Alvin Journeyman: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume IV (11 page)

“Bloody Man?”

“You know, the one as tells horrible stories or when he can’t find nobody new to tell it to, his hands are dripping with blood. Everybody knows the Bloody Man. He come here because the curse on him is, he has to find new people every day to tell his story to, and where you going to find a good supply of new people all the time?”

Of course Calvin knew by now exactly who she was talking about. “Harrison is
here
”

“You know him?”

“Know
of
him. He called hisself—himself—governer of Wobbish for a while. Slaughtered Tenskwa-Tawa’s people at Tippy-Canoe.”

“That’s the one. Dreadful story. Thank heaven I only had to hear it the once. But there’s some kind of power in the fact that his hands get all bloody. I mean, that’s strange, ain’t it? All them other folks you hear about, you never actually see them do nothing, if you know what I mean. But you can see the blood. That’s power, I reckon.”

“Reckon so.” Again he corrected himself. “I think so.”

“Might as well say, T imagine so,’ if you’re trying to get all highfalutin.”

“Just don’t want to sound country, that’s all.”

“Then you’d better learn French. All the high-tone folks do. Here we are in a Dutch city where everybody speaks English, and they go into their toney restaurants and order their food
in French! What did the
French
ever have to do with New Amsterdam? You want to eat in French, you go to Canada, that’s what I say!”

He listened to her diatribe until he could finally get free—which meant when she finally got a customer—and then he set out to find Harrison. White Murderer Harrison. Galvin knew all about the curse on him, from the stories told by his own father and neighbors, and he’d sometimes imagined Harrison walking country roads from town to town, folks throwing him out before he could come in and start telling his awful tale. It never occurred to him that Harrison would come to the city, but it made sense, once you thought about it. Bloody Man.

He found him in an alleyway behind a restaurant where he got fed every night by a manager who didn’t want him accosting his customers. “It’s a stiff punishment,” said the manager. “I had a landlord in Kilkenny who believed in that kind of justice. Punishments that went on forever. Permanent shame. I think it’s wrong. I don’t care much what the man did. Let him without sin among you, and all that. So he eats back of my restaurant. Long as he doesn’t hurt trade.”

“Aren’t you the generous one,” said Calvin.

“You got a mouth on you, boy. In fact I
am
generous, and open-minded, too, and just because I know it and take credit for it doesn’t make it any less true. So you can take your little winking sort of wit and leave my establishment if you’re going to eat my food and then sit in judgment on me.”

“I haven’t eaten your food.”

“But you will,” said the man, “because, as I said, I
am
generous, and you look hungry. Now get back to the kitchen and you can tell the cook to give you something for yourself and something for Bloody Man out in the alley. If you come with his food, he’ll talk to you, right enough. He’ll probably tell you his story, for that matter.”

“I know his story.”

“Everybody might know a story, but it’s never the same story
they know. Now get away from my door, you look like a street rat.”

Calvin looked down at his clothes and realized, yes, he had bought clothing to blend in, but what he blended in with was the street, not the city. He’d have to do something about that before he went to Paris. Have to become, if not a gentleman, then at least a tradesman. Not a street rat.

He didn’t like people who called themselves generous, but the fact was the food in the kitchen was good. The cook didn’t give him no scraps or scrapings. He got food that was decent and there was plenty. How did this manager stay in business, being so generous to the poor? No doubt he was cheating his boss. He could afford to be generous, since he didn’t have to pay for it himself. Most virtues were like that. People could take pride in how virtuous they were, but the fact was that as soon as virtue got expensive or inconvenient, it was amazing how fast it gave way to practical concerns.

The man’s generosity got him this much: No roaches or mice in his kitchen.

Out in the alleyway, Bloody Man was sipping from a wine bottle. He saw Calvin and his eyes went hungry. Calvin laughed. “I hear you’ve got a story to tell.”

“They still sending boys like you to find me, as a prank?”

“No prank. I know your story, mostly. Just wanted to meet you my own self, I guess.”

Harrison offered him the wine bottle. “Best thing about this place,” he said. “Besides that they don’t run me off in the first place. When somebody opens a bottle of wine and doesn’t finish it at the table, the manager refuses to pour from that bottle to anyone else. So it comes out into the alley.”

