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

“How should I know? We learn what we can learn, but the threads say little except by their movement through the cloth. You will know. That’s why she called you. Not just for your own happiness, but because . . . as she said, because I owe it to the Maker. I used him once to save my love. Didn’t I owe you the same chance? That’s what she said. But we knew that if I showed you this at first, before you chose, you would help him out of duty. For the grand cause, not for love of him.”

  “But I hadn’t decided to watch him again.”

  “So you say,” said Becca.

  “You’re very smug,” said Peggy, “for a woman who has made such a botch of things herself.”

  “I inherited a botch,” said Becca. “One day my mother, who crossed the ocean and brought us here, one day she took her hands from the loom and walked away. My sister and I came in with her supper and found her gone. We were both married, but I had borne a child for my husband, and in those days my sister had none. So I took the loom, and she went to her husband. And all the time, I was furious at my mother for going away like that. Fleeing her duty.” Becca stroked the threads, gently, even gingerly. “Now I think I understand. The price of holding all these lives in our hands is that we scarcely have a life ourselves. My mother wasn’t good at this, because her heart wasn’t in it. Mine is, and if I made a mistake to save my husband’s life, perhaps you can judge me more kindly knowing that I had already given up my life with my husband in order to fill my mother’s place.”

  “I didn’t mean to condemn you,” said Peggy, abashed.

  “Nor did I mean to justify myself to you,” said Becca. “And yet you did condemn me, and I did justify myself. I hold my mother’s thread here. I know where she is. But I’ll never know, really, why she did what she did. Or what might have happened if she stayed.” Becca looked up at Peggy. “I don’t know much, but what I know, I know. Alvin must go out into the world. He must leave his family—let them learn Making on their own now, as he did. He must rejoin Calvin before the boy has been completely turned by the Unmaker. Otherwise, Calvin may be not only his death, but also the undoing of all the Maker’s works.”

  “I have an easy answer,” said Peggy. “I’ll find Calvin and make sure he never comes home.”

  “You think you have the power to control a Maker’s life?”

  “Calvin is no Maker. How could he be? Think what Alvin had to do, to come into his own.”

  “Nevertheless, you never had the power to stand against Alvin, even when he was a child. And he was kind at heart. I think Calvin isn’t governed by the same sense of decency.”

  “So I can’t stand against him,” said Peggy. “Nor can I send Alvin out on errands. He’s not mine to command.”

  “Isn’t he?” asked Becca.

  Peggy buried her face in her hands. “I don’t want him to love me. I don’t want to love him. I want to continue my struggle against slavery here in Appalachee.”

  “Oh, yes. Using your knack to meddle with the cloth, aren’t you?” said Becca. “Do you know where it leads?”

  “To liberty for the slaves, I hope.”

  “Perhaps,” she said. “But the sure thing is this: It leads to war.”

  Peggy looked up grimly. “I see warsigns down all the paths. Before I started doing this, I saw those signs.” Grieving mothers. The terror of battle in young men’s lives.

  “It begins as a civil war in Appalachee, but it ends as a war between the King on the one side and the United States on the other. Brutal, bloody, cruel . . .”

  “Are you saying I should stop? That I should let these monsters continue to rule over the Blacks they kidnapped and all their children forever?”

  “Not at all,” said Becca. “The war comes because of a million different choices. Your actions push things that way, but you aren’t the only cause. Do you understand? If war is the only way to free the slaves, then isn’t the war worth all the suffering? Are lives wasted, when they end for such a cause?”

  “I can’t judge this sort of thing,” said Peggy.

  “But that’s not true,” said Becca. “Only you are fit to judge, because only you see the outcomes that might result. By the time I see things they’ve become inevitable.”

  “If they’re inevitable, then why are you bothering to tell me to try to change them?”

  “Almost inevitable. Again, I spoke imprecisely. I can’t meddle with the threads on a grand scale. I can’t foresee the consequences of change. But a single thread—sometimes I can move it without undoing the whole fabric. I didn’t know a way to move Calvin that would make a difference. But I could move you. I could bring the judge here, the one who sees with the blindfold over her eyes. So I’ve done that.”

