Red Prophet: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume II (18 page)

“You’ll get a tree limb and we’ll raise the rope up slow, so you strangle instead of breaking your neck.”

“Just so it’s memorable,” said Hooch.

Harrison called in some soldiers and had them take Hooch back to jail. This time they did a little kicking and poking, so Hooch had a whole new batch of bruises, and maybe a broken rib.

He also didn’t have much time.

So he lay down real calm on the floor of the jail. The drunks were gone, but the three brawlers were still there, using all the cots; the floor was all that was available. Hooch didn’t much care. He knew Harrison would give him an hour or two to think about it, then take him out and put the rope around his neck and kill him. He might pretend to give him one last chance, of course, but he wouldn’t mean it, because now he wouldn’t trust Hooch. Hooch had told him no, and so he’d never trust him to carry out the assignment if he let him go.

Well, Hooch planned to use the time wisely. He started out pretty simply. He closed his eyes and let some heat build up inside him. A spark. And then he sent that spark outside himself. It was like what doodlebugs said they did, sending out their bug to go searching underground and see what it could see. He set his spark to searching and pretty soon he found what he was looking for. Governor Bill’s own house. His spark was too far away by now for him to find some particular spot in the house. And his aim couldn’t be too tight. So instead he just pumped all his hate and rage and pain into the spark, built it hotter and hotter and hotter. He let himself go like he never done before in his life. And he kept pushing it and pushing it until he started hearing that most welcome sound.

“Fire! Fire!” The shouts came from outside, from far away, but more and more people took up the cry. Gunshots went off—distress signals.

The three brawlers heard it, too. One of them stepped on Hooch where he was lying on the floor, they were in such a hurry. Stood at the door, they did, rattling and shouting at the guard. “Let us out! Don’t go trying to fight that fire without letting us out first! Don’t let us die in here!”

Hooch hardly noticed the man stepping on him, he already hurt so bad. Instead he just lay there, using his spark again, only this time heating up the metal inside the lock of the jail door. Now his aim was tight and his spark could get much hotter.

The guard came in and put his key in the lock, turned it, opened the door. “You boys can come on out,” he said. “Sergeant said so, we need you to help with the fire brigade.”

Hooch struggled to his feet, but the guard straight-armed him and shoved him back into the cell. Hooch wasn’t surprised. But he made the spark go hotter yet, so hot that now the iron of the lock melted inside. It even glowed red a little. The guard slammed the door shut and went to turn the key. By now it was so hot that it burned his hand. He cussed and went for his shirttail to try and grab the key, but Hooch kicked the door open, knocking
the guard down. He stomped the guard in the face and kicked his head, which probably broke his neck, but Hooch didn’t think of that as murder. He thought of it as justice, cause the guard had been all set to leave him locked in his cell to burn to death.

Hooch walked on out of the jail. Nobody paid him much attention. He couldn’t see the mansion from here, but he could see the smoke rising. Sky was low and grey. Probably it’d rain before it burned the stockade. Hooch sure hoped not, though. Hoped the whole place burned to the ground. It was one thing to want to kill off Reds, that was fine with Hooch, he and Harrison saw eye to eye on that. Kill them with likker if you can, bullets if you can’t. But you don’t go killing White folks, you don’t go hiring Reds to torture White babies. Maybe to Harrison it was all part of the same thing. Maybe to him it was like White soldiers having to die in a war with Reds, only the soldiers’d just be a little younger. All in a good cause, right? Maybe Harrison could think that way, but Hooch couldn’t. It actually took him by surprise, to tell the truth. He was more like Andrew Jackson than he ever supposed. He had a line he wouldn’t cross. He drew it in a different place than old Hickory did, but still, he had a line, and he’d die before he crossed it.

Of course he didn’t reckon to die if he could help it. He couldn’t go out the stockade gate, cause the bucket line to the river would go through there and he’d be seen. But it was easy enough to climb up to the parapet. The soldiers weren’t exactly keeping a lookout. He clambered over the wall and dropped down outside the fort. Nobody saw him. He walked the ten yards into the woods, then made his way—slowly, cause his ribs hurt pretty bad and he was a little weak from so much sparking, it took something out of him—through the woods to the riverbank.

He came out of the woods on the far side of the open area around the wharf. There was his flatboat, still loaded up with all his kegs. And his poleboys standing around, watching the bucket brigade dipping into the river some thirty yards farther upstream. It didn’t surprise Hooch a bit that his poleboys weren’t over there helping with the buckets. They weren’t exactly the public-spirited type.

Hooch walked out onto the wharf, beckoning for the poleboys to come join him. He jumped down to the flat-boat; stumbled a little, from being weak and hurting. He turned around to tell his boys what was happening, why they had to push off, but they hadn’t followed. They just stood there on the bank, looking at him. He beckoned again, but they didn’t make a move to come.

Well, then, he’d go without them. He was even moving toward the rope, to cast off and pole himself away, when he realized that not all the poleboys were on shore. No, there was one missing. And he knew right where that missing boy would be. Right there on the flatboat, standing right behind him, reaching out his hands—

Mike Fink wasn’t the knifing kind. Oh, he’d knife you if he had to, but he’d rather kill with his bare hands. He used to say something about killing with a knife, some comparison with whores and a broomstick. Anyway, that’s why Hooch knew that it wouldn’t be a knife. That it wouldn’t be quick. Harrison must’ve known Hooch might get away, so he bought off Mike Fink, and now Fink would kill him sure.

Sure, but slow. And slow gave Hooch time. Time to make sure he didn’t die alone.

