“You got my journeyman paper,” said Alvin. “I want it.”
Makepeace reached into his pocket, took out a folded paper, and threw it onto the grass in front of the smithy. Then he reached out and pulled the smithy doors shut, something he hardly ever did, even in winter. He shut them tight and barred them on the inside. Poor fool, as if Alvin couldn’t break down them walls in a second if he really wanted to get inside. Alvin walked over and picked up the paper. He opened it and read it—signed all proper. It was legal. Alvin was a journeyman.
The sun was just about to show up when Alvin got to the springhouse door. Of course it was locked, but locks and hexes couldn’t keep Alvin out, specially when he made them all himself. He opened the door and went inside. Arthur Stuart stirred in his sleep. Alvin touched his shoulder, brought the boy awake. Alvin knelt there by the bed and told the boy most all that happened in the night. He showed him the golden plow, showed him how it moved. Arthur laughed in delight. Then Alvin told him that the woman he called Mama all his life was dead, killed by the Finders, and Arthur cried.
But not for long. He was too young to cry for long. “You say she kilt one herself afore she died?”
“With your pa’s own shotgun.”
“Good for her!” said Arthur Stuart, his voice so fierce Alvin almost laughed, him being so small.
“I killed the other one myself. The one that shot her.”
Arthur reached out and took Alvin’s right hand and opened it. “Did you kill him with this hand?”
Alvin nodded.
Arthur kissed his open palm.
“I would’ve fixed her up if I could,” said Alvin. “But she died too fast. Even if I’d been standing right there the second after the shot hit her, I couldn’t’ve fixed her up.”
Arthur Stuart reached out and hung onto Alvin around his neck and cried some more.
It took a day to put Old Peg into the ground, up on the hill with her own daughters and Alvin’s brother Vigor and Arthur’s mama who died so young. “A place for people of courage,” said Dr. Physicker, and Alvin knew that he was right, even though Physicker didn’t know about the runaway Black slave girl.
Alvin washed away the bloodstains from the floor and stairs of the roadhouse, using his knack to pull out what blood the lye and sand couldn’t remove. It was the last gift he could give to Horace or to Peggy. Margaret. Miss Larner.
“I got to leave now,” he told them. They were setting on chairs in the common room of the inn, where they’d been receiving mourners all day. “I’m taking Arthur to my folks’ place in Vigor Church. He’ll be safe there. And then I’m going on.”
“Thank you for everything,” said Horace. “You been a good friend to us. Old Peg loved you.” Then he broke down crying again.
Alvin patted him on the shoulder a couple of times, and then moved over to stand in front of Peggy. “All that I am, Miss Larner, I owe to you.”
She shook her head.
“I meant all I said to you. I still mean it.”
Again she shook her head. He wasn’t surprised. With her mama dead, never even knowing that her own daughter’d come home, why, Alvin didn’t expect she could just up and go. Somebody had to help Horace Guester run the roadhouse. It all made sense. But still it stabbed him to the heart, because now more than ever he knew that it was true—he loved her. But she wasn’t for him. That much was plain. She never had been. A woman like this, so educated and fine and beautiful—she could be his teacher, but she could never love him like he loved her.
“Well then, I guess I’m saying good-bye,” said Alvin. He stuck out his hand, even though he knew it was kind of silly to shake hands with somebody grieving the way she was. But he wanted so bad to put his arms around her and hold her tight the way he’d held Arthur Stuart when he was grieving, and a handshake was as close as he could come to that.
She saw his hand, and reached up and took it. Not for a handshake, but just holding his hand, holding it tight. It took him by surprise. He’d think about that many times in the months and years to come, how tight she held to him. Maybe it meant she loved him. Or maybe it meant she only cared for him as a pupil, or thanked him for avenging her mama’s death—how could he know what a thing like that could mean? But still he held onto that memory, in case it meant she loved him.
And he made her a promise then, with her holding his hand like that; made her a promise even though he didn’t know if she even wanted him to keep it. “I’ll be back,” he said. “And what I said last night, it’ll always be true.” It took all his courage then to call her by the name she gave him permission last night to use. “God be with you, Margaret.”
“God be with you, Alvin,” she whispered.
