Red Prophet: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume II Read online

  Then one word stuck out of all the yammering—a name: Ta-Kumsaw. Al looked at Measure to see if he’d heard, and Measure was looking at him, raising his eyebrows, asking the same thing. They both mouthed the name at the same time. Ta-Kumsaw.

  Did this mean Ta-Kumsaw was in charge of all this? Was he angry at the captors because they failed at the torture, or because they’d captured White boys at all? There wasn’t no explanation from the Reds, that was sure. All that Al could know for sure was what they did. The new-come Reds took all the muskets away from the gun-toters, and then led them off into the woods. Only about a dozen Reds stayed with Al and Measure. Among them was Ta-Kumsaw.

  “They say you have fingers made of steel,” said Ta-Kumsaw.

  Measure looked at Al for him to answer, and Al couldn’t think of anything to say. He was sure reluctant about telling this Red what it was he done. So it was Measure answered him after all, by raising his hands and wiggling his fingers. “Just regular fingers near as I can tell,” he said.

  Ta-Kumsaw reached out and took him by the hand—a strong, hard grip, it must have been, cause Measure tried to pull away and couldn’t. “Iron skin,” said Ta-Kumsaw. “Can’t cut with knife. Can’t burn. Boys made of stone.”

  He pulled Measure up to a standing position and, with his free hand, slapped him hard on the upper part of the arm. “Stone boy, throw me on the dirt!”

  “I can’t wrassle you,” said Measure. “I don’t want a fight with nobody.”

  “Throw me!” commanded Ta-Kumsaw. And he adjusted his grip, put out his foot, and waited until Measure put out his own foot to join him. Facing off, man to man, the way the Reds did in their games. Only this wasn’t no game, not to these boys who’d been looking death in the face and didn’t have no guarantee that it still wasn’t just around the corner.

  Al didn’t know what he ought to do, but he was in a mood for doing something, coming on the heels of all his changing of things. So it was almost without a thought of the consequences that the very moment Measure and Ta-Kumsaw started to push and pull on each other, Al made the dirt come all loose under Ta-Kumsaw’s feet, so his own pushing made him fall ass over elbow in the dirt.

  The other Reds had been kind of laughing and joshing about the wrassle, but when they saw the greatest chief of all the tribes, a man whose name was known from Boston to New Orleans, when they saw him smash on the ground like that they kind of left off laughing. Truth to tell there wasn’t a sound in that clearing. Ta-Kumsaw picked himself up and looked at the dirt under his feet, scraping on it with his foot. It was solid enough now, of course. But he stepped a few feet away, onto the grass, and held out his hand again.

  This time Measure had a little more confidence, and reached out to take his hand—but at the last second, Ta-Kumsaw snatched his own hand away. He stood very still, not looking at Measure or Al or anybody, just looking into space, his face all hard and set. Then he turned to the other Reds and fired off a volley of words, spitting them out with all the Ss and Ks and Xs of Shaw-Nee talk. Al and the other children of Vigor Church used to imitate Red talk by saying things like “boxy talksy skock woxity” and laughing till their sides ached. But it didn’t sound too funny the way Ta-Kumsaw said it, and when he was done Al and Measure found themselves getting pulled along by them thongs again. And when the rags of their underjohns fell down and started tripping them up, Ta-Kumsaw came back and tore them off the boys, ripping that fabric to shreds with his bare hands, his face all angry. Neither Al nor Measure felt like mentioning that they was left pretty near naked by this time, considering that the only wearing apparel left on them was the thong around their neck; it just didn’t seem like a good time to complain. Where Ta-Kumsaw was taking them they had no idea, and since they also had no choice about going, there wasn’t much point in asking, either.

  Al and Measure never ran so long or so far in their lives. Hour after hour, mile after mile, never going too terrible fast, but never stopping, neither. Moving like this, a Red could travel faster on foot than a White usually could on horseback, unless he was making his nag run all the way. Which wasn’t too good on the horse. And the horse had to stay on cleared roads. While Reds—Reds didn’t even need a path.

