Red Prophet: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume II Page 9

  “Not somebody. Enemy. Catch enemy, he shows brave before he dies so then his spirit flies back to home. Tell his mother and sisters he died brave, they sing songs and scream for him. He doesn’t show brave, then his spirit falls flat on the dirt and you step on him, grind him in, he never goes home, nobody remembers his name.”

  “It’s a good thing Thrower’s out at the privy right now, or I reckon he’d wet his pants over that doctrine.” Thrower squinted at Lolla-Wossiky. “You mean they honored that Wee-Aw who killed that little boy?”

  “Very bad thing, killing little boy. But maybe Red man knows about whisky-Red, very thirsty, making crazy. Not like killing man to take his house or his woman or his land, like White man all the time.”

  “I got to say, the more I learn about you Reds, the more it kind of starts to make sense. I better read the Bible more every night before I turn Red myself.”

  Lolla-Wossiky laughed and laughed.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Many Red men turn White and then die. But never does a White man turn Red. I have to tell this story, everybody laugh.”

  “You Reds have a sense of humor like I just don’t understand.” Armor patted the map. “Here’s us, right here just downriver from where the Tippy-Canoe flows into the Wobbish. All these dots, they’re White man’s farms. And these circles, they’re Red villages. This one’s Shaw-Nee, this one’s Winny-Baygo, see how it goes?”

  “White Murderer Harrison tells Reds that you make this land-face picture so you can find Red villages. Killing everybody, he says.”

  “Well, that’s just the kind of lie I’d expect him to tell. So you heard about me afore you came up here, did you? Well, I hope you don’t believe his lies.”

  “Oh, no. Nobody believes White Murderer Harrison.”

  “Good thing.”

  “Nobody believes any White man. All lies.”

  “Well, not me, you understand that? Not me. Harrison wants to be governor so bad that he’ll tell any lie he can to get power and keep it.”

  “He says you want to be governor, too.”

  Armor paused at that. Looked at the map. Looked at the door to the kitchen, where his wife was washing up. “Well, I reckon he didn’t lie about that. But my idea of what it means to be governor and his are two different things. I want to be governor so Red men and White men can live together in peace here, farming the land side by side, going to the same schools so someday there ain’t no difference between Red and White. But Harrison, he wants to get rid of the Red man altogether.”

  If you make the Red man just like the White man, then he won’t be Red no more. Harrison’s way or Armor’s way, you end up with no Red men at the end. Lolla-Wossiky thought of this, but he didn’t say it. He knew that even though turning all the Red men White would be very bad, killing them all with likker the way Harrison planned, or killing them and driving them off the land the way Jackson planned, those were even worse. Harrison was a very bad man. Armor wanted to be a good man, he just didn’t know how. Lolla-Wossiky understood this, so he didn’t argue with Armor-of-God.

  Armor went on showing him the map. “Down here’s Fort Carthage, it’s got a square, cause it’s a town. I put a square for us, too, even though we’re not rightly a town yet. We’re calling it Vigor Church, on account of that church we’re building.”

  “Church for building. Why Vigor?”

  “Oh, the first folks settled here, the ones who cut the road and made the bridges, the Miller family. They live on up behind the church, way along the road there. My wife is their oldest girl, in fact. They named this place Vigor on account of their oldest son was named Vigor. He drowned in the Hatrack River clear back near Suskwahenny, on their way coming here. So they named the place after him.”

  “Your wife, very pretty,” said Lolla-Wossiky.

  It took Armor just a few seconds to answer that, he looked so surprised. And in the shop in back, where they ate the meal, his wife Eleanor must have been listening, cause she was suddenly standing there in the doorway.

  “Nobody ever called me pretty,” she said softly.

  Lolla-Wossiky was baffled. Most White women had narrow faces, no cheekbones, sick-looking skin. Eleanor was darker, wide-faced, high cheekbones.

  “I think you’re pretty,” said Armor. “I really do.”

  Lolla-Wossiky didn’t believe him, and neither did Eleanor, though she smiled and went away from the door. He never had thought she was pretty, that was plain. And after a moment, Lolla-Wossiky understood why. She was pretty like a Red woman. So naturally White men who never saw straight thought her pretty was very ugly.

