Red Prophet Page 0,100
were clumsy, but then he was able to feel his way into the stone and find the natural creases and folds, and then break them apart. For his fourth arrowhead, he didn't chip at all. Just used his fingers and gently pulled the arrowhead away from the flint.
Ta-Kumsaw's face showed no expression. That's what most White folks thought he looked like all the time. They thought Red men, and most especially Ta-Kumsaw, never felt nothing cause they never let nobody see their feelings. Alvin had seen him laugh, though, and cry, and all the other faces that a man can show. So he knowed that when Ta-Kumsaw showed nothing on his face, that meant he was feeling a whole lot of things.
"I worked with stone a lot before," said Alvin. He felt like he was sort of apologizing.
"Flint isn't stone," said Ta-Kumsaw. "Pebbles in the river, boulders, those are stone. This is living rock, rock with fire in it, the hard earth that the land gives to us freely. Not hewn out and tortured the way White men do with iron." He held up Alvin's fourth arrowhead, the one he cajoled out of the flint with his fingers. "Steel can never have an edge this sharp."
"It's just about as perfect an edge as I ever saw," said Al.
"No chip marks," said Ta-Kumsaw. "No pressing. A Red man would see this flint and say, The land grew the flint this way."
"But you know better," said Al. "You know it's just a knack I got.
"A knack bends the land," said Ta-Kumsaw. "Like a snag in the river churns the water on the river's face. So it is with the land when a White uses his knack. Not you."
Alvin puzzled on that for a minute. "You mean you can see where other folks did their doodlebug or beseeching or hex or charm?"
"Like the bad stink when a sick man loosens his bowel," said Ta-Kumsaw. "But you - what you do is clean. Like part of the land. I thought I would teach you how to be Red. Instead the land gives you arrowheads like a gift."
Again, Alvin felt like apologizing. It seemed to make Ta-Kumsaw angry, that he could do the things he did. "It ain't like I asked anybody for this," he said. "I was just the seventh son of a seventh son, and the thirteenth child."
"These numbers - seven, thirteen - you Whites care about them, but they're nothing in the land. The land has true numbers. One, two, three, four, five, six - these numbers you can find when you stand in the forest and look around you. Where is seven? Where is thirteen?"
"Maybe that's why they're so strong," said Alvin. "'Maybe cause they ain't natural."
"Then why does the land love this unnatural thing that you do?"
"I don't know, Ta-Kumsaw. I'm only ten going on eleven."
Ta-Kumsaw laughed. "Ten? Eleven? Very weak numbers."
They spent the night there, in the borders of the Land of Flints. Ta-Kumsaw told Alvin the story of that place, how it was the best flint country in the whole land. No matter how many flints the Reds came and took away, more always came out of the ground, just lying there to get picked up. In years gone by, every now and then some tribe would try to own the place. They'd bring their warriors and kill anyone else who came for flints. That way they figured they'd have arrows and the other tribes wouldn't have any. But it never worked right. Cause as soon as that tribe won its battles and held the land, the flints just plain disappeared. Not a one. Members of that tribe would search and search, and never find a thing. They'd go away, and another tribe would come in, and there'd be flints again, as many as ever.
"It belongs to everybody, this place. All Reds are at peace here. No killing, no war, no quarrels - or the tribe has no flints."
"I wish the whole world was a place like that," said Alvin.
"Listen to my brother long enough, White boy, and you'll start to think it is. No, no, don't explain to me. Don't defend him. He takes his road, I take mine. I think his way will kill more people, Red or White, than mine."
In the night, Alvin dreamed. He saw himself walk all the way around Eight-Face Mound, until he found a place where a path seemed to lead up the steep hill. He