“When you get free of this place, you let me go with you, to learn from you, to watch you, to be part of all you do.”
“You don't even know me, and you're proposing marriage.”
Verily laughed. “I suppose it sounds like that, doesn't it.”
“Without none of the benefits, neither,” said Alvin. “I'm right comfortable taking Arthur Stuart along with me, because he knows when to keep silent, but I don't know if I can take having a fellow who wants to pick my brains tagging along with me every waking minute.”
“I'm a lawyer, so my trade is talk, but I promise you that if I didn't know when and how to keep silence, I'd never have lived to adulthood in England.”
“I can't give you no promises,” said Alvin. “So I reckon you ain't my attorney after all, since I can't make your fee.”
“There's one promise you can make me,” said Verily. “To give me an honest chance.”
Alvin studied the man's face and decided he liked the look of him, though he wished as more than once before that he had Peggy's knack of seeing inside a fellow's mind instead of just being able to check out the health of his organs.
“Yes, I reckon I can make that promise, Verily Cooper,” said Alvin. “An honest chance you'll have, and if that's fee enough for you, then you're my attorney.”
“Then the deed is done. And now I'll let you go back to sleep, excepting only for one question.”
“Ask it.”
“This plow– how vital is it to you that the plow remain in your hands, and no one else's?”
“If the court demands that I give it up, I'll buck this jail and live in hiding the rest of my days before I'll let any other hand touch the plow.”
“Let's be precise. Is it the possession of it that matters, or the very seeing and touching of it?”
“I don't get your question.”
“What if someone else could see and touch it in your presence?”
“What good would that do?”
“Webster will argue that the court has the right and duty to determine that the plow exists and that it's truly made of gold, in order to make just compensation possible, if the court should determine that you need to pay Mr. Makepeace Smith the cash value of the plow.”
Alvin hooted. “It never crossed my mind, in all this time in jail, that maybe I could buy old Makepeace off.”
“I don't think you can,” said Verily. “I think it's the plow he wants, and the victory, not the money.”
“True enough, though I reckon if the money's all he can get…”
“So tell me, as long as the plow is in your possession…”
“I guess it depends on who's doing the looking and the touching.”
“If you're there, nobody can steal it, am I right?” asked Verily.
“Reckon that's true,” said Alvin.
“So how free a hand do I have?”
“Makepeace can't be the one to touch it,” said Alvin. “Not out of any meanness on my part, but here's the thing: The plow's alive.”
Verily raised an eyebrow.
“It don't breathe and it don't eat or nothing like that,” said Alvin. “But the plow is alive under a man's hand. Depending on the man. But for Makepeace to touch the plow while he's living in the midst of a black lie– I don't know what would happen to him. I don't know if it'd be safe for him ever to touch metal again. I don't know what the hammer and anvil would do to him, if his hands touched the plow with his heart so black.”
Verily leaned his face against the bars, closed his eyes.
“Are you unwell?” asked Alvin.
“Sick with the thrill of at last staring knowledge in the face,” said Verily. “Sick with it. Faint with it.”
“Well, don't puke on the floor, I'll have to smell it all night.” Then Alvin grinned.
“I was thinking more of fainting,” said Verily. “Not Makepeace, or anyone else who's living in a… black lie. Makes me wonder about my opponent, Mr. Daniel Webster.”
“Don't know him,” said Alvin. “Might be an honest man, for all I know. A lying man might have an honest attorney, don't you think?”
“He might,” said Verily. “But such a combination would only work to destroy the lying man in the end.”
“Well hell, Verily, a lying man destroys himself in the end every time anyway.”
“Do you know that? I mean, the way you know the plow is alive?” asked Verily.
“I reckon not,” said Alvin. “But I have to believe it's true, or how could I trust anybody?”
“I think you're right, in the long run,” said Verily. “In the long run, a lie ties itself in knots and eventually people come to see that it's a lie. But the long run is very, very long. Longer than life. You could be long dead before the lie dies, Alvin.”
