Alvin Journeyman: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume IV (49 page)

Po Doggly came in about ten-thirty and asked Alvin if he’d mind too much being put on his own parole to go spend the night in the roadhouse—Horace Guester was standing bail for him, and did he give his solemn oath etcetera etcetera because the jail was needed to hold drunken brawlers ten to a cell. Alvin took the oath and Horace and Verily escorted him through back lots to the roadhouse. There was plenty of drinking and dancing downstairs in the common room of the roadhouse, but not the kind of rowdiness that prevailed at rougher places and out in the open, where wagons filled with likker were doing quite a business. Horace’s party, as always, was for locals of the more civilized variety. Still, it wouldn’t do no good for Alvin to show his face there and get rumors going, especially since there was bound to be some in the crowds infesting Hatrack River as wasn’t particular friends of Alvin’s—and a few that
was
particular friends of Makepeace’s. Not to mention them as was always a particular friend of any amount of gold that might be obtained by stealth or violence. It was up the back stairs for Alvin, and even then he stooped and had his face covered and said nary a word the whole jaunt.

Up in Horace’s own bedroom, where Arthur Stuart and Measure already had cots, Alvin paced the room, touching the walls, the soft bed, the window as if he had never seen such things before. “Even cooped up in here,” said Alvin, “it’s better than a cell. I hope never to be back in such a place again.”

“Don’t know how you’ve stood it this far,” said Horace. “I’d go plain bonkers in a week.”

“Who’s to say he didn’t?” said Measure.

Alvin laughed and agreed with him. “I was crazy not to let Verily go with his plans, I know that,” said Alvin.

“No, no,” said Verily. “You were right, you came through in your own defense.”

“But what if I hadn’t figured out how to let the salamander’s voice be heard? I’ve been thinking about that ever since yesterday.
What if I hadn’t done it? They was all talking like I could do anything, like I could fly or do miracles on the moon just by thinking about it. I wish I could. Sometimes I wish I could. It’s still nip and tuck with the jury, ain’t it, Verily?”

Verily agreed that it was. But they all knew that he wasn’t likely to get convicted of anything now—assuming, of course, that the shelf of rock was still there in the spot Hank Dowser marked for a well. The real damage was to his good name. The real damage was to the Crystal City, which now would be harder to build because of all them stories going around about how Alvin Smith seduced young girls and old women and walked through walls to get to them. Never mind that the story had turned out to be lies and foolishness—there was always folks stupid enough to say, “Where there’s smoke there’s fire,” when the saying should have been, “Where there’s scandalous lies there’s always malicious believers and spreaders-around, regardless of evidence.”

The whooping and hollering in the street, with youngsters or drunken oldsters riding their horses at a breakneck speed up and down until Sheriff Doggly or some deputy could either stop the horse or shoot it, that guaranteed no sleep for anyone, not early, anyway. So they were all still awake, even Arthur Stuart, when two more men came into the common room of the roadhouse, looking wore out and dirty from hard travel. They waited at the counter, nursing a mug of cider each, till Horace came downstairs to check on things and recognized them at once. “Come on up, he’s here, he’s upstairs,” whispered Horace, and the three of them was up the stairs in a trice.

“Armor,” said Alvin, greeting him with a brotherly hug. “Mike.” And Mike Fink got him a hug as well. “You picked a good night to return.”

“We picked a
damn
good night,” said Fink. “We was afraid we might be too late. The plan was to take you out of the jail and hang you as part of the election night festivities. Glad the sheriff thought ahead.”

“He just needed the space for drunk and disorderly,” said Alvin. “I don’t think he had any inkling about no plot.”

“There’s twenty boys here,” said Fink. “Twenty at least, all of them well paid and likkered up. I hope well enough paid that they’re
really
likkered up so they’ll just fall down, puke, and go to sleep, and then slink off home to Carthage in the morning.”

“I doubt it,” said Measure. “I been caught up in plots against Alvin before. Somebody once pretty much took me apart.”

Fink looked at him again. “You wasn’t so tall then,” he said. “I was plain ashamed of what I done to you,” he said. “It was the worst thing I ever done.”

“I didn’t die,” said Measure.

“Not for lack of trying on my part,” said Fink.

Verily was baffled. “You mean this man tried to kill you, Measure?”

