Alvin Journeyman: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume IV (19 page)

Calvin shook his head. “I see that you want merely to provoke me, sir, into speaking in ways that are against the law here.”

“Not so,” said Verily. “There are three dozen witnesses in this salon right now who would testify that far from initiating
this conversation, you were dragged into it. Furthermore, I am not asking you to preach to us. I’m merely asking you to tell us, as scientists, what Americans believe. It is no more a crime to tell about American beliefs concerning knacks than it is to report on Muslim harems and Hindu widow-burning. And this is a company of people who are eager to learn. If I’m wrong, please, let me be corrected.”

No one spoke up to correct him. They were, in fact, dying to hear what the young American would say.

“I’d say there’s no consensus about it,” said Calvin. “I’d say that no one knows what to think. They just use the knacks that they have. Some say it’s against God. Some say God made the world, knacks included, and it all depends on whether the knacks are used for righteousness or not. I’ve heard a lot of different opinions.”

“But what is the wisest opinion that you’ve heard?” insisted Verily.

He could feel it the moment Calvin decided on his answer: It was a kind of surrender. Calvin had been flailing around, but now he had given in to the inevitable. He was going to tell, if not the truth, then at least a true reporting of somebody else’s truth.

“One fellow says that knacks come because of a natural affinity between a person and some aspect of the world around him. It’s not from God
or
Satan, he says. It’s just part of the random variation in the world. This fellow says that a knack is really a matter of winning the trust of some part of reality. He reckons that the Reds, who don’t believe in knacks, have found the truth behind it all. A White man gets it in his head he has a knack, and from then on all he works on is honing that particular talent. But if, like the Reds, he saw knacks as just an aspect of the way all things are connected together, then he wouldn’t concentrate on just one talent. He’d keep working on all of them. So in this fellow’s view, knacks are just the result of too much work on one thing, and not enough work on all the rest. Like a hodsman who carries bricks only on his
right shoulder. His body’s going to get twisted. You have to study it all, learn it all. Every knack is within our power to acquire it, I reckon, if only we . . .”

His voice trailed off.

When Calvin spoke again, it was in the crisp, clear, educated-sounding way he must have learned since reaching England. Only then did Verily and the others realize that his accent had changed during that long speech. He had shed the thin coating of Englishness and shown the American.

“Who is this man who taught you all this lore?” asked Verily.

“Does it matter? What does such a rough man know of nature?” Calvin spoke mockingly; but he was lying again, Verily knew it.

“This ‘rough man,’ as you call him. I suspect he says a great deal more than the mere snippet you’ve given us today.”

“Oh, you can’t stop him from talking, he’s so full of his own voice.” The bitterness in Calvin’s tone was a powerful message to Verily: This is sincere. Calvin resents whoever this frontier philosopher is, resents him deeply. “But I’m not about to bore this company with the ravings of a frontier lunatic.”

“But you don’t think he’s a lunatic, do you, Mr. Miller?” said Verily.

A momentary pause. Think of your answer quickly, Calvin Miller. Find a way to deceive me, if you can.

“I can’t say, sir,” said Calvin. “I don’t think he knows half as much as he lets on, but I wouldn’t dare call my own brother a liar.”

There was a sudden loud eruption of buzzing. Calvin Miller had a brother who philosophized about knacks and said they weren’t from the Devil.

More important to Verily was the fact that Calvin’s words obviously didn’t fit in with the world he actually believed in. Lies, lies. Calvin obviously believed that his brother was very wise indeed; that he probably knew
more
than Calvin was willing to admit.

At this moment, without realizing it himself, Verily Cooper
made the decision to go to America. Whoever Calvin’s brother was, he knew something that Verily wanted desperately to learn. For there was a ring of truth in this man’s ideas. Maybe if Verily could only meet him and talk to him, he could make Verily’s own knack clear to him. Could tell him why he had such a talent and why it persisted even though his father tried to beat it out of him.

“What’s your brother’s name?” asked Verily.

“Does that matter?” asked Calvin, a faint sneer in his voice. “Planning a visit to the backwoods soon?”

“Is that where you’re from? The backwoods?” asked Verily.

Calvin immediately backtracked. “Actually, no, I was exaggerating. My father was a miller.”

“How did the poor man die?” asked Verily.

“He’s not dead,” said Calvin.

“But you spoke of him in the past tense. As if he were no longer a miller.”

“He still runs a mill,” said Calvin.

“You still haven’t told me your brother’s name.”

“Same as my father’s. Alvin.”

“Alvin Miller?” asked Verily.

“Used to be. But in America we still change our names with our professions. He’s a journeyman smith now. Alvin Smith.”

“And you remain Calvin Miller because . . .”

“Because I haven’t chosen my life’s work yet.”

“You hope to discover it in France?”

Calvin leapt to his feet as if his most terrible secret had just been exposed. “I have to get home.”

Verily also rose to his feet. “My friend, I fear my curiosity has made you feel uncomfortable. I will stop my questioning at once, and apologize to this whole company for having broached such difficult subjects tonight. I hope you will all excuse my insatiable curiosity.”

Verily was at once reassured by many voices that it had been most interesting and no one was angry with or offended by anyone. The conversation broke into many smaller chats.

In a few moments, Verily managed to maneuver himself close to the young American. “Your brother, Alvin Smith,” he said. “Tell me where I can find him.”

“In America,” said Calvin; and because the conversation was private, he did not conceal his contempt.

