Seventh Son: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume I Page 16

  11

  Millstone

  TALESWAPPER WOKE UP TO SOMEBODY shaking him. Still full dark outside, but it was time to be moving. He sat, flexed himself a little, and took some pleasure in how few knots and pains he had these days, sleeping on a soft bed. I could get used to this, he thought. I could enjoy living here.

  The bacon was so fat he could hear it sizzling clear from the kitchen. He was just about to pull his boots on when Mary knocked at the door. “I’m presentable, more or less,” he said.

  She came in, holding out two pair of long thick stockings. “I knotted them myself,” she said.

  “I couldn’t buy socks this thick in Philadelphia.”

  “Winter gets right cold here in the Wobbish country, and—” She didn’t finish. Got too shy, ducked her head, and scampered out of the room.

  Taleswapper pulled on the stockings, and his boots over them, and grinned. He didn’t feel bad about accepting a few things like this. He worked as hard as anybody, and he’d done a lot to help ready this farm for winter. He was a good roof man—he liked climbing and didn’t get dizzy. So his own hands had made sure the house and barns and coops and sheds all were tight and dry.

  And, without anybody ever deciding to do it, he had prepared the millhouse to receive a millstone. He had personally loaded all the hay from the mill floor, five wagons full. The twins, who really hadn’t got their two farms going yet, since they married only that summer, did the unloading up in the big barn. It was all done without Miller himself ever touching a pitchfork. Taleswapper saw to that, without making a fuss over it, and Miller never insisted.

  Other things, though, weren’t going so well. Ta-Kumsaw and his Shaw-Nee Reds were driving off so many folks from down Carthage way that everybody had the jitters. It was fine for the Prophet to have his big town of thousands of Reds across the river, all talking about how they’d never again raise their hands in war for any reason. But there were a lot of Reds who felt the way Ta-Kumsaw did, that the White man ought to be forced to the shores of the Atlantic and floated back to Europe, with or without boats. There was war talk, and word was that Bill Harrison down in Carthage was only too happy to fan that particular flame, not to mention the French in Detroit, always urging the Reds to attack the American settlers in land the French claimed was part of Canada.

  Folks in the town of Vigor Church talked about this all the time, but Taleswapper knew that Miller didn’t take it all that seriously. He thought of Reds as country clowns that wanted nothing more than to guzzle such whisky as they could find. Taleswapper had seen that attitude before, but only in New England. Yankees never seemed to realize that New England Reds with any gumption had long since moved to the state of Irrakwa. It would surely open Yankee eyes to see that the Irrakwa were working heavily with steam engines brought straight from England, and up in the Finger Lakes country a White named Eli Whitney was helping them make a factory that could turn out guns about twenty times faster than it had ever been done before. Someday those Yankees were going to wake up and find out that the Reds weren’t all likker-mad, and some White folks were going to have to scramble fast to catch up.

  In the meantime, though, Miller didn’t take the war talk very seriously. “Everybody knows there’s Reds in the woods. Can’t stop them from skulking around, but I haven’t missed any chickens so it’s no problem yet.”

  “More bacon?” asked Miller. He shoved the bacon board across the table toward Taleswapper.

  “I’m not used to eating so much in the morning,” said Taleswapper. “Since I’ve been here I’ve had more food at every meal than I used to eat in a whole day.”

  “Put some meat on your bones,” said Faith. She slapped down a couple of hot scones with honey smeared on them.

  “I can’t eat another bite,” protested Taleswapper.

  The scones slid right off Taleswapper’s plate. “Got em,” said Al Junior.

  “Don’t reach across the table like that,” said Miller. “And you can’t eat both those scones.”

  Al Junior proved his father wrong in an alarmingly short time. Then they washed the honey off their hands, put on their gloves, and went out to the wagon. The first light was just showing in the east as David and Calm, who lived townward from the farm, rode up. Al Junior climbed in the back of the wagon, along with all the tools and ropes and tents and supplies—it would be a few days before they came back.

  “So—do we wait for the twins and Measure?” asked Taleswapper.

