ALVIN JOURNEYMAN Read online

  “That must be some funny story,” said a voice.

  Calvin fairly jumped out of his skin. How did somebody come on him unawares? Still, he didn’t let himself show he’d been surprised. His heart might be beating fast inside his chest, but he still waited a minute before even turning around to look, and then he made sure to look about as uninterested as a fellow can look without being dead.

  A bald fellow, old and in buckskins. Calvin knew him, of course. A far traveler and sometime visitor named Taleswapper. Another one who thought the world began with God and ended with Alvin. Calvin looked him up and down. The buckskins were about as old as the man. “Did you get them clothes off a ninety-year-old deer, or did your daddy and grandpa wear them all their lives to get them so worn out like that?”

  “I’ve worn these clothes so long,” said the old man, “that I sometimes send them on errands when I’m too busy to go, and nobody can tell the difference.”

  “I think I know you,” said Calvin. “You’re that old Taleswapper fellow.”

  “So I am,” said the old man. “And you’re Calvin, old Miller’s youngest boy.”

  Calvin waited.

  And here it came: “Alvin’s little brother.”

  Calvin folded himself sitting down and then unfolded himself standing. He liked how tall he was. He liked looking down at the old man’s bald head. “You know, old man, if we had another just like you, we could put your smooth pink heads together and you’d look like a baby’s butt.”

  “Don’t like being called Alvin’s little brother, eb?” asked Taleswappeir.

  “You know where to go for your free meal,” said Calvin. He started to walk away into the meadow. Having no destination in mind, of course, his walking pretty soon petered out, and he paused a moment, looking around, wishing there was something he wanted to do.

  The old man was right behind him. Damn but the old boy was quiet! Calvin had to remember to keep a watch out for people. Alvin did it without thinking, dammit, and Calvin could do it too if he could just remember to remember.

  “Heard you chuckling,” said Taleswapper. “When I first walked up behind you.”

  “Well, then, I guess you ain’t deaf yet.”

  “Saw you watching the millhouse and heard you chuckling and I thought, What does this boy see so funny in a mill whose wheel don’t turn?”

  Calvin turned to face him. “You were born in England, weren’t you?”

  “I was.”

  “And you lived in Philadelphia awhile, right? Met old Ben Franklin there, right?”

  “What a memory you have.”

  “Then how come you talk like a frontiersman? You know and I know that it’s supposed to be ‘a mill whose wheel doesn’t turn,’ but here you are talking bad grammar as if you never went to school but I know you did. And how come you don’t talk like other Englishmen?”

  “Keen ear, keen eye,” said Taleswapper. “A sharp one for details. Dull on the big picture, but sharp on details. I notice you talk worse than you know how, too.”

  Calvin ignored the insult. He wasn’t going to let this old coot distract him with tricks. “I said how come you talk like a frontiersman?”

  “Spend a lot of time on the frontier.”

  “I spend a lot of time in the chicken coop but that don’t make me cluck.”

  Taleswapper grinned. “What do you think, boy?”

  “I think you try to sound like the people you’re telling your lies to, so they’ll trust you, they’ll think you’re one of them. But you’re not one of us, you’re not one of anybody. You’re a spy, stealing the hopes and dreams and wishes and memories and imaginings of everybody and leaving them nothing but lies in exchange.”

  Taleswapper seemed amused. “If I’m such a criminal, why ain’t I rich?”

  “Not a criminal,” said Calvin.

  “I’m relieved to be acquitted.”

  “Just a hypocrite.”

  Taleswapper’s eyes narrowed.

  “A hypocrite,” Calvin said again. “Pretending to be what you’re not. So other people will trust you, but they’re trusting in a bunch of pretenses.”

  “That’s an interesting idea, there, Calvin,” said Taleswapper. “Where do you draw the line between a humble man who knows his own weaknesses but tries to act out virtues he hasn’t quite mastered yet, and a proud man who pretends to have those virtues without the slightest intention of acquiring them?”

  “Listen to the frontiersman now,” said Calvin scornfully. “I knew you could shed that folksy talk the minute you wanted to.”

  “Yes, I can do that,” said Taleswapper. “Just as I can speak French to a Frenchman and Spanish to a Spaniard and four kinds of Red talk depending on which tribe I’m with. But you, Calvin, do you speak Scorn and Mockery to everyone? Or just to your betters?”

  It took Calvin a moment to realize that he had been put down, hard and low. “I could kill you without using my hands,” he said.

  “Harder than you think,” said Taleswapper. “Killing a man, that is. Why not ask your brother Alvin about it? He’s done it the once, for just cause, whereas you think of killing a man because he tweaks your nose. And then you wonder why I call myself your better.”

  “You just want to put me down because I named you for what you are. Hypocrite. Like all the others.”

  “All the others?”

  Calvin nodded grimly.

  “Everyone is a hypocrite except Calvin Miller?”

  “Calvin Maker,” said Calvin. Even as he said it, he knew it was a mistake; he had never told anyone the name by which he thought of himself, and now he had blurted it out, a boast, a brag, a demand, to this most unsympathetic of listeners. This man who was most likely, of all men, to repeat Calvin’s secret dream to others.

