Red Prophet: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume II Page 11

  Lolla-Wossiky took his shining knife and brought the blade against his other palm—and cut. Sharp, hard, deep, so blood leapt from the wound, rushed down his forearm to gather and pool in his sleeve. Quickly it began to drip on the floor.

  The pain came suddenly, a moment later; Lolla-Wossiky knew at once how to take the pain and make it into a picture and put it into the boy’s mind. The picture of his sisters’ room as a small weak creature saw it. Rushing in, hungering, hungering, looking for the food, certain that the food was there; on the soft body was the promise, climb the body, find the food. But great hands slapped and brushed, and the small creature was thrown onto the floor. The floor shook with giant footfalls, a sudden shadow, the agony of death.

  Again and again, each small life, hungering, trusting, and then betrayed, crushed, battered.

  Many lived, but they cowered, they scurried, they fled. The sisters’ room, the room of death, yes, they fled from there. But better to stay there and die than run into the other room, the room of lies. Not words, there were no words in the small creature’s life, there were no thoughts that could be named as thoughts. But the fear of death in the one place was not as strong as another kind of fear, the fear of a world gone crazy, a place where anything could happen, where nothing could be trusted, where nothing was certain. A terrible place.

  Lolla-Wossiky ended the vision. The boy was pressing his hands against his eyes, sobbing desperately. Lolla-Wossiky had never seen anyone so tortured by remorse; the vision Lolla-Wossiky had given him was stronger than any dream a man could imagine for himself. I am a terrible dream beast, thought Lolla-Wossiky. He will wish I hadn’t wakened him. In dread of his own strength, Lolla-Wossiky opened his eye.

  At once the boy disappeared, and Lolla-Wossiky knew that the boy would think that Lolla-Wossiky had also disappeared. What now? he thought. Am I here to make this boy crazy? To give him a terrible thing, as bad as the black noise was to me?

  He could see from the shaking of the bed, the movement of the bedclothes, that the boy was still crying passionately. Lolla-Wossiky closed his eye, and again sent the light to the boy. Calm, calm.

  The boy’s weeping became a whimper, and he looked again at Lolla-Wossiky, who was still shining with a dazzling light.

  Lolla-Wossiky didn’t know what to do. While he was silent and uncertain, Alvin began to speak, to plead. “I’m sorry, I’ll never do it again, I’ll—”

  Babbling on and on. Lolla-Wossiky pushed more light at him, to help him see better. It came to the boy almost as a question. What will you never do again?

  Alvin couldn’t answer, didn’t know. What was it he actually did? Was it because he sent the roaches to die?

  He looked at the Shining Man and saw an image of a Red kneeling before a deer, calling it to come and die; the deer came, trembling, afraid; the Red loosed his arrow and it stood quivering on the deer’s flank; the deer’s legs wobbled, and it fell. It wasn’t the dying or the killing that was his sin, because dying and killing were a part of life.

  Was it the power he had? The knack he had for making things go just where he wanted, to break just at the right place, or fit together so tight that they joined forever without any gluing or hammering. The knack he had for making things do what he wanted, arrange themselves in the right order. Was it that?

  Again he looked at the Shining Man, and now he saw a vision of himself pressing his hands against a stone, and the stone melted like butter under his hands, came out in just the shape he wanted, smooth and whole, fell from the side of the mountain and rolled away, a perfect ball, a perfect sphere, growing and growing until it was a whole world, shaped just the way his hands had made it, with trees and grass springing up in its face, and animals running and leaping and flying and swimming and crawling and burrowing on and above and beneath the ball of stone that he had made. No, it wasn’t a terrible power, it was a glorious one, if he only knew how to use it.

  If it isn’t the dying and it isn’t the power, what did I do wrong?

  This time the Shining Man didn’t show him anything. This time Alvin didn’t have the answer come to him in a vision. This time he studied it out in his mind. He felt like he couldn’t understand, he was too stupid to understand, and then suddenly he knew.

