Alvin looked a little angry. “So you ain’t even going to let me write in your book?”
“Not everybody does, you know.”
“Pa did. And Mama.”
“And Cally, too.”
“I bet that looks good,” said Alvin. “He writes like a, like a—”
“Like a seven-year-old.” It was a rebuke, but Alvin had no intention of squirming.
“Why not me, then? Why Cally and not me?”
“Because I only let people write the most important thing they ever did or ever saw with their own eyes. What would you write?”
“I don’t know. Maybe about the millstone.”
Taleswapper made a face.
“Then maybe my vision. That’s important, you said so yourself.”
“And that got written up somewhere else, Alvin.”
“I want to write in the book,” he said. “I want my sentence in there along with Maker Ben’s.”
“Not yet,” said Taleswapper.
“When!”
“When you’ve whipped that old Unmaker, lad. That’s when I’ll let you write in this book.”
“What if I don’t ever whip him?”
“Then this book won’t amount to much, anyway.”
Tears sprang to Alvin’s eyes. “What if I die?”
Taleswapper felt a thrill of fear. “How’s the leg?”
The boy shrugged. He blinked back the tears. They were gone.
“That’s no answer, lad.”
“It won’t stop hurting.”
“It’ll be that way till the bone knits.”
Alvin Junior smiled wanly. “Bone’s all knit.”
“Then why don’t you walk?”
“It pains me, Taleswapper. It never goes away. It’s got a bad place on the bone, and I ain’t figured out yet how to make it right.”
“You’ll find a way.”
“I ain’t found it yet.”
“An old trapper once said to me, ‘It don’t matter if you start at the bung or the breastbone, any old way you get the skin off a panther is a good way.’”
“Is that a proverb?”
“It’s close. You’ll find a way, even if it isn’t what you expect.”
“Nothing’s what I expect,” said Alvin. “Nothing turns out like anything I figured.”
“You’re ten years old, lad. Weary of the world already?”
Alvin kept rubbing folds of the blanket between his thumb and fingers. “Taleswapper, I’m dying.”
Taleswapper studied his face, trying to see death there. It wasn’t. “I don’t think so.”
“The bad place on my leg. It’s growing. Slow, maybe, but it’s growing. It’s invisible, and it’s eating away at the hard places of the bone, and after a while it’ll go faster and faster and—”
“And Unmake you.”
Alvin started to cry for real this time, and his hands were shaking. “I’m scared to die, Taleswapper, but it got inside me and I can’t get it out.”
Taleswapper laid a hand on his, to still the trembling. “You’ll find a way. You’ve got too much work to do in this world, to die now.”
Alvin rolled his eyes. “That’s about as dumb a thing as I’ve heard this year. Just because somebody’s got things to do don’t mean he won’t die.”
“But it does mean he won’t die willingly.”
“I ain’t willing.”
“That’s why you’ll find a way to live.”
Alvin was silent for a few seconds. “I’ve been thinking. About if I do live, what I’ll do. Like what I done to make my leg get mostly better. I can do that for other folks, I bet. I can lay hands on them and feel the way it is inside, and fix it up. Wouldn’t that be good?”
“They’d love you for it, all the folks you healed.”
“I reckon the first time was the hardest, and I wasn’t partickler strong when I done it. I bet I can do it faster on other people.”
“Maybe so. But even if you heal a hundred sick people every day, and move on to the next place and heal a hundred more, there’ll be ten thousand people die behind you, and ten thousand more ahead of you, and by the time you die, even the ones you healed will almost all be dead.”
Alvin turned his face away. “If I know how to fix them, then I got to fix them, Taleswapper.”
“Those you can, you must,” said Taleswapper. “But not as your life’s work. Bricks in the wall, Alvin, that’s all they’ll ever be. You can never catch up by repairing the crumbling bricks. Heal those who chance to fall under your hand, but your life’s work is deeper than that.”
“I know how to heal people. But I don’t know how to beat down the Un—the Unmaker. I don’t even know what it is.”
