Alvin Journeyman: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume IV Page 7

  He asked Taleswapper about it, of course. After all, Taleswapper didn’t show up for no reason, even if the old coot had no notion what the reason was himself. Maybe he was there to give Alvin some answers. So one day when the two of them were chopping wood out back, he asked, and Taleswapper answered like he always did, with a story.

  “I heard a tale once about how a man who was building a wall as fast as he could, but somebody else was tearing it down faster than he could build it up. And he wondered how he could keep the wall from being torn down completely, let alone ever finish it. And the answer was easy: You can’t build it alone.”

  “I remember that tale,” said Alvin. “That tale is why I’m here, trying to teach these folks Making.”

  “I just wonder,” said Taleswapper, “if you might be able to stretch that story, or maybe twist it a little and wring a bit more useful truth out of it.”

  “Wring away,” said Alvin. “We’ll find out whether the story is a wet cloth or a chicken’s neck when you’re done wringing.”

  “Well maybe what you need isn’t a bunch of other stonemasons, cutting the stone and mixing the mortar and plumbing the wall and all those jobs. Maybe what you need is just a lot of cutters, and a lot of mortar mixers, and a lot of surveyors, and so on. Not everybody has to be a Maker. In fact, maybe all you need is just the one Maker.”

  The truth of what Taleswapper was saying was obvious; it had already occurred to Alvin many times, in other guises. What took him by surprise was how tears suddenly came to his own eyes, and he said softly, “Why does that make me so desperate sad, my friend?”

  “Because you’re a good man,” said Taleswapper. “An evil man would delight to find out that he was the only one who could rule over a great many people working in a common cause.”

  “More than anything I don’t want to be alone anymore,” said Alvin. “I’ve been alone. Almost my whole time as a prentice in Hatrack River, I felt like there was nobody to take my part.”

  “But you were never alone the whole time,” said Tale-swapper.

  “If you mean Miss Larner looking out for me—”

  “Peggy is who I meant. I can’t see why you still call her by that false name.”

  “That’s the name of the woman I fell in love with,” said Alvin. “But she knows my heart. She knows I killed that man and I didn’t have to.”

  “The man who murdered her mother? I don’t think she holds it against you.”

  “She knows what kind of man I am and she doesn’t love me, that’s what,” said Alvin. “So I am alone, the minute I leave this place. And besides, leaving here is like lining up all these people and slapping their faces and saying, You failed so I’m gone.”

  At that Taleswapper just laughed. “That is plain foolishness and you know it. Truth is you’ve already taught them everything, and now it’s just a matter of practice. They don’t need you here anymore.”

  “But nobody needs me anywhere else,” said Alvin.

  Taleswapper laughed again.

  “Stop laughing and tell me what’s funny.”

  “A joke you have to explain isn’t going to be funny anyway,” said Taleswapper, “so there ain’t no point in explaining it.”

  “You’re no help,” said Alvin, burying the head of his axe in the chopping stump.

  “I’m a great help,” said Taleswapper. “You just don’t want to be helped yet.”

  “Yes I do! I just don’t need riddles, I need answers!”

  “You need somebody to tell you what to do? That’s a surprise. Still an apprentice then, after all? Want to turn your life over to somebody else? For how long, another seven years?”

  “I may not be a prentice anymore,” said Alvin, “but that don’t mean I’m a master. I’m just a journeyman.”

  “Then hire on somewhere,” said Taleswapper. “You’ve still got things to learn.”

  “I know,” said Alvin. “But I don’t know where to go to learn it. There’s that crystal city I saw in the twister with Tenskwa-Tawa. I don’t know how to build it. I don’t know where to build it. I don’t even know why to build it, except that it ought to exist and I ought to make it exist.”

  “There you are,” said Taleswapper. “Like I said, you’ve already taught everybody here everything you know, twice over. All you’re doing now is helping them practice—and cheating now and then by helping them, don’t think I haven’t noticed.”

  “When I use my knack to help them, I tell them I helped,” said Alvin, blushing.

  “And then they feel like failures anyway, figuring that your help was all that made anything happen, and nothing of their own doing. Alvin, I think I am giving you your answer. You’ve done what you can here. Leave Measure to help them, and the others who’ve learned a bit of it here and there. Let them work things out on their own, the way you did. Then you go out into the world and learn more of the things you need to know.”