  This also meant that Armor-of-God was married to a woman he thought was ugly. But he didn’t shout at her or hit her, like a Red man with an ugly squaw. This was a good thing, Lolla-Wossiky decided.

  “You very happy,” said Lolla-Wossiky.

  “That’s because we’re Christians,” said Armor-of-God. “You’d be happy, too, if you was Christian.”

  “I won’t never be happy,” said Lolla-Wossiky. He meant to say, “Till I hear green silence again, till black noise goes away.” But no use saying that to a White man, they didn’t know that half the things going on in the world were plain invisible to them.

  “Yes you will,” said Thrower. He strode into the room with all kinds of energy, ready to tackle this heathen all over again. “You accept Jesus Christ as your savior, and you will have true happiness.”

  Now, that was a promise worth looking into. That was a good reason to talk about this Jesus Christ. Maybe Jesus Christ was Lolla-Wossiky’s dream beast. Maybe he would make the black noise go away and make Lolla-Wossiky happy again like he was before White Murderer Harrison blew up the world with black noise from his gun.

  “Jesus Christ makes me wake up?” asked Lolla-Wossiky.

  “Come follow me, he said, and I will make you fishers of men,” answered Thrower.

  “He waking me up? He making me happy?”

  “Eternal joy, in the bosom of the Heavenly Father,” said Thrower.

  None of this made any sense, but Lolla-Wossiky decided to go ahead anyway on the chance that it would wake him up and then he’d understand what Thrower was talking about. Even though Thrower made the black noise louder, maybe he also had the cure for it.

  So that night Lolla-Wossiky slept out in the woods, took his four swallows of whisky in the morning, and staggered on up to the church. Thrower was annoyed that Lolla-Wossiky was drunk, and Armor once again insisted on knowing who gave him likker. Since all the other men who were doing the church-raising were gathered around, Armor made a speech, with a whole bunch of threats in it. “If I find out who’s likkering up these Reds, I swear I’ll burn his house down and make him go live with Harrison down on the Hio. Up here we’re Christian folk. Now I can’t stop you from putting those hexes on your houses and making those spells and conjures, even though they show lack of faith in the Lord, but I sure can stop you from poisoning the folk that the Lord saw fit to put on this land. Do you understand me?”

  All the White folk nodded and said yes and that’s right and reckon so.

  “Nobody here gave me whisky,” said Lolla-Wossiky.

  “Maybe he carried it with him in a cup!” said one of the men.

  “Maybe he’s got him a still in the woods!” said another.

  They all laughed.

  “Please be reverent,” said Thrower. “This heathen is accepting the Lord Jesus Christ. He shall be covered with the water of baptism as was Jesus himself. Let this mark the beginning of a great missionary labor among the Red men of the American forest!”

  Amen, murmured the men.

  Well, the water was cold, and that’s about all Lolla-Wossiky noticed, except that when Thrower sprinkled it on him the black noise just got louder. Jesus Christ didn’t show up, so he wasn’t the dream beast after all. Lolla-Wossiky was disappointed.

  But Reverend Thrower wasn’t. That was the strange thing about White men. They just seemed not
to notice what went on around them. Here Thrower performed a baptism that didn’t do a lick of good, and he went strutting around the rest of the day like he had just called a buffalo into a starving village in the dead of winter.

  Armor-of-God was just as blind. At noon, when Eleanor brought dinner up the hill to the workmen, they let Lolla-Wossiky eat with them. “Can’t turn away a Christian, can we?” said one. But none of them was too happy about sitting next to Lolla-Wossiky, probably because he stank of liquor and sweat and he staggered when he walked. It ended up that Armor-of-God sat with Lolla-Wossiky off a ways from the others, and they talked about this and that.

  Till Lolla-Wossiky asked him, “Jesus Christ, he don’t like hexes?”

  “That’s right. He is the way, and all this beseeching and suchlike is blasphemy.”

  Lolla-Wossiky nodded gravely. “Painted hex no good. Paint never was alive.”

  “Painted, carved, same thing.”

  “Wooden hex, a little strong. Tree used to be alive.”

