Red Prophet: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume II Page 10

  As usual, they thought he was asleep.

  “He seems drunker than he did this morning,” said Thrower.

  “I know he never left the hill,” said Armor. “There’s not a chance he got a drink anywhere.”

  “I’ve heard it said that when a drunk becomes sober,” said Thrower, “at first he acts more drunk than when he has alcohol in him.”

  “I hope that’s all it is,” said Armor.

  “I daresay he was somewhat disappointed at the baptism today,” said Thrower. “Of course it’s impossible to understand what a savage is feeling, but—”

  “I wouldn’t call him a savage, Reverend Thrower,” said Eleanor. “I think in his own way he’s civilized.”

  “You might as well call a badger civilized, then,” said Thrower. “In his own way, anyway.”

  “I mean to say,” Eleanor said, her voice even quieter and meeker-sounding, but therefore carrying all the more weight, “that I saw him reading.”

  “Turning pages you mean,” said Thrower. “He couldn’t be reading.”

  “No. He read, and his lips formed the words,” she said. “The signs on the wall in the front room, where we serve customers. He read the words.”

  “It’s possible, you know,” said Armor. “I know for a fact that the Irrakwa read just as good as any White men. I been there to do business often enough, and you can bet you have to read the fine print on the contracts they write up. Red men can learn to read, and that’s a fact.”

  “But this one, this drunk—”

  “Who knows what he can become, when the likker ain’t in him?” said Eleanor.

  Then they went away to the other room, and left the house for a while, walking Thrower home to the cabin he was staying in before the rain got so bad he had to stay the night.

  Alone in the house, Lolla-Wossiky tried to make sense of things. Baptism alone hadn’t wakened him from his dream. Nor had White man’s clothes. Maybe going without likker for a night would do it, like Eleanor suggested, though it made him crazy with pain so he couldn’t sleep.

  Whatever happened, though, he knew that the dream beast was waiting somewhere near here. The white light was suffused all around him now; this was the waking place for Lolla-Wossiky. Maybe if he stayed away from the church hill today, maybe if he wandered in the woods around Vigor Church, then the dream beast could find him.

  One thing was sure. He wasn’t going to spend another night without whisky. Not when he had a keg out in a crotch of a tree that could take away the black noise and let him sleep.

  Lolla-Wossiky walked everywhere in the woods. He saw many animals, but they all ran from him; he was so drunk or so bound up in the black noise that he never was part of the land, and they ran from him just as if he were White.

  Discouraged, he began to drink more than four swallows, even though he knew he would run out of whisky too fast. He walked less and less in the forest, more and more along the White man’s paths and roads, showing up at farmhouses in the middle of the day. The women sometimes screamed and ran away, carrying a baby and leading children off into the woods. Other women pointed guns at him and made him leave. Some of them fed him and talked about Jesus Christ. Finally Armor-of-God told him not to visit the farms when the men were away, working on the church.

  So there was nothing left for Lolla-Wossiky to do. He knew he was close to the dream beast, but he couldn’t find it. He couldn’t walk in the forest because the animals ran from him and he stumbled and fell all the time, more and more, until he feared he might break a bone and die of starvation because he couldn’t even call small animals to feed him. He couldn’t visit the farms because the men were angry. So he lay on the commons, sleeping from drunkenness or trying to endure the pain of the black noise, one or the other.

  Sometimes he worked up the energy to go up the hill and see the men working on the church. Whenever he got there, some man would call out, “Here comes the Red Christian!” and Loila-Wossiky knew that there was malice and ridicule in the voices that said it and the voices that laughed.

  He was not at the church the day the roof-beam fell. He was sleeping on the grass of the commons, near the porch of Armor’s house, when he heard the crash. It startled him awake, and the black noise came back harsher than ever, even though he had drunk eight swallows that morning and ought to be drunk till noon. He lay there holding his head until men started coming down from the hill, cursing and muttering about the strange thing that happened.

  “What happened?” Lolla-Wossiky asked. He had to know, because whatever it was, it had made the black noise worse than it had been in years. “Was a man killed?” He knew that a gunshot made the black noise in the first place. “Did White Murderer Harrison shoot somebody?”