  Alvin nodded, but in his heart he still refused to believe it. “I just can’t see what good it is to go out to try to learn when you know as well as I do there’s not another Maker in the world right now, unless you count Calvin which I don’t. Who am I going to learn from? Where am I going to go?”

  “So you’re saying that there’s no use in just wandering around, seeing what happens and learning as you can?”

  Taleswapper’s face was so wry as he said this that Alvin knew at once there was a double meaning. “Just because you learn that way doesn’t mean I can. You’re just collecting stories, and there’s stories everywhere.”

  “There’s Making almost everywhere, too,” said Taleswapper. “And where there isn’t Making, there’s still old made things being torn down, and you can learn from them, too.”

  “I can’t go,” said Alvin. “I can’t go.”

  “Which is to say, you’re afraid.”

  Alvin nodded.

  “You’re afraid you’ll kill again.”

  “I don’t think so. I know I won’t. Probably.”

  “You’re afraid you’ll fall in love again.”

  Alvin hooted derisively.

  “You’re afraid you’ll be alone out there.”

  “How could I be alone?” he asked. “I’d have my golden plow with me.”

  “That’s another thing,” said Taleswapper. “That living plow. What did you make it for, if you keep it in darkness all the time and never use it?”

  “It’s gold,” said Alvin. “People want to steal it. Many a man would kill for that much gold.”

  “Many a man would kill for that much tin, for that matter,” said Taleswapper. “But you remember what happened to the man who was given a talent of gold, and buried it in the earth.”

  “Taleswapper, you’re plumb full of wisdom today.”

  “Brimming over,” said Taleswapper. “It’s my worst fault, splashing wisdom all over other people. But most of the time it dries up real fast and doesn’t leave a stain.”

  Alvin grimaced at him. “Taleswapper, I’m not ready to leave home yet.”

  “Maybe folks have to leave home before they’re ready, or they never get ready at all.”

  “Was that a paradox, Taleswapper? Miss Larner taught me about paradox.”

  “She’s a fine teacher and she knows all about it.”

  “All I know about paradox is that if you don’t shovel it out of the stable, the barn gets to stinking real bad and fills up with flies.”

  Taleswapper laughed at that, and Alvin joined in laughing, and that was the end of the serious part of the conversation. Only it clung to Alvin, the whole thing, knowing that Taleswapper thought he should leave home, and him not having a clue where he would go if he did leave, and not being willing to admit failure, either. All kinds of reasons for staying. Most important reason of all was simply being home. He’d spent half his childhood away from his family, and it was good to sit down at his mother’s table every day. Good to see his father standing at the mill. Hear his father’s voice, his brothers’ voices, his sisters’
voices laughing and quarreling and telling and asking, his mother’s voice, his mother’s sharp sweet voice, all of them covering his days and nights like a blanket, keeping him warm, all of them saying to him, You’re safe here, you’re known here, we’re your people, we won’t turn on you. Alvin had never heard him a symphony in his life, or even more than two fiddles and a banjo at the same time, but he knew that no orchestra could ever make a music more beautiful than the voices of his family moving in and out of their houses and barns and the millhouse and the shops in town, threads of music binding him to this place so that even though he knew Taleswapper was right and he ought to leave, he couldn’t bring himself to go.

  How did Calvin ever do it? How did Calvin leave this music behind him?

  Then Miss Larner’s letter came.

  Measure’s boy Simon brought it, him being five now and, old enough to run down to Armor-of-God’s store to pick up the post. He could do his letters now, too, so he didn’t just give the letter over to his grandma or grandpa, he took it right to Alvin himself and announced at the top of his lungs, “It’s from a woman! She’s called Miss Larner and she makes real purty letters!”

  “Pretty letters,” Alvin corrected him.

  Simon wasn’t to be fooled. “Oh, Uncle Al, you’re the only person around here as says it like that! I’d be plumb silly to fall for a joke like that!”

