Keeper of Dreams (79 page)

Alvin walked up quietly behind the bear and gently rested his hand on the bear’s shoulder. “Why would I do that? This bear never pointed no gun at me.”

“I’m a dead man,” Davy whispered. The grin faded from his face. He bowed his head, then toppled forward, curled up on the ground, and waited to be killed.

But it didn’t happen. The bear came up, nosed him, snuffled him all over, rolled him back and forth a little, all the time ignoring the little whimpering sounds Davy was making. Then the bear lay down beside the man, flung one arm over him, and dozed right off to sleep.

Unbelieving, Davy lay there, terrified yet hopeful again. If he could just stay awake a little longer.

Either the bear was a light sleeper in the summertime, or Davy made his move too soon, but no sooner did his hand slide toward the knife at his waist than the bear was wide awake, slapping more or less playfully at Davy’s hand.

“Time for sleep,” said Alvin. “You’ve earned it, the bear’s earned it, and come morning you’ll find things look a lot better.”

“What’s going to happen to me?” asked Davy.

“Don’t you think that’s kind of up to the bear?”

“You’re controlling him somehow,” said Davy. “This is all your doing.”

“He’s controlling himself,” said Alvin, careful not to deny the second charge, seeing how it was true. “And he’s controlling you. Because that’s what grinning is all about—deciding who is master. Well, that bear is master here, and I reckon tomorrow we’ll find out what bears do with domesticated humans.”

Davy started to murmur a prayer.

The bear laid a heavy paw on Davy’s mouth.

“Prayers are done,” intoned Alvin. “Gone the sun. Shadows creep. Go to sleep.”

That’s how it came about that when Alvin returned to Westville, he did it with two friends along—Davy Crockett and a big old grizzly bear. Oh, folks was alarmed when that bear come into town, and ran for their guns, but the bear just grinned at them and they didn’t shoot. And when the bear gave Davy a little poke, why, he’d step forward and say a few words. “My friend here doesn’t have much command of the American language,” said Davy, “but he’d just as soon you put that gun away and didn’t go pointing it at him. Also, he’d be glad of a bowl of corn mush or a plate of corn bread, if you’ve got any to spare.”

Why, that bear plumb ate his way through Westville, setting down to banquets without raising a paw except to poke at Davy Crockett, and folks didn’t even mind it, it was such a sight to see a man serve gruel and corn bread to a bear. And that wasn’t all, either. Davy Crockett spent a good little while picking burrs out of the bear’s fur, especially in the rumpal area, and singing to the bear whenever it crooned in a high-pitched tone. Davy sang pert near every song that he ever heard, even if he only heard it once, or didn’t hear the whole thing, for there’s nothing to bring back the memory of tunes and lyrics like having an eleven-foot bear poking you and whining to get you to sing, and when he flat-out couldn’t remember, why, he made something up, and since the bear wasn’t altogether particular, the song was almost always good enough.

As for Alvin, he’d every now and then pipe up and ask Davy to mention whether it was true that Alvin was a burglar and a plow-stealing prentice, and each time Davy said no, it wasn’t true, that was just a made-up lie because Davy was mad at Alvin and wanted to get even. And whenever Davy told the truth like that, the bear rumbled its approval and
stroked Davy’s back with his big old paw, which Davy was just barely brave enough to endure without wetting himself much.

Only when they’d gone all through the town and some of the outlying houses did this parade come to the millhouse, where the horses naturally complained a little at the presence of a bear. But Alvin spoke to each of them and put them at ease, while the bear curled up and took him a nap, his belly being full of corn in various forms. Davy didn’t go far, though, for the bear kept sniffing, even in his sleep, to make sure Davy was close by.

Davy was putting the best face on things, though. He had his pride.

“A man does things for a friend, and this here bear’s my friend,” said Davy. “I’m done with trapping, as you can guess, so I’m looking for a line of work that can help my friend get ready for the winter. What I mean is, I got to earn some corn, and I hope some of you have jobs for me to do. The bear just watches, I promise, he’s no danger to your livestock.”

