From time to time more people would come from the old world—fishermen, mostly. Off course, led astray by storms, running from enemies. They’d come, and for a time they’d live their old-world life in America, trying to build fast, and breed fast, and kill as much as they could. Like a sickness. But then they’d either join in with the Reds and disappear, or get killed off. None of them ever kept up their old-world ways.
Until now, thought Alvin. Now when we came, we were just too strong. Like getting a couple of colds maybe, and you begin to think you won’t never get real sick, and then you get a dose of smallpox and you know that you were never truly sick before at all.
Alvin felt a hand on his shoulder.
“So there is where you looked,” said the Prophet. “What did you see?”
“I think I saw the whole creation of the world,” said Al. “Just like in the Bible. I think I saw—”
“I know what you saw. We all see this, all who have ever come to this place.”
“I thought you said I was the first you brought.”
“This place—there are many doors inside. Some walk in through fire. Some walk in through water. Some through being buried in the earth. Some by falling through the air. They come to this place and see. They go back and tell what they remember, as much of it as they understood, and tell it, as much as they have words to say, and others listen and remember, as much as they can understand. This is the seeing place.”
“I don’t want to leave,” said Alvin.
“No, and neither does the other one.”
“Who? Is there somebody else here?”
The Prophet shook his head. “Not his body. But I feel him in me, looking out of my eye.” He tapped the cheekbone under his good eye, “Not this eye, the other.”
“Can’t you tell who it is?”
“White,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. Whoever it is did no harm. I think maybe—will do a good thing. Now we go.”
“But I want to know all the stories in this place!”
The Prophet laughed. “You could live forever and not see all the stories. They change faster than a man can see.”
“How will I ever come here again? I want to see everything, all of it!”
“I will never bring you back,” said the Prophet.
“Why? Did I do something wrong?”
“Hush, Roach Boy. I will never bring you back, because I will never come here myself again. This is the last time. I have seen the end of all my dreams.”
For the first time, Alvin realized how sad the Prophet looked. His face was haggard with grief.
“I saw you in this place. I saw that I had to bring you here. I saw you in the hands of the Chok-Taw. I sent my brother to get you, bring you back.”
“Is it cause you brought me here that you can’t never come here again yourself?”
“No. The land has chosen. The end will be soon.” He smiled, but it was a ghastly smile. “Your preacher, Reverend Thrower, he said to me once—if your foot gets sick, cut it off. Right?”
“I don’t remember that.”
“I do,” said the Prophet. “This part of the land, it is already sick. Cut it off, so the rest of the land can live.”
“What do you mean?” Alvin conjured up pictures in his mind, about pieces of the land breaking off and falling into the sea.
“Red man will go west of the Mizzipy. White man will stay east. Red part of land will live. White part of land will be very dead, cut off. Full of smoke and metal, guns and death. Red men who stay in the east will turn White. And White men won’t come west of the Mizzipy.”
“There’s already White men west of the Mizzipy. Trappers and traders, mostly, but a few farmers with their families.”
“I know,” said the Prophet. “But what I see here today—I know how to make the White man never come west again, and how to make the Red man never stay east.”
“How’re you going to do that?”
“If I tell,” said the Prophet, “then it won’t happen. Some things in this place, you can’t tell, or it changes, and they go away.”
“Is it the crystal city?” asked Alvin.
“No,” said the Prophet. “It is the river of blood. It is the forest of iron.”
“Show me!” demanded the boy. “Let me see what you saw!”
“No,” said the Prophet. “You wouldn’t keep the secret.”
“Why wouldn’t I? If I give my word I won’t break it!”
“You could give your word all day, Roach Boy, but if you saw the vision you would cry out in fear and pain. And you would tell your brother. You would tell your family.”
“Is something going to happen to them?”
“Not one of your family will die,” said the Prophet. “All safe and healthy when this is over.”
“Show me!”
