Prentice Alvin: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume III (43 page)

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Authors: Orson Scott Card

BOOK: Prentice Alvin: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume III
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“That’s not what I meant,” said Alvin. “I just don’t use my knack around—”
“Around people as dumb as
me,”
said Cal.
“I was doing a bad job explaining,” said Alvin, “but if you’ll let me, Cal, I can teach you how to change iron into—”
“Gold,” said Cal, his voice thick with scorn. “What do you think I am? Trying to fool me with an alchemist’s tales! If you knew how to do
that,
you wouldn’t’ve come home poor. You know I once used to think you were the beginning and end of the world. I thought, when Al comes home, it’ll be like old times, the two of us playing and working together, talking all the time, me tagging on, doing everything together. Only it turns out you still think I’m just a little boy, you don’t say nothing to me except ‘here’s another rail’ and ‘pass the beans, please.’ You took over all the jobs folks used to look to me to do, even one as simple as making a stout rail fence.”
“Job’s yours,” said Alvin, shouldering his hammer. There was no point in trying to teach Cal anything—even if he
could
learn it, he could never learn it from Alvin. “I got other work to do, and I won’t detain you any longer.”
“Detain
me,” said Cal. “Is that a word you learned in a book, or from that ugly old teacher lady in Hatrack River that your ugly little mix-up boy talks about?”
Hearing Miss Larner and Arthur Stuart so scornfully spoken of, that made Alvin burn inside, especially since he had in fact learned to use phrases like “detain you any longer” from Miss Larner. But Alvin didn’t say anything to show his anger. He just turned his back and walked off, back down the line of the finished fence. Cal could use his own knack and finish the fence himself; Alvin didn’t even care about collecting the wages he’d earned in most of a day’s work. He had other things on his mind—memories of Miss Larner, partly, but mostly he was upset about how Cal hadn’t wanted Alvin to teach him. Here he was the person in the whole world who had the best chance to learn it all as easy as a baby learning to suck, since it was his natural knack—only he didn’t want to learn it, not from Alvin. It was something Alvin never would have thought possible,
to turn down the chance to learn something, just because the teacher was somebody you didn’t like.
Come to think of it, though, hadn’t Alvin hated going to school with Reverend Thrower, cause of how Thrower always made him feel like he was somehow bad or evil or stupid or something? Could it be that Cal hated Alvin the way Alvin had hated Reverend Thrower? He just couldn’t understand why Cal was so angry. Of all people in the world, Cal had no reason to be jealous of Alvin, because he could come closest to doing all that Alvin did; yet for that very reason, Cal was so jealous he’d never learn it, not without going through every step of figuring it out for himself.
At this rate, I’ll never build the Crystal City, cause I’ll never be able to teach Making to another soul.
It was a few weeks after that when Alvin finally tried again to talk to somebody, to see if he really could teach Making. It was on a Sunday, in Measure’s house, where Alvin and Arthur Stuart had gone to take their dinner. It was a hot day, so Delphi laid a cold table—bread and cheese and salt ham and smoked turkey—and they all went outside to take the afternoon in the shade of Measure’s north-facing kitchen porch.
“Alvin, I invited you and Arthur Stuart here today for a reason,” said Measure. “Delphi and me, we already talked it over, and said a few things to Pa and Ma, too.”
“Sounds like it must be pretty terrible, if it took that much talking.”
“Reckon not,” said Measure. “It’s just—well, Arthur Stuart, here, he’s a fine boy, and a good hard worker, and good company to boot.”
Arthur Stuart grinned. “I sleep solid, too,” he said.
“Fine sleeper,” said Measure. “But Ma and Pa ain’t exactly young no more. I think Ma’s used to doing things in the kitchen all her own way.”
“That she is,” sighed Delphi, as if she had more than a little reason for knowing exactly how set in her ways Goody Miller was.
“And Pa, well, he’s tiring out. When he gets home from the mill, he needs to lie down, have plenty of quiet around him.”
