Panther in the Sky (21 page)

It was not round anymore!

He leaped up and ran home. Other children were hurrying in all directions, scampering, stumbling, squealing with fear.

Turtle Mother tried to soothe the triplets. She told them not to be afraid. It was
Mukutaaweethe Keelswah,
the Black Sun. It came now and then in any lifetime; it always lasted only a short time. Wise men said it happened when the moon got in front of the sun for some reason known only to Weshemoneto.

They were all glad but amazed when the sun was whole again, and there was not a trace of the event left in the sky. The world was as bright as ever. But in the faces of many of the gray-hairs, its gloom remained for a while. For the Black Sun, almost always in the history of the Shawnee nation, had foreshadowed misfortunes in war. And most of the men were now away at war.

“L
OOK, NOW
,” T
ECUMSEH SAID TO
L
OUD
N
OISE.
“Y
OU
MUST
keep this arm straight.” With a sigh, he took hold of his little brother’s left arm above and below the elbow and straightened it. “Now you must keep that arm straight like that while you pull the bowstring. Pull it now!”

Loud Noise made one of his awful, mouth-twisting grimaces and tried to pull the bowstring. The bow began to wobble. His fingers on the bowstring began to tremble and spread apart, and the nock of the arrow slipped off the string and the arrow fell to the ground; by then his left arm had begun to quake, and it bent at the elbow again. Now the boy eased the tension off the bow and, making a panting sound, looked down at his arrow on the ground as if he were about to cry.

Tecumseh sighed again in exasperation. Never had he known any person so clumsy and uncoordinated as this poor child. Tecumseh himself had been shooting a bow for three years by the time he was this age. The other two triplets could shoot the bows Tecumseh had made for them. But Loud Noise could just barely do anything that required
one
hand; he could throw a stick or rock, and it would usually land somewhere—not far—in front of him, but not always. Sometimes it would fall behind him or just go up and come down on his head. But anything that called for the use of
both
hands, like shooting a bow or kindling a fire or simply juggling two stones, seemed to be beyond his capabilities. When he had tried to use a rock sling, he had always bruised his shins or gotten the cord tangled around his arm or neck. It was as if he could not think of both hands at once, and anything he attempted usually ended in an awkward, spectacular fumble, followed by squeals or shrieks of frustration. If it had not been so pathetic, it would have been funny.

Tecumseh knew that a boy who could neither shoot an arrow nor light a fire would be helpless in life, so he strove patiently every day to help the poor bumbler overcome his natural ineptitude. He coached him, demonstrated, explained. He wished Chiksika could be here to help him instruct. Chiksika was a wonderful teacher. But actually, Chiksika had never been the kind of a teacher to Loud Noise that he had been to Tecumseh. Chiksika was truly embarrassed by Loud Noise and stayed away from him, and tried to pretend he did not exist.

Besides, Chiksika was not here. He was still away in Kain-tuck-ee with Black Fish and the war party.

After Boone’s betrayal and flight, Black Fish had waited a long time before setting out to Boone’s Fort; he had waited in expectation of some British cannons. He had known that Boone had gone home to warn the forts, so there would be no surprise, and without surprise it would be important to have cannons. But no cannons had come, and at last Black Fish had led them all away. They had left in a high state of war fever, accompanied by some British captains and interpreters, determined to do great damage to all the white settlements in Kain-tuck-ee even without cannons. But his primary target was Boone’s Fort; it was, indeed, Boone himself. Shawnee law decreed that any adopted outsider who betrayed the People was a condemned man. If Boone could be caught this summer, he would be executed instantly—preferably by Black Fish himself, whose heart he had frozen.

“Little brother,” Tecumseh said now, sounding more patient
than he really felt, “try once more. Listen to me. From the beginning, hold this arm straight. You are strong enough. Draw the string quickly, so you won’t tire your muscles. Do not forget to keep holding the arrow between the two fingers so it will not fall. Here. You are ready now. Try to shoot your arrow as close to mine as you can.” Quickly he put an arrow to his own bowstring and shot it into a patch of bare clay on the opposite bank of the creek, a mere fifteen paces away. “Shoot at my arrow,” he said.

