“I never could,” said Alvin. It was wrong of her to say such a thing. “There wasn't time.”
“You should have looked! You should have seen what was coming.”
Alvin didn't understand her. “I can't see what's coming,” he said. “That's your knack.”
Then she burst out crying, not the dry sobs like when he first came in, but deep, gut-wrenching howls of grief. Alvin didn't know what to do.
The door opened behind him.
“Peggy,” whispered Horace Guester. “Little Peggy.”
Peggy looked up at her father, her face so streaked with tears and twisted up and reddened with weeping that it was a marvel he could recognize her. “I killed her!” she cried. “I never should have left, Papa! I killed her!”
Only then did Horace understand that it was his wife's body lying there. Alvin watched as he started trembling, groaning, then keening loud and high like a hurt dog. Alvin never seen such grieving. Did my father cry like that when my brother Vigor died? Did he make such a sound as this when he thought that me and Measure was tortured to death by Red men?
Alvin reached out his arms to Horace, held him tight around the shoulders, then led him over to Peggy and helped him kneel there beside his daughter, both of them weeping, neither giving a sign that they saw each other. All they saw was Old Peg's body spread out on the floor; Alvin couldn't even guess how deeply, how agonizingly each one bore the whole blame for her dying.
After a while the sheriff came in. He'd already found the black-haired Finder's corpse outside, and it didn't take him long to understand exactly what happened. He took Alvin aside. “This is pure self-defense if I ever saw it,” said Pauley Wiseman, “and I wouldn't make you spend three seconds in jail for it. But I can tell you that the law in Appalachee don't take the death of a Finder all that easy, and the treaty lets them come up here and get you to take back there for trial. What I'm saying, boy, is you better get the hell out of here in the next couple of days or I can't promise you'll be safe.”
“I was going anyway,” said Alvin.
“I don't know how you done it,” said Pauley. Wiseman, “but I reckon you got that half-Black pickaninny away from them Finders tonight and hid him somewhere around here. I'm telling you, Alvin, when you go, you best take that boy with you. Take him to Canada. But if I see his face again, I'll ship him south myself. It's that boy caused all this– makes me sick, a good White woman dying cause of some half-Black mixup boy.”
“You best never say such a thing in front of me again, Pauley Wiseman.”
The sheriff only shook his head and walked away. “Ain't natural,” he said. “All you people set on a monkey like it was folks,” He turned around to face Alvin. “I don't much care what you think of me, Alvin Smith, but I'm giving you and that mixup boy a chance to stay alive. I hope you have brains to take it. And in the meantime, you might go wash off that blood and fetch some clothes to wear.”
Alvin walked on back to the road. Other folks was coming by then– he paid them no heed. Only Mock Berry seemed to understand what was happening. He led Alvin on down to his house, and there Anga washed him down and Mock gave him some of his own clothes to wear. It was nigh onto dawn when Alvin got him back to the smithy.
Makepeace was setting there on a stool in the smithy door, looking at the golden plow. It was resting on the ground, still as you please, right in front of the forge.
“That's one hell of a journeyman piece,” said Makepeace.
“I reckon,” said Alvin. He walked over to the plow and reached down. It fairly leapt into Alvin's hands– notheavy at all now– but if Makepeace noticed how the plow moved by itself just before Alvin touched it, he didn't say.
“I got a lot of scrap iron,” said Makepeace. “I don't even ask for you to go halves with me. Just let me keep a few pieces when you turn them into gold.”
“I ain't turning no more iron into gold,” said Alvin.
It made Makepeace angry. “That's gold, you fool! That there plow you made means never going hungry, never having to work again, living fine instead of in that rundown house up there! It means new dresses for Gertie and maybe a suit of clothes for me! It means folks in town saying Good morning to me and tipping their hats like I was a gentleman. It means riding in a carriage like Dr. Physicker, and going to Dekane or Carthage or wherever I please and not even caring what it costs. And you're telling me you ain't making no more gold?”
