“Maybe he what?” She said the words like a taunt, a challenge.
“Maybe he hurt you.”
“No, he didn't hurt me.”
Now a thought began to creep into Cavil's mind, a thought so terrible he couldn't even admit he was thinking it. “What did he do, then?”
“Why, the same holy work that you've been doing, Cavil.”
Cavil couldn't say a thing to that. She knew. She knew it all.
“Last summer, when your friend Reverend Thrower came, I lay here in my bed as you talked, the two of you.”
“You were asleep. Your door was–”
“I heard everything. Every word, every whisper. I heard you go outside. I heard you talk at breakfast. Do you know I wanted to kill you? For years I thought you were the loving husband, a Christ-like man, and all this time you were rutting with these Black women. And then sold all your own babies as slaves. You're a monster, I thought. So evil that for you to live another minute was an abomination. But my hands couldn't hold a knife or pull the trigger on a gun. So I lay here and thought. And you know what I thought?”
Cavil said nothing. The way she told it, it made him sound so bad. “It wasn't like that, it was holy.”
“It was adultery!”
“I had a vision!”
“Yes, your vision. Well, fine and dandy, Mr. Cavil Planter, you had a vision that making half-Wbite babies was a good thing. Here's some news for you. I can make half-White babies, too!”
It was all making sense now. “He raped you!”
“He didn't rape me, Cavil. I invited him up here. I told him what to do. I made him call me his vixen and say prayers with me before and after so it would be as holy as what you did. We prayed to your damned Overseer, but for some reason he never showed up.”
“It never happened.”
“Again and again, every time you left the plantation, all winter, all spring.”
“I don't believe it. You're lying to hurt me. You can't do that– the doctor said– it hurts you too bad.”
“Cavil, before I found out what you done with those Black women, I thought I knew what pain was, but all that suffering was nothing, do you hear me? I could live through that pain every day forever and call it a holiday. I'm pregnant, Cavil.”
“He raped you. That's what we'll tell everybody, and we'll hang him as an example, and–”
“Hang him? There's only one rapist on this plantation, Cavil, and don't think for a moment that I won't tell. If you lay a hand on my baby's father, I'll tell the whole county what you've been doing. I'll get up on Sunday and tell the church.”
“I did it in the service of the–”
“Do you think they'll believe that? No more than I do. The word for what you done isn't holiness. It's concupiscence. Adultery. Lust. And when word gets out, when my baby is born Black, they'll turn against you, all of them. They'll run you out.”
Cavil knew she was right. Nobody would believe him. He was ruined. Unless he did one simple thing.
He walked out of her room. She lay there laughing at him, taunting him. He went to his bedroom, took the shotgun down from the wall, poured in the powder, wadded it, then dumped in a double load of shot and rammed it tight with a second wad.
She wasn't laughing when he came back in. Instead she had her face toward the wall, and she was crying. Too late for tears, he thought. She didn't turn to face him as he strode to the bed and tore down the covers. She was naked as a plucked chicken.
“Cover me!” she whimpered. “He ran out so fast, he didn't dress me. It's cold! Cover me, Cavil–”
Then she saw the gun.
Her twisted hands flailed in the air. Her body writhed. She cried out in the pain of trying to move so quickly. Then he pulled the trigger and her body just flopped right down on the bed, a last sigh of air leaking out of the top of her neck.
Cavil went back to his room and reloaded the gun.
He found Fat Fox fully dressed, polishing the carriage. He was such a liar, he thought he could fool Cavil Planter. But Cavil didn't even bother listening to his lies. “Your vixen wants to see you upstairs,” he said.
Fat Fox kept denying it all the way until he got into the room and saw Dolores on the bed. Then he changed his tune. “She made me! What could I do, Master! It was like you and the women, Master! What choice a Black slave got? I got to obey, don't I? Like the women and you!”
Cavil knew devil talk when he heard it, and he paid no mind. “Strip off your clothes and do it again,” he said. Fat Fox howled and Fat Fox whined, but when Cavil jammed him in the ribs with the barrel, he did what he was told. He closed his eyes so he didn't have to see what Cavil's shotgun done to Dolores, and he did what he was told. Then Cavil fired the gun again.
