ALVIN JOURNEYMAN

by Orson Scott Card

  “So what do they call you now, judge woman?” the boy asked Peggy. “Goody Smith?”

  “Most still call me Peggy Larner. Only they say Miz Larner now, and not Miss.”

  “I call her Margaret,” said Alvin.

  “I reckon you’ll really be married when she starts to think of herself by the name you call her, instead of the name her parents called her by.” He winked at Peggy. “Thanks for getting me my job. My sisters are glad, too, they had nightmares, I’ll tell you. There ain’t no love of the loom in them.” He turned back to Alvin. “So are you going or what?”

  At that moment the door flew open and a tied-up bundle flew through it.

  “Uh-oh,” said the boy. “Best turn your back. Becca’s coming through, and she travels stark nekkid, seeing as how women’s clothing can’t fit through that door without touching.”

  Alvin turned his back, and so did Peggy, though unlike Alvin she cheated and allowed herself to watch anyway. It was not Becca who caine through the door first, however. It was Ta-Kumsaw, a man Peggy had never met, though she had seen him often enough in Alvin’s heartfire. He was not naked, but rather clothed in buckskins that clung tightly to his body. He saw them standing there and grunted. “Boy Renegado comes back to see the most dangerous Red man who ever lived.”

  “Howdy, Ta-Kumsaw,” said Alvin.

  “Hi, Isaac,” said the boy. “I warned him about the door like you said.”

  “Good boy,” said Ta-Kumsaw. He turned his back on them then, just in time for Becca to leap through the door wearing only thin and clinging underwear. He gathered her at once into his arms. Then together they untied the bundle and unfolded it into a dress, which she drew down over her head. “All right,” said Ta-Kurnsaw. “She’s dressed enough for a White woman now.”

  Alvin turned around and greeted her. There were handshakes, and even a hug between women. They talked about what had happened in Hatrack River over the past few months, and then Alvin explained his errand.

  Ta-Kumsaw showed no emotion. “I don’t know what my brother will say. He keeps his own counsel.”

  “Does he rule there in the west?” asked Alvin.

  “Rule? That’s not how we do things. There are many tribes, and in each tribe many wise men. My brother is one of the greatest of them, everyone agrees to that. But he doesn’t make law just by deciding what it should be. We don’t do anything as foolish as you do, electing one president and concentrating too much power in his hands. It was good enough when good men held the office, but always when you create an office that a man can lay hands on, an evil man will someday lay hands on it.”

  “Which is going to happen on New Year’s day when Harrison—“

  Ta-Kumsaw glowered. “Never say that name, that unbearable name.”

  “Not saying it won’t make him go away,”

  “It will keep his evil out of this house,” said Ta-Kurnsaw. “Away from the people I love.”

  In the meantime, Becca had finished dressing. She came to the boy and bumped him with her hip. “Move over, stubbyfingers. That’s my loom you’re tangling.”

  “Tightest weave ever,” the boy retorted. “People will always know which spots I wove.”

  Becca settled onto the chair and then began to make the shuttlecock dance. The whole music of the loom changed, the rhythm of it, the song. “You came for a purpose, Maker? The door’s still open for you. Do what you came to do.”

  For the first time Peggy really looked at the door, trying to see what lay beyond it; and what lay beyond was nothing. Not blackness, but not daylight either. Just... nothing. Her eyes couldn’t look at it; her gaze kept shifting away.

  “Alvin,” she said. “Are you sure you want to—“

  He kissed her. “I love it when you worry about me.”

  She smiled and kissed him back. As he took off his cap and his boots, and his long coat that might flap against the doodamb, he couldn’t see how she reached into the small box she kept in a pocket of her skirt; how she held the last scrap of his birth caul between her fingers and then watched his heartfire, ready to spring into action the moment he needed her, to use his power to heal him even if he, in some dire extremity, could not or dared not or would not use it himself.

  He ran for the door, leapt toward it left-foot-first, his right foot leaving the ground before any part of him broke the plane of the door. He sailed through with his head ducked down; he missed the top of the door by an inch.

  “I don’t like it when people leap through all spread out like that,” said Ta-Kumsaw. “Better to spring from both feet at once, and curl up into a ball as you go.”

