ALVIN JOURNEYMAN

by Orson Scott Card

  “Let me understand you,” said Peggy. “You plan to discredit me, destroy my reputation, and convict Alvin, all for the sake of justice in America?”

  “As I said,” Marty repeated, “I hope your lawyer can do as good a job defending Alvin as I’m going to do prosecuting him. I hope he can find as much damning evidence against my witnesses as Mr. Webster and I have found concerning Alvin. Because, frankly, I don’t like my witnesses much, and I think Makepeace is a greedy lying bastard who should go to jail himself for pedury but I can’t prove it.”

  “How can you live with yourself, then, working in the service of evil when you know so clearly what is goodT’

  “It’s also good for the public prosecutorto prosecute, instead of setting himself up as judge.”

  Peggy nodded gravely. “As so often is the case, there is no clear choice that has all the good on its side, opposed to one that is nothing but bad.”

  “That’s the truth, Peggy. That’s God’s honest truth.”

  “You advise me not to testify.”

  “Nothing of the kind. I just warned you of the price you’d pay for testifying.”

  “It’s unethical for us to have had this conversation, isn’t it?”

  “A little bit,” said Marty. “But your pa and I go back a long way.”

  “He’d never forgive you if you discredited me.”

  “I know, Miss Peggy. And that would break my heart.” He nodded his good-bye, touching his forehead as if to tip the hat he wasn’t wearing indoors. “Good day to you.”

  Peggy followed him into the courtroom.

  That first morning was spent questioning the eight witnesses who had been shown the golden plow. First was Merlin Wheeler, who rolled in on his wheelchair. Peggy knew that Alvin had offered once, years ago, to heal him so he could walk again. But Merlin just looked him in the eye and said, “I lost the use of my legs to the same men who killed my wife and child. If you can bring them back, then we’ll see about my legs.” Alvin didn’t understand then, and truth to tell, Peggy didn’t really understand now. How did it help his wife and children for Merlin to go around in a wheelchair all the time? But then, maybe it helped Merlin himself. Maybe it was like wearing widow’s weeds. A public symbol of how he was crippled by the loss of those he loved best. Anyway, he made a sturdy witness, mostly because people knew he had a knack for seeing what was fair and right, making him a sort of informal judge, though it wasn’t all that common for both parties in a dispute to agree to get him to arbitrate for him. One or the other of them, it seemed, always felt it somehow inconvenient to have the case decided by a man who was truly evenhanded and fair. Anyway, the jury was bound to listen when Wheeler said, “I ain’t saying the plow’s bewitched cause I don’t know how it got to be the way it is. I’m just saying that it appears to be gold, it hefts like gold, and it moves without no hand touching it.”

  Wheeler set the tone for all the others. Albert Wimsey was a clockmaker with a knack for fine metalwork, who fled to America when his business rivals accused him of using witchery in making his clocks—when he said the plow was gold, he spoke with authority, and the jury would entertain no further doubt about the metal it was made of. Jan Knickerbacker was a glassmaker who was said to have an eye to see things more clearly than most folks. Ma Bartlett was a frail old lady who once was a schoolteacher but now lived in the old cabin in the woods that Po Doggly built when he first settled in the area; she got a small pension from somewhere and mostly spent her days under an oak tree by Hatrack River, catching catfish and letting them go. People went to her to find out if they could trust other folks, and she was always right, which made it so many a budding romance got nipped in the bud, until folks sort of shied away from asking certain questions of her.

  Billy Sweet made candy, a young and gullible young fellow that nobody took all that seriously, but you couldn’t help but like him no matter how foolish the things he said and did. Naomi Lerner made a little money tutoring, but her knack was ignorance, not teaching—she could spot ignorance a mile away, but wasn’t much good at alleviating it. Joreboam Hemelett was a gunsmith, and he must have had a touch of fire knackery because it was well known that no matter how damp a day it might be, the powder in a Hemelett gun always ignited. And Goody Trader—whose first name was rumored to be either Chastity or Charity, both names used ironically by those who didn’t like her—kept a general store on the new end of Main Street, where she was well known to stock her shelves, not just with the things folks wanted, but also with the things they needed without knowing it.