  “I thought you said your sister did it.”

  “Well, she’s the one who decided it must be done. But only I could touch the thread.”

  “I think you spend a lot of your time lying and concealing things.”

  “Quite possibly.”

  “Like the fact that the western door leads into Ta-Kumsaw’s land west of the Mizzipy.”

  “I never lied about that, or concealed it either.”

  “And the eastern door, where does that lead?”

  “It opens in my auntie’s house in Winchester, back in England. See? I conceal nothing.”

  “You have but one daughter,” said Peggy, “and she’s already got a loom of her own. Who will take your place here?”

  “None of your business,” said Becca.

  “Nothing is none of my business now,” said Peggy. “Not after you picked up my thread and moved it here.”

  “I don’t know who will take my place. Maybe I’ll be here forever. I’m not my mother. I won’t quit and force this on an unwilling soul.”

  “When it comes time to choose, look at the boy,” said Peggy. “He’s wiser than you think.”

  “A boy’s hands on the loom?” Becca’s face bore an expression that suggested she had just tasted something awful.

  “Before any talent for weaving,” said Peggy, “doesn’t the weaver have to care about the threads coming into the cloth? He may have killed a squirrel, but I don’t think he loves death.”

  Becca regarded her steadily. “You take too much upon yourself.”

  “As you said. I’m a judge.”

  “You’ll do it, then?”

  “What, watch Alvin? Yes. Though I know I’ll have a broken heart six times over before I bury him, yes, I’ll turn my eyes back to that boy.”

  “That man.”

  “That Maker,” said Peggy.

  “And the other?”

  “I’ll meddle if I can find a way.”

  Becca nodded. “Good.” She nodded again. “We’re done, now. The doors will lead you out of the house.”

  That was all the good-bye that Peggy got. But what Becca said was true. Where once Peggy couldn’t see a way out, now every corridor led to a door standing open, with the daylight outside. She didn’t want to go through the doors back into her own world, though. She wanted to pass through the doors in the old cabin. The east door, into England. The west door, into Red country. Or the south door—where did it lead?

  Nevertheless, it was this time and place where she belonged. There was a carriage waiting for her, and work to do, stirring up war by encouraging compassion for the slaves. She could live with that, yes, as Becca had said. Didn’t Jesus himself say that he came to bring, not peace, but war? Turning brother against brother? If that’s what it takes to remove the stain of slavery from this land, then so be it. I speak only of peaceful change—if others choose to kill or die rather than let the slaves go free, that is their choice, and I didn’t cause it.

  Just as I didn’t cause my mother to take up the gun and kill the Finder who was, after all, only obeying the law, unjust as the law might be. He wouldn’t have found Arthur Stuart, hidden as he was in my house, his very smell changed by Alvin’s Making, and his presence hidden behind all the hexes Alvin had put there. I didn’t kill her. And even if I
could have prevented what she did, it wouldn’t have changed who she was. She was the woman who would make such a choice as that. That was the woman I loved, her fierce angry courage along with everything else. I am not guilty of her death. The man who shot her was. And she was the one, not I, who placed her in harm’s way.

  Peggy strode out into the sunlight feeling invigorated, light of step. The air tasted sweet to her. The place with no heartfires had rekindled her own.

  She got back into the carriage and it took her without further distractions to an inn well north of Chapman Valley. She spent the night there, and then the next day rode on to Baker’s Fork. Once there, she held her master classes, teaching schoolmasters and gifted students, and in between conversing with this man or that woman about slavery, making comments, scorning those who mistreated slaves, declaring that as long as anyone had such power over other men and women, there would be mistreatment, and the only cure for it was for all men and women to be free. They nodded. They agreed. She spoke of the courage it would take, how the slaves themselves bore the lash and had lost all; how much would White men and women suffer in order to free them? What did Christ suffer, for the sake of others? It was a strong and measured performance that she gave. She did not retreat from it one bit, even though she knew now that it would lead to war. Wars have been fought for foolish causes. Let there be one, at last, in a good cause, if the enemies of decency refuse to soften their hearts.