  Al noticed real quick that running through the woods was different for the Reds than it was for him and Measure. The only sound he heard was his and Measure’s footfalls. Al being near the back, he could see how things went with Measure. The Red who was pulling Measure would push a branch with his body, and the branch would bend to make way. But the next second when Measure tried to push through, it would snatch at his skin and then break off. Reds would step on roots or twigs and there’d be no sound, nothing snagging their feet; Al would step on the same spot, and he’d trip up, stumble, the thong catching at his neck; or the twig would snap under his bare foot, or the rough bark of the root would tear at his skin. Al, on account of being just a boy, was used to walking around barefoot a good deal of the time, so the soles of his feet were somewhat toughened up. But Measure’d been in growed-man’s boots for some years now, and Al could see that after maybe half a mile Measure was bleeding.

  One thing he could do, Al reckoned, was help his brother’s feet to heal up. He tried to start, to find his way into his brother’s body the way he’d found his way into the stone and the steel and the wood. Running along like that, though, it was hard to concentrate. And living flesh was just too complicated.

  Al wasn’t the kind to give up. No, he just tried a different way. Since it was running that distracted him, he just quit thinking about running. Didn’t look at the ground. Didn’t try to step where the Red ahead of him stepped, just didn’t think about it at all. Like trimming an oil lamp, he trimmed his own wick, as they say, letting his eyes focus on nothing, thinking about nothing, letting his body work like a pet animal that could be let to have its own head and go its own way.

  He had no notion that he was doing what doodlebugs do, when they let their bug go out of their head and travel on its own. And anyway it wasn’t the same, on account of there wasn’t no doodlebug in the natural world who ever tried to doodle while he was running with a thong around his neck.

  Now, though, he didn’t have a speck of trouble getting into Measure’s body, finding the sore places, the bleeding cuts on his feet, the ache in his legs, the pain in his side. Healing the feet, toughing them up, callusing them, that was easy enough. For the others, Al felt how Measure’s body was craving for him to breathe more, deeper, faster; so Al got into his lungs and cleared them, opened them into the deepest places. Now when Measure sucked in air, his body got more of a use out of it, like it could wring out each rag of air to get the very last drop of good out of it. Al didn’t even half understand what he was doing—but he knowed it worked, cause the pain in Measure’s body began to ease, he didn’t weary so much, he didn’t gasp for breath.

  As he returned to himself, Al noticed that in the whole time he was helping Measure, he didn’t step on no twig that broke or get smacked by some snaggy branch flipping back from the Red in front of him. Now, though, he was getting poked and tripped and snapped as much as ever. He thought right off, it was happening just the same all along, only I didn’t hardly notice cause I wasn’t rightly paying attention to my own skin. But even as he decided that was true and even mostly believed it, he also realized that the sound of the world had changed. Now it was just breathing and pale-skinned feet thumping on the dirt or swishing through ancient dead leaves. A bird sound now and then, a fly buzzing. Nothing remarkable, except that Al could remember, just as plain as anything, that until he came back from fixing up Measure’s body he could hear something else, a kind of music, a kind of—green music. Well, that didn’t make no sense. There wasn’t no way music could have a color to it, that was plain crazy. So Al put that out of his mind, just didn’t think about it. Without thinking about it, though, he was still longing to hear it again. Hear it or see it or smell it, however it came into him, he wanted it back again.

 
And one more little thing. Until he went out of himself to help Measure, his own body wasn’t doing all that well, neither; in fact he was near wore out. But now he was all right, his body was doing fine, he was breathing deep, his legs and arms felt like he could go on forever, sturdy in their motion as trees were in their stillness. Now maybe that was because in healing Measure, he also somehow healed himself—but he didn’t rightly believe that, cause he always knew what he did and what he didn’t do. No, to Al Junior’s thinking, his body was doing better because of something else. And that something else, either it was part of the green music, or it caused the music, or they both were caused by the same thing. As near as Al could figure.

  Running along like that, Al and Measure didn’t have no chance to talk till getting on nightfall, when they came to a Red village on the curve of a dark deep river. Ta-Kumsaw led them right into the middle of the village and then walked off and left them. The river was just down the slope from them, maybe a hundred yards of grassy ground.