  All through their testimony, about hefting the plow, about how it moved, or hummed, or trembled, or warmed their hands, the jurors’ eyes were drawn again and again to the burlap sack under Alvin’s chair. He never touched it or did anything to call, attention to it, but his body moved as if the plow inside the sack were the fulcrum of his balance. They wanted to see for themselves. But they knew, from Alvin’s posture, that they would not see it. That these eight had seen for them. It would have to be enough.

  The eight witnesses were well known to the people in town, all of them trusted (though Billy Sweet was only trusted this far, seeing as how he was so trusting himself that any liar could get him to believe any fool thing) and all of them well enough liked, apart from the normal quarrels of small-town life. Peggy knew them all, better than they knew each other, of course, but perhaps it was that very knowledge of them that blinded her to a thing that only Arthur Stuart seemed to notice.

  Arthur was sitting beside her in the courtroom, watching the testimony, wide-eyed. It was only when all eight of the witnesses were done testifying that he leaned up to Peggy and whispered, “Sure are a lot of folks with sharp knacks here in Hatrack, aren’t there?”

  Peggy grew up around here, and for all that a lot of folks had moved in after she left, she always felt that she pretty much knew everybody. But was that so? She had run off the first time just before Alvin got to Hatrack to start his prenticeship with Makepeace Smith, and in the more than eight years since then, she had only spent that single year in Hatrack—less than a year, really—when she was in disguise. During those eight years a lot of people had moved in. More, in fact, by twice, than had lived here at the time she left. She had scanned their heartfires, routinely, because she wanted to get a sense of who lived in this place.

  But she hadn’t realized until Arthur’s whispered remark that of the newcomers, an unusual number had quite remarkable knacks. It wasn’t that the eight witnesses were different from the rest of the town. Knacks were thick on the ground here, much more so than any other place that Peggy had visited.

  Why? What brought them here?

  The answer was easy and obvious—so obvious that Peggy doubted it at once. Could they really have been drawn here because Alvin was here? It was in Hatrack that the prentice learned to hone his knack until it became an all-encompassing power of powers. It was here that Alvin made the living plow. Was there something about his Making that drew them? Something that kindled a fire inside them and set their feet to wandering until they came to rest in this place, where Making was in the air?

  Or was it more than that? Was there Someone perhaps guiding them, so it wasn’t just the makery in Hatrack that drew them, but rather the same One who had brought Alvin to this town? Did it mean there was purpose behind it all, some master plan? Oh, Peggy longed to believe that, for it would mean she was not responsible for making things turn out all right. If God is tending to things here, then I can put away my broom and set aside my needle and thread, I have neither cleaning nor stitchery to do. I can simply be about my business.

  One way or the other, though, it was plain that Hatrack River was more than just the town where Alvin happened to be in jail right now. It was a place where people of hidden powers congregated in goodly numbers. Just as Verily Cooper had crossed the sea to meet Alvin, perhaps unwittingly all these others had also crossed sea or mountains or vast reaches of prairie and forest to find the place where the Mak
er Made his golden plow. And now these eight had handled the plow, had seen it move, knew it was alive. What did it mean to them?

  For Peggy, to wonder was to find out: She looked at their heartfires and found something startling. On past examination, none of them had shown paths in their future that were closely tied to Alvin’s. But now she found that their lives were bound up in his. All of them showed many paths into the future that led to a crystal city by the banks of a river.

  For the first time, the Crystal City of Alvin’s vision in the tornado was showing up in someone else’s future.

  She almost fainted from the relief of it. It wasn’t just a formless dream in Alvin’s heart, with no path guiding her as to how he would get there. It could be a reality, and if it was, all of these eight souls would be a part of it.