“Only slightly better than telling me to search for him on Earth,” said Verily. “Obviously you resent him. I have no desire to trouble you by asking you to tell me any more of his ideas. It will cost you nothing to tell me where he lives so I can search him out myself.”

“You’d make a voyage across the ocean to meet with a boy who talks like a country bumpkin in order to learn what he thinks about knacks?”

“Whether I make such a voyage or merely write him a letter is no concern of yours,” said Verily. “In the future I’m bound to be asked to defend people accused of witchery. Your brother may have the arguments that will allow me to save a client’s life. Such ideas can’t be found here in England because it would be the ruin of a man’s career to explore too assiduously into the works of Satan.”

“So why aren’t you afraid of ruining your own career?” said Calvin.

“Because whatever he knows, it’s true enough to make a liar like you run halfway around the world to get away from the truth.”

Calvin’s expression grew ugly with hate. “How dare you speak to me like that! I could . . .”

So Verily had guessed right about the way Calvin fit into his own family back home. “The name of the town, and you and I will never have to speak again.”

Calvin paused for a moment, weighing the decision. “I take you at your word, Mr. Rising Young Barrister Esquire. The town is Vigor Church, in Wobbish Territory. Near the mouth of Tippy-Canoe Creek. Go find my brother if you can. Learn from him—if you can. Then you can spend the rest of your
life wondering if maybe you wouldn’t have been better off trying to learn from
me
”

Verily laughed softly. “I don’t think so, Calvin Miller. I already know how to lie, and alas, that’s the only knack you have that you’ve practiced enough to be truly accomplished at it.”

“In another time I would have shot you dead for that remark.”

“But this is an age that loves liars,” said Verily. “That’s why there are so many of us, acting out lives of pretense. I don’t know what you’re hoping to find in France, but I can promise you, it will be worthless to you in the long run, if your whole life up to that moment is a lie.”

“Now you’re a prophet? Now you can see into a man’s heart?” Calvin sneered and backed away. “We had a deal. I told you where my brother lives. Now stay away from me.” Calvin Miller left the party, and, moments later, so did Verily Cooper. It was quite a scandal, Verily’s acting so rudely in front of the whole company like that. Was it quite safe to invite him to dinners and parties anymore?

Within a week that question ceased to matter. Verily Cooper was gone: resigned from his law firm, his bank accounts closed, his apartment rented. He sent a brief letter to his parents, telling them only that he was going to America to interview a fellow about a case he was working on. He didn’t add that it was the most important case of his life: his trial of himself as a witch. Nor did he tell them when, if ever, he meant to return to England. He was sailing west, and would then take whatever conveyance there was, even if it was his own feet on a rough path, to meet this fellow Alvin Smith, who said the first sensible thing about knacks that Verily had ever heard.

On the very day that Verily Cooper set sail from Liverpool, Calvin Miller stepped onto the Calais ferry. From that moment on, Calvin spoke nothing but French, determined to be fluent before he met Napoleon. He wouldn’t think of Verily Cooper again for several years. He had bigger fish to fry. What did he care about what some London lawyer thought of him?

  10  

Left to himself, Alvin likely wouldn’t have come back to Hatrack River. Sure, it was his birthplace, but since his folks moved on before he was even sitting up by himself he didn’t have no memories of the way it was then. He knew that the oldest settlers in that place were Horace Guester and Makepeace Smith and old Vanderwoort, the Dutch trader, so when he was born the roadhouse and the smithy and the general store must have been there already. But he couldn’t conjure up no pictures in his memory of such a little place.

The Hatrack River he knew was the village of his prenticeship, with a town square and a church with a preacher and Whitley Physicker to tend the sick and even a post office and enough folks with enough children that they got them up a subscription and hired them a schoolteacher. Which meant it was a real town by then, only what difference did that make to Alvin? He was stuck there from the age of eleven, bound over to a greedy master who squeezed the last ounce of work out of “his” boy while teaching him as little as possible, as late
as possible. There was scarce any money, and neither time to get any pleasure from it nor pleasures to be bought if you had the time.

Even so, miserable as his prenticeship was, he might have looked back on Hatrack River with some fondness. There was Makepeace’s shrewish wife Gertie, who nevertheless was a fine cook and had a spot of kindness for the boy now and then. There was Horace and Old Peg Guester, who remembered his birth and made him feel welcome whenever he had a moment to visit with them or do some odd job to help them out. And as Alvin got him a name for making perfect hexes and doing better ironwork than his master, there was plenty of visits from all the other folks in town, asking for this, asking for that, and all sort of pretending they didn’t know Alvin was the true master in that smithy. Wouldn’t want to rile up old Makepeace, cause then he’d take it out on the boy, wouldn’t he? But he was a good one with his hands, that boy Alvin.

So Alvin might have made him some happy memories of the place, the way folks always finds a way to dip into their own past and draw out wistful moments, even if those very moments was lonely or painful or downright hellish to live through at the time.

For Alvin, though, all those childish and youthish memories was swallowed up in the way it ended. Right at the happiest time, when he was falling in love with Miss Larner while trying to pick up some decent book learning, them Slave Finders came for little Arthur Stuart and everything went ugly. They even forced Alvin to make the manacles that Arthur would wear back into slavery. Then Alvin and Horace Guester took their life in their hands and went to fetch back the boy, and Alvin changed Arthur Stuart deep inside and washed away his old self in the Hio, so the Finders could never match him up with the bits of hair and flesh in their cachet. So even then, it might have still been hopeful, a good memory of a bad time that turned out fine.