Alvin Journeyman: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume IV Read online

  “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 might 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 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 known that I’m tru
ly 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.

  Best of all, they couldn’t even get up a group of men to follow him. For here in the town of Vigor Church, the adults were all bound by Tenskwa-Tawa’s curse, so that any stranger they met, they had to tell him the story of how they slaughtered the innocent Reds at Tippy-Canoe. If they didn’t tell the story, their hands and arms would become covered with dripping blood, mute testimony of their crime. Because of that they didn’t venture out into the world where they might run into strangers. Alvin himself might come looking for him, but no one else except those who had been too young to take part in the massacre would be able to join with him. Oh, yes, their brother-in-law Armor, he wasn’t under the curse. And maybe Measure wasn’t really under the curse, because he took it on himself, even though he wasn’t part of the battle. So maybe he could leave. But that still wouldn’t be much of a search party.

  And why would they bother to search for him anyway? Alvin thought Calvin was a nothing. Not worth teaching. So how could he be worth following?

  My freedom was always just a few steps away, thought Calvin. All it took was my realizing that Alvin was never going to accept me as his true friend and brother. Taleswapper showed me that. I should thank him.

  Hey, I already gave him all the thanks he deserved.

  Calvin chuckled. Then he turned and headed back into the forest. He tried to move as silently as Alvin always did, moving through the forest—a trick Al had learned from the wild Reds back before they either gave up and got civilized or moved across the Mizzipy into the empty country of the west. But despite all his efforts, Calvin always ended up making noise and breaking branches.

  For all I know, Calvin told himself, Alvin makes just as much noise, and simply uses his knack to make us think he’s quiet. Because if everybody thinks you’re silent, you are silent, right? Makes no difference at all.

  Wouldn’t it be just like that hypocrite Alvin to have us all thinking he’s in such harmony with the greenwood when he’s really just as clumsy as everyone else! At least I’m not ashamed to make an honest noise.

  With that reassuring thought, Calvin plunged on into the underbrush, breaking off branches and disturbing fallen leaves with every step.

  3

  Watchers

  While Calvin was a-setting out on his journey to wherever, trying not to think about Alvin with every step, there was someone else already on a journey, also wishing she could stop thinking about Alvin. That’s about where the semblance ends, though. Because this was Peggy Larner, who knew Alvin better and loved Alvin more than any living soul. She was riding in a coach along a country road in Appalachee, and she was at least as unhappy as Calvin ever was. Difference was, she blamed her woes on nary a soul but her own self.

  In the days after her mother was murdered, Peggy Larner figured that she would stay in Hatrack River for the rest of her life, helping her father tend his roadhouse. She was done with the great matters of the world. She had set her hand to meddling in them, and the result had been that she didn’t tend to her own backyard and so she failed to see her mother’s death looming. Preventable, easily, it was so dependent upon merest chance; a simple word of warning and her mother and father would have known the Slave Finders were coming back that night, and how many of them there were, and how armed, and through what door coming. But Peggy had been watching the great matters of the world, had been minding her foolish love for the young journeyman smith named Alvin who had learned to make a plow of living gold and then asked her to marry him and go with him through the world to do battle with the Unmaker, and all the while the Unmaker was destroying her own life through the back door, with a shotgun blast that shredded her mother’s flesh and gave Peggy the most terrible of burdens to carry all her life. What kind of child does not watch out to save her own mother’s life?

  She could not marry Alvin. That would be like rewarding herself for her own selfishness. She would stay and help her father in his work.

  And yet she couldn’t do even that, not for long. When her father looked at her—or rather, when he wouldn’t look at her—she felt his grief stab to her heart. He knew she could have prevented it. And thought it was his great effort not to reproach her with it, she didn’t need to hear his words to know what was in his heart. No, nor did she need to use her knack to see his heart’s desire, his bitter memories. She knew without looking, because she knew him deep, as children know parents.

  There came a day, then, when she could bear it no longer. She had left home once before, as a girl, with a note left behind. This time she left with more courage, facing her father and telling him that she couldn’t stay.

