Grinning Man Read online

  Arthur Stuart fumed a little more, chipping away burnt wood as he did. 'Someday I'm going to get fed up with your smugness,' he says to Alvin, 'and I won't follow you any more.'

  Alvin shook his head. 'Arthur Stuart, I tried to get you not to follow me this time, if you'll recall.'

  'Is that what this is about? You're punishing me for following you when you told me not to?'

  'You said you wanted to learn everything about being a maker,' says Alvin. 'And when I try to teach you, all I get is pissing and moaning.'

  'You also get work from me,' says Arthur. 'I never stopped working the whole time we talked.'

  'That's true,' says Alvin.

  'And here's something you didn't consider,' says Arthur Stuart. 'All the time we're making a canoe, we're also unmaking a tree.'

  Alvin nodded. 'That's how it's done. You never make something out of nothing. You always make it out of something else. When it becomes the new thing, it ceases to be what it was before.'

  'So every time you do a making, you do an unmaking, too,' says Arthur Stuart.

  'Which is why the Unmaker always knows where I am and what I'm doing,' says Alvin. 'Because along with doing my work, I'm also doing a little bit of his.'

  That didn't sound right or true to Arthur Stuart, but he couldn't figure out an argument to answer it, and while he was trying to think one up, they kept on a-burning and a-chipping and to and behold, they had them a canoe. They dragged it to the stream and put it in and got inside it and it tipped them right over. Spilled them into the water three times, till Alvin finally gave up and used his knack to feel the balance of the thing and then reshape it just enough that it had a good balance to it.

  Arthur Stuart had to laugh at him then. 'What lesson am I supposed to learn from this? How to make a bad canoe?'

  'Shut up and row,' said Alvin.

  'We're going downstream,' said Arthur Stuart, 'and I don't have to row. Besides which all I've got is this stick, which is no kind of paddle.'

  'Then use it to keep us from running into the bank,' said Alvin, 'which we're about to do thanks to your babbling.'

  Arthur Stuart fended the canoe away from the bank of the stream, and they kept on floating down until they joined a larger stream, and a larger, and then a river. All the time, Arthur kept coming back to the things Alvin said to him, and what he was trying to teach, and as usual Arthur Stuart despaired of learning it. And yet he couldn't help but think he had learned something, even if he had no idea at present what the thing he learned might be.

  Because folks build towns on rivers, when you float down a river you're likely as not to come upon a town, which they did one morning with mist still on the river and sleep still in their eyes. It wasn't much of a town, but then it wasn't much of a river, and they weren't in much of a boat. They put in to shore and dragged the canoe on to the bank, and Alvin shouldered his poke with the plough inside and they trudged on into town just as folks was getting up and about their day.

  First thing they looked for was a roadhouse, but the town was too small and too new. Only a dozen houses, and the road so little travelled that grass was growing from one front door to the next. But that didn't mean there was no hope of breakfast. If there's light in the sky, somebody's up, getting a start on the day's work. Passing one house with a barn out back, they heard the ping-ping-ping of a cow getting milked into a tin pail. At another house, a woman was coming in with the night's eggs from a chicken coop. That looked promising.

  'Got anything for a traveller?' asked Alvin.

  The woman looked them up and down. Without a word she walked on into her house.

  'If you wasn't so ugly,' said Arthur Stuart, 'she would have asked us in.'

  'Whereas looking at you is like seeing an angel,' said Alvin.

  They heard the front door of the house opening.

  'Maybe she was just hurrying in to cook them eggs for us,' said Arthur Stuart.

  But it wasn't the woman who came out. It was a man, looking like he hadn't had much time to fasten his clothing. In fact, his trousers were kind of droopy, and they might have started laying bets on how quick they'd drop to the porch if he hadn't been aiming a pretty capable-looking blunderbuss at them.

  'Move along,' the man said.

  'We're moving,' said Alvin. He hoisted his poke to his back and started walking across in front of the house. The barrel of the shotgun followed them. Sure enough, just as they were about even with the front door, the trousers dropped. The man looked embarrassed and angry. The barrel of the blunderbuss dipped. The loose birdshot rolled out of the barrel, dozens of tiny lead balls hitting the porch like rain. The man looked confused now.