  It was because he did it for himself. It was because the roaches thought he was doing it for them, and really he was doing it for himself. Hurting the roaches, his sisters, everyone, making everyone suffer and all for what? Because Alvin Miller Junior was angry and wanted to get even—

  Now he looked at the Shining Man and saw a fire leap from his single eye and strike him in the heart. “I’ll never use it for myself again,” murmured Alvin Junior, and when he said the words he felt as though his heart were on fire, it burned so hot inside. And then the Shining Man disappeared again.

  Lolla-Wossiky stood panting, his head spinning. He felt weak, weary. He had no idea what the boy had been thinking. He only knew what visions to send him, and then at the end, no vision at all, just to stand there, that’s all he was to do, stand there and stand there until, suddenly, he sent a strong pulse of fire at the boy and buried it in his heart.

  And now what? Twice now he had closed his eye and appeared to the boy. Was he through? He knew that he was not.

  For the third time Lolla-Wossiky closed his eye. Now he could see that the boy was much brighter than he was; that the light had passed from him into the child. And then he understood—he was the boy’s dream beast, yes, but the boy was also his. Now it was time for him to wake up from his dream life.

  He took three steps and knelt beside the bed, his face only a little way from the boy’s small and frightened face, which now shone so brightly that Lolla-Wossiky could hardly see that it was a child and not a man who looked at him. What do I want from him? Why am I here? What can he give me, this powerful child?

  “Make all things whole,” Lolla-Wossiky whispered. He spoke, not in English, but in Shaw-Nee.

  Did the boy understand? Alvin raised his small hand, reached out gently and touched Lolla-Wossiky’s cheek, under the broken eye. Then he raised his finger until it touched the slack eyelid.

  There was a cracking sound in the air, and a spark of light. The boy gasped and drew back his hand. Lolla-Wossiky didn’t see him, though, because suddenly the boy was invisible. But Lolla-Wossiky had no care for what he saw, for what he felt was the most impossible thing of all:

  Silence. Green silence. The black noise was utterly, completely gone. His land-sense had returned, and the ancient injury was healed.

  Lolla-Wossiky knelt there, gasping for breath, as the land returned to him the way that it had been before. All these years had passed; he had forgotten how strong it was, to see in all directions, hear the breath of every animal, smell the scent of every plant. A man who has been dry and thirsty until he was at the point of death, and suddenly cold water pours down his throat so fast he can’t swallow, can’t breathe; it’s what he longed for, but much too strong, much too sudden, can’t contain it, can’t endure it—

  “It didn’t work,” the boy whispered. “I’m sorry.”

  Lolla-Wossiky opened his good eye, and now for the first time saw the boy as a natural man. Alvin was staring at his bad eye. Lolla-Wossiky wondered why; he reached up, touched his missing eye. The lid still hung over an empty socket. Then he understood. The boy thought that was what he was supposed to heal. No, no, don’t be disappointed, child, you healed me from the deep injury; what do I care about this tiny wound? I never lost my sight; it was my land-sense that was gone, and you gave it back to me.

  He meant to shout all this to the boy, cry out and sing for the joy of it. But it was all too strong for him. The words never came to his lips. He couldn’t even send him visions now because both of them were now awake. The dream was over. They had each been dream beast for the other.

  Lolla-Wossiky seized the boy with both hands, pulled him close, kissed him on the forehead, hard and strong, like a father to a son, like brothers, lik
e true friends the day before they die. Then he ran to the window, swung out and dropped to the ground. The earth yielded to his feet as it did to other Red men, as it hadn’t done for him in so many years; the grass rose up stronger where he stepped; the bushes parted for him, the leaves softened and yielded as he ran among the trees; and now he did cry out, shouted, sang, caring not at all who heard him. Animals didn’t run from him, as they used to; now they came to hear his song; songbirds awoke to sing with him; a deer leapt from the wood and ran beside him through a meadow, and he rested his hand upon her flank.

  He ran until he had no breath, and in all that time he met no enemy, he felt no pain; he was whole again, in every way that mattered. He stood on the bank of the Wobbish River, across from the mouth of the Tippy-Canoe, panting, laughing, gasping for air.

