Before he ever got to the smithy, though, he rounded the bend and saw the very roadhouse where he was born, just as plain as ever in the vision in the crystal tower. Whitewashed shiny and new with only the dust of this summer on it, so it didn't look quite the same, but it was as welcome a sight as any weary traveler could hope for.
Twice welcome, cause inside it, with any decent luck, the torch girl could tell him what his life was supposed to be.
Alvin knocked at the door cause that's what you do, he thought. He'd never stayed in a roadhouse before, and had no notion of a public room. So he knocked once, and then twice, and then hallooed till finally the door opened. It was a woman with flour on her hands and her checked apron, a big woman who looked annoyed beyond belief– but he knew her face. This was the woman in his crystal tower vision, the one what pulled him out of the womb with her own fingers around his neck.
“What in the world are you thinking of, boy, to knock my door like that and start hullaballooing like there was a fire! Why can't you just come on in and set like any other folk, or are you so powerful important that you got to have a servant come and open doors for you?”
“Sorry, ma'am,” said Alvin, about as respectful as could be.
“Now what business could you have with us? If you're a beggar then I got to tell you we'll have no scraps till after dinner, but you're welcome to wait till then, and if you got a conscience, why, you can chop some wood for us. Except for look at you, I can't believe you're more than fourteen years old–”
“Eleven, ma'am.”
“Well, then, you're right big for your age, but I still can't figure what business you got here. I won't serve you no liquor even if you got money, which I doubt. This is a Christian house, in fact more than mere Christian because we're true-blue Methodist and that means we don't touch a drop nor serve it neither, and even if we did we wouldn't serve children. And I'd stake ten pound of porkfat on a wager that you don't have the price of a night's lodging.”
“No ma'am,” said Alvin, “but–”
“Well then here you are, dragging me out of my kitchen with the bread half-kneaded and a baby who's bound to cry for milk any minute, and I reckon you don't plan to stand at the head of the table and explain to all my boarders why their dinner is late, on account of a boy who can't open a door his own self, no, you'll leave me to make apologies myself as best I can, which is right uncivil of you if you don't mind my saying, or even if you do.”
“Ma'am,” said Alvin, “I don't want food and I don't want a room.” He knew enough courtesy not to add that travelers had always been welcome to stay in his father's house whether they had money or not, and a hungry man didn't get afternoon scraps, he set down at Pa's own table and ate with the family. He was catching on to the idea that things were different here in civilized country.
"Well, all we deal in here is food and rooms, " said the roadhouse lady.
“I come here, ma'am, cause I was born in this house almost twelve years ago.”
Her whole demeanor changed at once. She wasn't a roadhouse mistress now, she was a midwife. “Born in this house?”
"Born on the day my oldest brother Vigor died in the Hatrack River. I thought as how you might even remember that day, and maybe you could show me the place where my brother lies buried. "
Her face changed again. “You,” she said. “You're the boy who was born to that family– the seventh son of–”
“Of a seventh son,” said Alvin.
“Well what's become of you, tell me! Oh, it was a portentous thing. My daughter stood there and looked afar off and saw that your big brother was still alive as you came out of the womb–”
“Your daughter,” said Alvin, forgetting himself so much that he interrupted her clean in the middle of a sentence. “She's a torch.”
The lady turned cold as ice. “Was,” she said. “She don't torch no more.”
But Alvin hardly noticed how the lady changed. “You mean she lost her knack for it? I never heard of a body losing their knack. But if she's here, I'd like to talk to her.”
“She ain't here no more,” said the lady. Now Alvin finally caught on that she didn't much care to talk about it. “There ain't no torch now in Hatrack River. Babies will be born here without a body touching them to see how they lie in the womb. That's the end of it. I won't say another word about such a girl as that who'd run off, just run right off.”
Something caught in the lady's voice and she turned her back to him.
