“I think my real vision was about the same thing,” said Alvin.
“You don't have to tell me about the Shining Man,” said Taleswapper. “I never mean to pry.”
“You mean you just pry by accident?” said Alvin.
That was the kind of remark that got him a slap across the face at home, but Taleswapper only laughed.
“I did something evil and I didn't even know it,” said Alvin. “The Shining Man came and stood by the foot of my bed, and first he showed me a vision of what I done, so I knowed it was bad. I tell you I cried, to know I was so wicked. But then he showed me what my knack was for, and now I see it's the same thing you're talking about. I saw a stone that I pulled out of a mountain, and it was round as a ball, and when I looked close I saw it was the whole world, with forests and animals and oceans and fish and all on it. That's what my knack is for, to try to put things in order.”
Taleswapper's eyes were gleaming. “The Shining Man showed you such a vision,” he said. “Such a vision as I'd give my life to see.”
“Only cause I'd used my knack to cause harm to others, just for my own pleasure,” said Alvin. “I made a promise then, my most solemn vow, that I'd never use my knack for my own good. Only for others.”
“A good promise,” said Taleswapper. “I wish all men and women in the world would take such an oath and keep it.”
“Anyway, that's how I know that the– the Unmaker, it isn't a vision. The Shining Man wasn't even a vision. What he showed me, that was a vision, but him standing there, he was real.”
“And the Unmaker?”
“Real, too. I don't just see it in my head, it's there.”
Taleswapper nodded, his eyes never leaving Alvin's face.
“I've got to make things,” said Alvin. “Faster than he can tear them down.”
“Nobody can make things fast enough for that,” said Taleswapper. “If all the men in all the world made all the earth into a million million million million bricks, and built a wall all the days of their lives, the wall would crumble faster than they could build it. Sections of the wall would fall apart even before they built them.”
“Now that's silly,” said Alvin. “A wall can't fall down before you build it up.”
“If they keep at it long enough, the bricks will crumble into dust when they pick them up, their own hands will rot and slough like slime from their bones, until brick and flesh and bone alike all break down into the same indistinguishable dust. Then the Unmaker will sneeze, and the dust win be infinitely dispersed so that it can never come together again. The universe will be cold, still, silent, dark, and at last the Unmaker will be at rest.”
Alvin tried to make sense out of what Taleswapper was saying. It was the same thing he did whenever Thrower talked about religion in school, so Alvin thought of it as kind of a dangerous thing to do. But he couldn't stop himself from doing it, and from asking his questions, even if they made people mad. “If things are breaking down faster than they're getting made, then how come anything's still around? Why hasn't the Unmaker already won? What are we doing here?”
Taleswapper wasn't Reverend Thrower. Alvin's question didn't make him angry. He just knit his brow and shook his head. “I don't know. You're right. We can't be here. Our existence is impossible.”
“Well we are here, in case you didn't notice,” said Alvin. “What kind of stupid tale is that, when we just have to look at each other to know it isn't true?”
“It has problems, I admit.”
“I thought you only told stories you believe.”
“I believed it while I was telling it.”
Taleswapper looked so mournful that Alvin reached out and laid his hand on the man's shoulder, though his coat was so thick and Alvin's hand so small that he wasn't altogether sure Taleswapper felt his touch. “I believed it, too. Parts of it. For a while.”
“Then there is truth in it. Maybe not much, but some.” Taleswapper looked relieved.
But Alvin couldn't leave well enough alone. “Just because you believe it doesn't make it so.”
Taleswapper's eyes went wide. Now I've done it, thought Alvin. Now I've made him mad, just like I make Thrower mad. I do it to everbody. So he wasn't surprised when Taleswapper reached out both arms toward him, took Alvin's face between his hands, and spoke with such force as to drive the words deep into Alvin's forehead. “Everything possible to be believed is an image of truth.”
And the words did pierce him, and he understood them, though he could not have put in words what it was he understood. Everything possible to be believed is an image of truth. If it feels true to me, then there is something true in it, even if it isn't all true. And if I study it out in my mind, then maybe I can find what parts of it are true, and what parts are false, and– And Alvin realized something else. That all his arguments with Thrower came down to this: that if something just plain didn't make sense to Alvin, he didn't believe it, and no amount of quoting from the Bible would convince him. Now Taleswapper was telling him that he was right to refuse to believe things that made no sense. “Taleswapper, does that mean that what I don't believe can't be true?”
Taleswapper raised his eyebrows and came back with another proverb. “Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believed.”
Alvin was fed up with proverbs. “For once would you tell me straight!”
“The proverb is the straight truth, lad. I refuse to twist it up to fit a confused mind.”
“Well, if my mind's confused, it's all your fault. All your talk about bricks crumbling before the wall is built–”
“Didn't you believe that?”
“Maybe I did. I reckon if I set out to weave all the grass of this meadow into bug baskets, before I got to the far end of the meadow the grass would all have died and rotted to nothing. I reckon if I set out to turn all the trees from here to Noisy River into barns, the trees'd all be dead and fell before I ever got to the last of them. Can't build a house out of rotted logs.”