  At first they paid him no attention, because they thought he was drunk, of course. But finally someone told him what happened.

  They had been laying the first ridgebeam in place, high on top of the building, when the central ridgepole shivered and tossed the ridgebeam up in the air. “Came down flat, just like God’s own foot stepping on the earth, and wouldn’t you know, there was that little Alvin Junior, Al Miller’s boy, right under the beam. Well, we thought he was dead. The boy just stood there, the beam landed smack—you must have heard the noise, that’s why it sounded like a gun to you—but you won’t believe this. That ridgebeam split right in half, right in the very place where Alvin was standing, split right in two and landed on this side and that side of him, didn’t touch a hair on his head.”

  “Something strange about that boy,” said a man.

  “He’s got a guardian angel, that’s what he’s got,” said another.

  Alvin Junior. The boy he couldn’t see with his eye open.

  There was no one at the church when Lolla-Wossiky got there. The ridgebeam was also gone, everything swept out, no sign of the accident. But Lolla-Wossiky was not looking with his eye. He could feel it, almost as soon as he got within sight of the church. A whirlpool, not fast at the edges, but stronger and stronger the closer he came. A whirlwind of light, and the closer he got, the weaker the black noise became. Until he stood on the church floor, in the spot that he knew was where the boy was standing. How did he know? The black noise was quieter. Not gone, the pain not healed, but Lolla-Wossiky could feel the green land again, just a little, not like it used to be, but he could feel the small life under the floor, a squirrel in the meadow not far off, things he hadn’t felt, drunk or sober, in all the years since the gun blew the black noise into his head.

  Lolla-Wossiky turned around and around, seeing nothing but the walls of the church. Until he closed his eye. Then he saw the whirlwind, yes, white light spinning and spinning around him, and the black noise retreating. He was in the end of his own dream now, and he could see with his eye closed, see clearly. There was a shining path ahead of him, a road as bright as the noonday sky, dazzling like meadow snow on a clear day. He knew already, without opening his eye to see, where the path would lead. Up the hill, down the other side, up a higher hill, to a house not far from a stream, a house where lived a White boy who was only visible to Lolla-Wossiky with his eye closed.

  His silent step had returned to him, now that the black noise had backed off a bit. He walked around the house, around and around. No one heard him. Inside laughter, shouting, screaming. Happy children, quarreling children. Stern voices of parents. Except for the language, it could be his village. His own sisters and brothers in the happy days before White Murderer Harrison took his father’s life.

  The White father, Alvin Miller, came out to the privy. Not long after, the boy himself came, running, as if he was afraid. He shouted at the privy door. With his eye open, Lolla-Wossiky only knew that someone was standing there, shouting. With his eye closed, he saw the boy clearly, radiant, and heard his voice like birdsong across a river, all music, even though what he said was silly, foolish, like a child.

  “If you don’t come out I’ll do it right in front of the door so you’ll step in it when yo
u come out!”

  Then silence, as the boy grew more worried, hitting himself on the top of his head with his own fist, as if to say, Stupid, stupid, stupid. Something changed in Al Junior’s expression; Lolla-Wossiky opened his eye to see that the father had come out, was saying something.

  The boy answered him, ashamed. The father corrected him. Lolla-Wossiky closed his eye.

  “Yes sir,” said the boy.

  Again the father must be speaking, but with his eye closed Lolla-Wossiky did not hear the father.

  “Sorry, Papa.”

  Then the father must have walked away, because little Alvin went into the privy. Muttering, so soft no one could hear. But Lolla-Wossiky heard. “Well, if you’d just build another outhouse I’d be fine.”

  Lolla-Wossiky laughed. Foolish boy, foolish father, like all boys, like all fathers.

  The boy finished and went into the house.

  Here I am, said Lolla-Wossiky silently. I followed the shining path, I came to this place, I saw silly White family things; now where is my dream beast?

