Red Prophet

Chapter 14 -- Tippy Canoe

In Prophetstown, no one but the children slept that night. The adults all felt the circling White army; the bidings and hexes cast by the White troops were like trumpets and banners to the land-sense of the Reds.

Not all of them found they had the courage to keep their oath, now that iron-and-fire death was hours away. But they kept the oath this far: They gathered their families and slipped out of Prophetstown, passing silently between companies of White soldiers, who neither heard nor saw them. Knowing they could not die without defending themselves, they left, so that not one Red would mar the perfection of the Prophet's refusal to fight.

Tenskwa-Tawa was not surprised that some left; he was surprised that so many stayed. Almost all. So many who believed in him, so many who would prove that trust in blood. He dreaded the morning; the pain of a single murder close at hand had cursed him with the black noise for many years. True, it was his father who was killed, so the pain was more; but did he love the people of Prophetstown any less than he had loved his father?

Yet he had to fend off the black noise, keep his wits about him, or all their deaths would be in vain. If their dying accomplished nothing, he wouldn't have them do it. So many times he had searched the crystal tower, tying to find some way to approach this day, some path that would lead to something good. The best that he could find was the land divided, Red west of the Mizzipy, White to the east. Even that, though, could be found only through the narrowest of paths. So much depended on the White boys, so much on Tenskwa-Tawa, so much on White Murderer Harrison himself. For in all the paths in which Harrison showed any mercy, the massacre of Tippy-Canoe did nothing to stop the destruction of the Reds, and, with them, the land. In all those paths, the Red men dwindled, confined to tiny preserves of desolate land, until the whole land was White, and therefore brutalized into submission, stripped and cut and ravished, giving vast amounts of food that was only an imitation of the true harvest, poisoned into life by alchemical trickery. Even the White man suffered in those visions of the future, but it would be many generations before he realized what he had done. Yet here—Prophetstown—there was a day—tomorrow—when the future could be turned onto an unlikely path, but a better one. One that would lead to a living land after all, even if it was truncated; one that would lead someday to a crystal city catching sunlight and turning it into visions of truth for all who lived within it.

That was Tenskwa-Tawa's hope, that he could cling to the bright vision through all of tomorrow's pain, and so turn that pain, that blood, that black noise of murder, to an event that would change the world.

Even before the first detectable rays of light rose above the horizon, Tenskwa-Tawa felt the coming dawn. He felt it partly in the stirring of life to the east. He could feel it from farther off than any other Red. He felt it also, though, from the movements among the Whites as they prepared to light the matches for their cannon. Four fires, hidden and therefore revealed by spells and witchery. Four cannon, poised to rake the city, end to end.

Tenskwa-Tawa walked through the city, humming softly. They heard him, and awakened their children. The White men thought to kill them in their sleep, faceless within their wigwams and lodges. Instead, they emerged in the darkness, walking surefooted to the broad meadow of the meeting ground. There wasn't room enough for all of them even to sit. They stood, families together, father and mother with their children in the circle of their embrace, waiting for the White man to spill their blood.

"The earth will not soak up your blood," Tenskwa-Tawa had promised diem. "It will flow into the river, and I will hold it there, all the power of all your lives and all your deaths, and I will use it to keep the land alive, and bind the White man to the lands he has already captured and begun to kill."

So now Tenskwa-Tawa made his way to the bank of the Tippy-Canoe, watching the meadow fill up with his people, of whom so many would die before him because they believed in his words.

"Stand with me today, Mr. Miller," said General Harrison. "It's your kin whose blood we'll avenge today. I want you to have the honor of firing the first bullet in this war."

Mike Fink watched as the hot-eyed miller carefully rammed wad and shot down his musket barrel. Mike knew the thirst for murder in his eyes. It was a kind of madness that came on a man, and it made him dangerous, made him able to do things beyond his normal reach. Mike was just as glad that miller didn't know just when and how his boy had died. Oh, Governor Bill hadn't never told him right out who that young man was, but Mike Fink wasn't a boy in short pants, and he knew all right. Harrison played a deep game, but one thing was sure. He'd do anything to raise himself higher and put more land and people under his control. And Mike Fink knew that Harrison would only keep him around as long as he was useful.