In a little while Lashman came in from the far field, all a-lather with running and fearing when he heard the gunshots. Cavil met him downstairs. “Lock down the slaves, Lashman, and then go fetch me the sheriff.”
When the sheriff came, Cavil led him upstairs and showed him. The sheriff went pale. “Good Lord,” he whispered.
“Is it murder, Sheriff? I did it. Are you taking me to jail?”
“No sir,” said the sheriff. “Ain't nobody going to call this murder.” Then he looked at Cavil with this twisted kind of expression on his face. “What kind of man are you, Cavil?”
For a moment Cavil didn't understand the question.
“Letting me see your wife like that. I'd rather die before I let somebody see my wife like that.”
The sheriff left. Lashman had the slaves clean up the room. There was no funeral for either one. They both got buried out where Salamandy lay. Cavil was pretty sure a few chickens died over the graves, but by then he didn't care. He was on his tenth bottle of bourbon and his ten-thousandth muttered prayer to the Overseer, who seemed powerful standoffish at a time like this.
Along about a week later, or maybe longer, here comes the sheriff again, with the priest and the Baptist preacher both. The three of them woke Cavil up from his drunken sleep and showed him a draught for twenty-five thousand dollars. “All your neighbors took up a collection,” the priest explained.
“I don't need money,” Cavil said.
“They're buying you out,” said the preacher.
“Plantation ain't for sale.”
The sheriff shook his head. “You got it wrong, Cavil. What happened here, that was bad. But you letting folks see. your wife like that–”
“I only let you see.”
“You ain't no gentleman, Cavil.”
“Also, there's the matter of the slave children,” said the Baptist preacher. “They seem remarkably light-skinned, considering you have no breeding stock but what's black as night.”
“It's a miracle from God,” said Cavil. “The Lord is lightening the Black race.”
The sheriff slid a paper over to Cavil. “This is the transfer of tide of all your property– slaves, buildings, and land– to a holding company consisting of your former neighbors.”
Cavil read it. “This deed says all the slaves here on the land,” he said. “I got rights in a runaway slave boy up north.”
“We don't care about that. He's yours if you can find him. I hope you noticed this deed also includes a stipulation that you will never return to this county or any adjoining county for the rest of your natural life.”
“I saw that part,” said Cavil.
“I can assure you that if you break that agreement, it will be the end of your natural life. Even a conscientious, hardworking sheriff like me couldn't protect you from what would happen.”
“You said no threats,” murmured the priest.
“Cavil needs to know the consequences,” said the sheriff.
“I won't be back,” said Cavil.
“Pray to God for forgiveness,” said the preacher.
“That I will.” Cavil signed the paper.
That very night he rode out on his horse with a twenty-five-thousand-dollar draught in his pocket and a change of
clothes and a week's provisions on a pack horse behind him. Nobody bid him farewell. The slaves were singing jubilation songs in the sheds behind him. His horse manured the end of the drive. And in Cavil's mind there was only one thought. The Overseer hates me, or this all wouldn't have happened. There's only one way to win back His love. That's to find that Alvin Smith, kill him, and get back my boy, my last slave who still belongs to me.
Then, O my Overseer, will You forgive me, and heal the terrible stripes Thy lash has torn upon my soul?
Chapter 21 – Alvin Journeyman
Alvin stayed home in Vigor Church all summer, getting to know his family again. Folks had changed, more than a little– Cally was mansize now, and Measure had him a wife and children, and the twins Wastenot and Wantnot had married them a pair of French sisters from Detroit, and Ma and Pa was both grey-haired mostly, and moving slower than Alvin liked to see. But some things didn't change– there was playfulness in them all, the whole family, and the darkness that had fallen over Vigor Church after the massacre at Tippy-Canoe, it was– well, not gone– more like it had changed into a kind of shadow that was behind everything, so the bright spots in life seemed all the brighter by contrast.
