They all stood and watched Alvin work. It was the smoothest, purest job they’d ever see. Alvin used his knack this time, but not so it’d show. He hammered and bent the strap iron, cutting it exactly right. The two halves of each manacle fit snug, so they wouldn’t shift and pinch the skin. And all the time he was thinking how Arthur used to pump the bellows for him, or just stand there and talk to him while he worked. Never again. Even after they saved him tonight, they’d have to take him to Canada or hide him somehow—as if you could hide from a Finder.
“Good work,” said the white-haired Finder. “I never saw me a better blacksmith.”
Makepeace piped up from the dark corner of the forge. “You should be proud of yourself, Alvin. Why, let’s make those manacles your journeyman piece, all right?”
Alvin turned and faced him. “My journeyman piece is that plow setting on the workbench, Makepeace.”
It was the first time Alvin ever called his master by his first name. It was as clear as Alvin could let him know that the days of Makepeace talking to him like that were over now.
Makepeace didn’t want to understand him. “Watch how you talk to me, boy! Your journeyman piece is what I say it is, and—”
“Come on, boy, let’s get these on you.” The white-haired Finder wasn’t interested in Makepeace’s talk, it seemed.
“Not yet,” said Alvin.
“They’re ready,” said the Finder.
“Too hot,” said Alvin.
“Well dip them in that bucket there and cool them off.”
“If I do that, they’ll change shape just a little, and then they’ll cut the boy’s arms so they bleed.”
The black-haired Finder rolled his eyes. What did he care about a little blood from a mixup boy?
But the white-haired Finder knew that nobody’d stand for it if he didn’t wait. “No hurry,” he said. “Can’t take too long.”
They sat around waiting without a word. Then Pauley started in talking about nothing, and so did the Finders, and even Dr. Physicker, just jawing away like as if the Finders were any old visitors. Maybe they thought they were making the Finders feel more kindly so they wouldn’t take it out on the boy once they had him across the river. Alvin had to figure that so he wouldn’t hate them.
Besides, an idea was growing in his mind. It wasn’t enough to get Arthur Stuart away tonight—what if Alvin could make it so even the Finders couldn’t find him again?
“What’s in that cachet you Finders use?” he asked.
“Don’t you wish you knew,” said the black-haired Finder.
“It’s no secret,” said the white-haired Finder. “Every slaveowner makes up a box like this for each slave, soon as he’s bought or born. Scrapings from his skin, hair from his head, a drop of blood, things like that. Parts of his own flesh.”
“You get his scent from that?”
“Oh, it ain’t a scent. We ain’t bloodhounds, Mr. Smith.”
Alvin knew that calling him Mr. Smith was pure flattery. He smiled a little, pretending that it pleased him.
“Well then how does it help?”
“Well, it’s our knack,” said the white-haired Finder. “Who knows how it works? We just look at it, and we—it’s like we see the shape of the person we’re looking for.”
“It ain’t like that,” said the black-haired Finder.
“Well that’s how it is for me.”
“I just know where he is. Like I can see his soul. If I’m close enough, anyway. Glowing like a fire, the soul of the slave I’m searching for.” The black-haired Finder grinned. “I can see from a long way off.”
“Can you show me?” asked Alvin.
“Nothing to see,” said the white-haired Finder.
“I’ll show you, boy,” said the black-haired Finder. “I’ll turn my back and y’all move that boy around in the forge. I’ll point to him over my shoulder, perfect all the time.”
“Come on now,” said the white-haired Finder.
“We got nothing to do anyway till the iron cools. Give me the cachet.”
The black-haired Finder did what he bragged—pointed at Arthur Stuart the whole time. But Alvin hardly saw that. He was busy watching from the inside of that Finder, trying to understand what he was doing, what he was seeing, and what it had to do with the cachet. He couldn’t see how seven-year-old dried-up bits of Arthur Stuart’s newborn body could show them where he was now.
Then he remembered that for a moment right at first the Finder hadn’t pointed at all. His finger had wandered a little, and only after just that pause had he started pointing right at Arthur Stuart. Like as if he’d been trying to sort out which of the people behind him in the smithy was Arthur. The cachet wasn’t for Finding—it was for recognizing. The Finders saw everybody, but they couldn’t tell who was who without a cachet.
So what they were seeing wasn’t Arthur’s mind, or Arthur’s soul. They were just seeing a body, like every other body unless they could sort it out. And what they were sorting was plain enough to Alvin—hadn’t he healed enough people in his life to know that people were pretty much the same, except for some bits at the center of each living piece of their flesh? Those bits were different for every single person, yet the same in every part of that person’s flesh. Like it was God’s way of naming them right in their flesh. Or maybe it was the mark of the beast, like in the book of Revelation. Didn’t matter. Alvin knew that the only thing in that cachet that was the same as Arthur Stuart’s body was that signature that lived in every part of his body, even the dead and cast-off parts in the cachet.