“You warning me of something in particular?” asked Alvin.
“I don't think so,” said Verily. “The words just sounded like something I had to say and you had to hear.”
“You said them. I heard them.” Alvin grinned. “Good night, Verily Cooper.”
“Good night, Alvin Smith.”
* * *
Peggy Larner got to the ferry bright and early in the morning, wearing her urgency like a tight corset so she could hardly breathe. White Murderer Harrison was going to be president of the United States. She had to talk to Alvin, and this river, this Hio, was standing in her way.
But the ferry was on the other side of the river, which made perfect sense, since the farmers on the other side would need to have it earliest, to bring their goods to market. So she had to wait, urgency or not. She could see the ferry already being poled along, tied to a metal ring that slid along the cable that crossed the river some forty feet overhead. Only that frail connection kept the whole thing from being washed downriver, and she imagined that when the river was in flood they didn't run the ferry at all some days, since even if the cable were strong enough, and the ring, and the rope, there'd be no trees strong enough to tie the ends to without fear of one or the other of them pulling out of the ground. Water was not to be tamed by cables, rings, or ropes, any more than dams or bridges, hulls or rafts, pipes or gutters, roofs or windows or walls or doors. If she had learned anything in her early years of looking out for Alvin, it was the untrustworthiness of water, the sneakiness of it.
There was the river to be crossed, though, and she would cross it.
As so many others had crossed. She thought of how many times her father had snuck down to the river and taken a boat across to rescue some runaway slave and bring him north to safety. She thought of how many slaves had come without help to this water, and, not knowing how to swim, had either despaired and waited for the Finders or the dogs to get them, or struck out anyway, breasting the water until their feet found no purchase on the bottom mud and they were swept away. The bodies of such were always found on some downriver bank or bar or snag, made white by the water, bloated and horrible in death; but the spirit, ah, the spirit was free, for the owner who thought he owned the woman or the man, that owner had lost his property, for his property would not be owned whatever it might cost. So the water killed, yes, but just reaching this river meant freedom of one kind or another to those who had the courage or the rage to take it.
Harrison, though, would take away all meaning from this river. If his laws came to be, the slave who crossed would still be a slave no matter what; only the slave who died would be free.
One of the ferrymen, the one poling on this side, he looked familiar to her. She had met him before, though he'd not been missing an ear then, nor had he any kind of scar on his face. Now a gash marked him with a faint white line, a little puckering and twisting at the eyebrow and the lip. It had been a wicked fight. Once no one had been able to lay a hand of harm on this rough man, and in the sure knowledge of that he had been a bully. But someone took that lifelong hex away from him. Alvin had fought this man, fought him in defense of Peggy herself, and when the fight was, done, this river rat had been undone. But not completely, and he
was alive still, wasn't he?
“Mike Fink,” she said softly when he stepped ashore.
He looked sharp at her. “Do I know you, ma'am?”
Of course he didn't. When they met before, not two years ago, she was covered in hexes that made her look many years older. “I don't expect you to remember me,” she said. “You must take many thousands of people a year across the river.”
He helped her hoist her traveling bags onto the ferry. “You'll want to sit in the middle of the raft, ma'am.” She sat down on the bench that ran the middle of the raft. He stood near her, waiting, while another couple of people sauntered over to the ferry– locals, obviously, since they had no luggage.
“A ferryman now,” she said.
He looked at her.
“When I knew you, Mike Fink, you were a full-fledged river rat.”
He smiled wanly. “You was that lady,” he said. “Hexed up six ways to Tuesday.”
She looked at him sharply. “You saw through them?”
“No ma'am. But I could feel them. You watched me fight that Hatrack River boy.”
“I did.”
“He took away my mother's hex,” said Mike.
“I know.”
“I reckon you know damn near everything.”
She looked at him again. “You seem to be abundant in knowledge yourself, sir.”
