Red Prophet

Chapter 4 -- Lolla-Wossiky

When Lolla-Wossiky left Ta-Kumsaw standing by the gate of Fort Carthage, he knew what his brother thought. Ta-Kumsaw thought he was going off with his keg to drink and drink and drink.

But Ta-Kumsaw didn't know. White Murderer Harrison didn't know. Nobody knew about Lolla-Wossiky. This keg would last him two months maybe. A little bit now, a little bit then. Careful, careful, never spill a drop, drink just this much, close it tight, make it last. Maybe even three months.

Always before he had to stay close to White Murderer Harrison's fort, to get the cups of dribbling likker from the dark brown jug. Now, though, he had plenty to make his journey, his great north journey to meet his dream beast.

Nobody knew that Lolla-Wossiky had a dream beast. White man didn't know cause White man had no dream beast, White man slept all the time and never woke up. Red man didn't know cause Red man saw Lolla-Wossiky and thought he was a likker Red, going to die, had no dream beast, never wake up.

Lolla-Wossiky knew though. Lolla-Wossiky knew that light up north, he saw it come five years back. He knew it was his dream beast calling, but he never could go. He started five, six, twelve times north, but then the likker would seep out of his blood and then the noise would come back, terrible black noise that hurt him so bad all the time. When the black noise came it was like a hundred tiny knives in his head, twisting, twisting, so he couldn't feel the land no more, couldn't even see his dream beast light, had to go back, find the likker, still the noise so he could think.

This last was the very worst time. No likker came for a long, long time, and for two months at the end even White Murderer Harrison didn't have much for him, maybe one cup in a week, never enough to last more than a few hours, maybe a day. Two long months of black noise all the time.

Black noise made it so Lolla-Wossiky couldn't walk right. Everything wiggles, ground bumps up and down, how can you walk when the land looks like water? So everybody thought Lolla-Wossiky was drunk, stagger like a whisky-Red, fall down all the time. Where does he get the likker? they all ask. Nobody has likker but Lolla Wossiky still gets drunk, how does he do it? Not one person has eyes to see that Lolla-Wossiky isn't drunk at all. Don't they hear how he talks, clear talking, not drunktalk? Don't they smell he got no likker-stink? Nobody guesses, nobody reckons, nobody calcalates, nobody figures. They know Lolla-Wossiky always needs likker. Never nobody thinks maybe Lolla-Wossiky has pain so bad he hopes to die.

And when he closes his eye to stop the world from rippling like the river, they all think he's asleep and they say things. Oh, they say things they don't want no Red to hear. Lolla-Wossiky figured that out very quick and so when the black noise got so bad he wanted to go lie down on the bottom of the river to shut out the noise forever, instead he staggered to White Murderer Harrison's office and fell down on the floor by his door and listened. Black noise was very loud, but it wasn't ear noise, so he could still hear voices even with the roaring of the black noise in his head. He thought very hard to hear every word under the door. He knew all that White Murderer Harrison said to everybody.

Lolla-Wossiky never told anybody what he heard.

Lolla-Wossiky never told anybody anything true. They never believed him anyway. You're drunk, Lolla-Wossiky. Shame on you, Lolla-Wossiky. Even when he wasn't drunk, even when he hurt so bad he wanted to kill everything alive to make it go away, even then they said, Too bad to see even a Red get so awful drunk. And Ta-Kumsa, standing there never saying anything or when he did, being so strong and right, when Lolla-Wossiky was so weak and wrong.

North north north went Lolla-Wossiky, chanting to himself. North a thousand steps before I take a little drink. North with the black noise so loud I don't know where north is, but still north because I don't dare to stop.

Very dark night. Black noise so bad the land says nothing to Lolla-Wossiky. Even the white light of the dream beast is far off and seems to come from everywhere at the same time. One eye sees night, other eye sees black noise. Have to stop. Have to stop.

Very carefully Lolla-Wossiky found a tree, put down the keg, sat down and leaned against the tree, keg between his legs. Very slowly because he couldn't see, he felt the keg all over to make sure of the bung. Tap tap tap with the tommy-hawk, tap, tap, tap till the bung was loose. Slowly he wiggled it out with his fingers. Then he leaned over and put his mouth over the bunghole, tight as a kiss, tight as a baby on the nipple, that's how tight; then up with the keg, very slow, very slow, not very high, there's the taste, there's the likker, one swallow, two swallows, three swallows, four.

Four is all. Four is the end. Four is the true number, the whole number, the square number. Four swallows.

He put the bung back into the keg and tapped it into place, tight. Already the likker is getting to his head. Already the black noise is fading, fading.

Into silence. Into beautiful green silence.

But the green also goes away, fading with the black. Every time it goes this way. The land sense, the green vision that every Red has, nobody ever saw it clearer than Lolla-Wossiky. But now when it comes, right behind it comes the black noise every time. And when the black noise goes, when the likker chases it off, right behind it goes away the green living silence every time.

Lolla-Wossiky is left like a White man then. Cut off from the land. Ground crunching underfoot. Branches snagging. Roots tripping. Animals running away.

Lolla-Wossiky hoped, hoped for years to find just the right amount of likker to drink, to still the black noise and still leave the green vision. Four swallows, that was as close as he ever came. It left the black noise just out of reach, just behind the nearest tree. But it also left the green where he could just touch it. Just reach it. So he could pretend to be a true Red instead of a whisky-Red, which was really a White.

Tonight, though, he had been without likker so long, two months except for a cup now and then, that four swallows was too strong for him. The green was gone with the black. But he didn't care, not today. Didn't care, had to sleep.

When he woke up in the morning, the black noise was just coming back. He wasn't sure whether the sun or the noise woke him, and he didn't care. Tap on the bung, four swallows, tap it closed. This time the land sensed stayed close by, he could feel it a little. Enough to find the rabbit in the hole.

Thick old stick. Cut it here, slice it, slice it, so splintery burrs of wood stuck out in every direction.

Lolla-Wossiky knelt down in front of the rabbit hole.

"I am very hungry," he whispered. "And I am not very strong. Will you give me meat?"

He strained to hear the answer, strained to know if it was right. But it was too far off, and rabbits were very quiet in their land-voice. Once, he remembered, he could hear all the voices, and from miles and miles away. Maybe if the black noise ever went away, he could hear again. But for now, he had no way of knowing if the rabbits gave consent or not.

