Red Prophet Part 18

He could never explain it to the others, and even if he could, he wouldn't do it. Word would get out that Ta-k.u.msaw had taken a White to the ancient holy place, and then many Reds would refuse to listen to Ta-k.u.msaw anymore.

So in the morning he told the others he was taking the boy off to teach him, as the Prophet had told him he must. "Meet me in five days where the Pickawee flows into the Hio," he told them. "From there we'll go south to talk to the Chok-Taw and the Chicky-Saw."

Take us with you, they said. You won't be safe alone. But he didn't answer them, and soon enough they gave up. He set off at a run, and once again Alvin fell in step behind him, matching him stride for stride. It was almost as far again as the journey from Mizogan to Detroit. By nightfall they would be at the edge of the Land of Flints. Ta-k.u.msaw planned to sleep there, and find dreams of his own, before daring to lead a White boy to Eight-Face Mound.

Chapter 12 Cannons.

Measure heard them coming only seconds before the door swung open and light flooded the root cellar. Time enough to dump out the dirt and tuck his loincloth into the deerhide belt, then scramble forward onto the potatoes. The breechclout was so filthy it was like wearing dirt, but this wasn't a time to get finicky.

They didn't waste no time on prison inspection, so they didn't see the hole that was now reaching a good two feet under the back wall. Instead they reached in and drug him out by the armpits, slamming the root cellar doors shut behind him. The light was so sudden it dazzled him, and he couldn't make out who had him, or how many they were. Didn't much matter. Anyone local would have known him right off, so they had to be Harrison's boys, and once he knew that, he knew it wasn't nothing good going to happen to him.

"Like a pig," said Harrison. "Disgusting. You look like a Red."

"You put me in a hole in the ground," said Measure. "I ain't about to come out clean."

"I gave you one long night to think about it, boy," said Harrison, "Now you got to make up your mind. There's two ways you can be useful to me. One is alive, you telling all about how they tortured your brother to death, him screaming every second. You make it a good story, and you tell all about how Ta-k.u.msaw and the Prophet were there, getting their own hands into the boy's blood. You tell a story like that, and it's worth keeping you alive."

"Ta-k.u.msaw saved my life from your Chok-Taw Reds," said Measure, "That's the only story I'll tell. Except to mention how you wanted me to tell another story."

"That's what I thought," said Harrison. "Fact is, even if you lied to me and promised to tell the story my way, I reckon I wouldn't've believed you. So we both agree it's the other choice."

Measure knew Harrison meant to produce his body, with the evidence of torture on it. Dead, he couldn't tell anybody who did the cutting and burning. Well, thought Measure, you'll see I die as brave as any man.

But because he wasn't one to welcome death with both hands, he thought he'd give talking a bit more of a try. "You let me go and call off this war, Harrison, and I'll keep my mouth shut. Just let me wander in, and you allow as how it was all a terrible mistake and take your boys on home and leave Prophetstown in peace, and I won't tell a word otherwise. That's a lie I'm glad to tell."

Harrison hesitated just a moment, and Measure allowed himself to hope he might actually have some spark of G.o.dliness left in him, to turn away from the sin of murder before it was fully done. Then Harrison smiled, shook his head, and waved his hand at a big ugly riverman standing right up against the wall.

"Mike Fink, this here's a renegade White boy, who has joined in with all the evil doings of Ta-k.u.msaw and his gang of child-killers and wife-rapers. I hope you'll break several of his bones."

Fink stood there, contemplating. "I reckon he'll make a-powerful lot of noise, Gov."

"Well, jam in a gag on him." Harrison took a kerchief out of his own coat pocket. "Here, stuff this in his mouth and tie it there."

Fink complied. Measure tried to keep his eyes off him, tried to calm the dread that made his belly so tight and his bladder so full. The kerchief filled his mouth so full he choked on it. He only got control of himself by breathing slow and steady through his nose. Fink tied his own red scarf so tight around Measure's face that it forced the gag down into his throat even farther; again it took all his concentration just to breathe evenly and stop from gagging and retching. If he did that, he'd sure breathe the that kerchief, right down into his lungs, and then he would die.

Which was a crazy thought, seeing as how Harrison meant to have him dead no matter what. Maybe choking on a kerchief would be better than the pain Fink meant to cause. But Measure had too strong a spark of life to choose to die like that. Pain or not, when he died he'd go out gasping, not smothering himself just to get off easy.

"Breaking his bones ain't the way Reds do it." Fink was being helpful. "They usually cut and b.u.m."

"Well, we don't have time for cutting, and you can burn the body after he's dead. The point of this is to have a colorful corpse, Mike, not to cause this boy pain. We're not savages, or at least some of us aren't."