“As long as you’re the only one that can see him, though, you’re also the only one who has a hope of beating him.”
“Maybe.”
Another long silence. Taleswapper knew it was time to go.
“Wait.”
“I’ve got to leave now.”
Alvin caught at his sleeve. “Not yet.”
“Pretty soon.”
“At least—at least let me read what the others wrote.”
Taleswapper reached into his bag and pulled out the book pouch. “I can’t promise I’ll explain what they mean,” he said, sliding the book out of its waterproof cover.
Alvin quickly found the last, newest writings.
In his mother’s hand: “Vigor he push a log and he don die til the boy is bornd.”
In David’s hand: “A mil ston splits in two then it suks bak not a crak.”
In Cally’s hand: “A sevent sunn.”
Alvin looked up. “He ain’t talking about me, you know.”
“I know,” said Taleswapper.
Alvin looked back at the book. In his father’s hand: “He dont kil a boy cus a stranjer com in time.”
“What’s Pa talking about?” asked Alvin.
Taleswapper took the book from his hands and closed it. “Find a way to heal your leg,” he said. “There’s a lot more souls than you who need it to be strong. It’s not for yourself, remember?”
He bent over and kissed the boy on the forehead. Alvin reached up and held him with both arms, hanging on him so that he couldn’t stand up without lifting the boy clear out of bed. After a while, Taleswapper had to reach up and pull the boy’s arms away. His cheek was wet with Alvin’s tears. He didn’t wipe them away. He let the breeze dry them as he trudged along the cold dry path, with fields of half-melted snow stretching left and right.
He paused a moment on the second covered bridge. Just long enough to wonder if he’d ever come back here, or see them again. Or get Alvin Junior’s sentence for his book. If he were a prophet, he’d know. But he hadn’t the faintest idea.
He walked on, setting his feet toward morning.
13
Surgery
THE VISITOR SAT COMFORTABLY upon the altar, leaning casually on his left arm, so that his body had a jaunty tilt. Reverend Thrower had seen just such an informal pose taken by a dandy from Camelot, a rakehell who clearly despised everything that the Puritan churches of England and Scotland stood for. It made Thrower more than a little uncomfortable to see the Visitor in such an irreverent pose.
“Why?” asked the Visitor. “Just because the only way you can maintain control over your bodily passions is to sit straight in your chair, knees together, hands delicately arranged in your lap, fingers tightly intertwined, does not mean that I am required to do the same.”
Thrower was embarrassed. “It isn’t fair to chastise me for my thoughts.”
“It is, when your thoughts chastise me for my actions. Beware of hubris, my friend. Do not fancy yourself so righteous that you can judge the acts of angels.”
It was the first time the Visitor had ever called himself an angel.
“I did not call myself anything,” said the Visitor. “You must learn to control your thoughts, Thrower. You leap to conclusions far too easily.”
“Wh
y have you come to me?”
“It’s a matter of the maker of this altar,” said the Visitor. He patted one of the crosses Alvin Junior had burnt into the wood.
“I’ve done my best, but the boy is unteachable. He doubts everything, and contests each point of theology as if it were required to meet the same tests of logic and consistency that prevail in the world of science.”
“In other words, he expects your doctrines to make sense.”
“He is unwilling to accept the idea that some things remain mysteries, comprehensible only to the mind of God. Ambiguity makes him saucy, and paradox causes open rebellion.”
“An obnoxious child.”
“The worst I have ever seen,” said Thrower.
The Visitor’s eyes flashed. Thrower felt a stab in his heart.
“I’ve tried,” said Thrower. “I’ve tried to turn him to serve the Lord. But the influence of his father—”
“It is a weak man who blames his failures on the strength of others,” said the Visitor.
“I haven’t failed yet!” said Thrower. “You told me I had until the boy was fourteen—”
“No. I told you I had until the boy was fourteen. You only have him as long as he lives here.”
