“When do we start, then?”
It took Alvin by surprise, having a grown man ask him when they should start. “Soon as it's dark, I reckon. Soon as those two Finders are asleep.”
“You can really do that?”
“I can if I keep watching them. I mean sort of watching. Keeping track of where they are. So I don't go putting the wrong people to sleep.”
“Well, are you watching them now?”
“I know where they are.”
“Keep watching, then.” Horace looked a little scared, almost as bad as he did near seven years ago, when Alvin told him he knew about the girl buried there. Scared because he knew Alvin could do something strange, something beyond any hexings or knacks in Horace's ken.
Don't you, know me, Horace? Don't you know that I'm still Alvin, the boy you liked and trusted and helped so many times? Finding out that I'm stronger than you thought, in ways you didn't think of, that don't mean I'm a whit more dangerous to you. No reason to be a-scared.
As if Horace could hear his words, the fear eased away from his face. “I just mean– Old Peg and I are counting on you. Thank God you ended up in this place, right at this time when we needed you so bad. The good Lord's looking out for us.” Horace smiled, then turned and left the smithy.
What Horace said, it left Alvin feeling good, feeling sure of himself. But then, that was Horace's knack, wasn't it– to give folks the view of theirselves they most needed to see.
Alvin turned his thoughts at once to the Finders, and sent out his bug to stay with them, to keep track of the way their bodies moved like small black storms through the greensong around them, with Arthur Stuart's small song bright and clear between them. Black and White don't have nothing to do with bright and dark at-heart, I reckon, thought Alvin. His hands stayed busy doing work at the forge, but for the life of him he couldn't pay real attention to it. He'd never watched somebody so far off before– except for that time he got helped by powers he didn't understand, inside Eight-Face Mound.
And the worst thing of all would be if he lost them, if they got away with Arthur Stuart, all because Alvin didn't pay attention close enough and lost that boy among all the beat-down souls of slaves in Appalachee and on beyond, in the deep South where all White men were servants to the other Arthur Stuart, King of England, and so all Blacks were slaves of slaves. Ain't going to lose Arthur in a place so bad. Going to hold on tight to him, like as if he got a thread to connect him to me.
Almost as soon as he thought of it, almost as soon as he imagined a thin invisible thread connecting him and that mixup boy, why, there it was. There was a thread in the air, a thread about as thin as what he imagined once tying to understand what an atom might be. A thread that only had size in one direction– the direction that led toward Arthur Stuart, connecting them heart to heart. Stay with him, Alvin told the thread, like as if it really was alive. And in answer it seemed to grow brighter, thicker, till Alvin was sure anybody who come along could see it.
But when he looked with his eyes, he couldn't see the thread at all; it only appeared to him again when he looked without eyes. It plain astonished him, that such a thing could come to be, created– not out of nothing– but created without pattern except the pattern found in Alvin's own mind. This is a Making. My first, thin, invisible Making– but it's real, and it's going to lead me to Arthur Stuart tonight, so I can set him free.
In her little house, Peggy watched Alvin and Arthur Stuart both, looking back and forth from one to the other, trying to find some pathway that led for Arthur's freedom without costing Alvin's death or capture. No matter how closely and carefully she looked, there was no such path. The Finders were too skilled with their terrible knack; on some paths, Alvin and Horace might carry Arthur off, but he'd only be found again and recaptured– at the cost of Alvin's blood or Alvin's freedom.
So she watched despairing as Alvin spun his almost nonexistent thread. Only then, for the first time, did she see some glimmer of a possibility of freedom in Arthur Stuart's heartfire. It came, not from the fact that the thread would lead Alvin to the boy– on many paths before he spun the thread, she had seen Alvin finding the Finders and putting them to sleep. No, the difference now was that Alvin could make the thread at all. The possibility of it had been so small that there had been no path that showed it. Or perhaps– something she hadn't thought of before– the very act of Making was such a violation of the natural order that her own knack couldn't see paths that relied on it, not until it was actually accomplished.