Mike chuckled, then reached out, took Measure by the shoulder, and kicked his feet out from under him. Measure never felt so helpless in his life as in that moment when he fell. Fink didn't have an inch of height or reach on him, and Measure knew a few wra.s.sling tricks, but Fink never even tried to grapple with him. Just a grab and a kick, and Measure was on the floor.

"Don't you need to tie him first?" asked Harrison.

In answer, Fink picked up Measure's left leg so fast and high that Measure slid across the floor and his b.u.t.tocks lifted right into the air. No chance to get leverage, no chance to kick. Then Fink brought Measure's leg down across his own thigh hard and sharp. His leg bones snapped like dry kindling wood. Measure screamed into the gag, then nearly inhaled the kerchief gasping for breath. He never felt pain like that in all his life. For one crazy moment he thought, This is how Alvin felt when that millstone fell on his leg.

"Not in here," said Harrison. "Take him out back. Do it in the root cellar."

"How many bones you want me to break?" asked Fink.

"All of them."

Fink picked Measure up by an arm and a leg and practically tossed him up over his shoulders. Despite the pain, Measure tried to lay in a punch or two, but Fink jerked down on his arm, breaking it right at the elbow.

Measure was barely conscious the rest of the way outside. He heard somebody in the distance call, "Who you got there!"

Fink yelled back, "Caught us a Red spy, sneaking around!"

The voice from the distance sounded familiar to Measure, but he couldn't concentrate well enough to remember who it was. "Tear him apart!" he shouted.

Fink didn't answer. He didn't set Measure down to open the root cellar doors, even though they were low and at a slant, so you had to reach out and down, then pull them up. Fink just hooked the toe of his boot under the door and flipped it up. It moved so fast it banged on the ground and rebounded so as to nearly close again, but by then Fink was already stepping into the cellar; the door hit his thigh and bounced right open again. Measure just heard it as banging and a little jostling, which made his leg and his elbow hurt all the more. Why haven't I fainted yet, he wondered. Now's as good a time as any.

But he never did faint. Both legs broken above and below the knee, his fingers bent back and disjointed, his hands crushed, his arms broken above and below the elbows through all that be stayed awake, though the pain eventually got kind of far away, more like the memory of pain than pain itself. If you hear one cymbal crash, it's loud; two or three cymbal crashes at once are louder yet. But along about the twentieth cymbal crash, it don't get louder, you just get deafer, and you hardly hear any of them at all. That's how it was for Measure.

There was a sound of cheering in the distance.

Somebody ran up. "Governor says finish up real quick, he wants you right away."

"I'll be done in a minute," said Fink. "Except for the burning.

"Save it till later," the man said. "Hurry!"

Fink dropped Measure, then stomped his chest till his ribs were pretty much broke, bending in and out any which way. Then her picked him up by the arm and the hair and bit off his ear. Measure felt it tear away with one last desperate surge of anger. Then Fink gave his head a sharp twist. Measure heard his own neck snap. Fink flung him onto the potatoes. He rolled down the backside and into the hole he dug. Only when his face was in the dirt did the pain stop and darkness come.

Fink flipped the doors shut with his foot, slid the bar into place, and headed back to the house. The cheering out front was louder. Harrison met him coming out of his office. "Never mind about that now," Harrison said. "There's no need for a corpse to keep things hot around here. The cannon just got here, and we'll attack in the morning.

Harrison rushed out to the front porch, and Mike Fink followed him. Cannon? What did cannons have to do with needing or not needing a corpse? What did he think Mike was, an a.s.sa.s.sin? Killing Hooch was one thing, and killing a man in a fair fight was something else. But killing a young man with a gag in his mouth, that was altogether different. When he bit off that ear it just didn't feel right. It wasn't no trophy of a fair fight. Took the heart right out of him. He didn't even bother biting off the other ear.

Mike stood there beside Harrison, watching the horses pull the four cannon right along, brisk as you please. He knew how Harrison would use the guns, he'd heard him planning it. Two here, two there, so they rake the whole Red city from both sides. Grape and canister, to rip and tear the bodies of the Reds, women and children right along with the men.

It ain't my kind of a fight, thought Mike. Like that man out back. No challenge at all, like stomping baby frogs. You can do it, and not think twice. But you don't pick up the dead frogs, stuff them, and hang them on the wall, you just don't do that.

It ain't my kind of fight.

Chapter 13 Eight-Face Mound.

There was a different feel to the land around Licking River. Alvin didn't notice right off, mostly cause he was running with his wick trimmed, so to speak. Didn't notice much at all. It was one long dream as he ran. But as Ta-k.u.msaw led him into the Land of Flints, there was a change in the dream. All around him, no matter what he saw in his dream, there was little sparks of deep-black fire. Not like the nothingness that always lurked at the edges of his vision. Not like the deep black that sucked light into itself and never let it go. No, this black shone, it gave off sparks.