Alvin knew it wouldn't do no good explaining, but still he tried. “This ain't no common gold, sir. This is a living plow– I ain't going to let nobody melt it down to make coins out of it. Best I can figure, nobody could melt it even if they wanted to. So back off and let me go.”
“What you going to do, plow with it? You blame fool, we could be kings of the world together!” But when Alvin pushed on by, headed out of the smithy, Makepeace stopped his pleading and started getting ugly. “That's my iron you used to make that golden plow! That gold belongs to me! A journeyman piece always belongs to the master, less'n he gives it to the journeyman and I sure as hell don't! Thief! You're stealing from me!”
“You stole five years of my life from me, long after I was good enough to be a journeyman,” Alvin said. “And this plow– making it was none of your teaching. It's alive, Makepeace Smith. It doesn't belong to you and it doesn't belong to me. It belongs to itself. So let me just set it down here and we'll see who gets it.”
Alvin set down the plow on the grass between them. Then he stepped back a few paces. Makepeace took one step toward the plow. It sank down into the soil under the grass, then cut its way through the dirt till it reached Alvin. When he picked it up, it was warm. He knew what that had to mean. “Good soil,” said Alvin. The plow trembled in his hands.
Makepeace stood there, his eyes bugged out with fear. “Good Lord, boy, that plow moved.”
“I know it,” said Alvin.
“What are you, boy? The devil?”
“I don't think so,” said Alvin. “Though I might've met him once or twice.”
“Get on out of here! Take that thing and go away! I never want to see your face around here again!”
“You got my journeyman paper,” said Alvin. “I want it.”
Makepeace reached into his pocket, took out a folded paper, and threw it onto the grass in front of the smithy. Then he reached out and pulled the smithy doors shut, something he hardly ever did, even in winter. He shut them tight and barred them on the inside. Poor fool, as if Alvin couldn't break down them walls in a second if he really wanted to get inside. Alvin walked over and picked up the paper. He opened it and read it– signed all proper. It was legal. Alvin was a journeyman.
The sun was just about to show up when Alvin got to the springhouse door. Of course it was locked, but locks and hexes couldn't keep Alvin out, specially when he made them all himself. He opened the door and went inside. Arthur Smart stirred in his sleep. Alvin touched his shoulder, brought the boy awake. Alvin knelt there by the bed and told the boy most all that happened in the night. He showed him the golden plow, showed him how it moved. Arthur laughed in delight. Then Alvin told him that the woman he called Mama all his life was dead, killed by the Finders, and Arthur cried.
But not for long. He was too young to cry for long. “You say she kilt one herself afore she died?”
“With your pa's own shotgun.”
“Good for her!” said Arthur Stuart, his voice so fierce Alvin almost laughed, him being so small.
“I killed the other one myself. The one that shot her.”
Arthur reached out and took Alvin's right hand and opened it. “Did you kill him with this hand?”
Alvin nodded.
Arthur kissed his open palm.
“I would've fixed her up if I could,” said Alvin. “But she died too fast. Even if I'd been standing right there the second after the shot hit her, I couldn't've fixed her up.”
Arthur Stuart reached out and hung onto Alvin around his neck and cried some more.
; It took a day to put Old Peg into the ground, up on the hill with her own daughters and Alvin's brother Vigor and Arthur's mama who died so young. “A place for people of courage,” said Dr. Physicker, and Alvin knew that he was right, even though Physicker didn't know about the runaway Black slave girl.
Alvin washed away the bloodstains from the floor and stiairs of the roadhouse, using his knack to pull out what blood the lye and sand couldn't remove. It was the last gift he could give to Horace or to Peggy. Margaret. Miss Larner.
“I got to leave now,” he told them. They were setting on chairs in the common room of the inn, where they'd been receiving mourners all day. “I'm taking Arthur to my folks' place, in Vigor Church. He'll be safe there. And then I'm going on.”
“Thank you for everything,” said Horace. “You been a good friend to us. Old Peg loved you.” Then he broke down crying again.