Alvin thought he knew where the conversation was heading. Maybe his folks just weren’t the quality of Old Peg Guester or Gertie Smith. Maybe they couldn’t take a mix-up boy into their home or their heart. It made him sad to think of such a thing about his own folks, but he knew right off that he wouldn’t even complain about it. He and Arthur Stuart would just pack up and set out on a road leading—nowhere in particular. Canada, maybe. Somewhere that a mix-up boy’d be full welcome.
“Mind you, they didn’t say a thing like that to
me,
” said Measure. “In fact, I sort of said it all to them. You see, me and Delphi, we got a house somewhat bigger than we need, and with three small ones Delphi’d be glad of a boy Arthur Stuart’s age to help with kitchen chores like he does.”
“I can make bread all myself,” said Arthur Stuart. “I know Mama’s recipe by heart. She’s dead.”
“You see?” said Delphi. “If he can make bread himself sometimes, or even just help me with the kneading, I wouldn’t end up so worn out at the end of the week.”
“And it won’t be long before Arthur Stuart could help out in my work in the fields,” said Measure.
“But we don’t want you to think we’re looking to hire him on like a servant,” said Delphi.
“No, no!” said Measure. “No, we’re thinking of him like another son, only growed up more than my oldest Jeremiah, who’s only three and a half, which makes him still pretty much useless as a human being, though at least he isn’t always trying to throw himself into the creek to drown like his sister Shiphrah—or like you when you were little, I might add.”
Arthur Stuart laughed at that. “Alvin like to drowned
me
one time,” said Arthur Stuart. “Stuck me right in the Hio.”
Alvin felt pure ashamed. Ashamed of lots of things: The fact that he never told Measure the whole story of how he rescued Arthur Stuart from the Finders; the fact that he even thought for a minute that Measure and Ma and Pa might be trying to get rid of a mixup boy, when the truth was they were squabbling over who got to have him in their home.
“It’s Arthur Stuart’s choice where to live, once he’s invited,” said Alvin. “He came home along with me, but I don’t make such choices for him.”
“Can I live here?” asked Arthur Stuart. “Cal doesn’t much like me.”
“Cal’s got troubles of his own,” said Measure, “but he likes you fine.”
“Why didn’t Alvin bring home something useful, like a horse?” said Arthur Stuart. “You eat like one, but I bet you can’t even pull a two-wheel shay.”
Measure and Delphi laughed. They knew Arthur Stuart was repeating something Cal had said, word for word. Arthur Stuart did it so often, folks came to expect it, and took delight in his perfect memory. But it made Alvin sad to hear it, because he knew that only a few months ago, Arthur Stuart would have said it in Cal’s own voice, so even Ma couldn’t’ve known without looking that it wasn’t Cal himself.
“Is Alvin going to live down here too?” asked Arthur Stuart.
“Well, see, that’s what we’re thinking,” said Measure. “Why don’t you come on down here, too, Alvin? We can put you up in the main room here, for a while. And when the summer work’s done, we can set to fixing up our old cabin—it’s still pretty solid, since we ain’t moved out of it but two years now. You can be pretty much on your own then. I reckon you’re too old now to be living in your pa’s house and eating at your ma’s table.”
Why, Alvin never would’ve reckoned it, but all of a sudden he found his eyes full of tears. Maybe it was the pure joy of having somebody notice he wasn’t the same old Alvin Miller Junior anymore. Or maybe it was the fact that it was Measure, looking out for him like in the old days. Anyway, it was at that moment that Alvin first felt like he’d really come home.
“Sure I’ll come down here, if you want me,” Alvin said.
“Well there’s no reason to cry about it,” said Delphi. “I already got three babies crying every time they think of it. I don’t want to have to come along and dab your eyes and wipe your nose like I do with Keturah.”
“Well at least he don’t wear diapers,” said Measure, and he and Delphi both laughed like that was the funniest thing they ever heard. But actually they were laughing with pleasure at how Alvin had gotten so sentimental over the idea of living with them.
So Alvin and Arthur Stuart moved on down to Measure’s house, and Alvin got to know his best-loved brother all over again. All the old things that Alvin once loved were still in Measure as a man, but there were new things, too. The tender way Measure had with his children, even after a spanking or a stiff talking to. The way Measure looked after his land and buildings, seeing all that needed doing, and then doing it, so there was never a door that squeaked for a second day, never an animal that was off its feed for a whole day without Measure trying to account for what was wrong.