Then he gathered up Arthur Stuart, who’d been saying his own good-byes, and led the boy outside. They walked out back of the roadhouse to the barn, where Alvin had hidden the golden plow deep in a barrel of beans. He took off the lid and held out his hand, and the plow rose upward until it glinted in the light. Then Alvin took it up, wrapped it double in burlap and put it inside a burlap bag, then swung the bag over his shoulder.
Alvin knelt down and held out his hand the way he always did when he wanted Arthur Stuart to climb up onto his back. Arthur did, thinking it was all for play—a boy that age, he can’t be grieving for more than an hour or two at a time. He swung up onto Alvin’s back, laughing and bouncing.
“This time it’s going to be a long ride, Arthur Stuart,” said Alvin. “We’re going all the way to my family’s house in Vigor Church.”
“Walking the whole way?”
“I’ll be walking. You’re going to ride.”
“Gee-yap!” cried Arthur Stuart.
Alvin set off at a trot, but before long he was running full out. He never set foot on that road, though. Instead he took off cross country, over fields, over fences, and on into the woods, which still stood in great swatches here and there across the states of Hio and Wobbish between him and home. The greensong was much weaker than it had been in the days when the Red men had it all to themselves. But the song was still strong enough for Alvin Smith to hear. He let himself himself fall into the rhythm of the greensong, running as the Red men did. And Arthur Stuart—maybe he could hear some of the greensong too, enough that it could lull him to sleep, there on Alvin’s back. The world was gone. Just him, Arthur Stuart, the golden plow—and the whole world singing around him. I’m a journeyman now. And this is my first journey.
20
Cavil’s Deed
CAVIL PLANTER HAD business in town. He mounted his horse early on that fine spring morning, leaving behind wife and slaves, house and land, knowing all were well under his control, fully his own.
Along about noon, after many a pleasant visit and much business well done, he stopped in at the postmaster’s store. There were three letters there. Two were from old friends. One was from Reverend Philadelphia Thrower in Carthage, the capital of Wobbish.
Old friends could wait. This would be news about the Finders he hired, though why the letter should come from Thrower and not from the Finders themselves, Cavil couldn’t guess. Maybe there was trouble. Maybe he’d have to go north to testify after all. Well, if that’s what it takes, I’ll do it, thought Cavil. Gladly I’ll leave the ninety and nine sheep, as Jesus said, in order to reclaim the one that strayed.
It was bitter news. Both Finders dead, and so also the innkeeper’s wife who claimed to have adopted Cavil’s stolen firstborn son. Good riddance to her, thought Cavil, and he spared not a second’s grief for the Finders—they were hirelings, and he valued them less than his slaves, since they weren’t his. No, it was the last news, the worst news, that set Cavil’s hands to trembling and his breath to stop. The man who killed one of the Finders, a prentice smith named Alvin, he ran off instead of standing trial—and took with him Cavil’s son.
He took my son. And the worst words from Thrower were these: “I knew this fellow Alvin when he was a mere child, and already he was an agent of evil.
He is our mutual Friend’s worst enemy in all the world, and now he has your most valued property in his possession. I wish I had better news. I pray for you, lest your son be turned into a dangerous and implacable foe of all our Friend’s holy work.”
With such news, how could Cavil go about the rest of the day’s business? Without a word to the postmaster or to anybody, Cavil stuffed the letters into his pocket, went outside, mounted his horse, and headed home. All the way his heart was tossed between rage and fear. How could those northerner Emancipationist scum have let his slave, his son, get stole right out from under them, by the worst enemy of the Overseer? I’ll go north, I’ll make them pay, I’ll find the boy, I’ll—and then his thoughts would turn all of a sudden to what the Overseer would say, if ever He came again. What if He despises me now, and never comes again? Or worse, what if He comes and damns me for a slothful servant? Or what if He declares me unworthy and forbids me to take any more Black women to myself? How could I live if not in His service—what else is my life for?
And then rage again, terrible blasphemous rage, in which he cried out deep within his soul, O my Overseer! Why did You let this happen? You could have stopped it with a word, if You are truly Lord!
And then terror: Such a thing, to doubt the power of the Overseer! No, forgive me, I am truly Thy slave, O Master! Forgive me, I’ve lost everything, forgive me!
Poor Cavil. He’d find out soon enough what losing everything could mean.
He got himself home and turned the horse up that long drive leading to the house, only the sun being hot he stayed under the shade of the oaks along the south side of the road. Maybe if he’d rode out in the middle of the lane he would’ve been seen sooner. Maybe then he wouldn’t have heard a woman cry out inside the house just as he was coming out from under the trees.
