Red Prophet Page 0,109

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