“I was going to say, 'Men cannot build permanent things out of impermanent pieces.' That is the law. But the way you said it was the proverb of the law: 'You can't build a house out of rotted logs.'”
“I said a proverb?”
“And when we get back to the house, I'll write it in my book.”
“In the sealed part?” asked Alvin. Then he remembered that he had only seen that book by peeking through a crack in his floor late at night when Taleswapper was writing by candlelight in the room below him.
Thleswapper looked at him sharp. “I hope you never tried to conjure open that seal.”
Alvin was offended. He might peek through a crack, but he'd never sneak. “Just knowing you don't want me to read that part is better than any old seal, and if you don't know that, you ain't my friend. I don't pry into your secrets.”
“My secrets?” Taleswapper laughed. “I seal that back part because that's where my own writings go, and I simply don't want anyone else writing in that part of the book.”
“Do other people write in the front part?”
“They do.”
“Well, what do they write? Can I write there?”
“They write one sentence about the most important thing they ever did or ever saw with their own eyes. That one sentence is all I need from then on to remind me of their story. So when I visit in another city, in another house, I can open the book, read the sentence, and tell the story.”
Alvin thought of a remarkable possibility. Taleswapper had lived with Ben Franklin, hadn't he? “Did Ben Franklin write in your book?”
“He wrote the very first sentence.”
“He wrote down the most important thing he ever did?”
“That he did.”
“Well, what was it?”
Taleswapper stood up. “Come back to the house with me, lad, and I'll show you. And on the way I'll tell you the story to explain what he wrote.”
Alvin sprang up spry, and took the old man by his heavy sleeve, and fairl
y dragged him toward the path back down to the house. “Come on, then!” Alvin didn't know if Taleswapper had decided not to go on to church, or if he plumb forgot that's where they were supposed to go– whatever the reason, Alvin was happy enough with the result. A Sunday with no church at all was a Sunday worth being alive. Add to that Taleswapper's stories and Maker Ben's own writing in a book, and it was well nigh to being a perfect day.
“There's no hurry, lad. I won't die before noon, nor will you, and stories take some time to tell.”
“Was it something he made?” asked Alvin. “The most important thing?”
“As a matter of fact, it was.”
“I knew it! The two-glass spectacles? The stove?”
“People used to say to him all the time, Ben, you're a true Maker. But he always denied it. Just like he denied he was a wizard. I've got no knack for hidden powers, he said. I just take pieces of things and put them together in a better way. There were stoves before I made my stove. There were spectacles before I made my spectacles. I never really made anything in my life, in the way a true Maker would do it. I give you two-glass spectacles, but a Maker would give you new eyes.”
“He figured he never made anything?”
“I asked him that one day. The very day that I was starting out with my book. I said to him, Ben, what's the most important thing you ever made? And he started in on what I just told you, about how he never really made anything, and I said to him, Ben, you don't believe that, and I don't believe that. And he said, Bill, you found me out. There's one thing I made, and it's the most important thing I ever did, and it's the most important thing I ever saw.”
Taleswapper fell silent, just shambling down the slope through leaves that whispered loud underfoot.
“Well, what was it?”
“Don't you want to wait till you get home and read it for yourself?”
Alvin got real mad then, madder than he meant to. “I hate it when people know something and they won't say!”
“No need to get your dander up, lad. I'll tell you. What he wrote was this: The only thing I ever truly made was Americans.”
“That don't make sense. Americans are born.”
“Well, now, that's not so, Alvin. Babies are born. In England the same as in America. So it isn't being born that makes them American.”
Alvin thought about that for a second. “It's being born in America.”
“Well, that's true enough. But along about fifty years ago, a baby born in Philadelphia was never called an American baby. It was a Pennsylvanian baby. And babies born in New Amsterdam were Knickerbockers, and babies born in Boston were Yankees, and babies born in Charleston were Jacobians or Cavaliers or some such name.”
“They still are,” Alvin pointed out.
“They are indeed, lad, but they're something else besides. All those names, Old Ben figured, those names divided us up into Virginians and Orangemen and Rhode Islanders, into Whites and Reds and Blacks, into Quakers and Papists and Puritans and Presbyterians, into Dutch, Swedish, French, and English. Old Ben saw how a Virginian could never quite trust a man from Netticut, and how a White man could never quite trust a Red, because they were different. And he said to himself, If we've got all these names to hold us apart, why not a name to bind us together? He toyed with a lot of names that already were used. Colonials, for instance. But he didn't like calling us all Colonials because that made us always turn our eyes back to Europe, and besides, the Reds aren't Colonials, are they! Nor are the Blacks, since they came as slaves. Do you see the problem?”
“He wanted a name we could all share the same,” said Alvin.
“Just right. There was one thing we all had in common. We all lived on the same continent. North America. So he thought of calling us North Americans. But that was too long. So–”
“Americans.”