“I got to finish my bread,” said the lady. “The graveyard is up the hill there.” She turned around agaid to face him, with nary a sign of the anger or grief or what-all that she felt a second before. “If my Horace was here I'd have him show you the way, but you'll see it anyhow, there's a kind of path. It's just a family graveyard, with a picket fence around it.” Her stern manner softened. “When you're done up there you come on back and I'll serve you better than scraps.” She hurried on into the kitchen. Alvin followed her.
There was a cradle by the kitchen table, with a babe asleep in it but wiggling somewhat. Something funny about the baby but Alvin couldn't say right off what it was.
“Thank you for your kindness, ma'am, but I don't ask for no handouts. I'll work to pay for anything I eat.”
“That's rightly said, and like a true man– your father was the same, and the bridge he built over the Hatrack is still there, strong as ever. But you just go now, see the graveyard, and then come back by and by.”
She bent over the huge wad of dough on the kneading table. Alvin got the notion for just a moment that she was crying, and maybe he did and maybe he didn't see team drop from her eyes straight down into the dough. It was plain she wanted to be alone.
He looked again at the baby and realized what was different. “That's a pickaninny baby, isn't it?” he said.
She stopped kneading, but left her hands buried to the wrist in dough. “It's a baby,” she said, “and it's my baby. I adopted him and he's mine, and if you call him a pickaninny I'll knead your face like dough.”
“Sorry, ma'am, I meant no harm. He just had a sort of cast to his face that gave me that idea, I reckon–”
“Oh, he's half-Black all right. But it's the White half of him I'm raising up, just as if he was my own son. We named him Arthur Stuart.”
Alvin got the joke of that right off. “Ain't nobody can call the King a pickaninny, I reckon.”
She smiled. “I reckon not. Now get, boy. You owe a debt to your dead brother, and you best pay it now.”
The graveyard was easy to find, and Alvin was gratified to see that his brother Vigor had a stone, and his grave was as well-tended as any other. Only a few graves here. Two stones with the same name– “Baby Missy” –and dates that told of children dying young. Another stone that said “Oldpappy” and then his real name, and dates that told of a long life. And Vigor.
He knelt by his brother's grave and tried to picture what he might have been like. The best he could do was imagine his brother Measure, who was his favorite brother, the one who was captured by Reds along with Alvin. Vigor must have been like Measure. Or maybe Measure was like Vigor. Both willing to die if need be, for their family's sake. Vigor's death saved my life before I was born, thought Alvin, and yet he hung on to the last breath so that when I was born I was still the seventh son of a seventh son, with all my brothers ahead of me alive. The same kind of sacrifice and courage and strength that it took when Measure, who hadn't killed a single Red man, who near died just trying to stop the Tippy-Canoe massacre from happening, took on himself the same curse as his father and his brothers, to have blood on his hands if he failed to tell any stranger the true story of the killing of all them innocent Reds. So when he knelt there at Vigor's grave, it was like he was kneeling at Measure's grave, even though he knew Measure wasn't dead.
Wasn't wholly dead, anyway. But like the rest of the folk of Vigor Church, he'd never leave that place again. He'd live out all his days where he wouldn't have to meet too ma
ny strangers, so that for days on end he could forget the slaughter on that day last summer. The whole family, staying together there, with all the folks in the country roundabout, living out their days of life until them as had the curse all died, sharing each other's shame and each other's loneliness like they was all kin, every one of them.
All them together, except for me. I didn't take no curse on me. I left them all behind.
Kneeling there, Alvin felt like an orphan. He might as well be. Sent off to be a prentice here, knowing that whatever he did, whatever he made, his kin could never come on out to see. He could go home to that bleak sad town from time to time, but that was more like a graveyard than this grassy living place, because even with dead folks buried here, there was hope and life in the town nearby, people looking forward instead of back.
Alvin had to look forward, too. Had to find his way to what he was bom to be. You died for me, Vigor, my brother that I never met. I just haven't figured out yet why it was so important for me to be alive. When I find out, I hope to make you proud of me. I hope you'll think that I was worth dying for.
When his thoughts was all spent and gone, when his heart had filled up and then emptied out again, Alvin did something he never thought to do. He looked under the ground.