  Why? Just because they had touched the living plow? Was that what the thing was? A tool to turn people into citizens of the Crystal City?

  No, not that. No, it would hardly be the free place Alvin dreamed of, if folks were forced to be citizens because of touching some powerful object. Rather the plow opened up a door in their lives so they could enter into the future they most longed for. A place, a time where their knacks could be brought to full fruition, where they could be part of something larger than any of them were capable of creating on their own.

  She had to tell Alvin. Had to let him know that after all that trying in Vigor Church to teach those of feeble knack how to do what they could not really do, or not easily, here in his true birthplace his citizens were already assembling, those who had the natural gifts and inclinations that would make them co-Makers with him.

  Another thought struck her, and she began to look into the heartfires of the jurors. Another group of citizens, randomly chosen—and again, while not all had spectacular knacks, they were all people whose knacks defined them, people who might well have been searching for what their gifts might mean, what they were for. People who, consciously or not, might well have found themselves gravitating toward the place where a Maker had been born. A place where iron was turned to gold, where a mixup boy had been changed so a cachet no longer named him as a slave. A place where people with knacks and talents and dreams might find purpose, might build something together, might become Makers.

  Did they know how much they needed Alvin? How much their hopes and dreams depended on him? Of course not. They were jurors, trying to stay impartial. Trying to judge according to the law. And that was good. That was a kind of Making, too—keeping to the law even when it hurt your heart to do it. Maintaining good order in the community. If they showed favoritism to one person just because they admired him or needed him or liked him or even loved him, that would be the undoing of justice, and if justice were ever undone, were ever openly disdained, then that would be the end of good order. To corrupt justice was the Unmaker’s trick. Verily Cooper would have to prove his case, or at least disprove Makepeace Smith’s assertions; he would have to make it possible for the jury to acquit.

  But if they did acquit, then the paths that opened in their heartfire were like the paths of the witnesses: They would be with Alvin one day, building great towers of shimmering crystal rising into the sky, catching light and turning it into truth the way it had happened when Tenskwa-Tawa took Alvin up into the waterspout.

  Should I tell Alvin that his fellow-Makers are here around him in this courtroom? Would it help his work or make him overconfident to know?

  To tell or not to tell, the endless question that Peggy wrestled with. Next to that one, Hamlet’s little quandary was downright silly. Contemplations of suicide were always the Unmaker’s work. But truth-telling and truth-hiding—it could go either way. The consequences were unpredictable.

  Of course, for ordinary people consequences were always unpredictable. Only torches like Peggy were burdened by having such a clear idea of the possibilities. And there weren’t many torches like Peggy.

  Makepeace wasn’t a very good witness in his own cause. Surly and nervous—not a winning combination, Verily knew. But that was why Laws and Webster had put him on first, so that his negative impression would be forgotten after the testimony of more likable—and believable—witnesses.

  The best thing Verily could do, in this case, was to let Makepeace have his say—as memorably as possible, as negatively as possible. So he made no objection when Makepeace peppered his account with slurs on Alvin’s character. “He was always the laziest prentice I ever had.” “I never could get the boy to do nothing without standing over him and yelling in his ear.” “He was a slow learner, everybody knowed that.” “He ate like a pig even on days when he didn’t lift a finger.” The onslaught of slander was so relentless that everyone was getting uncomfortable with it—even Marty Laws, who was starting to glance at Verily to see why he wasn’t raising any objections. But why should Verily object, when the jurors were shifting in their seats and looking away from Makepeace with every new attack on Alvin? They all knew these were lies. There probably wasn’t a one of them that hadn’t come to the smithy hoping that Alvin rather than his master would do the work. Alvin’s skill was famous—Verily had learned that from overhearing casual conversation in the roadhouse at evening meals—so all Makepeace was doing was damaging his own credibility.

