Prentice Alvin: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume III

by Orson Scott Card

  He took the measure of a lot of things. Where a little pot-bellied stove would have to go, if the place was going to be warm in the winter; and figuring that, he also figured how to lay in the right foundation under the heavy stove, and how to put the flaring around the chimney, all the things it’d take to make the springhouse into a tight little cabin, fit for a lady to live in.

  Alvin didn’t write down the measures. He never did. He just knew them, now that he’d put his fingers and hands and arms into all the places: and if he forgot, and took the measure wrong somehow, he knew that in a pinch he could make it fit even so. It was a kind of laziness, he knew, but he got precious little advantage from his knack these days, and there was no shame in such small fudging.

  Arthur Stuart wandered along when Al was just about done at the springhouse. Alvin didn’t say nothing, nor did Arthur: you don’t greet somebody who belongs where you are, you hardly notice them. But when Alvin needed to get the measure of the roof, he just said so and then tossed Arthur up onto the roof as easy as Peg Guester tossed the feather mattresses from the inn beds.

  Arthur walked like a cat on top of the roof, paying no heed to being up so high. He paced off the roof and kept his own count, and when he was done he didn’t even wait to make sure Alvin was ready to catch him, he just took a leap into the air. It was like Arthur believed he could fly. And with Alvin there to catch him below. why, it might as well be true, since Alvin had such arms on him that he could catch Arthur easy and let him down as gentle as a mallard settling onto a pond.

  When Al and Arthur was done with measuring, they went back to the smithy. Alvin took a few bars of iron from the pile, het up the forge, and set to work. Arthur set in to pumping the bellows and fetching toots—they’d been doing this so long that it was like Arthur was Alvin’s own prentice, and it never occurred to either of them that there was arything wrong with it. They just did this together, so smooth that to other folks it looked like a kind of dance.

  A couple of hours later, Alvin had all the fittings. It should’ve taken less time by half, only for some reason Alvin got it into his head that he ought to make a lock for the door, and then he got it into his head that it ought to be a real lock, the kind that a few rich folks in town ordered from back east in Philadelphia-with a proper key and all, and a catch that shut all by itself when you closed the door, so you’d never forget to lock the door behind you.

  What’s more, he put secret hexes on all the fittings, perfect six-point figures that spoke of safety, and no one with harm in his heart being about to turn the lock. Once the lock was closed and fastened in place on the door, nobody’d see those hexes, but they’d do the work sure, since when Alvin made a hex the measure was so perfect it cast a network of hexes like a wall for many yards on every side.

  It occurred to Alvin to wonder why a hex should work at all. Of course he knew why it was such a magical shape, being twice three; and he knew how you could lay hexes down on a table and they’d fit snug together, as perfect as squares, only stronger, woven not with warp and weft, but with warp and weft and hax. It wasn’t like squares, which were hardly ever found in nature, being too simple and weak; there was hexes in snowflakes and crystals and honeycombs. Making a single hex was the same as making a whole fabric of hexes, so that the perfect hexes he hid up inside the lock would wrap all the way around the house, sealing it from outside harm as surely as if he forged a net of iron and wove it right in place.

  But that didn’t answer the question why it worked. Why his hidden hexes should bar a man’s hand, turn a man’s mind away from entering. Why the hex should invisibly repeat itself as far as it could, and the more perfect the hex, the farther the net it threw. All these years of puzzling things out, and he still knew so little. Knew so near to nothing that he despaired, and even now, holding the springhouse fittings in his hands, he wondered if in fact he shouldn’t content himself to be a good smith and forget these tales of Makering.

  With all his wondering and questioning, Alvin never did ask himself what should have been the plainest question of all. Why would a schoolmistress need such a perfectly hexed, powerful lock? Alvin didn’t even try to guess. He wasn’t thinking like that. Instead he just knew that such a lock was something fine, and this little house had to be as fine as he could make it. Later on he’d wonder about it, wonder if he knew even then, before he met her, what this schoolmistress would mean to him. Maybe he already had a plan in the back of his mind, just like Old Peg Guester did. But he sure didn’t know about it yet, and that was the truth. When he made all those fancy fittings, with patterns cut in them so the door would look pretty, he most likely was doing it for Arthur Stuart; maybe he was halfway thinking that if the schoolmistress had a right pretty little place to live she’d he more inclined to give Arthur Stuart his private lessons.

