Alvin would have answered, but right then they stepped up onto the porch of the house, and before they could get to the door, it swung open, and Ma stood there looking down at him. From the look on her face, Alvin knew that he was in trouble this time, and he knew why.
“I meant to go to church, Ma!”
“Lots of dead people meant to go to heaven,” she answered, “and they didn't get there, neither.”
“It was my fault, Goody Faith,” said Taleswapper.
“It surely was not, Taleswapper,” she said.
“We got to talking, Goody Faith, and I'm afraid I distracted the boy.”
“The boy was born distracted,” said Ma, never taking her eyes from Alvin's face. “He takes after his father. If you don't bridle and saddle him and ride him to church, he never gets there, and if you don't nail his feet to the floor of the church he's out that door in a minute. A ten-year-old boy who hates the Lord is enough to make his mother wish he'd never been born.”
The words struck Alvin Junior to the heart.
“That's a terrible thing to wish,” said Taleswapper. His voice was real quiet, and Ma finally lifted her gaze to the old man's face.
“I don't wish it,” she finally said.
“I'm sorry, Mama,” said Alvin Junior.
“Come inside,” she said. “I left church to come and find you, and now there's not time to get back before the sermon ends.”
“We talked about a lot of things, Mama,” Alvin said. “About my dreams, and about Ben Franklin, and–”
“The only story I want to hear from you,” said Ma, “is the sound of hymn singing. If you won't go to the church, then you'll sit in the kitchen with me and sing me hymns while I fix the dinner.”
So Alvin didn't get to see Old Ben's sentence in Taleswapper's book, not for hours. Ma kept him singing and working till dinnertime, and after dinner Pa and the big boys and Taleswapper sat around planning tomorrow's expedition to bring a millstone down from the granite mountain.
“I'm doing it for you,” Pa said to Taleswapper, “so you better come along.”
“I never asked you to bring a millstone.”
“Not a day since you've been here that you haven't said something about what a shame it is that such a fine mill gets used as nothing but a haybarn, when people hereabouts need good flour.”
“I only said it the once, that I remember.”
“Well, maybe so,” said Pa, “but every time I see you, I think about that millstone.”
“That's because you keep wishing the millstone had been there when you threw me.”
“He don't wish that!” shouted Cally. “Cause then you'd be dead!”
Taleswapper just grinned, and Papa grinned back. And they went on talking about this and that. Then the wives brought the nephews and nieces over for Sunday supper, and they made Taleswapper sing them the laughing song so many times that Alvin thought he'd scream if he heard another chorus of “Ha, Ha, Hee.”
It wasn't till after supper, after the nephews and nieces were all gone, that Taleswapper brought out his book.
“I wondered if you'd ever open that book,” Pa said.
“Just waiting for the right time.” Then Taleswapper explained about how people wrote down their most important deed.
“I hope you don't expect me to write in there,” Pa said.
“Oh, I wouldn't let you write in it, not yet. You haven't even told me the story of your most important deed.” Taleswapper's voice got even softer. “Maybe you didn't actually do your most important deed.”
Pa looked just a little angry then, or maybe a little afraid. Whichever it was, he got up and came over. “Show me what's in that book, that other people thought was so all-fired important.”
“Oh,” said Taleswapper. “Can you read?”
“I'll have you know I got a Yankee education in Massachusetts before I ever got married and set up as a miller in West Hampshire, and long before I ever came out here. It may not amount to much compared to a London education like you got, Taleswapper, but you don't know how to write a word I can't read, lessen it's Latin.”
Taleswapper didn't answer. He just opened the book. Pa read the first sentence. “The only thing I ever truly made was Americans.” Pa looked up at Taleswapper. “Who wrote that?”
“Old Ben Franklin.”
“The way I heard it the only American he ever made was illegitimate.”
“Maybe Al Junior will explain it to you later,” said Taleswapper.
While they said this, Alvin wormed his way in front of them, to stare at Old Ben's handwriting. It looked no different from other men's writing. Alvin felt a little disappointed, though he couldn't have said what he expected. Should the letters be made of gold? Of course not. There was no reason why a great man's words should look any different on a page than the words of a fool.
Still, he couldn't rid himself of frustration that the words were so plain. He reached out and turned the page, turned many pages, riffling them with his fingers. The words were all the same. Grey ink on yellowing paper.
A flash of light came from the book, blinding him for a moment.
“Don't play with the pages like that,” said Papa. “You'll tear one.”
Alvin turned around to took at Taleswapper. “What's the page with light on it?” he asked. “What does it say there?”
“Light?” asked Taleswapper.
Then Alvin knew that he alone had seen it.
“Find the page yourself,” said Taleswapper.
“He'll just tear it,” said Papa.
“He'll be careful,” said Taleswapper.
But Papa sounded angry. “I said stand away from that book, Alvin Junior.”
Alvin started to obey, but felt Taleswapper's hand on his shoulder. Taleswapper's voice was quiet, and Alvin felt the old man's fingers moving in a sign of warding. “The boy saw something in the book,” said Taleswapper, “and I want him to find it again for me.”