So he didn't know if he had the right or not. Didn't know if he was taking like a Red man, just what the land offered, or stealing like a White man, murdering whatever it pleased him to kill. He had no choice. He thrust the stick into the burrow, twisting it. He felt it quiver, heard the squeal, and pulled it out, still twisting. Little rabbit, not a big one, just a little rabbit squirming to get away from the splinters, but Lolla-Wossiky was quick, just at the moment the rabbit was at the burrow mouth, ready to get free and run, Lolla-Wossiky had his hand there, held the rabbit by the head, lifted it quickly into the air and gave it a snap and a shake. It came down dead, little rabbit, and Lolla-Wossiky carried it away from the burrow, back to the keg, because it is very bad, it makes an empty place in the land, if you skin a baby animal where its kin can see or hear you.

He did not make a fire. Too dangerous, and there was no time to smoke the meat, not this close to White Murderer Harrison's fort. There wasn't much meat anyway; he ate it all, raw so it took chewing but the flavor was very strong and good. If you can't smoke meat, Red man knows, carry all you can in your belly. He tucked the hide into the waist of his loincloth, hoisted the keg over his shoulder, and started north. The white light was on ahead of him, dream beast calling, dream beast urging him on. I will wake you up, said the dream beast. I will end your dream.

White man heard about dream beasts. White man thought the Red man went out into the forest and had dreams. Stupid White man, never understood. All of life at first is a long sleep, a long dream. You fall asleep at the moment you are born, and never wake up, never wake up until finally one day the dream beast calls you. You go then, into the forest, sometimes only a few steps, sometimes to the edge of the world. You go until you meet the beast who calls you. The beast is not in a dream. The beast wakes you up from the dream. The beast shows you who you are, teaches you your place in the land. Then you go home awake, awake at last, and tell the shaman and your mother and your sisters who the dream beast was. A bear? A badger? A bird? A fish? A hawk or an eagle? A bee or a wasp? The shaman will tell you stories and help you choose your woke-up name. Your mother and sisters will name all your children, whether they have been born yet or not.

All of Lolla-Wossiky's brothers met their dream beasts long ago. Now his mother was dead, his two sisters were gone to live with another tribe. Who would name his children?

I know, said Lolla-Wossiky. I know. Lolla-Wossiky will never have children, this old one-eyed whisky-Red. But Lolla-Wossiky will find his dream beast. Lolla-Wossiky will wake up. Lolla-Wossiky will have his woke-up name.

Then Lolla-Wossiky will see if he should live or die. If the black noise goes on, and waking up teaches him nothing more than he knows now, Lolla-Wossiky will go sleep in the river and let it roll him to the sea, far away from the land and the black noise. But if waking up teaches him some reason to live on, black noise or not, then Lolla-Wossiky will five, many long years of drink and pain, pain and drink.

Lolla-Wossiky drank four swallows every morning, four swallows every night, and then went to sleep hoping that when the dream beast woke him up, he then could die.

One day he stood on the banks of a clearwater stream, with the black noise thick in his vision and loud in his ears. A great brown bear stood in the water. It slapped the face of the water and a fish flew into the air. The bear caught it in his teeth, chomped twice, and swallowed. It was not the eating that Lolla-Wossiky cared about. It was the bear's eyes.

The bear had one eye missing, just like Lolla-Wossiky. This made Lolla-Wossiky wonder if the bear could be his dream beast. But that could not be. The white light that called him was still north and somewhat west of this place. So this bear was not the dream beast, it was part of the dream.

Still, it might have a message for Lolla-Wossiky. This bear might be here because the land wanted to tell Lolla-Wossiky a story.

This is the first thing Lolla-Wossiky noticed: When the bear caught the fish in his jaws, he was looking with his single eye, seeing the glimmer of sunlight shining on the fish. Lolla-Wossiky knew about this, cause Lolla-Wossiky tilted his head to one side just like the bear.

This is the second thing Lolla-Wossiky noticed: When the bear looked into the water to see the fish swimming, so he could slap at it, he looked with the other eye, with the eye that wasn't there. Lolla-Wossiky didn't understand this. It was very strange,

This is the last thing Lolla-Wossiky noticed: As he watched the bear, his own good eye was closed. And when he opened his eye, the river was still there, the sunlight was still there, the fishes still danced into the air and then disappeared, but the bear was gone. Lolla-Wossiky could see the bear only if he closed his good eye.

Lolla-Wossiky drank two swallows, from the keg, and the bear went away.

One day Lolla-Wossiky crossed a White man's road, and felt it like a river moving under his feet. The current of the road swept him along. He staggered with it, then caught the stride and jogged along, the keg on his shoulder. A Red man never walked on the White man's road—the dirt was packed too hard in dry weather, mud too deep in rain, and the wagon wheel ruts reached out like White man's hands to turn the Red man's ankle, trip him up, break him down. This time, though, the ground was soft like spring grass on a riverbank, as long as Lolla-Wossiky ran along the road the right direction. Not toward the light anymore, cause the light was soft around him, and he knew the dream beast was very very close.

The road three times went over water—two little streams and a big one—and each time there was a bridge, made of great heavy logs and sturdy planks, with a roof like a White man's house. Lolla-Wossiky stood on the first bridge a long time. He never heard of such a thing. Here he was standing in the place where water was supposed to be, and yet the bridge was so heavy and strong, the walls so thick, that he couldn't see or hear the water at all.

And the river hated it. Lolla-Wossiky could hear how angry it was, how it wanted to reach up and tear the bridge away. White man's ways, thought Lolla-Wossiky, White man has to conquer, tear things away from the land.

Yet standing on the bridge, he noticed something else. Even though the likker was mostly gone from his body, the black noise was quieter on the bridge. He could hear more of the green silence than he had in a long time. As if the black noise came partly from the river. How can that be? River got no anger against Red man. And no White-built thing can bring the Red man closer to the land. Yet that was what happened in this place. Lolla-Wossiky hurried on down the road; maybe when his dream beast woke him up, he'd understand this thing.

Road poured out into a place of meadows and a few White man's buildings. Lots of wagons. Horses posted and tied, grazing on the meadow grass. Sound of metal hammers ringing, chopping of axes in the wood, screech of saws going back and forth, all kinds of White-man forest-killing sounds. A White man's town.

But not a White man's town. Lolla-Wossiky stopped at the edge of the open land. Why is this White man's town different, what's missing that I expect to see?

The stockade. There was no stockade.

Where did the White men go to hide? Where did they lock up drunken Reds and White man thieves? Where did they hide their guns?

"Lift! Lift! Lift!" White man's voice ringing out loud as a bell in the thick air of a summer afternoon.

Up a grassy hill, maybe half a mile off, a strange wooden thing was rising up. Lolla-Wossiky couldn't see the men raising it cause the angle was wrong; they were all hid up behind the brow of the hill. But he could see a new-wood frame go up, poles at the high end to raise it into place.

