But Alvin wasn’t lazy. He didn’t linger long at riverside, though he might want to. Soon enough he went into the porthouse and turned in Makepeace Smith’s chit to redeem the iron packed in nine crates on the dock.
“Don’t want you using my hand trucks to tote those, now,” said the portmaster. Alvin nodded—it was always the same. Folks wanted iron bad enough, the portmaster included, and he’d be up to the smithy soon enough asking for this or that. But in the meantime, he’d let Alvin heft the iron all himself, and not let him wear out the portmaster’s trucks moving such a heavy load. Nor did Makepeace ever give Alvin money enough to hire one of the river rats to help with the toting. Truth to tell, Alvin was glad enough of that. He didn’t much like the sort of man who lived the river life. Even though the day of brigands and pirates was pretty much over, there being too much traffic on the water now for much to happen in secret, still there was thievery enough, and crooked dealing, and Alvin looked down hard on the men who did such things. To his way of thinking, such men counted on the trust of honest folks, and then betrayed them; and what could that do, except make it so folks would stop trusting each other at all? I’d rather face a man with raw fighting in him, and match him arm for arm, than face a man who’s full of lies.
So wouldn’t you know it, Alvin met the new teacher and matched himself with a river rat all in the same hour.
The river rat he fought was one of a gang of them lolling under the eaves of the porthouse, probably waiting for a gaming house to open. Each time Alvin came out of the porthouse with a crate of iron bars, they’d call out to him. taunting him. At first it was sort of good-natured, saying things like, “Why are you taking so many trips, boy? Just tuck one of those crates under each arm!” Alvin just grinned at remarks like that, since he knew that they knew just how heavy a load of iron was. Why, when they unloaded the iron from the boat yesterday, the boatmen no doubt hefted two men to a crate. So in a way, teasing him about being lazy or weak was a kind of compliment, since it was only a joke because the iron was heavy and Alvin was really very strong.
Then Alvin went on to the grocer’s, to buy the spices Gertie had asked him to bring home for her kitchen, along with a couple of Irrakwa and New England kitchen tools whose purpose Al could only half guess at.
When he came back, both arms full, he found the river rats still loitering in the shade, only they had somebody new to taunt, and their mockery was a little ugly now. It was a middle-aged woman, some forty years old by Alvin’s guess, her hair tied up severe in a bun and a plain hat atop it, her dark dress right up to the neck and down the wrist as if she was afraid sunlight on her skin might kill her. She was staring stonily ahead while the river rats had words at her.
“You reckon that dress is sewed on, boys?”
They reckoned so.
“Probably never comes up for no man.”
“Why no, boys, there’s nothing under that skirt, she’s just a doll’s head and hands sewed onto a stuffed dress, don’t you think?”
“No way could she be a real woman.”
“I can tell a real woman when I see one, anyway. The minute they lay eyes on me, real women just naturally start spreading their legs and raising their skirts.”
“Maybe if you helped her out a little, you could turn her into a real woman.”
“This one? This one’s carved out of wood. I’d get splinters in my oar, trying to row in such waters.”
Well, that was about all Alvin could stand to hear. It was bad enough for a man to think such thoughts about a woman who invited it—the girls from the gaming houses, who opened their necklines down to where you could count their breasts as plain as a cow’s teats and flounced along the streets kicking up their skirts till you could see their knees. But this woman was plainly a lady, and by rights oughtn’t to have to hear the dirty thoughts of these low men. Alvin figured she must be waiting for somebody to fetch her—the stagecoach to Hatrack River was due, but not for a couple of hours yet. She didn’t look fearful—she probably knew these men was more brag than action, so her virtue was safe enough. And from her face Alvin couldn’t guess whether she was even listening, her expression was so cold and faraway. But the river rats’ words embarrassed him so much he couldn’t stand it, and couldn’t feel right about just driving his wagon off and leaving her there. So he put the parcels he got from the port grocer into the wagon and then walked up to the river rats and spoke to the loudest and crudest talker among them.
“Maybe you’d best speak to her like a lady,” said Alvin. “Or perhaps not speak to her at all.”
