But he hardly noticed the weight of his leg, or the dizziness. The pain was his enemy, throbs and stabs of it taking his mind away from the task that Taleswapper had set him: to heal himself.
Yet the pain was his friend, too. It built a wall around him so he scarce knew he was in a house, in a roof, on a bed. The outside world could burn up and turn to ash and he'd never notice it. It was the world inside that he was exploring now.
Taleswapper didn't know half what he was talking about. It wasn't a matter of making pictures in his mind. His leg wouldn't get better from just pretending it was all healed up. But Taleswapper still had the right idea. If Alvin could feel his way through the rock, could find the weak and strong places and teach them where to break and where to hold firm, why couldn't he do it with skin and bone?
Trouble was, skin and bone was all mixed up. The rock was pretty much the same thing through and through, but the skin changed with every layer, and it wasn't no easy trick figuring where everything went. He lay there with his eyes closed, looking into his own flesh for the first time. At first he tried following the pain, but that didn't get nowhere, just led him to where everything was mashed and cut and messed up so he couldn't tell up from down. After a long while he tried a different tack. He listened to his heart beating. At first the pain kept tearing him away, but after a while he closed in on that sound. If there was noise in the world outside he didn't know about it, because the pain shut all that out. And the rhythm of the heartbeat, that shut out the pain, or mostly, anyway.
He followed the tracks of his blood, the big strong stream, the little streams. Sometimes he got lost. Sometimes a stab from his leg just broke in and demanded to be heard. But by and by he found his way to healthy skin and bone in the other leg. The blood wasn't half so strong there, but it led him where he wanted to go. He found all the layers, like the skin of an onion. He learned their order, saw how the muscle was tied together, how the tiny veins linked up, how the skin stretched taut and bonded tight.
Only then did he find his way to the bad leg. The patch of skin Mama sewed on was pretty much dead, just turning to rot. Alvin Junior knew what it needed, though, if any part of it was to live. He found the mashed-off ends of the arteries around the wound, and began to urge them to grow, just the way he made cracks travel through stone. The stone was easy, compared to this– to make a crack, it just had to let go, that's all. The living flesh was slower to do what he wanted, and pretty soon he gave up on all but the strongest artery.
He began to see how it was using bits and pieces of this and that to build with. A lot was happening that was far too small and fast and complicated for Alvin to get hold of with his mind. But he could get his body to free up what the artery needed in order to grow. He could send it where it was needed, and after a while the artery linked up with the rotted tissue. It took some doing, but he finally found the end of a shriveled artery and linked them up, and sent the blood flowing into the sewn-on patch.
Too soon, too fast. He felt the heat on his leg from blood pouring out of the dead flesh at a dozen points; it couldn't hold in all the blood he sent. Slow, slow, slow. He followed the blood, now seeping instead of pumping, and again linked up blood vessels, arteries to veins, trying to match it, as best he could, to the other leg.
Finally it was done, or well enough. The normal flow of blood could be contained. Many parts of the patch of skin came back to life as the blood returned. Other parts stayed dead. Alvin kept going around and around with the blood, stripping away the dead parts, breaking them up into bits and pieces too small for him to recognize. But the living parts recognized them well enough, took them up, put them to work. Wherever Alvin explored, he made the flesh grow.
Until he was so weary in his mind from thinking so small and working so hard that he fell asleep in spite of himself.
“I don't want to wake him.”
“No way to change the bandage without touching it, Faith.”
“All right, then– oh, be careful, Alvin! No, let me!”
“I've done this before–”
“On cows, Alvin, not on little boys!”
Alvin Junior felt pressure on his leg. Something pulling at the skin there. The pain wasn't as bad as yesterday. But he was still too tired even to open his eyes. Even to make a sound to let them know he was awake, he could hear them.
“Good laws, Faith, he must have bled something awful in the night.”
“Mama, Mary says I have to–”
“Hush up and get on out of here, Cally! Can't you see your ma's worried about–”
“No need to yell at the boy, Alvin. He's only seven.”