“No,” said the Prophet. “I will break the tower now, and you will remember what we did and said here. But the only way you’ll ever come back and see these things is if you find the crystal city.”
The Prophet knelt down at the place where the wall met the floor. He pushed his bloody fingers into the wall and lifted. The wall rose up, dissolved, turned to wind. They were surrounded now by the scene they left so many hours before, it seemed. The water, the storm, the twister rising back up into the clouds above them. Lightning flashed all around them, and the rain came down, so fast it made the shore disappear. The rain that landed on the crystal place where they stood turned to crystal, too, became part of the floor under them.
The Prophet went to the edge nearest the shore, and stepped out onto the rough water. It went hard under his foot, but it still undulated slowly—it wasn’t as firm as the platform. The Prophet reached back, took Alvin’s hand, pulled him out onto the new path he was making on the surface of the lake. It wasn’t near as smooth as before, and the farther they walked the rougher it got, the more it moved, the slicker it got so it was hard to go up and over the waves.
“We stayed too long!” cried the Prophet.
Alvin could feel the black water under the thin shell of crystal, roiling with hate. Nothingness out of an ancient nightmare, wanting to break through the crystal, get hold of Al, suck him down, drown him, tear him to pieces, to the tiniest pieces of all, and discard him into the darkness.
“It wasn’t me!” shouted Alvin.
The Prophet turned around, picked him up, lifted him to his shoulders. The rain beat down on him, the wind tried to tear him from the Prophet’s shoulders. Alvin clung tight to Tenskwa-Tawa’s hair. He could feel that now the Prophet’s feet were sinking down into the water more and more with every step. Behind them there wasn’t a trace of a path, all of it gone, the waves rising higher and higher.
The Prophet stumbled, fell; Alvin fell too, forward, knowing he was going to drown—
And found himself sprawled on the wet sand of the beach, the water licking up around him, sucking sand out from under him, trying to pull him back out into the water. Then strong hands under his arms, pulling him away, up the beach, up toward the dunes.
“He’s out there, the Prophet!” Alvin shouted. Or thought he shouted—his voice was just a whisper, and he hardly made a sound. It wouldn’t have mattered, the wind being so loud. He opened his eyes and they were whipped full of sand and rain.
Then Measure’s lips were against his ear, yelling to him. “The Prophet’s all right! Ta-Kumsaw pulled him out! I thought you were dead for sure, when that twister sucked you up! Are you all right?”
“I saw everything!” Alvin cried. But he was so feeble now that he couldn’t make a sound, and he gave it up, let his body go limp, and collapsed into exhausted sleep.
10
Gatlopp
Measure saw little of Alvin—too little. After the episode with the tornado on the lake, Measure would have thought Alvin would be awake to his danger here, eager to get away. Instead he seemed to care for nothing but to be with the Prophet, listening to his stories and the perverse poetic wisdom he dispensed.
Once when Alvin was actually with him long enough to set and talk, Measure asked him why he bothered. “Even when them Reds talk English I can’t understand them. Talk about the land like it was a person, things about taking only the life that offers itself, the land dying east of the Mizzipy—it ain’t dying here, Al, as any fool can see. And even if it’s got smallpox, black death, and ten thousand hangnails, there ain’t no doctor knows how to cure it.”
“Tenskwa-Tawa does know how,” said Alvin.
“Then let him do it, and let’s get on home.”
“Another day, Measure.”
“Ma and Pa’ll be worried sick, they think we’re dead!”
“Tenskwa-Tawa says the land is working out its own course.”
“There you go again! Land is land, and it ain’t got a thing to do with Pa getting a bunch of the boys together combing through the woods to find us!”
“Go on without me, then.”
But Measure wasn’t ready to do that yet. He didn’t have no particular wish to face Ma if he came home without Alvin. “Oh, he was fine when I left him. Just playing around with tornadoes and walking on water with a one-eyed Red. Didn’t want to come home just yet, you know how them ten-year-old boys are.” No, Measure wasn’t ripe to come home just now, not if he didn’t have Alvin in tow. And it was sure he couldn’t take Alvin against his will. The boy wouldn’t even listen to talk of escape.
