Red Prophet: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume II (22 page)

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.

“Women will bring you blankets. Warriors don’t need them. This is summer.” Ta-Kumsaw walked a few steps away, then turned back to Alvin. “Weaw-Moxiky ran behind you, White boy. He saw what you did. Don’t try to keep the secret from Tenskwa-Tawa. He will know when you lie.” Then the chief was gone.

“What’s he talking about?” asked Measure.

“I wisht I knew,” said Al. “I’m going to have trouble telling the truth when I don’t know what the truth
is
.”

The blankets came soon enough. Al snuggled close to his big brother, for courage more than warmth. He and Measure whispered awhile, trying to puzzle things out. If Ta-Kumsaw wasn’t in on this from the start, how come them Chok-Taw cut his and the Prophet’s names into the saddle? And even if that was a lie, it was going to look real bad that Ta-Kumsaw finally did end up with the captives, and then up and took them to Lake Mizogan instead of just letting them go home. It was going to take some tall talking to keep this from turning into a war.

Finally, though, they fell silent, weary to the bone from all their running, not to mention their work moving the tree and the plain terror when the Chok-Taw was out to
torture them. Measure started snoring lightly. And Alvin, he found himself drifting. In the very last moments before sleep, he heard that green music again, or saw it, or anyhow knew that it was there. But before he could even listen, he dozed off. Dozed off and slept real peaceful, what with the night breeze blowing cool off the river, the blanket and the warmth of Measure’s body keeping him warm, the nightsounds of the animals, the cries of a hungry infant from a hut somewhere; all of it was part of the green music flowing through his head.

8

They gathered in the clearing, some thirty White men, grim-faced and angry and tired from walking through the woods. The trail was easy enough to follow, but it seemed like the branches grabbed at them and the roots tripped them up—the forest was never kind to a White man. Then there was an hour lost when the trail reached a stream, and they had to go up and down the stream to find where the Reds took them boys out of the water and up onto land again. Old Alvin Miller like to went crazy when he saw they dragged the boys through water—it took his son Calm about ten minutes to get him quiet and able to go on. The man was just mad with fear.

“Shouldn’t’ve sent him away, I never should’ve let him go,” he kept saying.

And Calm kept saying, “Could’ve happened anywhere, don’t blame yourself, we’ll find them all right, they’re still walking ain’t they?” All kinds of talk, but mostly it was his voice that soothed Al Miller, it was his manner—some folks even said it was his knack, that his ma named him straight for what he could best do.