"For that I'm grateful," Matthew replied.
"It would please him to hear it, but not from me, since he and I no longer speak. I am a source of great shame to him, being insane."
"Insane how? Because you have bad dreams?"
"Let me go on. We three children, and the tribe, were told we would see the world of England and the city of London for ourselves and when we were returned-within two years-we would be able to explain to our people what we had witnessed. In hopes, the men said, of forming closer ties as brothers. But you'll note in my story that the men wanted only children, and there was a reason for that." Walker nodded, his eyes still directed to the fire. "Children are so much easier to handle. They're so trusting, so unaware."
"You mean the men didn't do as they said?"
"We were taken to England, yes." A muscle worked in his jaw as if he were chewing bitter hardtack. "What a journey that was. And all that time, through heavy seas and sickness, knowing your home is falling further and further away behind you, and to get back home you have to come the same way again. My soul withers at the memory of that trip. How you English do it again and again, I'll never know."
Matthew managed a faint smile. "Maybe we're a bit insane, too."
"You would have to be. But I suppose that's the nature of all men. To be a bit insane, for a purpose or a cause." Walker turned the watch over in his hand, and ran his fingers across the silver. "Nimble Climber did not survive the trip. The sailors began a wagering game, betting how fast he could get up the rigging to fetch a gull feather fixed to the mast with a leather strap. And they kept putting it higher and higher. The captain warned them to stop, and the gentlemen who were travelling with us forbade it but an Indian boy of nine years can't be stoppered in a bottle, or locked below a deck. They were paying him with peppermint candies. He had one in his mouth when he fell. And when I stood beside Pretty Girl and looked at him lying on the deck, I thought of the clay doll with the blonde hair, and I hoped it didn't break as easily as Nimble Climber."
One of the owls hooted a few times, far off in the woods. Walker listened to it, his head tilted to the side as if hearing the sweetest music. "When we reached England," he said, "I stood on the deck in the dawn light looking at a forest of flying canoe clouds around us. Ships, of course. Hundreds of them, it seemed. All shapes and sizes. I thought how many men must there be in this world, to have made all those canoes? It was an incredible view, one I shall never forget. And then directly when we left our ship Pretty Girl Who Sits Alone was taken away by two men. I held onto her hand as long as I could, but they pulled us apart. They put her in a horse box. A coach. She was carried off, somewhere. I never found out. Some men put me into another coach, and I was not to see my people again for almost ten years. When they finally were done with me, and let me go home, I was insane."
"When they were done with you?" Matthew asked. "What happened?"
"I became a star," the Indian replied, with his own wistful smile. "A celebrity, I think is the word. I was dressed up in feathers and animal skins, with a golden crown on my head, and put upon the London stage. The signs out front advertised me as the 'Noble Young Savage', or 'Jonathan Redskin'. The plays-I was in several, over a number of years-were all the same: romantic dramas pitting the gallant Englishmen against the wicked or misguided savages, building to the moment when I stepped upon the stage and with sign language alerted the hero to the oncoming attack. Some such thing. As time went on and I grew older, the novelty of my stoic silence wore off, and I was required to speak a few lines. I remember one: Beware the wrath of the Iroquois, as they shall strip your scalps" He frowned, searching for the rest of it. " As surely as the locust strips the cornplants, yonder in the field." He solemnly raised his right hand, toward the paper cornplants in the painted field.
Matthew thought that the low firelight might indeed pass for the footlamps. On the boulder behind Walker his shadow was thrown as upon a canvas backdrop. "And that was enough to drive you insane? Playing a part on the stage?"
"No, not that. In fact, it was a very interesting experience. I was tended to, fed and watered very well, and I was taught your language by some very capable teachers. People came to see me by the hundreds. The thousands, I suppose. I was shown off at garden parties and in grand ballrooms. I was may I say the object of affection from a few daring ladies. But that was then. Later when first a new Indian was brought to the stage, and then another, and another yet Jonathan Redskin's days of valor were numbered. I was cast as the villain in a new play, which served to prolong my career, but the truth was I could not act. My finest scene was a death sprawl, in which I lay motionless at center stage for three minutes with my eyes open. But I was no longer a boy, and I was no longer a sensation. I was simply one of many."
Walker paused to add a few more sticks to the fire. "One of many," he repeated. "In a foreign land." He took a long breath and let it slowly out. "I was sold," he said flatly. "To another acting company. They toured the countryside. I was required to do the same as I had done, in town halls, pastures, barns and warehouses. Wherever we might set up. Of course the people flocked in, to see oh, I was called 'The Savage Adam' that time around. Things were good for awhile, but soon there was always another Savage Adam, it seemed, who had just passed that way and played a week's engagement. In one village I was accused of being an Englishman in makeup, because I'd spoken to a man there who thought my speech was too civilized. So I was sold again. And sold again, about a year after that. Then, sold once more within six months. Until at last " He looked directly at Matthew. "Have you ever seen a mishap of nature?"
"A mishap?"
"A person," Walker corrected, "who is a mishap of nature. A malformed human being. A dwarf, or a man with claw hands, or a woman with three arms. A boy who sweats blood. Have you ever seen any of those?"
"No," Matthew replied, though he could certainly relate to any boy who sweated blood.
"I was the Demon Indian," said Walker, in a quiet, faraway voice. "The Lucifer of the New World. The sign on my cage said so. The red paint on my face, the horns on my head those said so, too. And Mr. Oxley, the show's owner-poor old drunken Mr. Oxley-told me to make sure I rattled the bars of my cage, to throw myself against them, and holler and growl like a fiend from Hell. Some nights I had part of a chicken to gnaw upon. Then when the people had gone, I came out of my cage and took off my horns and all of us-all of us mishaps of nature-packed up to go to the next town. And there stood Mr. Oxley with his silver watch-very much like this one-telling everyone to hurry, telling everyone that tomorrow night in Guildford there was a fortune to be made, or the next night in Winchester, or the night after that in Salisbury. He said, hurry there! Hurry up! He said we had to hurry, through the night along the little roads, because time was wasting, because time was money, and because time never stops for an Englishman."
Walker turned the watch in his hands. "Mr. Oxley," he said, "hurried himself to his death. He was already worn out. It was the gin that finished him off. The rest of us divided what money we had and that was the end of the show. I dressed in my English suit, went to Portsmouth and bought passage on a ship. I came home. I went back to my people. But I brought my insanity and my demons with me, and they will never let me be."