"Side wall now! Lift! Lift! Lift!"

Now another frame rose up, slowly, slowly, sideways to the first. When both frames were standing straight, they met just so along one edge. For the first time Lolla-Wossiky saw men. White boys scrambled up the frames and raised their hammers and brought them down like tommy-hawks to beat the wood into submission. After they pounded for a while, they stood up, three of them, standing on the very top of the wall frames, their hammers raised up high like spears just pulled from the body of the wild buffalo. The poles that had pushed the walls in place were pulled away. The walls stood, holding each other in place. Lolla-Wossiky heard a cheer.

Then suddenly the White men all appeared on the brow of the hill. Did they see me? Will they come to make me go away or lock me up? No, they were just going down the hill to where their horses and their wagons stood. Lolla-Wossiky melted into the woods.

He drank four swallows from the keg, then climbed into a tree and settled the keg into a place where three thick branches split apart. Nice and tight, nice and safe. Leaves nice and thick; nobody see it from the ground, not even Red man.

Lolla-Wossiky took the long way round, but pretty soon there he was on the hill where the new walls stood. Lolla-Wossiky looked a long time, but he couldn't understand what this building was going to be. It was the new way of building, those frame walls, like White Murderer Harrison's new mansion, but it was very big. Bigger than anything Lolla-Wossiky ever saw White men build, taller than the stockade.

First the strange bridges, tight as houses. Now this strange building, tall as trees. Lolla-Wossiky walked out from the shelter of the forest onto the open meadow, rocking back and forth because the ground never stayed level when he had likker in him. When he reached the building, he stepped up onto the wooden floor. White man's floor, White man's walls, but it didn't feel like any White man building Lolla-Wossiky ever saw. Big open space inside. Walls very high. First time ever he saw White man build something that wasn't closed in and dark. In this place a Red man still maybe glad to be here.

"Who's that? Who are you?"

Lolla-Wossiky turned around so fast he almost fell. A tall White man stood at the edge of the building. The floor was up so high it met this man at the waist. He wasn't in buckskin like a hunter, or in uniform like a soldier. He was dressed like a farmer maybe, only he was clean. In fact Lolia-Wossiky never saw such a man in Carthage City.

"Who are you?" demanded the man again.

"Red man," said Lolla-Wossiky.

"It's getting on dusk, but it sure ain't night yet. I'd have to be blind not to know you're Red. But I know the Reds close by and you ain't from around here."

Lolly-Wossiky laughed. What White man ever knew one Red from another so well he could say who was from close by and who was from far away?

"You got a name, Red man?"

"Lolla-Wossiky."

"You're likkered, ain't you. I can smell it, and you don't walk too good."

"Very likkered. Whisky-Red."

"Who gave you that likker! You tell Me! Where'd you get that likker?"

Lona-wossiky was confused. White man never asked him where he got his likker before. White man always knew. "From White Murderer Harrison," he said.

"Harrison's two hundred miles southeast of here. What did you call him?"

"Governor Bill Harrison."

"You called him White Murderer Harrison."

"This Red very drunk."

"I can see that. But you sure didn't get drunk at Fort Carthage and then walk all this way without sobering up. Now where'd you get that likker?"

"You going to lock me up?"

"Lock you—now where would I lock you up, tell me that? You really are from Fort Carthage, aren't you. Well, I'll tell you, Mr. Lolla-Wossiky, we got no place to lock up drunk Reds around here, cause around here Reds don't get drunk. And if they do, we find the White man who gave him likker and that White man gets a flogging. So you tell me right now where you got that likker."

"My whisky," said Lolla-Wossiky.

"Maybe you better come with me."

"Lock me up."

"I told you, we don't—listen, you hungry?"

"Reckon so," said Lolla-Wossiky.

"You got a place to eat?"

"Eat wherever I am."

"Well, tonight you come on down and eat at my house."

Lolla-Wossiky didn't know what to say. Was this a White man joke? White man jokes were very hard to understand.

"Aren't you hungry?"

"Reckon so," said Lolla-Wossiky again.

"Well, come on, then!"

Another White man came up the hill. "Annor-of-God!" he called. "Your good wife wondered where you were."

"Just a minute, Reverend Thrower. I think maybe we got us company for supper."

"Who is that? Why, Armor-of-God, I daresay that's a Red.

"He says his name's Lolla-Wossiky. He's a Shaw-Nee. He's also drunk as a skunk."

Lolla-Wossiky was very surprised. This White man knew he was a Shaw-Nee without asking. From his hair, plucked out except the tall strip down the middle? Other Reds did this. The fringe on his loincloth? White man never saw these things.

"A Shaw-Nee," said the new-come White man. "Aren't they a particularly savage tribe?"

"Well, now, I don't know, Reverend Thrower," said Armor-of-God. "What they are is a particularly sober tribe. By which I mean they don't get so likkered as some of these others. Some folks think that the only safe Red is a whisky-Red, so they see all these sober Shaw-Nee and they think that makes them dangerous."

"This one seems not to have that problem."

"I know. I tried to find out who gave him his whisky, and he won't tell me."

Reverend Thrower addressed Lolla-Wossiky. "Don't you know that whisky is the devil's tool and the downfall of the Red man?"

"I don't think he talks English enough to know what you're talking about, Reverend."

"Likker very bad for Red man," said Lolla-Wossiky.

"Well, maybe he does understand," said Armor-of-God, chuckling. "Lolla-Wossiky, if you know how bad likker is, how come you stink of cheap whisky like an Irish barroom?"

"Likker very bad for Red man," said Lolla-Wossiky, "but Red man thirsty all the time."

"There's a simple scientific explanation for that," said Reverend Thrower. "Europeans have had alcoholic beverages for so long that they've built up a tolerance. Europeans who desperately hunger for alcohol tend to die younger, have fewer children, provide less wen for those children they do have. The result is that most Europeans have a resistance to alcohol built into them. But you Reds have never built up that tolerance."

"Very damn right," said Lolla-Wossiky. "True-talking White man, how come White Murderer Harrison not kill you yet?"

"Well, now, will you listen to that," said Armor-of-God. "That's the second time he called Harrison a murderer."

"He also swore, which I do not appreciate."

"If he's from Carthage, he learned to talk English from a class of White man that thinks words like ‘damn' are punctuation, if you catch my drift, Reverend. But listen, Lolla-Wossiky. This man here, he's Reverend Philadelphia Thrower, and he's a minister of the Lord Jesus Christ, so mind you don't use no bad language around him."

