The Sound of Many Waters

by Sean Bloomfield

  “What do I have to do to join?” asked Zane.

  The preacher smiled, revealing a mouthful of teeth that were all too perfect and white.

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  “Twins!” shouted Francisco. He slapped Dominic on the back.

  Dominic’s eyes narrowed. “Pardon?”

  “A boy and a girl! Perfect in every way. God has blessed you twofold, commander. Now I can call you father.”

  Earlier that day, when Mela’s screams from the maternity hut became too upsetting for Dominic to bear, he retreated to the far side of the village to busy himself with his normal share of daily work: stretching deer hides, flipping the smoked meats, husking corn, and binding arrows. Lost in the monotony of his chores, he did not even notice that Mela had stopped screaming until Francisco shuffled over.

  “Twins?” Dominic whispered. He dropped a half-husked ear of corn and ran to the hut.

  Inside, curled up on a bed of moss and surrounded by three smiling midwives, Mela held two infants against her chest, their mouths glistening with colostrum. She beamed at Dominic. The midwives hurried out of the hut. He inched forward, put his hand on the baby boy’s back, and lost his breath when he felt the faint heartbeat. It was like the flutter of small wings.

  “As their father,” said Mela, “you must name them. It is our custom.”

  Dominic looked away until he felt certain he could restrain his tears, and then he kneeled beside Mela and the infants.

  He put his hand on the baby girl’s tiny body and gazed at her rosy checks and her glossy eyes and her black, downy hair that wimpled when he breathed on it.

  “How do you say the word beauty in your language?” asked Dominic.

  Mela smiled. “Isa.”

  “Then we will call her Isa.”

  Mela kissed Isa’s forehead. “Isa,” she whispered.

  Dominic touched the other infant’s head. The little boy twitched and made a sucking sound with his mouth. “As I understand it, the lineage of chief is passed down through the mother,” said Dominic.

  “Yes,” said Mela.

  “Then he should have a name befitting of a leader. What is the strongest and smartest animal in these woods?”

  “The panther. Yaraha.”

  “Yaraha. Perfect.”

  Francisco entered carrying a bowl of water. “Pardon my interruption, but I am here to administer the baptism.”

  In a spasm of anger, Dominic knocked the bowl out of his hands. Holy water sprayed the walls. “I did not request any baptism!”

  Mela put her hand on Dominic’s arm. “Be calm, husband. I did.”

  “You? Why?”

  “Because I fear what Utina will do when he finds out we have a boy child. He likely already knows—one of the midwives is his niece.”

  “How will dribbling some water on our baby’s head help that?”

  “They may not worship our God,” said Francisco, “but they do fear him, and they respect what is his.”

  Yaba burst into the hut, knocking Francisco down as he approached Mela. His eyes darted about. The severed raccoon tails on his headdress swung as he walked. Mela pulled the infants close.

  “Stay back,” she said.

  Dominic glared at Yaba. “What do you want?”

  Yaba dipped his finger into a small clay bowl filled with some red substance, and then he lunged past Dominic and poked Yaraha in the chest. The infant wailed.

  “No!” shouted Francisco.

  “Be gone!” Dominic pushed Yaba out of the hut and onto the ground outside. “Go away, you snake!”

  Yaba scurried off, cackling.

  …………………………

  A year had drifted by since Dominic and Mela were wed. Life at Many Waters had been both blissful and difficult. In the months following the Ais attack, the memories of the dead had faded and the hair of the women gradually grew back. At the same time, however, the reign of Utina—and that of his most trusted adviser, Yaba—had become dark and oppressive. Most of the natives accepted the changes. Many even embraced them. They saw obvious benefits to the old way of living.

  Slavery, for example, was brought back. It started one bleak winter day when Utina sent a group of warriors to the northwest to raid an Appalachee encampment. One week later, they returned with seven captives: two men, two boys, and three women, the latter of which, it was made known, were available for the pleasure of any Timucuan man who desired them. Many did. Utina severed one of the Achilles tendons of each slave to prevent them from escaping. Dominic could not even look at the poor things as they toiled and limped among the crops. Sometimes, he stopped to help them.