  'Got to be careful loading up a big-barrel gun like that,' Alvin said. 'I always wrap the shot in paper so it don't do that.'

  The man glared at him. 'I did.'

  'Why, I know you did,' said Alvin.

  But there sat the shot on the porch, a silent refutation. Nevertheless, Alvin was telling the simple truth. The paper was still in the barrel, as a matter of fact, but Alvin had persuaded it to break open at the front, freeing the shot.

  'Your pants is down,' said Arthur Stuart.

  'Move along,' said the man. His face was turning red. His wife was watching from the doorway behind him.

  'Well, you know, we was already planning to,' said Alvin, 'but as long as you can't quite kill us, for the moment at least, can I ask you a couple of questions?'

  'No,' said the man. He set down the gun and pulled up his trousers.

  'First off, I'd like to know the name of this town. I reckon it must be called "Friendly" or "Welcome".'

  'It ain't.'

  'Well, that's two down,' said Alvin. 'We got to keep guessing, or you think you can just tell us like one fellow to another?'

  'How about "Pantsdown Landing"?' murmured Arthur Stuart.

  'This here is Westville, Kenituck,' said the man. 'Now move along.'

  'My second question is, seeing as how you folks don't have enough to share with a stranger, is there somebody who's prospering a bit more and might have something to spare for travellers as have a bit of silver to pay for it?'

  'Nobody here got a meal for the likes of you,' said the man.

  'I can see why this road got grass growing on it,' said Alvin. 'But your graveyard must be full of strangers as died of hunger hoping for breakfast here.'

  On his knees picking up loose shot, the man didn't answer, but his wife stuck her head out the door and proved she had a voice after all. 'We're as hospitable as anybody else, except to known burglars and thieving prentices.'

  Arthur Stuart let out a low whistle. 'What you want to bet Davy Crockett came this way?' he said softly.

  'I never stole a thing in my life,' said Alvin.

  'What you got in that poke, then?' demanded the woman.

  'I wish I could say it was the head of the last man who pointed a gun at me, but unfortunately I left it attached to his neck, so he could come here and tell lies about me.'

  'So you're ashamed to show the golden plough you stole?'

  'I'm a blacksmith, ma'am,' said Alvin, 'and I got my tools here. You're welcome to look, if you want.'

  He turned to address the other folks who were gathering, out on their porches or into the street, a couple of them armed.

  'I don't know what you folks heard tell,' said Alvin, setting down his poke, 'but you're welcome to look at my tools.' He drew open the mouth of the poke and let the sides drop so his hammer, tongs, bellows, and nails lay exposed in the street. Not a sign of a plough.

  Everyone looked closely, as if taking inventory.

  'Well, maybe you ain't the one we heared tell of,' said the woman.

  'No, ma'am, I'm the exact one, if it was a certain trapper in a coonskin cap named Davy Crockett who was telling the tale.'

  'So you confess to being that Prentice Smith who stole the plough? And a burglar?'

  'No, ma'am, I just confess to being a fellow as got himself on the wrong side of a
trapper who talks a man harm behind his back.' He gathered up his bag over the tools and drew the mouth closed. 'Now, if you-all want to turn me away, go ahead, but don't go thinking you turned away a thief, because it ain't so. You pointed a gun at me and turned me away without a bite to eat for me or this hungry boy, without so much as a trial or a scrap of evidence, just on the word of a traveller who was as much a stranger here as me.'

  The accusation made them all sheepish. One old woman, though, wasn't having any of it. 'We know Davy, I reckon,' she said. 'It's you we never set eyes on.'

  'And never will again, I promise you,' said Alvin. 'You can bet I'll tell this tale wherever I travel - Westville, Kenituck, where a stranger can't get a bite to eat, and a man is guilty before he even hears the accusation.'

  'If there's no truth to it,' said the old woman, 'how did you know it was Davy Crockett a-telling the tale?'

  The others nodded and murmured as if this were a telling point.

  "Cause Davy Crockett accused me of it to my face,' said Alvin, 'and he's the only one who ever looked at me and my boy and thought of burglaring. I'll tell you what I told him. If we're burglars, why ain't we in a big city with plenty of fine houses to rob? A burglar could starve to death, trying to find something to steal in a town as poor as this one.'