The funny thing was, you see, that Mike Fink didn't think of himself as a murderer. He thought of life as a contest, and dying was what happened to those who came out second best, but it wasn't the same as murder, it was a fair fight. Like how he killed Hooch—Hooch didn't have to be so careless. Hooch could have noticed Mike wasn't on the shore with the other poleboys, Hooch could have been watchful and wary, and if he had been, why, Mike Fink might well have died. So Hooch lost his life because he lost the contest—the contest he and Mike were both playing for.

But that boy yesterday, he wasn't a player. He wasn't in the contest at all. He just wanted to go home. Mike Fink never wrassled a man who didn't want a fight, and he never killed a man who wasn't set to kill him first if he got a chance. Yesterday was the first time he had ever killed somebody just cause he was told to, and he didn't like it, didn't like it one bit. Mike could see now that Governor Bill thought he had killed Hooch that same way, just because he was told to. But it wasn't so. And today Mike Fink looked at the young man's father, with all that rage in his eyes, and he said to that man—but silently, so nobody could hear—he said, I'm with you, I agree with you that the man who killed your boy should die.

Trouble was, Mike Fink was that man. And he was plain ashamed.

Same thing with them Red men in Prophetstown. What kind of contest was it, to wake them up with grapeshot whistling through their own houses, setting them afire, cutting into their bodies, the bodies of children and women and old men?

Not my kind of fight, thought Mike Fink.

The first light of dawn came into the sky. Prophetstown was still nothing but shadows, but it was time. Alvin Miller aimed his musket right into the thick of the houses, and then he fired.

A few seconds later, the cannons banged out their answer. Maybe a few more seconds, and the first flame appeared in the town.

The cannons fired again. Yet not a soul ran screaming out of the wigwams. Not even the ones that were afire.

Didn't anybody else notice it? Didn't they realize that the Reds were all gone out of Prophetstown? And if they were gone, that meant they knew all about this morning's attack. And if they knew, that meant they might be ready, lying in ambush. Or maybe they all escaped, or maybe-Mike Fink's lucky amulet was nearly burning him, it felt so hot. He knew what that meant. Time to go. Something real bad was going to happen to him if he stayed.

So he slid off down the line of soldiers—or what passed for soldiers, since there hadn't been more than a day or two for training some of these raw farmers. Nobody paid no heed to Mike Fink. They were too busy watching the wigwams burn. Some of them had finally noticed that nobody seemed to be in the Red city, and they were talking about it, worried. Mike said nothing, kept moving along the line, down toward the creek.

The cannon were all on the high ground; they sounded farther away. Mike emerged from the trees into the cleared ground that ran down to the river. There he stopped short and stared. The dawn was still just a grey streak in the distance, but there was no mistaking what he saw. Thousands and thousands of Reds, standing shoulder to shoulder in the meadow. Some were crying softly—no doubt stray shrapnel and musket balls had come this far, since two of the cannons were on the opposite side of the city from here, firing this direction. But they weren't making a move to defend themselves. It wasn't an ambush. They had no weapons. These Red folks were all lined up to die.

There was maybe a dozen canoes up and down the bank of the river. Mike Fink pushed one out into the water and rolled himself aboard. Downstream, that's where he'd go, all the way down the Wobbish to the Hio. It wasn't war today, it was massacre, and that just wasn't Mike Fink's kind of fight. Nearly everybody's got a thing so bad he just won't do it.

In the darkness of the root cellar, Measure couldn't see if Alvin was really there or not. But he could hear his voice, soft but urgent, riding in over the crest of the pain. "I'm trying to fix you, Measure, but I need your help."

Measure couldn't answer. Speech wasn't one of the things he could manage right at the moment.

"I've fixed your neck, and some of your ribs, and the guts that got tore up," said Alvin. "And your left arm bones were pretty much in a line, so they're all right, can you feel that?"