  “Devilry,” as Francisco called it, flourished. The age-old custom of bartering with the dead was renewed. Late at night, natives would kneel beside the graves of loved ones and ask favors of them, including, at times, to put vexes on their rivals within the village. If a native wanted an enemy to die, for example, all he or she had to do was present an offering of raw meat at the grave of a warrior and murmur a series of incantations. In time, the graveyard became a stinking mess of rotten food and, on most nights, it was filled with hunched-over natives, the sound of their collective prayers burbling out of the darkness like an ill wind. Mela no longer went there to mourn her parents.

  Violence burgeoned. Small war parties were dispatched into the wilderness as part of a campaign to broaden Utina’s kingdom. They would return with scalps and limbs severed from members of neighboring villages; these trophies were then displayed on the posts in the center of the village. From then on the odor of death pervaded every tribal meeting. The most vicious warriors were treated as heroes. If, however, members of a war party showed cowardice or mercy during their raids, they were brought before Utina upon their return. First, he made them kneel and beg, and then he split their heads open with a canoe paddle.

  One day a hunting party returned with a wounded panther that had fallen into a pit trap. Utina requested that a cage be built for it beside his hut—panthers, after all, were godlike in their cunning and beauty. Utina would spend hours taunting the animal with chunks of raw venison and prodding it with a stick, laughing every time it lashed out. On many nights, Dominic considered releasing the miserable beast, but the consequences of getting caught were too grave.

  As things regressed throughout the year, Francisco became increasingly despondent. He spent most of his time at prayer in his chapel, or in his rectory which was supposedly at the end of the gruesome trail where Dominic and Mela were wed. Dominic had still not seen the rectory, though. He guessed that the treasure Francisco had spoken of was out there and that the old man slept near to guard it.

  Lost in his new life with Mela, however, Dominic had no urge to go looking. For the first time he could remember, the ambition that had always thundered inside him was now as calm as a windless sea. His thoughts were no longer clouded by avarice. He reveled in the peace, a peace that had begun to flower as soon as he and Mela moved into their hut together. Dominic constructed the hut by hand, with Itori’s instruction. In exchange, Dominic allowed Itori to tattoo him, the most painful thing he had ever endured. Apparently, the tattoo—which consisted of concentric bands and animal shapes wrapping around Dominic’s arm—meant something about hunting deer and battling alligator gar, but one of the animals looked suspiciously like a squirrel.

  Regardless, every bit of discomfort from the tattoo was worth Itori’s guidance with the hut. The roof leaked and the walls were crooked, but to Dominic—having built it for the woman he cherished—it was nothing less than a palace. Mela decorated the interior with things she salvaged from her father’s hut before Utina had taken it over, including an owl totem, a clay panther effigy, and her great-grandfather’s femur, which still bore the tooth marks of the bear attack that killed him. Day after day, Dominic sensed, Mela worked her way into him, softening his heart and coaxing out little morsels of kindness. Her most effective tool was food; Mela, he discovered, was a skilled cook.

  Bre
akfast in their little home usually consisted of corncakes drizzled with honey or maple sap and topped with whatever wild fruits were in season. Mela would wake before Dominic and, in the pre-dawn darkness, scour the woods for blackberries, persimmons and hog plums while they were still crisp and glistening with dew. Whenever she found a goldenrod flower, she added that to the dish as an edible garnish.

  After breakfast, Dominic would go to work with the other men of the village. His day often consisted of hunting deer, trapping otters, setting snares and carving new canoes, but he always came home for lunch. Mela would usually catch a perch or bream from the river and serve it to him roasted on a clay platter with mushrooms and beans. Other dishes included boiled snails with squash; fritters made of corn flour and crayfish tails; dandelion greens with hickory nuts and fish oil; and, what was perhaps Dominic’s favorite, swamp duckling roasted over an open flame. How he loved her duckling.

