Ivory Blood

Jimmy Robison

Mr. Smith

AP Literature

October 10, 2016

Ivory Blood

A quail called out. The sun rose over the Taum Sauk Mountain and shone through the red cedar, brushing across the face of a young man, rousing him from his slumber. Indrajith Suri brought himself to his feet and stretched his back. The morning dew moistened his feet as the dampened grass slipped between his toes. He yawned.

            Suri recalled his previous evening spent unsuccessfully tracking a large doe. He decided to abandon his efforts, setting his sights west, back towards the small wigwam where he and his wife currently lived.

            Hours later, as Suri became close to home, he heard a bloodcurdling scream not far in the distance. He leaped into action, sprinting through hundreds of yards of vegetation in the direction of the cry. To his horror, he arrived just in time to witness the execution of his beautiful wife. The white man stood over her lifeless body, flintlock still smoking in hand. “Filthy wahoo,” the man muttered. His accomplice laughed, and the killer joined him in laughter.

            Overcome with rage, Suri leaped from the bushes, drawing his mace. With a thundering cry, he struck the killer across the face, sending him limply collapsing to the ground. The accomplice reached for a blade, but in vain, as the vengeful Indian landed a fatal blow to his head.

Suri dropped to his knees, towering over his love’s corpse, sobbing. “Oh, sweet Sulochana! By Popé and Wovoka your death will not go unavenged! The death of these two honkies will not suffice! Only after I may bathe my hands in the ivory blood of thousands shall your demise be vindicated!”

As his cry for vengeance concluded, he noticed the rustling sound of movement through the trees to his right. Stealthily he crept, moving undetected through the cover of nature. He snuck up behind the source of the noise, another white man of middle age. He shattered one of the man’s legs, sending him falling to the ground, screaming and clutching his leg. Suri knocked the man out cold, but did not kill him. He laid the comatose man alongside the men he’d killed, then retreated to the bushes and waited. Several minutes later, the man came to. He was shaken by the death around him, limping away in the direction from which he had come. For many hours, Suri followed.

The stumbling man eventually came to a horse tied to a tree. He struggled to untie it, then mounted and headed east. For months, the determined Indrajith followed in the tracks of the horse. The trail ran cold before long, but he continued to push east, traveling on little sleep. He encountered six more white men over the course of his journey, killing them all and painting his face in their blood. Finally, he reached a settlement. He could see stone houses in the distance, and white people filled the streets. On the side of the road leading into the village, a wooden sign read “Welcome to Jamestown”.

From a distance, he walked around the perimeter of the settlement. After much observation, he entered. He was first noticed by a woman, who gasped at the sight of the native, naked and covered in blood. For a white woman, she was quite pretty, her blonde hair stretching partially down the back of her white dress. The fair woman reminded him of his beloved wife, killed by the savage gringos. Suri unleashed another thunderous cry, killing the woman before him and everyone else in Jamestown one by one. The screams of his victims resonated through him. All he could hear was the final wail of his wife, the last sound to ever pass her perfect lips. The screams only furthered his rage, and he tirelessly swung his mace at everyone he seen. Blood dripped from every inch of his body.

Suddenly, a gunshot sounded. Suri was stopped dead in his tracks. He gasped for air but failed to acquire any. He turned around slowly, and noticed a white man up the road holding a musket. With every ounce of his strength, Suri stumbled towards him. But he was too weak, and the man had already loaded another shot. Another shot sounded, and the Indian felt its impact. The mace fell to the dirt, and slowly he right beside the woman he had first killed. Face first he lay in a pool of her blood. As he lay, their blood intertwined, and mixed until the two couldn’t be distinguished.