They all took to Arthur Stuart right off. He was so young he could hear all the men of the town tell him the tale of Tippy-Canoe, and all that he thought of it was to tell them his own story– which was really a mish-mash of his real mama's story, and Alvin's story, and the story of the Finders and how his White mama killed one afore she died.
Alvin pretty much let Arthur Stuart's account of things stand uncorrected. Partly it was because why should he make Arthur Stuart out to be wrong, when he loved telling the tale so? Partly it was out of sorrow, realizing bit by bit that Arthur Stuart never spoke in nobody else's voice but his own. Folks here would never know what it was like to hear Arthur Stuart speak their own voice right back at them. Even so, they loved to hear the boy talk, because he still remembered all the words people said, never forgetting a scrap it seemed like. Why should Alvin mar what was left of Arthur Stuart's knack?
Alvin also figured that what he never told, nobody could ever repeat. For instance, there was a certain burlap parcel that nobody ever saw unwrapped. It wouldn't do no good for word to get around that a certain golden object had been seen in the town of Vigor Church– the town, which hadn't had many visitors since the dark day of the massacre at Tippy-Canoe, would soon have more company than they wanted, and all the wrong sort, looking for gold and not caring who got harmed along the way. So he never told a soul about the golden plow, and the only person who even knew he was keeping a secret was his close-mouthed sister Eleanor.
Alvin went to call on her at the store she and Armor-of-God kept right there on the town square, ever since before there was a town square. Once it had been a place where visitors, Red and White, came from far away to get maps and news, back when the land was still mostly forest from the Mizzipy to Dekane. Now it was still busy, but it was all local folks, come to buy or hear gossip and news of the outside world. Since Armor-of-God was the only grown-up man in Vigor Church who wasn't cursed with Tenskwa-Tawa's curse, he was also the only one who could easily go outside to buy goods and hear news, bringing it all back in to the farmers and tradesmen of Vigor Church. It happened that today Armor-of-God was away, heading up to the town of Mishy-Waka to pick up some orders of glass goods and fine china. So Alvin found only Eleanor and her oldest boy, Hector, there, tending the store.
Tbings had changed a bit since the old days. Eleanor, who was near as good a hexmaker as Alvin, didn't have to conceal her hexes in the patterns of hanging flower baskets and arrangements of herbs in the kitchen. Now some of the hexes were right out in the open, which meant they could be much clearer and stronger. Armor-of-God must've let up a little on his hatred of knackery and hidden powers. That was a good thing– it was a painful thing, in the old days, to know how Eleanor had to pretend not to be what she was or know what she knew.
“I got something with me,” said Alvin.
“So I see,” said Eleanor. “All wrapped in a burlap bag, as still as stone, and yet it seems to me there's something living inside.”
“Never you mind about that,” said Alvin. “What's here is for no other soul but me to see.”
Eleanor didn't ask any questions. She knew from those words exactly why he brought his mysterious parcel by. She told Hector to wait on any customers as came by, and then led Alvin out into the new ware-room, where they kept such things as a dozen kinds of beans in barrels, salt meat in kegs, sugar in paper cones, powder salt in waterproof pots, and spices all in different kinds of jars. She went straight to the fullest of the bean barrels, filled with a kind of green-speckle bean that Alvin hadn't seen before.
“Not much call for these beans,” she said. “I reckon we'll never see the bottom of this barrel.”
Alvin set the plow, all wrapped in burlap, on top of the beans. And then he made the beans slide out of the way, flowing around the plow smooth as molasses, until it sank right down to the bottom. He didn't so much as ask Eleanor to turn away, since she knew Alvin had power to do that much since he was just a little boy.
“Whatever's living in there,” said Eleanor, “it ain't going to die, being dry down at the bottom of the barrel, is it?”
“It won't ever die,” said Alvin, “at least not the way folks grow old and die.”
Eleanor gave in to curiosity just enough to say, “I wish you could promise me that if anybody ever knows what's in there, so will I.”
Alvin nodded to her. That was a promise he could keep. At the time, he didn't know how or when he'd ever show that plow to anybody, but if anybody could keep a secret, silent Eleanor could.