  “Think we could make it down to the river without them catching us?” whispered Measure.

  “No,” said Al. “And anyways I can’t swim. Pa never let me near the water.”

  Then all the Red women and children come out of the stick-and-mud huts they lived in and pointed at them two naked Whites, man and boy, and laughed and threw sods at them. At first Al and Measure tried to dodge, but it just made them laugh harder and run around and around, throwing wet dirt from different angles, trying to catch them in the face or the crotch. Finally Measure just sat down on the grass, put his face to his knees, and let them throw all they wanted. Al did the same. Finally somebody barked a few words and the sod-throwing stopped. Al looked up in time to see Ta-Kumsaw walking away, and a couple of his fighting men come out to watch and make sure nothing else happened.

  “That was the farthest I ever run in my whole life,” said Measure.

  “Me too,” said Al.

  “Right at the start there I thought I was like to die, I was so tired,” said Measure. “Then I got my second wind. I didn’t think I had it in me.”

  Al didn’t say nothing.

  “Or did you have something to do with that?”

  “Maybe some,” said Al.

  “I never know what you can do, Alvin.”

  “Me neither,” said Al, and it was the truth.

  “When that hatchet come down on my fingers I thought that was the end of my working days.”

  “Just be glad they didn’t try to drownd us.”

  “You and water again,” said Measure. “Well I’m glad you done what you done, Al. Though I will say it might’ve worked out better if you hadn’t made the chief slip like that when he was set to arm-wrassle me.”

  “Why not?” said Al, “I didn’t want him to hurt you—”

  “There’s no way you should know it, Al, so don’t blame yourself. But that kind of wrassling ain’t to hurt a body, it’s kind of a test. Of manliness and quickness and what all. If he beat me, but I put up a fair fight, then I’d have his respect, and if I beat him fair, why, there’s respect in that, too. Armor told me about it. They do it all the time.”

  Alvin thought about this. “So when I made him fall, was that real bad?”

  “I don’t know. Depends on why they think it happened. Might be they’ll think it means that God is on my side or something.”

  “Do they believe in God?”

  “They’ve got a Prophet, don’t they? Just like in the Bible. Anyway I just hope they don’t think it means I’m a coward and a cheater. Things won’t go so good for me then.”

  “Well I’ll tell them it was me done it,” said Al.

  “Don’t you dare,” said Measure. “The only thing saved us was they didn’t know it was you doing them changes on the knives and hatchets and such. If they knowed it was you, Al, they would’ve hacked your head open, mashed you flat and then done what they wanted with me. Only thing that saved you was they didn’t know what was causing it.”

  Then they got to talking about how worried Pa and Ma would be, speculating on how Ma would be so mad, or maybe she’d be too worried to be angry at Pa, and there must be men out looking for them by now even if the horses never came home, cause when they didn’t show up for supper at the Peachees they wouldn’t waste a minute giving the warning.

  “They’ll be talking about war with the Reds,” said Measure. “I know that much—there’s plenty of folks from down Carthage way who hate Ta-Kumsaw already, from his running off their livestock earlier this year.”

  “But it was Ta-Kumsaw who saved us,” said Al.

  “Or that’s how it looks, anyway. But I notice he didn’t take us home, or even ask us where home was. And how did he happen to come along right at that very minute, if he wasn’t part of it himself? No, Al, I don’t know what’s going on, but Ta-Kumsaw didn’t save us, or if he did he saved us for his own reasons, and I don’t know as how I trust him to do good for us. For one thing, I really ain’t much for setting around naked in the middle of a Red village.”

  “Me neither. And I’m hungry.”

  It wasn’t long, though, before Ta-Kumsaw himself came out with a pot of com mash, ft was almost funny, seeing that tall Red man, who carried himself like, a king, toting a pot like one of the Red women. But after that first surprise, Al realized that when Ta-Kumsaw did it, pot-toting looked downright noble.