Yet even at the moment of Alvin's birth, hadn't she seen his glorious future? Hadn't she seen him building a city made of the purest glass or ice? Hadn't she seen his city filled with people who spoke with the tongues of angels and saw with the eyes of God? The fact that Alvin would Make, that was always probable, provided he stayed alive. But any one particular act of Making, that was never likely, never natural enough for a torch– even an extraordinary torch like Peggy– to see it.
She saw Alvin put the Finders to sleep almost as soon as it was dark and they could find a stopping place on the far side of the Hio.
She saw Alvin and Horace meet in the smithy, preparing to set out through the woods to the Hio, avoiding the road so they wouldn't meet the sheriff and Dr. Physicker coming back from Hatrack Mouth. But she paid little heed to them. Now that there was new hope, she gave her full attention to Arthur's future, studying how and where his slender new paths of freedom were rooted to the present action.
She could not find the clear moment of choice and change. To her that fact was proof that all depended on Alvin becoming a Maker, truly, on this night.
“O God,” she whispered, “if thou didst cause this boy to be born with such a gift, I pray thee teach him Making now, tonight.”
Alvin stood beside Horace, masked by shadows at the riverbank, waiting for a well-lighted riverboat to pass. Out on the boat, musicians were playing, and people danced a fancy quadrille on the decks. It made Alvin angry, to see them playing like children when a real child was being carried off to slavery tonight. Still, he knew they meant no harm, and knew it wasn't fair to blame others for being happy while somebody they don't even know might be grieving. By that measure there'd be no happiness in all the world, Alvin figured. Life being how it is, Alvin thought, there's not a moment in the day when there ain't at least a few hundred people grieving about something.
The ship had no sooner passed around a bend than they heard a crashing in the woods behind them. Or rather, Alvin heard the sound, and it only seemed like crashing to him because of his sense of the right order of things in the greenwood song. It took more than a few minutes before Horace heard it at all. Whoever it was sneaking up on them, he was right stealthy for a White man.
“Now I'm wishing for a gun,” whispered Horace.
Alvin shook his head. “Wait and watch,” he whispered– so faint his lips barely moved.
They waited. After a while, they saw a man step out of the woods and slither down the bank to the muddy edge of the water, where the boat rocked on the water. Seeing nobody there, he looked around, then sighed and stepped out into the boat, turned around and sat down in the stern, glumly resting his chin on his hands.
Suddenly Horace started chuckling. “Play fetch with my bones when I'm dead, but I do think that's old Po Doggly.”
At once the man in the boat leaned back and Alvin could finally see him clear in the moonlight. It was Dr. Physicker's driver, sure enough. But this didn't seem to bother Horace none. He was already slipping down the riverbank, to splash out to the boat, climb aboard, and give Po Doggly such a violent hug the boat took on water. In only a second they both noticed that the boat was rocking out of kilter, and without a word they both shifted exactly right to balance the load, and then again without a word Po got the oars into the locks while Horace took a flat tin baling cup out from under his bench and commenced to dipping it and pouring it out overboard, again and again.
Alvin marveled for a moment at how sm
ooth the two of them fit together. He didn't even have to ask– he knew from how they acted that they'd done this sort of thing a good many times before. Each knew what the other was going to do, so they didn't even have to think about it anymore. One man did his part, and the other his, and neither even had to check to make sure both parts were getting done.
Like the bits and pieces that made up everything in the world; like the dance of atoms Alvin had imagined in his mind. He'd never realized it before, but people could be like those atoms, too. Most of the time people were all disorganized, nobody knowing who anybody else was, nobody holding still long enough to trust or be trusted, just like Alvin imagined atoms might have been before God taught them who they were and gave them work to do. But here were two men, men that nobody'd ever figure even knew each other hardly, except as how everybody in a town like Hatrack River knows everybody else. Po Doggly, a one-time farmer reduced to driving for Dr. Physicker, and Horace Guester, the first settler in this place, and still prospering. Who'd've thought they could fit together so smooth? But it was because each one knew who the other was, kmew it pure and true, knew it as sure as an atom might know the name God gave him; each one in his place, doing his work.