  Miller swung up onto the wagon seat. “Measure’s on ahead, felling trees for the sledge. And Wastenot and Wantnot are staying back here, riding circuit from house to house.” He grinned. “Can’t leave the womenfolk unprotected, with all the talk of wild Reds prowling around, can we?”

  Taleswapper grinned back. Good to know that Miller wasn’t as complacent as he seemed.

  It was a good long way up to the quarry. On the road they passed the ruins of a wagon with a split millstone right in the middle of it. “That was our first try,” said Miller. “But an axle dried out and jammed up coming down this steep hill, and the whole wagon fell in under the weight of the stone.”

  They came near a good-sized stream, and Miller told about how they had tried to float two millstones down on a raft, but both times the raft just up and sank. “We’ve had bad luck,” said Miller, but from the set of his face he seemed to take it personally, as if someone had set out to make things fail.

  “That’s why we’re using a sledge and rollers this time,” said Al Junior, leaning over the back of the seat. “Nothing can fall off, nothing can break, and even if it does, it’s all just logs, and we got no shortage of replacements.”

  “As long as it don’t rain,” said Miller. “Nor snow.”

  “Sky looks clear enough,” said Taleswapper.

  “Sky’s a liar,” said Miller. “When it comes to anything I want to do, water always gets in my way.”

  They got to the quarry when the sun was full up, but still far from noon. Of course, the trip back would be much longer. Measure had already felled six stout young trees and about twenty small ones. David and Calm set right to work, stripping off branches and rounding them smooth as possible. To Taleswapper’s surprise, it was Al Junior who picked up the sack of stonecutting tools and headed up into the rocks.

  “Where are you going?” asked Taleswapper.

  “Oh, I’ve got to find a good place for cutting,” said Al Junior.

  “He’s got an eye for stone,” said Miller. But he wasn’t saying all he knew.

  “And when you find the stone, what’ll you do then?” asked Taleswapper.

  “Why, I’ll cut it.” Alvin sauntered on up the path with all the arrogance of a boy who knows he’s about to do a man’s job.

  “Got a good hand for stone, too,” said Miller.

  “He’s only ten years old,” said Taleswapper.

  “He cut the first stone when he was six,” said Miller.

  “Are you saying it’s a knack?”

  “I ain’t saying nothing.”

  “Will you say this, Al Miller? Tell me if by chance you are a seventh son.”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “It’s said, by those who know such things, that a seventh son of a seventh son is born with the knowledge of how things look under the surface. That’s why they make such good dowsers.”

  “Is that what they say?”

  Measure walked up, faced his father, put his hands on his hips, and looked plain exasperated. “Pa, what harm is there in telling him? Everybody in the whole country roundabout here knows it.”

  “Maybe I think Taleswapper here knows more than I want him to know already.”

  “That’s a right ungracious thing to say, Pa, to a man who’s proved himself a friend twice over.”

  “He doesn’t have to tell me anything he doesn’t want me to know,” said Taleswapper.

  “Then I’ll tell you,” said Measure. “Pa is a seventh son, all right.”

  “And so is
Al Junior,” said Taleswapper. “Am I right? You’ve never mentioned it, but I’d guess that when a man gives his own name to a son other than his firstborn, it’s bound to be his seventh born.”

  “Our oldest brother Vigor died in the Hatrack River only a few minutes after Al Junior was born,” said Measure.

  “Hatrack,” said Taleswapper.

  “Do you know the place?” asked Measure.

  “I know every place. But for some reason that name makes me think I should have remembered it before now, and I can’t think why. Seventh son of a seventh son. Does he conjure the millstone out of the rock?”

  “We don’t talk about it like that,” said Measure.

  “He cuts,” said Miller. “Just like any stonecutter.”

  “He’s a big boy, but he’s still just a boy,” said Taleswapper.

  “Let’s just say,” said Measure, “that when he cuts the stone it’s a mite softer than when I cut it.”

