Red Prophet ttoam-2, Page 2

  What made it even funnier was the fact that Harrison himself was the man who shot Lolla-Wossiky's father, some fifteen years ago, when Lolla-Wossiky was just a little tyke, standing right there watching. Harrison even told the story sometimes right in front of Lolla-Wossiky, and the one-eyed drunk just nodded and laughed and grinned and acted like he had no brains at all, no human dignity, just about the lowest, crawliest Red that Hooch ever seen. He didn't even care about revenge for his dead papa, just so long as he got his likker. No, Hooch wasn't a bit surprised to see that Lolla-Wossiky was lying right on the floor outside Harrison's office, so every time the door opened, it bumped him right in the butt. Incredibly, even now, when there hadn't been new likker in Carthage City in four months, Lolla-Wossiky was pickled. He saw Hooch come in, sat up on one elbow, waved an arm in greeting, and then rocked back onto the floor without a sound. The handkerchief he kept tied over his missing eye was out of place, so the empty socket with the sucked-in eyelids was plainly visible. Hooch felt like that empty eye was looking at him. He didn't like that feeling. He didn't like Lolla-Wossiky. Harrison was the kind of man who liked having such squalid creatures around– made him feel real good about himself, by contrast, Hooch figured, but Hooch didn't like seeing such miserable specimens of humanity. Why hadn't Lolla-Wossiky died yet?

  Just as he was about to open Harrison's door, Hooch looked up from the drunken one-eyed Red into the eyes of another man, and here's the funny thing: He thought for a second it was Lolla-Wossiky again, they looked so much alike. Only it was Lolla-Wossiky with both eyes, and not drunk at all, no sir. This Red must be six feet from sole to scalp, leaning against the wall, his head shaved except his scalplock, his clothing clean. He stood straight, like a soldier at attention, and he didn't so much as look at Hooch. His eyes stared straight into space. Yet Hooch knew that this boy saw everything, even though he focused on nothing. It had been a long time since Hooch saw a Red who looked like that, all cold and in control of things.

  Dangerous, dangerous, is Harrison getting careless, to let a Red into his own headquarters with eyes like those? With a bearing like a king, and arms so strong he looks like he could pull a bow made from the trunk of a six-year-old oak? Lolla-Wossiky was so contemptible it made Hooch sick. But this Red who looked like Lolla-Wossiky, he was the opposite. And instead of making Hooch sick, he made Hooch mad, to be so proud and defiant as if he thought he was as good a man as any White. No, better. That's how he looked– like he thought he was better.

  Then he realized he was just standing there, his hand on the latch pull, staring at the Red. Hadn't moved in how long? That was no good, to let folks see how this Red made him uncomfortable. He pulled the door open and stepped inside.

  But he didn't talk about that Red, no sir, that wouldn't do at all. It wouldn't do to let Harrison know how much that one proud Shaw-Nee bothered him, made him angry. Because there sat Governor Bill behind a big old table, like God on his throne, and Hooch realized things had changed around here. It wasn't just the fort that had got bigger– so had Bill Harrison's vanity. And if Hooch was going to make the profit he expected to on this trip, he'd have to make sure Governor Bill came down a peg or two, so they could deal as equals instead of dealing as a tradesman and a governor.

  “Noticed your cannon,” said Hooch, not bothering even to say howdy. “What's the artillery for, French from Detroit, Spanish from Florida, or Reds?”

  “No matter who's buying the scalps, it's always Reds, one way or another,” said Harrison. “Now sit down, relax, Hooch. When my door is closed there's no ceremony between us.” Oh, yes, Governor Bill liked to play his games, just like a politician. Make a man feel like you're doing him a favor just to let him sit in your presence, flatter him by making him feel like a real chum before you pick his pocket. Well, thought Hooch, I have some games of my own to play, and we'll see who comes out on top.

  Hooch sat down and put his feet up on Governor Bill's desk. He took out a pinch of tobacco and tucked it into his cheek. He could see Bill flinch a little. It was a sure sign that his wife had broke him of some manly habits. “Care for a pinch?” asked Hooch.

  It took a minute before Harrison allowed as how he wouldn't mind a bit of it. “I mostly swore off this stuff,” he said ruefully.

  So Harrison still missed his bachelor ways. Well, that was good news to Hooch. Gave him a handle to get the Gov off balance. “Hear you got yourself a white bedwarmer from Manhattan,” said Hooch.