Well, they heard him out, of course, because one tends to listen for a while at least to a man who’s somehow got himself hooked up as a servant to a grizzly bear. But there wasn’t a chance in hell that they were going to let no bear anywhere near their pigsties, nor their chicken coops, especially not when the bear clearly showed no disposition to earn its food honestly. If it would beg, they figured, it would steal, and they’d have none of it.

Meanwhile, as the bear napped and Davy talked to the farmers, Alvin and Arthur had their reunion, with Arthur Stuart telling him what he’d figured out. “Some mechanism in the scale makes it weigh light when the wagon’s full, and heavy when it’s empty, so the farmers get short weight. But then, without changing a thing, it’ll weight light on the buyers’ empty wagons, and heavy when they’re full, so Rack gets extra weight when he’s selling the same corn.”

Alvin nodded. “You find out if this theory is actually true?”

“The only time he ain’t watching me is in the dark, and in the dark I can’t sneak down and see a thing. I’m not crazy enough to risk getting myself caught sneaking around the machinery in the dark, anyway.”

“Glad to know you got a brain.”

“Says the man who keeps getting himself put in jail.”

Alvin made a face at him, but in the meantime he was sending out his doodlebug to probe the machinery of the scale underground. Sure enough, there was a ratchet that engaged on one weighing, causing the levering to shift a little, making short weight; and on the next weighing, the ratchet would disengage and the levers would move back, giving long weight. No wonder Rack didn’t want Alvin looking over the machinery of the scale.

The solution, as Alvin saw it, was simple enough. He told Arthur Stuart to stand near the scale but not to step on it. Rack wrote down the weight of the empty wagon, and while it was being pulled off the scale, he stood there calculating the difference. The moment the wagon was clear of the scale, Alvin rounded on Arthur Stuart, speaking loud enough for all to hear.

“Fool boy! What were you doing! Didn’t you see you was standing on that scale?”

“I wasn’t!” Arthur Stuart cried.

“I don’t think he was,” said a farmer. “I worried about that, he was so close, so I looked.”

“And I say I saw him stand on it,” said Alvin. “This farmer shouldn’t be out the cost of a boy’s weight in corn, I think!”

“I’m sure the boy didn’t stand on the scale,” Rack said, looking up from his calculation.

“Well, there’s a simple enough test,” said Alvin. “Let’s get that empty wagon back onto the scale.”

Now Rack grew alarmed. “Tell you what,” he said to the farmer, “I’ll just
give
you credit for the boy’s weight.”

“Is this scale sensitive enough to weigh the boy?” asked Alvin.

“Well, I don’t know,” said Rack. “Let’s just estimate.”

“No!” cried Alvin. “This farmer doesn’t want any more than his fair credit, and it’s not right for him to receive any less. Haul the wagon back on and let’s weigh it again.”

Rack was about to protest again, when Alvin said, “Unless there’s something wrong with the scale. There wouldn’t be something wrong with the scale, now, would there?”

Rack got a sick look on his face. He couldn’t very well confess. “Nothing wrong with the scale,” he said gruffly.

“Then let’s weigh this wagon and see if my boy’s weight made any difference.”

Well, you guessed it. As soon as the wagon was back on the scale, it showed near a hundred pounds lighter than it did the first time. The other witnesses were flummoxed. “Could have sworn the boy never stepped on that scale,” said one. And another said, “I don’t know as I would have guessed that boy to weigh a hundred pounds.”

“Heavy bones,” says Alvin.

“No sir, it’s my brain that weighs heavy,” said Arthur Stuart, winning a round of laughter.

And Rack, trying to put a good face on it, pipes up, “No, it’s the food he’s been eating at my table—that’s fifteen pounds of it right there!”

In the meantime, though, the farmer’s credit was being adjusted by a hundred pounds.

And the next wagon to come on the scale was a full one, while the scale was set to read heavy. In vain did Rack try to beg off early—Alvin simply offered to keep on weighing for him, with the farmers as witnesses so he wrote down everything square. “You don’t want any of these men to have to wait an extra day to sell you their market grain, do you?” Alvin said. “Let’s weigh it all!”