  “You athletic men can do that,” said Becca. “But I can’t see myself hitting the floor like that and rolling. Besides, you leap half the time yourself.”

  “I’m not as tall as Alvin,” said Ta-Kumsaw. He turned to Peggy. “He grew to be very tall.”

  But Peggy didn’t answer him.

  “She’s watching his heartfire,” said Becca: “Best leave her alone till he comes back.”

  Alvin tumbled and fell when he hit the floor on the other side he sprawled into a pile of cloth and heard the sound of laughter. He got up and looked around. Another cabin, but a newish one and the girl at the loom was scarcely older than he was. She was a mixup like Arthur, only half-Red instead of half-Black, and the combination of Ta-Kumsaw and Becca was becoming in her.

  “Howdy, Alvin,” she said. He had expected her voice to sound like Ta-Kumsaw’s and Tenskwa-Tawa’s, accented when she spoke in English, but she spoke like Becca, a bit old-fashioned sounding but like a native speaker of the tongue.

  “Howdy,” he said.

  “You sure came through like a ton of bricks,” she said.

  “Made a mess of the piles of cloth here.”

  “Don’t fret,” she said. “That’s why they’re there. Papa always smacks into them when he comes through like a cannonball.”

  With that he ran out of conversation, and so did she, so he stood there watching as she ran her loom.

  “Go find Tenskwa-Tawa. He’s waiting for you.”

  Alvin had heard so much about the fog on the Mizzipy that he had halfway got it into his head that the whole of the western lands was covered with fog. When he opened the cabin and stepped outside, though, he found that far from being foggy, the sky was so clear it felt like he could see clear into heaven in broad daylight. There were high mountains looming to the east, and he could see them so crisp and clear that he felt as though he could trace the crevices in the bare granite near the top, or count the leaves on the oak trees halfway up their craggy flanks. The cabin stood at the brow of a hill separating two valleys, both of which contained lakes. The one to the north was huge, the far reaches of it invisible because of the curve of the Earth, not because of any haze or thickness of the air; the lake to the south was smaller, but it was even more beautiful, shining like a blue jewel in the cold sunlight of late autumn.

  “The snow is late,” said a voice behind him.

  Alvin turned. “Shining Man,” he said, the name slipping from his lips before he could think.

  “And you are the man who learned how to be a man when he was a boy,” said Tenskwa-Tawa.

  They embraced. The wind whistled around them. When they parted, Alvin glanced around again. “This is a pretty exposed place to build a cabin,” he said.

  “Had to be here,” said Tenskwa-Tawa. “The valley to the south is Timpa-Nogos. Holy ground, where there can be no houses and no wars. The valley to the north is grazing land, where the deer can be hunted by families that run out of food in the winter. No houses either. Don’t worry. Inside a weaver’s house is always warm.” He smiled. “I’m glad to see you.”

  Alvin wasn’t sure if he could remember Tenskwa-Tawa ever smiling before. “You’re happy here?”

  “Happy?” Tenskwa-Tawa’s face went placid again. “I feel as though I stand with one foot on this earth and the other foot in the place where my people wait for me.”


  “Not all died that day at Tippy-Canoe,” said Alvin. “You still have people here.”

  “They also stand with one foot in one place, one foot in the other.” He glanced toward a canyon that led up into a gap between the impossibly high mountains. “They live in a high mountain valley. The snow is late this year, and they’re glad of that, unless it means poor water for next year, and a poor crop. That’s our life now, Alvin Maker. We used to live in a place where water leapt out of the ground wherever you struck it with a stick.”

  “But the air is clear. You can see forever.”

  Tenskwa-Tawa put his fingers to Alvin’s lips. “No man sees forever. But some men see farther. Last winter I rode a tower of water into the sky over the holy lake Timpa-Nogos. I saw many things. I saw you come here. I heard the news you told me and the question you asked me.”

  “And did you hear your answer?”

  “First you must make my vision come true,” said Tenskwa-Tawa.

  So Alvin told him about Harrison being elected president by bragging about his bloody hands, and how they wondered if Tenskwa-Tawa might release the people of Vigor Church from their curse, so they could leave their homes, those as wanted to, and become part of the Crystal City when Alvin started to build it. “Was that what you heard me ask you?”