  It worked: Harrison's face flushed. “I married a lady from New Amsterdam,” he said. His voice was quiet and cold. Didn't bother Hooch a bit– that's just what he wanted.

  “A wife!” said Hooch. “Well, I'll be! I beg your pardon, Governor, that wasn't what I heard, you'll have to forgive me, I was only going by what the– what the rumors said.”

  “Rumors?” asked Harrison

  “Oh, no, you just never mind. You know how soldiers talk. I'm ashamed I listened to them in the first place. Why, you've kept the memory of your first wife sacred all these years, and if I was any kind of friend of yours, I would've known any woman you took into your house would be a lady, and a properly married wife.”

  “What I want to know,” said Harrison, “is who told you she was anything else?”

  “Now, Bill, it was just loose soldiers' talk; I don't want any man to get in trouble because he can't keep his tongue. A likker shipment just came in, for heaven's sake, Bill! You won't hold it against them, what they said with their minds on whisky. No, you just take a pinch of this tobacky and remember that your boys all like you fine.”

  Harrison took a good-sized chaw from the offered tobacco pouch and tucked it into his cheek. “Oh, I know, Hooch, they don't bother me.” But Hooch knew thatit did bother him, that Harrison was so angry he couldn't spit straight, which he proved by missing the spittoon. A spittoon, Hooch noticed, which had been sparkling clean. Didn't anybody spit around here anymore, except Hooch?

  “You're getting civilized,” said Hooch. “Next thing you know you'll have lace curtains.”

  “Oh, I do,” said Harrison. “In my house.”

  “And little china chamber pots?”

  “Hooch, you got a mind like a snake and a mouth like a hog.”

  “That's why you love me, Bill– cause you got a mind like a hog and a mouth like a snake.”

  “Keep that in mind,” said Harrison. “You just keep that in mind, how I might bite, and bite deep, and bite with poison in it. You keep that in mind before you try to play your diddly games with me.”

  “Diddly games!” cried Hooch. “What do you mean, Bill Harrison! What do you accuse me of!”

  “I accuse you of arranging for us to have no likker at all for four long months of springtime, till I had to hang three Reds for breaking into military stores, and even my soldiers ran out!”

  “Me! I brought this load here as fast as I could!”

  Harrison just smiled.

  Hooch kept his look of pained outrage– it was one of his best expressions, and besides it was even partly true. If even one of the other whisky traders had half a head on him, he'd have found a way downriver despite Hooch's efforts. It wasn't Hooch's fault if he just happened to be the sneakiest, most malicious, lowdown, competent skunk in a business that wasn't none too clean and none too bright to start with.

  Hooch's look of injured innocence lasted longer than Harrison's smile, which was about what Hooch figured would happen.

  “Look here, Hooch,” said Harrison.

  “Maybe you better start calling me Mr. Ulysses Palmer,” said Hooch. “Only my friends call me Hooch.”

  But Harrison did not take the bait. He did not start to make protests of his undying friendship. “Look here, Mr. Palmer,” said Harrison, “you know and I know that this hasn't got a thing to do with friendship. You want to be rich, and I want to be governor of a real state. I need your likker to be governor, and you need my protection to be rich. But this time you pushed too far. You understand me? You can have a mono
poly for all I care, but if I don't get a steady supply of whisky from you, I'll get it from someone else.”

  “Now Governor Harrison, I can understand you might've started fretting along in there sometime, and I can make it right with you. What if you had six kegs of the best whisky all on your own–”

  But Harrison wasn't in the mood to be bribed, either. “What you forget, Mr. Palmer, is that I can have all this whisky, if I want it.”

  Well, if Harrison could be blunt, so could Hooch, though he made it a practice to say things like this with a smile. “Mr. Governor, you can take all my whisky once. But then what trader will want to deal with you?”

  Harrison laughed and laughed. “Any trader at all, Hooch Palmer, and you know it!”

  Hooch knew when he'd been beat. He joined right in with the laughing.

  Somebody knocked on the door. “Come in,” said Harrison. At the same time he waved Hooch to stay in his chair. A soldier stepped in, saluted, and said, “Mr. Andrew Jackson here to see you, sir. From the Tennizy country, he says.”