  Only then did he realize that his hand was still dripping blood from where he had cut himself to give pain to the White boy. His pants and shirt were thick with it. White man’s clothing! I never needed it. He stripped it off and flung it into the river.

  A funny thing happened. The clothing didn’t move. It sat on the surface of the water, not sinking, not sliding leftward with the current.

  How could this be? Wasn’t the dream over? Wasn’t he fully awake yet?

  Lolla-Wossiky closed his eye.

  Immediately he saw a terrible thing and shouted in fear. As soon as he closed his eye, he saw the black noise again, a great sheet of it, hard and frozen. It was the river. It was the water. It was made of death.

  He opened his eye, and it was water again, but still his clothing didn’t move.

  He closed his eye, and saw that where the clothing was, light sparkled on the surface of the black. It pooled, it shone, it dazzled. It was his own blood shining.

  Now he could see that the black noise wasn’t a thing. It was nothing. Emptiness. The place where the land ended, and emptiness began; it was the edge of the world. But where his own blood sparkled, it was like a bridge across nothingness. Lolla-Wossiky knelt, his eye still closed, and reached out with his cut and still-bleeding hand, touched the water.

  It was solid, warm and solid. He smeared his blood across the surface, and it made a platform. He crawled out onto the platform. It was smooth and hard as ice, only warm, welcoming.

  He opened his eye. It was a river again, except that under him it was solid. Wherever his blood had touched, the water was hard and smooth.

  He crawled out to where the clothing was, slid it ahead of him. All the way out to the middle of the river he crawled, and beyond the middle, making a thin, glowing bridge of blood to the other side.

  What he was doing was impossible. The boy had done much more than heal him. He had changed the order of things. It was frightening and wonderful. Lolla-Wossiky looked down into the water between his hands. His own one-eyed reflection looked back up at him. Then he closed his eye, and a whole new vision leapt to view.

  He saw himself standing in a clearing, speaking to a hundred Red men, a thousand, from every tribe. He saw them build a city of lodges, a thousand, five thousand, ten thousand Reds, all of them strong and whole, free of the White man’s likker, the White man’s hate. In his vision they called him the Prophet, but he insisted that he was not that at all. He was only the door, the open door. Step through, he said, and be strong, one people, one land.

  The door. Tenskwa-Tawa.

  In his vision, his mother’s face appeared, and she said that word to him. Tenskwa-Tawa. It is your name now, for the dreamer is awake.

  And more, he saw much more that night, staring downward into the solid water of the Wobbish River, he saw so much that he could never tell it all; in that hour on the water he saw the whole history of the land, the life of every man and woman, White or Red or Black, who ever set foot on it. He saw the beginning and he saw the end. Great wars and petty cruelties, all the murderings of men, all the sins; but also all the goodness, all the beauty.

  And above all, a vision of the Crystal City. The city made of water as solid and as clear as glass, water that would never melt, formed into crystal towers so high that they should have cast shadows seven miles across the land. But because they were so pure and clear they cast no shadow at all, the sunlight passed unblocked through every inch and yard and mile of it. Wherever a man or woman stood, they could look deep into the crystal and see all the visions that Lolla-Wossiky saw now. Perfect understanding, that was what they had, seeing with eyes of pure sunlight and speaking with the voice of lightning.

  Lolla-Wossiky, who from now on would be named Tenskwa-Tawa, did not know if he would build the Crystal City, or live in it, or even see it before he died. It was enough to do the first things that he saw in the solid water of the Wobbish River. He looked and looked until his mind couldn’t see more. Then he crawled across to the far shore, climbed onto the bank, and walked until he came to the meadow he had seen in the vision.

  This was where he would call the Reds together, teach them what he saw in his vision, and help them to be, not the strongest, but strong; not the largest, but large; not the freest, but free.

  A certain keg in the crotch of a certain tree. All summer it was hidden from view. But the rain still found it, and the heat of high summer, and the insects, and the teeth of salt-hungry squirrels. Wetting, drying, heating, cooling; no keg can last forever in such conditions. It split, just a little, but enough; the liquid inside seeped outcrop by drop; in a few hours the keg was empty.