“I’ve heard nothing about the Millers moving. They just got their millstone in place, they’re going to start grinding in the spring, they wouldn’t leave without—”
The Visitor stood up from the altar. “Let me put a case to you, Reverend Thrower. Purely hypothetical. Let us suppose you were in the same room with the worst enemy of all that I stand for. Let us suppose that he were ill, and lay helpless in his bed. If he recovered, he would be removed from your reach, and would thus go on to destroy all that you and I love in this world. But if he died, our great cause would be safe. Now suppose that someone put a knife into your hand, and begged you to perform a delicate surgery upon the boy. And suppose that if you were to slip, just the tiniest bit, your knife could cut a great artery. And suppose that if you simply delayed, his lifeblood would flow out so quickly that in moments he would die. In that case, Reverend Thrower, what would be your duty?”
Thrower was aghast. All his life he had prepared to teach, persuade, exhort, expound. Never to perform a bloody-handed act like the one the Visitor suggested. “I’m not suited for such things,” he said.
“Are you suited for the kingdom of God?” asked the Visitor.
“But the Lord said Thou shalt not kill.”
“Oh? Is that what he said to Joshua, when he sent him into the promised land? Is that what he said to Saul, when he sent him against the Amalekites?”
Thrower thought of those dark passages in the Old Testament, and trembled with fear at the thought of taking part in such things himself.
But the Visitor did not relent. “The high priest Samuel commanded King Saul to kill all the Amalekites, every man and woman, every child. But Saul hadn’t the stomach for it. He saved the king of the Amalekites and brought him back alive. For that crime of disobedience, what did the Lord do?”
“Chose David to be king in his place,” murmured Thrower.
The Visitor stood close to Thrower, his eyes wounding him with their fire. “And then Samuel, the high priest, the gentle servant of God, what did he do?”
“He called for Agag the king of the Amalekites to be brought before him.”
The Visitor would not relent. “And what did Samuel do?”
“Killed him,” whispered Thrower.
“What does the scripture say that he did!” roared the Visitor. The walls of the meetinghouse shook, the glass of the windows rattled.
Thrower wept in fear, but he spoke the words that the Visitor demanded: “Samuel hacked Agag in pieces—in the presence of the Lord.”
Now the only sound in the church was Thrower’s own ragged breath as he tried to control his hysterical weeping. The Visitor smiled at him, his eyes filled with love and forgiveness. Then he was gone.
Thrower sank to his knees before the altar and prayed. O Father, I would die for Thee, but do not ask me to kill. Take away this cup from my lips, I am too weak, I am unworthy, do not lay this burden upon my shoulders.
His tears fell on the altar. He heard a sizzling sound and jumped back from the altar, startled. His tears skittered along the surface of the altar like water on a hot skillet, until finally they were consumed.
The Lord has rejected me, he thought. I pledged to serve Him however He required, and now, when He asks something difficult, when He commands me to be as strong as the great prophets of old, I discover myself to be a broken vessel in the hands of the Lord. I cannot contain the destiny He wanted to pour into me.
The door of the church opened, letting in a wave of freezing air that rushed along the floor and sent a chill through the minister’s flesh. He looked up, fearing that it was an angel sent to punish him.
It was no angel, though. Merely Armor-of-God Weaver.
“I didn’t mean to interrupt you in prayer,” said Armor.
“Come in,” said Thrower. “Close the door. What can I do for you?”
“Not for me,” said Armor.
“Come here. Sit down. Tell me.”
Thrower hoped that perhaps it was a sign from God that Armor had come just now. A member of the congregation, coming to him for help, right after he prayed—surely the Lord was letting him know that he was accepted after all.
“It’s my wife’s brother,” said Armor. “The boy, Alvin Junior.”
Thrower felt a thrill of dread run through him, freezing him to the bone. “I know him. What about him?”
“You know he got his leg mashed.”
“I heard of it.”
“You didn’t happen to go visit and see him afore it healed up?”
“I’ve been given to believe that I’m not welcome in that house.”
