He turned his back, walked to the Reds waiting for him on the other shore, and helped an injured child walk up the far slope into the trees. Behind him, the water of the Tippy-Canoe began to flow again.
Miller walked down the slope to where his son stood on the bank of the creek. “Measure,” he said, “Measure, Measure.”
Measure turned and reached out his hands to embrace his father. “Alvin’s alive, Father, far to the east of us. He’s with Ta-Kumsaw, and he—”
But Miller hushed him, held his son’s hands out. They dripped blood, just like Miller’s own. Miller shook his head. “It’s my fault,” he said. “All my fault.”
“Not all, Father,” said Measure. “There’s fault enough for everyone to share.”
“But not for you, Son. That’s my shame on your hands.”
“Well, then, maybe you’ll feel it less, for having two of us to carry it.” Measure reached out and took his father by the shoulders, held him close. “We’ve seen the worst that men can do, Pa, and been the worst that men can be. But that don’t mean that someday we won’t see the best, too. And if we can never be perfect after this, well, we can still be pretty good, can’t we?”
Maybe, thought Miller. But he doubted it. Or maybe he just doubted that he’d ever believe it, even if it were true. He’d never look into his own heart again and like what he found there.
They waited there on the riverbank for Miller’s other sons. They came with bloody hands—David, Calm, Wastenot, Wantnot. David held his hands in front of him and wept. “I wish that I had died with Vigor in the Hatrack River!”
“No you don’t,” said Calm.
“I’d be dead, but I’d be clean.”
The twins said nothing, but held each other’s cold and slimy hands.
“We need to go home,” said Measure.
“No,” said Miller.
“They’ll be worried,” said Measure. “Ma, the girls, Cally.”
Miller remembered his parting from Faith. “She said that if I—if this—”
“I know how Ma talks, but I also know your children need their pa, and she won’t keep you out.”
“I’ll have to tell her. What we did.”
“Yes, and the girls and Cally, too. We each have to tell them, and Calm and David have their wives to tell. Best do it now, and clean our hands, and get on with our lives. All of us at once, all of us together. And I have a story to tell you, too, about me and Alvin. When we’ve done with this tale, I’ll tell mine, is that good? Will you stay for that?”
Armor met them at the Wobbish. The ferry was already on the other side, still unloading, and other men had took all the boats they used for crossing last night. So they stood and waited.
Measure stripped off his bloody coat and trousers, but Armor wouldn’t put them on. Armor didn’t make no accusations, but none of the others would look at their brother-in-law. Measure took him aside and told him about the curse while the ferry was slowly drawn back across the river. Armor listened, then walked to Miller, whose back was to him, looking at the far shore.
“Father,” said Armor-of-God.
“You were right, Armor,” said Miller, still not looking at him. He held up his hands. “Here it is, the proof that you were right.”
“Measure tells me that I have to hear the story once from all of you,” said Armor, turning to include them all in his speech. “But then you’ll never hear another word of it from me. I’m still your son and brother, if you’ll have me; my wife is your daughter and your sister, and you’re the only kin I have out here.”
“To your shame,” whispered David.
“Don’t punish me because my hands are clean,” said Armor.
Calm held out a bloody hand. Armor took it without hesitation, shook firmly, then let go.
“Look at that,” said Calm. “You touch us, it comes off on you.”
In answer, Armor held out that same stained hand to Miller. After a while, Miller took it. The handshake lasted till the ferry came. Then they headed on home.
15
Two-Soul Man
Taleswapper woke at dawn, instantly aware that something was wrong. It was Ta-Kumsaw, sitting on the grass, his face toward the west, rocking back and forth and breathing heavily, as if he was enduring a dull and heavy ache. Was he ill?
No. Alvin had failed. The slaughter had begun. Ta-Kumsaw’s pain was not from his own body. It was Ta-Kumsaw’s people dying, somewhere afar off, and what he felt was not grief or pity, it was the pain of their deaths. Even for a Red man as gifted as Ta-Kumsaw, to feel death from so far away meant that many, many souls had gone on to their reward.