It was true that there wasn't no pain coming from Measure's left arm. He moved it. It jostled the whole rest of his body, but it could move, it had some strength in it.

"Your ribs," said Alvin. "Poking out. You got to push them back in place."

Measure pushed on one and nearly fainted from the pain. "I can't."

"You got to."

"Make it not hurt."

"Measure, I don't know how. Not without making it so you can't move. You just got to stand it. Everything you get back in place, I can fix it, and then it won't hurt no more, but first you got to straighten it, you got to."

"You do it."

"I can't."

"Just reach out and do it, Alvin, you're big for ten, you can do it."

"I can't."

"I once cut your bone for you, to save your life, I once did that."

"Measure, I can't do it cause I ain't there."

This made no sense to Measure. So he knew he was dreaming. Well, if he was dreaming, why didn't he come up with some dream where things didn't hurt so bad?

"Push on the bone, Measure."

Alvin just wouldn't go away. So Measure pushed, and it hurt him. But Alvin was as good as his word. Soon after, the place where he straightened out the bone didn't hurt no more.

It took so long. He was so tore up that it seemed there just wasn't no end to the pain. But in between times, while Alvin was making things heal up where he just fixed the bones, Measure explained to Alvin what had happened to him, and Alvin told him what he knew, and pretty soon Measure understood that there was a lot more to this than saving the life of one young man in a root cellar.

Finally, finally it was over. Measure couldn't hardly believe it. He had hurt so much for so many hours that it felt downright strange not to hurt anywhere.

He heard the thump, thump of cannon firing. "Can you hear that, Alvin?" he asked.

Alvin couldn't.

"The shooting's started. The cannon."

"Then run, Measure. Go as fast as you can."

"Alvin, I'm in a root cellar. They barred the door."

Alvin cussed with a couple of words that Measure didn't know the boy had ever heard.

"Alvin, I got me a hole half-dug here in the back. You got such a knack with stone, I wondered if you could loosen things up for me here, so I could dig out real fast."

And that's how it worked out. Measure rolled himself into the hole and just closed his eyes and pawed at the dirt above his head. It was nothing like digging the day before, rubbing his fingers raw on the dirt. It just fell away, slid off him; when he reached up to dig more, the dirt slipped under his shoulders, and there it firmed right up, so that he didn't even have to think about moving the dirt out of the hole, it was just filling up underneath him. He kicked, and his legs jostled the dirt loose, so his whole body was rising up the same way.

Swimming through dirt, that's what I'm doing, he thought, and he started to laugh, it was so easy and so strange.

His laugh was finished in the open air. He was on top, just behind the root cellar. The sky was pretty light—the sun would be up in just a minute or so. The booming of the cannon had stopped. Did that mean it was over, too late? Maybe, though, they were just letting the guns cool. Or moving them to another place. Or maybe the Reds even managed to capture the guns—But would that be good news? Right or wrong, his brothers and his father were with them guns, and if the Reds won this battle, some of his kin might die. It was one thing to know that the Reds were in the right and the Whites in the wrong; it was something else to wish defeat on your own family, defeat and maybe death. He had to stop the battle, and so he ran, like he never done before. Alvin's voice was gone, now, but Measure didn't need to be encouraged. He fair to flew down that road.

He met two people on the way. One was Mrs. Hatch, who was driving her wagon along the road, loaded down with supplies. When she saw Measure, she screamed—he was wearing a loincloth and filthy as could be, and she couldn't be blamed for thinking he was a Red all set to scalp her. She was off that wagon and running before Measure could so much as call her name. Well, that was fine with him. He nearly tore the horse from the wagon, he worked so fast, and then he was riding bareback, galloping along the road hoping that the horse wouldn't trip and spill him.

The other person he met along the way was Armor-of-God. Armor was kneeling in the middle of the common green, out front of his store, praying his heart out while the cannon roared and the muskets crackled across the river. Measure hailed him, and Armor looked up with a face like as if he'd seen Jesus resurrected. "Measure!" he shouted. "Stop, stop!"

Measure was all set to go on, to say he had no time, but then Armor was out in the middle of the way, and the horse was shy to go around him, so he did stop. "Measure, are you an angel or alive?"