  Supper was generally a communal feast shared in the center of the village, and—despite the copious amounts of smoked game, steamed shellfish, corn on the cob, whole roasted turkeys, and desserts of honeycomb and muscadine grapes—this was the least pleasant of Dominic’s meals. He always felt like he was being watched. Members of Utina’s entourage would scowl at him and lean toward each other throughout the evening, their whispers slithering from mouth to ear like invisible snakes.

  When Utina had learned about their clandestine wedding the day after it took place, he had stormed off to his hut and pushed his wife inside; no one saw her for the next three days, and when she emerged, she was bruised and scarred and looked like a corpse. Dominic was certain that he would, one day, avenge Ona’s death by killing Utina, but as he became more accustomed to his life in the village and to the sweetness that his new bride showered on him, that resolution moved to the very aft of his thoughts. Still, he always slept with his sword at his side.

  He never forgot finding the leg in the river on the day the alligator ate the boy. Judging by the decorative scarring and the lack of tattoos on the severed limb, it belonged to one of the Ais warriors who had been killed during the battle. But how did it end up in the river, tied to a rope? So many things about that day made no sense. He tried not to think about it too often.

  One night, not long after Mela’s belly began to swell with pregnancy, Dominic woke with a start and reached over to make sure she was still there. He relaxed when he felt her warmth. Pulling the deer hide curtain away from the window to let the moonlight stream in, he lay there staring at the soft silvery features of her face. She quivered, and he hoped she was having a good dream full of beautiful things and that he was as present in her nighttime thoughts as she was in his. Why was she so good to him? What was her motivation? He decided that night to never ponder such questions again. Mela and her love for him were mysteries he did not want to solve.

  “Let us run away from here,” Dominic said to Mela one cold evening as they sat together wrapped in a deerskin blanket beside the hearth.

  Mela put her head against his shoulder. “But we are meant to be here.”

  “We are meant to be wherever we are. We can go to San Agustín and I will take you to Spain on a sailing ship. I have a house in the Pyrenees with seven rooms and two servants. You will see things there that you can never imagine.”

  “If you go, you will have to go without me. I was born at Many Waters, and I will die at Many Waters. That is how it must be.”

  …………………………

  As soon as Yaba was out of sight, Dominic hurried back into the hut. He found Mela bawling, cradling the babies. Francisco knelt beside her, his face filled with gloom.

  “What’s wrong?” said Dominic.

  Francisco looked up. “Yaba marked him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Before I could baptize him, Yaba put the mark on him.”

  Dominic tried to rub the red spot off of Yaraha’s chest but it would not even smudge. He lifted the baby out of Mela’s arms and took him to the other side of the hut and used water from a clay pot to try to wash off the spot—but it seemed to be ingrained in his skin. “What does this mean? This mark?” asked Dominic.

  Francisco hesitated. “It means he is reserved for tacato.”

  “What is tacato?”

  “Sacrifice.”

  “Sacrifice?” Dominic’s face filled with shock.

  “Many years ago, the tribe would sacrifice every firstborn son on the first full moon of the year. The next such moon—is four nights from now.”

  Dominic rubbed his forehead. “Four nights?”

  Mela quelled her sobs. “I had a baby brother, but he…” Her words turned into weeping and she buried her face against Isa.

  “An offering, they believe, will bring good fortune to the tribe.” Francisco shook his head. “Everything Ona tried to change. All for naught.”

  Dominic’s eyes filled with fury. “They will not sacrifice my son.”

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  “The book of Revelation describes the Son of Man as thus,” boomed the preacher. “His hair was white as wool…his eyes were a flame of fire…and his voice was like the sound of many waters!”

  Zane kneeled beside the improvised baptism font—a five-gallon pickle bucket filled with water—and the preacher stood over him, reading from a ratty old Bible.

  Get it over with, thought Zane. He just wanted to use the phone.

  Moments earlier, the preacher had explained the simple process of joining his congregation. Judging from the dusty pews that had not seen a rear end in years, the so-called congregation consisted of only one person—the preacher himself.