All these thoughts rushed through Alvin's mind so fast he hardly noticed himself thinking them, yet in later years he'd remember right enough that this was when he first understood: These two men, together, made something between them that was just as real and solid as the dirt under his feet, as the tree he was leaning on. Most folks couldn't see it, they'd look at the two of them and see nothing but two men who happened to be sitting in a boat together. But then, maybe to other atoms it wouldn't seem like the atoms making up a bit of a iron was anything more than two atoms as happened to be next to each other. Maybe you have to be far off, like God, or anyhow bigger by far in order to see what it is that two atoms make when they fit together in a certain way. But just because another atom don't see the connection don't mean it isn't real, or that the iron isn't as solid as iron can be.
And if I can teach these atoms how to make a string out of nothing, or maybe how to make iron out of gold, or even– let it be so– change Arthur's secret invisible signature all through his body so the Finders wouldn't know him no more– then why couldn't a Maker also do with people as he does with atoms, and teach them a new order, and once he finds enough that he can trust, build them together into something new, something strong, something as real as iron.
“You coming, Al, or what?”
Like I said, Alvin hardly knew what thought it was he had. But he didn't forget it, no, even sliding down the bank into the mud he knew that he'd never forget what he thought of just then, even though it'd take him years and miles and tears and blood before he really understood it all the way.
“Good to see you, Po,” said Alvin. “Only I kind of thought we was doing something a mite secret.”
Po rowed the boat closer in, slacking the rope and letting Alvin spider his way on board without getting his feet wet. Alvin didn't mind that. He had an aversion to water, which was natural enough seeing how often the Unmaker tried to use water to kill him. But the water seemed to be just water tonight; the Unmaker was invisible or far away. Maybe it was the slender string that still hooked Alvin to Arthur– maybe that was such a powerful Making that the Unmaker plain hadn't the strength to turn even this much water against Alvin.
“Oh, it's still secret, Alvin,” said Horace. “You just don't know. Afore you ever got to Hatrack River– or anyway I mean afore you came back– me and Po, we used to go out and fetch in runaway slaves and help them on to Canada whenever we could.”
“Didn't the Finders ever get you?” asked Alvin.
“Any slave got this far, that meant the Finders wasn't too close behind,” said Po. “A good number that reached us stole their own cachet.”
“Besides, that was afore the Fugitive Slave Treaty,” said Horace. “Long as the Finders didn't kill us outright, they couldn't touch us.”
“And in those days we had a torch,” said Po.
Horace said nothing, just untied the rope from the boat and tossed it back onto shore. Po started in rowing the first second the rope was free and Horace had already braced himself for the first lurch of the boat. It was a miracle, seeing how smooth they knew each other's next move before the move was even begun. Alvin almost laughed out loud in the joy of seeing such a thing, knowing it was possible, dreaming of what it might mean– thousands of people knowing each other that well, moving to fit each other just right, working together. Who could stand in the way of such people?
“When Horace's girl left, why, we had no way of knowing them was a runaway coming through here.” Po shook his head. “It was over. But I knowed that with Arthur Stuart put in chains and dragged on south, why, there wasn't no way in hell old Horace wasn't going to cross the river and fetch him back. So once I dropped off them Finders and headed back away from the Hio a ways, I stopped the carriage and hopped on down.”
“I bet Dr. Physicker noticed,” said Alvin.
“Course he did, you fool!” said Po. “Oh, I see you're funning me. Well, he noticed. He just says to me, 'You be careful, them boys are dangerous.' And I said I'd be careful all right and then he says to me, 'It's that blame sheriff Pauley Wiseman. He didn't have to let them take him so fast. Might be we could've fought exerdiction if we could've held onto Arthur Stuart till the circuit judge come around. But PauIey, he did everything legal, but he moved so fast I just knew in my heart he wanted that boy gone, wanted him clean out of Hatrack River and never come back.' I believe him, Horace. Pauley Wiseman never did like that mixup boy, once Old Peg got the wind in her sails about him going to school.”