Lolla-Wossiky hadn't the faintest idea what a minister was—there was no such thing in Carthage City. The best he could think of was that a minister was like a governor, only nicer.

"Will you live in this very big house?"

"Live here?" asked Thrower. "Oh, no. This is the Lord's house.

"Who?"

"The Lord Jesus Christ."

Lona-Wossiky had heard of Jesus Christ. White man called out that name all the time, mostly when they were angry or lying. "Very angry man," said Lofla-Wossiky. "He live here?"

"Jesus Christ is a loving and forgiving Lord," said Reverend Thrower. "He won't live here the way a White man lives in a house. But when good Christians want to worship—to sing hymns and pray and hear the word of the Lord—we'll come together in this place. It's a church, or it will be."

"Jesus Christ talks here?" Lolla-Wossiky thought it might be interesting to meet this very important White man face to face.

"Oh, no, not in person. I speak for him."

From below the hill came a woman's voice. "Armor! Armor Weaver!"

Armor-of-God came alert. "Supper's ready, and there she is calling out, she hates when she has to do that. Come on, Lolla-Wossiky. Drunk or not, if you want supper you can come, and get it."

"I hope you will," said Reverend Thrower. "And when supper is done, I hope to be able to teach you the words of the Lord Jesus."

"Very most first thing," said Lolla-Wossiky. "You promise not to lock me up. I don't want lock-up, I got to find dream beast."

"We won't lock you up. You can walk out of my house any time." Armor-of-God turned to Reverend Thrower. "You can see what these Reds learn about White men from William Henry Harrison. Likker and lock-ups."

"I am more moved by his pagan beliefs. A dream beast! Is this their idea of gods?"

"The dream beast isn't God, it's an animal they dream about that teaches them things," explained Armor. "They always take a long journey till they have the dream and come home. That explains what he's doing two hundred miles from the main Shaw-Nee settlements on the lower My-Ammy."

"Dream beast real," said Lolla-Wossiky.

"Right," said Armor-of-God. Lolla-Wossiky knew he was saying that only to avoid offending him.

"This poor creature is obviously in dire need of the gospel of Jesus," said Thrower.

"Looks to me like he's in more need of supper at the moment. Gospel is learned best on a full belly, wouldn't you say?"

Thrower chuckled. "I don't think it says that anywhere in the Bible, Armor-of-God, but I dare say you're correct."

Armor-of-God put his hands on his hips and asked Lolla-Wossiky again. "You coming or not?"

"Reckon so," said Lolla-Wossiky.

Lolla-Wossiky's belly was full, but it was White man's food, soft and smoooth and overcooked, and it grumbled inside him. Thrower went on and on with very strange words. The stones were good, but Thrower kept going on about original sin and redemption. One time when Lolla-Wossiky thought he understood, he said, "What a silly god, he makes everybody born bad to go to bunung hell. Why so mad? All his fault!" But this made Thrower get very upset and talk longer and faster, so after that Lolla-Wossiky did not offer any of his thoughts.

The black noise came back louder and louder the more Thrower talked. Whisky wearing off? It was very quick for the likker to go out of him. And when Thrower left one time to go empty himself, the black noise got quieter. Very strange—Lolla-Wossiky never before noticed anybody making the black noise louder or softer by coming or going.

But maybe that was because he was here in the dream beast place. He knew this was the place because the white light was all around him when he looked, and he couldn't see where to go. Don't be surprised at bridges that make black noise soft and White minister who makes black noise loud. Don't be surprised at Annor-of-God with his land-face picture who feeds Red man and doesn't sell likker or even give likker.

While Thrower was outside, Armor-of-God showed Lolla-Wossiky the map. "This is a picture of the whole land around hem. Up to the northwest, there's the big lake—the Kicky-Poo call it Fat Water. Right there, Fort Chicago—it's a French outpost."

"French. One cup of whisky for a White man scalp."

"That's the going rate, all right," said Armor-of-God. "But the Reds around here don't take scalps. They trade fair with me, and I trade fair with them, and we don't go shooting down Reds and they don't go killing White folks for the bounty. You understand me? You start getting thirsty, you think about this: There was a whisky-Red from the Wee-Aw tribe here some four year back, he killed him a little Danish boy out in the woods. Do you think it was White men tracked him down? Reckon not; you know a White man's got no hope to find no Red in these woods, specially not farmers and such like us. No, it was Shaw-Nee and Otty-Wa who found him two hours after the boy turned up missing. And do you think it was White men punished that whisky-Red? Reckon not; they set that Wee-Aw down and said, ‘You want to show brave?' and when he said yes, they took six hours killing him."

"Very kind," said Lolla-Wossiky.

"Kind? I reckon not," said Armor-of-God.

"Red man kills White boy for whisky, I never let him show brave, he die—uh! Like that, quick like rattlesnake, no man him."

"I got to say you Reds think real strange," said Armor. "You mean it's a favor when you torture somebody to death?"

"Not somebody. Enemy. Catch enemy, he shows brave before he die 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 Annor-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-ofGod. "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 Annor-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 yvas 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. Instead 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, tying to endure the stabbing in his head, the pain of the black noise like knives cutting out his brain slice by slice.

As usual, they thought he was asleep.

"He seems drunker than he did this morning," said Thrower.

"I know he never left the hill," said Armor. "There's not a chance he got a drink anywhere."

"I've heard it said that when a drunk becomes sober," said Thrower, "at first he acts more drunk than when he has alcohol in him."

"I hope that's all it is," said Armor.

"I daresay he was somewhat disappointed at the baptism today," said Thrower. "Of course it's impossible to understand what a savage is feeling, but—"

"I wouldn't call him a savage, Reverend Thrower," said Eleanor. "I think in his own way he's civilized."

"You might as well call a badger civilized, then," said Thrower. "In his own way, anyway."

"I mean to say," Eleanor said, her voice even quieter and meeker-sounding, but therefore carrying all the more weight, "that I saw him reading."

"Turning pages you mean," said Thrower. "He couldn't be reading."

"No. He read, and his lips formed the words," she said. "The signs on the wall in the front room, where we serve customers. He read the words."

"It's possible, you know," said Armor. "I know for a fact that the Irrakwa read just as good as any White men. I been there to do business often enough, and you can bet you have to read the fine print on the contracts they write up. Red men can learn to read, and that's a fact."

"But this one, this drunk—"

"Who knows what he can become, when the likker ain't in him?" said Eleanor.

Then they went away to the other room, and left the house for a while, walking Thrower home to the cabin he was staying in before the rain got so bad he had to stay the night.