“The big surprise,” said Calvin, “is that there ain’t ten dozen other hungry drunks here.”

Harrison laughed. “They used to. But they got sick of hearing me tell my story and now I have the alley to myself. That’s how I like it.”

But Calvin could hear it in his voice that it was a lie. He didn’t like it that way. He was hungry for company.

“Might as well start telling me the story. Between bites, if you want,” said Calvin.

Harrison started eating. Calvin could see a remnant of table manners. Once he had been a civilized man.

Between bites, Harrison told the tale. All of it: How he had some Reds from south of the Hio come and kidnap two White boys in order to blame it on Tenskwa-Tawa, the so-called Red Prophet. Only the boys were rescued somehow and fell in with the Prophet’s brother, Ta-Kumsaw. But that didn’t matter because Harrison still used the kidnapping to rile up the White folks in the northern part of Wobbish, the ones as lived nearest to the Prophet’s village at Tippy-Canoe. So Harrison was able to raise an army to go wipe out Prophetstown. And then at the last minute, who shows up but one of the kidnapped boys. Well, Harrison sees nothing for it but to have the boy killed, and everything seems to be working. The Reds just stand there, letting the musketfire and the grapeshot mow them down until nine out of ten of them was dead, the whole meadow a sheet of blood flowing down into the Tippy-Canoe, only it was too much for those White men—they
called
themselves men—because they all stopped shooting before the job was done, and then up comes that boy who was supposed to be dead and he wasn’t even injured, and he tells the truth to everybody and then the Red Prophet puts a curse on all of them there and the worst curse on Harrison, including that he has to tell a new person every day and . . .

“You’re telling it all wrong,” said Calvin.

Harrison looked at him angrily. “You think after all these years I don’t know how to tell the tale? If I tell it any other way, I get blood on my hands and believe me, it looks bad. People throw up when they see me. Looks like I stuck my hands in a corpse up to my elbows.”

“Telling it
your
way has you living in an alley, eating from charity and drinking leftover wine,” said Calvin.

Harrison squinted at him. “Who
are
you?”

“The boy you tried to kill is my brother Measure. The other boy you had them kidnap is my brother Alvin.”

“And you came to gloat?”

“Do I look like I’m gloating? No, I left home because I got sick of their righteousness, knowing everything and not having respect for nobody else.”

Harrison winked. “I never liked people like that.”

“You want to hear how you
ought
to tell your tale?”

“I’m listening.”

“The Reds were at war with the Whites. They weren’t using the land but they didn’t want White farmers to use it, either. They just couldn’t share even though there was plenty of room. Tenskwa-Tawa claimed to be peaceful, but you knew that he was gathering all those thousands of Reds together in order to be Ta-Kumsaw’s army. You had to do
something
to rile up the Whites there to put a stop to this menace. So yes, you had two boys kidnapped, but you never gave orders for anybody to be killed—”

“If I say
that
the blood just leaps onto my hands on the spot—”

“I’m sure you’ve thought of all the possible lies, but hear me out,” said Calvin.

“Go on.”

“You didn’t order anybody killed. That was just lies your enemies told about you. Lies originating with Alvin Miller Junior, now called Alvin Smith. After all, Alvin was the Boy Renegado, the White boy who went everywhere with Ta-Kumsaw for a year. He was Ta-Kumsaw’s friend—we’ll use the
wore friend
because we’re in decent company—so of course he lied about you. It was your battle at Tippy-Canoe that broke the back of Ta-Kumsaw’s plans. If you hadn’t struck then and there, Ta-Kumsaw would have been victorious later at Fort Detroit, and Ta-Kumsaw would have driven all the civilized folks out of the land west of the Appalachees and Red armies would be descending on the cities of the east, raiding out of
the mountains and—why, thanks to you and your courage at Tippy-Canoe, the Reds have been driven west of the Mizzipy. You opened up all the western lands to safe colonization.”

“My hands would be dripping before I said all that.”