  It was time to quit for the day, but Alvin didn’t quit. He pushed all the fittings up to the springhouse in a wheelbarrow, along with a couple of other tools he figured to need, and some scrap tin for the flaring of the chimney. He worked fast, and without quite meaning to, he used his knack to smooth the labor. Everything fit first time; the doors rehung as nice as could be, and the lock fitted exactly to the inside face of the door, bolted on so tight that it’d never come off. This was a door no man could force—easier to chop through the split-log wall than attack this door. And with the hexes inside, a man wouldn’t dare to lift his axe against the house, or if he did, he’d be too weak to strike a telling blow—these were hexes that even a Red might not laugh at.

  Al took another trip back to the shed outside the smithy and chose the best of the old broke-down pot-belly stoves that Makepeace had bought for the iron in them. Carrying a whole stove wasn’t easy even for a man strong as a blacksmith, but it was sure the wheelbarrow couldn’t handle such a load. So Alvin hefted it up the hill by main strength. He left it outside while he brought stones from the old streambed to make a foundation under the floor at the place where the stove would go. The floor of the springhouse was set on beams running the length of the house inside, but they hadn’t planked over the strip where the stream used to go—it wouldn’t have been much of a springhouse if they covered over the cold water. Anyway he put a tight stone foundation under an upstream corner where the floor was done but not too high off the ground, and then bolted sheets of thin-beat iron on top of the planks to make a fireproof floor. Then he hefted the stove into place and piped it up to the hole he knocked in the roof.

  He set Arthur Stuart to work with a rasp, tearing the dead moss off the inside of the walls. It came off easy, but it mostly kept Arthur distracted so he didn’t notice that Alvin was fixing things on that brokedown stove that couldn’t be fixed by a natural man. Good as new, and all fittings tight.

  “I’m hungry,” said Arthur Stuart.

  “Get on up to Gertie and tell her I’m working late and please send food down for both of us, since you’re helping.”

  Arthur Stuart took off running. Alvin knew that he’d deliver the message word for word, and in Alvin’s own voice, so that Gertie’d laugh out loud and give him a good supper in a basket. Probably such a good supper that Arthur’d have to stop and rest three or four times on the way back, it’d be so heavy.

  All this time Makepeace Smith never so much as showed his face.

  When Arthur Stuart finally got back, Alvin was on the roof putting the final touch on the flaring, and fixing some of the shingles while he was up there. The flaring fit so tight water’d never get into the house, he saw to that. Arthur Stuart stood below, waiting and watching, not asking if he could go ahead and eat, not even asking how long till Alvin’d come down; he wasn’t the type of child to whine or complain. When Alvin was done, he dropped over the edge of the roof, caught himself on the lip of the eaves, then dropped to the ground.

  “Cold chicken be mighty good after a hot day’s work,” said Arthur Stuart, in a voice that was exactly Gertie Smith’s, except pitched in a child’s high voice.

  Alvin
grinned at him and opened the basket. They fell to eating like sailors who’d been on short rations for half the voyage, and in no time they was both lying there on their backs, bellies packed full, belching now and then, watching the white clouds move like placid cattle grazing across the sky.

  The sun was getting low toward the west now. Definitely time to pack in for the day, but Alvin just couldn’t feel good about that. “Best you get home,” he said. “Maybe if you just run that empty basket back up to Gertie Smith’s, you can get in without your Ma gets too upset at you.”

  “What you doing now?”

  “Got windows to frame and re-hang.”

  “Well I got walls to finish rasping down,” said Arthur Stuart.

  Alvin grinned, but he also knew that what he planned to do to the windows wasn’t a thing he wanted witnesses for. He had no intention of actually doing a lot of carpentry, and he didn’t ever let anybody watch him do something obvious with his knack. “Best you go home now,” said Alvin.

