Matthew Corbett 03 - Mister Slaughter

misguided savages, building to the moment when I stepped upon the stage and with sign language alerted the hero to the oncoming attack. Some such thing. As time went on and I grew older, the novelty of my stoic silence wore off, and I was required to speak a few lines. I remember one: Beware the wrath of the Iroquois, as they shall strip your scalps ' He frowned, searching for the rest of it. ' As surely as the locust strips the cornplants, yonder in the field.' He solemnly raised his right hand, toward the paper cornplants in the painted field.

Matthew thought that the low firelight might indeed pass for the footlamps. On the boulder behind Walker his shadow was thrown as upon a canvas backdrop. 'And that was enough to drive you insane? Playing a part on the stage?'

'No, not that. In fact, it was a very interesting experience. I was tended to, fed and watered very well, and I was taught your language by some very capable teachers. People came to see me by the hundreds. The thousands, I suppose. I was shown off at garden parties and in grand ballrooms. I was may I say the object of affection from a few daring ladies. But that was then. Later when first a new Indian was brought to the stage, and then another, and another yet Jonathan Redskin's days of valor were numbered. I was cast as the villain in a new play, which served to prolong my career, but the truth was I could not act. My finest scene was a death sprawl, in which I lay motionless at center stage for three minutes with my eyes open. But I was no longer a boy, and I was no longer a sensation. I was simply one of many.'

Walker paused to add a few more sticks to the fire. 'One of many,' he repeated. 'In a foreign land.' He took a long breath and let it slowly out. 'I was sold,' he said flatly. 'To another acting company. They toured the countryside. I was required to do the same as I had done, in town halls, pastures, barns and warehouses. Wherever we might set up. Of course the people flocked in, to see oh, I was called 'The Savage Adam' that time around. Things were good for awhile, but soon there was always another Savage Adam, it seemed, who had just passed that way and played a week's engagement. In one village I was accused of being an Englishman in makeup, because I'd spoken to a man there who thought my speech was too civilized. So I was sold again. And sold again, about a year after that. Then, sold once more within six months. Until at last ' He looked directly at Matthew. 'Have you ever seen a mishap of nature?'

'A mishap?'

'A person,' Walker corrected, 'who is a mishap of nature. A malformed human being. A dwarf, or a man with claw hands, or a woman with three arms. A boy who sweats blood. Have you ever seen any of those?'

'No,' Matthew replied, though he could certainly relate to any boy who sweated blood.

'I was the Demon Indian,' said Walker, in a quiet, faraway voice. 'The Lucifer of the New World. The sign on my cage said so. The red paint on my face, the horns on my head those said so, too. And Mr. Oxley, the show's owner-poor old drunken Mr. Oxley-told me to make sure I rattled the bars of my cage, to throw myself against them, and holler and growl like a fiend from Hell. Some nights I had part of a chicken to gnaw upon. Then when the people had gone, I came out of my cage and took off my horns and all of us-all of us mishaps of nature-packed up to go to the next town. And there stood Mr. Oxley with his silver watch-very much like this one-telling everyone to hurry, telling everyone that tomorrow night in Guildford there was a fortune to be made, or the next night in Winchester, or the night after that in Salisbury. He said, hurry there! Hurry up! He said we had to hurry, through the night along the little roads, because time was wasting, because time was money, and because time never stops for an Englishman.'

Walker turned the watch in his hands. 'Mr. Oxley,' he said, 'hurried himself to his death. He was already worn out. It was the gin that finished him off. The rest of us divided what money we had and that was the end of the show. I dressed in my English suit, went to Portsmouth and bought passage on a ship. I came home. I went back to my people. But I brought my insanity and my demons with me, and they will never let me be.'

'I still don't understand what you mean.'

Walker closed his eyes for a few seconds and then opened them again. 'From the first moment I saw the city of London,' he said, 'the demons came to me. They began their whispering in my ear, day and night. In my dreams I see them as high-collared Englishmen with gold coins and jewels in their fists. They have eyes like fire-pits, and they say, Look upon what will be. All those buildings, roads, coaches, and people. A hundred thousand chimneys, spouting black smoke. All that noise, like the beating of great drums that you can never find nor understand. All that confusion, and constant rushing like mad human rivers. The demons whispered: this is the future. Of everywhere. Not only of the English New York, and Philadelphia, and of every town the English build upon the earth. But for the Seneca, or the Mohawk, or any of my nation there will be no place left, among all those buildings and roads and noise. Oh, we'll fight for a place, yes, but we won't win. That's what my demons tell me; that's what they've shown me, and to make me insane they have ensured that no other of my tribe will believe it, because it is beyond belief. The world will be strange. My nation will no longer be part of it. All we have created all that is important to us gone, under the buildings and the roads, and all we hear will be lost to the noise.'

He looked at Matthew and nodded. 'Don't think you shall escape it. Someday you'll see your world and not know it, and think it strange monstrous, even. And you and your Englishmen will yearn for what was lost, and never be able to find it again, for that is the demon's trick. To point the way forward, but to close the way back.'

Matthew ventured, 'I suppose that's called progress.'

'There is progress,' Walker agreed, 'and there is rushing toward an illusion. The first takes wisdom and a plan, the second can be done by any drunken fool. I know how that story ends.' He regarded the watch again. 'I will think of Mr. Oxley whenever I look at this. I will think of him hurrying through the night, toward a fortune that never existed, with a wagon full of mishaps of nature. And I will think that the greatest thing for a man-and maybe the hardest thing-is to make peace with the passage of time. Or the stopping of his own time.' He returned the watch to the bag, and gathered up his cloak, his bow and quiver, and the belt with his knife. 'It's not raining anymore. I'll find another place.'

'You can stay here.'

'No, I can't. I won't be far away, though. I believe we have four or five hours before light, so there's still plenty of time to sleep. Take it while you can.'

'All right. Thank you.' It was all Matthew could think to say. He watched as Walker strode off into the dark beyond the fire, which seemed a familiar place for the Indian to be. At last Matthew lay down and tried his best to relax, if that would ever be possible again. But weariness is weariness, after all, and slowly he began to drift off. His last sense of anything was hearing the voice of a nightbird far away in the woods, which stirred some memory that did not linger, but departed on silent wings.

Twenty

'So,' said the Reverend, 'you've had a good year, then?'

'Yes, sir. Very good,' Peter Lindsay answered. 'A bumper crop of corn, apples a'plenty, and pumpkins still on the vine. You must have seen them, out in the field.'

'I did. Peter, you're a blessed man. To have such a farm as this, and such a lovely family. I was speaking with a fellow not long ago about greed. You know, how greed can lead a man into the valley of destruction. It's good that you're not greedy, Peter, and that you're satisfied with your position in life.'

'I am, sir, and thank you.'

'Well, we certainly need the glories of the farm, don't we? Just as we need ' He paused, tapping his chin with one forefinger, which had a long and ragged nail.

'The glories of Heaven?' asked Peter's wife, Faith, who was preparing the midday meal at the hearth across the room. Her kitchen was a glory of its own: clean and tidy, with walls of pale yellow pinewood, an orderly arrangement of cups and platters on shelves and in the arched fireplace itself the frying pans, trivets, spider skillets, iron pots, bake kettle, pot hooks and other vessels and tools that kept a home in operation and the family fed.

'Exactly that,' the reverend agreed.

The youngest child, Robin, had been helping her mother. Now she came toward the reverend, who sat at the head of the table nursing a cup of cider, and showed him something she'd brought from the other room. She was