Above all, though, Alvin saw how Measure was with Delphi. She wasn’t a noticeably pretty girl, though not particular ugly either; she was strong and stout and laughed loud as a donkey. But Alvin saw how Measure had a way of looking at her like the most beautiful sight he ever could see. She’d look up and there he’d be, watching her with a kind of dreamy smile on his face, and she’d laugh or blush or look away, but for a minute or two she’d move more graceful, walking partly on her toes maybe, like she was dancing, or getting set to fly. Alvin wondered then if he could ever give such a look to Miss Larner as would make
her
so full of joy that she couldn’t hardly stay connected to the earth.
Then Alvin would lie there in the night, feeling all the subtle movements of the house. knowing without even using his doodlebug what the slow and gentle creaking came from; and at such times he remembered the face of the woman named Margaret who had been hiding inside Miss Larner all those months, and imagined her face close to his, her lips parted, and from her throat those soft cries of pleasure Delphi made in the silence of the night. Then he would see her face again, only this time twisted with grief and weeping. At such times his heart ached inside him, and he yearned to go back to her, to take her in his arms and find some place inside her where he could heal her, take her grief away, make her whole.
And because Alvin was in Measure’s house, his wariness slipped away from him, so that his face again began to show his feelings. It happened, then, that once when Measure and Delphi exchanged such a look as they had between them, Measure happened to look at Alvin’s face. Delphi was gone out of the room by then, and the children were long since in bed, so Measure was free to reach out a hand and touch Alvin’s knee.
“Who is she?” Measure asked.
“Who?” asked Alvin, confused.
“The one you love till it takes your breath away just remembering.”
For a moment Alvin hesitated, by long habit. But then the gateway opened, and all his story spilled out. He started with Miss Larner, and how she was really Margaret, who was the same girl who once was the torch in Taleswapper’s stories, the one that looked out for Alvin from afar. But telling the story of his love for her led to the story of all she taught him, and by the time the tale was done, it was near dawn. Delphi was asleep on Measure’s shoulder—she’d come back in sometime during the tale, but didn’t last long awake, which was just as well, with her three children and Arthur Stuart sure to want breakfast on time no matter how late she stayed up in the night. But Measure was still awake, his eyes sparkling with the knowledge of what the Redbird said, of the living golden plow, of Alvin in the forgefire, of Arthur Stuart in the Hio. And also a deep sadness behind that light in Measure’s eyes, for the murder Alvin had done with his own hands, however much it might have been deserved; and for the death of Old Peg Guester, and even for the death of a certain runaway Black slave girl Arthur Stuart’s whole lifetime ago.
“Somehow I got to go out and find people I can teach to be Makers,” said Alvin. “But I don’t even know if somebody without a knack like mine can learn it, or how much they ought to know, or if they’d even want to know it.”
“I think,” said Measure, “that they ought to love the dream of your Crystal City before they ever know that they might learn to
help in the making of it. If word gets out that there’s a Maker who can teach Making, you’ll get the sort of folks as wants to rule people with such power. But the Crystal City—ah, Alvin, think of it! Like living inside that twister that caught you and the Prophet all those years ago.”
“Will you learn it, Measure?” asked Alvin.
“I’ll do all I can to learn it,” said Measure. “But first I make you a solemn promise, that I’ll only use what you teach me to build up the Crystal City. And if it turns out I just can’t learn enough to be a Maker, I’ll help you any other way I can. Whatever you ask me to do, Alvin, that I’ll do—I’ll take my family to the ends of the Earth, I’ll give up everything I own, I’ll die if need be—anything to make the vision Tenskwa-Tawa showed you come true.”
Alvin held him by both hands, held him for the longest time. Then Measure leaned forward and kissed him, brother to brother, friend to friend. The movement woke Delphi. She hadn’t heard most of it, but she knew that something solemn was happening, and she smiled sleepily before she got up and let Measure take her off to bed for the last few hours till dawn.

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