  “I’d appreciate it,” said Miller, “if you’d stay down here and help with the rounding and notching. We need a nice tight sledge and some smooth true rollers.” What he didn’t say, but Taleswapper heard just as plain as day, was, Stay down here and don’t ask too many questions about Al Junior.

  So Taleswapper worked with David and Measure and Calm all morning and well into the afternoon, all the time hearing a steady chinking sound of iron on stone. Alvin Junior’s stonecutting set the rhythm for all their work, though no one commented on it.

  Taleswapper wasn’t the sort of man who could work in silence, though. Since the others weren’t too conversational at first, he told stories the whole time. And since they were grown men instead of children, he told stories that weren’t all adventure and heroics and tragic death.

  Most of the afternoon, in fact, he devoted to the saga of John Adams: How his house was burnt down by a Boston mob after he won the acquittal of ten women accused of witchcraft. How Alex Hamilton invited him to Manhattan Island, where the two of them set up a law practice together. How in ten years they managed to maneuver the Dutch government to allow unlimited immigration of non-Dutch-speaking people, until English, Scotch, Welsh, and Irish were a majority in New Amsterdam and New Orange, and a large minority in New Holland. How they got English declared a second official language in 1780, just in time for the Dutch colonies to become three of the seven original states under the American Compact.

  “I’ll bet the Dutchmen hated those boys, by the time they were through,” said David.

  “They were better politicians than that,” said Taleswapper. “Why, both of them learned to speak Dutch better than most Dutchmen, and had their children grow up speaking Dutch in Dutch schools. They were so dad-gum Dutch, boys, that when Alex Hamilton ran for governor of New Amsterdam and John Adams ran for president of the United States, they both did better in the Dutch parts of New Netherland than they did among the Scotch and Irish.”

  “Reckon if I run for mayor, I could get those Swedes and Dutchmen downriver to vote for me?” said David.

  “I wouldn’t even vote for you,” said Calm.

  “I would,” said Measure. “And I hope someday you do run for mayor.”

  “He can’t run for mayor,” said Calm. “This ain’t even a proper town.”

  “It will be,” said Taleswapper. “I’ve seen it before. Once you get this mill working, it won’t be long before three hundred people dwell between your mill and Vigor Church.”

  “You think so?”

  “Right now people come in to Armor’s store maybe three or four times a year,” said Taleswapper. “But when they can get flour, they’ll come in much more often. They’ll prefer your mill to any other around here for some time, too, since you’ve got a smooth road and good bridges.”

  “If the mill makes money,” Measure said, “Pa’s sure to send for a Buhr Stone from France. We had one back in West Hampshire, before the flood broke up the mill. And a Buhr Stone means fine white flour.”

  “And white flour means good business,” said David. “We older ones, we remember.” He smiled wistfully. “We were almost rich there, once.”

  “So,” said Taleswapper. “With all that traffic here, it won’t be just a store and a church and a mill. There’s good white clay down on the Wobbish. Some potter’s bound to go into business, making redware and stoneware for the whole territory.”

  “Sure wish they’d hurry with that,” said Calm. “My wife is sick unto death, she says, of having to serve food on tin plates.”

  “That’s how towns grow,” said Taleswapper. “A good store, a church, then a mill, then a pottery. Bricks, too, for that matter. And when there’s a town—”

  “David can be mayor,” said Measure.

  “Not me,” said David. “All that politics business is too much. It’s Armor wants that, not me.”

  “Armor wants to be king,” said Calm.

  “That’s not kind,” said David.

  “But it’s true,” said Calm. “He’d try to be God, if he thought the job was open.”

  Measure explained to Taleswapper. “Calm and Armor don’t get along.”

  “It ain’t much of a husband that calls his wife a witch,” said Calm bitterly.

  “Why would he call her that?” asked Taleswapper.

  “It’s sure he doesn’t call her that now,” said Measure. “She promised him to give them up. All her knacks in the kitchen. It’s a shame to make a woman run a household with just her own two hands.”

  “That’s enough,” David said. Taleswapper caught just a corner of his warning look.

