Prentice Alvin: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume III

by Orson Scott Card

  “You got a customer,” said Alvin.

  Vanderwoort turned real slow and looked at Mock Berry without expression. Then, still moving slow, he walked over and stood in front of Mock without a word.

  “Just need me two pounds of flour and twelve feet of that half-inch rope,” said Mock.

  “Hear that?” said Daisy. “He’s a-fixing to powder his face white and then hang himself, I’ll bet.”

  “Spell ‘suicide,’ boy,” said Martin.

  “S-U-I-C-I-D-E,” said Arthur Stuart.

  “No credit,” said Vanderwoort.

  Mock laid down some coins on the counter. Vanderwoort looked at it a minute. “Six feet of rope.”

  Mock just stood there.

  Vanderwoort just stood there.

  Alvin knew it was more than enough money for what Mock wanted to buy. He couldn’t hardly believe Vanderwoort was raising his price for a man about as poor but hard-working as any in town. In fact, Alvin began to understand a little about why Mock stayed so poor. Now, Alvin knew there wasn’t much he could do about it—but he could at least do what Horace Guester had once done for him with his master Makepeace—make Vanderwoort put things out in the open and stop pretending he wasn’t being as unfair as he was being. So Alvin laid down the paper Vanderwoort had just written out for him. “I’m sorry to hear there’s no credit,” Alvin said. “I’ll go fetch the money from Goody Guester.”

  Vanderwoort looked at Alvin. Now he could either make Alvin go fetch the money or say right out that there was credit for the Guesters, just not for Mock Berry.

  Of course he chose another course. Without a word he went into the back and weighed out the flour. Then he measured out twelve feet of half-inch rope. Vanderwoort was known for giving honest measure. But then, he was also known for giving a fair price, which is why it took Alvin aback to see him do otherwise with Mock Berry.

  Mock took his rope and his flour and started out.

  “You got change,” said Vanderwoort.

  Mock turned around, looking surprised though he tried not to. He came back and watched as Vanderwoort counted out a dime and three pennies onto the counter. Then, hesitating a moment, Mock scooped them off the counter and dropped them into his pocket. “Thank you sir,” he said. Then he went back out into the cold.

  Vanderwoort turned to Alvin, looking angry or maybe just resentful. “I can’t give credit to everybody.”

  Now, Alvin could’ve said something about at least he could give the same price to Blacks as Whites, but he didn’t want to make an enemy out of Mr. Vanderwoort, who was after all a mostly good man. So Alvin grinned real friendly and said, “Oh, I know you can’t. Them Berrys, they’re almost as poor as me.”

  Vanderwoort relaxed, which meant it was Alvin’s good opinion he wanted more than to get even for Alvin embarrassing him. “You got to understand, Alvin, it ain’t good for trade if they come in here all the time. Nobody minds that mixup boy of yours—they’re cute when they’re little—but it makes folks stay away if they think they might run into one of them here.”

  “I always knowed Mock Berry to keep his word,” said Alvin. “And nobody ever said he stole or slacked or any such thing.”

  “No, nobody ever told such a tale on him.”

  “I’m glad to know you count us both among your customers,” said Alvin.

  “Well, lookit here, Daisy,” said Martin. “I think Prentice Alvin’s gone and turned preacher on us. Spell ‘reverend,’ boy.”

  “R-E-V-E-R-E-N-D.”

  Vanderwoort saw things maybe turning ugly, so of course he tried to change the subject. “Like I said, Alvin, that mixup boy’s bound to be the best speller in the county, don’t you think? What I want to know is, why don’t he go on and get into the county spelling bee next week? I think he’d bring Hatrack River the championship. He might even get the state championship, if you want my opinion.”

  “Spell ‘championship,’” said Daisy.

  “Miss Larner never said me that word,” said Arthur Stuart.

  “Well figure it out,” said Alvin.

  “C-H-A-M-P,” said Arthur. “E-U-N-S-H-I-P.”

  “Sounds right to me,” said Daisy.

  “Shows what you know,” said Martin.

  “Can you do better?” asked Vanderwoort.

  “I’m not going to be in the county spelling bee,” said Martin.

  “What’s a spelling bee?” asked Arthur Stuart.