“Governor Harrison ordered it,” said Measure. “And it was years ago. Before I was married. Before Alvin came here to Hatrack River as a prentice boy. And if I recall aright, Mike Fink was a little prettier in those days.”

“Not in my heart,” said Frank. “But I bore you no malice, Measure. And after Harrison had me do that to you, I left him, I wanted no truck with him. It don’t make up for nothing, but it’s the truth, that I’m not a man who’d let such as him boss me around, not anymore. If I thought you was the type of man to get even, I wouldn’t run, I’d let you do it. But you ain’t that kind of man.”

“Like I said,” Measure answered, “no harm done. I learned some things that day, and so did you. Let’s have done with that now. You’re Alvin’s friend now, and that makes you my friend as long as you’re loyal and true.”

There were tears in Mike Fink’s eyes. “Jesus himself couldn’t be more kind to me, and me less deserving.”

Measure held out his hand. Mike took and held it. Just for a second. Then it was done, and they set it behind them and went on.

“Found out a few things,” said Armor-of-God. “But I’m glad Mike was with me. Not that he had to do any violence, but there was a couple of times that some fellows didn’t take kindly to the questions I was asking.”

“I did throw a fellow into a horsetrough,” said Fink, “but I didn’t hold him under or nothing so I don’t think that counts.”

Alvin laughed. “No, I reckon that was just playing around.”

“It’s some old friends of yours behind all this, Alvin,” said Armor-of-God. “The Property Rights Crusade is mostly Reverend Philadelphia Thrower and a couple of clerks opening letters and mailing out letters. But there’s some money people behind him, and he’s behind other people who need money.”

“Like?” asked Horace.

“Like one of his first and longest and loyalest contributors is a fellow name of Cavil Planter, who once owned him a farm in Appalachee and still clings to a certain cachet like it was gold bullion,” said Armor-of-God, with a glance at Arthur Stuart.

Arthur nodded. “You’re saying that’s the white man as raped my mama to make me.”

“Most likely,” said Armor-of-God.

Alvin stared at Arthur Stuart. “How do you know about such things?”

“I hear everything,” said Arthur Stuart. “I don’t forget none of it. People said things about that stuff when I was too young to understand it, but I remembered the words and said them to myself when I was older and
could
understand them.”

“Damn,” said Horace. “How was Old Peg and me supposed to know he’d be able to figure it out later?”

“You did nothing wrong,” said Verily. “You can’t help the knacks your children have. My parents couldn’t predict what I’d do, either, though heaven knows they tried. If Arthur Stuart’s knack let him learn things that were painful to know, then I’d also have to say his inward character was strong enough to deal with it and let him grow up untroubled by it.”

“I ain’t troubled by it, that’s true,” said Arthur Stuart. “But I’ll never call him my pa. He hurt my mama and he wanted to
make a slave of me, and that’s no pa.” He looked at Horace Guester. “My own Black mama died trying to get me here, to a real pa and to a ma who’d take her place when she died.”

Horace reached out and patted the boy’s hand. Alvin knew how Horace had never liked having the boy call him his father, but it was plain Horace had reconciled himself to it. Maybe it was because of what Arthur just said, or maybe it was because Alvin had taken the boy away for a year and Horace was realizing now that his life was emptier without this half-Black mixup boy as his son.

“So this Cavil Planter is one of the money men behind Thrower’s little group,” said Verily. “Who else?”

“A lot of names, we didn’t get but a few of them but it’s prominent people in Carthage, and all of them from the pro-slavery faction, either openly or clandestine,” said Armor. “And I’m pretty sure about where most of the money’s going to.”

“We know some of it went to pay Daniel Webster,” said Alvin.

“But a lot more of it went to help with White Murderer Harrison’s campaign for president,” said Armor.

They fell silent, and in the silence more gunshots went off, more cheering, more galloping of horses and whooping and hollering. “Tippy-Canoe just carried him another county,” said Horace.

“Maybe he won’t do so well back east,” said Alvin.

“Who knows?” said Measure. “I can guarantee you he didn’t get a single vote in Vigor Church. But that ain’t enough to turn the tide.”

“It’s out of our hands for now,” said Alvin. “Presidents ain’t forever.”

“I think what’s important here,” said Verily, “is that the same people whose candidate for president just won the election are also out to get you killed, Alvin.”