Alone in the house, Lolla-Wossiky tried to make sense of things. Baptism alone hadn't wakened him from his dream. Nor had White man's clothes. Maybe going without likker for a night would do it, like Eleanor suggested, though it made him crazy with pain so he couldn't sleep.

Whatever happened, though, he knew that the dream beast was waiting somewhere near here. The white light was suffused all around him now; this was the waking place for Lolla-Wossiky. Maybe if he stayed away from the church hill today, maybe if he wandered in the woods around Vigor Church, then the dream beast could find him.

One thing was sure. He wasn't going to spend another night without whisky. Not when he had a keg out in a crotch of a tree that could take away the black noise and let him sleep.

Lolla-Wossiky walked everywhere in the woods. He saw many animals, but they all ran from him; he was so drunk or so bound up in the black noise that he never was part of the land, and they ran from him just as if he were White.

Discouraged, he began to drink more than four swallows, even though he knew he would run out of whisky too fast. He walked less and less in the forest, more and more along the White man's paths and roads, showing up at farmhouses in the middle of the day. The women sometimes screamed and ran away, carrying a baby and leading children off into the woods. Other women pointed guns at him and made him leave. Some of them fed him and talked about Jesus Christ. Finally Armor-of-God told him not to visit the farms when the men were away, working on the church.

So there was nothing left for Lolla-Wossiky to do. He knew he was close to the dream beast, but he couldn't find it. He couldn't walk in the forest because the animals ran from him and he stumbled and fell all the time, more and more, until he feared he might break a bone and die of starvation because he couldn't even call small animals to feed him. He couldn't visit the farms because the men were angry. So he lay on the commons, sleeping from drunkenness or trying to endure the pain of the black noise, one or the other.

Sometimes he worked up the energy to go up the hill and see the men working on the church. Whenever he got there, some man would call out, "Here comes the Red Christian!" and Lolla-Wossiky knew that there was malice and ridicule in the voices that said it and the voices that laughed.

He was not at the church the day the roof-beam fell. He was sleeping on the grass of the commons, near the porch of Armor's house, when he heard the crash. It startled him awake, and the black noise came back harsher than ever, even though he had drunk eight swallows that morning and ought to be drunk till noon. He lay there holding his head until men started coming down from the hill, cursing and muttering about the strange thing that happened.

"What happened?" Lolla-Wossiky asked. He had to know, because whatever it was, it had made the black noise worse than it had been in years. "Was a man killed?" He knew that a gunshot made the black noise in the first place. "Did White Murderer Harrison shoot somebody?"

At first they paid him no attention, because they thought he was drunk, of course. But finally someone told him what happened.

They had been laying the first ridgebeam in place, high on top of the building, when the central ridgepole shivered and tossed the ridgebeam up in the air. "Came down flat, just like God's own foot stepping on the earth, and wouldn't you know, there was that little Alvin Junior, Al Miller's boy, right under the beam. Well, we thought he was dead. The boy just stood there, the beam landed smack—you must have heard the noise, that's why it sounded like a gun to you—but you won't believe this. That ridgebeam split right in half, right in the very place where Alvin was standing, split right in two and landed on this side and that side of him, didn't touch a hair on his head."

"Something strange about that boy," said a man.

"He's got a guardian angel, that's what he's got," said another.

Alvin Junior. The boy he couldn't see with his eye open.

There was no one at the church when Lolla-Wossiky got there. The ridgebeam was also gone, everything swept out, no sign of the accident. But Lolla-Wossiky was not looking with his eye. He could feel it, almost as soon as he got within sight of the church. A whirlpool, not fast at the edges, but stronger and stronger the closer he came. A whirlwind of light, and the closer he got, the weaker the black noise became. Until he stood on the church floor, in the spot that he knew was where the boy was standing. How did he know? The black noise was quieter. Not gone, the pain not healed, but Lolla-Wossiky could feel the green land again, just a little, not like it used to be, but he could feel the small life under the floor, a squirrel in the meadow not far off, things he hadn't felt, drunk or sober, in all the years since the gun blew the black noise into his head.

Lolla-Wossiky turned around and around, seeing nothing but the walls of the church. Until he closed his eye. Then he saw the whirlwind, yes, white light spinning and spinning around him, and the black noise retreating. He was in the end of his own dream now, and he could see with his eye closed, see clearly. There was a shining path ahead of him, a road as bright as the noonday sky, dazzling like meadow snow on a clear day. He knew already, without opening his eye to see, where the path would lead. Up the hill, down the other side, up a higher hill, to a house not far from a strewn, a house where lived a White boy who was only visible to Lolla-Wossiky with his eye closed.

His silent step had returned to him, now that the black noise had backed off a bit. He walked around the house, around and around. No one heard him. Inside laughter, shouting, screaming. Happy children, quarreling children. Stern voices of parents. Except for the language, it could be his village. His own sisters and brothers in the happy days before White Murderer Harrison took his father's life.

The White father, Alvin Miller, came out to the privy. Not long after, the boy himself came, running, as if he was afraid. He shouted at the privy door. With his eye open, Lolla-Wossiky only knew that someone was standing there, shouting. With his eye closed, he saw the boy clearly, radiant, and heard his voice like birdsong across a river, all music, even though what he said was silly, foolish, like a child.

"If you don't come out I'll do it right in front of the door so you'll step in it when you come out!"

Then silence, as the boy grew more worried, hitting himself on the top of his head with his own fist, as if to say, Stupid, stupid, stupid. Something changed in Al Junior's expression; Lolla-Wossiky opened his eye to see that the father had come out, was saying something.

The boy answered him, ashamed. The father corrected him. Lolla-Wossiky closed his eye.

"Yes sir," said the boy.

Again the father must be speaking, but with his eye closed Lolla-Wossiky did not hear the father.

"Sorry, Papa."

Then the father must have walked away, because little Alvin went into the privy. Muttering, so soft no one could hear. But Lolla-Wossiky heard. "Well, if you'd just build another outhouse I'd be fine."

Lolla-Wossiky laughed. Foolish boy, foolish father, like all boys, like all fathers.

The boy finished and went into the house.

Here I am, said Lolla-Wossiky silently. I followed the shining path, I came to this place, I saw silly White family things; now where is my dream beast?

And again he saw the white light gather, inside the house, following the boy up the stairs. For Lolla-Wossiky there were no walls. He saw the boy being very careful, as if he were watching for an enemy, for some attack. When he reached the bedroom he ducked inside, closed his door quickly behind him. Lolla-Wossiky saw him so clearly that he thought he could almost hear his thoughts; and then, because he thought it, and because this was near the end of his dream, almost to the time of waking, he did hear the boy's thoughts, or at least felt his feelings. It was his sisters he was afraid of. A silly quarrel, begun with teasing, but malicious now—he was afraid of their vengeance.