  And again he saw the white light gather, inside the house, following the boy up the stairs. For Lolla-Wossiky there were no walls. He saw the boy being very careful, as if he were watching for an enemy, for some attack. When he reached the bedroom he ducked inside, closed his door quickly behind him. Lolla-Wossiky saw him so clearly that he thought he could almost hear his thoughts; and then, because he thought it, and because this was near the end of his dream, almost to the time of waking, he did hear the boy’s thoughts, or at least felt his feelings. It was his sisters he was afraid of. A silly quarrel, begun with teasing, but malicious now—he was afraid of their vengeance.

  It came as he stripped off his clothes and pulled his nightshirt over his head. Stinging! Insects, thought the boy. Spiders, scorpions, tiny snakes! He pulled the nightshirt off, slapped himself, cried out from the pain, the surprise, the fear.

  But Lolla-Wossiky could feel the land well enough to know there were no insects. Not on his body, not in the shirt. Though there were many living creatures there. Small life, little animals. Roaches, hundreds of them living in the walls and floors.

  Not in all the walls and floors, though. Just in Alvin Junior’s room. All gathered to his room.

  Was it enmity? Roaches were too small for hate. They knew only three feelings, those little creatures. Fear, hunger, and the third sense, the land sense. The trust in how things ought to be. Did the boy feed them? No. They came to him for the other thing. Lolla-Wossiky could hardly believe it, but he felt it in the roaches and couldn’t doubt. The boy had called them somehow. The boy had the land sense, at least enough to call these small creatures.

  Call them why? Who wanted roaches? But he was only a boy. There didn’t have to be sense in it. Just the discovery that the little life would come when you called it. Red boys learned this, but always with their father or a brother, always out on the first hunt. Kneel and speak silently to the life you need to take, and ask it if this is a good time, and if it is willing to die to make your life strong. Is it your time to die? asks the Red boy. And if the life consents, it will come.

  This is what the boy did. Except it wasn’t so simple. He didn’t call the roaches to die for his need, because he had no need. No, he called them and kept them safe. He protected them. It was like a treaty. There were certain places the roaches didn’t go. Into Alvin’s bed. Into his little brother Calvin’s cradle. Into Alvin’s clothing, folded on the stool. And in return Alvin never killed them. They were safe in his room. It was a sanctuary, a reserve. A very silly thing, a child playing with things he didn’t understand.

  But the marvel of it was—this was a White boy, doing something beyond even a Red man’s reach. When did the Red man ever say to the bear, come and live with me and I will keep you safe? When did the bear ever believe such a thing? No wonder the light was centered on this boy. This wasn’t the foolish knack of the White man Hooch, or even the strong living hexes of the woman Eleanor. This wasn’t the Red man’s power to fit himself into the pattern of the land. No, Alvin didn’t fit himself into anything. The land fit itself to him. If he wanted the roaches to live a certain way, to make a bargain, then that was how the land ordered itself. In this small place, for this time, with these tiny lives, Alvin Junior had commanded and the land obeyed.

  Did the boy understand how miraculous this was?

  No, no, he had no idea. How could he know? What White man could even understand it?

  And now, because he didn’t understand, Alvin Junior was destroying the delicate thing that he had done. The insects that had bitten him were metal pins that his sisters had poked into his nightshirt. Now he could hear them laughing behind their wall. Because he had been very frightened, now he was very angry. Get even, get back at them; Lolla-Wossiky could feel his childish rage, He only did one little thing to tease them, and they pay him back by scaring him, poking him a hundred times and making him bleed. Get even, give them such a scare—

  Alvin Junior sat on the edge of the bed, angrily taking the pins out of his nightshirt, saving them—White men were so careful with all their useless metal tools, even such tiny ones as those. As he sat there he saw the roaches scurrying along the wails, running in and out of cracks in the floor, and he saw his vengeance.

  Lolla-Wossiky felt him making the plan in his mind. Then Alvin knelt on the floor and explained it softly to the roaches. Because he was a child, and a White boy with no one to teach him, Alvin thought he had to say the words aloud, that the roaches somehow understood his language. But no—it was the order of things, the way he arranged the world in his mind.

  And in his mind he lied to them. Hunger, he told them. And in the other room, food. He showed them food if they went under the wall into the sisters’ room and climbed on the beds and the bodies there. Food if they hurried, food for all of them. It was a lie, and Lolla-Wossiky wanted to shout at him not to do this.