"Alive, no thanks to Harrison. Tried to murder me, he did. I'm alive and so is Alvin. This whole thing was Harrison's doing, and I've got to put a stop to it."

"Well you can't go like that," said Armor. "Wait, I said! You can't just show up wearing a loincloth and covered up with dirt like that, somebody's going to think you're a Red and shoot you on the spot!"

"Then hop on this horse behind me, and give me your clothing on the way!"

So Measure hoisted Armor-of-God onto the horse behind him, and they rode out to the river crossing.

Peter Ferryman's wife was there to run the winch. One look at Measure was enough to tell her all she needed to know. "Hurry," she said. "It's so bad, the river's running scarlet."

On the ferry, Armor stripped off his clothes while Measure ducked himself in the water, blood and all, to wash some of the dirt away. He didn't come out clean, but at least he looked somewhat like a White man. Still wet, he put on Armor's shirt and trousers, and then his waistcoat. They didn't fit too good, Armor being a smaller man, but Measure shrugged on the coat all the same. While he did, he said, "Sorry to leave you with just your summerjohns."

"I'd stand naked half the day in front of all the ladies in church if it would stop this massacre," said Armor. If he said more, Measure didn't hear it, cause he was already on his way.

Nothing was the way Alvin Miller Senior thought that it would be. He'd imagined shooting his musket at the same screaming savages who cut up and killed his boys. But the city turned up empty, and they found the Reds all gathered in Speaking Meadow, just like they was ready for a sermon from the Prophet. Miller never knowed there was so many Reds in Prophetstown, cause he never seen them all in the same place like this. But they were Reds, weren't they? So he shot his musket all the same, just like the other men, firing and reloading, hardly looking at whether his shot hit anything. How could he miss, them all standing together so close? The bloodlust was on him then, he was crazy with anger and the power to kill. He didn't notice how some of the other men were getting quieter. Shooting less often. He just loaded and fired, loaded and fired, stepping a yard or two closer every time, out from the cover of the forest, out into the open; only when the cannon got moved into place did he stop shooting, make way for them, watched them mow great swaths through the mass of Reds.

That was the first time he really noticed what all was happening to the Reds, what they were doing, what they werent doing. They weren't screaming. They weren't fighting back. They were just standing there, men and women and children, just looking out at the White men who were killing them. Not a one even turned his back to the hail of shrapnel. Not a parent tried to shield a child from the blast. They just stood, waited, died.

The grapeshot carved gaps in the crowd; the only thing to stop the spray of metal was human bodies. Miller saw them fall. Them as could, got up again, or at least knelt, or raised their heads above the mass of corpses so that the next blast would take them and kill them.

What is it, do they want to die?

Miller looked around him. He and the men with him were standing in a sea of corpses—they had already walked out to where the outer edges of the crowd of Reds had been. Right at his feet, the body of a boy no older than Alvin lay curled, his eye blown out by a musket ball. Maybe my own musket ball, thought Miner. Maybe I killed this boy.

During the lulls between cannon volleys, Miller could hear men crying. Not the Reds, the ones still living, huddled in an ever-smaller mass down toward the river. No, the men crying were his neighbors, White men standing beside him, or behind the line. Some of them were talking, pleading. Stop it, they said. Please, stop it.

Please stop. Were they talking to the cannon? Or to the Red men and women, who insisted on standing there, not trying to escape, not crying out in fear? Or to their children, who faced the guns as bravely as their parents? Or did they speak to the terrible gnawing pain in their own hearts, to see what they had done, were doing, would yet do?

Miller noticed that the blood didn't soak into the grass of the meadow. As it poured out of the wounds of those most recently hit, it formed rivulets, streams, great sheets of blood flowing down the slope of the meadow, toward the Tippy-Canoe Creek. The morning sunlight on this bright clear day shone vivid red from the water of the creek.

While he was watching, all at once the water of the creek went smooth as glass. The sunlight didn't dance on the water now, it reflected like a mirror, near blinding him. But he could still see a solitary Red man walking on the water, just like Jesus in the story, standing on the water in the middle of the creek.

