Measure answered the question that he thought Taleswapper was asking. “Oh, Pa’s staying up by the rock. To watch.”
Taleswapper could hear David and Calm breathe a sigh of relief. The third voice didn’t have jinx in his mind, so Alvin Junior was safe.
Now Taleswapper was free to wonder why Miller felt he had to keep watch at the quarry. “What could happen to a rock? I’ve never heard of Reds stealing rocks.”
Measure winked. “Powerful strange things happen sometimes, specially with millstones.”
Alvin was joking with David and Calm now, as he tied the knots. He worked hard to get them as tight as he could, but Taleswapper saw that it wasn’t in the knot itself that his knack was revealed. As Al Junior pulled the ropes tight, they seemed to twist and bite into the wood in all the notches, drawing the whole sledge tighter together. It was subtle, and if Taleswapper hadn’t been watching for it, he wouldn’t have seen. But it was real. What Al Junior bound was bound tight.
“That’s tight enough to be a raft,” said Al Junior, standing back to admire.
“Well, it’s floating on solid earth this time,” said Measure. “Pa says he won’t even piss into water no more.”
Since the sun was low in the west, they set to laying the fire. Work had kept them warm today, but tonight they’d need the fire to back off the animals and keep the autumn cold at bay.
Miller didn’t come down, even at supper, and when Calm got up to carry food up the hill to his father, Taleswapper offered to come along.
“I don’t know,” said Calm. “You don’t need to.”
“I want to.”
“Pa—he don’t like lots of people gathered at the rock face, time like this.” Calm looked a little sheepish. “He’s a miller, and it’s his stone getting cut there.”
“I’m not a lot of people,” said Taleswapper. Calm didn’t say anything more. Taleswapper followed him up among the rocks.
On the way, they passed the sites of two early stonecuttings. The scraps of cut stone had been used to make a smooth ramp from the cliff face to ground level. The cuts were almost perfectly round. Taleswapper had seen plenty of stone cut before, and he’d never seen one cut this way—perfectly round, right in the cliff. Most times it was a whole slab they cut, then rounded it on the ground. There were several good reasons for doing it that way, but the best of all was that there was no way to cut the back of the stone unless you took a whole slab. Calm didn’t slow down for him, so Taleswapper didn’t have a chance to look closely, but as near as he could tell there was no possible way that the stonecutter in this quarry could have cut the back of the stone.
It looked just the same at the new site, too. Miller was raking chipped rock into a level ramp in front of the millstone. Taleswapper stood back and, in the last specks of daylight, studied the cliff. In a single day, working alone, Al Junior had smoothed the front of the millstone and chipped away the whole circumference. The stone was practically polished, still attached to the cliff face. Not only that, but the center hole had been cut to take the main shaft of the mill machinery. It was fully cut. And there was no way in the world that anybody could get a chisel in position to cut away the back.
“That’s some knack the boy has,” said Taleswapper.
Miller grunted assent.
“Hear you plan to spend the night up here,” said Taleswapper.
“Heard right.”
“Mind company?” asked Taleswapper.
Calm rolled his eyes.
But after a little bit, Miller shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
Calm looked at Taleswapper with wide eyes and raised eyebrows, as if to say, Miracles never cease.
When Calm had set down Miller’s supper, he left. Miller set aside the rake. “You et yet?”
“I’ll gather wood for tonight’s fire,” said Taleswapper. “While there’s still light. You eat.”
“Watch out for snakes,” said Miller. “They’re mostly shut in for the winter now, but you never know.”
Taleswapper watched out for snakes, but he never saw any. And soon they had a good fire, laid with a heavy log that would burn all night.
They lay there in the firelight, wrapped in their blankets. It occurred to Taleswapper that Miller might have found softer ground a few yards away from the quarry. But apparently it was more important to keep the millstone in plain sight.
