mark is taking him down to the inlet, the Bishop says he would like to linger. He tells Mark that whenever he visits the village, he tries to put into words what is so valuable about the village. He concludes that it is easier there to learn “[e]nough of the meaning of life to be ready to die” (144). When his seaplane arrives, the Bishop tells Mark that his work is done and that he will write him soon to call him back.

Mark feels a sudden anguish upon realizing he must leave Kingcome and reflects that he had “made friends” (145)with loneliness, death, and deprivation there. He wonders what he has accomplished and suspects the Bishop would tell him he might never know, and he realizes that there is no one truth of the Indian and that he had been witness to just a small, disappearing portion of the truth. Mark scatters Calamity Bill’s ashes at the place Bill had marked on the map. As he makes his way back to the village, Mark begins to connect his deep tiredness with the sadness of his sister and the Bishop going into the church by himself. He wades to shore and is walking back to the vicarage when he hears an owl call. He finds Marta cooking in the kitchen and tells her that he heard an owl call his name. Marta is unsurprised, says, “Yes, my son” (149).

Knowing he is going to die, Mark dreads the idea of leaving Kingcome for the outside world, where he believes he will feel like a stranger. Keetah finds him and tells him the villagers have written to the Bishop asking if he can stay with them in the village: “You are the swimmer who came to us from the great sea” (151). Later that day, Mark and Jim receive a report of a drunk logger who stole a boat and went missing. They go searching for the logger and eventually learn over the radio that he has been found safe. Mark asks Jim to take care of Keetah and be more courteous and caring towards her than the traditional marriage dynamics of the village dictate. Mark says that he cares for Keetah and for Jim. A storm begins, and lightning strikes start a landslide, so that “the whole world exploded into sound” (153). 

The village hears the landslide and the men go out into the storm to search for Mark and Jim. Keetah senses that one of the men has died but doesn’t know which. She can’t choose between the men and calls on all the spirits of the tribe to help both. She sees the men bring back a figure wrapped in a blanket but does not know which man it is until she goes to the vicarage and sees Jim. She sees he has been crying, but he says it is only the saltwater in his eyes. He tells her he will fish and finish building his house and ask her to plan it how she wants it. He tells her he will not bang on the table when he wants coffee or leave her alone for too long, and that he will show her “the big world, because Mark said that when the village is gone, we too must be able to walk across the bridge” (157). While planning the funeral feast, Mrs. Hudson calls for carrots instead of mashed turnips and laments that she served them to Mark knowing he didn’t like them. When the men arrive with Mark’s body, the schoolteacher can’t bring himself to leave his house and suffer with the village. Lying awake after the church service, Marta addresses Mark’s spirit: “Walk straight on, my son. Do not look back. Do not turn your head. You are going to the land of our Lord” (159). Peter the carver, also awake, remembers the lore saying that when a man died, his soul came back to his village, sometimes in the body of another creature. Expecting Mark’s soul, he dresses and waits up to greet him.