Seventh Son Read online

  Finally things started calming down in the next room. In a minute they’d come in to check on him and Calvin, so he blew out the candle, ducked under the covers, and whispered for the roaches to hide. Sure enough, here came Mama’s footsteps in the hall outside. Just at the last moment, Alvin Junior remembered that he wasn’t wearing his nightgown. He snaked out his hand, snatched the nightgown, and pulled it under the covers just as the door opened. Then he concentrated on breathing easy and regular.

  Mama and Papa came in, holding up candles. He heard them pull down Calvin’s covers to check for roaches, and he feared they might pull down his as well. That would be such a shameful thing, to sleep like an animal without a stitch on. But the girls, who knew he couldn’t possibly be asleep so soon after getting stuck with so many pins, they were naturally afraid of what Alvin might tell Mama and Papa, so they made sure to hustle them out of the room before they could do more than shine a candle in Alvin’s face to make sure he was asleep. Alvin held his face absolutely still, not even twitching his eyelids. The candle went away, the door softly closed.

  Still he waited, and sure enough, the door opened again. He could hear the padding of bare feet across the floor. Then he felt Anne’s breath against his face and heard her whisper in his ear. “We don’t know how you did it, Alvin Junior, but we know you set those roaches onto us.”

  Alvin pretended not to hear anything. He even snored a little.

  “You don’t fool me, Alvin Junior. You better not go to sleep tonight, because if you do, you’ll never wake up, you hear me?”

  Outside the room, Papa was saying, “Where’s Anne got to?”

  She’s in here, Papa, threatening to kill me, thought Alvin. But of course he didn’t say it out loud. Anyway, she was just trying to scare him.

  “We’ll make it look like an accident,” said Anne. “You always have accidents, nobody will think it’s murder.”

  Alvin was beginning to believe her, more and more.

  “We’ll carry your body out and stuff it down the privy hole, and they’ll all think you went to relieve yourself and fell in.”

  That would work, thought Alvin. Anne was just the one to think of something so devilish clever, since she was the very best at secretly pinching people and being a good ten feet away before they screamed. That was why she always kept her fingernails so long and sharp. Even now, Alvin could feel one of those sharp nails scraping along his cheek.

  The door opened wider. “Anne,” whispered Mama, “you come out of there this instant.”

  The fingernail quit scratching. “I was just making sure little Alvin was all right.” Her bare feet padded back out of the room.

  Soon all the doors were closed, and he heard Papa’s and Mama’s shoes clattering down the stairs.

  He knew that by rights he should still be scared to death by Anne’s threats, but it wasn’t so. He had won the battle. He pictured the roaches crawling all over the girls, and he started to laugh. Well, that wouldn’t do. He had to stifle that, breathe calm as could be. His whole body shook from trying to hold in the laughter.

  There was somebody in the room.

  He couldn’t hear anything, and when he opened his eyes he couldn’t see anybody. But he knew somebody was there. Hadn’t come in the door, so they must’ve come in the open window. That’s plain silly, Alvin told himself, there isn’t a soul in here. But he lay still, all laughter gone out of him, because he could feel it, somebody standing there. No, it’s a nightmare, that’s all, I’m still spooked from thinking about Reds watching me outside, or maybe from Anne’s threat, something like that, if I just lie here with my eyes closed it’ll go away.

  The blackness inside Al’s eyelids turned pink. There was a light in his room. A light as bright as daylight. There wasn’t no candle in the world, no, not even a lantern that could burn so bright as that. Al opened his eyes, and all his dread turned into terror, for now he saw that what he feared was real.

  There was a man standing at the foot of his bed, a man shining as if he was made of sunlight. The light in the room was coming from his skin, from his chest where his shirt was tore open, from his face, and from his hands. And in one of those hands, a knife, a sharp steel knife. I am going to die, thought Al. Just like Anne promised me, only there wasn’t no way his sisters could conjure up such an awful apparition as this one. This bright Shining Man had come on his own, that was sure, and planned to kill Alvin Junior for his own sins and not cause somebody else had set him on.