Taleswapper began talking. Quietly, but steadily, he talked about how hard it must be for fathers, to watch their sons grow, so full of hope for the boys, but never knowing when death would come and take the child away. It was the right thing to talk about, because soon it was Alvin Miller doing the talking. He told the story of how his oldest boy Vigor died in the Hatrack River, only a few minutes after Alvin Junior was born. And from there, he turned to the dozens of ways that Al Junior had almost died. “Always water,” Miller said at the end. “Nobody believes me, but it’s so. Always water.”
“The question is,” said Taleswapper, “is the water evil, trying to destroy a good boy? Or is it good, trying to destroy an evil power?”
It was a question that might have made some men angry, but Taleswapper had given up trying to guess when Miller’s temper would flare. This time it didn’t. “I’ve wondered that myself,” said Miller. “I’ve watched him close, Taleswapper. Of course, he has a knack for making people love him. Even his sisters. He’s tormented them unmerciful since he was old enough to spit in their food. Yet there’s not a one of them who doesn’t find a way to make him something special, and not just at Christmas. They’ll sew his socks shut or smear soot on the privy bench or needle up his nightshirt, but they’d also die for him.”
“I’ve found,” said Taleswapper, “that some people have a knack for winning love without ever earning it.”
“I feared that, too,” said Miller. “But the boy doesn’t know he has that knack. He doesn’t trick people into doing what he wants. He lets me punish him when he does wrong. And he could stop me, if he wanted.”
“How?”
“Because he knows that sometimes when I see him, I see my boy Vigor, my firstborn, and then I can’t do him any harm, even harm that’s for his own good.”
Maybe that reason was partly true, Taleswapper thought. But it certainly wasn’t the whole truth.
A bit later, after Taleswapper stirred the fire to make sure the log caught well, Miller told the story that Taleswapper had come for.
“I’ve got a story,” he said, “that might belong in your book.”
“Give it a try,” said Taleswapper.
“Didn’t happen to me, though.”
“Has to be something you saw yourself,” said Taleswapper. “I hear the craziest stories that somebody heard happened to a friend of a friend.”
“Oh, I saw this happen. It’s been going on for years now, and I’ve had some discussions with the fellow. It’s one of the Swedes downriver, speaks English good as I do. We helped him put up his cabin and his barn when he first come here, the year after us. And I watched him a little bit even then. See, he has a boy, a blond Swede boy, you know how they get.”
“Hair almost white?”
“Like frost in the first morning sun, white like that, and shiny. A beautiful boy.”
“I can see him in my mind,” said Taleswapper.
“And that boy, his papa loved him. Better than his life. You know that Bible story, about that papa who gave his boy a coat of many colors?”
“I’ve heard tell of it.”
“He loved his boy like that. But I saw them two walking alongside the river, and the father all of a sudden lurched kind of, just bumped his boy, and sent the lad tumbling down into the Wobbish. Now, it happened that the boy caught onto a log and his father and I helped pull him in, but it was a scary thing to see that the father might have killed his own best-loved child. It wouldn’t’ve been a-purpose, mind you, but that wouldn’t make the boy any less dead, or the father any less blameful.”
“I can see the father might neve
r get over such a thing.”
“Well, of course not. Yet not long after that, I seen him a few more times. Chopping wood, and he swung that axe wild, and if the boy hadn’t slipped and fell right at that very second, that axe would’ve bit into the boy’s head, and I never seen nobody live after something like that.”
“Nor I.”
“And I tried to imagine what must be happening. What that father must be thinking. So I went to him one day, and I said, ‘Nels, you ought to be more careful round that boy. You’re likely to take that boy’s head off someday, if you keep swinging that axe so free.’
“And Nels, he says to me, ‘Mr. Miller, that wasn’t no accident.’ Well, you could’ve blowed me down with a baby’s burp. What does he mean, no accident? And he says to me, ‘You don’t know how bad it is. I think maybe a witch cursed me, or the devil takes me, but I’m just working there, thinking how much I love the boy, and suddenly I have this wish to kill him. It came on me first when he was just a baby, and I stood at the top of the stairs, holding him, and it was like a voice inside my head, it said, “Throw him down,” and I wanted to do it, even though I also knew it would be the most terrible thing in the world. I was hungry to throw him off, like a boy gets when he wants to smash a bug with a stone. I wanted to see his head break open on the floor.