Tecumseh never really saw what Loud Noise did wrong then. Unsteadily the child arched the little bow. His left arm quivered and bent. The bow sprang back; something broke with a loud, splitting sound. The bow and part of the arrow fell, and Loud Noise spun away shrieking and fell on his knees and elbows. Tecumseh leaped to him and turned his face up. A bolt of shock went through him.

Protruding from the little boy’s eyesocket was an eight-inch sliver of the split arrow shaft, the feather still hanging loosely on it. The feather was red with blood. Oozing from between the eyelids was a pinkish mixture of blood and fluid from the child’s punctured eyeball.

The boy screamed and drooled and writhed.

C
HANGE-OF-
F
EATHERS, THE OLD MEDICINE MAN OF THE
Chalagawthas, came with two little bundles and squatted in the lodge beside the shrieking child, whom Tecumseh was holding down by keeping his arms pinned.

Turtle Mother was already taking the long splinter out of the eyesocket. Grimly, firmly, her own eyes tearing with pity, she knelt over him in the very face of his terrible wails and pulled out the bloody sliver, not too slowly, for that would have protracted the pain, nor too quickly, either, as that might have damaged the eye even more. It was one of the hardest things she had ever done. The tough integument of the collapsed eyeball came out of the socket with the wood sliver, though still attached inside by its little muscles and cords, and it made her think of the placental sacs and cords that had been pulled out of her every time she had borne children—yes, when she had borne this poor wretch of a child, too—and the thought twisted her heart. Clenching her jaw, she put two fingers against the integument and pulled the arrow fragment out between them, looked at it a moment, shuddered, and then turned and threw the piece of arrow into the fire. Tecumseh watched her do all this and had to bite
the inside of his cheek to keep from crying out himself. Loud Noise struggled, but it was easy to hold him down.

Star Watcher was by the fire, boiling a comfrey mixture in a kettle according to her mother’s instructions. It was very hot in the
wigewa,
and the women had stripped to the waist and their bodies gleamed with sweat. “Now put the cloth in and take it out and fold it,” Turtle Mother said, not looking up from her shrieking child. She was smoothing his forehead with her hand. It was hard to talk over his screeching. He was crying the way he had done all the first days of his life, that pathetic, desperate noise she had hoped she would never have to hear again. Now Star Watcher came around beside her with the hot poultice and gave it to her mother.

Turtle Mother pressed the collapsed eyeball gently back inside the eyelids, bringing forth an even louder outburst of screaming, then she put the poultice over the eyesocket and bound it in place with a strip of strouding. Change-of-Feathers remained beside the pallet and watched all this. He said, shaking his head:

“That eye cannot be made good again. Do not hope for that.”

“I know, Grandfather.” She had faith in the shaman’s healing powers but knew they could not repair that eye. He had more than once restored sight to blind people, but this eyeball was torn up.

“You have done well what you can do,” said the old shaman. “Now I will do the rest, with the help of Weshemoneto. All of you go out now.” They looked at each other, then Turtle Mother nodded. Tecumseh looked at the old shaman’s dark eyes, which were nested in wrinkles. The old man’s hair was long and as white as snow. “You go, too, my son,” he said to Tecumseh. “He will stay still for me.” As he said this, the old man passed his wrinkled, dry-skinned, knobby-knuckled hand a few inches above Loud Noise’s forehead, and the child stopped struggling. Even his screams subsided, and he lay whimpering as the women and Tecumseh went out through the low doorway into the late afternoon sunlight. The other boys were sitting on the ground under a tree, their faces streaked from crying. There were villagers standing in the street, waiting to give their quiet consolation.

For several hours the family waited outside. The old shaman’s voice chanted softly within, sometimes rising into quavery wails. Odors of tobacco and pine needles, and some unfamiliar smell of rot, came from the house. Tecumseh wanted to go away into the woods and be alone, but he knew he should stay with his family
at this time. He wondered if his mother blamed him for this in any way. If she did, she did not show it.