And when they stopped running, and Alvin came to hisself again, those black fires may have faded just a bit but they were still there. Without so much as thinking, Alvin walked toward one, a black blaze in a sea of green, reached down and picked it up. A flint. A good big one.

"A twenty-arrow flint," said Ta-k.u.msaw.

"It shines black and burns cold," said Alvin.

Ta-k.u.msaw nodded. "You want to be a Red boy? Then make arrowheads with me."

Alvin caught on quick. He had worked with stone before. When he cut a millstone, he wanted smooth, flat surfaces. With flint, it was the edge, not the face that counted. His first two arrowheads were clumsy, but then he was able to feel his way into the stone and find the natural creases and folds, and then break them apart. For his fourth arrowhead, he didn't chip at all. Just used his fingers and gently pulled the arrowhead away from the flint.

Ta-k.u.msaw's face showed no expression. That's what most White folks thought he looked like all the time. They thought Red men, and most especially Ta-k.u.msaw, never felt nothing cause they never let n.o.body see their feelings. Alvin had seen him laugh, though, and cry, and all the other faces that a man can show. So he knowed that when Ta-k.u.msaw showed nothing on his face, that meant he was feeling a whole lot of things.

"I worked with stone a lot before," said Alvin. He felt like he was sort of apologizing.

"Flint isn't stone," said Ta-k.u.msaw. "Pebbles in the river, boulders, those are stone. This is living rock, rock with fire in it, the hard earth that the land gives to us freely. Not hewn out and tortured the way White men do with iron." He held up Alvin's fourth arrowhead, the one he cajoled out of the flint with his fingers. "Steel can never have an edge this sharp."

"It's just about as perfect an edge as I ever saw," said Al.

"No chip marks," said Ta-k.u.msaw. "No pressing. A Red man would see this flint and say, The land grew the flint this way."

"But you know better," said Al. "You know it's just a knack I got.

"A knack bends the land," said Ta-k.u.msaw. "Like a snag in the river churns the water on the river's face. So it is with the land when a White uses his knack. Not you."

Alvin puzzled on that for a minute. "You mean you can see where other folks did their doodlebug or beseeching or hex or charm?"

"Like the bad stink when a sick man loosens his bowel," said Ta-k.u.msaw. "But you what you do is clean. Like part of the land. I thought I would teach you how to be Red. Instead the land gives you arrowheads like a gift."

Again, Alvin felt like apologizing. It seemed to make Ta-k.u.msaw angry, that he could do the things he did. "It ain't like I asked anybody for this," he said. "I was just the seventh son of a seventh son, and the thirteenth child."

"These numbers seven, thirteen you Whites care about them, but they're nothing in the land. The land has true numbers. One, two, three, four, five, six these numbers you can find when you stand in the forest and look around you. Where is seven? Where is thirteen?"

"Maybe that's why they're so strong," said Alvin. "'Maybe cause they ain't natural."

"Then why does the land love this unnatural thing that you do?"

"I don't know, Ta-k.u.msaw. I'm only ten going on eleven."

Ta-k.u.msaw laughed. "Ten? Eleven? Very weak numbers."

They spent the night there, in the borders of the Land of Flints. Ta-k.u.msaw told Alvin the story of that place, how it was the best flint country in the whole land. No matter how many flints the Reds came and took away, more always came out of the ground, just lying there to get picked up. In years gone by, every now and then some tribe would try to own the place. They'd bring their warriors and kill anyone else who came for flints. That way they figured they'd have arrows and the other tribes wouldn't have any. But it never worked right. Cause as soon as that tribe won its battles and held the land, the flints just plain disappeared. Not a one. Members of that tribe would search and search, and never find a thing. They'd go away, and another tribe would come in, and there'd be flints again, as many as ever.

"It belongs to everybody, this place. All Reds are at peace here. No killing, no war, no quarrels or the tribe has no flints."

"I wish the whole world was a place like that," said Alvin.

"Listen to my brother long enough, White boy, and you'll start to think it is. No, no, don't explain to me. Don't defend him. He takes his road, I take mine. I think his way will kill more people, Red or White, than mine."

In the night, Alvin dreamed. He saw himself walk all the way around Eight-Face Mound, until he found a place where a path seemed to lead up the steep hill. He climbed, then, and came to the top. The silver-leafed trees shook in the breeze, blinding him as the sun shone off them. He walked to one tree, and in it there was a nest of redbirds. Every tree the same, a single redbird nest.