As he had so many times before, Taleswapper addressed a few silent words to God, which always came down to this question: Why do you put us to so much trouble, when it all comes to nought in the end? Taleswapper couldn’t bear the futility of it. Ta-Kumsaw and Alvin racing across country in their way, Taleswapper making the best time a White man can make, and Alvin going onto Eight-Face Mound, and what does it come to? Does it save a life? So many are dying now that Ta-Kumsaw can feel it from clear away by the Wobbish.
And, as usual, God had nothing much to say to Taleswapper when his questioning was done.
Taleswapper had no wish to interrupt Ta-Kumsaw. Or rather he guessed that Ta-Kumsaw had no particular wish to get into conversation with a White man at this particular moment. Yet he felt a vision growing within him. Not a vision such as prophets were rumored to see, not a vision of inward eyes. To Taleswapper visions came as words, and he did not know what the vision was until his own words told him. Even then, he knew that he was not a prophet; his visions were never such as would change the world, only the sort of thing that records it, that understands the world. Now, however, he took no thought of whether his visions were worthy or not. It came, and he must record it. Yet because the writing of words had been taken from him in this place, he could not write it down. What was there, then, but to speak the words aloud?
So Taleswapper spoke, forming the words into couplets as he said them because that was how visions ought to be expressed, in poetry. It was a confusing tale at first, and Taleswapper could not decide whether it was God or Satan whose terrible light blinded him as the words tumbled forth. He only knew that whichever one it was, whichever one had brought such slaughter to the world, he richly deserved Taleswapper’s anger, and so he wasn’t bashful about lashing him with language.
It all came down to these words rushing forth in a stream so intense that Taleswapper hardly breathed, certainly made no sensible break in the rhythms of his speech, his voice growing louder and louder as the lines were wrung from him and dashed out against the harsh wall of air around him, as if he dared God to hear him and resent his resentment:
When I had my defiance given
The sun stood trembling in heaven
The moon that glowed remote below
Became leprous and white as snow
And every soul of men on the earth
Felt affliction and sorrow and sickness and dearth
God flamed in my path and the Sun was hot
With the bows of my mind and the arrows of thought
My bowstring fierce with ardor breathes
My arrows glow in their golden sheaves
My brothers and father march before
The heavens drop with human gore—
“Stop!”
It was Ta-Kumsaw. Taleswapper waited with his mouth open, more words, more anguish waiting to pour from him. But Ta-Kumsaw was not to be disobeyed.
“It’s finished,” said Ta-Kumsaw.
“All dead?” whispered Taleswapper.
“I can’t feel life from here,” said Ta-Kumsaw. “I can feel death—the world is torn like an old cloth, it can never be mended.” Despair gave way immediately to cold hate. “But it can be cleaned.”
“If I could have prevented it, Ta-Kumsaw—”
“Yes, you’re a good man, Taleswapper. There are others, too, among your kind. Armor-o
f-God Weaver is such a man. And if all White men came like you, to learn this land, then there’d be no war between us.”
“There is no war between you and me, Ta-Kumsaw.”
“Can you change the color of your skin? Can I change mine?”
“It isn’t our skin, but our hearts—”
“When we stand with all the Red men on one side of the field, and all the White men on the other side of the field, where will you stand?”
“In the middle, pleading with both sides to—”
“You will stand with your people, and I will stand with mine.”
How could Taleswapper argue with him? Perhaps he would have the courage to refuse such a choice. Perhaps not. “Pray God it never comes to such a pass.”
“It already has, Taleswapper.” Ta-Kumsaw nodded. “From this day’s work, I will have no trouble gathering my army of Red men at last.”
The words leapt from Taleswapper before he could stop them: “Then it’s a terrible work you’ve chosen, if the death of so many good folk helps it along!”
Ta-Kumsaw answered with a roar, springing on Taleswapper all at once, knocking him back, flat on the grass of the meadow. Ta-Kumsaw’s right hand clutched Taleswapper’s hair; his left pressed against Taleswapper’s throat. “All White men will die, all who don’t escape across the sea!”