  Then it was like as if the light from the man pushed right through Alvin’s skin and came inside him, and the fear just went right out of him. The Shining Man might have him a knife, and he might’ve snuck on into the room without so much as opening a door, but he didn’t mean no harm to Alvin. So Alvin relaxed a little and wriggled up in his bed till he was mostly sitting, leaning up against the wall, watching the Shining Man, waiting to see what all he’d do.

  The Shining Man took his bright steel knife and brought the blade against his other palm—and cut. Alvin saw the gleaming crimson blood flow from the wound in the Shining Man’s hand, stream down his forearm, and drip from his elbow onto the floor. He hadn’t seen four drops, though, before he came to see a vision in his mind. He could see his sisters’ room, he knew the place, but it was different. The beds were up high, and his sisters were giants, so all he could see clear was big old feet and legs. Then he realized he was seeing a little creature’s view of the room. A roach’s view. In his vision he was scurrying, filled with hunger, absolutely fearless, knowing that if he could get up onto those feet, those legs, there’d be food, all the food he’d ever want. So he rushed, he climbed, he scurried, searching. But there wasn’t no food, not a speck of it, and now huge hands reached and swept him off, and then a great huge shadow loomed over him, and he felt the hard sharp crushing agony of death.

  Not once, but many times, dozens of times, the hope of food, the confidence that no harm would come; then disappointment—nothing to eat, nothing at all—and after disappointment, terror and injury and death. Each small trusting life, betrayed, crushed, battered.

  And then in his vision he was one who lived, one who got away from the looming, stomping boots, under the beds, into the cracks in the walls. He fled from the room of death, but not into the old place, not into the safe room, because now that was no longer safe. That was where the lies came from. That was the place of the betrayer, the liar, the killer who had sent them into this place to die. There were no words in this vision, of course. There could be no words, no clarity of thought in a roach’s brain. But Al had words and thoughts, and he knew more than any roach what the roaches had learned. They had been promised something about the world, they had been made sure of it, and then it was a lie. Death was a fearful thing, yes, flee that room; but in the other room, there was worse than death—there the world had gone crazy, it was a place where anything could happen, where nothing could be trusted, where nothing was certain. A terrible place. The worst place.

  Then the vision ended. Alvin sat there, his hands pressed against his eyes, sobbing desperately. They suffered, he cried out silently, they suffered, and I did it to them, I betrayed them. That’s what the Shining Man came to show me. I made the roaches trust me, but then I cheated them and sent them to die. I’ve done murder.

  No, not murder! Who ever heard of roach-killing being murder? Nobody in the whole world would call it that.

  But it didn’t matter what other folks thought of it, Al knew that. The Shining Man had come to show him that murder was murder.

  And now the Shining Man was gone. The light was gone from the room, and when Al opened his eyes, there was no one in the room but Cally, fast asleep. Too late even to beg forgiveness. In pure misery Al Junior closed his eyes and cried some more.

  How long was it? A few seconds? Or did Alvin doze off and not notice the passage of a much longer time? Never mind how long—the light came back. Once again it came into him, not just through his eyes, but piercing clear to hi
s heart, whispering to him, calming him. Again Alvin opened his eyes and looked at the face of the Shining Man, waiting for him to speak. When he said nothing, Alvin thought it was his turn, and so he stammered out the words, so weak compared to the feelings in his heart. “I’m sorry, I’ll never do it again, I’ll—”

  He was babbling, he knew it, couldn’t even hear himself speak he was so upset. But the light grew brighter for a moment, and he felt a question in his mind. Not a word was spoke, mind you, but he knew that the Shining Man wanted him to say what it was he was sorry for.

  And when he thought about it, Alvin wasn’t altogether sure what all was wrong. Sure it wasn’t the killing itself—you could starve to death if you didn’t slaughter a pig now and then, and it wasn’t hardly murder when a weasel killed himself a mouse, was it?