Not by digging, mind you. Alvin's knack was such that he could get the feel of underground without using his eyes. Like the way he looked into stone. Now it might seem to some folk like a kind of grave-robbing, for Al to peek inside the earth where his brother's body lay. But to Al it was the only way he'd ever see the man who died to save him.
So he closed his eyes and gazed under the soil and found the bones inside the rotted wooden box. The size of him– Vigor was a big boy, which was about what it would take to roll and yaw a full-sized tree in a river's current. But the soul of him, that wasn't there, and even though he knowed it wouldn't be Al was somewhat disappointed.
His hidden gaze wandered to the small bodies barely clinging to their own dust, and then to the gnarled old corpse of Oldpappy, whoever that was, fresh in the earth, only a year or so buried.
But not so fresh as the other body. The unmarked body. One day dead at most, she was, all her flesh still on her and the worms hardly working at her yet.
He cried out in the surprise of it, and the grief at the next thought that came to mind. Could it be the torch girl buried there? Her mother said that she run off, but when folks run off it ain't unusual for them to come back dead. Why else was the mother grieving so? The innkeeper's own daughter, buried without a marker– oh, that spoke of terrible bad things. Did she run off and get herself shamed so bad her own folks wouldn't mark her burying place? Why else leave her there without a stone?
“What's wrong with you, boy?”
Alvin stood, turned, faced the man. A stout fellow who was right comfortable to look upon; but his face wasn't too easy right now.
“What are you doing here in this graveyard, boy?”
“Sir,” said Alvin, “my brother's buried here.”
The man thought a moment, his face easing. “You're one of that family. But I recall all their boys was as old as you even back then–”
“I'm the one what was born here that night.”
At that news the man just opened up his arms and folded Alvin up inside. “They named you Alvin, didn't they,” said the man, “just like your father. We call him Alvin Bridger around here, he's something of legend. Let me see you, see what you've become. Seventh son of a seventh son, come home to see your birthplace and your brother's grave. Of course you'll stay in my roadhouse. I'm Horace Guester, as you might guess, I'm pleased to meet you, but ain't you somewhat big for– what, ten, eleven years old?”
“Almost twelve. Folks say I'm tall.”
“I hope you're proud of the marker we made for your brother. He was admired here, even though we all met him in death and never in life.”
“I'm suited,” said Alvin. “It's a good stone.” And then, because he couldn't help himself, though it wasn't a particularly wise thing to do, he up and asked the question most burning in him. “But I wonder, sir, why one girl got herself buried here yesterday, and no stone nor marker tells her name.”
Horace Guester's face turned ashen. “Of course you'd see,” he whispered. “Doodlebug or something. Seventh son. God help us all.”
“Did she do something shameful, sir, not to have no marker?” asked Alvin.
“Not shame,” said Horace. “As God is my witness, boy, this girl was noble in life and died a virtuous death. She stays unmarked so this house can be a shelter to others like her. But oh, lad, say you'll never tell what you found buried here. You'd cause pain to dozens and hundreds of lost souls along the road from slavery to freedom. Can you believe me that much, trust me and be my friend in this? It'd be too much grief, to lose my daughter and have this secret out, all in the same day. Since I can't keep the secret from you, you have to keep it with me, Alvin, lad. Say you will.”
“I'll keep a secret if it's honorable, sir,” said Alvin, “but what honorable secret leads a man to bury his own daughter without a stone?”
Horace's eyes went wide, and then he laughed like he was calling loony birds. When he got control of hisself, he clapped Alvin on the shoulder. "That ain't my daughter in the ground there, boy, what made you think it was? It's a Black girl, a runaway slave, who died last night on her way north. "
Now Alvin realized for the first time that the body was way too small to be no sixteen-year-old, anyhow. It was a child-size body. “That baby in your kitchen, it's her brother?”
“Her son,” said Horace.
“But she's so small,” said Alvin.