  “All you need to do,” the preacher had said, smiling like a traveling salesman, “is be baptized.” He waved a cordless phone at Zane.

  “Can’t I just use the phone and think about getting baptized?”

  The preacher dropped the phone on a pew and put his hands on his hips. “Son, don’t you want eternal life?”

  “Doesn’t everyone?”

  The preacher’s face reddened and his voice changed into the deeper, fiery one he had used on the pulpit. “Unless a man be born again of water,” he roared, “he cannot enter into the kingdom of God! No way, no how!” And then he relaxed and softened his tone. “Just let me baptize you, son. It’ll only take a minute.”

  “And that’s it?”

  “That’s it. That and you need to make an offering to the church, of course. Give some cash, get a splash, and the phone’s all yours. Easy peasy, right?”

  “I don’t have any money.”

  The preacher’s face soured. “Well, that is a problem. Eternity has never been free, you know.”

  Zane felt around in his pocket and realized he had one doubloon left. He pulled it out and flashed it at the preacher. “I do have this,” said Zane.

  The preacher’s eyes lit up and he reached for the coin. “Let me see that.”

  Zane stuffed the coin back into his pocket. “Not until I use the phone.”

  The preacher exhaled. “Fair enough. Let’s get to it, then, shall we?”

  Now, kneeling beside the bucket, Zane hoped it would be over soon.

  “A spring rose out of the earth, watering the surface!” yelled the preacher, his mouth frothing. “And the Lord God formed man of the slime of the earth, and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul!”

  The preacher grabbed Zane by the hair and yanked his head back. “Let me go!” screamed Zane, but the preacher ignored him. Sweat dripped off the preacher’s chin and onto Zane’s face. With his other hand, the preacher reached into the bucket with the chalice—a Miller Light can cut in half.

  “Zane Fisher! I now baptize you and wash you of all sin!”

  Warm water splashed onto Zane’s face. He felt nothing but regret for stepping into the church in the first place.

  “And last but not least,” yelled the preacher. “The Lord said that whosoever shall drink of his water will have life everlast
ing! Can I get an amen, brother Zane?”

  Zane trembled. “I want to stop.”

  The preacher tightened his grip on Zane’s hair and yanked his head. “I said, can I get an amen!?”

  “Amen,” whimpered Zane.

  “Hallelujah! Now drink, son—drink the water of life!” He thrust the beer can chalice toward Zane’s mouth, but Zane shook his head.

  “No.”

  “Drink!” yelled the preacher. “Drink for eternity!”

  The preacher pulled Zane’s head backward and down, forcing Zane’s mouth open. The doubloon rolled out of Zane’s pocket and wobbled on the floor. The preacher squinted and leaned closer to it. When the coin stopped moving, the preacher’s mouth fell open. He dropped the beer can.

  “Señora Dolores?” he whispered. His grip on Zane’s hair loosened and Zane pulled away.

  The preacher picked up the coin. “Where did you get this?”

  “I found it.”

  “Nay,” said the preacher, shaking his head. “He sent you, didn’t he?”

  Zane inched away. “Don’t come any closer.”

  “Do you know the secret? Is there more gold out there?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Zane spotted the cordless phone on the pew beside him. This had gone too far. Even though the cops seemed intent on punishing him for a crime he did not commit, he would rather deal with them than with Miguel or the crazy preacher. He grabbed the phone and quickly dialed 911.

  “We ain’t done yet!” The preacher lunged at him and grabbed his arm. A voice garbled out of the phone as it tumbled out of Zane’s hand. 911, what’s your emergency?

  “I’m Zane Fisher!” he shouted. “I need help!”

  “Quiet!” The preacher stomped on the phone with his shiny leather shoe, squashing it like a cockroach.

  “What have you done?” said the preacher. He pulled a switchblade knife out of his pocket and flipped it open. “We don’t need no police round here!”

  The preacher charged toward Zane with the knife held out in front of him. Zane rolled away and the man crashed to the floor. The entire church quaked. Zane bolted through the door and down the steps and into the woods.