  “Doesn’t matter to me, wooden or painted, I won’t have no hexes in my house. No conjures, no come-hithers, no fendings, no wardings, none of that stuff. A good Christian relies on prayer, and that’s that. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.”

  Lolla-Wossiky knew then that Armor-of-God was just as blind as Thrower. Because Armor-of-God’s house was the strongest-hexed house Lolla-Wossiky ever saw. That was part of the reason Lolla-Wossiky was impressed with Armor, that his house was actually well protected, because he understood enough to make his hexes out of living things. Arrangements of living plants hanging on the porch, seeds with the life in them sitting in carefully placed jars, garlics, stains of berry juices, all so strongly placed that even with the likker in him to dull the black noise, Lolla-Wossiky could feel the pushing and pulling of the fendings and wardings and hexes.

  Yet Armor-of-God didn’t have the faintest idea that his house had any hexes at all. “My wife Eleanor, her folks always had hexes. Her little brother Al Junior, he’s that six-year-old wrassling with the blond-headed Swedish boy there—see him? He’s a real hex-carver, they say.”

  Lolla-Wossiky looked at the boy, but couldn’t exactly see him. He saw the yellow-hair boy he was tussling with, but the other boy just couldn’t come clear for him, he didn’t know why.

  Armor was still talking. “Don’t that make you sick? That young, and already he’s being turned away from Jesus. Anyway, it was real hard for Eleanor to give up those hexes and such. But she did it. Gave me her solemn oath, or we never would’ve got married.”

  At that moment Eleanor, the pretty wife that White men thought was ugly, came up to take away the dinner basket. She heard the last words that her husband said, but she gave no sign that it meant anything to her. Except that when she took Lolla-Wossiky’s bowl from him, and looked him in the eye, he felt like she was asking him. Did you see those hexes?

  Lolla-Wossiky smiled at her, his biggest smile, so she’d know he didn’t have any plan to tell her husband.

  She smiled back, hesitantly, untrustingly. “Did you like the food?” she asked him.

  “Everything cooked too much,” said Lolla-Wossiky. “Blood taste all gone.”

  Her eyes went wide. Armor only laughed and clapped Lolla-Wossiky on the shoulder. “Well, that’s what it means to be civilized. You give up drinking blood, and that’s a fact. I hope your baptism sets you on the right road—it’s plain you’ve been a long time on the wrong one.”

  “I wondered,” said Eleanor—and she stopped, glanced down at Lolla-Wossiky’s loincloth, and then looked at her husband.

  “Oh, yes, we talked about that last night. I’ve got some old trousers and a shirt I don’t use anymore, and Eleanor’s making me new ones anyway, so I thought, now that you’re baptized, you really ought to start dressing like a Christian.”

  “Very hot day,” said Lolla-Wossiky.

  “Yes, well, Christians believe in modesty of dress, Lolla-Wossiky.” Armor laughed and hit him on the shoulder again.

  “I can bring the clothes up this afternoon,” said Eleanor.

  Lolla-Wossiky thought this was a very stupid idea. Red men always looked stupid dressed in White man’s clothes. But he didn’t want to argue with them because they were trying to be very friendly. And maybe the baptism would work after all, if he put on White man’s clothes. Maybe then the black noise would go away.

  So he didn’t answer. He just looked at where the yellow-hair boy was running around in circles, shouting, “Alvin! Ally!” Lolla-Wossiky tried very hard to see the boy that he was chasing. He saw a foot touching the ground and raising dust, a hand moving through the air, but never quite saw the boy himself. Very strange thing.

  Eleanor was waiting for him to answer. Lolla-Wossiky said nothing, since he was now watching the boy who wasn’t there. Finally Armor-of-God laughed and said, “Bring the clothes up, Eleanor. We’ll dress him like a Christian, all right, and maybe tomorrow he can lend a hand on building the church, start learning a Christian trade. Get a saw into his hand.”