  “Well, now it seems to be unanimous,” said Taleswapper. “We’re all pretending to be something that we’re not.”

  “I am a Maker!” Calvin insisted, raising his voice, even though he knew he was making himself seem even weaker and more vulnerable. He just couldn’t stop himself from talking to this slimy old man. “I’ve got all the knack for it that Alvin ever had, if anyone would bother to notice!”

  “Made any millstones lately, without tools?” asked Taleswapper.

  “I can make stones in a fence fit together like as if they growed that way out of the ground!”

  “Healed any wounds?”

  “I killed a bug crawling on my leg just a moment ago without so much as laying a hand on it.”

  “Interesting. I ask of healing and you answer with killing. Doesn’t sound like a Maker to me.”

  “You said yourself that Alvin killed a man!”

  “With his hands, not with his knack. A man who had just murdered an innocent woman who died to protect her son from captivity. The bug—was it going to harm you or anyone?”

  “Yes, there you are, Alvin is always righteous and wonderful, while Calvin can’t do nothing right! But Alvin hisself told me the story of how he caused a bunch of roaches to get theirselfs kilt when he was a boy and—“

  “And you learned nothing from his story, except that you have the power to torment insects.”

  “He gets to do what he wants and then talks about how he’s learned better now, but if I do the same things then I’m not worthy! I can’t be taught any of his secrets because I’m not ready for them only I am ready for them, I’m just not ready to let Alvin decide how I’ll use the knack I was born with. Who tells him what to do?”

  “The inner light of virtue,” said Taleswapper, “for lack of a clearer name.”

  “Well what about my inner light?”

  “I imagine that your parents ask themselves this very question, and often.”

  “Why can’t I be allowed to figure things out on my own like Alvin did?”

  “But of course you are being allowed to do exactly that,” said Taleswapper.

  “No I’m not! He sits there trying to explain to those boneheaded no-knack followers of his how to ge
t inside other things and learn what they are and how they’re shaped inside and then ask them to take on new forms, as if that’s a thing that folks can learn—“

  “But they do learn it, don’t they?”

  “If you call an inch a year moving, then I guess you can call that learning,” said Calvin. “But me, the one who actually understands everything he says, the one who could actually put it all to use, he won’t even let me in the room. If I stay there he just tells stories and makes jokes and won’t teach a thing until I leave, and why? I’m his best pupil, ain’t I? I learn it all, I soak it in fast and I can use it on the instant, but he won’t teach me! He calls them others ‘apprentice Makers’ but me he won’t even take on for a single lesson, all because I don’t bow down and worship whenever he starts talking about how a Maker can never use his power to destroy, but only to build, or he loses it, which is nonsense, since a man’s knack is his knack and—“

  “It seems to me,” said Taleswapper, his voice sharp enough to cut through Calvin’s raging, “that you are a singularly unteachable young man. You ask Alvin to teach you, and he tries to do it, but then you refuse to listen because you know what’s nonsense and what matters, you know that a man doesn’t have to make in order to be a Maker, you already know so much I’m surprised you still wait around here, wishing for Alvin to teach you things that you plainly have no desire to know.”

  “I want him to teach me how to get into the small of things!” cried Calvin. “I want him to teach me how to change people the way he changed Arthur Stuart so the Finders couldn’t Find him anymore! I want him to teach me how to get inside bones and blood vessels, how to turn iron to gold! I want me a golden plow like his and he won’t teach me how!”

  “And it has never occurred to you,” said Taleswapper, “that when he speaks of using the power of Making only to build things up, never to tear them down, he mighf be teaching you precisely the thing you are asking? Oh, Calvin, I’m so sorry to see that your mama did have one stupid child after all.”

  Calvin felt the rage explode inside himself, and before he knew what he was doing he knocked the old man down and straddled his hips, pounding on his frail old ribs and belly. It took many blows before he realized that the old man wasn’t fighting back. Have I killed him? Calvin wondered. What will I do if he’s dead? They’ll have me for murder, then. They won’t understand how he provoked me, begging for a beating. It’s not like I planned to kill him.

  Calvin put his fingers to Taleswapper’s throat, feeling for a pulse. It was there, feeble, but it probably was always feeble, given how old the fellow was.

  “Didn’t quite kill me, eh?” whispered Taleswapper.

  “Didn’t feel like it,” said Calvin.

  “How many men will you have to beat up before everyone agrees that you’re a Maker?”

  Calvin wanted to hit him again. Didn’t this old man learn anything?

  “You know, if you hurt people enough, eventually they’ll all call you whatever you want. Maker. King. Captain. Boss. Master. Holy One. Pick your title, you can beat people into calling you that. But you don’t change yourself a bit. All you do is change the meanings of those words, so they all mean the same thing: Bully.”

  Calvin, hot with shame, got up and stood over him. He restrained himself from kicking the old man until his head was jelly. “You’ve got a knack for words,” he said.

  “True words in particular,” said Taleswapper.

  “Lies, from all I can see,” said Calvin.

  “A liar sees lies,” said Taleswapper. “Even when they aren’t there. Just as a hypocrite sees hypocrites whenever he runs across good people. Can’t stand to think that anyone might really be what you only pretend to be.”