  “Have I lost my daughter then, as well as my wife?”

  “Your daughter you have as well as ever,” said Peggy. “But the woman who could have prevented your wife’s death, and failed to do it—that woman can’t live here anymore.”

  “Have I said anything? Have I by word or deed—”

  “It’s your knack to make folks feel welcome under your roof, Father, and you’ve done your best with me. But there’s no knack can take away the terrible burden charged to my soul. There’s no love or kindness you can show toward me that will hide—from me—what you suffer at the very sight of me.”

  Father knew he couldn’t deceive his daughter any longer, her being a torch and all. “I’ll miss you with all my heart,” he said.

  “And I’ll miss you, Father,” she answered. With a kiss, with a brief embrace, she took her leave. Once again she rode in Whitley Physicker’s carriage to Dekane. There she visited with a family that had done her much kindness, once upon a time.

  She didn’t stay long, though, and soon she took the coach down to Franklin, the capital of Appalachee. She knew no one there, but she soon would—no heart could remain closed to her, and she quickly found those people who hated the institution of slavery as much as she did. Her mother had died for taking a half-black boy into her home, into her family as her own son, even though by law he belonged to some white man down in Appalachee.

  The boy, Arthur Stuart, was still free, living with Alvin in the town of Vigor Church. But the institution of slavery, which had killed both the boy’s birth mother and his adoptive mother, that lived on, too. There was no hope of changing it in the King’s lands to the south and east, but Appalachee was the nation that had won its freedom by the sacrifice of George Washington and under the leadership of Thomas Jefferson. It was a land of high ideals. Surely she could have some influence here, to root out the evil of slavery from this land. It was in Appalachee that Arthur Stuart had been conceived by a cruel master’s rape of his helpless slave. It was in Appalachee, then, that Peggy would quietly but deftly maneuver to help those who hated slavery and hinder those who would perpetuate it.


  She traveled in disguise, of course. Not that anyone here would know her, but she didn’t like being called by the name of Peggy Guester, for that was also her mother’s name. Instead she passed as Miss Lamer, gifted teacher of French, Latin, and music, and in that guise she went about tutoring, here a few weeks, there a few weeks. It was master classes that she taught, teaching the schoolmasters in various towns and villages.

  Though her public lessons were conscientiously taught, what concerned her most was seeking out the heartfires of those who loathed slavery, or those who, not daring to admit their loathing, were at least uncomfortable and apologetic about the slaves they owned. The ones who were careful to be gentle, the ones who secretly allowed their slaves to learn to read and write and cipher. These good-hearted ones she dared to encourage. She called upon them and said words that might turn them toward the paths of life, however few and faint they were, in which they gained courage and spoke out against the evil of slavery.

  In this way, she was still helping her father in his work. For hadn’t old Horace Guester risked his life for many years, helping runaway slaves make it across the Hio and on north into French territory, where they would be no longer slaves, where Finders could not go? She could not live with her father, she could not remove any part of his burden of grief, but she could carry on his work, and might in the end make his work unnecessary, for it would have been accomplished, not a slave at a time, but all the slaves of Appalachee at once.

  Would I then be worthy to return and face him? Would I be redeemed? Would Mother’s death mean something then, instead of being the worthless result of my carelessness?

  Here was the hardest part of her discipline: She refused to let any thought of Alvin Smith distract her. Once he had been the whole focus of her life, for she was present at his birth, peeled the birth caul from his face, and for years thereafter used the power of the dried-up caul to protect him against all the attacks of the Unmaker. Then, when he became a man and grew into his own powers enough that he could mostly protect himself, he was still the center of her heart, for she came to love the man he was becoming. She had come home to Hatrack River then, in disguise for the first time as Miss Larner, and there she gave him and Arthur Stuart the kind of book learning that they both hungered for. And all the time she was teaching him, she was hiding behind the hexes that hid her true face and name, hiding and watching him like a spy, like a hunter, like a lover who dared not be seen.