  Then the light pushed at him again, and he saw another vision. Not roaches this time. Now he saw the image of a Red man, kneeling before a deer, calling it to come and die; the deer came, all trembling and its eyes wide, the way they are when they’re scared. It knew it was coming to die. The Red loosed him an arrow, and there it stood, quivering in the doe’s flank. Her legs wobbled. She fell. And Alvin knew that in this vision there wasn’t no sin at all, because dying and killing, they were both just a part of life. The Red was doing right, and so was the deer, both acting according to their natural law.

  So if the evil he done wasn’t the death of the roaches, what was it? The power he had? His knack for making things go just where he wanted, making them break just in the right place, understanding how things ought to be and helping them get that way? He’d found that right useful, as he made and fixed the things a boy makes and fixes in a rough country household. He could fit the two pieces of a broken hoe handle, fit them so tight that they joined forever without glue or tack. Or two pieces of torn leather, he didn’t even have to stitch them; and when he tied a knot in string or rope, it stayed tied. It was the same knack he used with the roaches. Making them understand how things was supposed to be, and then they did what he wanted. Was that his sin, that knack of his?

  The Shining Man heard his question before he even found words for it. Here came the push of light, and another vision. This time he saw himself pressing his hands against a stone, and the stone melted like butter under his hands, came out in just the shape he wanted, smooth and whole, fell from the side of the mountain and rolled away, a perfect ball, a perfect sphere, growing and growing until it was a whole world, shaped just the way his hands had made it, with trees and grass springing up on its face, and animals running and leaping and flying and swimming and crawling and burrowing on and above and within the ball of stone that he had made. No, it wasn’t a terrible power, it was a glorious one, if he only knew how to use it.

  Well if it ain’t the dying and it ain’t the knack, what did I do wrong?

  This time the Shining Man didn’t show him a thing. This time Alvin didn’t see no burst of light, there wasn’t a vision at all. Instead the answer just came, not from the Shining Man but from inside his own self. One second he felt too stupid ever to understand his own wickedness, and then the next second he saw it all as clear as could be.

  It wasn’t the roaches dying, and it wasn’t the fact he made them do it. It was the fact that he made them do it just to suit his own pleasure. He told them it was for their own good, but it wasn’t so, it was for Alvin’s benefit alone. Harming his sisters, more than harming the roaches, and all so Alvin could lie in his bed shaking with laughter because he got even—The Shining Man heard the thoughts of Alvin’s heart, yes sir, and Al Junior saw a fire leap from his gleaming eye and strike him in the heart. He had guessed it. He was right.

  So Alvin made the most solemn promise of his whole life, right then and there. He had a knack, and he’d use it, but there was rules in things like that, rules that he would follow even if it killed him. “I’ll never use it for myself again,” said Alvin Junior. And when he said the words he felt like his heart was on fire, it burned so hot inside.

  The Shining Man disappeared again.

  Alvin lay back, slid down under the blanket, exhausted from weeping, weary with relief. He’d done a bad thing, that was so. But as long as he kept this oath he made, as long as he only used his knack to help other people and never ever used it to help himself, why then he would be a good boy and didn’t need to be ashamed. He felt lightheaded the way you do coming out of a fever, and that was about right, he had been healed of the wickedness that grew inside him for a spell. He thought of himself laughing when he’d just caused death for his own pleasure, and he was ashamed, but that shame was tempered, it was softened, cause he knew that it would never happen again.

  As he lay there, Alvin once again felt the light grow in the room. But this time it didn’t come from a single source. Not from the Shining Man at all. This time when he opened his eyes he realized the light was coming from himself. His own hands were shining, his own face must be glowing the way the Shining Man had. He threw off his covers and saw that his whole body glowed with light so dazzling he couldn’t hardly bear to look at himself, except that he also couldn’t bear to look anywhere else. Is this me? he thought.

  No, not me. I’m shining like this because I’ve also got to do something. Just like the Shining Man did something for me, I’ve got something to do, too. But who am I supposed to do it for?