  He set down the pot in front of Al and Measure, and then took a couple of strips of Red-weave cloth from around his neck. “Wrap up,” he said, and handed each of them a strip. Neither one of them knowed the first thing about tying on a loincloth, beginning with the fact that Ta-Kumsaw was still holding the deerskin belts that were supposed to hold them on. Ta-Kumsaw laughed at how confused they were, and then made Al stand up. He dressed Al himself, and that showed Measure how it was done so he could cover himself, too. It wasn’t like proper clothes, but it was sure better than being buck naked.

  Then Ta-Kumsaw sat down on the grass, the pot between him and them, and showed them how to eat the mash—dipping in his hand, pulling out a tepid, jelly-thick glop of it and smacking it into his open mouth. Tasted so bland that Alvin like to gagged on it. Measure saw it, and said, “Eat.” So Alvin ate, and once he got some swallowed he could feel how much his belly wanted more, even though it still took real persuasion to get his throat to take on the job of transportation.

  When they had the pot cleaned right down to the bottom, Ta-Kumsaw set it aside. He looked at Measure for a while. “How did you make me fall down, White coward?” he said.

  Al was all for speaking up right then, but Measure answered too quick and loud. “I ain’t no coward, Chief Ta-Kumsaw, and if you wrassle me now it’ll be fair and square.”

  Ta-Kumsaw smiled grimly. “So you can make me fall down with all these women and children watching?”

  “It was me,” said Alvin.

  Ta-Kumsaw turned his head, slowly, the smile not leaving his face—but not so grim now, neither, “Very small boy,” he said. “Very worthless child. You can make the ground loose under my feet?”

  “I just got a knack,” said Alvin. “I didn’t know you weren’t aiming to hurt him.”

  “I saw a hatchet,” said Ta-Kumsaw. “Finger-marks like this.” He waved his finger to show the kind of pattern Measure’s fingers had left in the blade of the hatchet. “You did that?”

  “It ain’t right to cut a man’s fingers off.”

  Ta-Kumsaw laughed out loud. “’Very good!” Then he leaned in close. “White men’s knacks, they make noise, very much noise. But you, what you do is so quiet nobody sees it.”

  Al didn’t know what he was talking about.

  In the silence, Measure spoke up bold as you please. “What you plan to do with us, Chief Ta-Kumsaw?”

  “Tomorrow we run again,” he said.

  “Well why don’t you think about letting us run toward home? There’s got to be a hundred of our neighbors out now, mad as hornets. There’s going to be a lot of trouble
if you don’t let us go home.”

  Ta-Kumsaw shook his head. “My brother wants you.”

  Measure looked at Alvin, then back at Ta-Kumsaw. “You mean the Prophet?”

  “Tenskwa-Tawa,” said Ta-Kumsaw.

  Measure looked plain sick. “You mean after he built up his Prophetstown for four years, nobody causing him a lick of trouble, White man and Red man getting along real good, now he goes around taking Whites captive and torturing them and—”

  Ta-Kumsaw clapped his hands once, loudly. Measure fell silent. “Chok-Taw took you! Chok-Taw tried to kill you! My people don’t kill except to defend our land and our families from White thieves and murderers. And Tenskwa-Tawa’s people, they don’t kill at all.”

  That was the first Al ever heard of there being a split between Ta-Kumsaw’s people and the Prophet’s people.

  “Then how’d you know where we were?” demanded Measure. “How’d you know how to find us?”

  “Tenskwa-Tawa saw you,” said Ta-Kumsaw. “Told me to hurry and get you, save you from the Chok-Taw, bring you to Mizogan.”

  Measure, who knew more about Armor-of-God’s maps than Alvin did, recognized the name. “That’s the big lake, where Fort Chicago is.”

  “We don’t go to Fort Chicago,” said Ta-Kumsaw. “We go to the holy place.”

  “A church?” asked Alvin.

  Ta-Kumsaw laughed. “You White people, when you make a place holy you build walls so nothing of the land can get in. Your god is nothing and nowhere, so you build a church with nothing alive inside, a church that could be anywhere, it doesn’t matter—nothing and nowhere.”

  “Well what does make a place holy?” asked Alvin.

  “Because that’s where the Red man talks to the land, and the land answers.” Ta-Kumsaw grinned. “Sleep now. We will go when it’s still dark.”

  “It’s going to be mighty cool tonight,” said Measure.