Prentice Alvin: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume III Read online

  The moment of unease passed, and Peggy forgot it as her thoughts turned to the Black girl on the common-room floor. She was awake, her eyes open. The baby was still mewling. Without the girl saying a thing, Peggy knew she was willing for the babe to suckle, if she had anything in her breasts to suck on out. The girl hadn’t even strength to open up her faded cotton shirt. Peggy had to sit beside her, cradling the child against her own thighs while she fumbled the girl’s buttons open with her free hand. The girl’s chest was so skinny, her ribs so stark and bare, that her breasts looked to be saddlebags tossed onto a rail fence. But the nipple still stood up for the baby to suck, and a white froth soon appeared around the baby’s lips, so there was something there, even now, even at the very end of his mama’s life.

  The girl was far too weak to talk, but she didn’t need to; Peggy heard what she wanted to say, and answered her. “My own mama’s going to keep your boy,” said Peggy. “And no wise is she going to let any man make a slave of him.”

  That was what the girl wanted most to hear—that and the sound of her greedy boy-baby slurping and humming and squealing at her breast.

  But Peggy wanted her to know more than that before she died. “Your boy-baby’s going to know about you,” she told the girl. “He’s going to hear how you gave your life so you could fly away and take him here to freedom. Don’t you think he’ll ever forget you, cause he won’t.”

  Then Peggy looked into the child’s heartfire, searched there for what he’d be. Oh, that was a painful thing, because the life of a half-White boy in a White town was hard no matter which of the paths of his life he chose. Still, she saw enough to know the nature of the babe whose fingers scratched and clutched at his mama’s naked chest. “And he’ll be a man worth dying for, too, I promise you that.”

  The girl was glad to hear it. It brought her peace enough that she could sleep again. After a time the babe, satisfied, also fell asleep. Peggy picked him up, wrapped him in a blanket, and laid him in the crook of his mama’s arm. Every last moment of your mama’s life you’ll be with her, she told the boychild silently. We’ll tell you that, too, that she held you in her arms when she died.

  When she died. Papa was out with Po Doggly, digging her grave; Mama was off at the Berrys, to persuade them to help her save the baby’s life and freedom; and here was Peggy, thinking as if the girl was already dead.

  But she wasn’t dead, not yet. And all of a sudden it came to Peggy, with a flash of anger that she was too stupid to think of it before, that there was one soul she knew of who had the knack in him to heal the sick. Hadn’t he knelt by Ta-Kumsaw at the battle of Detroit, that great Red man’s body riddled with bullet holes, hadn’t Alvin knelt there and healed him up? Alvin could save this girl, if he was here.

  She cast off in the darkness, searching for the heartfire that burned so bright, the heartfire she knew better than any in the world, better even than her own. And there he was, running in the darkness, traveling the way Red men did, like he was asleep, and the land around him was his soul. He was coming faster than any White could ever come, even with the fastest horse on the best road between the Wobbish and the Hatrack, but he wouldn’t be here till noon tomorrow, and by then this runaway slavegirl would be dead and in the ground up in the family graveyard. By twelve hours at most she’d miss the one man in this country who could have saved her life.

  Wasn’t that the way of it? Alvin could save her, but he’d never know she needed saving While Peggy, who couldn’t do a thing, she knew all that was happening, knew all the things that might happen, knew the one thing that should happen if the world was good. It wasn’t good. It wouldn’t happen.

  What a terrible gift it was, to be a torch, to know all these things a-coming, and have so little power to change them. The only power she’d ever had was just the words of her mouth, telling folks, and even then she couldn’t be sure what they’d choose to do. Always there’d be some choice they could make that would set them down a path even worse than the one she wanted to save them from—and so many times in their wickedness or cantankerousness or just plain bad luck, they’d make that terrible choice and then things’d be worse for them than if Peggy’d just kept still and never said a thing. I wish I didn’t know. I wish I had some hope that Alvin would come in time. I wish I had some hope this girl would live. I wish that I could save her life myself.