  Lolla-Wossiky didn’t actually hear that last, or he might have taken off into the woods right away. He had seen what happened to Red men who started using White man’s tools. The way they got cut off from the land, bit by bit, every time they hefted that metal. Even guns. A Red man starts using guns for hunting, he’s half White the first time he pulls the trigger; only thing a Red man can use a gun for is killing White men, that’s what Ta-Kumsaw always said, and he was right. But Lolla-Wossiky didn’t hear Armor talk about wanting Lolla-Wossiky to use a saw because he had just made the most remarkable discovery. When he closed his good eye, he could see that boy. Just like the one-eyed bear in the river. Open his eye, and there was the yellow-head boy chasing and shouting, but no Alvin Miller Junior. Close his eye, and there was nothing but the black noise and the traces of the green—and then, right in the middle, there was the boy, bright and shining with light as if he had the sun in his back pocket, laughing and playing with a voice like music.

  And then he didn’t see him at all.

  Lolla-Wossiky opened his eye. There was Reverend Thrower. Armor and Eleanor were gone—all the men were back to work on the church. It was Thrower who made the boy disappear, that was plain enough. Or maybe not—because now, with Thrower standing by him, Lolla-Wossiky could see the boy with his good eye. Just like any other child.

  “Lolla-Wossiky, it occurs to me that you really ought to have a Christian name. I’ve never baptized a Red before, and so I just thoughtlessly used your uncivilized nomenclature. You’re supposed to take a new name, a Christian name. Not necessarily a saint’s name—we’re not Papists—but something to suggest your new commitment to Christ.”

  Lolla-Wossiky nodded. He knew he would need a new name, if the baptism turned out to work after all. Once he met his dream beast and went back home, he would get a name. He tried to explain this to Thrower, but the White minister didn’t really understand. Finally, though, he grasped the idea that Lolla-Wossiky wanted a new name and meant to get one soon, so he was mollified.

  “While we’re both right here, by the way,” said Thrower, “I wondered if I might examine your head. I am working on developing some orderly categorizations for the infant science of phrenology. It is the idea that particular talents and propensities in the human soul are reflected in or perhaps even caused by protuberances and depressions in the shape of the skull.”

  Lolla-Wossiky didn’t have any idea what Thrower was talking about, so he nodded silently. This usually worked with White men who were talking nonsense, and Thrower was no exception. The end of it was that Thrower felt all over Lolla-Wossiky’s head, stopping now and then to make sketches and notes on a piece of paper, muttering things like “Interesting,” “Ha!” and “So much for that theory.” When it was over, Thrower thanked him. “You’ve contributed greatly to the cause of science, Mr. Wossiky. You are living proof that a Red man does not necessarily have the bumps of savagery and cannibalism. Instea
d you have the normal array of knacks and lacks that any human has. Red men are not intrinsically different from White men, at least not in any simple, easily categorized way. In fact, you have every sign of being quite a remarkable speaker, with a profoundly developed sense of religion. It is no accident that you are the first Red man to accept the gospel in my ministry here in America. I must say that your phrenological pattern has many great similarities to my own. In short, my dear new-baptized Christian, I would not be surprised if you ended up being a missionary of the gospel yourself. Preaching to great multitudes of Red men and women and bringing them to an understanding of heaven. Contemplate that vision, Mr. Wossiky. If I am not mistaken, it is your future.”

  Lolla-Wossiky barely caught the gist of what Thrower said. Something about him being a preacher. Something about telling the future. Lolla-Wossiky tried to make sense of this, but it didn’t work.

  By nightfall, Lolla-Wossiky was dressed in White man’s clothes, looking like a fool His likker had worn off and he hadn’t had a chance to dodge back into the woods and get his four swallows, so the black noise was getting very bad. Worse yet, it looked to be a rainy night, so he couldn’t see with his eye, and with the black noise as bad as it was, his land sense couldn’t lead him to his keg, either.

  The result was that he was staggering worse than when he had likker in him, the ground heaved and tossed so much under his feet. He fell over trying to get out of his chair at Armor’s supper table. Eleanor insisted that he had to spend the night there. “We can’t have him sleep in the woods, not when it rains,” she said, and as if to buttress her point there was a clap of thunder and rain started pelting the roof and walls. Eleanor made up a bed on the floor of the kitchen while Thrower and Armor went around the house closing shutters. Gratefully Lolla-Wossiky crawled to the bed, not even removing the stiff uncomfortable trousers and shirt, and lay down, his eye closed, trying to endure the stabbing in his head, the pain of the black noise like knives cutting out his brain slice by slice.