Red Prophet: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume II (6 page)

It took only a few minutes.

Hooch listened with a straight face as a young lieutenant testified that all Hooch’s whisky had been sold to the sutler at exactly the price it sold for last time. According to the legal papers, Hooch didn’t make a penny more from having kept them waiting four months between shipments. Well, thought Hooch, that’s fair enough, Harrison’s letting me know how he wants things run. So he didn’t say a word. Harrison looked as merry as you please, behind his magisterial solemnity. Enjoy yourself, thought Hooch. You can’t make me mad.

But he
could
, after all. They took 220 dollars right off the top and handed it over to Andrew Jackson right there in court. Counted out eleven gold twenty-dollar coins. That caused Hooch physical pain, to see that fiery metal dropping into Jackson’s hands. He couldn’t keep his silence then. But he did manage to keep his voice low and mild-sounding. “If don’t seem regular to me,” he said, “to have the plaintiff acting as defense attorney.”

“Oh, he’s not your defense attorney on the debt
charges,” said His Honor Judge Harrison. “He’s just your defense attorney on the likker charges.” Then Harrison grinned and gaveled that matter closed.

The likker business didn’t take much longer. Jackson carefully presented all the same invoices and receipts to prove that every keg of whisky was sold to the sutler of Carthage Fort, and not a speck of it to any Reds. “Though I will say,” said Jackson, “that the amount of whisky represented by these receipts seems like enough for three years for an army ten times this size.”

“We’ve got a bunch of hard-drinking soldiers,” said Judge Harrison. “And I reckon that likker won’t last six months. But not a drop to the Reds, Mr. Jackson, you may be sure!”

Then he dismissed all charges against Hooch Palmer, alias Ulysses Brock. “But let this be a lesson to you, Mr. Palmer,” said Harrison in his best judicial voice. “Justice on the frontier is swift and sure. See to it you pay your debts. And avoid even the appearance of evil.”

“Sure enough,” said Hooch cheerfully. Harrison had rolled him over good, but everything had worked out fine. Oh, the 220 dollars bothered him, and so did the two days in jail, but Harrison didn’t mean for Hooch to suffer much. Because what Jackson didn’t know, and no one else saw fit to mention, was that Hooch Palmer happened to have the contract as sutler for the U.S. Army in Wobbish Territory. All those documents that proved he hadn’t sold the likker to the Reds
really
showed that he sold the likker to himself—and at a profit, too. Now Jackson would head on home and Hooch would settle down in the sutler’s store, selling likker to the Reds at extortionate prices, splitting the profits with Governor Bill and watching the Reds die like flies. Harrison had played his little joke on Hooch, right enough, but he’d played an even bigger one on old Hickory.

Hooch made sure to be at the wharf when they ferried Jackson back across the Hio. Jackson had brought along two big old mountain boys with rifles, no less. Hooch took note that one of them looked to be half Red himself, probably a Cherriky half-breed—there was lots of that kind of thing in Appalachee, White men actually
marrying
squaws
like as if they was real women. And both those rifles had “Eli Whitney” stamped on the barrel, which meant they was made in the state of Irrakwa, where this Whitney fellow set up shop making guns so fast he made the price drop; and the story was that all his workmen was
women
, Irrakwa
squaws
, if you can believe it. Jackson could talk all he wanted about pushing the Reds west of the Mizzipy, but it was already too late. Ben Franklin did it, by letting the Irrakwa have their own state up north, and Tom Jefferson made it worse by letting the Cherriky be full voting citizens in Appalachee when they fought their revolution against the King. Treat them Reds like citizens and they start to figure they got the same rights as a White man. There was no way to have an orderly society if
that
sort of thing caught on. Why, next thing you know them Blacks’d start trying to get out of being slaves, and first thing you know you’d sit down at the bar in a saloon and you’d look to your left and there’d be a
Red
, and you’d look to your right and there’d be a
Black
, and that was just plain against nature.

There went Jackson, thinking he was going to save the White man from the Red, when he was traveling with a half-breed and toting Red-made rifles. Worst of all, Jackson had eleven gold coins in his saddle pouch, coins that properly belonged to Hooch Palmer. It made Hooch so mad he couldn’t think straight.

So Hooch hotted up that saddle pouch, right where the metal pin held it onto the saddle. He could feel it from here, the leather charring, turning ash-black and stiff around that pin. Pretty soon, as the horse walked along, that bag would drop right off. But since they was likely to notice it, Hooch figured he wouldn’t stop with the pouch. He hotted up a whole lot of other places on that saddle, and on the other men’s saddles, too. When they reached the other shore they mounted up and rode off, but Hooch knew they’d be riding bareback before they got back to Nashville. He most sincerely hoped that Jackson’s saddle would break in such a way and at such a time that old Hickory would land on his butt or maybe even break his arm. Just thinking about the prospect made Hooch pretty
cheerful. Every now and then it was kind of fun to be a spark. Take some pompous holy-faced lawyer down a peg.

Truth is, an honest man like Andrew Jackson just wasn’t no match for a couple of scoundrels like Bill Harrison and Hooch Palmer. It was just a crying shame that the army didn’t give no medals to soldiers who likkered their enemies to death instead of shooting them. Cause if they did, Harrison and Palmer would both be heroes, Hooch knew that for sure.

As it was, Hooch reckoned Harrison would find a way to make himself a hero out of all this anyway, while Hooch would end up with nothing but money. Well, that’s how it goes, thought Hooch. Some people get the fame, and some people get the money. But I don’t mind, as long as I’m not one of the people who end up with nothing at all. I sure never want to be one of them. And if I am, they’re sure going to be sorry.