  Alvin pried up the sealing wax and unfolded the letter. He knew her handwriting from the many hours he had tried to imitate it, studying with her back in Hatrack River. His hand was never as smooth, could never flow the way hers did. Nor was he as eloquent. Words weren’t his gift, or at least not the formal, elegant words Miss Larner—Peggy—used in writing.

  Dear Alvin,

  You’ve overstayed in Vigor Church. Calvin’s a great danger to you, and you must go find him and reconcile with him; if you wait for him to come back to you, he will bring the end of your life with him.

  I can almost hear you answer me: I ain’t afraid to see my life end. (I know you still say ain’t, just to spite me.) Go or stay, that’s up to you. But I can tell you this. Either you will go now, of your own free will, or you will go soon anyway, but not freely. You’re a journeyman smith—you will have your journey.

  Perhaps in your travels we shall encounter each other. It would please me to see you again.

  Sincerely,

  Peggy

  Alvin had no idea what to make of this letter. First she bosses him around like a schoolboy. Then she talks teasingly about how he still says ain’t. Then she as much as asks him to come to her, but in such a cold way as to chill him to the bone—“It would please me to see you again” indeed! Who did she think she was, the Queen? And she signed the letter “sincerely” as if she was a stranger, and not the woman that he loved, and that once said she loved him. What was she playing at, this woman who could see so many futures? What was she trying to get him to do? It was plain there was more going on than she was saying in her letter. She thought she was so wise, since she knew more about the future than other folks, but the fact was that she could make mistakes like anybody else and he didn’t want her telling him what to do, he wanted her to tell him what she knew and let him make up his own mind.

  One thing was certain. He wasn’t going to drop everything and take off in search of Calvin. No doubt she knew exactly where he was and she hadn’t bothered to tell him. What was that supposed to accomplish? Why should he go off searching for Calvin when she could send him a letter and tell him, not where Calvin was right now, but where Calvin would be by the time Alvin caught up with him? Only a fool takes off on foot trying to follow the flight of a wild goose.

  I know I’ve got to leave here sometime. But I’m not going to leave in order to chase down Calvin. And I’m not going to leave because the woman I almost married sends me a bossy letter that doesn’t even hint that she still loves me, if she ever really did. If Peggy was so sure that he’d go soon anyway, because he had to, well, then he might as well just wait around and see what it was that would make him go.

  5

  Twist

  America was too small a country for Calvin. He knew that now. It was all too new. The powers of a land took time to ripen. The Reds, they knew the land, but they were gone. And the Whites and Blacks who lived here now, they had only shallow powers, knacks and hexes, spells and dreams. Nothing like the ancient music that Alvin had talked about. The greensong of the living forest. Besides, the Reds were gone, so whatever it was they knew, it must have been weak. Failure was proof enough of that.

  Even before Calvin knew in his mind where he was headed, his feet knew. East. Sometimes a bit north, sometimes a bit south, but always east. At first he thought he was just going to Dekane, but when he got there he just worked for a day or two to get a bit of coin and some bread in his belly, and then he was off over the mountains, following the new railroad into Irrakwa, where he could sneer a little at men and women who were Red in body but White in dress and speech and soul. More work, more coin, more practice at using his Making here and there. Pranks, mostly, because he didn’t dare use his knack out in the open where folks would take notice and spread word of him. Just little favors for houses where they treated him good, like driving all the mice and roaches off their property. And a little bit of getting even with those who turned him away. Sending a rat to die in a well. Causing a leak in the roof over a flour barrel. That one was hard, making the wood swell and then shrink. But he could work with the water. The water lent itself to his use better than any other element.

  Turned out that Irrakwa wasn’t where his feet were taking him, either. He worked his way across Irrakwa to New Holland, where the farmers all spoke Dutch, and then down the Hudson to New Amsterdam.

  He thought when he came to the great city on the tip of Manhattan Island that this might be the place he was looking for. Biggest city in the U.S.A. And it wasn’t hardly Dutch anymore. Everybody spoke English for business, and on top of that Calvin counted a dozen languages before he stopped caring how many. Not to mention strange accents of English from places like York and Glasgow and Monmouth. Surely all the lores of the world were gathered here. Surely he could find teachers.