  If a Red man knelt and called to prey that he didn’t need, the prey would know his lie and wouldn’t come. The lie itself would cut the Red man from the land, make him walk alone awhile. But this White boy could lie with such force and strength that the tiny minds of the roaches believed him. They scurried, a hundred, a thousand of them under the walls, into the other room.

  Alvin Junior heard something, and he was delighted. But Lolla-Wossiky was angry. He opened his eye, so he didn’t have to see Alvin Junior’s glee at his revenge. Instead now he heard the sisters screaming as the roaches climbed all over them. And then the parents and brothers rushing into their room. And the stomping. The stomping, the smashing, the murders of the roaches. Lolla-Wossiky closed his eye and felt the deaths, each one a pinprick. It had been so long with the black noise masking all the deaths behind one vast memory of murder that Lolla-Wossiky had forgotten what the small pains felt like.

  Like the death of bees.

  Roaches, useless animals, eating up garbage, making filthy rustling noises in their dens, loathsome when they crawled on the skin; but part of the land, part of the life, part of the green silence, and their death was an evil noise, their useless murder because they believed in a lie.

  This is why I came, Lolla-Wossiky realized. The land brought me here, knowing that this boy had such power, knowing that there was no one to teach him how to use it, no one to teach him to wait to feel the need of the land before changing it. No one to teach him how to be Red instead of White.

  I didn’t come for my own dream beast, but to be the dream beast for this boy.

  The noise settled. The sisters, the brothers, the parents went back to sleep. Lolla-Wossiky pressed his fingers into the cracks between the logs, climbed carefully, his eye closed so that the land would guide him instead of trusting in himself. The boy’s shutters were open, and Lolla-Wossiky thrust his elbows over the sill and hung there, looking in.

  First with his eye open. He saw a bed, a stool with clothes neatly folded, and at the foot of the bed, a cradle. The window opened onto the space b
etween the bed and the cradle. In the bed, a shape, boy-sized, unidentifiable.

  Lolla-Wossiky closed his eye again. Alvin lay in the bed. Lolla-Wossiky felt the heat of the boy’s excitement like a fever. He had been so afraid of being caught, so exhilarated at his victory, and now lay trembling, trying to breathe calmly, trying to stifle laughter.

  His eye open again, Lolla-Wossiky scrambled up onto the sill and swung onto the floor. He expected Alvin to notice him, to cry out; but the shape of the boy lay still in the bed; there was no sound.

  The boy couldn’t see him when his eye was open, any more than he could see the boy. This was the end of the dream, after all, and Lolla-Wossiky was dream beast for the boy. It was Lolla-Wossiky’s duty to give visions to the boy, not to be seen as himself, a whisky-Red with one eye missing.

  What vision will I show him?

  Lolla-Wossiky reached inside his White man’s trousers to where he still wore his loincloth, and pulled his knife from its sheath. He held both his hands high, the one holding the knife. Then he closed his eye.

  The boy still didn’t see him; his eyes were closed. So Lolla-Wossiky gathered the white light he could feel around him, gathered it close to himself, so that he could feel himself shining brighter and brighter. The light came from his skin, so he tore open the breast of the White man’s shirt he wore, then raised his hands again. Now, even through closed eyelids, the boy could see the brightness, and he opened his eyes.

  Lolla-Wossiky felt the boy’s terror at the sight of the apparition he had become: a bright and shining Red man, one-eyed, with a sharp knife in his hand. But it wasn’t fear Lolla-Wossiky wanted. No one should fear his own dream beast. So he sent the light outward to the boy, to include him, and with the light he sent calm, calm, don’t be scared.

  The boy relaxed a little, but still wriggled up in his bed, so he was sitting up, leaning against the wall.

  It was time to begin to wake the boy from his life of sleep. How did Lolla-Wossiky know what to do? No man, Red or White, had ever been another man’s dream beast. Yet he knew without thinking what he ought to do. What the boy needed to see and feel. Whatever came to Lolla-Wossiky’s mind that felt right to do, that was what he did.