“Seven's old enough to keep his mouth shut and leave grown-ups alone when we've got things to– look at that.”
“I can hardly believe it.”
“I thought to see pus coming out like cream from a cow's tit.”
“Clean as can be.”
“And skin growing back, will you look at that? Your sewing must've took.”
“I hardly dared to hope that skin would live.”
“Can't even see no bone under there.”
“The Lord is blessing us. I prayed all night, Alvin, and look what God has done.”
“Well, you should've prayed harder, then, and got it healed up tight. I need this boy for chores.”
“Don't you get blasphemous with me, Alvin Miller.”
“It just gripes me hollow, the way God always sneaks in to take the credit. Maybe Alvin's just a good healer, you ever think of that?”
“Look, your nastiness is waking the boy.”
“See if he wants a drink of water.”
“He's getting one whether he wants it or not.”
Alvin wanted it badly. His body was dry, not just his mouth; it needed to make back what it lost in blood. So he swallowed as much as he could, from a tin cup held to his mouth. A lot of it spilled around his face and neck but he didn't hardly notice that. It was the water that trickled into his belly that mattered. He lay back and tried to find out from the inside how his wound was doing. But it was too hard to get back there, too hard to concentrate. He dropped off before he was halfway there.
He woke again, and thought it must be night again, or maybe the curtains were drawn. He couldn't find out cause it was too hard to open his eyes, and the pain was back, fierce again, and something maybe even worse: the wound was a-tickling till he could hardly keep himself from reaching down to scratch. After a while, though, he was able to find the wound and once again help the layers to grow. By the time he slept, there was a thin, complete layer of skin over the whole wound. Underneath, the body was still working to renew the ravaged muscles and knit the broken bones. But there'd be no more loss of blood, no more open wound to get infected.
“Look at this, Taleswapper. You ever seen the like of this?”
“Skin like a newborn baby.”
“Maybe I'm crazy, but except for the splint I can't see no reason to leave this leg bound up no more.”
“Not a sign of a wound. No, you're right, there's no need for a bandage now.”
“Maybe my wife is right, Taleswapper. Maybe God just rared back and passed a miracle on my boy.”
“Can't prove anything. When the boy wakes up, maybe he'll know something about it.”
“Not a chance of that. He hasn't even opened his eyes this whole time.”
“One thing's certain, Mr. Miller. The boy isn't about to die. That's more than I could have guessed yesterday.”
“I was set to build him a box to hold him underground, that I was. I didn't see no chance him living. Will you look at how healthy he is? I want to know what's protecting him, or who.”
“Whatever is protecting him, Mr. Miller, the boy is stronger. That's something to think about. His protector split that stone, but Al Junior put it back together and not a thing his protector could do about it.”
“Reckon he even knew what he was doing?”
“He must have some notion of his powers. He knew what he co
uld do with the stone.”
“I never heard of a knack like this, to tell you straight. I told Faith what he did with that stone, dressing it on the backside without ever laying on a tool, and she starts reading from the Book of Daniel and crying about fulfilment of the prophecy. Wanted to rush in here and warn the boy about clay feet. Don't that beat all? Religion makes them crazy. Not a woman I ever met wasn't crazy with religion.”
The door opened.
“Get out of here! Are you so dumb I have to tell you twenty times, Cally? Where's his mother, can't she keep one seven-year-old boy away from–”
“Be easy on the lad, Miller. He's gone now, anyway.”
“I don't know what's wrong with him. As soon as Al Junior is down, I see Cally's face wherever I look. Like an undertaker hoping for a fee.”
“Maybe it's strange to him. To have Alvin hurt.”
“As many times as Alvin's been an inch from death–”
“But never injured.”
A long silence.
“Taleswapper.”
“Yes, Mr. Miller?”
“You've been a good friend to us here, sometimes in spite of ourselfs. But I reckon you're still a walking man.”