  So he stayed for days, for a. week. He tried the college farther up the island, but they wanted him to study intellectual things instead of the lore of power, and soon enough Calvin figured out that none of them high-toned professors knew anything useful anyhow. They treated him like he was crazy. One old coot with a white goat-beard spent half an hour trying to convince Calvin to let the man study him, like as if he was some strange specimen of bug. Calvin only stayed for the whole half hour so he’d have time to loosen all the bindings of all the books on the man’s shelves. Let him wonder about Calvin’s kind of madness as the pages of every book he picked up fell out and scattered on the floor.

  If the professors weren’t worth nothing, the street wasn’t much better. Oh, he heard about loremasters and wizards and such. Gypsies bragged on some cursemonger. Irishmen knew of a priest who had special ways. Frenchmen and Spaniards heard of witches or child-saints or whatever. One Portugee told of a free Black woman who could make your enemy’s crotch turn as smooth and blank as an armpit—which, according to the story, was how she got her freedom, after doing that to her master’s firstborn son and threatening to do it next to him. But every one of them kept retreating out of sight. He’d find out who knew the loremaster, and then go to that person and find out that he only knew somebody else who knew the powerful one, and so on and so on, like constables searching through the night for a fugitive who kept slipping away into alleys.

  In the meantime, though, Calvin learned to live in a city and he liked it. He liked the way that you could disappear right out in the open. Nobody knew you. Nobody expected anything from you. You were what you wore. When he arrived he dressed like a rube from the country, and so people expected him to be stupid and awkward and, what the hell, he was. But in a few days he realized how his clothes gave him away
and he bought some city garb from a used-garment house. That was when people started being willing to talk to him. And he learned to change his speech a little, too. Talk faster, get rid of some of the drawl. Shake off the country twang. He knew he gave himself away with every word he said, but he was getting better. People didn’t ask him to repeat himself as much. And by the end of the week, he was no more out of place than any of the other immigrants. That was as good as it got—it wasn’t as if anybody was actually from New Amsterdam. Except maybe for some old Dutch landlords hiding in their mansions up-island.

  Rumors of wisdom, but no wisdom to be had in this town. Well, what did he expect? Anybody who really knew the powers of the old world would hardly have to board some miserable boat and sail west at risk of life and limb in order to come live in some sinkhole of a slum in New Amsterdam. No, the people of Europe who understood power were still in Europe—because they were running things there, and didn’t have no reason to leave.

  And who was the most powerful one of all? Why, the man whose victories had caused all these people of the dozen languages to flock to American shores. The man who drove the aristocrats out of France, and then conquered Spain and the Holy Roman Empire and Italy and Austria and then for some reason stopped at the Russian border and the English Channel, declared peace and held on, iron-fisted but, as they said, tenderhearted, so that pretty soon nobody in Italy or Austria or the low countries or anywhere, really, was wishing for their old rulers to come back. That was the man who understood power. That was the man who was fit to teach Calvin what he needed to know.

  Only trouble was, why would a man so powerful ever agree to speak to a poor farmboy from Wobbish? And how was that poor farmboy ever going to find passage across the ocean? If only Alvin had bothered to teach him how to turn iron into gold. Now that would be useful. Imagine a whole steam locomotive turned to solid gold. Fire up the engine and the whole damn thing would melt down—but it would melt down into pools of gold. Just put in a dipper and draw it out and there was passage to France, and not in no steerage, neither. First-class passage, and a fine hotel in Paris. Fine clothes, too, so that when he walked into the American embassy the flunkies would bow and scrape and take him straight to the ambassador and the ambassador would take him straight to the imperial palace where he would be presented to Napoleon himself and Napoleon would say, Why should I meet with you, an ordinary citizen of a second-rate country in the wild lands of the west? And Calvin would take three dipperfuls of gold out of his pockets and set them heavily in Napoleon’s hands and say, How much of this do you want? I know how to make more. And Napoleon would say, I have all the taxes of Europe to buy me gold. What do I need with your pathetic handfuls? And Calvin would say, Now you have a bit more gold than you had before. Look at your buttons, sir. And Napoleon would look at the brass buttons on his coat and they would be gold, too, and he would say, What do you want from me, sir? That’s right, he’d call Calvin “sir” and Calvin would say, All I want is for you to teach me the ways of power.