THE CRYSTAL CITY Page 16

  Alvin would probably have tried to use his knack somehow to save the fools who couldn't swim. Maybe dissolve their boots or something. Or grow them gills-he could probably do it, just to show off.

  But even if Calvin had been able to think of something like that quick enough, and even if he had enough control to do anything useful at such a distance, he wouldn't have tried. The world was no poorer for the loss of a few such fools. Indeed, it was downright generous of these "brave" drunk nitwits to improve the breeding population of Barcy by removing themselves from it.

  All fools on the river today, thought Calvin. Because the ones following such careful plans were going to end up looking just as stupid as these clowns, when Alvin was done with them. They probably wouldn't be dead-it was Alvin, after all-but what they most certainly would not be was successful.

  Which was probably about how the expedition to Mexico would turn out, too, Calvin cheerfully recognized. These arrogant men, thinking that because they were white they could easily defeat the Mexica. They would probably fail, too. And because it was the Mexica they were facing, and not Alvin Maker, a good number of Steve Austin's boys would probably end up dead.

  But not Calvin. He might go along with the plans of fools as long as they looked useful, or at least entertaining. But he would never turn his life over to someone else's plan. His own plans were the only plans he ever followed.

  Not like Alvin, letting his wife tell him what to do. Speaking of fools.

  9

  Expeditions

  It took some doing, but they found the nicest dresses in the whole company that would fit them, and decked out Dead Mary and her mother, Rien, so they could pass for slaveowners. Slightly shabby, perhaps, but it wasn't completely impossible that they would have a mammy slave like La Tia seemed to be and a sturdy young man like Arthur Stuart.

  It's not like strangers would be rare in this country, either. Ten years ago the only white folks here was trappers or fugitives. But when most of the reds who didn't want to live white crossed over the Mizzippy, it opened up this land to settlement. Around here, if your house had been standing for five years, you were an old-timer. So nobody'd be too surprised to see two ladies of a family they didn't know-or so they hoped.

  Alvin refused to go to the door of the plantation house with them. "What good does it do for you to see how I'd do it?

  I'm a white man, and not a word I say would be useful to you after. I'll be watching in case anything goes wrong, but you've got to do it yourselves."

  La Tia and Arthur Stuart waited just off the porch as Dead Mary and Rien stepped up to clap hands and call someone to the door. Soon it was opened by an elderly black man.

  "Good evening," he said gravely.

  "Good evening," said Dead Mary. She was doing the talking because her French accent was not so pronounced as Rien's. And because she could do a better job of faking high-class conversation. "Sir, my mother and I would like to speak to the master of the house, if we may."

  "Master of the house away," said the old man. "Mistress of the house poorly. But the young master, he here."

  "Could you fetch him for us, then?"

  "Would you like to come and rest inside, where it's shady?" asked the old man.

  "No thank you," said Mary. She had no intention of getting out of sight of Arthur Stuart or La Tia.

  Soon the old man returned, and brought with him a young man who could not have been much over fourteen years old. Behind him hovered a white man of middle age. Not the master of the house, and not a slave, so who was he?

  Mary addressed the young man. "My name is Marie Moore," she said. They had agreed an English last name would be better for her, suggesting that her father had simply married a Frenchwoman. "My mother is shy about speaking English."

  It was the middle-aged man who leapt to answer. "Parleyvous francais, madame?"

  "Mr. Tutor," said the boy, "they come to see me."

  "Came, young master," said Mr. Tutor.

  "This is not my lesson right this very moment, if you please." So the boy was faking being high class just as much as Mary. He turned back to her with an irked look on his face, but quickly changed it to an expression of dignity. "What do you wish? If you wish to have water or a bite to eat, the kitchen's around back."

  This was not a good sign, that he was treating them like beggars, when he should take them for slave-owning gentry like himself.

  Fortunately, Mr. Tutor saw the gaffe at once. "Young master, you can't ask ladies to go around back as if they were servants or beggars!" To Mary and Rien he said, "Please excuse his lapse. He has never met a visitor at the door before, and so-"

  "They're not ladies," said the boy. "Look at their dresses. I've seen better dresses on slaves."