  And then she thought of the many times she had saved a life. Alvin’s life, using Alvin’s caul. At that moment hope did spark up in her heart, for surely, just this once, she could use a bit of the last scrap of Alvin’s caul to save this girl, to restore her.

  Peggy leapt up and ran clumsily to the stairs, her legs so numb from sitting on the floor that she couldn’t hardly feel her own footsteps on the bare wood. She tripped on the stairs and made some noise, but none of the guests woke up, as far as she noticed right off like that. Up the stairs, then up the attic ladderway that Oldpappy made into a proper stairway not three months afore he died. She threaded her way among the trunks and old furniture until she reached her room up against the west end of the house. Moonlight came in through her south-facing window, making a squared-off pattern on the floor. She pried up the floorboard and took the box from the place where she hid it whenever she left the room.

  She walked too heavy or this one guest slept too light, but as she came down the ladderway. there he stood, skinny white legs sticking out from under his longshirt, a-gazing down the stairs, then back toward his room, like as if he couldn’t make up his mind whether to go in or out, up or down. Peggy looked into his heartfire, just to find out whether he’d been downstairs and seen the girl and her baby—if he had, then all their thought and caution had been in vain.

  But he hadn’t—it was still possible.

  “Why are you still dressed for going out?” he asked. “At this time of the morning, too?”

  She gently laid her finger against his lips. To silence him, or at least that’s how the gesture began. But she knew right away that she was the first woman ever to touch this man upon the face since his mama all those many years ago. She saw that in that moment his heart filled, not with lust, but with the vague longings of a lonely man. He was the minister who’d come day before yesterday morning, a traveling preacher—from Scotland, he said. She’d hardly paid him no mind, her being so preoccupied with knowing Alvin was on his way back. But now all that mattered was to send him back into his room, quick as could be, and she knew one sure way to do it. She put her hands on his shoulders, getting a strong grip behind his neck, and pulled him down to where she could kiss him fair on the lips. A good long buss, like he never had from a woman in all his days.

  Just like she expected, he was back into his room almost before she let go of him. She might’ve laughed at that, except she knew from his heartfire it wasn’t her kiss sent him back, like she planned. It was the box she still held in one hand, which she had pressed up against the back of his neck when she held him. The box with Alvin’s caul inside.

  The moment it touched him, he felt what was inside. It wasn’t no knack of his, it was something else—just being so near something of Alvin’s done it to him. She saw the vision of Alvin’s face loom up inside his mind, with such fear and hatred like she never seen before. Only then did she realize that he wasn’t just any minister. He was Reverend Philadelphia Thrower, who once had been a preacher back in Vigor Church. Reverend Thrower, who once had tried to kill the boy, except Alvin’s pa prevented him.

  The fear of a woman’s kiss was nothing to him compared to his fear of Alvin Junior. The trouble was that now he was so afraid he was already thinking of leaving right this minute and getting out of this roadhouse. If he did that, he’d have to come downstairs and then he’d see all, just what she meant to fend off. This was how it went so often—she tried to stave off a bad thing and it turned out worse, something so unlikely she didn’t see it. How could she not have reckonized who he was? Hadn’t she seen him through Alvin’s eyes all those many times in years
past? But he’d changed this last year, he looked thin and haunted and older. Besides, she wasn’t looking for him here, and anyhow it was too late to undo what she already done. All that mattered now was to keep him in his room.

  So she opened his door and followed him inside and looked him square in the face and said, “He was born here.”

  “Who?” he said. His face was white as if he’d just seen the devil himself. He knew who she meant.

  “And he’s coming back. Right now he’s on his way. You’re only safe if you stay in your room tonight, and leave in the morning at first light.”

  “I don’t know—know what you’re talking about.”

  Did he really think he could fool a torch? Maybe he didn’t know she was—no, he knew, he knew, he just didn’t believe in torching and hexing and knacks and suchlike. He was a man of science and higher religion. A blamed fool. So she’d have to prove to him that what he feared most was so. She knew him, and she knew his secrets. “You tried to kill Alvin Junior with a butchery knife,” she said.

  That did it, right enough. He fell to his knees. “I’m not afraid to die,” he said. Then he began to murmur the Lord’s prayer.