It came as he stripped off his clothes and pulled his nightshirt over his head. Stinging! Insects, thought the boy. Spiders, scorpions, tiny snakes! He pulled the nightshirt off, slapped himself, cried out from the pain, the surprise, the fear.

But Lolla-Wossiky could feel the land well enough to know there were no insects. Not on his body, not in the shirt. Though there were many living creatures there. Small life, little animals. Roaches, hundreds of them living in the walls and floors.

Not in all the walls and floors, though. Just in Alvin Junior's room. All gathered to his room.

Was it enmity? Roaches were too small for hate. They knew only three feelings, those little creatures. Fear, hunger, and the third sense, the land sense. The trust in how things ought to be. Did the boy feed them? No. They came to him for the other thing. Lolla-Wossiky could hardly believe it, but he felt it in the roaches and couldn't doubt. The boy had called them somehow. The boy had the land sense, at least enough to call these small creatures.

Call them why? Who wanted roaches? But he was only a boy. There didn't have to be sense in it. Just the discovery that the little life would come when you called it. Red boys learned this, but always with their father or a brother, always out on the first hunt. Kneel and speak silently to the life you need to take, and ask it if this is a good time, and if it is willing to die to make your life strong. Is it your time to die? asks the Red boy. And if the life consents, it will come.

This is what the boy did. Except it wasn't so simple. He didn't call the roaches to die for his need, because he had no need. No, he called them and kept them safe. He protected them. It was like a treaty. There were certain places the roaches didn't go. Into Alvin's bed. Into his little brother Calvin's cradle. Into Alvin's clothing, folded on the stool. And in return Alvin nevcr killed them. They were safe in his room. It was a sanctuary, a reserve. A very silly thing, a child playing with things he didn't understand.

But the marvel of it was—this was a White boy, doing something beyond even a Red man's reach. When did the Red man ever say to the bear, come and live with me and I will keep you safe? When did the bear ever believe such a thing? No wonder the light was centered on this boy. This wasn't the foolish knack of the White man Hooch, or even the strong living hexes of the woman Eleanor. This wasn't the Red man's power to fit himself into the pattern of the land. No, Alvin didn't fit himself into anything. The land fit itself to him. If he wanted the roaches to live a certain way, to make a bargain, then that was how the land ordered itself. In this small place, for this time, with these tiny lives, Alvin Junior had commanded and the land obeyed.

Did the boy understand how miraculous this was?

No, no, he had no idea. How could he know? What White man could even understand it?

And now, because he didn't understand, Alvin Junior was destroying the delicate thing that he had done. The insects that had bitten him were metal pins that his sisters had poked into his nightshirt. Now he could hear them laughing behind their wall. Because he had been very frightened, now he was very angry. Get even, get back at them; Lolla-Wossiky could feel his childish rage. He only did one little thing to tease them, and they pay him back by scaring him, poking him a hundred times and making him bleed. Get even, give them such a scare—Alvin Junior sat on the edge of the bed, angrily taking the pins out of his nightshirt, saving them—White men were so careful with all their useless metal tools, even such tiny ones as those. As he sat there he saw the roaches scurrying along the walls, running in and out of cracks in the floor, and he saw his vengeance.

Lolla-Wossiky felt him making the plan in his mind. Then Alvin knelt on the floor and explained it soffly to the roaches. Because he was a child, and a White boy with no one to teach him, Alvin thought he had to say the words aloud, that the roaches somehow understood his language. But no—it was the order of things, the way he arranged the world in his mind.

And in his mind he lied to them. Hunger, he told them. And in the other room, food. He showed them food if they went under the wall into the sisters' room and climbed on the beds and the bodies there. Food if they hurried, food for all of them. It was a lie, and Lolla-Wossiky wanted to shout at him not to do this.

If a Red man knelt and called to prey that he didn't need, the prey would know his lie and wouldn't come. The lie itself would cut the Red man from the land, make him walk alone awhile. But this White boy could lie with such force and strength that the tiny minds of the roaches believed him. They scurried, a hundred, a thousand of them under the walls, into the other room.

Alvin Junior heard something, and he was delighted. But Lolla-Wossiky was angry. He opened his eye, so he didn't have to see Alvin Junior's glee at his revenge. Instead now he heard the sisters screaming as the roaches climbed all over them. And then the parents and brothers rushing into their room. And the stomping. The stomping, the smashing, the murders of the roaches. Lolla-Wossiky closed his eye and felt the deaths, each one a pinprick. It had been so long with the black noise masking all the deaths behind one vast memory of murder that Lolla-Wossiky had forgotten what the small pains felt like.

Like the death of bees.

Roaches, useless animals, eating up garbage, making filthy rustling noises in their dens, loathsome when they crawled on the skin; but part of the land, part of the life, part of the green silence, and their death was an evil noise, their useless murder because they believed in a lie.

This is why I came, Lolla-Wossiky realized. The land brought me here, knowing that this boy had such power, knowing that there was no one to teach him how to use it, no one to teach him to wait to feel the need of the land before changing it. No one to teach him how to be Red instead of White.

I didn't come for my own dream beast, but to be the dream beast for this boy.

The noise settled. The sisters, the brothers, the parents went back to sleep. Lolla-Wossiky pressed his fingers into the cracks between the logs, climbed carefully, his eye closed so that the land would guide him instead of trusting in himself, The boy's shutters were open, and Lolla-Wossiky thrust his elbows over the sill and hung there, looking in.

First with his eye open. He saw a bed, a stool with clothes neatly folded, and at the foot of the bed, a cradle. The window opened onto the space between the bed and the cradle. In the bed, a shape, boy-sized, unidentifiable.

Lolla-Wossiky closed his eye again. Alvin lay in the bed. Lolla-Wossiky felt the heat of the boy's excitement like a fever. He had been so afraid of being caught, so exhilarated at his victory, and now lay trembling, trying to breathe calmly, trying to stifle laughter.

His eye open again, Lolla-Wossiky scrambled up onto the sill and swung onto the floor. He expected Alvin to notice him, to cry out; but the shape of the boy lay still in the bed; there was no sound.

The boy couldn't see him when his eye was open, any more than he could see the boy. This was the end of the dream, after all, and Lolla-Wossiky was dream beast for the boy. It was Lolla-Wossiky's duty to give visions to the boy, not to be seen as himself, a whisky-Red with one eye missing.

What vision will I show him?