So anyway he lived in Vigor Church, sleeping in his old bedroom in his parents' house, lived there a good many weeks, well on toward July, and all the while he kept most of what happened in his seven-year prenticeship to himself. In fact he talked hardly more than he had to. He went here and there, a-calling on folks with his Pa or Ma and without much fuss healing such toothaches and broken bones and festering wounds and sickness as he found. He helped at the mill; he hired out to work in other farmers' fields and barns; he built him a small forge and did simple repairs and solders, the kind a smith can do without a proper anvil. And all that time, he pretty much spoke when people spoke to him, and said little more than what was needed to do business or get the food he wanted at table.
He wasn't glum– he laughed at a joke, and even told a few. He wasn't solemn, neither, and spent more than a few afternoons down in the square, proving to the strongest farmers in Vigor Church that they weren't no match for a blacksmith's arms and shoulders in a rassling match. He just didn't have any gossip or small talk, and he never told a story on himself. And if you didn't keep a conversation going, Alvin was content to let it fall into silence, keeping at his work or staring off into the, distance like as if he didn't even remember you were there.
Some folks noticed how little Alvin talked, but he'd been gone a long time, and you don't expect a nineteen-year-old to act the same as an eleven-year-old. They just figured he'd grown up to be a quiet man.
But a few knew better. Alvin's mother and father had some words between the two of them, more than once. “The boy's had some bad things happen to him,” said his mother; but his father took a different view. “I reckon maybe he's had bad and good mixed in together, like most folks– he just doesn't know us well enough yet, after being gone seven years. Let him get used to being a man in this town, and not a boy anymore, and pretty soon he'll talk his leg off.”
Eleanor, she also noticed Alvin wasn't talking, but since she also knew he had a marvelous secret living thing hidden in her bean barrel, she didn't fuss for a minute about something being wrong with Alvin. It was like she said to her husband, Armor-of-God, when he mentioned about how Alvin just didn't seem to have five words altogether for nobody. “He's thinking deep thoughts,” said Eleanor. “He's working out problems none of us kno
ws enough to help him with. You'll see– he'll talk plenty when he figures it an out.”
And there was Measure, Alvin's brother who got captured by Reds when Alvin was; the brother who had come to know Ta-Kumsaw and Tenskwa-Tawa near as well as Alvin himself. Of course Measure noticed how little Alvin had told them about his prentice years, and in due time he'd surely be one Alvin could talk to– that was natural, seeing how long Alvin had trusted Measure and all they'd been through together. But at first Alvin felt shy even around Measure, seeing how he had his wife, Delphi, and any fool could see how they hardly could stand to be more than three feet apart from each other; he was so gentle and careful with her, always looking out for her, turning to talk to her if she was near, looking for her to come back if she was gone. How could Alvin know whether there was room for him anymore in Measure's heart? No, not even to Measure could Alvin tell his tale, not at first.
One day in high summer, Alvin was out in a field building fences with his younger brother Cally, who was man-size now, as tall as Alvin though not as massive in the back and shoulders. The two of them had hired on for a week with Martin Hill. Alvin was doing the rail splitting– hardly using his knack at all, either, though truth to tell he could've split all the rails just by asking them to split themselves. No, he set the wedge and hammered it down, and his knack only got used to keep the logs from splitting at bad angles that wouldn't give full-length rails.
They must have fenced about a quarter mile before Alvin realized that it was peculiar how Cally never fell behind. Alvin split, and Cally got the posts and rails laid in place, never needing a speck of help to set a post into soil too hard or soft or rocky or muddy.
So Alvin kept his eye on the boy– or, more exactly, used his knack to keep watch on Cally's work– and sure enough, Alvin could see that Cally had something of Alvin's knack, the way it was long ago when he didn't half understand what he was doing with it. Cally would find just the right spot to set a post, then make the ground soft till he needed it to be firm. Alvin figured Cally wasn't exactly planning it. He probably thought he was finding spots that were naturally good for setting a post.
Prentice Alvin ttoam-3 Page 35