  'We ain't poor,' said the man on the porch.

  'You got no food to spare,' said Alvin. 'And there ain't a house here with a door that even locks.'

  'See?' cried the old woman. 'He's already checked our doors to see how easy they'll be to break into!'

  Alvin shook his head. 'Some folks see sin in sparrows and wickedness in willow trees.' He took Arthur Stuart by the shoulder and turned to head back out of town the way they came.

  'Hold, stranger!' cried a man behind them. They turned to see a large man on horseback approaching slowly along the road. The people parted to make way for him.

  'Quick, Arthur,' Alvin murmured. 'Who do you reckon this is?'

  'The miller,' said Arthur Stuart.

  'Good morning to you, Mr Miller!' cried Alvin in greeting.

  'How did you know my trade?' asked the miller.

  'The boy here guessed,' said Alvin.

  The miller rode nearer, and turned his gaze to Arthur Stuart. 'And how did you guess such a thing?'

  'You spoke with authority,' said Arthur Stuart, 'and you're riding a horse, and people made way for you. In a town this size, that makes you the miller.'

  'And in a bigger town?' asked the miller.

  'You'd be a lawyer or a politician,' said Arthur Stuart.

  'The boy's a clever one,' said the miller.

  'No, he just runs on at the mouth,' said Alvin. 'I used to beat him but I plumb gave out the last time. Only thing I've found that shuts him up is a mouthful of food, preferably pancakes, but we'd settle for eggs, boiled, scrambled, poached, or fried.'

  The miller laughed. 'Come along to my house, not three rods beyond the commons and down the road towards the river.'

  'You know,' said Alvin, 'my father's a miller.'

  The miller cocked his head. 'Then how does it happen you don't follow his trade?'

  'I'm well down the list of eight boys,' said Alvin. 'Can't all be millers, so I got put out to a smith. I've got a ready hand with mill equipment, though, in case you'll let me help you to earn our breakfast.'

  'Come along and we'll see how much you know,' said the miller. 'As for these folks, never mind them. If some wanderer came through and told them the sun was made of butter, you'd see them all trying to spread it on their bread.' His mirth at this remark was not widely appreciated among the others, but that didn't faze him. 'I've got a shoeing shed, too, so if you ain't above a little ferrier work, I reckon there's horses to be shod.'

  Alvin nodded his agreement.

  'Well, go on up to the house and wait for me,' said the miller. 'I won't be long. I come to pick up my laundry.' He looked at the woman that Alvin had first spoken to. Immediately she ducked back inside the house to fetch the clothes the miller had come for.

  On the road to the mill, once they were out of sight of the villagers, Alvin began to chuckle.

  'What's so funny?' asked Arthur Stuart.

  'That fellow with his pants around his ankles and birdshot dribbling out of his blunderbuss.'

  'I don't like that miller,' said Arthur Stuart.

  'Well, he's giving us breakfast, so I reckon he can't be all bad.'

  'He's just showing up the town folks,' said Arthur Stuart.

  'Well, excuse me, but I don't think that'll change the flavour of the pancakes.'

  'I don't like his voice.'

  That made Alvin perk up and pay attention. Voices were part of Arthur Stuart's knack. 'Something wrong with the way he talks?'

  'There's a meanness in him,' said Arthur Stuart.

  'May well be,' said Alvin. 'But his meanness is better than hunting for nuts and berries again, or taking another squirrel out of the trees.'

  'Or another fish.' Arthur made a face.

  'Millers get a name for meanness sometimes,' Alvin said. 'People need their grain milled, all right, but they always think the miller takes too much. So millers are used to having folks accuse them. Maybe that's what you heard in his voice.'

  'Maybe,' said Arthur Stuart. Then he changed the subject. 'How'd you hide the plough when you opened your poke?'

  'I kind of opened up a hole in the ground under the poke,' said Alvin, 'and the plough sank down out of sight.'

  'You going to teach me how to do things like that?'

  'I'll do my best to teach,' said Alvin, 'if you do your best to learn.'

  'What about making shot spill out of a gun that's pointed at you?'