Lolla-Wossiky reached inside his White man's trousers to where tie still wore his loincloth, and pulled his knife from its sheath. He held both his hands high, the one holding the knife. Then he closed his eye.

The boy still didn't see him; his eyes were closed. So Lolla-Wossiky gathered the white light he could feel around him, gathered it close to himself, so that he could feel himself shining brighter and brighter. The light came from his skin, so he tore open the breast of the White man's shirt he wore, then raised his hands again. Now, even through closed eyelids, the boy could see the brightness, and he opened his eyes.

Lolla-Wossiky felt the boy's terror at the sight of the apparition he had become: a bright and shining Red man, one-eyed, with a sharp knife in his hand. But it wasn't fear Lolla-Wossiky wanted. No one should fear his own dream beast. So he sent the light outward to the boy, to include him, and with the light he sent calm, calm, don't be scared.

The boy relaxed a little, but still wriggled up in his bed, so he was sitting up, leaning against the wall.

It was time to begin to wake the boy from his life of sleep. How did Lolla-Wossiky know what to do? No man, Red or White, had ever been another man's dream beast. Yet he knew without thinking what he ought to do. What the boy needed to see and feel. Whatever came to Lolla-Wossiky's mind that felt right to do, that was what he did.

Lolla-Wossiky took his shining knife and brought the blade against his other palm—and cut. Sharp, hard, deep, so blood leapt from the wound, rushed down his forearm to gather and pool in his sleeve. Quickly it began to drip on the floor.

The pain came suddenly, a moment later; Lolla-Wossiky knew at once how to take the pain and make it into a picture and put it into the boy's mind. The picture of his sisters' room as a small weak creature saw it. Rushing in, hungering, hungering, looking for the food, certain that the food was there; on the soft body was the promise, climb the body, find the food. But great hands slapped and brushed, and the small creature was thrown onto the floor. The floor shook with giant footfalls, a sudden shadow, the agony of death.

Again and again, each small life, hungering, trusting, and then betrayed, crushed, battered.

Many lived, but they cowered, they scurried, they fled. The sisters' room, the room of death, yes, they fled from there. But better to stay there and die than run into the other room, the room of lies. Not words, there were no words in the small creature's life, there were no thoughts that could be named as thoughts. But the fear of death in the one place was not as strong as another kind of fear, the fear of a world gone crazy, a place where anything could happen, where nothing could be trusted, where nothing was certain. A terrible place.

Lolia-Wossiky ended the vision. The boy was pressing his hands against his eyes, sobbing desperately. Lolla-Wossiky had never seen anyone so tortured by remorse; the vision Lolla-Wossiky had given him was stronger than any dream a man could imagine for himself. I am a terrible dream beast, thought Lolla-Wossiky. He will wish I hadn't wakened him. In dread of his own strength, Lolla-Wossiky opened his eye.

At once the boy disappeared, and Lolla-Wossiky knew that the boy would think that Lolla-Wossiky had also disappeared. What now? he thought. Am I here to make this boy crazy? To give him a terrible thing, as bad as the black noise was to me?

He could see from the shaking of the bed, the movement of the bedclothes, that the boy was still crying passionately. Lolla-Wossiky closed his eye, and again sent the light to the boy. Calm, calm.

The boy's weeping became a whimper, and he looked again at Lolla-Wossiky, who was still shining with a dazzling light.

Lolla-Wossiky didn't know what to do. While he was silent and uncertain, Alvin began to speak, to plead. "I'm sorry, I'll never do it again, I'll—"

Babbling on and on. Lolla-Wossiky pushed more light at him, to help him see better. It came to the boy almost as a question. What will you never do again?

Alvin couldn't answer, didn't know. What was it he actually did? Was it because he sent the roaches to die?

He looked at the Shining Man and saw an image of a Red kneeling before a deer, calling it to come and die; the deer came, trembling, afraid; the Red loosed his arrow and it stood quivering on the deer's flank; the deer's legs wobbled, and it fell. It wasn't the dying or the killing that was his sin, because dying and killing were a part of life.

Was it the power he had? The knack he had for making things go just where he wanted, to break just at the right place, or fit together so tight that they joined forever without any gluing or hammering. The knack he had for making things do what he wanted, arrange themselves in the right order. Was it that?

Again he looked at the Shining Man, and now he saw a vision of himself pressing his hands against a stone, and the stone melted like butter under his hands, came out in just the shape he wanted, smooth and whole, fell from the side of the mountain and rolled away, a perfect ball, a perfect sphere, growing and growing until it was a whole world, shaped just the way his hands had made it, with trees and grass springing up in its face, and animals running and leaping and flying and swimming and crawling and burrowing on and above and beneath the ball of stone that he had made. No, it wasn't a terrible power, it was a glorious one, if he only knew how to use it.

If it isn't the dying and it isn't the power, what did I do wrong?

This time the Shining Man didn't show him anything. This time Alvin didn't have the answer come to him in a vision. This time he studied it out in his mind. He felt like he couldn't understand, he was too stupid to understand, and then suddenly he knew.

It was because he did it for himself. It was because the roaches thought he was doing it for them, and really he was doing it for himself. Hurting the roaches, his sisters, everyone, making everyone suffer and all for what? Because Alvin Miller Junior was angry and wanted to get even—

Now he looked at the Shining Man and saw a fire leap from his single eye and strike him in the heart. "I'll never use it for myself again," murmured Alvin Junior, and when he said the words he felt as though his heart were on fire, it burned so hot inside. And then the Shining Man disappeared again.

Lolla-Wossiky stood panting, his head spinning. He felt weak, weary. He had no idea what the boy had been thinking. He only knew what visions to send him, and then at the end, no vision at all, just to stand there, that's all he was to do, stand there and stand there until, suddenly, he sent a strong pulse of fire at the boy and buried it in his heart.

And now what? Twice now he had closed his eye and appeared to the boy. Was he through? He knew that he was not.

For the third time Lolla-Wossiky closed his eye. Now he could see that the boy was much brighter than he was; that the light had passed from him into the child. And then he understood—he was the boy's dream beast, yes, but the boy was also his. Now it was time for him to wake up from his dream life.

He took three steps and knelt beside the bed, his face only a little way from the boy's small and frightened face, which now shone so brightly that Lolla-Wossiky could hardly see that it was a child and not a man who looked at him. What do I want from him? Why am I here? What can he give me, this powerful child?

"Make all things whole," Lolla-Wossiky whispered. He spoke, not in English, but in Shaw-Nee.

Did the boy understand? Alvin raised his small hand, reached out gently and touched Lolla-Wossiky's cheek, under the broken eye. Then he raised his finger until it touched the slack eyelid.