Except one tree. It was different from the others. It was older, gnarled, with spreading branches instead of the up-reaching kind. Like a fruit tree. And the leaves were gold, not silver, so they didn't shine so bright, but they were soft and deep. In the tree, he saw round white fruit, and he knew that it was ripe. But when he reached out his hand to take the fruit, and eat it, he could hear laughter, jeering. He looked around him and saw everybody he ever knowed in his whole life, laughing at him. Except one Taleswapper. Taleswapper was standing there, and he said, "Eat." Alvin reached up and plucked a single fruit out of the tree and took it to his lips and bit into it. It was juicy and firm, and the taste was sweet and bitter, salt and sour all at once, so strong it made him tingle all over but good, a taste he wanted to hold inside him forever.

He was about to take a second bite when he saw that the fruit was gone from his hand, and not a one hung from the tree. "One bite is all you need for now," said Taleswapper. "Remember how it tastes."

"I'll never forget," said Alvin.

Everybody was still laughing, louder than ever; but Alvin paid them no mind. He'd took him a bite of the fruit, and all he wanted now was to bring his family to the same tree, and let them eat; to bring everybody he ever knowed, and even strangers, too, and let them taste it. If they'd just taste it, Alvin figured, they'd know.

"What would they know?" asked Taleswapper.

Al couldn't think what it was. "Just know," he said. "Know everything. Everything that's good."

"That's right," said Taleswapper. "With the first bite, you know."

"What about the second bite?"

"With the second bite, you live forever," said Taleswapper. "And that isn't a thing you'd better plan on doing, my boy. Don't ever imagine you can live forever."

Alvin woke up that morning with the taste of the fruit still in his mouth. He had to force himself to believe that it was just a dream. Ta-k.u.msaw was already up. He had a low fire going, and he had called two fish out of the Licking River. Now they were spitted with sticks down their mouths. He handed one to Alvin.

But Alvin didn't want to eat. If he did, the taste of the fruit would go out of his mouth. He'd begin to forget, and he wanted to remember. Oh, he knowed that he'd have to eat sometime a body can get remarkable thin saying no to food all the time. But today, for now, he didn't want to eat.

Still, he held the spit and watched the trout sizzle. Ta-k.u.msaw talked, telling him about calling fish and other animals when you need to eat. Asking them to come. If the land wants you to eat, then they come; or maybe some other animal, it doesn't matter, just so you eat what the land gives you. Alvin thought about the fish he was roasting. Didn't the land know he wasn't going to eat this morning? Or did it send this fish to tell him he ought to eat after all?

Neither one. Because just at the moment the fish were ready to eat, they heard the crashing and thumping that told them a White man was coming.

Ta-k.u.msaw sat very still, but he didn't so much as pull out his knife. "If the land brings a White man here, then he isn't my enemy," said Ta-k.u.msaw.

In a few seconds, the White man stepped into the clearing. His hair was white, where he wasn't bald. He was carrying his hat. He had a slack-looking pouch over his shoulder, and no weapon at all. Alvin knew right off what was in that pouch. A change of clothes, a few s.n.a.t.c.hes of food, and a book. A third of the book contained single sentences, where folks had written down the most important thing they ever saw happen with their own eyes. The last two-thirds of the book, though, were sealed with a leather strap. That was where Taleswapper wrote down his own stories, the ones he believed and thought were important.

Cause that's who it was, Taleswapper, who Alvin never thought to see again in his life. And suddenly, seeing that old friend, Alvin knew why two fish came at Ta-k.u.msaw's call. "Taleswapper," Alvin said, "I hope you're hungry, cause I got a fish here that I roasted for you."

Taleswapper led. "I'm right glad to see you, Alvin, and right glad to see that fish."

Alvin handed him the spit. Taleswapper sat him down in the gra.s.s, across, the fire from Alvin and Ta-k.u.msaw. "Thank you kindly, Alvin," said Taleswapper. He pulled out his knife and neatly began flaking off slices of fish. They sizzled his lips, but he just licked and smacked and made short work of the trout. Ta-k.u.msaw also ate his, and Alvin watched them both. Ta-k.u.msaw never took his eyes off Taleswapper.

"This is Taleswapper," Alvin said. "He's the man who taught me how to heal."

"I didn't teach you," said Taleswapper. "I just gave you some idea how to teach yourself. And persuaded you that you ought to try." Taleswapper directed his next sentence at Ta-k.u.msaw. "He was set to let himself die before he'd use his knack to heal himself, can you believe that?"

"And this is Ta-k.u.msaw," said Alvin.

"Oh, I knew that the minute I saw you. Do you know what a legend you are among White people? You're like Saladin during the Crusade they admire you more than they admire their own leaders, even though they know you're sworn to fight until you've driven the last White man out of America."