Horace grunted; he turned the tiller just a little, exactly at the moment when Pauley slacked the oar on one side so the boat would turn slightly upstream to make the right landing on the far shore. “You know what I been thinking?” said Horace. “I been thinking your job just ain't enough to keep you busy, Po.”
“I like my job good enough,” said Po Doggly.
“I been thinking that there's a county election this fall, and the office of sheriff goes up for grabs. I think Pauley Wiseman ought to get turned out.”
“And me get made sheriff? You think that's likely, me being a known drunk?”
“You ain't touched a drop the whole time you been with the doctor. And if we live through this and get Arthur back safe, why, you're going to be a hero.”
“A hero hell! You crazy, Horace? We can't tell a soul about this or there'll be a reward out for our brains on rye bread from the Hio to Camelot.”
“We ain't going to print up the story and sell copies, if that's what you mean. But you know how word spreads. Good folks'll know what you and me done.”
“Then you be sheriff, Horace.”
“Me?” Horace grinned. “Can you imagine me putting a man in jail?”
Po laughed softly. “Reckon not.”
When they reached the shore, again their movements were swift and fit together just right. It was hard to believe it had been so many years since they worked together. It was like their bodies already knew what to do, so they didn't even have to think about it. Po jumped into the water– ankle deep is all, and he leaned on the boat so as not to splash much. The boat rocked a bit at that, of course, but without a bit of wasted motion Horace leaned against the rocking and calmed it down, hardly even noticing he was doing it. In a minute they had the bow dragged up onto the shore– sandy here, not muddy like the other side– and tied to a tree. To Alvin the rope looked old and rotten, but when he sent his bug inside to feel it out, he was sure it was still strong enough to hold the boat against the rocking of the river against the stern.
Only when all their familiar jobs was done did Horace present himself like militia on the town square, shoulders squared and eyes right on Alvin. “Well, now, Al, I reckon it's up to you to lead the way.”
“Ain't we got to track them?” asked Po.
“Alv
in knows where they are,” said Horace.
“Well ain't that nice,” said Po. “And does he know whether they got their guns aimed at our heads?”
“Yes,” said Alvin. He said it in such a way as to make it plain that he didn't want no more questions.
It wasn't plain enough for Po. “You telling me this boy's a torch, or what? Most I heard was he got him a knack for shoeing horses.”
Here was the bad part about having somebody else along. Alvin didn't have no wish to tell Po Doggly what all he could do, but he couldn't very well tell the man that he didn't must him.
It was Horace came to the rescue. “Po, I got to tell you, Alvin ain't part of the story of this night.”
“Looks to me like he's the biggest part.”
“I tell you, Po, when this story gets told, it was you and me came along and happened to find the Finders asleep, you understand?”
Po wrinkled his brow, then nodded. “Just tell me this, boy. Whatever knack you got, you a Christian? I don't even ask that you be a Methodist.”
“Yes sir,” said Alvin. “I'm a Christian, I reckon. I hold to the Bible.”
“Good then,” said Po. “I just don't want to get myself all mixed up in devil stuff.”
“Not with me,” said Alvin.
“All right then. Best if I don't know what you do, Al. Just take a care not to get me killed because I don't know it.”
Alvin stuck out his hand. Po shook it and grinned. “You blacksmiths got to be strong as a bear.”
“Me?” said Alvin. “A bear gets in my way, I beat on his head till he's a wolverine.”
“I like your brag, boy.”
A moment's pause, and then Alvin led them off, following the thread that connected him to Arthur Stuart.
It wasn't all that far, but it took them an hour cutting through the woods in the dark– with all the leaves out, there wasn't much moonlight got to the ground. Without Alvin's sense of the forest around them, it would've taken three times as long and ten times the noise.
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