  Arthur sighed.

  “You been a good help to me, but I don’t want you getting in trouble.”

  To Alvin’s surprise, Arthur just returned his own words back to him in his own voice. “You been a good help to me, but I don’t want you getting in trouble.”

  “I mean it,” said Alvin.

  Arthur Stuart rolled over, got up, came over and sat down astride of Alvin’s belly—which Arthur often did, but it didn’t feel none too comfortable at the moment, there being about a chicken and a half inside that belly.

  “Come on, Arthur Stuart,” said Alvin.

  “I never told nobody bout no redbird,” said Arthur Stuart.

  Well. that just sent a chill right through Alvin. Somehow he’d figured that Arthur Stuart was just too young that day more than three years ago to even remember that anything happened. But Alvin should’ve knowed that just because Arthur Stuart didn’t talk about something didn’t mean that he forgot. Arthur never forgot so much as a caterpillar crawling on a leaf.

  If Arthur Stuart remembered the redbird, then he no doubt remembered that day when it was winter out of season. when Alvin’s knack dug a well and made the stone come clean of dirt without using his hands. And if Arthur Stuart knew all about Alvin’s knack, then what point was there in trying to sneak around and make it secret?

  “All right then,” said Alvin. “Help me hang the windows.” Alvin almost added, “as long as you don’t tell a soul what you see.” But Arthur Stuart already understood that. It was just one of the things that Arthur Stuart understood.

  They finished before dark, Alvin cutting into the wood of the window frames with his bare fingers, shaping what was just wood nailed into wood until it was windows that could slide free, up and down. He made little holes in the sides of the window frames and whittled plugs of wood to fit them, so the window would stay up as far as a body might want. Of course, he didn’t quite whittle like a natural man, since each stroke of the knife took off a perfect arc. Each plug was done in about six passes of the knife.

  Meantime Arthur Stuart finished the rasping, and then they swept out the house, using a broom of course, but Alvin helped with his knack so that every scrap of sawdust and iron filings and flakes of moss and ancient dust ended up outside the house. Only thing they didn’t do was try to cover the strip of open dirt down the middle of the springhouse, where once the stream flowed. That’d take felling a tree to get the planks, and anyway Alvin was starting to get a little scared, seeing how much he’d done and how fast he’d done it. What if somebody came tonight and realized that all this work was done in a single long afternoon? There’d be questions. There’d be guesses.

  “Don’t tell anybody that we did this all in a day,” said Alvin.

  Arthur Stuart just grinned. He’d lost one of his front teeth recently, so there was a spot where his pink gums showed up. Pink as a White person’s gums, Alvin thought. Inside his mouth he’s no different from a White. Then Alvin had this crazy idea of God taking all the people in the world who ever died and flaying them and hanging up their bodies like pigs in the butcher’s shop, just meat and bones hanging there by the heel, even the guts and the head gone, just meat. And then God would ask folks like the Hatrack River School Board to come in and pick out which was Black folks and which was Red and which was White. They couldn’t do it. Then God would say, “Well why in hell did you say that this one and this one and this one couldn’t go to school with this one and this one and this one?” What answer would they have then? Then God would say, “You people, you’re all the same rare meat under the skin. But I tell you, I don’t like your flavor. I’m going to toss your beefsteaks to the dogs.”

  Well, that was such a funny idea that Alvin couldn’t help but tell it to Arthur Stuart, and Arthur Stuart laughed just as hard as Alvin. Only after it was all said and the laughing was done did Alvin remember that maybe nobody’d told Arthur Stuart about how his ma tried to get him into the school and the school board said no. “You know what this is all about?”

  Arthur Stuart didn’t understand the question, or maybe he understood it even better than Alvin did. Anyways, he answered, “Ma’s hoping the teacher lady’ll learn me to read and write here in this springhouse.”

  “Right,” said Alvin. No point in explaining about the school, then. Either Arthur Stuart already knew how some White folks felt about Blacks, or else he’d find out soon enough without Alvin telling him now.