It wasn't just a whimper behind him anymore. It was a shout, from more and more men. Stop shooting! Stop it! Put down your guns! And then others, talking about the man standing on the water.

A bugle sounded. The men fell silent. "Time to finish them, men!" shouted Harrison. He was on a prancing stallion at the head of the meadow, leading the way down the blood-slick hill. None of the farmer folk were with him, but his uniformed soldiers formed a line and came along, bayonets fixed. Where once ten thousand Reds had stood, there was just a field of bodies, and maybe a thousand, a ragged remnant, gathered near the water at the bottom of the hill.

That was the moment when a tall young White man ran from the wood at the bottom of the hill, dressed in a suit too small, his feet bare, his coat and waistcoat all unbuttoned, his hair wet and tousled, and face grimy and wet. But Miller knew him, knew him before he heard his voice.

"Measure!" he cried. "It's my boy Measure!"

He threw down his musket and ran out into the field of corpses, down the hill toward his son.

"My boy Measure! He's alive! You're alive!"

Then he slipped in the blood, or maybe he tripped on a body, but whatever happened he fell, his hands splashing into a river of blood, spattering his chest and face.

He heard Measure's voice, not ten yards away, shouting out so every man could hear him. "The Reds who captured me were hired by Harrison. Ta-Kumsaw and Tenskwa-Tawa saved me. When I came home two days ago, Harrison's soldiers captured me and wouldn't let me tell you the truth. He even tried to kill me." Measure spoke slow and clear, so every word carried, every sound was understood. "He knew all the time. This whole thing, Harrison planned it all along. The Reds are innocent. You're killing innocent people."

Miller stood up from the bloody field and raised his hands high over his head, thick blood running from his scarlet hands. A cry was wrung from his throat, forced out by anguish, by despair. "What have I done! What have I done!" The cry was echoed by a dozen, a hundred, three hundred voices.

And there was General Harrison on his prancing horse, out in front of everybody. Even his own soldiers had thrown down their guns by now.

"It's a lie!" cried Harrison. "I never saw this boy! Someone has played a terrible trick on me!"

"It ain't no trick!" shouted Measure. "Here's his kerchief—they stuffed it in my mouth yesterday, to gag me while they broke my bones!"

Miller could see the kerchief clearly in his son's hand. It had the WHH embroidered in large, clear letters in the corner. Every man in that army had seen his handkerchiefs.

And now some of Harrison's own soldiers spoke up. "It's true! We brought this boy to Harrison two days ago."

"We didn't know he was one of the boys they all said the Reds had killed!"

A high, howling cry floated over the meadow. They all looked down to where the one-eyed Prophet stood on the solid, scarlet water of the Tippy-Canoe.

"Come to me, my people!" he said.

The surviving Reds walked, slowly, steadily toward the water. They walked across it, then gathered on the other side. "All my people, come!"

The corpses rustled, moved. The White men standing among them cried out in terror. But the dead were not riging up to walk—only the wounded who still breathed, they were the ones who rose up, staggered. Some of them tried to carry children, babies—they had no strength for it:

Miller saw and felt the blood on his own hands. He had to do something, didn't he? So he reached out to a struggling woman, whose husband leaned against her for support, meaning to take the baby from her arms and carry it for her. But when he came near, she looked into his face, and he saw his own reflection in her eyes—his face haggard, White, spattered with blood, his hands dripping with blood. Tiny as it was, he saw that reflection as clear as if it had been on a mirror held in front of his own face. He couldn't touch her baby, not with hands like his.

Some of the other White men on the hill also tried to help, but they must have seen something like what Miller saw, and they recoiled as if they had been burned.

Maybe a thousand wounded got up and tried to reach the creek. Many of them collapsed and died before they got there. Those that reached the water walked, staggered, crawled across; they were helped by the Reds on the other side.

Miller noticed something peculiar. All those wounded Reds, all the uninjured ones, they had walked on this meadow, they had walked across the blood-red river, and yet there wasn't a spot of blood on their hands or feet.