  "Days before I looked for him," said Harrison. "But I'm delighted, couldn't be more pleased, show him in, show him in. "

  Andrew Jackson. Had to be that lawyer fellow they called Mr. Hickory. Back in the days when Hooch was working the Tennizy country, Hickory Jackson was a real country boy– killed a man in a duel, put his fists into a few faces now and then, had a name for keeping his word, and the story was that he wasn't exactly completely married to his wife, who might well have another husband in her past who wasn't even dead. That was the difference between Hickory and Hooch– Hooch would've made sure the husband was dead and buried long since. So Hooch was a little surprised that this Jackson was big enough now to have business that would take him clear from Tennizy up to Carthage City.

  But that was nothing to his surprise when Jackson stepped through the door, ramrod straight with eyes like fire. He strode across the room and offered his hand to Governor Harrison. Called him Mr. Harrison, though. Which meant he was either a fool, or he didn't figure he needed Harrison as much as Harrison needed him.

  “You got too many Reds around here,” said Jackson. “That one-eyed drunk by the door is enough to make a body puke.”

  “Well,” said Harrison, “I think of him as kind of a pet. My own pet Red.”

  “Lolla-Wossiky,” said Hooch helpfully. Well, not really helpfully. He just didn't like how Jackson hadn't noticed him, and Harrison hadn't bothered to introduce him. Jackson turned to look at him. “What did you say?”

  “Loila-Wossiky,” said Hooch.

  “The one-eyed Red's name,” said Harrison.

  Jackson eyed Hooch coldly. “The only time I need to know the name of a horse,” he said, “is when I plan to ride it.”

  “My name's Hooch Palmer,” said Hooch. He offered his hand.

  Jackson didn't take it. "Your name is Ulysses Brock," said Jackson, "and you owe more than ten pounds in unpaid debts back in Nashville. Now that Appalachee has adopted U.S. currency, that means you owe two hundred and twenty dollars in gold. I bought those debts and it happens that I have the papers with me, since I heard you were trading whisky up in these parts, and so I think I'll place you under arrest. "

  It never occurred to Hooch that Jackson would have that kind of memory, or be such a skunk as to buy a man's paper, especially seven-year-old paper, which by now should be pretty much forgot. But sure enough, Jackson took a warrant out of his coat pocket and laid it on Governor Harrison's desk.

  "Since I appreciate your already having this man in custody when I arrived," said Jackson, "I am glad to tell you that under Appalachee law the apprehending officer is entitled to ten percent of the funds collected. "

  Harrison leaned back in his chair and grinned at Hooch. "Well, Hooch, maybe you better set down and let's all get better acquainted. Or I guess maybe we don't have to, since Mr. Jackson here seems to know you better than I did. "

  “Oh, I know Ulysses Brock all right,” said Jackson. “He's just the sort of skunk we had to get rid of in Tennizy before we could lay claim to being civilized. And I expect you'll be rid of his sort soon enough here, too, as you get the Wobbish country ready to apply for admission to the United States.”

  “You take a lot for granted,” said Harrison. “We might try to go it alone out here, you know.”

  “If Appalachee couldn't make a go of it alone, with Tom Jefferson as President, you won't do any better here, I reckon.”

  “Well maybe,” said Harrison, “just maybe we've got to do something that Tom Jefferson didn't have the guts to do. And maybe we've got a need for men like Hooch here.”

  “What you have need for is soldiers,” said Jackson. “Not rummers.”

  Harrison shook his head. “You're a man who forces me to come to the point, Mr. Jackson, and I can calculate right enough why the folks in Tennizy sent you on up here to meet with me. So I'll come to the point. We've got the same trouble up here that you've got down there, and that trouble can be summed up in one word: Reds.”

  “Which is why I'm perplexed that you let drunken Reds sit around here in your own headquarters. They all belong west of the Mizzipy, and that's as plain as day. We won't have peace and we won't have civilization until that's done. And since Appalachee and the U.S. alike are convinced that Reds can be treated like human beings, we've got to solve our Red problem before we join the Union. It's as simple as that.”

  “Well, you see?” said Harrison. “We already agree completely.”

  “Then why is it that you keep your headquarters as full of Reds as Independence Street in Washington City? They have Cherriky men acting as clerks and even holding government offices in Appalachee, right in the capital, jobs that White men ought to have, and then I come here and find you keep Reds around you, too.”