2

While Hooch was watching Jackson cross the river, Ta-Kumsaw watched the White whisky trader and knew what he did. So did any other Red man who cared to watch—sober Red man, anyway. White man does a lot of things Red man don’t understand, but when he fiddle with fire, water, earth, and air, he can’t hide it from a Red man.

Ta-Kumsaw didn’t
see
the saddle leather burn on Jackson’s horse. He didn’t feel the heat. What he saw was like a stirring, a tiny whirlwind, sucking his attention out across the water. A twisting in the smoothness of the land. Most Red men couldn’t feel such things as keen as Ta-Kumsaw. Ta-Kumsaw’s little brother, Lolla-Wossiky, was the only one Ta-Kumsaw ever knew who felt it more. Very much more. He knew all those whirlpools, those eddies in the stream. Ta-Kumsaw remembered their father, Pucky-Shinwa, he spoke of Lolla-Wossiky, that he would be shaman, and Ta-Kumsaw would be war-leader.

That was before Lying-Mouth Harrison shot Pucky-Shinwa right before Lolla-Wossiky’s eyes. Ta-Kumsaw was off hunting that day, four-hands walk to the north, but he felt the murder like a gun fired right behind him. When a White man laid a hex or a curse or cast a doodlebug, it felt to Ta-Kumsaw like an itch under his skin, but when a White man killed, it was like a knife stabbing.

He was with another brother, Methowa-Tasky, and he called to him. “Did you feel it?”

Methowa-Tasky’s eyes went wide. He had not. But even then, even at that age—not yet thirteen—Ta-Kumsaw had no doubt of himself. He felt it. It was true. A murder had been done, and he must go to the dying man.

He led the way, running through the forest. Like all Red men in the old days, his harmony with the woodland was complete. He did not have to think about where he placed his feet; he knew that the twigs under his feet would soften and bend, the leaves would moisten and not rustle, the branches he brushed aside would go back quick to their right place and leave no sign he passed. Some White men prided themselves that they could move as quiet as a Red, and in truth some of them could—but they did it by moving slow, careful, watching the ground, stepping around bushes. They never knew how little thought a Red man took for making no sound, for leaving no trace.

What Ta-Kumsaw thought of was not his steps, not himself at all. It was the green life of the woodland all around him, and in the heart of it, before his face, the black whirlpool sucking him downward, stronger, faster, toward the place where the living green was torn open like a wound to let a murder through. Long before they got there, even Methowa-Tasky could feel it. There on the ground lies their father, a bullet through his face. And by him, silent and unseeing, stands Lolla-Wossiky, ten years old.

Ta-Kumsaw carried his father’s body home across his shoulders, like a deer. Methowa-Tasky led Lolla-Wossiky by the hand, for otherwise the boy would not move. Mother greeted them with great wails of grief, for she also felt the death, but did not know it was her own husband until her sons brought him back. Mother tied her husband’s corpse to Ta-Kumsaw’s back; then Ta-Kumsaw climbed the tallest tree, untied his father’s corpse from his back, and bound it to the highest branch he could reach.

It would have been very bad if he had climbed beyond his strength, and his father’s body had fallen from his grasp. But Ta-Kumsaw did not climb beyond his strength. He tied his father to a branch so high the sun touched his
father’s face all day. The birds and insects would eat of him; the sun and air would dry him; the rain would wash the last of him downward to the earth. This was how Ta-Kumsaw gave his father back to the land.

But what could they do with Lolla-Wossiky? He said nothing, he wouldn’t eat unless someone fed him, and if you didn’t take his hand and lead him, he would stay in one place forever. Mother was frightened at what had happened to her son. Mother loved Ta-Kumsaw very much, more than any other mother in the tribe loved any other son; but even so, she loved Lolla-Wossiky more. Many times she told them all how baby Lolla-Wossiky cried the first time the air grew bitter cold each winter. She could never get him to stop, no matter how she covered him with bearskins and buffalo robes. Then one winter he was old enough to talk, and he told her why he cried. “All the bees are dying,” he said. That was Lolla-Wossiky, the only Shaw-Nee who ever felt the death of bees.

That was the boy standing beside his father when Colonel Bill Harrison shot him dead. If Ta-Kumsaw felt that murder like a knife wound, half a day’s journey away, what did Lolla-Wossiky feel, standing so close, and already so sensitive? If he cried for the death of bees in winter, what did he feel when a White man murdered his father before his eyes?

After a few years, Lolla-Wossiky finally began to speak again, but the fire was gone from his eyes, and he was careless. He put his own eye out by accident, because he tripped and fell on the short jagged stump of a broken bush. Tripped and fell! What Red man ever did that? It was like Lolla-Wossiky lost all feeling for the land; he was dull as a White man.

Or maybe, Ta-Kumsaw thought, maybe the sound of that ancient gunshot still rings in his head so loud he can’t hear anything else now; maybe that old pain is still so sharp that he can’t feel the tickling of the living world. Pain all the time till the first taste of whisky showed Lolla-Wossiky how to take away the sharp edge of it.

That was why Ta-Kumsaw never beat Lolla-Wossiky for likkering, though he would beat any other Shaw-Nee,
even his brothers, even an old man, if he found him with the White man’s poison in his hand.

But the White man never guessed at what the Red man saw and heard and felt. The White man brought death and emptiness to this place. The White man cut down wise old trees with much to tell; young saplings with many lifetimes of life ahead; and the White man never asked, Will you be glad to make a lodgehouse for me and my tribe? Hack and cut and chop and burn, that was the White man’s way. Take from the forest, take from the land, take from the river, but put nothing back. The White man killed animals he didn’t need, animals that did him no harm; yet if a bear woke hungry in the winter and took so much as a single young pig, the White man hunted him down and killed him in revenge. He never felt the balance of the land at all.