Red Prophet: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume II (32 page)

There was a different feel to the land around Licking River. Alvin didn’t notice right off, mostly cause he was running with his wick trimmed, so to speak. Didn’t notice much at all. It was one long dream as he ran. But as Ta-Kumsaw led him into the Land of Flints, there was a change in the dream. All around him, no matter what he saw in his dream, there was little sparks of deep-black fire. Not like the nothingness that always lurked at the edges of his vision. Not like the deep black that sucked light into itself and never let it go. No, this black shone, it gave off sparks.

And when they stopped running, and Alvin came to hisself again, those black fires may have faded just a bit but they were still there. Without so much as thinking, Alvin walked toward one, a black blaze in a sea of green, reached down and picked it up. A flint. A good big one.

“A twenty-arrow flint,” said Ta-Kumsaw.

“It shines black and burns cold,” said Alvin.

Ta-Kumsaw nodded. “You want to be a Red boy? Then make arrowheads with me.”

Alvin caught on quick. He had worked with stone before. When he cut a millstone, he wanted smooth, flat surfaces. With flint, it was the edge, not the face that counted. His first two arrowheads were clumsy, but then he was able to feel his way into the stone and find the natural creases and folds, and then break them apart. For
his fourth arrowhead, he didn’t chip at all. Just used his fingers and gently pulled the arrowhead away from the flint.

Ta-Kumsaw’s face showed no expression. That’s what most White folks thought he looked like all the time. They thought Red men, and most especially Ta-Kumsaw, never
felt
nothing cause they never let nobody
see
their feelings. Alvin had seen him laugh, though, and cry, and all the other faces that a man can show. So he knowed that when Ta-Kumsaw showed nothing on his face, that meant he was feeling a whole lot of things.

“I worked with stone a lot before,” said Alvin. He felt like he was sort of apologizing.

“Flint isn’t
stone
,” said Ta-Kumsaw. “Pebbles in the river, boulders, those are stone. This is living rock, rock with fire in it, the hard earth that the land gives to us freely. Not hewn out and tortured the way White men do with iron.” He held up Alvin’s fourth arrowhead, the one he cajoled out of the flint with his fingers. “Steel can never have an edge this sharp.”

“It’s just about as perfect an
edge
as I ever saw,” said Al.

“No chip marks,” said Ta-Kumsaw. “No pressing. A Red man would see this flint and say, The land grew the flint this way.”

“But you know better,” said Al. “You know it’s just a knack I got.”

“A
knack
bends the land,” said Ta-Kumsaw. “Like a snag in the river chums the water on the river’s face. So it is with the land when a White uses his knack. Not you.”

Alvin puzzled on that for a minute. “You mean you can see where other folks did their doodlebug or beseeching or hex or charm?”

“Like the bad stink when a sick man loosens his bowel,” said Ta-Kumsaw. “But you—what you do is clean. Like part of the land. I thought I would teach you how to be Red. Instead the land gives you arrowheads like a gift.”

Again, Alvin felt like apologizing. It seemed to make Ta-Kumsaw angry, that he could do the things he did. “It ain’t like I asked anybody for this,” he said. “I was just
the seventh son of a seventh son, and the thirteenth child.”

“These numbers—seven, thirteen—you Whites care about them, but they’re nothing in the land. The land has true numbers. One, two, three, four, five, six—these numbers you can find when you stand in the forest and look around you. Where is seven? Where is thirteen?”

“Maybe that’s why they’re so strong,” said Alvin. “Maybe cause they ain’t natural.”

“Then why does the land love this unnatural thing that you do?”

“I don’t know, Ta-Kumsaw. I’m only ten going on eleven.”

Ta-Kumsaw laughed. “Ten? Eleven? Very weak numbers.”

They spent the night there, in the borders of the Land of Flints. Ta-Kumsaw told Alvin the story of that place, how it was the best flint country in the whole land. No matter how many flints the Reds came and took away, more always came out of the ground, just lying there to get picked up. In years gone by, every now and then some tribe would try to own the place. They’d bring their warriors and kill anyone else who came for flints. That way they figured they’d have arrows and the other tribes wouldn’t have any. But it never worked right. Cause as soon as that tribe won its battles and held the land, the flints just plain disappeared. Not a one. Members of that tribe would search and search, and never find a thing. They’d go away, and another tribe would come in, and there’d be flints again, as many as ever.