  Poor Marty was trapped, however. He couldn’t very well cut short Makepeace Smith’s testimony, since it was the foundation of his whole case. So the questioning went on, and the answering, and the slander.

  “He made a plow out of plain iron. I saw it, and so did Pauley Wiseman who was sheriff then, and Arthur Stuart, and the two dead Finders. It was setting on the workbench when they come by to get me to make manacles for the boy. But I wouldn’t make no manacles, no sir! That’s not decent work for a smith, to make the chains to take a free boy into slavery! So what do you know but Alvin himself, who said he was such a friend to Arthur Stuart, he up and says he’ll make the manacles. That’s the kind of boy he was and is today—no loyalty, no decency at all!”

  Alvin leaned over to Verily and whispered in his ear. “I know it’s wicked of me, Verily, but I want so bad to give old Makepeace a bad case of rectal itch.”

  Verily almost laughed out loud.

  The judge shot him a glare, but it wasn’t about his near laughter. “Mr. Cooper, aren’t you going to object to any of these extraneous comments upon your client’s character?”

  Verily rose slowly to his feet. “Your Honor, I am sure the jury will know exactly how seriously to take all of Mr. Makepeace Smith’s testimony. I’m perfectly content for them to remember both his malice and his inaccuracy.”

  “Well, maybe that’s how it’s done in England, but I will instruct the jury to ignore Mr. Smith’s malice, since there’s no way to know whether his malice came as a result of the events he has recounted, or predated them. Furthermore, I will instruct Mr. Smith to make no more aspersions on the defendant’s character, since those are matters of opinion and not of fact. Did you understand me, Makepeace?”

  Makepeace looked confused. “I reckon so.”

  “Continue, Mr. Laws.”

  Marty sighed and went on. “So you saw the iron plow, and Alvin made the manacles. What then?”

  “I told him to use the manacles as his journeyman piece. I thought it would be fitting for a traitorous scoundrel to go through his whole life knowing that the manacles he made for his friend were the—“

  The judge interrupted, again glaring at Verily. “Makepeace, it’s words like ‘traitorous scoundrel’ that’s going to get you declared in contempt of court. Do you understand me now?”

  “I been calling a spade a spade all my life, Your Honor!” Makepeace declared.

  “At this moment you’re digging a very deep hole with it,” said the judge, “and I’m the man to bury you if you don’t watch your tongue!”

  Cowed, Makepeace put on a very solemn look and faced forward. “I apologize, Your Honor, for daring to live up to my oath to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but th
e—“

  The gavel came down.

  “Nor will I allow sarcasm directed at this bench, Mr. Smith. Continue, Mr. Laws.”

  And so it went, till Makepeace had finished with his tale. It truly was a weak and whining little complaint. First there was an iron plow, made of the very iron Makepeace had provided for the journeyman piece. Then there was a plow made of solid gold. Makepeace could only think of two possibilities. First, that Alvin had somehow used some sort of hexery to change the iron into gold, in which case it was made from the iron Makepeace had given him and, according to time-honored tradition and the terms of Alvin’s prentice papers, the plow belonged to Makepeace. Or it was a different plow, not made from Makepeace’s iron, in which case where did Alvin get such gold? The only time Alvin had ever done enough digging to bring up buried treasure like that was when he was digging a well for Makepeace, which he dug in the wrong place. Makepeace was betting Alvin had dug in the right place first, found the gold, and then hid it by digging in another spot for the actual well. And if the gold was found on Makepeace’s land, well, it was Makepeace’s gold that way, too.

  Verily’s cross-examination was brief. It consisted of two questions.

  “Did you see Alvin take gold or anything like gold out of the ground?”

  Angry, Makepeace, started to make excuses, but Verily waited until the judge had directed him to answer the question yes or no.

  “No.”

  “Did you see the iron plow transformed into a golden plow?”

  “Well so what if I didn’t, the fact is there ain’t no iron plow so where is it then?”

  Again, the judge told him to answer the question yes or no.