I can change those bits, thought Alvin. Surely I can change them, change them in every part of his body. Like turning iron into gold. Like turning water into wine. And then their cachet wouldn’t work at all. Wouldn’t help them at all. They could search for Arthur Stuart all they liked, but as long as they didn’t actually see his face and recognize him the regular way, they’d never find him.
Best of all, they wouldn’t even realize what happened. They’d still have the cachet, same as ever, and they’d know it hadn’t been changed a bit because Alvin wouldn’t change it. But they could search the whole world over and never find a body just like those specks in their cachet, and they’d never guess why.
I’ll do it, thought Alvin. Somehow I’ll figure a way to change him. Even though there must be millions of those signatures all through his body, I’ll find a way to change every one. Tonight I’ll do it, and tomorrow he’ll be safe forever.
The iron was cool. Alvin knelt before Arthur Stuart and gently put the manacles in place. They fit his flesh so perfectly he might have cast them in a mold taken from Arthur’s own body. When they were locked into place, with a length of light chain strung between them, Alvin looked Arthur Stuart in the eye. “Don’t be afraid,” he said.
Arthur Stuart didn’t say a thing.
“I won’t forget you,” said Alvin.
“Sure,” said the black-haired Finder. “But just in case you get ideas about remembering him while he’s on his way home to his rightful master, I ought to tell you square—we never both of us sleep at the same time. And part of being a Finder is, we know if anybody’s coming. You can’t sneak up on us. Least of all you, smith boy. I could see you ten miles away.”
Alvin just looked at him. Eventually the Finder sneered and turned away. They put Arthur Stuart onto the horse in front of the white-haired Finder. But Alvin figured that as soon as they got across the Hio, they’d have Arthur walking. Not out of meanness, maybe—but it wouldn’t do no good for Finders to show themselves being kindly to a runaway. Besides, they had to set an example for the other slaves, didn’t they? Let them see a boy seven years old walking along, feet bleeding, head bowed, and they’d think twice about trying to run off with their children. They’d know that Finders have no mercy.
Pauley and Dr. Physicker rode away with them. They were seeing the Finders to the Hio River and watching them cross the river, to make sure they did no hurt to Arthur Stuart while h
e was in free territory. It was the best they could do.
Makepeace didn’t have much to say, but what he said, he said plain. “A real man would never put manacles on his own friend,” said Makepeace. “I’ll go up to the house and sign your journeyman papers. I don’t want you in my smithy or my house another night.” He left Alvin alone by the forge.
He’d been gone no more than five minutes when Horace Guester got to the smithy.
“Let’s go,” he said.
“No,” said Alvin. “Not yet. They can see us coming. They’ll tell the sheriff if they’re being followed.”
“We got no choice. Can’t lose their trail.”
“You know something about what I am and what I can do,” said Alvin. “I’ve got them even now. They won’t get more than a mile from the Hio shore before they fall asleep.”
“You can do that?”
“I know what goes on inside people when they’re sleepy. I can make that stuff start happening inside them the minute they’re in Appalachee.”
“While you’re at it, why don’t you kill them?”
“I can’t.”
“They aren’t men! It wouldn’t be murder, killing them!”
“They are men,” said Alvin. “Besides, if I kill them, then it’s a violation of the Fugitive Slave Treaty.”
“Are you a lawyer now?”
“Miss Larner explained it to me. I mean she explained it to Arthur Stuart while I was there. He wanted to know. Back last fall. He said, ‘Why don’t my pa just kill them if some Finders come for me?’ And Miss Larner, she told him how there’d just be more Finders coming, only this time they’d hang you and take Arthur Stuart anyway.”
Horace’s face had turned red. Alvin didn’t understand why for a minute, not till Horace Guester explained. “He shouldn’t call me his pa. I never wanted him in my house.” He swallowed. “But he’s right. I’d kill them Finders if I thought it’d do good.”
“No killing,” said Alvin. “I think I can fix it so they’ll never find Arthur again.”
“I know. I’m going to ride him to Canada. Get to the lake and sail across.”
“No sir,” said Alvin. “I think I can fix it so they’ll never find him anywhere. We just got to hide him till they go away.”
“Where?”
“Springhouse, if Miss Larner’ll let us.”
“Why there?”
“I got it hexed up every which way from Tuesday. I thought I was doing it for the teacher lady. But now I reckon I was really doing it for Arthur Stuart.”
Horace grinned. “You’re really something, Alvin. You know that?”
“Maybe. Sure wish I knew what.”
“I’ll go ask Miss Larner if we can make use of her house.”
“If I know Miss Larner, she’ll say yes before you finish asking.”
“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 trying 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.
Prentice Alvin: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume III Page 30