Them Bones

Leake IX

There was a new sound on the River.

Part metallic clang, part wooden knock, it came from the bend of the River.

Guys with conch shells on the lookout mounds began to blow them. Everyone took off for the canoe landing.

Took was in the hut. Sunflower came around from the garden patch. She brushed dirt from her hands.

Sun Man and a delegation stopped outside Took’s hut.

‘The ones on the River are the ones you want to see,’ Took said to me.

He stood, pulled on a bright feather mantle, then picked up the rolled bag of pipes he had been working on all winter.

I went out with him, stood behind some of the minor nobles, then we all walked through the village, out the river gate and down toward the water.

Half the village was standing and waiting there already. A plume of smoke rose up through the trees downriver. I felt we were in the old Currier and Ives print, ‘Waiting on the Levee.’

It appeared around the bend.

It had been so long since I’d seen any machinery I’d almost forgotten what it was like. The prow appeared, broad, flat and low. Then the front of the second deck, then the third. All painted bright red with yellow stripes like a hot dog covered with mustard. There were tall fair figures on the deck.

They had horns.

There was the long blast of a whistle, then the roar of a foghorn. The people onshore jumped and held their ears. The ship turned in toward the canoe landing, the figure on the prow casting a plumbline again and again before him.

The craft had two paddlewheels amidships. Above the upper deck flew a pennon with a red scimitar on a white field.

The figures in the pilothouse wore bright red robes and turbans.

There was another blast on the horn and a long release of steam from somewhere amidships. The paddles stopped, reversed, backed water. The ship, as big as the temple mound, slid quietly into the landing, as stately as a hotel.

The front of the ship, a drawbridge type ramp, arced over slowly and jerked down to the ground of the bank.

There was another piercing whistle and the people of the village began to cheer.

A short man in a robe and turban, followed by others dressed in robes or leather pants and jerkins, carrying arquebuses and blunderbusses, stepped to the top of the ramp.

‘Took, my old friend,’ he said in Greek. ‘Tell Sun Man and your people hello and that we come to trade, even up, sky is the limit, for whatever and how much?’

Took turned to the people, nodded to Sun Man, made a short speech.

The people yelled wildly, jumped around, began laying their wares, skins, weapons, art and food out onto their blankets on the ground.

The men came down the planks, all smiles, holding their hands out to hug Took, and bow to Sun Man. The deckhands, some in loose pants and fezzes, others in their horned and beaked helmets, began unloading the trade goods of the ship into the open area above the landing.

‘This,’ said Took, ‘is Aroun el Hama, king of merchants.’

‘And this,’ he continued, ‘is Madison Yazoo Leake.’

‘Hello,’ I said in Greek.

He looked at me. He was small, with hard dark eyes, a coal-black beard and salt and pepper mustache. A small scar went from his left eyebrow to his missing left earlobe.

‘By Ibram,’ he said, ‘are you a southerner gone wild on us?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘much farther away than that, I fear.’

‘Your accent,’ said el Hama. ‘You learned the language nowhere I know.’

‘I’m sure you two will want to talk tonight,’ said Took. ‘Aroun, they’re going to kill us all if we don’t get some trading done.’ People were yelling and pointing to their goods all up and down the landing.

‘Yaz,’ said Took. ‘Give us a hand, will you?’ He pointed over to where one of the guys with a horned helmet was arguing in one language with a village woman arguing in another.

I went over to help. It took a while, what with my trouble with the moundbuilder language, and the accent of the northerner, a big red-headed dude, to find that they had argued the price both up and down and had passed the price they had both agreed to long before.

It was going to be a long hot day.