Alvin patted him on the shoulder a couple of times, and then moved over to stand in front of Peggy. “All that I am, Miss Larner, I owe to you.”
She shook her head.
“I meant all I said to you. I still mean it.”
Again she shook her head. He wasn't surprised. With her mama dead, never even knowing that her own daughter'd come home, why, Alvin didn't expect she could just up and go. Somebody had to help Horace Guester run the roadhouse. It all made sense. But still it stabbed him to the heart, because now more than ever he knew that it was true– he loved her. But she wasn't for him. That much was plain. She never had been. A woman like this, so educated and fine and beautiful– she could be his teacher, but she could never love him like he loved her.
“Well then, I guess I'm saying good-bye,” said Alvin. He stuck out his hand, even though he knew it was kind of silly to shake hands with somebody grieving the way she was. But he wanted so bad to put his arms around her and hold her tight the way he'd held Arthur Stuart when he was grieving, and a handshake was as close as he could come to that.
She saw his hand, and reached up and took it. Not for a handshake, but just holding his hand, holding it tight. It took him by surprise. He'd think about that many times in the months and years to come, how tight she held to him. Maybe it meant she loved him. Or maybe it meant she only cared for him as a pupil, or thanked him for avenging her mama's death– how could he know what a thing like that could mean? But still he held onto that memory, in case it meant she loved him.
And he made her a promise then, with her holding his hand like that; made her a promise even though he didn't know if she even wanted him to keep it. “I'll be back,” he said. “And what I said last night, it'll always be true.” It took all his courage then to call her by the name she gave him permission last night to use. “God be with you, Margaret.”
“God be with you, Alvin,” she whispered.
Then he gathered up Arthur Stuart, who'd been saying his own good-byes, and led the boy outside. They walked out back of the roadhouse to the barn, where Alvin had hidden the golden plow deep in a barrel of beans. He took off the lid and held out his hand, and the plow rose upward until it glinted in the light. Then Alvin took it up, wrapped it double in burlap and put it inside a burlap bag, then swung the bag over his shoulder.
Alvin knelt down and held out his hand the way he always did when he wanted Arthur Stuart to climb up onto his back. Arthur did, thinking it was all for play– a boy that age, he can't be grieving for more than an hour or two at a time. He swung up onto Alvin's back, laughing and bouncing.
“This time it's going to be a long ride, Arthur Stuart,” said Alvin. “We're going all the way to my family's house in Vigor Church.”
“Walking the whole way?”
“I'll be walking. You're going to ride.”
“Gee-yap!” cried Arthur Stuart.
Alvin set off at a trot, but before long he was running full out. He never set foot on that road, though. Instead he took off cross country, over fields, over fences, and on into the woods, which still stood in great swatches here and there across the states of Hio and Wobbish between him and home. The greensong was much weaker than it had been in the days when the Red men had it all to themselves. But the song was still strong enough for Alvin Smith to hear. He let himself himself fall into the rhythm of the greensong, running as the Red men did. And Arthur Stuart– maybe he could hear some of the greensong too, enough that it could lull him to sleep, there on Alvin's back. The world was gone. Just him, Arthur Stuart, the golden plow– and the whole world singing around him. I'm a journeyman now. And this is my first journey.
Chapter 20 – Cavil's Deed
Cavil Planter had business in town. He mounted his horse early on that fine spring morning, leaving behind wife and slaves, house and land, knowing all were well under his control, fully his own.
Along about noon, after many a pleasant visit and much business well done, he stopped in at the postmaster's store. There were three letters there. Two were from old friends. One was from Reverend Philadelphia Thrower in Carthage, the capital of Wobbish.
Old friends could wait. This would be news about the Finders he hired, though why the letter should come from Thrower and not from the Finders themselves, Cavil couldn't guess. Maybe there was trouble. Maybe he'd have to go north to testify after all. Well, if that's what it takes, I'll do it, thought Cavil. Gladly I'll leave the ninety and nine sheep, as Jesus said, in order to reclaim the one that strayed.