Alvin wasn’t surprised to see the glint these boys all got in their eyes the minute he spoke. Provoking a lady was one kind of fun, but he knew they were sizing him up now to see how easy he’d be to whup. They always loved a chance to teach a lesson to a town boy, even one built up as strong as Alvin was, him being a blacksmith.
“Maybe you’d best not speak to us at all,” said the loud one. “Maybe you already said more than you ought.”
One of the river rats didn’t understand, and thought the game was still talking dirty about the lady. “He’s just jealous. He wants to pole her muddy river himself.”
“I haven’t said enough,” said Alvin, “not while you still don’t have the manners to know how to speak to a lady.”
Only now did the lady speak for the first time. “I don’t need protection, young man,” she said. “Just go along, please.” Her voice was strange-sounding. Cultured, like Reverend Thrower, with all the words clear. Like people who went to school in the East.
It would have been better for her not to speak, since the sound of her voice only encouraged the river rats.
“Oh, she’s sweet on this boy!”
“She’s making a move on him!”
“He wants to row our boat!”
“Let’s show her who the real man is!”
“If she wants his little mast, let’s cut it off and give it to him.”
A knife appeared, then another. Didn’t she know enough to keep her mouth shut? If they dealt with Alvin alone, they’d set up to have a single fight, one to one. But if they got to showing off for her, they’d be happy enough to gang up on him and cut him bad, maybe kill him, certainly take an ear or his nose or, like they said, geld him.
Alvin glared at her for a moment, silently telling her to shut her mouth. Whether she understood his look or just figured things out for herself or got plain scared to say more, she didn’t offer any more conversation, and Alvin set to turning things in a direction he could handle.
“Knives,” said Alvin, with all the contempt he could muster. “So you’re afraid to face a blacksmith with bare hands?”
They laughed at him, but the knives got pulled back and put away.
“Blacksmith’s nothing compared to the muscles we get poling the river.”
“You don’t pole the river no more, boys, and everybody knows that,” said Alvin. “You just set back and get fat, watching the paddlewheel push the boat along.”
The loudest talker got up and stepped out, pulling his filthy shirt off over his head. He was strongly muscled, all right, with more than a few scars making white and red marks here and there on his chest and arms. He was also missing an ear.
“From the look of you,” said Alvin, “you’ve fought a lot of men.”
“Damn straight,” said the river rat.
“And from the look of you, I’d say most of them was better than you.”
The man turned red, blushing under his tan clear down to his chest.
“Can’t you give me somebody who’s worth rassling? Somebody who mostly wins his fights?”
“I win my fights!” shouted the man—getting mad, so he’d be easy to lick, which was Al’s plan. But the others, they started pulling him back.
“The blacksmith boy’s right, you’re no great shakes at rassling.”
“Give him what he wants.”
“Mike, you take this boy.”
“He’s yours,
Mike.”
From the back—the shadiest spot, where he’d been sitting on the only chair with a back to it—a man stood up and stepped forward.
“I’ll take this boy,” he said.
At once the loud one backed off and got out of the way. This wasn’t what Alvin wanted at all. The man they called Mike was bigger and stronger than any of the others, and as he stripped his shirt off, A1 saw that while he had a scar or two, he was mostly clean, and he had both his ears, a sure sign that if he ever lost a rassling match, he sure never lost bad.
He had muscles like a buffalo.
“My name is Mike Fink!” he bellowed. “And I’m the meanest, toughest son-of-a-bitch ever to walk on the water! I can orphan baby alligators with my bare hands! I can throw a live buffalo up onto a wagon and slap him upside the head until he’s dead! If I don’t like the bend of a river, I grab ahold of the end of it and give it a shake to straighten it out! Every woman I ever put down come up with triplets, if she come up at all! When I’m done with you, boy, your hair will hang down straight on both sides cause you won’t have no more ears. You’ll have to sit down to piss, and you’ll never have to shave again!”
All the time Mike Fink was making his brag, Alvin was taking off his shirt and his knife belt and laying them on the wagon seat. Then he marked a big circle in the dirt, making sure he looked as calm and relaxed as if Mike Fink was a spunky seven-year-old boy, and not a man with murder in his eyes.