“‘Well, I just fought off that feeling, just swallowed it back and held that boy so tight I like to smothered him. Finally when I got him back into his cradle, I knew that from then on I wasn’t going to carry him up those stairs no more.
“‘But I couldn’t just leave him alone, could I? He was my boy, and he grew up so bright and good and beautiful that I had to love him. If I stayed away, he cried cause his papa didn’t play with him. But if I stayed with him, then those feelings came back, again and again. Not every day, but many a day, sometimes so fast that I did it afore I even knew what I was doing. Like the day I bumped him into the river, I just took a wrong step and tripped, but I knew even as I took that step that it was a wrong step, and that I’d trip, and that I’d bump him, I knew it, but I didn’t have time to stop myself. And someday I know that I won’t be able to stop myself, I won’t mean to do it, but someday when that boy is under my hand, I’ll kill him.’”
Taleswapper could see Miller’s arm move, as if to wipe tears away from his cheek.
“Ain’t that the strangest thing?” Miller asked. “A man having that kind of feeling for his own son.”
“Does that fellow have any other sons?”
“A few. Why?”
“I just wondered if he ever felt a desire to kill them.”
“Never, not a speck. I asked him that, matter of fact. I asked him, and he said not a speck.”
“Well, Mr. Miller, what did you tell him?”
Miller breathed in and out a few times. “I didn’t know what to tell him. Some things are just too big for a man like me to understand. I mean, the way that water is out to kill my boy Alvin. And then this Swede fellow with his son. Maybe there’s some children that wasn’t meant to grow up. Do you think so, Taleswapper?”
“I think there are some children that are so important, that someone—some force in the world—may want them dead. But there are always other forces, maybe stronger forces, that want them alive.”
“Then why don’t those forces show theirselves, Taleswapper? Why don’t some power from heaven come and say—come to that poor Swedish man and say, ‘Don’t you fear no more, your boy is safe, even from you!’”
“Maybe those forces don’t speak out loud in words. Maybe those forces just show you what they’re doing.”
“The only force that shows itself in this world is the one that kills.”
“I don’t know about that Swedish boy,” said Taleswapper, “but I’d guess that there’s a powerful protection on your son. From what you said, it’s a miracle he isn’t dead ten times over.”
“That’s the truth.”
“I think he’s being watched over.”
“Not well enough.”
“The water never got him, did it?”
“It came so close, Taleswapper.”
“And as for that Swedish boy, I know he’s got somebody watching over him.”
“Who?” asked Miller.
“Why, his own father.”
“His father is the enemy,” said Miller.
“I don’t think so,” said Taleswapper. “Do you know how many fathers kill their sons by accident? They’re out hunting, and a shot goes wrong. Or a wagon crushes the boy, or he takes a fall. Happens all the time. Maybe those fathers just didn’t see what was happening. But this Swedish man is sharp, he sees what’s happening, and he watches himself, catches himself in time.”
Miller sounded a little more hopeful. “You make it sound like maybe the father ain’t all bad.”
“If he were all bad, Mr. Miller, that boy would be dead and buried long ago.”
“Maybe. Maybe.”
Miller thought for a while more. So long, in fact, that Taleswapper dozed a little. He snapped awake with Miller already talking.