  “Time to go,” said Alvin, for he knew full well that Arthur Stuart wasn’t a regular admitted student in the Hatrack River Grammar School, and so it was a sure thing he wouldn’t be in no spelling bee. “Oh, Mr. Vanderwoort, I owe you for two crackers I ate.”

  “I don’t charge my friends for a couple of crackers,” said Vanderwoort.

  “I’m proud to know you count me one of your friends,” said Alvin. Alvin meant it, too—it took a good man to get caught out doing something wrong, and then turn around and treat the one that caught him as a friend.

  Alvin wound Arthur Stuart back into his scarves, and then wrapped himself up again, and plunged back into the snow, this time carrying all that he bought from Vanderwoort in a burlap sack. He tucked the sack under the seat of the sleigh so it wouldn’t get snowed on. Then he lifted Arthur Stuart into place and climbed up after. The horses looked happy enough to get moving again—they only got colder and colder, standing in the snow.

  On the way back to the roadhouse they found Mock Berry on the road and took him on home. Not a word did he say about what happened in the store, but Alvin knew it wasn’t cause he didn’t appreciate it. He figured Mock Berry was plain ashamed of the fact that it took an eighteen-year-old prentice boy to get him honest measure and fair price in Vanderwoort’s general store—only cause the boy was White. Not the kind of thing a man loves to talk about.

  “Give a howdy to Goody Berry,” said Alvin, as Mock hopped off the sleigh up the lane from his house.

  “I’ll say you said so,” said Mock. “And thanks for the ride.” In six steps he was clean gone in the blowing snow. The storm was getting worse and worse.

  Once everything was dropped off at the roadhouse, it was near time for Alvin’s and Arthur’s schooling at Miss Lamer’s house, so they headed on down there and threw snowballs at each other all the way. Alvin stopped in at the forge to give the delivery book to Makepeace. But Makepeace must’ve laid off early cause he wasn’t there; Alvin tucked the book onto the shelf by the door, where Makepeace would know to look for it. Then he and Arthur went back to snowballs till Miss Larner came back.

  Dr. Whitley Physicker drove her in his covered sleigh and walked her right up to her door. When he took note of Alvin and Arthur waiting around, he looked a bit annoyed. “Don’t you boys think Miss Larner shouldn’t have to do any more teaching on a day like this?”

  Miss Larner laid a hand on Dr. Physicker’s arm. “Thank you for bringing me home, Dr. Physicker,” she said.

  “I wish you’d call me Whitley.”

  “You’re kind to me, Dr. Physicker, but I think your honored title suits me best. As for these pupils of mine, it’s in bad weather that I do my best teaching, I’ve found, for they aren’t wishing to be at the swimming hole.”

  “Not me!” shouted Arthur Stuart. “How do you spell ‘championship’?”

  “C-H-A-M-P-I-O-N-S-H-I-P,” said Miss Larner. “Wherever did you hear that word?”

  “C-H-A-M-P-I-O-N-S-H-I-P,” said Arthur Stuart—in Miss Larner’s voice.

  “That boy is certainly remarkable,” said Physicker. “A mockingbird, I’d say.”

  “A mockingbird copies the song,” said Miss Larner, “but makes no sense of it. Arthur Stuart may speak back the spellings in my voice, but he truly knows the word and can read it or write it whenever he wishes.”

  “I’m not a mockingbird,” said Arthur Stuart. “I’m a spelling bee championship.”

  Dr. Physicker and Miss Larner exchanged a look that plainly meant more than Alvin could understand just fr
om watching.

  “Very well,” said Dr. Physicker. “Since I did in fact enroll him as a special student—at your insistence—he can compete in the county spelling bee. But don’t expect to take him any farther, Miss Larner!”

  “Your reasons were all excellent, Dr. Physicker, and so I agree. But my reasons—”

  “Your reasons were overwhelming, Miss Larner. And I can’t help but relish in advance the consternation of the people who fought to keep him out of school, when they watch him do as well as children twice his age.”

  “Consternation, Arthur Stuart,” said Miss Larner.

  “Consternation,” said Arthur. “C-0-N-S-T-E-R-N-A-T-I-O-N.”

  “Good evening, Dr. Physicker. Come inside, boys. Time for school.”

  Arthur Stuart won the county spelling bee, with the word “celebratory.” Then Miss Larner immediately withdrew him from further competition; another child would take his place at the state competition. As a result there was little note taken, except among the locals. Along with a brief notice in the Hatrack River newspaper.