  "Master Roy, you are being impolite, I fear."

  "Mr. Tutor, you forget your place," said Roy. He turned back to Mary. "I don't know what you want, but we got nothing to contribute to any cause, and if I were you I'd be careful, cause the story is that a whole passel of folks crossed over Pontchartrain last night. Rumor's been spreading all over and they say they're a lot of runaway slaves. We've got ours locked down today just in case they get some bad ideas, but you'll never keep those two under control if they get ideas."

  Mary smiled and put on her archest high-class voice. "There's danger about, and yet you do not invite two ladies inside because our dresses are not new enough to suit you. Your mother will be pleased when all the neighbor ladies hear how we were turned away at your door because the young master of the house was so proud." She turned her back on him and started down the stairs. "Come along, Mother, this is not a polite house."

  "Young master!" said Mr. Tutor, in great distress.

  "You always think I do wrong, but I tell you I know they're a bunch of liars, it's my knack."

  Mary turned around. "You say that you have a knack for discerning a lie?"

  "I always know," said Roy. "And you and your mother got liar written all over you. That's rude to say, I know it, but Father has me go with him when we buy horses or slaves or anything expensive, because I can always tell him when the man is lying when he says, This is as low as I'll go, or, This horse is right healthy."

  "You must be quite a help to your father," said Mary.

  "I am," said the boy proudly.

  "But not all lies are alike. My mother and I have fallen on hard times, but we still pretend to be ladies of substance because that allows us to uphold our dignity. But I would be surprised if we were the first ladies to come to this house planning to deceive you about our rank in the world."

  The boy grinned sheepishly. "Well, you got that aright. When her friends come to call, the lies come thicker and faster than hail in a storm."

  "Sometimes you should let a harmless lie stand, sir, without naming it so, for the sake of good manners."

  "I could not have said that better," said Mr. Tutor. "The young master is still so young."

  "They can see that I'm young," said Roy, irritated again. To Mary and Rien he said, "Why don't you ladies come on inside, then, and we'll see about maybe something to drink, like ... lemonade?"

  "Lemonade would be lovely," said Mary. "But before we accept your kind invitation, we heard that your name is Roy, but not your family name."

  "Why, we took our name from what we grow. Roy Cottoner, and my father is Abner Cottoner, after some general in the Bible." "And in French," said Mary, "your first name means 'king.' "

  "I know that," said Roy, sounding irritated again. He was quite an irritable boy.

  They followed him into the house. Mary had no idea if they were doing things properly-should Mother go first, or should she?-but they figured Roy wouldn't know, and besides, they were already tagged as impostors, so it wouldn't hurt if they got a few things wrong.

  "Master Cottoner," said Mary.

  Roy turned around.

  "Our servants are thirsty. Is there..."

  He laughed. "Oh, them. Old Bart, our houseboy, he'll show them ar
ound back to the cistern."

  Sure enough, the elderly black man was already closing the front door behind him as he headed out to where Arthur Stuart and La Tia were waiting. Mary wished she had more confidence in Arthur Stuart's knack. But Alvin seemed to have confidence in him, so how could Mary refuse to trust in his abilities?

  Roy led them into a parlor and invited them to sit down. He turned to Mr. Tutor. "Go tell Petunia we need lemonade."

  Mr. Tutor looked mortally offended. "I am not a servant in this house, sir."

  "Well what do you think, I should go tell them myself?"

  Mary suspected, from what she knew of manners, that that was indeed what he ought to do, but Mr. Tutor merely narrowed his eyes and went off to obey. Mary was just as happy to have him out of the room.

  She watched as Roy took a pose in the archway. It looked studied and unnatural, and she suspected that he was imitating the way he'd seen his father stand when company came. On a full-grown man, the stance would have seemed languid and comfortable.

  "Master Cottoner," said Mary. "We have, as you guessed, come to ask for aid."

  "Father isn't here," said Roy. "I got no money."

