Prophecy by David Seltzer Read Free Book Online Page B

under.
    “No… I” one of them sobbed as they were dragged unstoppably forward. And with a sudden jerk their bodies left the ground, catapulting into the air, their screams echoing as they cartwheeled downward into the chasm.
    Only one of them lived long enough after hitting the ground to see what it was that had pulled them. It stood over him, emitting a quiet squeal, and raised an arm that revealed a skinfold beneath it, with veins traced like tree branches, back lit by the moon. It was all the man saw before his head was severed from his body, the chemical reaction called memory quickly dissipating as the head smashed against a tree.
     
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    As John Hawks sat in grim silence, gazing out the window of the train that took him from Washington, D.C., to Maine, he saw dawn breaking over the stately pinnacle of Mount Katahdin. It was a sight he had not seen for seven years.
    That last visit to the place of his birth, when he was twenty-one, had been a profound disappointment. He had been seeking ancestral ties, re-immersion into a culture he had forsaken. But he found that the Masaquoddy people had fallen into cultural limbo. The village he remembered from childhood as beautiful and magical had become a garbage dump; a collection of huts made from cast-off materials, the ground littered with unusable machinery and the skeletons of defunct automobiles.
    Proximity to the white man’s world had taken its toll. The incipient feeling of inferiority had created an appetite for mimicry. Washing machines were purchased even though the village had no electrical power source, transistor radios abounded even though nothing but static could be picked up because of the barriers of mountains. Automobiles were bought and junked there because no gasoline could be afforded. White Woolworth brassiers could be seen intruding between the earth colors of the women’s animal-hide jackets and their rich brown skin.
    And yet, in spite of all this material weakness, the Masaquoddy still had their pride. Pride enough to
     
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    avoid contact with the whites. Pride enough to resent John Hawks for having been a part of the white world.
    It was likely that there was white blood in John Hawks. It was his blessing and his curse. It had entered too far back in his lineage for him to trace, but it was discernible on his face. His features were fine, his skin was light. He had once taken secret delight in the knowledge that he could pass for white. But now he hated that knowledge, for it had filled his life with confusion.
    It was because of his looks that he had been selected by Mary Pitney when he was twelve to be taken from the Masaquoddy village and educated at a boarding school in Portland. As owners of the lumber company on the shores of the Espee River, the Pitneys considered themselves philanthropic people. They were in their seventies then, and wanted to make sure, before it was too late, that they earned their passports to Heaven. There were two other Indian children selected. One was from the Yurok tribe, one from the Ashinabeg; Hawks was the third. The Yurok killed himself when he was a teenager. The Ashinabeg died in Vietnam.
    Hawks was the only one who survived the ordeal; he survived it by deception: losing his tribal accent, dressing as the white children dressed, and learning that it was better to be white than red. For many years he made a conscious effort to forget where he was born; he even invented a history of descendance from a wealthy Bostonian family, who, he said, were all deceased. The Pitneys had died by the time he was sixteen, leaving him an educational fund administered by a bank in Portland; he himself was an orphan. There was no one, except his inner self, to remind him of the truth.
    But the lifetime of deception took its toll. Passing for white in a country heavily populated with Indians, he was often privileged to conversations normally reserved for whites only. The jokes were torturous, and he forced