“It belongs to everybody, this place. All Reds are at peace here. No killing, no war, no quarrels—or the tribe has no flints.”

“I wish the whole world was a place like that,” said Alvin.

“Listen to my brother long enough, White boy, and you’ll start to think it is. No, no, don’t explain to me. Don’t defend him. He takes his road, I take mine. I think his way will kill more people, Red or White, than mine.”

In the night, Alvin dreamed. He saw himself walk all the way around Eight-Face Mound, until he found a place
where a path seemed to lead up the steep hill. He climbed, then, and came to the top. The silver-leafed trees shook in the breeze, blinding him as the sun shone off them. He walked to one tree, and in it there was a nest of redbirds. Every tree the same, a single redbird nest.

Except one tree. It was different from the others. It was older, gnarled, with spreading branches instead of the up-reaching kind. Like a fruit tree. And the leaves were gold, not silver, so they didn’t shine so bright, but they were soft and deep. In the tree, he saw round white fruit, and he knew that it was ripe. But when he reached out his hand to take the fruit, and eat it, he could hear laughter, jeering. He looked around him and saw everybody he ever knowed in his whole life, laughing at him. Except one—Taleswapper. Taleswapper was standing there, and he said, “Eat.” Alvin reached up and plucked a single fruit out of the tree and took it to his lips and bit into it. It was juicy and firm, and the taste was sweet and bitter, salt and sour all at once, so strong it made him tingle all over—but good, a taste he wanted to hold inside him forever.

He was about to take a second bite when he saw that the fruit was gone from his hand, and not a one hung from the tree. “One bite is all you need for now,” said Taleswapper. “Remember how it tastes.”

“I’ll never forget,” said Alvin.

Everybody was still laughing, louder than ever; but Alvin paid them no mind. He’d took him a bite of the fruit, and all he wanted now was to bring his family to the same tree, and let them eat; to bring everybody he ever knowed, and even strangers, too, and let them taste it. If they’d just taste it, Alvin figured, they’d know.

“What would they know?” asked Taleswapper.

Al couldn’t think what it was. “Just know,” he said. “Know everything. Everything that’s good.”

“That’s right,” said Taleswapper. “With the first bite, you
know
.”

“What about the second bite?”

“With the second bite, you live forever,” said Taleswapper. “And that isn’t a thing you’d better plan on doing, my boy. Don’t ever imagine you can live forever.”

Alvin woke up that morning with the taste of the fruit
still in his mouth. He had to force himself to believe that it was just a dream. Ta-Kumsaw was already up. He had a low fire going, and he had called two fish out of the Licking River. Now they were spitted with sticks down their mouths. He handed one to Alvin.

But Alvin didn’t want to eat. If he did, the taste of the fruit would go out of his mouth. He’d begin to forget, and he wanted to remember. Oh, he knowed that he’d have to eat sometime—a body can get remarkable thin saying no to food all the time. But today, for now, he didn’t want to eat.

Still, he held the spit and watched the trout sizzle. Ta-Kumsaw talked, telling him about calling fish and other animals when you need to eat. Asking them to come. If the land wants you to eat, then they come; or maybe some other animal, it doesn’t matter, just so you eat what the land gives you. Alvin thought about the fish he was roasting. Didn’t the land know he wasn’t going to eat this morning? Or did it send this fish to tell him he ought to eat after all?

Neither one. Because just at the moment the fish were ready to eat, they heard the crashing and thumping that told them a White man was coming.

Ta-Kumsaw sat very still, but he didn’t so much as pull out his knife. “If the land brings a White man
here
, then he isn’t my enemy,” said Ta-Kumsaw.

In a few seconds, the White man stepped into the clearing. His hair was white, where he wasn’t bald. He was carrying his hat. He had a slack-looking pouch over his shoulder, and no weapon at all. Alvin knew right off what was in that pouch. A change of clothes, a few snatches of food, and a book. A third of the book contained single sentences, where folks had written down the most important thing they ever saw happen with their own eyes. The last two-thirds of the book, though, were sealed with a leather strap. That was where Taleswapper wrote down his own stories, the ones he believed and thought were important.

Cause that’s who it was, Taleswapper, who Alvin never thought to see again in his life. And suddenly, seeing that old friend, Alvin knew why two fish came at
Ta-Kumsaw’s call. “Taleswapper,” Alvin said, “I hope you’re hungry, cause I got a fish here that I roasted for you.”