“That I am, Mr. Miller.”
“What I'm saying is, not to rush you off, but if you go anytime soon, and you happen to be heading generally eastward, do you think you could carry a letter for me?”
“I'd be glad to. And no fee, to sender or receiver.”
“That's right kind of you. I been thinking on what you said. About a boy needing to be sent far off from certain dangers. And I thought, in all the world where's there some folks I can trust to took after the boy? We got no kin worth speaking of back in New England– I don't want the boy raised Puritan on the brink of hell anyway.”
“I'm relieved to hear that, Mr. Miller, because I have no great longing to see New England again myself.”
“If you just follow back on the road we made coming west, sooner or later you come along to a place on the Hatrack River, some thirty miles north of the Hio, not all that far downriver from Fort Dekane. There's a road house there, or leastwise there was, with a graveyard out back where a stone says 'Vigor he died to save his kin.'”
“You want me to take the boy?”
“No, no, I'll not send him now that the snow's come. Water–”
“I understand.”
“There's a blacksmith there, and I thought he might want a prentice. Alvin's young, but he's big for his age, and I reckon he'll be a bargain for the smith.”
“Prentice?”
“Well, I sure won't make him a bond slave, now, will I? And I got no money to send him off to school.”
“I'll take the letter. But I hope I can stay till the boy is awake, so I can say good-bye.”
“I wasn't going to send you out tonight, was I? Nor tomorrow, with new snow deep enough to smother bunnies.”
“I didn't know if you had noticed the weather.”
“I always notice when there's water underfoot.” He laughed wryly, and they left the room.
Alvin Junior lay there, trying to figure why Pa wanted to send him away. Hadn't he done right all his life, as best he could? Hadn't he tried to help all he knew how? Didn't he go to Reverend Thrower's school, even though the preacher was out to make him mad or stupid? Most of all, didn't he finally get a perfect stone down from the mountain, holding it together all the time, teaching it the way to go, and at the very end risking his leg just so the stone wouldn't split? And now they were going to send him away.
Prentice! To a blacksmith! In his whole life he never even saw a blacksmith up to now. They had to ride three days to the nearest smithy, and Pa never let him go along. In his whole life he never even been ten mile from home one way or any other.
In fact, the more he thought about it the madder he got. Hadn't he been begging Mama and Papa just to let him go out walking in the woods alone, and they wouldn't let him. Had to have somebody with him all the time, like he was a captive or a slave about to run off. If he was five minutes late getting somewhere, they came to look for him. He never got to go on long trips– the longest one ever was to the quarry a few times. And now, after they kept him penned up like a Christmas goose all his life, they were set to send him off to the end of the whole earth.
It was so blame unfair that tears come to his eyes and squeezed out and tickled down his cheeks right into his ears, which felt so silly it made him laugh.
“What you laughing at?” asked Cally.
Alvin hadn't heard him come in.
“Are you all better now? It ain't bleeding nowhere, Al.”
Cally touched his cheek.
“You crying cause it hurts so bad?”
Alvin probably could have spoke to him, but it seemed like too much work to open up his mouth and push words out, so he kind of shook his head, slow and gentle.
“You going to die, Alvin?” asked Cally.
He shook his head again.
“Oh,” said Cally.
He sounded so disappointed that it made Alvin a little mad. Mad enough to get his mouth working after all. “Sorry,” he croaked.
“Well it ain't fair, anyhow,” said Cally. “I didn't want you dead, but they all said you was going to die. And I got to thinking what it'd be like if I was the one they all took care of. All the time, everybody watching out for you, and when I say one little thing they just say, Get out of here, Cally, Just shut up, Cally. Nobody asked you, Cally, Ain't you spose to be in bed, Cally? They don't care what I do. Except when I start hitting you, then they all say, Don't get in fights, Cally.”
“You wrestle real good for a field mouse.” At least that was what Alvin meant to say, but he didn't know for sure if his lips even moved.