  There was the Shining Man, visible again at the foot of his bed, but not shining no more. Now Al Junior realized that he knew this man. It was Lolla-Wossiky, that one-eyed whisky-Red who got himself baptized a few days ago, still wearing the White man’s clothes they gave him when he turned Christian. With the light inside him now, Alvin saw clearer than he ever did before. He saw that it wasn’t likker that poisoned this poor Red man, and it wasn’t losing one eye that crippled him. It was something much darker, something growing like a mold inside his head.

  The Red man took three steps and knelt beside the bed, his face only a little way from Alvin’s eyes. What do you want from me? What am I supposed to do?

  For the first time, the man opened his eyes and spoke. “Make all things whole,” he said. A second later, Al Junior realized that the man had said it in his Red language. Shaw-Nee, he remembered, from what the grown-ups said when he was baptized. But Al had understood it plain as if it was the Lord Protector’s own English. Make all things whole.

  Well, that was Al’s knack, wasn’t it? Fixing things, making things go the way they were supposed to. Trouble was, he didn’t even half understand how he did it, and he surely had no idea how to fix something that was alive.

  Maybe, though, he didn’t have to understand. Maybe he just had to act. So he lifted his hand, reached out as careful as he could, and touched Lolla-Wossiky’s cheek, under the broken eye. No, that wasn’t right. He raised his finger until it touched the slack eyelid where the Red man’s other eye was supposed to be. Yes, he thought. Be whole.

  The air crackled. Light sparked. Al gasped and pulled his hand away.

  All the light was gone from the room. Just the moonlight now coming in the window. Not even a glimmer of the brightness was left. Like as if he just woke up from a dream, the strongest dream he ever had in his life.

  It took a minute for Alvin’s eyes to change so he could see. It wasn’t no dream, that was sure. Cause there was the Red man, who had once been the Shining Man. You ain’t dreaming when you got a Red man kneeling by your bed, tears coming out of his one good eye, and the other eye, where you just touched him—

  That eyelid was still loose, hanging over nothing. The eye wasn’t healed. “It didn’t work,” whispered Alvin. “I’m sorry.”

  It was a shameful thing, that the Shining Man had saved him from awful wickedness, and he hadn’t done a thing for him in return. But the Red man said nary a word of reproach. Instead he reached out and took Alvin’s naked shoulders in both his large strong hands and pulled him close, kissed him on the forehead, hard and strong, like a father to a son, like brothers, like true
friends the day before they die. That kiss and all it held—hope, forgiveness, love—let me never forget that, Alvin said silently.

  Lolla-Wossiky sprang to his feet. Lithe as a boy he was, not staggering drunk at all. Changed, he was changed, and it occurred to Alvin that maybe he had healed something, set something right, something deeper than his eyes. Cured him of the whisky-lust, maybe.

  But if that was so, Al knew it wasn’t himself that done it, it was the light that was in him for a time. The fire that had warmed him without burning.

  The Red man rushed to the window, swung over the sill, hung for a moment by his hands, then disappeared. Alvin didn’t even hear his feet touch the ground outside, he was that quiet. Like the cats in the barn.

  How long had it been? Hours and hours? Would it be daylight soon? Or had it taken only a few seconds since Anne had whispered in his ear and the family had quieted down?

  Didn’t matter much. Alvin couldn’t sleep, not now, not with all that had just happened. Why had this Red man come to him? What did it all mean, the light that filled Lolla-Wossiky and then came to fill him? He couldn’t just lie here in bed, all full of wonder. So he got up, slithered into his nightgown as fast as he could, and slipped out of his door.

  Now that he was in the hall, he heard talking from downstairs. Mama and Papa were still up. At first he wanted to rush down and tell them what all happened to him. But then he heard the tone of their voices. Anger, fear, all upset. Not a good time to come to them with a tale of a dream. Even if Alvin knew it wasn’t a dream at all, that it was real, they’d treat it like a dream. And now that he was thinking straight, he couldn’t tell them at all. What, that he sent the roaches into his sisters’ room? The pins, the pokes, the threats? All of that would come out too, even though it felt like months, years ago to Alvin. None of it mattered now, compared to the vow he had taken and the future he thought might be in store for him—but it would matter to Mama and Papa.