  "It happens that we don't need money. What we need is permission to bring a large group of people onto your land, and feed them from your larder, and let them sleep the night."

  Roy's eyes narrowed, and he dropped his pose. "So you are from those people who crossed Pontchartrain."

  "We are indeed," said Mary. "There are five thousand of us, and we'd rather have your help offered freely. But if we have to, we'll just take what we need. We have hundreds of hungry children among us, and we don't mean for them to go hungry."

  "You get out of my house," said Roy. "You just get out of here."

  For the first time, Mother spoke. "You are young," she said. "But it is the essence of dignity to pretend to desire what you cannot prevent."

  "My father'll shoot you down like dogs when he gets home."

  "Roy!" A woman's voice came from the hall, and a frail-looking woman came into view behind him, wan and bedraggled from sleep, a robe drawn around her shoulders. "Roy, in my house we will be polite."

  "They're a bunch of runaways from Barcy, Mama! They're threatening to take food and such from us."

  "That's no reason not to be polite," said the woman. "I am Ruth Cottoner, mistress of this house. Please forgive my ill-mannered son."

  "You shouldn't apologize for me, Mama, not to thieves and liars!"

  "If I weren't so ill, I'd have reared him better," said Ruth sadly.

  Then she pulled up a musket that she had been holding behind her leg. She aimed it straight at Rien and before Mary could even scream, she pulled the trigger.

  The gunpowder fizzled and sparked, and a double handful of smallshot dribbled out the end of the barrel.

  "How odd," said Ruth. "My husband said it was loaded and ready to fire."

  Arthur Stuart appeared behind her. "It was," he said. "But sometimes guns just don't do what you tell them."

  She turned around to face him, and now for the first time there was fear on her face. "Whose slave are you! What are you doing in my house!"

  "I'm no man's slave," said Arthur Stuart, "nor any woman's neither. I'm just a fellow who doesn't take kindly to folks pointing muskets at my friends."

  La Tia appeared behind him. "Ma'am," she said, "you lay down that foolish gun and sit." La Tia was carrying a tray with a pitcher of lemonade and six glasses. "We gonna have a talk, us."

  "You leave my mother alone!" shouted Roy. And he made as if to shove at La Tia. But Arthur Stuart was already there and caught his wrists and held him.

  "You will die for laying a hand on my son," said Ruth.

  "We'll all die someday," said Arthur Stuart. "Now you heard the lady. Set."

  "You have invaded my home."

  "This ain't no home," said Arthur Stuart. "This is a prison, where sixty black people are held captive against their will. You are one of the captors, and for this crime you surely deserve terrible punishment, ma'am. But we ain't here to punish nobody, so maybe you best be keeping your thoughts of punishing us to yourself. Now set."

  She sat. Arthur propelled Roy to another chair and made sure he, too, sat down.

  La Tia put the tray on the small serving table and began to fill the glasses with lemonade. "Just so you know," said La Tia, "we notice that some fool has lock all the black folk into their cabins. In the heat of the day, that be so mean to do."

  "So I let them all out," said Arthur. "They're drinking their fill at the pump right now, but pretty soon they'll be helping our company find places to camp on your lawns and in your barns, and setting out a supper to feed five thousand. It's like being in the Bible, don't you think?"

  "We don't have food enough for so many!" said Ruth.

  "If you don't, we'll impose on the hospitality of some of your neighbors."

  "My husband will be back any time! Very soon!"

  "We'll be watching for him," said Arthur. "I don't think you need to fret-we won't let him accidentally hurt somebody."

  Mary couldn't help but admire how cool he was, as if he was enjoying this. And yet there was no malice in it.

  "He'll raise the county and have you all hanged!" said Roy.

  "Even the women and children?" asked Arthur Stuart mildly. "That's a dangerous precedent. Fortunately, we aren't killers, so we won't hang you."

  "I bet Mr. Tutor's already run for help," said Roy smugly.

  "I take it Mr. Tutor is that soft-bodied white man who has read more books than he understood."