And, to Alvin's surprise, Papa backed down. “If you don't mind getting your book ripped up by that careless lazy boy,” he murmured, then fell silent.
Alvin turned to the book and carefully thumbed the pages, one at a time. Finally one fell into place, and from it came a light, which at first dazzled him, but gradually subsided until it came only from a single sentence, whose letters were on fire.
“Do you see them burning?” asked Alvin.
“No,” said Taleswapper, “But I smell the smoke of it. Touch the words that burn for you.”
Alvin reached out and gingerly touched the beginning of the sentence. The flame, to his surprise, was not hot, though it did warm him. It warmed him through to the bone. He shuddered as the last cold of autumn fled from his body. He smiled, he was so bright inside. But almost as soon as he touched it, the flame collapsed, cooled, was gone.
“What does it say?” asked Mama. She was standing now across the table from them. She wasn't such a good reader, and the words were upside down to her.
Taleswapper read. “A Maker is born.”
“There hasn't been a Maker,” said Mama, “since the one who changed the water into wine.”
“Maybe not, but that's what she wrote,” said Taleswapper.
“Who wrote?” demanded Mama.
“A slip of a girl. About five years ago.”
“What was the story that went with her sentence?” asked Alvin Junior.
Taleswapper shook his head.
“You said you never let people write unless you knew their story.”
“She wrote it when I wasn't looking,” said Taleswapper. “I didn't see it till the next place I stopped.”
“Then how did you know it was her?” asked Alvin.
“It was her,” he answered. “She was the only one there who could have opened the hex I kept on the book in those days.”
“So you don't know what it means? You can't even tell me why I saw those letters burning?”
Taleswapper shook his head. “She was an innkeeper's daugh
ter, if I remember rightly. She spoke very little, and when she did, what she said was always strictly truthful. Never a lie, even to be kind. She was considered to be something of a shrew. But as the proverb says, If you always speak your mind, the evil man will avoid you. Or something like that.”
“Her name?” asked Mama. Alvin looked up in surprise. Mama hadn't seen the glowing letters, so why did she look so powerful eager to know about who wrote them?
“Sorry,” said Taleswapper. “I don't remember her name right now. And if I remembered her name, I wouldn't tell it, nor will I tell whether I know the place where she lived. I don't want people seeking her out, troubling her for answers that she may not want to give. But I will say this. She was a torch, and saw with true eyes. So if she wrote that a Maker was born, I believe it, and that's why I let her words stay in the book.”
“I want to know her story someday,” said Alvin. “I want to know why the letters were so bright.”
He looked up and saw Mama and Taleswapper looking steadily into each other's eyes.
And then, around the fringes of his own vision, where he could almost but not quite see it, he sensed the Unmaker, trembling, invisible, waiting to shiver the world apart. Without even thinking about it, Alvin pulled the front of his shirt out of his pants and knotted the corners together. The Unmaker wavered, then retreated out of sight.
Chapter Eleven – Millstone
Taleswapper woke up to somebody shaking him. Still full dark outside, but it was time to be moving. He sat, flexed himself a little, and took some pleasure in how few knots and pains he had these days, sleeping on a soft bed. I could get used to this, he thought. I could enjoy living here.
The bacon was so fat he could hear it sizzling clear from the kitchen. He was just about to pull his boots on when Mary knocked at the door. “I'm presentable, more or less,” he said.
She came in, holding out two pair of long thick stockings. “I knotted them myself,” she said.
“I couldn't buy socks this thick in Philadelphia.”
“Winter gets right cold here in the Wobbish country, and–” She didn't finish. Got too shy, ducked her head, and scampered out of the room.
Taleswapper pulled on the stockings, and his boots over them, and grinned. He didn't feel bad about accepting a few things like this. He worked as hard as anybody, and he'd done a lot to help ready this farm for winter. He was a good roof man– he liked climbing and didn't get dizzy. So his own hands had made sure the house and barns and coops and sheds all were tight and dry.
And, without anybody ever deciding to do it, he had prepared the millhouse to receive a millstone. He had personally loaded all the hay from the mill floor, five wagons full. The twins, who really hadn't got their two farms going yet, since they married only that summer, did the unloading up in the big barn. It was all done without Miller himself ever touching a pitchfork. Taleswapper saw to that, without making a fuss over it, and Miller never insisted.
Other things, though, weren't going so well. Ta-Kumsaw and his Shaw-Nee Reds were driving off so many folks from down Carthage way that everybody had the jitters. It was fine for the Prophet to have his big town of thousands of Reds across the river, all talking about how they'd never again raise their hands in war for any reason. But there were a lot of Reds who felt the way Ta-Kumsaw did, that the White man ought to be forced to the shores of the Atlantic and floated back to Europe, with or without boats. There was war talk, and word was that Bill Harrison down in Carthage was only too happy to fan that particular flame, not to mention the French in Detroit, always urging the Reds to attack the American settlers in land the French claimed was part of Canada.