“—and it’s just getting worse, not better. Harder to fight off those feelings. Not all that long ago, he was standing up in a loft in the—in his barn—and he was pitching down hay. And there below him was his boy, and all it would take is to let fly with the pitchfork, easiest thing in the world, he could say the pitchfork slipped and no one would ever know. Just let it fly, and stick that boy right through. And he was going to do it. Do you understand me? It was so hard to fight off those feelings, harder than ever before, and he just gave up. Just decided to have it done with, to give in. And in that very moment, why, a stranger appeared in the doorway, and shouted, ‘No,’ and I set down the pitchfork—that’s what he said, ‘I set down the pitchfork, but I was shaking so bad I could hardly walk, knowing that the stranger saw me with murder in my heart, he must think I’m the most terrible man in the world to think of killing my own boy, he can’t even guess how hard I’ve struggled all those years before—’”
“Maybe that stranger knew something about the powers that can work inside a man’s heart,” said Taleswapper.
“Do you think so?”
“Oh, I can’t be sure, but maybe that stranger also saw how much that father loved the boy. Maybe the stranger was confused for a long time, but finally began to realize that the child was extraordinary, with powerful enemies. And then maybe he came to understand that no matter how many enemies the boy had, his father wasn’t one of them. Wasn’t an enemy. And he wanted to say something to that father.”
“What did he want to say?” Miller brushed his eyes with his sleeve again. “What do you think that stranger might want to say?”
“Maybe he wanted to say, ‘You’ve done all you can do, and now it’s too strong for you. Now you ought to send that boy away. To relatives back east, maybe, or as a prentice in some town.’ That might be a hard thing for the father to do, since he loves the boy so much, but he’ll do it because he knows that real love is to take the boy out of danger.”
“Yes,” said Miller.
“For that matter,” said Taleswapper, “maybe you ought to do something like that with your own boy, Alvin.”
“Maybe,” said Miller.
“He’s in some danger from the water around here, wouldn’t you say? Somebody’s protecting him, or something. But maybe if Alvin weren’t living here—”
“Then some of the dangers would go away,” said Miller.
“Think about it,” said Taleswapper.
“It’s a terrible thing,” said Miller, “to send your boy away to live with strangers.”
“It’s a worse thing, though, to put him in the ground.”
“Yes,” said Miller. “That’s the worst thing in the world. To put your child in the ground.”
They didn’t talk any more, and after a while they both slept.
The morning was cold, with a heavy frost, but Miller wouldn’t even let Al Junior come up to the rock until the s
un burned it away. Instead they all spent the morning preparing the ground from the cliff face to the sledge, so they could roll the stone down the mountain.
By now, Taleswapper was sure that Al Junior used a hidden power to get the millstone away from the cliff face, even if he didn’t realize it himself. Taleswapper was curious. He wanted to see just how powerful this power was, so he could understand more about its nature. And since Al Junior didn’t realize what he was doing, Taleswapper’s experiment had to be subtle, too. “How do you dress your stone?” asked Taleswapper.
Miller shrugged. “Buhr Stone is what I used before. They all come with sickle dress.”
“Can you show me?” asked Taleswapper.
Using a corner of the rake, Miller drew a circle in the frost. Then he drew a series of arcs, radiating from the center of the circle out to the edges. Between each pair of arcs he drew a shorter arc, which began at the edge but never came closer than two-thirds of the way toward the center. “Like that,” said Miller.
“Most millstones in Pennsylvania and Suskwahenny are quarter dress,” said Taleswapper. “You know that cut?”
“Show me.”
So Taleswapper drew another circle. It didn’t show up as well, since the frost was burning off now, but it was good enough. He drew straight lines instead of curved ones from the center to the edge, and the shorter lines branched directly from the long ones and ran straight to the edge. “Some millers like this better, because you can keep it sharp longer. Since all the lines are straight, you get a nice even draw when you’re tooling the stone.”
“I can see that,” said Miller. “I don’t know, though. I’m used to those curvy lines.”
“Well, suit yourself,” said Taleswapper. “I’ve never been a miller, so I don’t know. I just tell stories about what I’ve seen.”
“Oh, I don’t mind you showing me,” said Miller. “Don’t mind a bit.”
Al Junior stood there, studying both circles.
Seventh Son: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume I Page 17
