Heartfire: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume V Read online

  “Paint on paper ain’t a bird,” said Arthur Stuart sullenly.

  Jean-Jacques’s hand flashed out and gripped Arthur’s arm. “Come here and say that to my picture!” He forced Arthur to stand over the open sketchbook. “You make me look at flying gooses. Now you look!”

  Arthur looked.

  “You see this is beautiful,” said Jean-Jacques. “And it teaches. Knowing is good. I show this bird to the world. In every eye, there is my bird. My goose is Plato’s goose. Perfect goose. True goose. Real goose.”

  Alvin chuckled. “We aren’t too clear on Plato.”

  Arthur turned scornfully to Alvin. “Miz Larner taught us all about Plato, lessen you was asleep that day.”

  “Was this the question you had for Mr. Audubon?” asked Alvin. “Asking why he thinks it’s worth killing birds to paint them? Cause if it was, you sure picked a rude way to ask it.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Arthur Stuart.

  “And I think he gave you a fair answer, Arthur Stuart. If he was shooting birds and selling them to a poulterer you wouldn’t think twice cause it’s nature’s way, killing and eating. It’s all right to shoot a bird so some family can buy the carcass and roast it up and eat it gone. But iffen you just paint it, that makes him a killer?”

  “I know,” said Arthur Stuart. “I knowed that right along.”

  “Then what was all this shouting for?” asked Alvin.

  “I don’t know,” said Arthur. “I don’t know why I got so mad.”

  “I know why,” said Jean-Jacques.

  “You do?” asked Alvin.

  “Of course,” said Jean-Jacques. “The gooses do not like to die. But they cannot speak. They cannot, how you say, complain. So. You are the interpreter for birds.”

  Arthur Stuart had no answer for this. They walked in silence for a while, as the road led them to the outlying buildings and then quickly into the city, the ground turning into a cobbled street under them.

  “I think of a question for you, King Arthur,” said Jean-Jacques at last.

  “What,” said Arthur, sounding far from enthusiastic.

  “The sound you make, no goose ever make this sound. But they understand you.”

  “Wish you could have heard him when he was younger,” said Alvin. “He sounded just like any bird you want.”

  “He lost this when his voice change? Getting low?”

  “Earlier,” said Alvin. He could not explain how he changed Arthur Stuart’s body so that the Finders couldn’t claim him. Though Jean-Jacques seemed a decent enough fellow, it wouldn’t be good to have any witness who could affirm that Arthur really was the runaway slave the Finders had been looking for.

  “But my question,” said Jean-Jacques, “is how you learn this language. You never hear this language, so how to learn it?”

  “I do hear the language,” said Arthur. “I’m talking their language right back to them. I just have a really thick human accent.”

  At this, Jean-Jacques burst out laughing, and so did Alvin. “Human accent,” Jean-Jacques repeated.

  “It ain’t like the geese talk in words anyway,” said Arthur. “It’s more like, when I talk, I’m making the sound that says, Hi, I’m a goose, and then the rest of it says things like, everything’s safe, or, quick let’s fly, or, hold still now. Not words. Just... wishes.”

  “But there was a time,” said Alvin, “when I saw you talking to a redbird and it told you all kinds of stuff and it wasn’t just wishes, it was complicated.”

  Arthur thought about it. “Oh, that time,” he finally said. “Well, that’s cause that redbird wasn’t talking redbird talk. He was talking English.”

  “English!” said Alvin, incredulous.

  “With a really thick redbird accent,” said Arthur. And this time all three of them laughed together.

  As they neared Mistress Louder’s boardinghouse, they could see a burly man bounding out into the street, then returning immediately through the garden gate. “Is that a man or a big rubber ball?” asked Jean-Jacques.

  “It’s Mr. Fink,” said Arthur Stuart. “I think he’s watching for us.”

  “Or is it Gargantua?” asked Jean-Jacques.

  “More like Pantagruel,” said Arthur Stuart.

  Jean-Jacques stopped cold. Alvin and Arthur turned to look at him. “What’s wrong?” asked Alvin.

  “The boy knows Rabelais?” asked Jean-Jacques.