“That's a name that belongs to a fisherman living on the rugged coast of West Anglia as much as to a baron ruling his slavehold in the southwest part of Dryden. It belongs as much to the Mohawk chief in Irrakwa as to the Knickerbocker shopkeeper in New Amsterdam. Old Ben knew that if people could once start thinking of themselves as Americans, we'd become a nation. Not just a piece of some tired old European country, but a single new nation here in a new land. So he started using that word in everything he wrote. Poor Richard's Almanac was full of talk about Americans this and Americans that. And Old Ben wrote letters to everybody, saying things like, Conflict over land claims is a problem for Americans to solve together. Europeans can't possibly understand what Americans need to survive. Why should Americans die for European wars? Why should Americans be bound by European precedents in our courts of law? Inside of five years, there was hardly a person from New England to Jacobia who didn't think of himself as being, at least partly, an American.”
“It was just a name.”
"But it is the name by which we call ourselves. And it includes everyone else on this continent who's willing to accept the name. Old Ben worked hard to make sure that name included as many people as possible. Without ever holding any public office except postmaster, he singlehandedly turned a name into a nation. With the King ruling over the Cavaliers in the south, and the Lord Protector's men ruling over New England in the north, he saw nothing but chaos and war ahead, with Pennsylvania smack in the middle. He wanted to forestall that war, and he used the name 'American' to fend it off. He made the New Englanders fear to offend Pennsylvania, and made the Cavaliers bend over backward trying to woo Pennsylvanian support. He was the one who agitated for an American Congress to establish trade policies and uniform land law.
“And finally,” Taleswapper continued, “just before he invited me over from England, he wrote the American Compact and got the seven original colonies to sign it. It wasn't easy, you know– even the number of states was the result of a great deal of struggle. The Dutch could see that most of the immigrants to America were English and Irish and Scotch, and they didn't want to be swallowed up– so Old Ben allowed them to divide New Netherland into three colonies so they'd have more votes in the Congress. With Suskwahenny split off from the land claimed by New Sweden and Pennsylvania, another squabble was put to rest.”
“That's only six states,” said Alvin.
“Old Ben refused to allow anyone to sign the Compact unless the Irrakwa were included as the seventh state, with firm borders, with Reds governing themselves. There were plenty of people who wanted a White man's nation, but Old Ben wouldn't hear of it. The only way to have peace, he said, was for all Americans to join together as equals. That's why his Compact doesn't allow slavery or even bonding. That's why his Compact doesn't allow any religion to have authority over any other. That's why his Compact doesn't let the government close down a press or silence a speech. White, Black, and Red; Papist, Puritan, and Presbyterian; rich man, poor man, beggarman, thief– we all live under the same laws. One nation, created out of a single word.”
“American.”
“Now do you see why he calls it his greatest deed?”
“How come the Compact itself ain't more important?”
“The Compact was just the words. The name 'American' was the idea that made the words.”
“It still doesn't include the Yankees and the Cavaliers, and it didn't stop war, neither, cause the Appalachee folk are still fighting against the King.”
“But it does include all those people, Alvin. Remember the story of George Washington in Shenandoah? He was Lord Potomac in those days, leading King Robert's largest army against that poor ragtag band that was all Ben Arnold had left. It was plain to see that in the morning, Lord Potomac's Cavaliers would overrun that little fort and seal the doom of Tom Jefferson's free-mountain rebellion. But Lord Potomac had fought beside those mountain men in the wars against the French. And Tom Jefferson had been his friend in days gone by. In his heart he could not bear to think of the morrow's battle. Who was King Robert, that so much blood should be shed for him? All these rebels wanted was to own their land, and not
have the King set barons over them, to tax them dry and turn them into slaves as surely as any Black in the Crown Colonies. He didn't sleep at all that night.”
“He was praying,” said Alvin.
“That's the way Thrower tells it,” Taleswapper said sharply. “But no one knows. And when he spoke to the troops the next morning, he didn't say a word about prayer. But he did speak about the word Ben Franklin made. He wrote a letter to the King, resigning from his command and rejecting his lands and titles. He didn't sign it 'Lord Potomac,' he signed it 'George Washington.' Then he rose up in the morning and stood before the blue-coat soldiers of the King and told them what he had done, and told them that they were free to choose, all of them, whether to obey their officers and go into battle, or march instead in defense of Tom Jefferson's great Declaration of Freedom. He said, 'The choice is yours, but as for me–'”
Alvin knew the words, as did every man, woman, and child on the continent. Now the words meant all the more to him, and he shouted them out: “'My American sword will never shed a drop of American blood!'”
“And then, when most of his army had gone and joined the Appalachee rebels, with their guns and their powder, their wagons and their supplies, he ordered the senior officer of the men loyal to the King to arrest him. 'I broke my oath to the King,' he said. 'It was for the sake of a higher good, but still I broke my oath, and I will pay the price for my treason.' He paid, yes sir, paid with a blade through his neck. But how many people outside the court of the King think it was really treason?”
“Not a one,” said Alvin.
“And has the King been able to fight a single battle against the Appalachees since that day?”
“Not a one.”
“Not a man on that battlefield in Shenandoah was a citizen of the United States. Not a man of them lived under the American Compact. And yet when George Washington spoke of American swords and American blood, they understood the name to mean themselves. Now tell me, Alvin Junior, was old Ben wrong to say that the greatest thing he ever made was a single word?”
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