  Amid all the teaching and all the persuasion, she did find time, a scrap of an hour to herself, sitting at the writing desk in one old plantation widow’s home. It was the very desk where, moments before, the woman had manumitted all her slaves and hired them on as free workingmen and workingwomen. Peggy saw in her heartfire when the choice was made that she would end up with her barns burnt and her fields spoiled. But she would lead these newfreed Blacks northward, despite all harassment and danger. Her courage would become legendary, a spark that would inspire other brave hearts. Peggy knew that in the end, the woman would not miss her fine house and lovely lands. And someday twenty thousand Black daughters would be given the woman’s name. Why am I named Jane? they would ask their mothers. And the answer would come: Because once there was a woman by that name who freed her slaves and protected them all the way north, and then hired and looked after them until they learned the ways of free men and women and could stand on their own. It is a name of great honor. No one would know of the schoolteacher who came one day and gave open words to the secret longings of Jane’s heart.

  At that writing desk, Peggy took the time to write a letter and address it. Vigor Church, in the state of Wobbish. It would get to him, of course. As she sealed it, as she handed it over to the postal rider, she looked at long last toward the heartfire that she knew best, knew even better than her own. In it she saw the familiar possibilities, the dire consequences. But they were different now, because of the letter. Different . . . but better? She couldn’t guess. She wasn’t judge enough to know. Right and wrong were easy for her. But good and bad, better and worse, those were still too tricky. They kept sliding past each other strangely and changing before her eyes. Perhaps there was no judge who could know that; or if there was, he wasn’t talking much about it.

  The messenger took the letter and carried it north, where in another town he handed it to a rider who paid him what he thought the letter might be worth on delivery, minus half. The second rider took it on north, in his meandering route, and finally he stood in a store in the town of Vigor Church, where he asked about a man named Alvin Smith.

  “I’m his brother-in-law,” said the storekeeper. “Armor-of-God Weaver. I’ll pay you for the letter. You don’t want to go any farther into the town, or up there, either. You don’t want to listen to the tale those people have to tell.”

  The tone of his voice convinced the rider. “Five dollars, then,” he said.

  “I’ll wager you only paid the rider who gave it to you a single dollar, thinking the most you could get from me was two. But I’ll pay you the five, if you still ask for it, because I’m willing to be cheated by a man who can live with himself after doing it. It’s you that’ll pay most, in the end.”

  “Two dollars, then,” said the rider. “You didn’t have to get personal about it.”

  Armor-of-God took out three silver dollars and laid them in the man’s hand. “Thank you for honest riding, friend,” he said. “You’re always welcome here. Stay for dinner with us.”

  “No,” the man said. “I’ll be on my way.”

  As soon as he was gone, Armor-of-God laughed and told his wife, “He only paid fifty cents for that letter, I’ll wager. So he still thinks he cheated me.”

  “You need to be more careful with our money, Armor,” she answered.

  “Two dollars to cause a man a little spiritual torment that perhaps could change his life for the better? Cheap enough bargain, I’d say. What is a soul worth to God? Two dollars, do you think?”

  “I shudder to think what some men’s souls will be marked down to when God decides to close the shop,” said his wife. “I’ll take the letter up to Mother’s house. I’m going there today anyway.”

  “Measure’s boy Simon comes down for the mail,” said Armor-of-God.

  She glared at him. “I wasn’t going to read it.”