“You're Peggy the torch, of Hatrack River town. And the boy as whupped me and stole my hex, he's in jail in Hatrack now, for stealing gold off'n his master when he was a prentice smith.”
“And I suppose that pleases you?” asked Peggy.
Mike Fink shook his head. “No ma'am.”
And in truth, as she looked into his heartfire, she saw no future in which he harmed Alvin.
“Why are you still here? Not ten miles from Hatrack Mouth, where he shamed you?”
“Where he made a man of me,” said Mike.
She was startled then, for sure. “That's how you think of it?”
“My mother wanted to keep me safe. Tattooed a hex right into my butt. But what she never thought of was, what kind of man does it make a fellow, to never get hurt no matter what harm he causes to others? I've killed folks, some bad, but some not so bad. I've bit off ears and noses and broken limbs, too, and all the time I was doing it, I never cared a damn, begging your pardon, ma'am. Because nothing ever hurt me. Never touched me.”
“And since Alvin took away your hex, you've stopped hurting people?”
“Hell no!” Mike Fink said, then roared with laughter. “Why, you sure don't know a thing about the river, do you! No, every last man I ever beat in a fight had to come find me, soon as word spread that a smith boy whupped me and made me howl! I had to fight every rattlesnake and weasel, every rat and pile of pigshit on the river all over again. You see this scar on my face? You see where my hair hangs straight one side of my head? That's two fights I damn near lost. But I won the rest! Didn't I, Holly!”
The other ferryman looked over. “I wasn't listening to your brag, you pitiful scab-eating squirrel-fart,” he said mildly.
“I told this lady I won every fight, every last one of them.”
“That's right enough,” said Holly. “Course, mostly you just shot them dead when they made as if to fight you.”
“Lies like that will get you sent to hell.”
“Already got me a room picked out there,” said Holly, “and you to empty my chamberpot twice't a day.”
“Only so's you can lick it out after!” hooted Mike Fink.
Peggy felt repulsed by their crudity, of course; but she also felt the spirit of camaraderie behind their banter. “What I don't understand, Mr. Fink, is why you never sought vengeance against the boy who beat you.”
“He wasn't no boy,” said Fink. “He was a man. I reckon he was probably born a man. I was the boy. A bully boy. He knew pain, and I didn't. He was fighting for right, and I wasn't. I think about him all the time, ma'am. Him and you. The way you looked at me, like I was a crusty toad on a clean bedsheet. I hear tell he's a Maker.”
She nodded.
“So why's he letting them hold him in jail?”
She looked at him quizzically.
“Oh, come now, ma'am. A fellow as can wipe the tattoo off my butt without touching it, he can't be kept in no natural jail.”
True enough. “I imagine he believes himself to be innocent, and therefore he wants to stand trial to prove it and clear his name.”
“Well he's a damn fool, then, and I hope you'll tell him when you see him.”
“And why will I give him this remarkable message?”
Fink grinned. “Because I know something he don't know. I know that there's a feller lives in Carthage City who wants Alvin dead. He plans to get Alvin exerdited to Kenituck.”
“Extradited?”
“That means one state tells another to give them up a prisoner.”
“I know what it means,” said Peggy.
“Then what was you asking, ma'am?”
“Go on with your story.”
“Only when they take Alvin in chains, with guards awake and watching him day and night, they'll never take him to Kenituck for no trial. I know some of the boys they hired to take him. They know that on some signal, they're to walk away and leave him alone in chains.”
“Why haven't you told the authorities?”
“I'm telling you, ma'am,” said Mike Fink, grinning. “And I already told myself and Holly.”
“Chains won't hold him,” said Peggy.
“You reckon not?” said Mike. “There was some reason that boy took the tattoo off my butt. If hexes had no power over him, I reckon he never would've had to clean mine off, do you think? So if he needed to get rid of my hex, then I reckon them as understands hexes right good might be able to make chains that'd hold him long enough for somebody to come with a shotgun and blow his head off.”