"All my people, all who died—Come home, says the land!"

All around them, the meadow was strewn with bodies—by far the majority of those who had stood there as living families only an hour before. Now, at the Prophet's words, these bodies seemed to shudder, to crumble; they collapsed and sank into the grass of the meadow. It took perhaps a minute, and they were gone, the grass springing up lush and green. The last of the blood skittered down the slope like beads of water on a hot griddle and became part of the bright red creek.

"Come to me, my friend Measure." The Prophet spoke quietly, and held out his hand.

Measure turned his back on his father and walked down the grassy slope to the water's edge.

"Walk to me," said the Prophet.

"I can't walk on the blood of your people," he said.

"They gave their blood to lift you up," said the Prophet. "Come to me, or take the curse that will fall on every White man in that meadow."

"I reckon I'll stay here, then," said Measure. "If I'd've been in their place, I don't figure I'd've done a thing different than what they did. If they're guilty, so am I."

The Prophet, nodded.

Every White man there felt something warm and wet and sticky on his hands. Some of them cried out when they saw. From elbow to hands, they dripped with blood. Some tried to wipe it off on their shirts. Some searched for wounds that might be bleeding, but there were no wounds. Just bloody hands.

"Do you want your hands to be clean of the blood of my people?" asked the Prophet. He wasn't shouting anymore, but they all heard him, every word. And yes, yes, they wanted their hands to be clean.

"Then go home and tell this story to your wives and children, to your neighbors, to your friends. Tell the whole story. Leave nothing out. Don't say that someone fooled you—you all knew when you fired on people who had no weapons that what you did was murder. No matter whether you thought some of us might have committed some crime. When you shot at babies in their mothers' anus, little children, old men and women, you were murdering us because we were Red. So tell the story as it happened, and if you tell it true, your hands will be clean."

There wasn't a man, on that meadow who wasn't weeping or trembling or faint with shame. To tell of this day's work to their wives and children, their parents, their brothers and sisters, that seemed unbearable. But if they didn't, these bloody hands would ten the story for them. It was more than they could bear to think of.

But the Prophet wasn't through. "If some stranger comes along, and you don't tell him the whole story before you sleep, then the blood will come back on your hands, and stay there until you do tell him. That's how it will be for the rest of your lives—every man and woman that you meet will have to hear the true story from your lips, or your hands will be filthy again. And if you ever, for any reason, kill another human being, then your hands and face will drip with blood forever, even in the grave."

They nodded, they agreed. It was justice, simple justice. They couldn't give back the lives of those they killed, but they could make sure no lie was ever told about the way that they were killed. No one could ever claim that Tippy-Canoe was a victory, or even a battle. It was a massacre, and White men committed it, and not one Red raised a hand in violence or defense. No excuse, no softening; it would be known.

Only one thing remained—the guilt of the man on the prancing stallion.

"White Murderer Harrison!" called the Prophet. "Come to me!"

Harrison shook his head, tried to turn his horse; the reins slipped from his bloody hands, and the horse walked briskly down the hill. All the White men watched him silently, hating him for how he lied to them, stirred them up, found the murder in their hearts and called it forth. The horse brought him to the water's edge. He looked downward at the one-eyed Red who had once sat under his table and begged for drops of whiskey from his cup.

"Your curse is the same," said the Prophet, "except that your story is much longer and uglier to tell. And you won't wait for strangers to come along before you speak—every day of your life you'll have to find someone who has never heard the story from your lips before, and tell it to him—every day! --or your hands will drip with blood. And if you decide to hide, and live with blood-soaked hands rather than find new people to tell, you'll feel the pain of my people's wounds, one new wound each day, until you tell the story again, once for every day you missed. Don't try to kill yourself, either—you can't do it. You'll wander from one end of this White man's land to the other. People will see you coming and hide, dreading the sound of your voice; you'll beg them to stop and listen to you. They'll even forget your old name, and call you by the name you earned today. Tippy-Canoe. That's your new name, White Murderer Harrison. Your true name, till you die a natural death as an old, old man."