Yet it was not murder he intended. Even in his rage, Ta-Kumsaw did not press so hard as to strangle Taleswapper. After a moment the Red man pushed off and rolled away, burying his face in the grass, his arms and legs spread out to touch the earth with as much of his body as he could.
“I’m sorry,” Taleswapper whispered. “I was wrong to say that.”
“Lolla-Wossiky!” cried Ta-Kumsaw. “I did not want to be right, my brother!”
“Is he alive?” asked Taleswapper.
“I don’t know,” said Ta-Kumsaw. He turned his head to press his cheek against the grass; his eyes, though, bored at Taleswapper as if to kill him with a look. “Taleswapper, the words you were saying. What did they mean? What did you see?”
“I saw nothing,” said Taleswapper. And then, though he only learned the truth as the words came out, he said, “It was Alvin’s vision I was speaking. It’s what he saw. My brothers and father march before. The heavens drop with human gore. His vision, my poem.”
“And where is the boy?” asked Ta-Kumsaw. “All night on that Mound, and where is he now?” Ta-Kumsaw jumped to his feet, orienting himself toward Eight-Face Mound, toward the very center of it. “No one stays there through the whole night, and now the sun is rising and he hasn’t come.” Ta-Kumsaw abruptly turned to face Taleswapper. “He can’t come down.”
“What do you mean?”
“He needs me,” said Ta-Kumsaw. “I can feel it. A terrible wound is in him. All his strength is bleeding into the earth.”
“What’s on that hill! What wounded him?”
“Who knows what a White boy finds inside?” said Ta-Kumsaw. Then he turned to face the Mound again, as if he had felt a new summoning. “Yes,” he said, then walked quickly toward the Mound.
Taleswapper followed, saying nothing about the incongruity—Ta-Kumsaw vowing to make war against Whites until all were dead or gone from this land, and yet hurrying back to Eight-Face Mound to save a White boy.
They stood together at the place where Alvin climbed.
“Can you see the place?” asked Taleswapper.
“There is no path,” said Ta-Kumsaw.
“But you saw it yesterday,” said Taleswapper.
“Yesterday there was a path.”
“Then some other way,” said Taleswapper. “Your own way onto the Mound.”
“Another way would not take me to the same place.”
“Come now, Ta-Kumsaw, the Mound is big, but not so big you can’t find someone up there in an hour of looking.”
Ta-Kumsaw gazed disdainfully at Taleswapper.
Abashed, Taleswapper spoke less confidently. “So you have to take the same path to reach the same place?”
“How do I know?” asked Ta-Kumsaw. “I never heard of one going up the Mound, and another following by the same path.”
“Don’t you ever go here in twos or threes?”
“This is the place where the land speaks to all creatures who live here. The speech of the land is grass and trees; the adornment is beasts and birds.”
Taleswapper noted that when he wished to, Ta-Kumsaw could speak the English language like any White man. No: like a well-educated White man. Adornment. Where in the Hio country could he learn a word like that? “So we can’t get in?”
Ta-Kumsaw’s face showed no expression.
“Well, I say we go up anyway. We know the road he took—let’s take it, whether we can see it or not.”
Ta-Kumsaw said nothing.
“Are you just going to stand here, then, and let him die up there?”
In answer, Ta-Kumsaw took a single step that brought him face to face—no, breast to breast—with Taleswapper. Ta-Kumsaw gripped his hand, threw his other arm around Taleswapper, held him close. Their legs were tangled; Taleswapper for a moment imagined how they must look, if there had been anyone to see them—whether someone would know which leg belonged to which man, they were so close together. He felt the Red man’s heart beating, its rhythm more commanding within Taleswapper’s body than the unsensed beat of his own hot pulse. “We are not two men,” whispered Ta-Kumsaw. “Not Red and White men here, with blood between us. We are one man with two souls, a Red soul and a White soul, one man.”
“All right,” said Taleswapper. “Let it be as you say.”
Still holding Taleswapper tightly, Ta-Kumsaw turned within the embrace; their heads pressed against each other, their ears so close-joined Taleswapper could hear nothing but Ta-Kumsaw’s pulse like the pounding of ocean waves inside his ear. But now, their bodies so tightly joined that they seemed to have a single heartbeat, Taleswapper could see a clear path leading up the face of the Mound.