“That didn't stop her White owner from getting her with child, boy. I don't know how you stand on the question of slavery, or if you even thought about it, but I beg you do some thinking now. Think about how slavery lets a White man steal a girl's virtue and still go to church on Sunday while she groans in shame and bears his bastard child.”
“You're a Mancipationist, ain't you?” said Alvin.
“Reckon I am,” said the innkeeper, “but I reckon all good Christian folk are Mancipationists in their hearts.”
“I reckon so,” said Alvin.
“I hope you are, cause if word gets out that I was helping a slavegirl run off to Canada, there'll be finders and cotchers from Appalachee and the Crown Colonies a-spying on me so I can't help no others get away.”
Alvin looked back at the grave and thought about the babe in the kitchen. “You going to tell that baby where his mama's grave is?”
“When he's old enough to know, and not to tell it,” said the man.
“Then I'll keep your secret, if you keep mine.”
The man raised his eyebrows and studied Alvin. “What secret you got, Alvin, a boy as young as you?”
“I don't have no partickler wish to have it known I'm a seventh son. I'm here to prentice with Makepeace Smith, which I reckon is the man I hear a-hammering at the forge down yonder,”
“And you don't want folks knowing you can see a body lying in an unmarked grave.”
“You caught my drift right enough,” said Alvin. “I won't tell your secret, and you won't tell mine.”
“You have my word on it,” said the man. Then he held out his hand.
Took that hand and shook it, gladly. Most grownup folk wouldn't think of making a bargain like that with a mere child like him. But this man even offered his hand, like they were equals. “You'll see I know how to keep my word, sir,” said Alvin.
“And anyone around here can tell you Horace Guester keeps a promise, too.” Then Horace told him the story that they were letting out about the baby, how it was the Berrys' youngest, and they gave it up for Old Peg Guester to raise, cause they didn't need another child and she'd always hankered to have her a son. “And that part is true enough,” said Horace Guester. “All the more, with Peggy running off.”
“Your daughter,” said Alvin.
Suddenly Horace Guester
's eyes filled up with tears and he shuddered with a sob like Alvin never heard from a growed man in his life. “Just ran off this morning,” said Horace Guester.
“Maybe she's just a-calling on somebody in town or something,” said Alvin.
Horace shook his head. “I beg your pardon, crying like that, I just beg your pardon, I'm awful tired, truth to tell, up all night last night, and then this morning, her gone like that. She left us a note. She's gone all right.”
“Don't you know the man she run off with?” asked Alvin. “Maybe they'll get married, that happened once to a Swede girl out in the Noisy River country–”
Horace turned a bit red with anger. “I reckon you're just a boy so you don't know better than to say such a thing. So I'll tell you now, she didn't run off with no man. She's a woman of pure virtue, and no one ever said otherwise. No, she run off alone, boy.”
Alvin thought he'd seen all kinds of strange things in his life– a tornado turned into a crystal tower, a bolt of cloth with all the souls of men and women woven in it, murders and tortures, tales and miracles, Alvin knew more of life than most boys at eleven years of age. But this was the strangest thing of all, to think of a girl of sixteen just up and leaving her father's house, without no husband or nothing. In all his life he never saw a woman go nowhere by herself beyond her own dooryard.
“Is she– is she safe?”
Horace laughed bitterly. “Safe? Of course she's safe. She's a torch, Alvin, the best torch I ever heard of. She can see folks miles off, she knows their hearts, ain't a man born can come near her with evil on his mind without she knows exactly what he's planning and just how to get away. No, I ain't worried about her. She can take care of herself better than any man. I just–”
“Miss her,” said Alvin.
“I guess it don't take no torch to guess that, am I right, lad? I miss her. And it hurt my feelings somewhat that she up and left with no warning. I could've given her God bless to send her on her way. Her mama could've worked up some good hex, not that Little Peggy'd need it, or anyhow just pack her a cold dinner for on the road. But none of that, no fare-thee-well nor God-be-with-you. It was like as if she was running from some awful boogly monster and had no time to take but one spare dress in a cloth bag and rush on out the door.”
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