And weigh it all they did, thirty wagons before the day was done, and the farmers was all remarking to each other about what a good corn year it was, the kernels heavier than usual. Arthur Stuart did hear one man start to grumble that his wagon seemed to be lighter this year than in any previous year, but Arthur immediately spoke up loud enough for all to hear. “It don’t matter if the scale is weighing light or heavy—it’s the difference between the full weight and the empty weight that matters, and as long as it’s the same scale, it’s going to be correct.” The farmers thought that over and it sounded right to them, while Rack couldn’t very well explain.

Arthur Stuart figured it all out in his head and he realized that Alvin hadn’t exactly set things to rights. On the contrary, this year Rack was getting cheated royally, recording credits for these farmers that were considerably more than the amount of corn they actually brought in. He could bear such losses for one day; and by tomorrow, Alvin and Arthur both knew, Rack meant to have the scale back in its regular pattern—light for the full wagons, heavy for the empty ones.

Still, Alvin and Arthur cheerfully bade Rack farewell, not even commenting on the eagerness he showed to be rid of them.

That night, Rack Miller’s lantern bobbed across the yard between his house and the mill. He closed the mill door behind him and headed for the trap door leading down to the scale mechanism. But to his surprise, there was something lying on top of that trap door. A bear. And nestled in to sleep with the bear wrapped around him was Davy Crockett.

“I hope you don’t mind,” said Davy, “but this here bear took it into his head to sleep right here, and I’m not inclined to argue with him.”

“Well, he can’t, so that’s that,” said the miller.

“You tell him,” said Davy. “He just don’t pay no heed to my advice.”

The miller argued and shouted, but the bear paid no mind. Rack got him a long stick and poked at the bear, but the bear just opened one eye, slapped the stick out of Rack’s hand, then took it in his mouth and crunched it up like a cracker. Rack Miller proposed to bring a gun out, but Davy drew his knife then. “You’ll have to kill me along with the bear,” he said, “cause if you harm him, I’ll carve you up like a Christmas goose.”

“I’ll be glad to oblige you,” said Rack.

“But then you’ll have to explain how I came to be dead. If you manage to kill the bear with one shot, that is. Sometimes these bears can take a half-dozen balls into their bodies and still swipe a man’s head clean off and then go fishing for the afternoon. Lots of fat, lots of muscle. And how’s your aim, anyway?”

So it was that next morning, the scale still weighed opposite to Rack’s intent, and so it went day after day until the harvest was over. Every day the bear and his servant ate their corn mush and corn bread and drank their corn likker and lay around in the shade, with onlookers gathering and lingering to see the marvel. The result was that witnesses were around all day and not far off at night. And it went on just the same when the buyers started showing up to haul away the corn.

Stories about the bear who had tamed a man brought more than just onlookers, too. More farmers than usual came to Rack Miller to sell their corn, so they could see the sight; and more buyers went out of their way to come to buy, so there was maybe half again as much business as usual.
At the end of the whole harvest season, there was Rack Miller with a ledger book showing a huge loss. He wouldn’t be paid enough by the buyers to come close to making good on what he owed the farmers. He was ruined.

He went through a few jugs of corn likker and took some long walks, but by late October he’d given up all hope. One time his despair led him to point a pistol at his head and fire, but the powder for some reason wouldn’t ignite, and when Rack tried to hang himself he couldn’t tie a knot that didn’t slip. Since he couldn’t even succeed at killing himself, he finally gave up even that project and took off in the dead of night, abandoning mill and ledger and all. Well, he didn’t mean to abandon it—he meant to burn it. But the fires he started kept blowing out, so that was yet another project he failed at. In the end, he left with the clothes on his back and two geese tucked under his arms, and they honked so much he turned them loose before he was out of town.

When it was clear Rack wasn’t just off on a holiday, the town’s citizens and some of the more prominent farmers from round about met in Rack Miller’s abandoned house and went over his ledger. What they learned there told them clear enough that Rack Miller was unlikely to return. They divided up the losses evenly among the farmers, and it turned out that nobody lost a thing. Oh, the farmers got paid less than Rack Miller’s ledger showed, but they’d get a good deal more than they had in previous years, so it was still a good year for them. And when they got to inspecting the property and found the ratchet mechanism in the scale, then the picture was crystal clear.