  “Yes,” said Tenskwa-Tawa.

  “And what was your answer?”

  “I didn’t see my answer,” said Tenskwa-Tawa. “So I have had all these months to think of what it was. In all these months, my people who died on that grassy slope have walked before my eyes in my sleep. I have seen their blood again and again flow down the grass and turn the Tippy-Canoe Creek red. I have seen the faces of the children and babies. I knew them all by name, and I still remember all the names and all the faces. Each one I see in the dream, I ask them, Do you forgive these White murderers? Do you understand their rage and will you let me take your blood from their hands?”

  Tenskwa-Tawa paused. Alvin. waited, too. One did not rush a shaman as he told of his dreams.

  “Every night I have had this dream until finally last night the last of them came before me and I asked my question.”

  Again, a silence. Again, Alvin waited patiently. Not patiently the way a White man waits, showing his patience by looking around or moving his fingers or doing something else to mark the passage of time. Alvin waited with a Red man’s patience, as if this moment were to be savored in itself, as if the suspense of waiting was in itself an experience to be marked and remembered.

  “If even one of them had said, I do not forgive them, do not lift the curse, then I would not lift the curse,” said Tenskwa-Tawa. “if even one baby had said, I do not forgive them for taking away my days of running like a deer through the meadows, I would not lift the curse. If even one mother had said, I do not forgive them for the baby that was in my womb when I died, who never saw the light of day with its beautiful eyes, I would not lift the curse. If even one father had said, The anger still runs hot in my heart, and if you lift the curse I will still have some hatred left unavenged, then I would not lift the curse.”

  Tears flowed down Alvin’s face, for he knew the answer now, and he could not imagine himself ever being so good that even in death he could forgive those who had done such a terrible thing to him and his family.

  “I also asked the living,” said Tenskwa-Tawa. “Those who lost father and mother, brother and sister, uncle and aunt, child and friend, teacher and helper, hunting companion, and wife, and husband. If even one of these living ones had said, I cannot forgive them yet, Tenskwa-Tawa, I would not lift the curse.”

  Then he fell silent one last time. This time the silence lasted and lasted. The sun had been at noon when Alvin arrived; it was touching the tops of the mountains to the west when at last Tenskwa-Tawa moved again, nodding his head. Like Alvin, he, too, had wept, and then had waited long enough for the tears to dry, and then had wept again, all without changing the expression on his face, all without moving a muscle of his body as the two of them sat facing each other in the tall dry autumn grass, in the cold dry autumn wind. Now he opened his mouth and spoke again. “I have lifted the curse,” he said.

  Alvin embraced his old teacher. It was not what a Red man would have done, but Alvin had acted Red all afternoon, and so Tenskwa-Tawa accepted the gesture and even returned it. Touched by the Red Prophet’s hands, his cheek against the old man’s hair, the old man’s face against his shoulder, Alvin remembered that once he had thought of asking Tenskwa-Tawa to strengthen the curse on Harrison, to stop him from misusing his bloody hands. It made him ashamed. If the dead could forgive, should not the living? Harrison would find his own way through life, and his own path to death. Judgment would have to come, if it came at all, from someone wiser than Alvin.

  When they arose from the grass, Tenskwa-Tawa looked north toward the larger lake. “Look, a man is coming.”

  Alvin saw where he was looking. Not far off, a man was jogging lightly along a path through the head-high grass. Not running in the Red man’s way, but like a White man, and not a young one. His hatless bald head glinted momentarily in the sunset.

  “That ain’t Taleswapper, is itT’ asked Alvin.

  “The Sho-sho-nay invited him to come and trade stories with them,” said Tenskwa-Tawa.

  Instead of asking more questions, Alvin waited with Tenskwa-Tawa until Taleswapper came up the long steep path. He was out of breath when he arrived, as might have been expected. But as Alvin sent, his doodlebug through Taleswapper’s body, he was surprised at the old man’s excellent health. They greeted each other warmly, and Alvin told him the news. Taleswapper smiled at Tenskwa-Tawa. “Your people are better than you thought they were,” he said.