  “Pray all night, if you like,” she said, “but stay in your room to do it.”

  Then she stepped through the door and closed it. She was halfway down the stairs when she heard the bar fall into place across the door. Peggy didn’t even have time to care whether she caused him undue misery—he wasn’t really a murderer in his heart. All she cared for now was to get the caul down to where she could use it to help the runaway, if by any chance Alvin’s power was really hers to use. So much time that minister had cost her. So many of the slavegirl’s precious breaths.

  She was still breathing, wasn’t she? Yes. No. The babe lay sleeping beside her, but her chest didn’t move even as much as him, her lips didn’t make even so much as a baby’s breath on Peggy’s hand. But her heartfire still burned! Peggy could see that plain enough, still burned bright because she was so strong-hearted, that slavegirl was. So Peggy opened up the box, took out the scrap of caul, and rubbed a dry corner of it to dust between her fingers, whispering to her, “Live, get strong.” She tried to do what Alvin did when he healed, the way he could feel the small broken places in a person’s body, set them right. Hadn’t she watched him as he did it so many times before? But it was different, doing it herself. It was strange to her, she didn’t have the vision for it, and she could feel the life ebbing away from the girl’s body, the heart stilled, the lungs slack, the eyes open but unlighted, and at last the heartfire flashed like a shooting star, all sudden and bright, and it was gone.

  Too late. If I hadn’t stopped in the hall upstairs, hadn’t had to deal with the minister—

  But no, no, she couldn’t blame herself, it wasn’t her power anyway, it was too late before she began. The girl had been dying all through her body. Even Alvin himself, if he was here, even he couldn’t have done it. It was never more than a slim hope. Never even hope enough that she could see a single pathway where it worked. So she wouldn’t do like so many did, she wouldn’t endlessly blame herself when after all she’d done her best at a task that had little hope in it from the start.

  Now that the girl was dead, she couldn’t leave the baby there to feel his mama’s arm grow cold. She picked him up. He stirred, but slept on in the way that babies do. Your mama’s dead, little half-White boy, but you’ll have my mama, and my papa too. They got love enough for a little one; you won’t starve for it like some children I seen. So you make the best of it, boy-baby. Your mama died to bring you here—you make the best of it, and you’ll be something, right enough.

  You’ll be something, she heard herself whispering. You’ll be something, and so will I.

  She made her decision even before she realized there was even a decision to be made. She could feel her own future changing even though she couldn’t see rightly what it was going to be.

  That slave girl guessed at the likeliest future—you don’t have to be a torch to see some things plain. It was an ugly life ahead, losing her baby, living as a slave till the day she dropped. Yet she saw just the faintest glimmer of hope for her baby, and once she saw it, she didn’t hold back, no sir. that glimmer was worth paying her life for.

  And now look at me, thought Peggy. Here I look down the paths of Alvin’s life and see misery for myself—nowhere near as bad as that slavegirl’s, but bad enough. Now and then I catch the shine of a bright chance for happiness, a strange and backward way to have Alvin and have him love me, too. Once I seen it, am I going to sit on my hands and watch that bright hope die, just because I’m not sure how to get to it from here?

  If that beat-down child can make her own hope out of wax and ash and feathers and a bit of herself, then I can make my own life, too. Somewhere there’s a thread that if I just lay hold on it, it’ll lead me to happiness. And even if I never find that particular thread, it’ll be better than the despair waiting for me if I stay. Even if I never become a part of Alvin’s life when he comes to manhood, well, that’s still not as steep a price as that slavegirl paid for freedom.

  When Alvin comes tomorrow, I won’t be here.

  That was her decision, just like that. Why, she could hardly believe she never thought of it before. Of all people in the whole of Hatrack River, she ought to have knowed that there’s always another choice. Folks talked on about how they were forced into misery and woe, they didn’t have no choice at all—but that runaway girl showed that there’s always a way out, long as you remember even death can be a straight smooth road sometimes.

  I don’t even have to get no blackbird feathers to fly, neither.