  Sheriff Pauley Wiseman folded up that page of the newspaper with a short note and put them in an envelope addressed to Reverend Philadelphia Thrower, The Property Rights Crusade, 44 Harrison Street, Carthage City, Wobbish. It took two weeks for that newspaper page to be spread open on Thrower’s desk, along with the note, which said simply:

  Boy turned up here summer 1811, only a few weeks old best guess. Lives in Horace Guester’s roadhouse, Hatrack River. Adoption don’t hold water I reckon if the boy’s a runaway.

  No signature—but Thrower was used to that, though he didn’t understand it. Why should people try to conceal their identity when they were taking part in works of righteousness? He wrote his own letter and sent it south.

  A month later, Cavil Planter read Thrower’s letter to a couple of Finders. Then he handed them the cachets he’d saved all these years, those belonging to Hagar and her stole-away Ishmael-child. “We’ll be back before summer,” said the black-haired Finder. “If he’s yourn, we’ll have him.”

  “Then you’ll have earned your fee and a fine bonus as well,” said Cavil Planter.

  “Don’t need no bonus,” said the white-haired Finder. “Fee and costs is plenty.”

  “Well, then, as you wish,” said Cavil. “I know God will bless your journey.”

  18

  Manacles

  IT WAS EARLY spring, a couple of months before Alvin’s nineteenth birthday, when Makepeace Smith come to him and said, “About time you start working on a journeyman piece, Al, don’t you think?”

  The words sang like redbird song in Alvin’s ears, so he couldn’t hardly speak back except to nod.

  “Well, what do you think you’ll make?” asked the master.

  “I been thinking maybe a plow,” said Alvin.

  “That’s a lot of iron. Takes a perfect mold, and no easy one, neither. You’re asking me to put a good bit of iron at risk, boy.”

  “If I fail, you can always melt it back.”

  Since they both knew that Alvin had about as much chance of failing as he did of flying, this was pretty much empty talk—just the last rags of Makepeace’s old pretense about how Alvin wasn’t much good at smithing.

  “Reckon so,” said Makepeace. “You just do your best, boy. Hard but not too brittle. Heavy enough to bite deep, but light enough to pull. Sharp enough to cut the earth, and strong enough to cast all stones aside.”

  “Yes sir.” Alvin had memorized the rules of the tools back when he was twelve years old.

  There were some other rules that Alvin meant to follow. He had to prove to himself that he was a good smith, and not just a half-baked Maker, which meant that he’d use none of his knack, only the skills that any smith has—a good eye, knowledge of the black metal, the vigor of his arms and the skill of his hands.

  Working on his journeyman piece meant he had no other duties till it was done. He started from scratch on this one, as a good journeyman always does. No common clay for the mold—he went upriver on the Hatrack to the best white clay. so the face of the mold would be pure and smooth and hold its shape. Making a mold meant seeing things all inside-out, but Alvin had a good mind for shapes. He patted and stroked the clay into place on the wooden frame, all the time seeing how the different pieces of the mold would give the cooling iron its plow shape. Then he baked the mold dry and hard, ready to receive the iron.

  For the metal, he took from the pile of scrap iron and then carefully filed the iron clean, getting rid of all dirt and rust. He scoured the crucible, too. Only then was he ready to melt and cast. He hotted up the coal fire, running the bellows himself, raising and lowering the bellows handle just like he done when he was a new prentice. At last the iron was white in the crucible—and the fire so hot he could scarce bear to come near it. But he came near it anyway, tongs in hand, and hoisted the crucible from the fire. then carried it to the mold and poured. The iron sparked and dazzled, but the mold held true, no buckling or breaking in the heat.

  Set the crucible back in the fire. Push the other parts of the mold into place. Gently, evenly, getting no splash. He had judged the amount of liquid iron just right—when the last part of the form slipped into place, just a bit of iron squeezed out evenly all around the edges, showing there was just enough, and scarce any waste.

  And it was done. Nothing for it but to wait for the iron to cool and harden. Tomorrow he’d know what he’d wrought.

  Tomorrow Makepeace Smith would see his plow and call him a man—a journey man, free to practice at any forge, though not yet ready to take on his own prentices. But to Alvin—well, he’d reached that point of readiness years ago. Makepeace would have only a few weeks short of the full seven years of Alvin’s service—that’s what he’d been waiting for, not for this plow.