“I’d think about lying low for a while,” said Measure.

“I
been
lying low,” said Alvin. “I had about all the low-lying I can stand.”

“Being in jail so’s they know right where you be ain’t lying low,” said Mike Fink. “You got to be where they don’t think to look for you, or where if they do find you they can’t do nothing to hurt you.”

“The first place I can think of that fills those requirements is the grave,” said Alvin, “but I reckon I don’t want to go there yet.”

There was a soft rap on the door. Horace went to it, whispered, “Who’s there?”

“Peggy,” came the answer.

He opened the door and she came in. She looked around at the assembled men and chuckled. “Planning the fate of the world here?”

Too many of them remembered what happened the last time they met together for her casual tone to be easily accepted. Only Armor and Fink, who weren’t there in Alvin’s cell that night, greeted her with good cheer. They filled her in on all that had happened, including the fact that Harrison’s election was taken for a sure thing all along the route from Carthage City to Hatrack.

“You know what I don’t think is fair?” said Arthur Stuart. “That old Red Hand Harrison is walking around with blood dripping off n him and they made him president, while Measure here has to stay half-hid and all them other good folks daresn’t leave Vigor Church cause of that curse. It seems to me like the good folks is still punished and the worsest one got off scot-free.”

“Seems the same to me,” said Alvin. “But it ain’t my call.”

“Maybe it ain’t and maybe it is,” said Arthur Stuart.

They all looked at him like he was a mess on the floor. “How is it Alvin’s call?” asked Verily.

“That Red chief ain’t dead, is he?” said Arthur Stuart. “That Red prophet what put the curse on, right? Well, him as puts on a curse can take it off, can’t he?”

“Nobody can talk to them wild Reds no more,” said Mike Fink. “They fogged up the river and nobody can get across.
There ain’t even no trade with New Orleans no more, damn near broke my heart.”

“Maybe nobody can get across the river,” said Arthur Stuart. “But Alvin can.”

Alvin shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t think so. Besides, I don’t know if Tenskwa-Tawa’s going to see things the same way as us, Arthur. He might say, The White people of America are bringing destruction on themselves by choosing White Murderer Harrison to be their leader. But the people of Vigor Church will be saved from that destruction because they respected the curse I gave them. So he’ll say the curse is really a blessing.”

“If he says that,” said Measure, “then he ain’t as good a man as I thought.”

“He sees things a different way, that’s all,” said Alvin. “I’m just saying you can’t be sure what he’ll say.”

“Then
you
can’t be sure either,” said Armor-of-God.

“I’m thinking something, Alvin,” said Measure. “Miss Larner here told me somewhat about how she and Arthur figured out there’s a lot of people with sharp knacks in this place. Maybe drawn here cause you was born here, or cause you made the plow here. And there’s all them people you’ve been teaching up in Vigor, folks who maybe don’t got so sharp a knack but they know the things you taught them, they know the way to live. And I also have my own idea that maybe the curse forced us all to live together there, so we had to get along no matter what, we had to learn to make peace among ourselves. If the curse was lifted from the folks of Vigor Church, them as wanted to could come here and teach them as has the knacks. And teach them meantime how to live together in harmony.”

“Or folks from here could go there,” said Alvin. “Even if the curse ain’t lifted.”

Measure shook his head. “There’s like a hundred people or more in Vigor Church who’s already trying to follow the Maker way. Nobody here even knows about it, really. So if you said to the folks in Vigor, please come to Hatrack, they’d come;
but if you said to the folks in Hatrack, please come to Vigor, they’d laugh.”

“But the river’s still fogged up,” said Mike Fink, “and the curse is still on.”

“If it comes to that,” said Miss Lamer, “there might be another way to talk to Tenskwa-Tawa without crossing the river.”

“You got a pigeon knows the way to the Red Prophet’s wigwam?” asked Horace, scoffing.

“I know a weaver,” said Miss Larner, “who has a door that opens into the west, and I know of a man named Isaac who uses that door.” She looked at Alvin, and he nodded.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Measure, “but if you think you can talk to Tenskwa-Tawa, then I hope you’ll do it. I hope you will.”

“I will for you,” said Alvin. “For your sake and the sake of my family and friends in Vigor Church, I’ll ask even though I fear the answer will be worse than no.”