  It didn’t matter. No one ever looked for it. No one ever missed it. No one mourned when it broke apart from ice in the winter, the fragments tumbling down the tree into the snow.

  5

  A Sign

  When word started spreading about a one-eyed Red man who was called the Prophet, Governor Bill Harrison laughed and said, “Why, that ain’t nobody but my old friend Lolla-Wossiky. When he runs out of that likker keg he stole from me, he’ll quit seeing visions.”

  After a little while, though, Governor Harrison took note of how much store was set by the Prophet’s words, and how the Reds spoke his name as reverent as a true Christian says the name of Jesus, and it got him somewhat alarmed. So he called together all the Reds around Carthage City—it was nigh onto a whisky day, so there wasn’t no shortage of audience for him—and he gave them a speech. And in that speech he said one particular thing:

  “If old Lolla-Wossiky is really a Prophet, then he ought to do us a miracle, to show he’s got more to him than just talk. You ought to make him cut off a hand or a foot and then put it back—that’d prove he was a prophet now, wouldn’t it? Or better still, make him put out an eye and then heal it back. What’s that you say? You mean he already had his eye put out? Well then he’s ripe for a miracle, wouldn’t you say? I say that as long as he’s only got one eye, he ain’t no prophet!”

  Word of that came to the Prophet while he was teaching in a meadow that sloped gently down to the banks of the Tippy-Canoe, not a mile above where it poured into the waters of the Wobbish. It was some whisky-Reds brought that challenge, and they wasn’t above mocking the Prophet and saying, “We came to see you make your eye whole.”

  The Prophet looked at them with his one good eye, and he said, “With this eye I see two Red men, weak and sick, slaves of likker, the kind of men who would mock me with the words of the man who killed my father.” Then he closed his good eye, and he said, “With this eye I see two children of the land, whole and strong and beautiful, who love wives and children, and do good to all creatures.” Then he opened his eye again and said, “Which eye is sick, and which eye sees true?” And they said to him, “Tenskwa-Tawa, you are a true prophet, and both your eyes are whole.”

  “Go tell White Murderer Harrison that I have performed the sign he asked for. And tell him another sign that he didn’t ask for. Tell him that one day a fire will start in his own house. No man’s hand will set this fire. Only rain will put out this fire, and before the fire dies, it will cut off something he loves more than a hand or a foot or an eye, an
d he will not have the power to restore it, either.”

  6

  Powder Keg

  Hooch was astounded. “You mean you don’t want the whole shipment?

  “We ain’t used up what you sold us last time, Hooch,” said the quartermaster. “Four barrels, that’s all we want. More than we need, to tell the truth.”

  “I come down the river from Dekane, loaded up with likker, not stopping to sell any at the towns along the way, I make that sacrifice and you tell me—”

  “Now, Hooch, I reckon we all know what kind of sacrifice that was.” The quartermaster smirked a little. “I think you’ll still recover your costs, pretty much, and if you don’t, well, it just means you ain’t been careful with the profits you’ve made off us afore.”

  “Who else is selling to you?”

  “Nobody,” said the quartermaster.

  “I been coming to Carthage City for nigh on seven years now, and the last four years I’ve had a monopoly—”

  “And if you’ll pay heed, you’ll remember that in the old days it used to be Reds what bought most of your likker.”

  Hooch looked around, walked away from the quartermaster, stood on the moist grassy ground of the riverbank, His flatboat rocked lazily on the water. There wasn’t a Red to be seen, not a one, and that was a fact. But it wasn’t no conspiracy, Hooch knew that. Reds had been slacking off the last few times he came. Always there used to be a few drunks, though.

  He turned and shouted at the quartermaster. “You telling me there ain’t no whisky-Reds left!”

  “Sure there’s whisky-Reds. But we ain’t run out of whisky yet. So they’re all off somewhere lying around being drunk.”

  Hooch cussed a little. “I’m going to see the Gov about this.”