Taleswapper smiled. “I’m right glad to see you, Alvin, and right glad to see that fish.”

Alvin handed him the spit. Taleswapper sat him down in the grass, across the fire from Alvin and Ta-Kumsaw. “Thank you kindly, Alvin,” said Taleswapper. He pulled out his knife and neatly began flaking off slices of fish. They sizzled his lips, but he just licked and smacked and made short work of the trout. Ta-Kumsaw also ate his, and Alvin watched them both. Ta-Kumsaw never took his eyes off Taleswapper.

“This is Taleswapper,” Alvin said. “He’s the man who taught me how to heal.”

“I didn’t teach you,” said Taleswapper. “I just gave you some idea how to teach yourself. And persuaded you that you ought to try.” Taleswapper directed his next sentence at Ta-Kumsaw. “He was set to let himself die before he’d use his knack to heal himself, can you believe that?”

“And this is Ta-Kumsaw,” said Alvin.

“Oh, I knew that the minute I saw you. Do you know what a legend you are among White people? You’re like Saladin during the Crusade—they admire you more than they admire their own leaders, even though they know you’re sworn to fight until you’ve driven the last White man out of America.”

Ta-Kumsaw said nothing.

“I’ve met maybe two dozen children named after you, most of them boys, all of them White. And stories—about you saving White captives from being burned to death, about you bringing food to people you drove out of their homes, so they wouldn’t starve. I even believe some of those stories.”

Ta-Kumsaw finished his fish and laid the spit in the fire.

“I also heard a story as I was coming here, about how you captured two Whites from Vigor Church and sent their bloody torn-up clothes to their parents. How you tortured them to death to show how you meant to destroy every White—man, woman, and child. How you said the time
for being civilized was past, and now you’d use pure terror to drive the White man out of America.”

For the first time since Taleswapper arrived, Ta-Kumsaw spoke. “Did you believe
that
story?”

“Well, I didn’t,” said Taleswapper. “But that’s because I already knew the truth. You see, I got a message from a girl I knew—a young lady now, she is. It was a letter.” He took a folded letter from his coat, three sheets of paper covered with writing. He handed them to Ta-Kumsaw.

Without looking at it, Ta-Kumsaw handed the letter to Alvin. “Read it to me,” he said.

“But you can read English,” said Alvin.

“Not here,” said Ta-Kumsaw.

Alvin looked at the letter, at all three pages of it, and to his surprise he couldn’t read it either. The letters all looked familiar. When he studied them out, he could even name them—T-H-E-M-A-K-E-R-N-E-E-D-S-Y-O-U, that’s how it started, but it made no sense to Al at all, he couldn’t even say for sure what language it was in. “I can’t read it either,” he said, and handed it back to Taleswapper.

Taleswapper studied it for a minute, then laughed and put it back into his coat pocket. “Well, that’s a story for my book. A place where a man can’t read.”

To Alvin’s surprise, Ta-Kumsaw smiled. “Even you?”

“I know what it says, because I read it before,” said Taleswapper. “But I can’t make out a single word of it today. Even when I know what the word is supposed to be. What
is
. this place?”

“We’re in the Land of Flints,” said Alvin.

“We’re in the shadow of Eight-Face Mound,” said Ta-Kumsaw.

“I didn’t think a White man could get here,” said Taleswapper.

“Neither did I,” said Ta-Kumsaw. “But here is a White boy, and there is a White man.”

“I dreamed you last night,” said Alvin. “I dreamed I was on top of Eight-Face Mound, and you were with me, explaining things to me.”

“Don’t count on it,” said Taleswapper. “I doubt there’s a thing on Eight-Face Mound that I could explain to anybody.”

“How did you come here,” asked Ta-Kumsaw, “if you didn’t know you were coming to the Land of Flints?”

“She told me to come up the Musky-Ingum, and when I saw a white boulder on the right, I should take the fork that led left. She said I’d find Alvin Miller Junior sitting with Ta-Kumsaw by a fire, roasting fish.”

“Who told you all this?” asked Alvin.

“A woman,” said Taleswapper. “A torch. She told me you saw her in a vision, Alvin, inside a crystal tower, not more than a week ago by now. She was the one who pulled the caul from your face, when you were born. She’s been watching you ever since, in the way a torch sees. She went inside that tower with you and saw out of your eyes.”