Говард Уолдроп - Them Bones

‘Thanks,’ said Tree-Gum, then went back to jumping up and down on a sapling he’d wedged into the rock.

We went farther up.

Took leaned close. ‘He’s getting the exact center out of the boulder. Big medicine of some kind, something he can only do himself. You don’t ask about stuff like that. He’s from two days upriver from here. He must be eighty years old.’

Took was running his hand across a rock face with a fracture in it. ‘Here,’ he said, taking my hand, putting it up to the stone. ‘Feel that?’

There was a discontinuity in the texture as well as color across the break. Above, it felt like dry sandstone; below the crack the rock felt wet and greasy, smooth to the touch.

‘It feels like a salamander,’ I said.

‘Just the stuff we want,’ he said.

‘How much of it?’

‘The whole damn thing,’ said Took.

‘Jesus.’

By pitch dark we had holes punched in, wedges driven, and levers ready on a section two meters by one and a half.

‘Tomorrow morning,’ said Took.

I followed him as well as I could through the blackness. We made it back to camp. Took stirred up the ashes and got the fire going. We ate some jerky, pemmican, and dried nuts.

Tree-Gum came over, bringing something in a leather bottle that smelled like root beer. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Have some.’ We did.

He warmed his hands at the fire. ‘Damned winters are getting colder,’ he said. Took told him about the visit of the mammoth.

‘Hell, I ain’t ever seen one of those,’ said Tree-Gum. ‘Don’t much want to, either. You know the Huastecas were all the way up here last year? They been sending envoys farther up here every year, north along the River. Getting greedy for trade, I guess. They’ve whupped up on everybody down there they can, I reckon. Now nothin’s left but to buy and sell.’

He let another huge fart, and fanned the air with his hands. Then he stared into the fire. ‘We got to find a new Hill, Took-His-Time. Talked with a couple dozen pipemakers up and down the River. Pipe Hill here’s gonna give out in twenty, thirty years. Never thought I’d see it. Gonna be up to you young ’uns, like you and your here friend Yaz, to find it. I’m sure too old to go traipsing around these hills.

‘This has been a good Pipe Hill, though. Taken many a thousand pipes out of it, yes sir.’

Then he was quiet. After a while he got up and stretched. ‘Well, give my regards to Sun Man and that no-good sister of his. Come up to the place sometimes. I imagine you’ll be gone a couple of days by the time I get through here.’

We waved good-bye, and he walked out of the firelight.

‘Look out below!’ yelled Took, and the only guy working farther down the hill scrambled up even with us.

‘Gardy-Loo!’ I said.

‘Heave-ho,’ said Took. We heave-hoed. There was a groan in the early morning stillness, then a snap as one of our sapling levers broke. We pounded another one in and pulled again. Cables stood out in Took’s arms. I thought my temples were going to burst.

Then everything moved and I fell down. The hemisphere of pipestone separated itself from the rock face and began to crash and roll its way down the hill.

It took a propitious spin and went off through the woods toward the tributary, taking small trees with it.

The other pipemakers applauded.

‘I’ll be Woodpecker-damned,’ said Took. We grabbed up our ropes and headed off down the hill. As we got near the woods I looked back. Tree-Gum and the others were already back at their tasks. The old man was jumping up and down on a lever. Something slipped; a large crack he’d made in the boulder closed back up, splitting wedges. He shook his fist at it. For a second, you couldn’t tell whether he was taking the rock apart or putting it back together again.

We found the rock less than fifty meters from the water.

‘Lucky lucky lucky,’ said Took. ‘Here, grab this rope.’

Lucky or not, the sun was going down by the time we were ready to go.

The rock was lashed in the center of the raft. We’d built a small platform of logs across the back and made a skin tent on it. Took had made a sweep from small trees.

We tied the canoe to the raft and out into the current of the tributary. My muscles were all gone. It was a good thing the water pushed us along. I didn’t have the strength to pole, sweep, or paddle.

Took stretched out in the tent. ‘Uh, what should I do?’ I asked.

‘Nothing. Turn right when we get to the River. You’d find turning left extremely hard. Call me before the light’s all gone and we’ll put in.’

He was snoring almost immediately. I watched the horizon bisect the sun behind us. There was still plenty of light left. The trees thinned, then we were onto the delta. I never really knew when we got on the River – the tributary widened, then we turned south and the River itself was around us, the tributary gone.

A gar croaked ahead, and the frogs started up. The first bat of the evening dipped over the water, and then the sky turned honey-gold to the west, making the River an amber mirror. Herons waded in an indentation in the shoreline.

The River turned slowly ahead until it went out of sight, kilometers away. A whippoorwill cranked up, long and lonely somewhere toward the sunset.

‘Huck and Jim,’ I said.

‘What?’ asked Took.

‘Nothing. We’d better put in.’

Took leaned his head out of the tent.

‘Some big-ass river, huh?’

Smith’s Diary

The word is that they are getting sick.

Spaulding has restricted everyone but the medics from contact with them. The doc is out at the second village with a team, trying to find out what’s wrong.

At least two of the Indians have died. They developed colds, running bloody noses, fevers, and then they died.

We were so careful, too. Up There, we had every shot you could think of, besides the usual stuff. Our arms and butts were sore for days, we had low grade fevers, and felt like shit for a week we had so many shots. But that was a month ago. We should be immune to everything.

Which doesn’t mean we weren’t carriers.

The doc is back.

There are more of them sick and one more has died in the second village. Except for the sick ones, the village is deserted. They had buried one in the common mound, but the rest left before the other two died. It looked like they had been getting ready for another burial ceremony but they dropped everything and ran.

The team took smears and samples, and hope to find out something, with our limited resources. We certainly can’t manufacture vaccines here, if that’s what it takes.

Spaulding told the doc to go out only with an armed guard if they left the camp again. The doctor didn’t think it was wise but didn’t argue very long either.

I hope this all blows over. We have enough problems already. They gave me the job of thinking up a few scenarios. They can’t do anything without an agenda.

They looked like a thousand parrots had committed suicide for them.

There were six of them, plus their servants, runners and so forth.

They reached the village about an hour after we first heard their horns and conch shells. They were shorter than Took’s people, darker than the standard, and two of them had mustaches.