  “Who’s that?” asked Alvin.

  “Alvin was asleep that day, too,” said Arthur Stuart.

  Jean-Jacques looked back and forth between them. “You and you have attend to school together?”

  Alvin knew what Audubon must be thinking—that Alvin must be a dunce to have gone to school at the same time as a child. “We had the same teacher,” said Alvin.

  “And she taught us in the same room at the same time,” said Arthur Stuart.

  “Only we didn’t always get the same lesson,” said Alvin.

  “Yeah, I got Rabelais and Plato,” said Arthur Stuart, “and Alvin married the schoolteacher.”

  Jean-Jacques laughed out loud. “That is so pleasant! Your wife is a schoolteacher but this slaveboy is the top student!”

  “Reckon so, except one thing,” said Alvin. “The boy is free.”

  “Oh yes, I’m sorry. I mean to say, this Black boy.”

  “Half-Black,” Arthur Stuart corrected him.

  “Which make you half-White,” said Jean-Jacques. “But when I look at you, I see only the Black half. Is this not curious?”

  “When Black folks look at me,” said Arthur Stuart, “they see only the White half.”

  “But the secret about you,” said Jean-Jacques, “is that deep in your heart, you know Rabelais!”

  “What does that have to do with Black and White?” asked Alvin.

  “It have to do that all this Black and White just make this boy laugh inside. When you are laughing deep down where no one else can see, Rabelais is there. Yes, Arthur Stuart?”

  “Rabelais,” said Alvin. “Was that the book about the big huge fat guy?”

  “So you did read it?”

  “No,” said Alvin. “I got embarrassed and gave it back to Miz Lamer. Margaret, I mean. You can’t talk about things like that with a lady!”

  “Ah,” said Jean-Jacques. “Your schoolteacher began as Miz Lamer, but now she is Margaret. Next you will call her ‘mama,’ n’est-ce pas?”

  Alvin got a little tight-lipped at that. “Maybe you French folks like to read nasty books and all, but in America you don’t go talking about a man’s wife having babies.”

  “Oh, you plan to get them some other way?” Jean-Jacques laughed again. “Look, Pantagruel has seen us! He is coming to crush us!”

  Mike Fink strode angrily toward them. “You know what damn time it is!” he called out.

  People nearby looked at him and glared.

  “Watch your language,” Alvin said. “You want to get fined?”

  “I wanted to get to Trenton before nightfall,” said Mike.

  “How, you got a train ticket?” asked Alvin.

  “Good afternoon, Pantagruel. I am Jean-Jacques Audubon.”

  “Is he talking English?” asked Mike.

  “Mike, this is John-James Audubon, a Frenchman who paints birds. Jean-Jacques, this is Mike Fink.”

  “That’s right, I’m Mike Fink! I’m half bear and half alligator, and my grandma on my mother’s side was a tornado. When I clap my hands it scares lightning out of a clear sky. And if I want a bird painted, I’ll pee straight up and turn the whole flock yellow!”

  “I tremble in my boots to know you are such a dangerous fellow,” said Jean-Jacques. “I am sure that when you say these things to ladies, their skirts fly up and they fall over on their backs.”

  Mike looked at him for a moment in silence. “If he’s making fun of me, Alvin, I got to kill him.”

  “No, he was saying he thinks you make a fine speech,” said Alvin. “Come on, Mike, it’s me you’re mad at
. I’m sorry I didn’t get back. I found Arthur Stuart pretty quick, but then we had to stay and help Mr. Audubon paint a goose.”

  “What for?” asked Mike. “Was the old colors peeling off?”

  “No no,” said Jean-Jacques. “I paint on paper. I make a picture of a goose.”

  Before Alvin could explain that the former river rat was making a joke, Mike said, “Thanks for clearing that up for me, you half-witted tick-licking donkey-faced baboon.”

  “Every time you talk I hear how much of English I have yet to learn,” said Jean-Jacques.

  “It wasn’t Mr. Audubon’s fault, Mike. It was Arthur Stuart who made us stay while he talked a goose into holding still. So Mr. Audubon could paint a picture without having to kill the bird and stuff it first.”