  “We’re all the same rare meat,” said Arthur Stuart. He used a funny voice that Alvin had never heard before.

  “Whose voice was that?” asked Alvin.

  “God, of course,” said Arthur Stuart.

  “Good imitation,” said Alvin. He was being funny.

  “Sure is,” said Arthur Stuart. He wasn’t.

  Turned out nobody came to the springhouse for a couple of days and more. It was Monday of the next week when Horace ambled into the smithy. He came early in the morning, at a time when Makepeace was most likely to be there, ostentatiously “teaching” Alvin to do something that Alvin already knew how to do.

  “My masterpiece was a ship’s anchor,” said Makepeace. “Course, that was back in Newport, afore I come west. Them ships, them whaling ships, they weren’t like little bitty houses and wagons. They needed real ironwork. A boy like you, you do well enough out here where they don’t know better, but you’d never make a go of it there, where a smith has to be a man.”

  Alvin was used to such talk. He let it roll right off him. But he was grateful anyway when Horace came in, putting an end to Makepeace’s brag.

  After all the good-mornings and howdy-dos. Horace got right to business. “I just come by to see when you’ll have a chance to get started on the springhouse.”

  Makepeace raised an eyebrow and looked at Alvin. Only then did Alvin realize that he’d never mentioned the job to Makepeace.

  “It’s already done, sir,” Alvin said to Makepeace—for all the world as if Makepeace’s unspoken question had been, “Are you finished yet?” and not. “What is this springhouse job the man’s talking about?”

  “Done?” said Horace.

  Alvin turned to him. “I thought you must’ve noticed. I thought you were in a hurry, so I did it right off in my free time.”

  “Well, let’s go see it,” said Horace. “I didn’t even think to look on my way down here.”

  “Yes, I’m dying to look at it myself,” said the smith.

  “I’ll just stay here and keep working,” said Alvin.

  “No,” said Makepeace. “You come along and show off this work you done in your free time.” Alvin didn’t hardly notice how Makepeace emphasized the last two words, he was so nervous to show off what he done at the springhouse. He only barely had sense enough to drop the keys he made into his pocket.

  They made their way up the hill to the springhouse. Horace was the kind of man who could tell when somebody did real good work, and wasn’t shy to say so. He fingered the fancy new hingework and admired the lock afor
e he put in the key. To Alvin’s pride it turned smooth and easy. The door swung open quiet as a leaf in autumn. If Horace noticed the hexes, he didn’t let on. It was other things he noticed, not hexery.

  “Why, you cleaned off the walls,” said Horace.

  “Arthur Stuart did that,” said Alvin. “Rasped it off neat as you please.”

  “And this stove—I tell you, Makepeace, I didn’t figure the price of a new stove in this.”

  “It isn’t a new stove,” said Alvin. “I mean, begging your pardon, but it was a brokedown stove we kept for the scrap, only when I looked it over I saw we could fix it up, so why not put it here?”

  Makepeace gave Alvin a cool look, then turned back to Horace. “That don’t mean it’s free, of course.”

  “Course not,” said Horace. “If you bought it for scrap, though …”

  “Oh, the price won’t be too terrible high.”

  Horace admired how it joined to the roof. “Perfect work,” he said. He turned around. To Alvin he looked a little sad, or maybe just resigned. “Have to cover the rest of the floor, of course.”

  “Not our line of work,” said Makepeace Smith.

  “Just talking to myself, don’t mind me.” Horace went over to the east window, pushed against it with his fingers, then raised it. He found the pegs on the sill and put them into the third hole on each side, then let the window fall back down to rest against the pegs. He looked at the pegs, then out the window, then back at the pegs, for a long time. Alvin dreaded having to explain how he, not trained as a fine carpenter, managed to hang such a fine window. Worse yet, what if Horace guessed that this was the original window, not a new one? That could only be explained by Alvin’s knack—no carpenter could get inside the wood to cut out a sliding window like that.

  But all Horace said was, “You did some extra work.”