“Well, let me tell you, it was bad. A whole patch of skin tore off. Bones broke. But two days later, it was healed right up. Couldn’t even see no scar. Three days later he was walking.”
“It must not have been as bad as you thought.”
“I’m telling you, that leg was broke and the wound was bad. The whole family figured the boy was bound to die. They asked me about buying nails for a coffin. And they looked so bad from grieving that I wasn’t sure but what we’d bury the boy’s ma and pa, too.”
“Then it can’t be as fully healed as you say.”
“Well, it ain’t fully healed, and that’s why I come to you. I know you don’t believe in such things, but I tell you they witched the boy’s leg to heal somehow. Elly says the boy did the witching himself. He was even walking on the leg for a few days, no splint even. But the pain never let up, and now he says there’s a sick place on his bone. He’s got a fever, too.”
“There’s a perfectly natural explanation for everything,” said Thrower.
“Well, be that as you like, the way I see it the boy invited the devil with his witchery, and now the devil’s eating him alive inside. And seeing how you’re an ordained minister of God, I thought maybe you could cast out that devil in the name of the Lord Jesus.”
Superstitions and sorceries were nonsense, of course, but when Armor brought up the possibility of a devil being in the boy, it made sense, it fit with what he knew from the Visitor. Maybe the Lord wanted him to exorcise the child, to purge the evil from him, not to kill the boy at all. It was a chance for him to redeem himself from his failure of will a few minutes before.
“I’ll go,” he said. He reached for his heavy cloak and whipped it around his shoulders.
“I better warn you, nobody up at their house asked me to bring you.”
“I’m prepared to deal with the anger of the unfaithful,” said Thrower. “It’s the victim of deviltry that concerns me, not his foolish and superstitious family.”
Alvin lay on his bed, burning with the heat of his fever. Now, in the daylight, they kept his shutters closed, so the light wouldn’t hurt his eyes. At night, though, he made them open thing
s up, let some of the cold air in. He would breathe it in relief. During the few days when he could walk, he had seen the snow covering the meadow. Now he tried to imagine himself lying under that blanket of snow. Relief from the fire burning through his body.
He just couldn’t see small enough inside himself. What he did with the bone, with the strands of muscle and layers of skin, it was harder than ever it was to find the cracks in the quarry stone. But he could feel his way through the labyrinth of his body, find the large wounds, help them to close. Most of what went on, though, was too small and fast for him to comprehend. He could see the result, but he couldn’t see the pieces, couldn’t make out how it happened.
That’s how it was with the bad place in his bone. Just a patch of it that was weakening, rotting away. He could feel the difference between the bad place and the good healthy bone, he could find the borders of the sickness. But he couldn’t actually see what was happening. He couldn’t undo it. He was going to die.
He wasn’t alone in the room, he knew. Someone always sat at his bedside. He would open his eyes and see Mama, or Papa, or one of the girls. Sometimes even one of the brothers, even though it meant he had left his wife and his chores. It was a comfort to Alvin, but it was also a burden. He kept thinking he ought to hurry up and die so they could all get back to their regular lives.
This afternoon it was Measure sitting there. Alvin said howdy to him when he first came, but there wasn’t much to talk about. Howdy do? I’m dying, thanks, and you? Kind of hard to keep chatting. Measure talked about how he and the twins had tried to cut a grindstone. They chose a softer stone than what Alvin worked with, and still they had a devil of a time cutting. “We finally gave right up,” said Measure. “It’s just going to have to wait till you can go up the mountain and get us a stone yourself.”
Alvin didn’t answer that, and they neither one said a word since then. Alvin just lay there, sweating, feeling the rot in his bone as it slowly, steadily grew. Measure sat there, lightly holding his hand.
Measure started to whistle.
The sound of it startled Alvin. He’d been so caught up inside himself that the music seemed to come from a great distance, and he had to travel some distance to discover where it was coming from.
Seventh Son: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume I Page 21