“Do you—” began Ta-Kumsaw.
“I see it,” said Taleswapper.
“Stay this close to me,” said Ta-Kumsaw. “Now we are like Alvin—a Red soul and a White soul in a single body.”
It was awkward, even ridiculous, to attempt to climb the Mound this way. Yet when their movement up the path jostled them apart, even the tiniest fraction, the path seemed to grow more difficult, hidden behind an errant growth of some vine, some bush, some dangling limb. So Taleswapper clung to Ta-Kumsaw as tightly as the Red man clung to him, and together they made their difficult way up the hill.
At the top Taleswapper was astonished to see that instead of a single Mound, they were at the crest of a ring of eight separate Mounds, with an octagonal valley between them. More important, Ta-Kumsaw was also surprised. He seemed uncertain; his grip on Taleswapper was not as tight; he was no longer in control.
“Where does a White man go in this place?” asked Ta-Kumsaw.
“Down, of course,” said Taleswapper. “When a White man sees a valley, he goes down into it, to find what’s there.”
“Is this how it always is for you?” asked Ta-Kumsaw. “Not knowing where you are, where anything is?”
Only then did Taleswapper realize that Ta-Kumsaw lacked his land-sense here. He was as blind as a White man in this place.
“Let’s go down,” said Taleswapper. “And look—we don’t have to cling so tightly now. It’s a grassy hill, and we don’t need a path.”
They crossed a stream and found him in a meadow, with a mist low on the ground around them. Alvin was not injured, but he lay trembling—as if fevered, though his brow was cool—and his breathing was shallow and quick. As Ta-Kumsaw had said: dying.
Taleswapper touched him, caressed him, then shook him, trying to wake the boy. Alvin showed no sign that he was aware of them. Ta-Kumsaw was no help. He sat beside the boy, holding his hand, whining so softly that Taleswapper doubted he knew he was making a sound.
But Taleswapper was not one to give
in to despair, if in fact that was what Ta-Kumsaw was feeling. He looked around. Nearby was a tree, looking like spring, its leaves so yellow-green that in the light of dawn they might have been made of thin-hammered gold. Hanging from the tree was a light-colored fruit. No, a white fruit. And suddenly, as soon as he saw it, Taleswapper smelled it, pungent and sweet, so that he could almost taste it.
He acted, not thinking what he would do, but doing it. He walked to the tree, plucked the fruit, carried it back to Alvin where he lay on the ground, a child so small. Taleswapper passed it under Alvin’s nose, so the odor of it might be like smelling salts, and revive him. Alvin’s breathing suddenly became great deep gasps. His eyes opened, his lips parted, and from gritted teeth came a whine almost exactly like Ta-Kumsaw’s keening; almost exactly like a kicked dog.
“Take a bite,” said Taleswapper.
Ta-Kumsaw reached out, snatched Alvin’s lower jaw in one hand and upper jaw in the other, his fingers interlaced at Alvin’s teeth, and with great effort prised Alvin’s jaws apart. Taleswapper thrust the fruit between Alvin’s teeth; Ta-Kumsaw forced the jaws closed again. The fruit broke open, spilling clear fluid into Alvin’s mouth and dribbling down his cheek into the grass. Slowly, with great effort, Alvin began to chew. Tears flowed from his eyes. He swallowed, Suddenly he reached out his hands, caught Taleswapper by the neck and Ta-Kumsaw by the hair, and pulled himself up to a sitting position. Clinging to them both, drawing their faces so close to his that they all breathed each other’s breath, Alvin wept until their faces all were wet, and because Ta-Kumsaw and Taleswapper were also weeping, none could be sure whose tears cast a glaze across the skin of each man’s face.
Alvin said little, but enough. He told them all that happened at Tippy-Canoe Creek that day, of blood in the river, a thousand survivors crossing on the water made smooth and hard; blood on White men’s hands, and on one man’s hands in particular.
Red Prophet: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume II Page 27