  Roy nodded.

  "He's standing out in the yard with his pants down around his ankles, while some of the illiterate black folks are reading to him from the Bible. It seems they heard him make a big deal about how black folks couldn't be taught to read because their brains wasn't big enough or they got baked in the sun or some such theory, and they're proving him wrong at this moment."

  "You were busy out there," said Rien.

  "I'm a sick and dying woman," said Ruth. "It's cruel of you to do this to me in the last weeks of my life."

  Arthur looked at her and smiled. "And how many weeks of freedom were you going to give any of your slaves, before they died?"

  "We treat our servants well, thank you!" said Ruth.

  As if in answer to her, Old Bart came into the room. He didn't walk slowly now. His stride was bold and quick, and he walked up to Ruth and spat in her lap. At once Roy leapt up from his chair, but Old Bart turned to him and slapped him so hard across the face that he fell to the floor.

  "No!" cried Mary, and her mother also cried out, "Non!"

  "We don't hit nobody," said La Tia softly. "And no spitting, neither."

  Old Bart turned to her. "The folks out back, they all wanted to do it, but I said, Let me do it just the once for all of us. And they chose me for the job. You know this boy already done had his way with two of the girls, and one of them not even got her womanlies yet."

  "That's a lie!" shouted Roy.

  "My son is not capable of-"

  "Don't you try to tell black folks what white folks is capable of," said Arthur Stuart. "But we're done with all that now. We ain't come here, sir, to bring vengeance or justice. Just freedom."

  "You bring me freedom, and then say I can't use it?" said Old Bart.

  "I know what you doing," said La Tia. "You a house slave, you try make them field slave forget you sleep indoors on a bed, you."

  Old Bart glared at her. "Every day I got them treating me like dirt, they in my face all the time, you think a indoor bed make up for that? I hate them more than anybody. Me slapping him stead of killing him, that what mercy look like."

  Arthur Stuart nodded. "I got respect for your feelings, sir. But right now I don't care about justice nor mercy neither. I care about getting five thousand people safe to the Mizzippy.

  And I don't need to have the whole country stirred up by a bunch of stories about slaves slapping the children o
f their former masters."

  "They ain't gonna tell no slapping story," said Old Bart. "They gonna tell that we killed this white boy and raped that white woman, and cut that stupid teacher all up. So as long as they gonna tell it, why not do a little of it?"

  Ruth gasped.

  "You already done all you gonna do," said Arthur Stuart. "I told you why. So if you raise a hand against anybody else while we're here, sir, I'll have to stop you."

  Old Bart smiled patronizingly at Arthur Stuart. "I'd like to see you try."

  "No you wouldn't," said Arthur.

  Mary tried to defuse the situation. She rose from her chair and approached Ruth Cottoner. "Please give me your hand," she said.

  "Don't touch me!" cried Ruth. "I won't give my hand to an invader and a looter!"

  "I know something about disease," said Mary. "I know more than your doctor."

  "In Barcy," said Arthur Stuart, "everybody came to her to know if they was gonna get better when they was sick."

  "I'll do no harm," said Mary. "And I'll tell you the truth of what I see. Your son will know if I'm lying."

  Slowly the woman raised her hand and put it in Mary's.

  Mary felt the woman's body as if it became part of her own, and at once knew where the cancer was. Centered in her womb, but spread out, too, eating away at her inside. "It's bad," she said. "It started in your womb, but it's everywhere now. The pain must be terrible."

  Ruth closed her eyes.

  "Mama," said Roy.

  Mary turned to Arthur Stuart. "Can you ...?"

  "Not me," said Arthur Stuart. "It's too much for me."

  "But Alvin, don't you think he-"

  "You can ask him," said Arthur Stuart. "It might be too much for him, too, you know. He ain't no miracle worker."

  "You have some kind of healer with you?" said Ruth bitterly. "I've had healers come before, the charlatans."

  "He ain't mostly a healer," said Arthur Stuart. "He only does it kind of, you know, when he runs into somebody who needs it."