  “Well that’s fine with me,” said Mike. “I’m not all that mad about it.”

  “You get more mad that this?” asked Jean-Jacques.

  “None of you ain’t seen me mad,” said Mike.

  “I have,” said Alvin.

  “Well, maybe a little bit mad,” said Mike. “When you broke my leg.”

  Jean-Jacques looked at Alvin, seeing him in a new light, if he could break the leg of a man who did indeed seem to be half bear.

  “It’s Verily who’s about ready to explode,” said Mike.

  “Verily?” asked Alvin, surprised. Verily Cooper hardly ever showed his temper.

  “Yeah, he drummed his fingers on the table at lunch and on the porch he snatched a fly right out of the air and threw it at the house so hard it broke a window.”

  “He did?” asked Arthur Stuart, in awe.

  “I said so, didn’t I?” said Mike Fink.

  “Oh, yeah, I forgot who was talking,” said Arthur.

  “Arthur and Mr. Audubon are hungry and thirsty,” said Alvin. “You think you can take them in and see if Mistress Louder can get them a slab of bread and some water, at least?”

  “Water?” said Audubon with a painted expression. “Do you Americans not understand that water can make you sick? Wine is healthy. Beer is good for you as long as you don’t mind making urine all the time. But water—you will get, what you call it, the piles.”

  “I been drinking water all my life,” said Alvin, “and I don’t get no piles.”

  “But this mean you are, how you say ...” Then he rattled off a stream of French.

  “Used to it,” said Arthur, translating.

  “Yes! Yoost a twit!”

  “Used. To. It,” Arthur repeated helpfully.

  “English is the stupidest language on Earth. Except for German, and it is not a language, it is a head cold.”

  “You speak French?” Alvin asked Arthur Stuart.

  “No,” said Arthur, as if it were the stupidest idea in the world.

  “Well, you understood Mr. Audubon.”

  “I guessed,” said Arthur. “I don’t even talk English all that good.”

  Right, thought Alvin. You can talk English any way you want to. You just like to break the rules and sound like this is your first day out of a deep-woods cabin.

  “Come on in and get something to eat,” said Mike. “And if you won’t drink water, Mr. Odd Bone—”

  “Audubon,” Jean-Jacques corrected him.

  “I hope hard cider will do the trick, cause I don’t reckon Mistress Louder has anything stronger.”

  “Can I have some hard cider?” asked Arthur Stuart.

  “No, but you can have a cookie,” said Alvin.

  “Hurrah!”

  “If she offers you one,” said Alvin. “And no hinting.

  “Mistress Louder always knows what a fellow’s hungry for,” said Arthur Stuart. “It’s her knack.”

  Jean-Jacques laughed. “The food I am hungry for has never been served in this whole continent!”

  “What do you mean?” said Mike Fink. “We got frogs and snails here.”

  “But you have no garlic.”

  “We got onions so strong they make you fart blue,” said Mike. “And I tasted a Red man’s peppercorn one time that made me think I was a fish and I woke up in the river.”

  “The food of France does nothing so wonderful. It taste so good that every day God send a saint down to Paris to bring him his dinner, but what does he know?”

  They continued the bragging contest into the kitchen. But Alvin stopped off in the small parlor, where Verily sat comfortably with a book on his lap. He glanced at Alvin and then back down at the book.

  “Oh, you’re back,” said Verily. “I assumed you had been killed and Arthur sold into slavery.” He turned a page. “Next time, perhaps.” He said it with no expression at all. Mike was right. Alvin had never seen Verily Cooper so mad.

  “I’m sorry,” Alvin said.

  “All right then,” said Verily, setting down the book and rising to his feet. “Let’s go.” Verily walked toward the door.

  “This late in the afternoon?” asked Alvin as he passed!

  Verily stopped and looked at Alvin in feigned surprise. “Afternoon? So late? I had no idea.”

  “I said I’m sorry,” said Alvin.

  “I’m not like Peggy,” said Verily. “I can’t see your heartfire off in the distance and assure myself that everything’s all right. I just sit here waiting.”

  “I can’t believe this,” said Alvin. “You sound like a wife.”