“You know what I did one time when I was six? I went out and got myself lost in the woods. I just walked and walked. Sometimes I closed my eyes and spun around a few times so I'd sure not know where I was. I must have been lost half the day. Did one soul come looking for me? I finally had to turn around and find my own way home. Nobody said, Where you been all day, Cally? Mama just said, Your hands are dirty as the back end of a sick horse, go wash yourself.”
Alvin laughed again, near silently, his chest heaving.
“It's funny for you. Everybody looks after you.”
Alvin worked hard to make a sound this time. “You want me gone?”
Cally waited a long time to answer. “No. Who'd play with me then? Just the dumb old cousins. There ain't a good wrassler in the bunch of them.”
“I'm going,” whispered Alvin.
“No you ain't. You're the seventh son, and they'll never let you go.”
“Going.”
“Course the way I count up it's me that's number seven. David, Calm, Measure, Wastenot, Wantnot, Alvin Junior that's you, and then me, that's seven.”
“Vigor.”
“He's dead. He's been dead a long time. Somebody ought to tell that to Ma. and Pa.”
Alvin lay there, near wore out from the few things he said. Cally didn't say anything much after that. Just sat there, still as could be. Holding Alvin's hand real tight. Pretty soon Alvin started drifting, so he wasn't sure altogether whether Cally really spoke or it was in a dream. But he heard Cally say, “I don't never wish you dead, Alvin.” And then he might have said, “I wish I was you.” But anyway Alvin drifted off to sleep, and when he woke up again there was nobody with him and the house was still except for nightsounds, the wind rattling the shutters, the timbers popping as they shrunk from the cold, the log snapping in the hearth.
One more time Alvin went inside himself and worked his way down to the wound. Only this time he didn't have much to do with the skin and muscle. It was the bones he worked on now. It surprised him how lacy it was, pocked with little hollows all over, not solid straight through like the millstone was. But he learned the way of it soon enough, and it was easy after a while to knit the bones up tight.
Still, there was something wron
g with that bone. Something in his bad leg just wouldn't get exactly like the good leg. But it was so small he couldn't see it clear. Just knew that whatever it was, it made the bone sick inside, just a little patch of sickness, but he couldn't figure how to make it better. Like trying to pick up snowflakes off the ground, whenever he thought he had ahold of something, it turned out to be nothing, or maybe just too small to see.
Maybe, though, it would just go away. Maybe if everything else got better, that sick place on his bone would get better by itself.
* * *
Eleanor was late getting back from her mother's house. Armor believed that a wife should have strong ties with her family, but coming home at dusk was too dangerous.
“There's talk of wild Reds up from the south,” said Armor-of-God. “And you traipsing about after dark.”
“I hurried home,” she said. “I know the way in the dark.”
“It's not a question of knowing the way,” he said sternly. “The French are giving guns as bounty on White scalps now. It won't tempt the Prophet's people, but there's many a Choc-Taw who'd be glad to come up to Fort Detroit, gathering scalps along the way.”
“Alvin isn't going to die,” said Eleanor.
Armor hated it when she turned the subject like that. But it was such news that he couldn't very well not ask after it. “They decide to take off the leg, then?”
“I saw the leg. It's getting better. And Alvin Junior was awake late this afternoon. I talked to him awhile.”
“I'm glad he was awake, Elly, I truly am, but I hope you don't expect the leg to get better. A big wound like that may look to be healing for a while, but the rot'll set in pretty soon.”
“I don't think so this time,” she said. “You want supper?”
“I must have gnawed down two loaves just pacing back and forth wondering whether you were even coming home.”
“It isn't good for a man to get a belly.”
“Well, I got one, and it calls out for food just like any other man's.”
“Mama gave me a cheese to bring home.” She set it out on the table.
Armor had his doubts. He figured half the reason Faith Miller's cheeses turned out so good was because she did things to the milk. At the same time, there wasn't no better cheese on the banks of the Wobbish, nor up Tippy-Canoe Creek neither.
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