But she had seen nothing of the kind in his future.
“Course it'll never happen,” said Mike Fink.
“Why not?” she asked.
“Cause I owe that boy my life. My life as a man, anyway, a man worth looking at in the mirror, though I ain't half so pretty as I was before he dealt with me. I had a grip on that boy in my arms, ma'am. I meant to kill him, and he knowed it. But he didn't kill me. More to the point, ma'am, he broke both my legs in that fight. But then he took pity on me. He had mercy. He must've knowed I wouldn't live out the night with broke legs. I had too many enemies, right there among my friends. So he laid hands on my legs and he fixed them. Fixed my legs, so the bones was stronger than before. What kind of man does that to a man as tried to kill him not a minute before?”
“A good man.”
“Well, many a good man might wish to, but only one good man had the power,” said Mike. “And if he had the power to do that, he had the power to kill me without touching me. He had the power to do whatever he damn well pleased, begging your pardon. But he had mercy on me, ma'am.”
That was true– the only surprise to Peggy was that Mike Fink understood it.
“I aim to pay the debt. As long as I'm alive, ma'am, ain't no harm coming to Alvin Smith.”
“And that's why you're here,” she said.
“Came here with Holly as soon as I found out what was getting plotted up.”
“But why here?”
Mike Fink laughed. “The portmaster at Hatrack Mouth knows me real good, and he don't trust me, I wonder why. How long you reckon it'd be afore the Hatrack County sheriff was on my back like a sweaty shirt?”
“I suppose that also explains why you haven't made yourself known to Alvin directly.”
“What's he going to think when he sees me, but that I've come to get even? No, I'm watching, I'm biding my time, I ain't showing my hand to the law nor to Alvin neither.”
“But you're telling me.”
“Because you'd know it anyway, soon enough.”
She shook her head. “I know this: There's no path in your future that has you
rescuing Alvin from thugs.”
His face grew serious. “But I got to, ma'am.”
“Why?”
“Because a good man pays his debts.”
“Alvin won't think you're in his debt, sir.”
“Don't matter to me what he thinks about it, I feel the debt so the debt's going to be paid.”
“It's not just debt, is it?”
Mike Fink laughed. “Time to push this raft away and get it over to the north shore, don't you think?” He hooted twice, high, as if he were some kind of steam whistle, and Holly hooted back and laughed. They set their poles against the floating dock and pushed away. Then, smooth as if they were dancers, he and Holly poled them across the river, so smoothly and deftly that the line that tied them to the cable never even went taut.
Peggy said nothing to him as he worked. She watched instead, watched the muscles of his arms and back rippling under the skin, watched the slow and graceful up-and-down of his legs as he danced with the river. There was beauty in it, in him. It also made her think of Alvin at the forge, Alvin at the anvil, his arms shining with sweat in the firelight, the sparks glinting from the metal as he pounded, the muscles of his forearms rippling as he bent and shaped the iron. Alvin could have done all his work without raising a hand, by the use of his knack. But there was a joy in the labor, a joy from making with his own hands. She had never experienced that– her life, her labors, all were done with her mind and whatever words she could think of to say. Her life was all about knowing and teaching. Alvin's life was all about feeling and making. He had more in common with this one-eared scar-faced river rat than he had with her. This dance of the human body in contest with the river, it was a kind of wrestling, and Alvin loved to wrestle. Crude as Fink was, he was Alvin's natural friend, surely.
They reached the other shore, bumping squarely against the floating dock, and the shoreman lashed the upstream comer of the raft to the wharf. The men with no luggage jumped ashore at once. Mike Fink laid down his pole and, sweat still dripping down his arms and from his nose and grizzled beard, he made as if to pick up her bags.
She laid a hand on his arm to stop him. “Mr. Fink,” she said. “You mean to be Alvin's friend.”
“I had in mind more along the lines of being his champion, ma'am,” he said softly.
Alvin Jorneyman ttoam-4 Page 22