  “Cool down, Mr. Jackson, cool right down. Don't the King keep his Blacks there in his palace in Virginia?”

  "His Blacks are slaves. Everybody knows you can't make slaves out of Reds. They aren't intelligent enough to be properly trained.

  “Well, you just set yourself there in that chair, Mr. Jackson, and I'll make my point the best way I know how, by showing you two prime Shaw-Nee specimens. Just set down.”

  Jackson picked up the chair and moved it to the opposite side of the room from Hooch. It made something gnaw in Hooch's gut, the way Jackson acted. Men like Jackson were so upright and honest-seeming, but Hooch knew that there wasn't no such thing as a good man, just a man who wasn't bought yet, or wasn't in deep enough trouble, or didri't have the guts to reach out and take what he wanted. That's all that virtue ever boiled down to, so far as Hooch ever saw in his life. But here was Jackson, putting on airs and calling for Bill Harrison to arrest him! Think of that, a stranger from Tennizy country coming up here and waving around a warrant from an Appalachee judge, of all things, which didn't have no more force, in Wobbish country than if it was written by the King of Ethiopia. Well, Mr. Jackson, it's, a long way home from here, and we'll just see if you don't have some kind of accident along the way.

  No, no, no, Hooch told himself silently. Getting even don't amount to nothing in this world. Getting even only gets you behind. The best revenge is to get rich enough to make them all call you sir, that's how you get evpn with these boys. No bushwhacking. If you ever get a name for bushwhacking, that's the end of you, Hooch Palmer.

  So Hooch sat there and smiled, as Harrison called for his aide. “Why don't you invite Lolla-Wossiky in here? And while you're at it, tell his brother he can come in, too.”

  Lolla-Wossiky's brother– had to be the defiant Red who was standing up against the wall. Funny, how two peas from the same pod could grow up so different.

  Lolla-Wossiky came in fawning, smiling, looking quickly from one White face to the next, wondering what they wanted, how he could make them happy enough to reward him with whisky. It was written all over him, how thirsty he was, even though he was already so drunk he didn't walk straight. Or had he already drunk so much l
ikker that he couldn't walk straight even when he was sober? Hooch wondered– but soon enough he knew the answer. Harrison reached into the bureau behind him and took out a jug and a cup. Lolla-Wossiky watched the brown liquid splash into the cup, his one eye so intense it was like he could taste the likker by vision alone. But he didn't take even a single step toward the cup. Harrison reached out and set the cup on the table near the Red, but still the man stood there, smiling, looking now at the cup, now at Harrison, waiting, waiting.

  Harrison turned to Jackson and smiled. “Lolla-Wossiky is just about the most civilized Red in the whole Wobbish country, Mr. Jackson. He never takes things that don't belong to him. He never speaks except when spoken to. He obeys and does whatever I tell him. And all he ever asks in return is just a cup of liquid. Doesn't even have to be good likker. Corn whisky or bad Spanish rum are just fine with him, isn't that right, Lolla-Wossiky?”

  “Very so right, Mr. Excellency,” said Lolla-Wossiky. His speech was surprisingly clear, for a Red. Especially a drunken Red.

  Hooch saw Jackson study the one-eyed Red with disgust. Then the Tennizy lawyer's gaze shifted to the door, where the tall, strong, defiant Red was standing. Hooch enjoyed watching Jackson's face. From disgust, his expression plainly changed to anger. Anger and, yes, fear. Oh, yes, you aren't fearless, Mr. Jackson. You know what Lolla-Wossiky's brother is. He's your enemy, and my enemy, the enemy of every White man who ever wants to have this land, because sometime this uppity Red is going to put his tommy-hawk in your head and peel off your scalp real slow, and he won't sell it to no Frenchman, neither, Mr. Jackson, he'll keep it and give it to his children, and say to them, “This is the only good White man. This is the only White man who doesn't break his word. This is what you do to White men.” Hooch knew it, Harrison knew it, and Jackson knew it. That young buck by the door was death. That young buck was White men forced to live east of the mountains, all crammed into the old towns with all their lawyers and professors and hightoned people who never gave you room to breathe. People like Jackson himself, in fact. Hooch gave one snort of laughter at that idea. Jackson was exactly the sort of man that folks moved west to get away from. How far west will I have to go before the lawyers lose the trail and get left behind?