  “Or more forgetful,” said Tenskwa-Tawa ruefully.

  “I’m glad I happened to be here, to hear this news,” said Taleswapper. “If you’re going back through the weaver’s house, I’d like to go with you.”

  When Alvin and Taleswapper returned to Becca’s cabin within the heart of the weaver’s house, it had been dark for two hours. Ta-Kumsaw had gone outside and invited Peggy’s and Alvin’s friends to come in and eat with his family. Becca’s sister and her daughters and her son joined them; they ate a stew of bison meat, Red man’s food cooked the White man’s way, a compromise like so much else in this house. Ta-Kumsaw had introduced himself by the name of Isaac Weaver, and Peggy was careful to call him by no other name.

  Alvin and Taleswapper found them all lying on their bedrolls on the floor of the parlor, except for Peggy, who was sitting on a chair, listening as Verily Cooper told them tales of his life in England, and all the subterfuges he had gone through in order to conceal his knack from everyone. She turned to face the door before her husband and their old friend came through it; the others also turned, so all eyes were on them. They knew at once from the joy on Alvin’s face what Tenskwa-Tawa’s answer had been.

  “I want to ride out tonight and tell them,” said Armor-of-God. “I want them to know the good news right now.”

  “Too dark,” said Ta-Kumsaw, who came in from the kitchen where he had been helping his sister-in-law wash the dishes from supper.

  “There’s no more rules, now, the curse is lifted free and clear,” said Alvin. “But he asks that we do something all the same. That everyone who used to be under the curse gather their family together once a year, on the anniversary of the massacre at Tippy-Canoe, and on that day eat no food, but instead tell the story as it used to be told to all strangers who came through Vigor Church. Once a year, our children and our children’s children, forever. He asks that we do that, but there’ll be no punishment if we don’t. No punishment except that our children will forget, and when they forget, there’s always the chance that it might happen again.”

  “I’ll tell them that too,” said Armor. “They’ll all take a vow to do that, you can be sure, Alvin.” He turned to Ta-Kumsaw. “You can tell your brother that for me when next you see him, that they’ll all take that vow.”


  Ta-Kumsaw grunted. “So much for calling myself Isaac in order to conceal from you who I really am.”

  “We’ve met before,” said Armor, “and even if we hadn’t, I know a great leader when I see one, and I knew who it was Alvin came to see.”

  “You talk too much, Armor-of-God, like all White men,” said Ta-Kumsaw. “But at least what you say isn’t always stupid.”

  Armor nodded and smiled to acknowledge the compliment.

  Alvin and Peggy were given a bedroom and a fine bed, which Peggy suspected was Ta-Kumsaw’s and Becca’s own. The others slept on the floor in the parlor—slept as best they could, which wasn’t well, what with all the excitement and the way Mike Fink snored so loud and the way Armor had to get up to pee about three times an hour it seemed like, till Peggy heard the activity, woke Alvin up, and Alvin did something with his doodlebug inside Armor’s body so he didn’t feel like his bladder was about to bust all the time. When morning came the men in the parlor slept a little late, and woke to the smell of a country breakfast, with biscuits and gravy and slabs of salted ham fried with potatoes.

  Then it was time for parting. Armor-of-God was like an eager horse himself, stamping and snorting till they finally told him to go on. He mounted and rode out of Chapman Valley, waving his hat and whooping like those damn fools on election night the week before.

  Alvin’s and Peggy’s parting was harder. She and Taleswapper would take Whitley Physicker’s carriage and drive, it to the next town of any size, where she’d hire another carriage and Taleswapper would drive this one north to Hatrack River to return it to the good doctor. From there Peggy intended to go to Philadelphia for a while. “I hope that I might turn some hearts against Harrison’s plans, if I’m there where Congress meets. He’s only going to be president, not king, not emperor—he has to win the consent of Congress to do anything, and perhaps there’s still hope.” But Alvin knew from her voice that she had little hope, that she knew already along what dark roads Harrison would lead the country.

  Alvin felt nearly as bleak about his own prospects. “Tenskwa-Tawa couldn’t tell me a thing about how to make the Crystal City, except to say a thing I already knew: The Maker is a part of what he Makes.”