So as the fingers closed around his throat and cinched tight, much tighter than Hooch ever imagined, clamping him so he thought his head would get wrung right off, he forced himself to make his spark go, to find that keg, that one place, he knew right where the place was on the flat-boat, to hot up that keg, as hot as he could, hotter, hotter—

And he waited for the explosion, waited and waited, but it never came. It felt like Fink’s fingers had pressed through the front of his throat clear to the spine, and he felt all his muscles just give way, he felt himself kicking, his lungs heaving to try to suck in air that just wouldn’t come, but he kept his spark going till the last second, waiting for the gunpowder keg to blow.

Then he died.

Mike Fink hung on to him for another whole minute after he was dead, maybe just cause he liked the feel of a dead man dangling from his hands. Hard to tell with Mike
Fink. Some folks said he was as nice a man as you could hope to find, when he was in the mood. Sure that’s what Mike thought of himself. He
liked
to be nice and have friends and drink real sociable. But when it came to killing, well, he liked that too.

But you can’t just hang on to a dead body forever. For one thing, somebody’s going to start complaining about it or maybe puking. So he shoved Hooch’s body off into the water.

“Smoke,” said one of the poleboys, pointing.

Sure enough, there was smoke coming out of the middle of the pile of kegs.

“It’s the gunpowder keg!” shouted one of them.

Well, the poleboys took off running to get away from the explosion, but Mike Fink just laughed and laughed. He walked over and started unloading kegs, hoisting them onto the wharf, unloading them until he got to the middle where there was a keg with a fuse coming out of it. He didn’t pick
that
one up with his hands, though. He tipped it over with his heel, then kind of rolled it along till it was on the open area around the edge of the boat.

By now the poleboys had come back to see what was going on, since it looked pretty much like Mike Fink wasn’t going to blow up after all. “Hatchet,” Mike called out, and one of the boys tossed him the one he kept in a sheath at his belt. It took a few good whacks, but the top finally sprung off the keg, and a whole cloud of steam came up. The water inside was so hot it was still boiling.

“You mean it wasn’t gunpowder after all?” asked of the boys. Not a bright one, but then not many rivermen was famous for brains.

“Oh, it was gunpowder when he set it down here,” said Mike. “Back in Suskwahenny. But you don’t think Mike Fink’d go all the way down the Hio River on the same flatboat with a keg of powder with a fuse coming out of it, do you?”

Then Mike jumped off the boat up onto the wharf and bellowed at the top of his voice, so loud that they heard him clear inside the fort, so loud that the bucket brigade stopped long enough to listen.

“My name is Mike Fink, boys, and I’m the meanest
lowdown son of an alligator that ever bit off the head of a buffalo! I eat growed men’s ears for breakfast and bears’ ears for supper, and when I’m thirsty I can drink enough to stop Niagara from falling. When I piss folks get on flatboats and float downstream for fifty mile, and when I fart the Frenchmen catch the air in bottles and sell it for perfume. I’m Mike Fink, and this my flatboat, and if you miserable little pukes ever put that fire out, there’s a free pint of whisky in it for every one of you!”

Then Mike Fink led the poleboys over and joined the bucket brigade, and they slowed the fire down until the rain came and put it out.

That night, with all the soldiers drinking and singing, Mike Fink was sitting up sober as you please, feeling pretty good about finally being in the likker business for himself. Only one of the poleboys was with him now, the youngest fellow, who kind of looked up to Fink. The boy was setting there playing with the fuse that used to go into a gunpowder keg.

“This fuse wasn’t lit,” said the poleboy.

“No, I reckon not,” said Mike Fink.

“Well, how’d the water get to boiling then?”

“Reckon Hooch had a few tricks up his sleeve. Reckon Hooch had something to do with the fire in the fort.”

“You knew that, didn’t you?”

Fink shook his head. “Nope, just lucky. I’m just plain lucky. I just get a feeling about things, like I had a feeling about that gunpowder keg, and I just do what I feel like doing.”

“You mean like a knack?”

In answer, Fink stood up and pulled down his trousers. There on his left buttock was a sprawl of a tattoo, six-sided and dangerous-looking. “My mama had that poked on when I wasn’t a month old. Said that’d keep me safe so I’d live out my whole natural life.” He turned and showed the boy the other buttock. “And that one she said was to help me make my fortune. I didn’t know how it’d work, and she died without telling me, but as near as I can tell it makes me lucky. Makes it so I just kind of know
what I ought to do.” He grinned, “Got me a flatboat now, and a cargo of whisky, don’t I?”

“Is the Governor really going to give you a medal for killing Hooch?”

“Well, for catching him, anyhow, looks like.”

“I don’t guess the Gov looked too bothered that old Hooch was dead, though.”

“Nope,” said Fink, “No, I reckon not. No, me and the Gov, we’re good friends now. He says he’s got some things need doing, that only a man like me can do.”

The poleboy looked at him with adoration in his eighteen-year-old eyes. “Can I help you? Can I come with you?”

“You ever been in a fight?”

“A lot of fights!”

“You ever bit off an ear?”

“No, but I gouged out a man’s eye once.”

“Eyes are easy. Eyes are soft.”

“And I butted a man’s head so he lost five teeth.”

Fink considered that for a few seconds. Then he grinned and nodded. “Sure, you come along with me, boy. By the time I’m through, there ain’t a man woman or child within a hundred mile of this, river who won’t know my name. Do you doubt that, boy?”

The boy didn’t doubt it.

In the morning, Mike Fink and his crew pushed off for the south bank of the Hio, loaded with a wagon, some mules, and eight kegs of whisky. Bound to do a little trading with the Reds.

In the afternoon, Governor William Harrison buried the charred remains of his second wife and their little boy, who had the misfortune of being in the nursery together, dressing the boy in his little parade uniform, when the room burst into flames.

A fire in his own house, set by no hand, which cut off what he loved the most, and no power on earth could bring them back.

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