  Peggy sat there holding the baby, making bold and fearsome plans for how she’d leave in the morning afore Alvin could arrive. Whenever she felt a-scared of what she’d set herself to do, she cast her gaze down on that girl, and the sight of her was comfort, it truly was. I might someday end up like you, runaway girl, dead in some stranger’s house. But better that unknown future than one I knew all along I’d hate, and then did nothing to avoid.

  Will I do it, will I really do it in the morning, when the time’s come and no turning back? She touched Alvin’s caul with her free hand, just snaking her fingers into the box, and what she saw in Alvin’s future made her feel like singing. Used to be most paths showed them meeting up and starting out her life of misery. Now only a few of those paths were there—in most of Alvin’s futures, she saw him come to Hatrack River and search for the torch girl and find her gone. Just changing her mind tonight had closed down most of the roads to misery.

  Mama came back with the Berrys before Papa came in from gravedigging. Anga Berry was a heavyset woman with laughter lines outnumbering the lines of worry on her face, though both kinds were plain enough. Peggy knew her well and liked her better than most folks in Hatrack River. She had a temper but she also had compassion, and Peggy wasn’t surprised at all to see her rush to the body of the girl and take up that cold limp hand and press it to her bosom. She murmured words almost like a lullaby, her voice was so low and sweet and kind.

  “She’s dead,” said Mock Berry. “But that baby’s strong I see.”

  Peggy stood up and let Mock see the baby in her arms. She didn’t like him half so well as she liked his wife. He was the kind of man who’d slap a child so hard blood flowed, just cause he didn’t like what was said or done. It was almost worse cause he didn’t rage when he did it. Like he felt nothing at all, to hurt somebody or not hurt somebody made no powerful difference in his mind. But he worked hard, and even though he was poor his family got by; and nobody who knew Mock paid heed to them crude folks what said there wasn’t a buck who wouldn’t steal or a ewe you couldn’t tup.

  “Healthy,” said Mock. Then he turned to Mama. “When he grow up to be a big old buck, ma’am, you still aim to call him your boy? Or you make him sleep out back in the shed with the animals?”

  Well, he wasn’t one to pussyfoot around the issue, Peg
gy saw.

  “Shut your mouth, Mock,” said his wife. “And you give me that baby, Miss. I just wish I’d knowed he was coming or I’d’ve kept my youngest on the tit to keep the milk in. Weaned that boy two months back and he’s been nothing but trouble since, but you ain’t no trouble, baby, you ain’t no trouble at all.” She cooed to the baby just like she cooed to his dead mama, and he didn’t wake up either.

  “I told you. I’ll raise him as my son,” said Mama.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, but I just never heard of no White woman doing such a thing,” said Mock.

  “What I say,” said Mama, “that’s what I do.”

  Mock thought on that a moment. Then he nodded. “I reckon so,” he said. “I reckon I never heard you break your word, not even to Black folks.” He grinned. “Most White folk allow as how lying to a buck ain’t the same as lying.”

  “We’ll do like you asked,” said Anga Berry. “I’ll tell anybody who ask me this is my boy, only we gave him to you cause we was too poor.”

  “But don’t you ever go forgetting that it’s a lie,” said Mock. “Don’t you ever go thinking that if it really was our own baby, we’d ever give him up. And don’t you ever go thinking that my wife here ever would let some White man put a baby in her, and her being married to me.”

  Mama studied Mock for a minute, taking his measure in the way she had. “Mock Berry, I hope you come and visit me any day you like while this boy is in my house, and I’ll show you how one White woman keeps her word.”

  Mock laughed. “I reckon you a regular Mancipationist.”

  Papa came in then, covered with sweat and dirt. He shook hands with the Berrys, and in a minute they told him the tale they all would tell. He made his promises too, to raise the boy like his own son. He even thought of what never entered Mama’s head—he said a few words to Peggy, to promise her that they wouldn’t give no preference to the boy, neither. Peggy nodded. She didn’t want to say much, cause anything she said would either be a lie or give her plans away; she knew she had no intention to be in this house for even a single day of this baby’s future here.