Folks in the town of Vigor Church talked about this all the time, but Taleswapper knew that Miller didn't take it all that seriously. He thought of Reds as country clowns that wanted nothing more than to guzzle such whisky as they could find. Taleswapper had seen that attitude before, but only in New England. Yankees never seemed to realize that New England Reds with any gumption had long since moved to the state of Irrakwa. It would surely open Yankee eyes to see that the Irrakwa were working heavily with steam engines brought straight from England, and up in the Finger Lakes country a White named Eli Whitney was helping them make a factory that could turn out guns about twenty times faster than it had ever been done before. Someday those Yankees were going to wake up and find out that the Reds weren't all likker-mad, and some White folks were going to have to scramble fast to catch up.
In the meantime, though, Miller didn't take the war talk very seriously. “Everybody knows there's Reds in the woods. Can't stop them from skulking around, but I haven't missed any chickens so it's no problem yet.”
“More bacon?” asked Miller. He shoved the bacon board across the table toward Taleswapper.
“I'm not used to eating so much in the morning,” said Taleswapper. “Since I've been here I've had more food at every meal than I used to eat in a whole day.”
“Put some meat on your bones,” said Faith. She slapped down a couple of hot scones with honey smeared on them.
“I can't eat another bite,” protested Taleswapper.
The scones slid right off Taleswapper's plate. “Got em,” said Al Junior.
“Don't reach across the table like that,” said Miller. “And you can't eat both those scones.”
Al Junior proved his father wrong in an alarmingly short time. Then they washed the honey off their hands, put on their gloves, and went out to the wagon. The first light was just showing in the east as David and Calm, who lived townward from the farm, rode up. Al Junior climbed in the back of the wagon, along with all the tools and ropes and tents and supplies– it would be a few days before they came back.
“So– do we wait for the twins and Measure?” asked Taleswapper.
Miller swung up onto the wagon seat. “Measure's on ahead, felling trees for the sledge. And Wastenot and Wantnot are staying back here, riding circuit from house to house.” He grinned. “Can't leave the womenfolk unprotected, with all the talk of wild Reds prowling around, can we?”
Taleswapper grinned back. Good to know that Miller wasn't as complacent as he seemed.
It was a good long way up to the quarry. On the road they passed the ruins of a wagon with a split millstone right in the middle of it. “That was our first try,” said Miller. “But an axle dried out and jammed up coming down this steep hill, and the whole wagon fell in under the weight of the stone.”
They came near a good-sized stream, and Miller told about how they had tried to float two millstones down on a raft, but both times the raft just up and sank. “We've had bad luck,” said Miller, but from the set of his face he seemed to take it personally, as if someone had set out to make things fail.
“That's why we're using a sledge and rollers this time,” said Al Junior, leaning over the back of the seat. “Nothing can fall off, nothing can break, and even if it does, it's all just logs, and we got no shortage of replacements.”
“As long as it don't rain,” said Miller. “Nor snow.”
“Sky looks clear enough,” said Taleswapper.
“Sky's a liar,” said Miller. “When it comes to anything I want to do, water always gets in my way.”
They got to the quarry when the sun was full up, but still far from noon. Of course, the trip back would be much longer. Measure had already felled six stout young trees and about twenty small ones. David and Calm set right to work, stripping off branches and rounding them smooth as possible. To Taleswapper's surprise, it was Al Junior who picked up the sack of stonecutting tools and headed up into the rocks.
“Where are you going?” asked Taleswapper.
“Oh, I've got to find a good place for cutting,” said Al Junior.
“He's got an eye for stone,” said Miller. But he wasn't saying all he knew.
“And when you find the stone, what'll you do then?” asked Taleswapper.
“Why, I'll cut it.” Alvin sauntered on up the path with all the arrogance of a bo
y who knows he's about to do a man's job.
“Got a good hand for stone, too,” said Miller.
“He's only ten years old,” said Taleswapper.
“He cut the first stone when he was six,” said Miller.
“Are you saying it's a knack?”
“I ain't saying nothing.”
“Will you say this, Al Miller? Tell me if by chance you are a seventh son.”
“Why do you ask?”
“It's said, by those who know such things, that a seventh son of a seventh son is born with the knowledge of how things look under the surface. That's why they make such good dowsers.”
“Is that what they say?”
Measure walked up, faced his father, put his hands on his hips, and looked plain exasperated. “Pa, what harm is there in telling him? Everybody in the whole country roundabout here knows it.”
“Maybe I think Taleswapper here knows more than I want him to know already.”
“That's a right ungracious thing to say, Pa, to a man who's proved himself a friend twice over.”
“He doesn't have to tell me anything he doesn't want me to know,” said Taleswapper.
“Then I'll tell you,” said Measure. “Pa is a seventh son, all right.”
“And so is Al Junior,” said Taleswapper. “Am I right? You've never mentioned it, but I'd guess that when a man gives his own name to a son other than his firstborn, it's bound to be his seventh born.”
“Our oldest brother Vigor died in the Hatrack River only a few minutes after Al Junior was born,” said Measure.
“Hatrack,” said Taleswapper.
“Do you know the place?” asked Measure.
“I know every place. But for some reason that name makes me think I should have remembered it before now, and I can't think why. Seventh son of a seventh son. Does he conjure the millstone out of the rock?”
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