It was bitter news. Both Finders dead, and so also the innkeeper's wife who claimed to have adopted Cavil's stolen firstborn son. Good riddance to her, thought Cavil, and he spared not a second's grief for the Finders– they were hirelings, and he valued them less than his slaves, since they weren't his. No, it was the last news, the worst news, that set Cavil's hands to trembling and his breath tostop. The man who killed one of the Finders, a prentice smith named Alvin, he ran off instead of standing trial– and took with him Cavil's son.
He took my son. And the worst words from Thrower were these: “I knew this fellow Alvin when he was a mere child, and already he was an agent of evil. He is our mutual Friend's worst enemy in all the world, and now he has your most valued property in his possession. I wish I had better news. I pray for you, lest your son be turned into a dangerous and implacable foe of all our Friend's holy work.”
With such news, how could Cavil go about the rest of the day's business? Without a word to the postmaster or to anybody, Cavil stuffed the letters into his pocket, went outside, mounted his horse, and headed home. All the way his heart was tossed between rage and fear. How could those northerner Emancipationist scum have let his slave, his son, get stole right out from under them, by the worst enemy of the Overseer? I'll go north, I'll make them pay, I'll find the boy, I'll– and then his thoughts would turn all of a sudden to what the Overseer would say, if ever He came again. What if He despises me now, and never comes again? Or worse, what if He comes and damns me for a slothful servant? Or what if He declares me unworthy and forbids me to take any more Black women to myself? How could I live if not in His service– what else is my life for?
And then rage again, terrible blasphemous rage, in which he cried out deep within his soul, O my Overseer! Why did You let this happen? You could have stopped it with a word, if You are truly Lord!
And then terror: Such a thing, to doubt the power of the Overseer! No, forgive me, I am truly Thy slave, O Master! Forgive me, I've lost everything, forgive me!
Poor Cavil. He'd find out soon enough what losing everything could mean.
He got himself home and turned the horse up that long drive leading to the house, only the sun being hot he stayed under the shade of the oaks along the south side of the road. Maybe if he'd rode out in the middle of the lane he would've been seen sooner. Maybe then he wouldn't have heard a woman cry out inside the house just as he was coming out from under the trees.
“Dolores!” he called. “Is something wrong?”
No answer.
Now, that scared him. It conjured up pictures in his mind of maraude
rs or thieves or such, breaking into his house while he was gone. Maybe they already killed Lashman, and even now were killing his wife. He spurred his horse and raced around the house to the back.
Just in time to see a big old Black running from the back door of the house down toward the slave quarters. He couldn't see the Black man's face, on account of his trousers, which he didn't have on, nor any other clothing either– no, he was holding those trousers like a banner, flapping away in front of his face as he ran down toward the sheds.
A Black, no pants on, running out of my house, in which a woman was crying out. For a moment Cavil was torn between the desire to chase down the Black man and kill him with his bare hands and the need to go up and see to Dolores, make sure she was all right. Had he come in time? Was she undefiled?
Cavil bounded up the stairs and flung open the door to his wife's room. There lay Dolores in bed, her covers tight up under her chin, looking at him through wide-open, frightened eyes.
“What happened!” cried Cavil. “Are you all right?”
“Of course I am!” she answered sharply. “What are you doing home?”
That wasn't the answer you get from a woman who's just cried out in fear. “I heard you call out,” said Cavil. “Didn't you hear me answer?”
“I hear everything up here,” said Dolores. “I got nothing to do in my life but lie here and listen. I hear everything that's said in this house and everything that's done. Yes, I heard you call. But you weren't answering me.”
Cavil was astonished. She sounded angry. He'd never heard her sound angry before. Lately he'd hardly heard a word from her at all– she was always asleep when he took breakfast, and their dinners together passed in silence. Now this anger– why? Why now?
“I saw a Black man running away from the house,” said Cavil. “I thought maybe he–”
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