So when Fink was shut of boasting, the circle was marked. Fink walked to the circle, then rubbed it out with his foot, raising a dust. He walked all around the circle, rubbing it out. “I don’t know who taught you how to rassle, boy,” he said, “but when you rassle me, there ain’t no lines and there ain’t no rules.”
Once again the lady spoke up. “Obviously there are no rules when you speak, either, or you’d know that the word ain’t is a sure sign of ignorance and stupidity.”
Fink turned to the woman and made as if to speak. But it was like he knew he had nothing to say, or maybe he figured that whatever he said would make him sound more ignorant. The contempt in her voice enraged him, but it also made him doubt himself. At first Alvin thought the lady was making it more dangerous for him, meddling again. But then he realized that she was doing to Fink what Alvin had tried to do to the loudmouth—make him mad enough to fight stupid. Trouble was, as Alvin sized up the river man, he suspected that Fink didn’t fight stupid when he was mad —it just made him fight meaner. Fight to kill. Act out his brag about taking off parts of Alvin’s body. This wasn’t going to be a friendly match like the ones Alvin had in town, where the game was just to throw the other man, or if they was fighting on grass, to pin him down.
“You’re not so much,” Alvin said, “and you know it, or you wouldn’t have a knife hid in your boot.”
Fink looked startled, then grinned. He pulled up his pantleg and took a long knife out of his boot, tossed it to the men behind him. “I won’t need a knife to fight you, he said.
“Then why don’t you take the knife out of the other boot?” asked Alvin.
Fink frowned and raised the other pantleg. “Ain’t no knife here,” he said.
Alvin knew better, of course, and it pleased him that Fink was worried enough about this fight not to part with his most secret knife. Besides which, probably nobody else knew about that knife but Alvin, with his ability to see what others couldn’t see. Fink didn’t want to let on to the others that he had such a knife, or word would spread fast along the river and he’d get no advantage from it.
Still, Alvin couldn’t afford to let Fink fight with the knife on him. “Then take off the boots and we’ll fight barefoot,” Alvin said. It was a good idea anyway, knife or no knife. Alvin knew that when the river rats fought, they kicked like mules with their boots. Fighting barefoot might take some of the spunk out of Mike Fink.
But if Fink lost any spunk, he didn’t show it. Just sat down in the dust of the road and pulled off his boots. Alvin did the same, and his socks too—Fink didn’t wear socks. So now the two of them had on nothing but their trousers, and already out in the sunlight there was enough dust and sweat that their bodies were looking a little streaked and cakey with clay.
Not so caked up, though, that Alvin couldn’t feel a hex of protection drawn over Mike Fink’s whole body. How could such a thing be? Did he have a hex on some amulet in his pocket? The pattern was strongest near his backside, but when Alvin sent his bug to search that pocket, there was nothing but the rough cotton canvas of Fink’s trousers. He wasn’t carrying so much as a coin.
By now a crowd was gathered. Not just the river rats who’d been resting in the porthouse shade, but a whole slew of others, and it was plain they all expected Mike Fink to win. He must be something of a legend on the river, Alvin realized, and no surprise, with this mysterious hex he had. Alvin could imagine folks poking a knife at Fink, only to twist at the last moment, or lose their grip, or somehow keep the knife from doing harm. It was a lot easier to win all your wrassling if no man’s teeth could bite into you, and if a knife couldn’t do much more than graze your skin.
Fink tried all the obvious stuff first, of course, because it made the best show: Roaring, rushing at Alvin like a buffalo, trying to get a bear hug on him, trying to grab onto Alvin and give him a swing like a rock on a string. But Alvin wouldn’t have none of that. He didn’t even have to use knackery to get away, neither. He was younger and quicker than Fink, and the river man hardly so much as laid a hand on him, Al dodged away so sudden. At first the crowd hooted and called Alvin coward. But after a while of this, they began to laugh at Fink, since he looked so silly, rushing and roaring and coming up empty all the time.