  Obviously they didn’t trust Taleswapper enough to let him in on the truth. So Taleswapper let them know that the secret was already in his possession. “It seems to me that she uses more than Armor guesses,” said Taleswapper. “There’s a clever hex out of baskets on the front porch. And she used a calming on him before my eyes, the day I arrived in town.”

  Work stopped then, for just a moment. Nobody looked at him, but for a second they did nothing. Just took in the fact that Taleswapper knew Eleanor’s secret and hadn’t told about it to outsiders. Or to Armor-of-God Weaver. Still, it was one thing for him to know, and something else for them to confirm it. So they said nothing, just resumed notching and binding the sledge.

  Taleswapper broke the silence by returning to the main topic. “It’s just a matter of time before these western lands have enough people in them to call themselves states, and petition to join the American Compact. When that happens, there’ll be need for honest men to hold office.”

  “You won’t find no Hamilton or Adams or Jefferson out here in the wild country,” said David.

  “Maybe not,” said Taleswapper. “But if you local boys don’t set up your own government, you can bet there’ll be plenty of city men willing to do it for you. That’s how Aaron Burr got to be governor of Suskwahenny, before Daniel Boone shot him dead in ninety-nine.”

  “You make it sound like murder,” said Measure. “It was a fair duel.”

  “To my way of thinking,” said Taleswapper, “a duel is just two murderers who agree to take turns trying to kill each other.”

  “Not when one of them is an old country boy in buckskin and the other is a lying cheating city man,” said Measure.

  “I don’t want no Aaron Burr trying to be governor over the Wobbish country,” said David. “And that’s what kind of man Bill Harrison is, down there in Carthage City. I’d vote for Armor before I’d vote for him.”

  “And I’d vote for you before I’d vote for Armor,” said Taleswapper.

  David grunted. He continued weaving rope around the notches of the sledge logs, binding them together. Taleswapper was doing the same thing on the other side. When he got to the knotting place, Taleswapper started to tie the two ends of the rope together.

  “Wait on that,” said Measure. “I’ll go fetch Al Junior.” Measure took off at a jog up the slope to the quarry.

  Taleswapper dropped the ends of the rope. “Alvin Junior ties the knots?
I would have thought grown men like you could tie them tighter.”

  David grinned. “He’s got a knack.”

  “Don’t any of you have knacks?” asked Taleswapper.

  “A few.”

  “David’s got a knack with the ladies,” said Calm.

  “Calm’s got dancing feet at a hoedown. Ain’t nobody fiddles like him, neither,” said David. “It ain’t on tune all the time, but he keeps that bow busy.”

  “Measure’s a true shot,” said Calm. “He’s got an eye for things too far off for most folks to see.”

  “We got our knacks,” said David. “The twins have a way of knowing when trouble’s brewing, and getting there just about in time.”

  “And Pa, he fits things together. We have him do all the wood joints when we’re building furniture.”

  “The womenfolk got women’s knacks.”

  “But,” said Calm, “there ain’t nobody like Al Junior.”

  David nodded gravely. “Thing is, Taleswapper, he don’t seem to know about it. I mean, he’s always kind of surprised when things turn out good. He’s right proud when we give him a job to do. I never seen him lord it over nobody because he’s got more of a knack than they do.”

  “He’s a good boy,” said Calm.

  “Kind of clumsy,” said David.

  “Not clumsy,” said Calm. “Most times it isn’t his fault.”

  “Let’s just say that accidents happen more common around him.”

  “I wouldn’t say jinx or nothing,” said Calm.

  “No, I wouldn’t say jinx.”

  Taleswapper noted that in fact they both had said it. But he didn’t comment on their indiscretion. After all, it was the third voice that made bad luck true. His silence was the best cure for their carelessness. And the other two caught on quickly enough. They, too, held their silence.

  After a while, Measure came down the hill with Alvin Junior. Taleswapper dared not be the third voice, since he had taken part in the conversation before. And it would be even worse if Alvin himself spoke next, since he was the one who had been linked with a jinx. So Taleswapper kept his eye on Measure, and raised his eyebrows, to show Measure that he was expected to speak.