  “I didn’t say you were.” But still he didn’t hand her the letter. Instead he laid it on the counter, waiting for Measure’s oldest boy to come and fetch it up the hill to the house where Alvin was teaching people to be Makers. Armor-of-God still wasn’t happy about it. It seemed unreligious to him, improper, against the Bible. And yet he knew Alvin was a good boy, grown to be a good man, and whatever powers of witchery he had, he didn’t use them to do harm. Could it be truly against God and religion for him to have such powers, if he used them in a Christian way? After all, God created the world and all things in it. If God didn’t want there to be Makers, he didn’t have to create any of them. So what Alvin was doing must be in line with the will of God.

  Sometimes Armor-of-God felt perfectly at peace with Alvin’s doings. And sometimes he thought that only a devil-blinded fool would think even for a moment that God was happy with any sort of witchery. But those were all just thoughts. When it came to action, Armor-of-God had made his decision. He was with Alvin, and against whoever opposed him. If he was damned for it, so be it. Sometimes you just had to follow your heart. And sometimes you just had to make up your mind and stick with it, come hell or high water.

  And nobody was going to mess with Alvin’s letter from Peggy Larner. Especially not Armor-of-God’s wife, who was a good deal too clever with hexery herself.

  Far away in another place, Peggy saw the changes in the heartfires and knew the letter was now in Alvin’s family. It would do its work. The world would change. The threads in Becca’s loom would move. It is unbearable to watch without meddling, thought Peggy. And then it is unbearable to watch what my meddling causes.

  4

  Quest

  Even before Miss Larner’s letter came, Alvin was feeling antsy. Things just wasn’t going the way he planned. After months of trying to turn his family and neighbors into Makers, it was looking like a job for six lifetimes, and try as he might, Alvin couldn’t figure out how he was going to have more than one lifetime to work with.

  Not that the teaching was a failure—he couldn’t call it an outright bust, not yet, considering that some of them really were learning how to do some small Makings. It’s just that Making wasn’t their knack. Alvin had figured out that there wasn’t no knack that another person couldn’t learn, given time and training and wit enough and plain old stick-to-it-iveness. But what he hadn’t taken into account was that Making was like a whole bunch of knacks, and while some of them could grasp this or that little bit of it, there was hardly any who seemed to show a sign of grasping the whole of it. Measure sometimes showed a glimmer. More than a glimmer, really. He could probably be a Maker himself if only he didn’t keep getting distracted. But t
he others—there was no way they were going to be anything like what Alvin was. So if there was no hope of success, what was the point of trying?

  Whenever he got to feeling discouraged like that, though, he’d just tell himself to shut his mouth and stick to his work. You don’t get to be a Maker by changing your plan every few minutes. Who can follow you then? You stick to it. Even when Calvin, the only natural born Maker among them, even when he refused to learn anything and finally took himself off to do who knows what sort of mischief in the wide world, even then you don’t give up and go off in search of him because, as Measure pointed out to the men who wanted to get up a search party, “You can’t force a man to be a Maker, because forcing folks to do things is to Unmake them.”

  Even when Alvin’s own father said, “Al, I marvel at what you can do, but it’s enough for me that you can do it. My part was done when you were born, it seems to me. Ain’t no man alive but what he isn’t proud to have his son pass him up, which you done handily, and I don’t aim to get back into the race.” Even then, Alvin determined grimly to go on teaching while his father went back to the mill and began to clean it up and get it ready to grind again.

  “I can’t figure out,” said Father, “if my milling is Making or Unmaking. The stones grind the grain and break it apart into dust, so that’s Unmaking. But the dust is flour, and you can use it to make bread and cake that the maize or wheat can’t be made into, so milling might be just a step along the road to Making. Can you answer me that, Alvin? Is grinding flour Making or Unmaking?”

  Well, Alvin could answer it glib enough, that it was Making for sure, but it kept nagging at him, that question. I set out to make Makers out of these people, my family, my neighbors. But am I really just grinding them up and Unmaking them? Before I started trying to teach them, they were all content with their own knacks or even their own lack of a knack, when you come down to it. Now they’re frustrated and they feel like failures and why? Is it Making to turn people into something that they weren’t born to be? To be a Maker is good—I know it, because I am one. But does that mean it’s the only good thing to be?