In the meantime, Alvin was exploring to find the source of Fink’s hex, for there was no hope of winning this fight if he couldn’t get rid of that strong web. He found it soon enough—a pattern of dye embedded deep in the skin of Fink’s buttock. It wasn’t a perfect hex anymore, since the skin had changed shape somewhat as Fink grew over the years, but it was a clever pattern, with strong locks and links—good enough to cast a strong net over him, even if it was misshapen.
If he hadn’t been in the middle of a rassling match with Fink, Alvin might have been more subtle, might have just weakened the hex a little, for he had no will to deprive Fink of the hex that had protected him for so long. Why, Fink might die of it, losing his hex, especially if he had let himself get careless, counting on it to protect him. But what choice did Alvin have? So he made the dyes in Fink’s skin start to flow, seeping into his bloodstream and getting carried away. Alvin could do without full concentration—just set it to happening and let it glide on, while he worked on dodging out of Fink’s way.
Soon enough Al could sense the hex weakening, fading, finally collapsing completely. Fink wouldn’t know it, but Alvin did—he could now be hurt like any other man.
By this time, though, Fink was no longer making those rough and stupid rushes at him. He was circling, feinting, looking to grapple in a square, then use his greater bulk to throw Alvin. But Alvin had a longer reach, and there was no doubt his arms were stronger, so whenever Fink reached to grab, Alvin batted the river man’s arms out of the way.
With the hex gone, however. Alvin didn’t slap him away. Instead, he reached inside Fink’s arms, so that as Fink grasped his arms, Alvin got his hands hooked behind Fink’s neck.
Alvin pulled down hard, bowing Fink down so his head was even with Alvin’s chest. It was too easy—Fink was letting him. and Alvin guessed why. Sure enough. Fink pulled Alvin closer and brought his head up fast, expecting to catch Alvin on the chin with the back of his head. He was so strong he might’ve broke Alvin’s neck doing that—only Alvin’s chin wasn’t where Fink thought it would be. In fact. Alvin had already rared his own head back, and when Fink came up hard and out of control, Alvin rammed forward and smashed his forehead into Fink’s face. He could feel Fink’s nose crumple under the blow. and blood, erupted down both their faces.
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It wasn’t all that surprising, for a man’s nose to get broke during a rassle like this. It hurt like blazes of course, and it would’ve stopped a friendly match—though of course a friendly match wouldn’t have included head butts. Any other river rat would’ve shook his head, roared a couple of times, and charged back into the fight.
Instead, Fink backed away. a look of real surprise on his face, his hands gripping his nose. Then he let out a howl like a whupped dog.
Everybody else fell silent. It was such a funny thing to happen, a river rat like Mike Fink howling at a broke-up nose. No, it wasn’t rightly funny, but it was strange. It wasn’t how a river rat was supposed to act.
“Come on, Mike,” somebody murmured.
“You can take him, Mike.”
But it was a half-hearted sort of encouragement. They’d never seen Mike Fink act hurt or scared before. He wasn’t good at hiding it, either. Only Al knew why. Only Al knew that Mike Fink had never in his life felt such a pain, that Fink had never once shed his own blood in a fight. So many times he’d broke the other fellow’s nose and laughed at the pain—it was easy to laugh, because he didn’t know how it felt. Now he knew. Trouble was, he was learning what others learned at six years old, and so he was acting like a six-year-old. Not crying, exactly, but howling.
For a minute Alvin thought that maybe the match was over. But Fink’s fear and pain soon turned to rage, and he waded back into the fight. Maybe he’d learned pain, but he hadn’t learned caution from it.
So it took a few more holds, a few more wrenches and twists, before Alvin got Fink down onto the ground. Even as frightened and surprised as Fink was, he was the strongest man Alvin had ever rassled. Till this fight with Fink, Alvin had never really had occasion to find out just how strong he was; he’d never been pushed to his limit. Now he was, and he found himself rolling over and over in the dust, hardly able to breathe it was so thick, Fink’s own hot panting breath now above him, now below, knees ramming, arms pounding and gripping, feet scrabbling in the dust, searching for purchase enough to get leverage.
Prentice Alvin: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume III Page 20