The worst of it was that while everybody liked Alvin just fine, jabbering to him in English and Shaw-Nee, not a soul there would so much as talk to Measure, except Ta-Kumsaw himself, and the Prophet, who talked all the time whether anybody was listening or not. It got powerful lonely, walking around all day. And not walking far, either. Nobody talked to him, but if he started heading away from the dunes toward the woods, somebody’d shoot off an arrow. It’d land with a thud in the sand right by him. They sure trusted their aim a lot better than Measure did. He kept thinking about arrows drifting a little this way or that and hitting him.
Escape was a silly idea, when Measure gave it serious thought. They’d track him down in no time. But what he couldn’t figure was why they didn’t want him to go. They weren’t doing nothing with him. He was completely useless. And they swore they had no plans to kill him or even break him up a little.
Fourth day at the dunes, though, it finally came to a head. He went to Ta-Kumsaw and plain demanded that he be let go. Ta-Kumsaw looked annoyed, but that was pretty normal for him. This time, though, Measure didn’t back down.
“Don’t you know it’s plain stupid for you to keep us here? It ain’t like we disappeared without a trace, you know. Our horses must have been found by now with your name all over them.”
That was the first time Measure realized that Ta-Kumsaw didn’t have a notion about them horses. “My name isn’t on horses.”
“On their saddles, Chief. Don’t you know? Them Chok-Taw who took us—if they weren’t your own boys, which I ain’t quite satisfied about either, if you want to know—they carved your name into the saddle on my horse and then jabbed the horse so it’d run. The Prophet’s name was carved in Alvin’s saddle. They must’ve gone home right away.”
Ta-Kumsaw’s face seemed to turn dark, his eyes flashing like lightning. If you want to see a sky-god, thought Measure, this is what he looks like. “All the Whites,” said Ta-Kumsaw. “They’ll think I stole you.”
“You didn’t know?” asked Measure. “Well if that don’t beat all. I thought you Reds knew everything, the way you carry on. I even tried to mention it to some of your boys, but they just turn their backs on me. And all the time none of you knowed it.”
“I didn’t know,” said Ta-Kumsaw. “But someone did.” He stalked off, as best you can do that in loose sand; then he turned back around. “Come on, I want you!”
So Measure followed him to the bark-covered wigwam where the Prophet held Bible classes or whatever it was he did all day. Ta-Kumsaw wasn’t shy about showing how angry he was. Didn’t say a thing—just walked around the wigwam, kicking away the rocks that helped anchor it to the sand. Then he picked up one end of it and started lifting. “Needs two men for this,” he said.
Measure squatted down next to him, got a grip, and counted to three. Then he heaved. Ta-Kumsaw didn’t, so the wigwam only lifted about six inches and dropped back down.
Measure grunted from the exertion and glared at Ta-Kumsaw. “Why didn’t you lift?”
“You only got to three,” said Ta-Kumsaw.
“That’s the count, Chief. One, two, three.”
“You Whites are such fools. Every man knows four is the strong number.”
Ta-Kumsaw counted to four. This time they lifted together, got it up, tipped it clean over. By now, of course, whoever was inside knew what was going on, but nobody shouted or nothing. And when the wigwam lay on its back like a stranded turtle, there sat the Prophet and Alvin and a few Reds, cross-legged on blankets on the sand, the one-eyed Red still talking away like as if nothing had happened at all.
Ta-Kumsaw started bellowing in Shaw-Nee, and the Prophet answered him, mildly at first, but louder and louder as time went on. It was quite a row, the sort of yelling that in Measure’s experience always came to blows. But not with these two Reds. Just yelled for a half hour and then stood there, facing each other, breathing hard, saying nothing at all. The silence was only a few minutes, but it felt longer than the shouting.
“You understand any of this?” asked Measure.