“So what? Hold them up and say, ‘Look what the Red Witch Tenskwa-Tawa did to punish me. He covered my hands with blood. But I’m glad to pay that price. The blood on my hands is the reason why White men are building civilization right to the shores of the Mizzipy. The blood on my hands is the reason why people in the east can sleep easy at night, without so much as a thought about Reds coming and raping and killing the way those savages always did.’ ”

Harrison chuckled. “Every word you’ve said is the profoundest bull hockey, my boy, I hope you know that.”

“You just need to decide whether you’re going to let Tenskwa-Tawa have the final victory over you.”

“Why are you telling me this? What’s in it for you?”

“I don’t know. I came looking for you thinking you might know something of power, but when I heard you tell that weaselly weakling tale I knew that you didn’t know nothing that a
man
could use. In fact, I knew more than
you.
So, seeing how I was going to ask you to share, it seemed only fair to share right back.”

“How kind of you.” His sarcasm was inescapable.

“I don’t think so. I just picture the look on my brother Alvin’s face when you tell everbody he was the Boy Renegado. You say
that,
and nobody’ll believe him if he testifies against you. In fact, he’ll have to hide himself, when you think of all the terrible things folks believe about the Boy Renegado. How he was the crudest Red of them all, killing and torturing so even the Shaw-Nee puked.”

“I remember those tales.”

“You hold up those bloody hands, my friend, and then make them mean what
you
want them to mean.”

Harrison shook his head. “I can’t live with the blood.”

“So you
have
a conscience, eh?”

Harrison laughed. “The blood gets in my
food.
It stains my clothes. It makes people sick.”

“If I were you, I’d eat with gloves on and I’d wear dark clothes.”

Harrison was through eating. So was Calvin.

“So you want me to do this to hurt your brother.”

“Not hurt him. Just keep him silent and out of sight. You’ve spent, what, eight years living like a dog. Now it’s his turn.”

“There’s no going back,” said Harrison. “Once I tell lies, I’ll have bloody hands till the day I die.”

Calvin shrugged. “Harrison, you’re a liar and a murderer, but you love power more than life. Unfortunately you’re piss-poor at getting it and keeping it. Ta-Kumsaw and Alvin and Tenskwa-Tawa played you for a sucker. I’m telling you how to undo what they done to you. How to set yourself free. I don’t give a rat’s front teeth whether you do what I said or not.” He got up to go.

Harrison half-rose and clutched at Calvin’s pantlegs. “Someone told me that Alvin, he’s a Maker. That he has real power.”

“No he doesn’t,” said Calvin. “Not for you to worry about. Because, you see, my friend, he can only use his power for
good
, never to harm nobody.”

“Not even me?”

“Maybe he’ll make an exception for you.” Calvin grinned wickedly. “I know
I
would.”

Harrison withdrew his hands from Calvin’s clothing. “Don’t look at me like that, you little weasel.”

“Like what?” asked Calvin.

“Like I’m scum. Don’t
you
judge
me
”

“Can you tell me a single good reason why not?”

“Because whatever else I did, boy, I never betrayed my own brother.”

Now it was Calvin’s turn to look into the face of contempt. He spat on the ground near Harrison’s knees. “Eat pus and die,” he said.

“Was that a curse?” asked Harrison jeeringly as Calvin walked away. “Or merely a friendly warning?”

Calvin didn’t answer him. He was already thinking of other things. How to raise the money to get passage east, for one thing. First class. He was going to go first class. Maybe what he needed to do was see if his knack extended to causing money to fall out of some shopkeeper’s moneybag as he carried his earnings to the bank. If he did it right, no one would see. He wouldn’t get caught. And even if someone saw the money fall out and him pick it up, they could only accuse him of finding dropped money, since he never laid a hand on the bag. That would work. It would be easy enough. So easy that it was stupid that Alvin had never done it before. The family could have used the money. There were some hard years. But Alvin was too selfish ever to think of anybody but himself, or anything but his stupid plan of trying to teach Making to people with no knack for it.

First-class passage to England, and from there across the channel to France. New clothes. It wouldn’t take much to get that kind of money. A lot of money changed hands in New Amsterdam, and there was nothing to stop some of it from falling onto the street at Calvin’s feet. God had given him the power, and that meant that it must be the will of God for him to do it.