  No, Alvin’s real journeyman work was yet to come. After Makepeace declared the plow good enough, then Alvin had yet another work to perform.

  “I’m going to turn it gold,” said Alvin.

  Miss Larner raised an eyebrow. “And what then? What will you tell people about a golden plow? That you found it somewhere? That you happened to have some gold lying about, and thought—this is just enough to make a plow?”

  “You’re the one what told me a Maker was the one who could turn iron to gold.”

  “Yes, but that doesn’t mean it’s wise to do it.” Miss Larner walked out of the hot forge into the stagnant air of late afternoon. It was cooler, but not much—the first hot night of spring.

  “More than gold,” said Alvin. “Or at least not normal gold.”

  “Regular gold isn’t good enough for you?”

  “Gold is dead. Like iron.”

  “It isn’t dead. It’s simply—earth without fire. It never was alive, so it can’t be dead.”

  “You’re the one who told me that if I can imagine it, then maybe I can make it come to be.”

  “And you can imagine living gold?”

  “A plow that cuts the earth with no ox to draw it.”

  She said nothing, but her eyes sparkled.

  “If I could make such a thing, Miss Larner, would you consider as how I’d graduated from your school for Makers?”

  “I’d say you were no longer a prentice Maker.”

  “Just what I thought, Miss Larner. A journeyman blacksmith and a journeyman Maker, both, if I can do it.”

  “And can you?”

  Alvin nodded, then shrugged. “I think so. It’s what you said about atoms, back in January.”

  “I thought you gave up on that.”

  “No ma’am. I just kept thinking—what is it you can’t cut into smaller pieces? And then I thought—why, if it’s got any size at all, it can be cut. So an atom, it’s nothing more than just a place, one exact place, with no width at all.”

  “Euclid’s geometric point.”

  “Well, yes ma’am, except that you said his geometry was all imaginary, and this is real.”

  “But if it has no
size. Alvin—”

  “That’s what I thought—if it’s got no size, then it’s nothing. But it isn’t nothing. It’s a place. Only then I thought, it isn’t a place—it just has a place. If you see the difference. An atom can be in one place, one pure geometric point like you said, but then it can move. It can be somewhere else. So. you see, it not only has place, it has a past and a future. Yesterday it was there, today it’s here, and tomorrow over yonder.”

  “But it isn’t anything, Alvin.”

  “No, I know that, it isn’t anything. But it ain’t nothing, neither.”

  “Isn’t. Either.”

  “I know all that grammar, Miss Larner, but I’m not thinking about that right now.”

  “You won’t have good grammar unless you use it even when you’re not thinking about it. But never mind.”

  “See, I start thinking, if this atom’s got no size, how can anybody tell where it is? It’s not giving off any light, because it’s got no fire in it to give off. So here’s what I come up with: Just suppose this atom’s got no size, but it’s still got some kind of mind. Some kind of tiny little wit, just enough to know where it is. And the only power it has is to move somewhere else, and know where it is then.”

  “How could that be, a memory in something that doesn’t exist?”

  “Just suppose it! Say you got thousands of them just lying around, just going any which way. How can any of them tell where they are? Since all the others are moving any which way, nothing around it stays the same. But then suppose somebody comes along—and I’m thinking about God here—somebody who can show them a pattern. Show them some way to set still. Like he says—you, there, you’re the center, and all the rest of you, you just stay the same distance away from him all the time. Then what have you got?”

  Miss Larner thought for a moment. “A hollow sphere. A ball. But still composed of nothing, Alvin.”

  “But don’t you see? That’s why I knew that this was true. I mean, if there’s one thing I know from doodlebugging, it’s that everything’s mostly empty. That anvil, it looks solid, don’t it? But I tell you it’s mostly empty. Just little bits of ironstuff, hanging a certain distance from each other, all patterned there. But most of the anvil is the empty space between. Don’t you see? Those bits are acting just like the atoms I’m talking about. So let’s say the anvil is like a mountain, only when you get real close you see it’s made of gravel. And then when you pick up the gravel, it crumbles in your hand, and you see it’s made of dust. And if you could pick up a single fleck of dust you’d see that it was just like the mountain, made of even tinier gravel all over again.”