There was a cracking sound in the air, and a spark of light. The boy gasped and drew back his hand. Lolla-Wossiky didn't see him, though, because suddenly the boy was invisible. But Lolla-Wossiky had no care for what he saw, for what he felt was the most impossible thing of all:

Silence. Green silence. The black noise was utterly, completely gone. His land-sense had returned, and the ancient injury was healed.

Lolla-Wossiky knelt there, gasping for breath, as the land returned to him the way that it had been before. All these years had passed; he had forgotten how strong it was, to see in all directions, hear the breath of every animal, smell the scent of every plant. A man who has been dry and thirsty until he was at the point of death, and suddenly cold water pours down his throat so fast he can't swallow, can't breathe; it's what he longed for, but much too strong, much too sudden, can't contain it, can't endure it—

"It didn't work," the boy whispered. "I'm sorry."

Lolla-Wossiky opened his good eye, and now for the first time saw the boy as a natural man. Alvin was staring at his bad eye. Lolla-Wossiky wondered why; he reached up, touched his missing eye. The lid still hung over an empty socket. Then he understood. The boy thought that was what he was supposed to heal. No, no, don't be disappointed, child, you healed me from the deep injury; what do I care about this tiny wound? I never lost my sight; it was my land-sense that was gone, and you gave it back to me.

He meant to shout all this to the boy, cry out and sing for the joy of it. But it was all too strong for him. The words never came to his lips. He couldn't even send him visions now because both of them were now awake. The dream was over. They had each been dream beast for the other.

Lolla-Wossiky seized the boy with both hands, pulled him close, kissed him on the forehead, hard and strong, like a father to a son, like brothers, like true friends the day before they die. Then he ran to the window, swung out and dropped to the ground. The earth yielded to his feet as it did to other Red men, as it hadn't done for him in so many years; the grass rose up stronger where he stepped; the bushes parted for him, the leaves softened and yielded as he ran among the trees; and now he did cry out, shouted, sang, caring not at all who heard him. Animals didn't run from him, as they used to; now they came to hear his song; songbirds awoke to sing with him; a deer leapt from the wood and ran beside him through a meadow, and he rested his hand upon her flank.

He ran until he had no breath, and in all that time he met no enemy, he felt no pain; he was whole again, in every way that mattered. He stood on the bank of the Wobbish River, across from the mouth of the Tippy-Canoe, panting, laughing, gasping for air.

Only then did he realize that his hand was still dripping blood from where he had cut himself to give pain to the White boy. His pants and shirt were thick with it. White man's clothing! I never needed it. He stripped it off and flung it into the river.

A funny thing happened. The clothing didn't move. It sat on the surface of the water, not sinking, not sliding leftward with the current.

How could this be? Wasn't the dream over? Wasn't he fully awake yet?

Lolla-Wossiky closed his eye.

Immediately he saw a terrible thing and shouted in fear. As soon as he closed his eye, he saw the black noise again, a great sheet of it, hard and frozen. It was the river. It was the water. It was made of death.

He opened his eye, and it was water again, but still his clothing didn't move.

He closed his eye, and saw that where the clothing was, light sparkled on the surface of the black. It pooled, it shone, it dazzled. It was his own blood shining.

Now he could see that the black noise wasn't a thing. It was nothing. Emptiness. The place where the land ended, and emptiness began; it was the edge of the world. But where his own blood sparkled, it was like a bridge across nothingness. Lolla-Wossiky knelt, his eye still closed, and reached out with his cut and still-bleeding hand, touched the water.

It was solid, warm and solid. He smeared his blood across the surface, and it made a platform. He crawled out onto the platform. It was smooth and hard as ice, only warm, welcoming.

He opened his eye. It was a river again, except that under him it was solid. Wherever his blood had touched, the water was hard and smooth.

He crawled out to where the clothing was, slid it ahead of him. All the way out to the middle of the river he crawled, and beyond the middle, making a thin, glowing bridge of blood to the other side.

What he was doing was impossible. The boy had done much more than heal him. He had changed the order of things. It was frightening and wonderful. Lolla-Wossiky looked down into the water between his hands. His own one-eyed reflection looked back up at him. Then he closed his eye, and a whole new vision leapt to view.

He saw himself standing in a clearing, speaking to a hundred Red men, a thousand, from every tribe. He saw them build a city of lodges, a thousand, five thousand, ten thousand Reds, all of them strong and whole, free of the White man's likker, the White man's hate. In his vision they called him the Prophet, but he insisted that he was not that at all. He was only the door, the open door. Step through, he said, and be strong, one people, one land.

The door. Tenskwa-Tawa.

In his vision, his mother's face appeared, and she said that word to him. Tenskwa-Tawa. It is your name now, for the dreamer is awake.

And more, he saw much more that night, staring downward into the solid water of the Wobbish River, he saw so much that he could never tell it all; in that hour on the water he saw the whole history of the land, the life of every man and woman, White or Red or Black, who ever set foot on it. He saw the beginning and he saw the end. Great wars and petty cruelties, all the murderings of men, all the sins; but also all the goodness, all the beauty.

And above all, a vision of the Crystal City. The city made of water as solid and as clear as glass, water that would never melt, formed into crystal towers so high that they should have cast shadows seven miles across the land. But because they were so pure and clear they cast no shadow at all, the sunlight passed unblocked through every inch and yard and mile of it. Wherever a man or woman stood, they could look deep into the crystal and see all the visions that Lolla-Wossiky saw now. Perfect understanding, that was what they had, seeing with eyes of pure sunlight and speaking with the voice of lightning.

Lolla-Wossiky, who from now on would be named Tenskwa-Tawa, did not know if he would build the Crystal City, or live in it, or even see it before he died. It was enough to do the first things that he saw in the solid water of the Wobbish River. He looked and looked until his mind couldn't see more. Then he crawled across to the far shore, climbed onto the bank, and walked until he came to the meadow he had seen in the vision.

This was where he would call the Reds together, teach them what he saw in his vision, and help them to be, not the strongest, but strong; not the largest, but large; not the freest, but free.

A certain keg in the crotch of a certain tree. All summer it was hidden from view. But the rain still found it, and the heat of high summer, and the insects, and the teeth of salt-hungry squirrels. Wetting, drying, heating, cooling; no keg can last forever in such conditions. It split, just a little, but enough; the liquid inside seeped out, drop by drop; in a few hours the keg was empty.

It didn't matter. No one ever looked for it. No one ever missed it. No one mourned when it broke apart from ice in the winter, the fragments tumbling down the tree into the snow.