  “I sound angry,” said Verily. “I think it’s interesting that in your mind this translates as ‘sounding like a wife.’”

  “Now you sound like a lawyer,” said Alvin.

  “But you still sound like someone who thinks his life is so much more important than anyone else’s that he can worry and inconvenience other people and all will be made right if he just says ‘I’m sorry.’”

  Alvin was stunned. “How can you say that? You know that’s not how I feel.”

  “That’s not what you say. But it’s how you act.”

  “Sure, yes, maybe I do act like that. I’m on this journey trying to find out what this knack I have is for. I was told once that I’m supposed to build a Crystal City only I don’t know what it is or how it’s made. So I’m flailing around, changing my mind from day to day and week to week because I don’t even know where to begin. Some Tennizy town calling itself Crystal City? Or maybe New England, because one of the wisest people I know tells me that’s where I’ll learn how to create a city?”

  “This is not about whether or not you follow my suggestion,” said Verily.

  “I know what it’s about,” said Alvin. “Your knack is as remarkable as mine. On top of that you’re an educated man. So why are you wandering all over America, following a half-educated journeyman blacksmith who doesn’t know where he’s going?”

  “That is precisely the question I’ve spent this whole day asking.”

  “Well, answer it,” said Alvin. “Because if you want to be the center of your own life, then get on with it. Go away. The longer you follow me around the more you’re going to get caught up in my life, and pretty soon all you’ll be is the fellow who helped Alvin Smith build him a Crystal City.”

  “That’s if you succeed in building it.”

  “Now we’re to it, ain’t we, Very?” said Alvin. “It’s worth it to tag along with me iffen I end up building the damn city. But what if I never figure it out? Then what’s your life about?”

  Verily turned his back on Alvin, but he didn’t leave the room. He walked to the window. “Now I see,” he said.

  “See what?”

  “I sat here getting angrier and angrier, and I thought it was because you were delaying our journey and hadn’t sent word, and I talked myself into resenting the highhanded way you make decisions, but that was nonsense, because I’m free to leave any time. I’m with you by my own choice, and that includes being patient while you figure things out. So why was I angry?”

  “Being angry isn’t always for a reason that makes sense.”

  “Do you imagine you have to tell a lawyer that?” Verily laughe
d grimly. “I see now that I was really angry because I’m not in control of my own life. I’ve handed it over to you.”

  “Not to me,” said Alvin.

  “You’re the one leading this expedition.”

  “You think just because you’re not in charge of your own life right now, I must be in charge?” Alvin sat down on the floor and leaned against the wall. “I didn’t give myself this knack. I didn’t set the Unmaker to trying to kill me a dozen times over while I was growing up. I didn’t cause myself to be born where this torch girl could see my future and use my birth caul to save my life every one of those times. I didn’t choose to get all caught up with Tenskwa-Tawa, either—I was kidnapped by a bunch of Reds as was in cahoots with Harrison. And when I do make a choice it’s liable to blow up in my face. I figured out how to save Arthur from the Finders but what did it cost him? He can’t do the voices anymore, not even the true voices of the birds. I’d give anything to put him back to rights, the way he was. And this golden plow, this living plow I found in the fire, that was the worst mistake of all, cause I don’t know how to use it or what it’s for. But I feel like it’s got to make sense. There’s got to be some purpose behind it. Some plan. Only I can’t see what it’s supposed to be. Not the future, not the present, not the past. And Margaret’s no help neither, cause she sees too many futures and all she cares about is whether I’m dead, as if there’s some future in which I don’t die. Verily, you feel like you’re getting led around on a string, but at least you can look at the other end of the string and see who’s holding it.”

  “You,” said Verily.

  “And you can take it back if you want. You can go your own way. But me, Verily, who’s holding my string? And how can I get away?”

  Verily sank to his knees in front of Alvin and put his hands on Alvin’s shoulders, then pulled him into an embrace. “You need a friend, and I’m nothing but a nag, Alvin.”

  “You’re the friend I need, Verily, as long as you want to be,” said Alvin.

  They held each other for a long moment, both of them rejoicing in the closeness, and both relieved that they hadn’t lost it in the flaring of tempers of two strong-willed men.