  'My knack opened the paper, but his own trousers, that's what made the barrel dip and spill out the shot.'

  'And you didn't make his trousers fall?'

  'If he'd pulled up his suspenders, his pants would've stayed up just fine,' said Alvin.

  'It's all unmaking though, isn't it?' said Arthur Stuart. 'Spilling shot, dropping trousers, making them folks feel guilty for not taking you in.'

  'So I should've let them drive us away without breakfast?'

  'I've skipped breakfasts before.'

  'Well, aren't you the prissy one,' said Alvin. 'Why are you suddenly so critical of the way I do things?'

  'You're the one made me dig out a canoe with my own hands,' said Arthur Stuart. 'To teach me making. So I keep looking to see how much making you do. And all I see is how you unmake things.'

  Alvin took that a little hard. Didn't get mad, but he was kind of thoughtful and didn't speak much the rest of the way to the miller's house.

  So nearly a week later, there's Alvin working in a mill for the first time since he left his father's place in Vigor Church and set out to be a prentice smith in Hatrack River. At first he was happy, running his hands over the machinery, analysing how the gears all meshed. Arthur Stuart, watching him, could see how each bit of machinery he touched ran a little smoother - a little less friction, a little tighter fit - so more and more of the power from the water flowing over the wheel made it to the rolling millstone. It ground faster and smoother, less inclined to bind and jerk. Rack Miller, for that was his name, also noticed, but since he hadn't been watching Alvin work, he assumed that he'd done something with tools and lubricants. `A good can of oil and a keen eye do wonders for machinery,' said Rack, and Alvin had to agree.

  But after those first few days, Alvin's happiness faded, for he began to see what Arthur Stuart had noticed from the beginning: Rack was one of the reasons why millers had a bad name. It was pretty subtle. Folks would bring in a sack of corn to be ground into meal, and Rack would cast it in handfuls on to the millstone, then brush the corn flour into a tray and back into the same sack they brought it in. That's how all millers did it. No one bothered with weighing before and after, because everyone knew there was always some corn flour lost on the millstone.

  What made Rack's practice a little diff
erent was the geese he kept. They had free rein in the millhouse, the yard, the millrace, and - some folks said - Rack's own house at night. Rack called them his daughters, though this was a perverse kind of thing to say, seeing as how only a few laying geese and a gander or two ever lasted out the winter. What Arthur Stuart saw at once, and Alvin finally noticed when he got over his love scene with the machinery, was how those geese were fed. It was expected that a few kernels of corn would drop; couldn't be helped. But Rack always took the sack and held it, not by the top, but by the shank of the sack, so kernels of corn dribbled out the whole way to the millstone. The geese were on that corn like - well, like geese on corn. And then he'd take big sloppy handfuls of corn to throw on to the millstone. A powerful lot of kernels hit the side of the stone instead of the top, and of course they dropped and ended up in the straw on the floor, where the geese would have them up in a second.

  'Sometimes as much as a quarter of the corn,' Alvin told Arthur Stuart.

  'You counted the kernels? Or are you weighing corn in your head now?' asked Arthur.

  'I can tell. Never less than a tenth.'

  `I reckon he figures he ain't stealing, it's the geese doing it,' said Arthur Stuart.

  `Miller's supposed to keep his tithe of the ground corn, not double or triple it or more in gooseflesh.'

  'I don't reckon it'll do much good for me to point out to you that this ain't none of our business,' said Arthur Stuart.

  'I'm the adult here, not you,' said Alvin.

  'You keep saying that, but the things you do, I keep wondering,' said Arthur Stuart. 'I'm not the one gallivanting all over creation while my pregnant wife is resting up to have the baby back in Hatrack River. I'm not the one keeps getting himself throwed in jail or guns pointed at him.'

  'You're telling me that when I see a thief I got to keep my mouth shut?'

  'You think these folks are going to thank you?'

  'They might.'

  'Put their miller in jail? Where they going to get their corn ground then?'

  'They don't put the mill in jail.'

  'Oh, you going to stay here, then? You going to run this mill for them, till you taught the whole works to a prentice? How about me? You can bet they'll love paying their miller's tithe to a free half-Black prentice. What are you thinking?'