“I just know that the Prophet said Ta-Kumsaw was coming today, and he’d be very angry.”
“Well, if he knowed, why didn’t he do something to change it?”
“Oh, he’s real careful about that. He’s got everything going just the way it needs to, for the land to be divided right between White and Red. If he goes and changes something because he knows what’s going to happen, he might undo everything, mess it all up. So he knows what’s going to happen, but he don’t tell a soul who might change it.”
“Well, what good does it do to know the future if you ain’t going to do nothing about it?”
“Oh, he does things,” said Alvin. “He just doesn’t necessarily tell folks what he’s doing. That’s why he made the crystal tower when that storm came by. To make sure the vision was still the way it was supposed to be, to make sure things hadn’t gotten themselves off the right path.”
“What’s all this about? Why are they fighting?”
“You tell me, Measure. You’re the one helped him turn over the wigwam.”
“Beats me. I just told him about his and the Prophet’s names being carved on our saddles.”
“He knowed that,” said Alvin.
“Well, he sure acted like he didn’t hear of it before.”
“I told the Prophet myself, the night after he took me into the tower.”
“Didn’t it come to your mind that maybe the Prophet didn’t tell Ta-Kumsaw?”
“Why not?” asked Alvin. “Why wouldn’t he tell it?”
Measure nodded wisely. “I have a feeling that’s the very question Ta-Kumsaw’s asking his brother about right now.”
“It’s crazy not to tell,” said Alvin. “I figured Ta-Kumsaw must’ve sent somebody by now to tell our folks we were all right.”
“You know what I think, Al? I think your Prophet’s been playing us all for fools. I don’t even have a guess as to why, but I think he’s working out some plan, and part of that plan is keeping us from going home. And since that means all our family and neighbors and all are going to be up in arms about it, you can figure it out. The Prophet wants to get a real hot little shooting war going here.”
“No!” said Alvin. “The Prophet says no man can kill another man who doesn’t want to die, that it’s as wrong to kill a White man as it is to kill a wolf or a bear that you don’t want for food.”
“Maybe he wants us for food. But he’s going to have a war if we don’t get home and tell our kin that we’re safe.”
That was right when T
a-Kumsaw and the Prophet fell silent. And it was Measure who broke the silence. “Think you boys are about set to let us go home?” he asked.
The Prophet immediately sank down into a cross-legged position, sitting on a blanket across from the two Whites. “Go home, Measure,” said the Prophet.
“Not without Alvin.”
“Yes without Alvin,” said the Prophet. “If he stays in this part of the country, he will die.”
“What are you talking about?”
“What I saw with my eyes!” said the Prophet. “The things to come. If Alvin goes home now, he’ll be dead in three days. But you go, Measure. Today in the afternoon is a very perfect time for you to go.”
“What are you going to do with Alvin? You think he’s going to be any safer with you?”
“Not with me,” said the Prophet. “With my brother.”
“This is all a stupid idea!” shouted Ta-Kumsaw.
“My brother is going to make many visits. With the French at Detroit, with the Irrakwa, the Appalachee nation, with the Chok-Taw and the Cree-Ek, every kind of Red man, every kind of White who might stop a very bad war from happening.”
“If I talk to Reds, Tenskwa-Tawa, I’ll talk to them about coming to fight with me and drive the White men back across the mountains, back into their ships, back into the sea!”
“Talk about whatever you want,” said Tenskwa-Tawa. “But leave this afternoon, and take the White boy who walks like a Red man.”
“No,” said Ta-Kumsaw.
Grief swept across Tenskwa-Tawa’s face, and he moaned sharply. “Then all the land will die, not just a part. If you don’t do what I say today, then White man will kill all the land, from one ocean to the other, from north to south, all the land dead! And Red men will die except a very few who will live on tiny pieces of ugly desert land, like prisons, live there all their lives, because you did not obey what I saw in my vision!”
Red Prophet: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume II Page 19