  “You did say one true thing,” said Calvin. “About its making no sense me waiting around here for Alvin to teach me what he plainly means to keep secret. I should’ve realized that Alvin wasn’t never going to teach me anything, because he’s afraid if people see me doing all the things he can do, he won’t be king of the hill anymore. I have to find it out on my own, just like he did.”

  “You have to find it out by learning the same things he did,” said Taleswapper. “Alone or as his pupil, though, I don’t think you’re capable of learning those things.”

  “You’re wrong,” said Calvin. “I’ll prove it to you.”

  “By learning to master your own will and use your power only to build things, only to help others?”

  “By going out into the world and learning everything and coming back and showing Alvin who’s got the real Maker’s knack and who’s just pretending.”

  Taleswapper propped himself up on one elbow. “But Calvin, your actions here today have made the answer to that question as plain as day.”

  Calvin wanted to kick him in his face. Silence that mouth. Break that shiny pate and watch the brains spill out into the meadow grass.

  Instead he turned away and took a few steps toward the woods. He had a destination this time. East Civilization. The cities, the lands where people lived together cheek by jowl. Among them there would be those who could teach him. Or, failing that, those he could experiment with until he learned all that Alvin knew, and more. Calvin was wrong to have stayed here so long. Foolish to have kept hoping that he’d ever get any love or help from Alvin. I worshipped him, that was my mistake, thought Calvin. It took this boneheaded old fool to show me the kind of contempt that people have for me. Always comparing me to Alvin, perfect Alvin, Alvin the Maker, Alvin the virtuous son.

  Alvin the hypocrite. He does with his power just what I want to do—only he’s so subtle about it that people don’t even realize he’s controlling them. Tell us what to do, Alvin! Teach us how to Make, Alvin! Does Alvin ever say, It’s not your knack, you poor fool, I can’t teach you how to do this any more than I can teach a fish to walk? No. He pretends to teach them, helps them get a few pathetic illusory successes so they stay with him, his obedient servants, his disciples.

  Well, I’m not one of them. I’m my own man, smarter than he is, and more powerful, too, if I can just learn what I need to learn. After all, Alvin was only a seventh son for a couple of moments after he was born, until our oldest brother Vigor died. But I have been a seventh son my whole life, and still am one today. Before long I’m bound to surpass Alvin. I’m the real Maker. The real thing. Not a hypocrite. Not a pretender.

  “When you see Alvin, tell him not to follow me. He won’t see I me again until I’m ready for him to square off against me, Maker against Maker.”

  “There can never be a battle of Maker against Maker,” said Taleswapper.

  “Oh?”

  “Because if there’s a battle,” said Taleswapper, “it’s because one of them, at least, is not a Maker at all, but rather its opposite.”

  Calvin laughed. “That old wives’ tale? About some supposed Unmaker? Alvin tells the stories, but it’s all a bunch of hogwash to make him look like more of a hero.”

  “I’m not surprised that you don’t believe in the Unmaker,” said Taleswapper. “The first lie the Unmaker always tells is that he doesn’t exist. And his true servants always believe him, even as they carry out his work in the world.”

  “So I’m the Unmaker’s servant?” asked Calvin.

  “Of course,” said Taleswapper. “I have the bruises on my body now to prove it.”

  “Those bruises prove you’re a weak man with a big mouth.”

  “Alvin would have healed me and strengthened me,” said Taleswapper. “That’s what Makers do.”

  Calvin couldn’t take any more of this. He kicked the man right in the face. He could feel Taleswapper’s nose break under the ball of his foot; then the old man flopped back into the grass and lay there still. Calvin didn’t even bother to check his pulse. If he was dead, so be it. The world would be a better place without his lies and rudeness.

  Not until he was well into the woods, about five minutes later, did the enormity of what he had done flow over him. Killed a man! I might
have killed a man, and left him to die!

  I should have healed him before I left. The way Alvin healed people. Then he would have know that I’m truly a Maker, because I healed him. How could I have missed such an opportunity to show what I can do?

  At once he turned and raced back through the forest, dodging the roots, skittering down a bank he had so eagerly climbed only moments before. But when, panting, he emerged into the meadow, the old man wasn’t there, though bits of blood still clung to the grass and pooled where his head had lain. Not dead, then. He got up and walked, so he can’t be dead.

  What a fool I was, thought Calvin. Of course I didn’t kill him. I’m a Maker. Makers don’t destroy things, they build them. Isn’t that what Alvin always tells me? So if I’m a Maker, nothing I do can possibly be destructive.

  For a moment he almost headed down the hill toward the millhouse. Let Taleswapper accuse him in front of everybody. Calvin would simply deny it and let them work out how to deal with the problem. Of course they’d all believe Taleswapper. But Calvin only needed to say, “That’s his knack, to make people believe his lies. Why else would you trust in this stranger instead of Alvin Miller’s youngest boy, when you all know I don’t go around beating people up?” It was a delicious scene to contemplate, with Father and Mother and Alvin all frozen into inaction.

  But a better scene was this: Calvin free in the city. Calvin out of his brother’s shadow.