Tecumseh sat trying to remember exactly how it had happened, but he had seen only that instant of the broken tension, and he had seen it only from the edge of his eye. Maybe Loud Noise had drawn the bow too far and caught the whole arrow between the bow and the bowstring, and the tension had split it. But somehow the child had, as always, fumbled what he was doing, and the taut bow had not forgiven his mistake.

Tecumseh’s heart was heavy and sick. That sorry child Loud Noise, who from the time of his birth had lacked in everything that grows to make a warrior and a good man, now would have still another disadvantage, still another ugliness. In some tribes he would not have been kept alive. Much misery, his own and his family’s, would have been avoided if he had not. But the life of anyone born a Shawnee was sacred. And, as had been said, the child’s strangeness probably foretold some special powers. One had to go on believing in the wisdom of heaven.

Eventually, then, at dusk, the shaman called the family in. The inside of their lodge smelled musky and tangy, and the boy lay asleep. The shaman said the bad spirits had been exorcised from the boy and chased from the house, and that the eye wound would not rot, and there would be no fever and no more terror. Then he raised a crooked forefinger, placed it on his forehead above his nose, and said a surprising thing:

“Remember that one eye may see more than two.” Then he left.

For a while Turtle Mother sat on the floor with her legs folded under her and gazed at the child, her face full of sadness and deep thought. Then she got up and took a bag of corn out of the
wigewa
and sat down at her hollowed-log mortar, put several fistfuls of corn in it, picked up the heavy stone pestle, and began pounding meal for the family’s dinner. Tecumseh walked out in the village and among the domed houses that were silhouetted against the last traces of red in the west. He listened to the murmur of the many voices of the Chalagawthas in and around their homes, smelled their woodsmoke and food, and gazed for a while at the evening star in the darkening sky.

He was watching the evening star when he heard the shouts from out on the edge of town and then that growing uproar of dismayed voices that had already come to mean more bad words about the white men.

The bringers of the dark news this time were three Delaware riders.

First the messengers were given food and water while the people of Chillicothe Town gathered in the council ground in front of the grand lodge. A bonfire lit up the many faces. Star Watcher and Tecumseh had crowded close in front to hear.

The messengers stood with Change-of-Feathers, who translated from their language.

“When the sun went black, an army of Long Knives passed through the lands of the Wabash-se-pe and the Illinois. But none of us who live there saw them or heard them.

“Early in the next moon our brothers the Piankeshaw Miamis saw that the totems of the king of England were no longer on the poles above the forts and towns along the Mother of Rivers. In their place flew the totems of Virginia and the Thirteen Fires. This was seen at Kaskaskia the French town, and at Cahokia, place of the Great Mound, and even at Post Vincennes on the Wabash-se-pe.”

Star Watcher groped for Tecumseh’s hand and squeezed it in hers.

These were only names that he had heard now and then, places where Chiksika and other warriors had gone sometimes to get gunpowder from the British. He looked at Star Watcher and saw the fear on her pretty face. He looked around at the other listeners, and the dread he saw in their eyes made him tremble. Most of the people in Chillicothe were women and children and ancients. None of the warrior chiefs was here, not even Black Fish was here to hear this threatening news, which made it more ominous. Now some of the old men wanted to know more. What else did the Delawares know of this? asked Change-of-Feathers. Were many people killed in the battles for those forts?

“There were no battles,” said the messengers. This answer caused a murmur of disbelief to sweep the crowd, like wind through trees. “Not a person was shot. The Long Knives walked in through the open gates of the forts in the dark of night and surprised and caught everybody while the Redcoats were away at Detroit.”

The crowd was jabbering now. It was the kind of coup that every war chief dreamed of, the kind that made a war chief’s name a legend. It was the kind of coup that Black Fish had been striving for, season after season in Kain-tuck-ee, without success. Who was this great Long Knife chief, then, who had passed like an invisible wind through the whole Middle Ground and surprised
the British? Was it Washington, the principal war chief of the Long Knives? That was the only name anyone knew from the great white men’s war in the east. Was Washington himself now standing like a giant between O-hi-o and the sunset? The messengers replied that it was known not to be Washington, though hardly anything else was known. “His name,” they said, “sounds like this: Korark.”