Harrison bent onto the mane of the horse and wept into his bloody hands. But his were tears of fury, not grief or shame. Tears of rage that all his plans had gone awry. He would kill the Prophet even now, if he could. He would search far and wide for some witch or wizard who could break this curse. He couldn't bear to let this miserable one-eyed Red defeat him.

Measure spoke to the Prophet from the shore. "Where will you go now, Tenskwa-Tawa?"

"West," said Tenskwa-Tawa. "My people, all who still believe in me, we'll go west of the Mizzipy. When you tell your story, tell White men this—that west of the Mizzipy is Red man's land. Don't come there. The land can't bear the touch of a White man's foot. You breathe out death; your touch is poison; your words are lies; the living land won't have you."

He turned his back, walked to the Reds waiting for him on the other shore, and helped an injured child walk up the far slope into the trees. Behind him, the water of the Tippy-Canoe began to flow again.

Miller walked down the slope to where his son stood on the bank of the creek. "Measure," he said, "Measure, Measure."

Measure turned and reached out his hands to embrace his father. "Alvin's alive, Father, far to the east of us. He's with Ta-Kumsaw, and he—"

But Miller hushed him, held his son's hands out. They dripped blood, just like Miller's own. Miller shook his head. "It's my fault," he said. "All my fault."

"Not all, Father," said Measure. "There's fault enough for everyone to share."

"But not for you, Son. That's my shame on your hands."

"Well, then, maybe you'll feel it less, for having two of us to carry it. " Measure reached out and took his father by the shoulders, held him close. "We've seen the worst that men can do, Pa, and been the worst that men can be. But that don't mean that someday we won't see the best, too. And if we can never be perfect after this, well, we can still be pretty good, can't we?"

Maybe, thought Miller. But he doubted it. Or maybe he just doubted that he'd ever believe it, even if it were true. He'd never look into his own heart again and like what he found there.

They waited there on the riverbank for Miller's other sons. They came with bloody hands—David, Calm, Wastenot, Wantnot. David held his hands in front of him and wept. "I wish that I had died with Vigor in the Hatrack River!"

"No you don't," said Calm.

"I'd be dead, but I'd be clean."

The twins said nothing, but held each other's cold and slimy hands.

"We need to go home," said Measure.

"No," said Miller.

"They'll be worried," said Measure. "Ma, the girls, Cally."

Miller remembered his parting from Faith. "She said that if I—if this—"

"I know how Ma talks, but I also know your children need their pa, and she won't keep you out."

"I'll have to tell her. What we did."

"Yes, and the girls and Cally, too. We each have to tell them, and Calm and David have their wives to tell. Best do it now, and clean our hands, and get on with our lives. All of us at once, all of us together. And I have a story to tell you, too, about me and Alvin. When we've done with this tale, I'll tell mine, is that good? Will you stay for that?"

Armor met them at the Wobbish. The ferry was already on the other side, still unloading, and other men had took all the boats they used for crossing last night. So they stood and waited.

Measure stripped off his bloody coat and trousers, but Armor wouldn't put them on. Armor didn't make no accusations, but none of the others would look at their brother-in-law. Measure took him aside and told him about the curse while the ferry was slowly drawn back across the river. Armor listened, then walked to Miller, whose back was to him, looking at the far shore.

"Father," said Armor-of-God.

"You were right, Armor," said Miller, still not looking at him. He held up his hands. "Here it is, the proof that you were right."

"Measure tells me that I have to hear the story once from all of you," said Armor, turning to include them all in his speech. "But then you'll never hear another word of it from me. I'm still your son and brother, if you'll have me; my wife is your daughter and your sister, and you're the only kin I have out here."

"To your shame," whispered David.

"Don't punish me because my hands are clean," said Armor.

Calm held out a bloody hand. Armor took it without hesitation, shook firmly, then let go.

"Look at that," said Calm. "You touch us, it comes off on you."

In answer, Armor held out that same stained hand to Miller. After a while, Miller took it. The handshake lasted till the ferry came. Then they headed on home.