“Dolores!” he called. “Is something wrong?”
No answer.
Now, that scared him. It conjured up pictures in his mind of marauders or thieves or such, breaking into his house while he was gone. Maybe they already killed Lashman, and even now were killing his wife. He spurred his horse and raced around the house to the back.
Just in time to see a big old Black running from the back door of the house down toward the slave quarters. He couldn’t see the Black man’s face, on account of his trousers, which he didn’t have on, nor any other clothing either—no, he was holding those trousers like a banner, flapping away in front of his face as he ran down toward the sheds.
A Black, no pants on, running out of my house, in which a woman was crying out. For a moment Cavil was torn between the desire to chase down the Black man and kill him with his bare hands and the need to go up and see to Dolores, make sure she was all right. Had he come in time? Was she undefiled?
Cavil bounded up the stairs and flung open the door to his wife’s room. There lay Dolores in bed, her covers tight up under her chin, looking at him through wide-open, frightened eyes.
“What happened!” cried Cavil. “Are you all right?”
“Of course I am!” she answered sharply. “What are you doing home?”
That wasn’t the answer you get from a woman who’s just cried out in fear. “I heard you call out,” said Cavil. “Didn’t you hear me answer?”
“I hear everything up here,” said Dolores. “I got nothing to do in my life but lie here and listen. I hear everything that’s said in this house and everything that’s done. Yes, I heard you call. But you weren’t answering me.”
Cavil was astonished. She sounded angry. He’d never heard her sound angry before. Lately he’d hardly heard a word from her at all—she was always asleep when he took breakfast, and their dinners together passed in silence. Now this anger—why? Why now?
“I saw a Black man running away from the house,” said Cavil. “I thought maybe he—”
“Maybe he what?” She said the words like a taunt, a challenge.
“Maybe he hurt you.”
“No, he didn’t hurt me.”
Now a thought began to creep into Cavil’s mind, a thought so terrible he couldn’t even admit he was thinking it. “What did he do, then?”
“Why, the same holy work that you’ve been doing, Cavil.”
Cavil couldn’t say a thing to that. She knew. She knew it all.
“Last summer, when your friend Reverend Thrower came, I lay here in my bed as you talked, the two of you.”
“You were asleep. Your door was—”
“I heard everything. Every word, every whisper. I heard you go outside. I heard you talk at breakfast. Do you know I wanted to kill you? For years I thought you were the loving husband, a Christlike man, and all this time you were rutting with these Black women. And then sold all your own babies as slaves. You’re a monster, I thought. So evil that for you to live another minute was an abomination. But my hands couldn’t hold a knife or pull the trigger on a gun. So I lay here and thought. And you know what I thought?”
Cavil said nothing. The way she told it, it made him sound so bad. “It wasn’t like that, it was holy.”
“It was adultery!”
“I had a vision!”
“Yes, your vision. Well, fine and dandy, Mr. Cavil Planter, you had a vision that making half-White babies was a good thing. Here’s some news for you. I can make half-White babies, too!”
It was all making sense now. “He raped you!”
“He didn’t rape me, Cavil. I invited him up here. I told him what to do. I made him call me his vixen and say prayers with me before and after so it would be as holy as what you did. We prayed to your damned Overseer, but for some reason he never showed up.”
“It never happened.”
“Again and again, every time you left the plantation, all winter, all spring.”
“I don’t believe it. You’re lying to hurt me. You can’t do that —the doctor said—it hurts you too bad.”
“Cavil, before I found out what you done with those Black women, I thought I knew what pain was, but all that suffering was nothing, do you hear me? I could live through that pain every day forever and call it a holiday. I’m pregnant, Cavil.”
“He raped you. That’s what we’ll tell everybody, and we’ll hang him as an example, and—”
“Hang him? There’s only one rapist on this plantation, Cavil, and don’t think for a moment that I won’t tell. If you lay a hand on my baby’s father, I’ll tell the whole county what you’ve been doing. I’ll get up on Sunday and tell the church.”
“I did it in the service of the—”
“Do you think they’ll believe that? No more than I do. The word for what you done isn’t holiness. It’s concupiscence. Adultery. Lust. And when word gets out, when my baby is born Black, they’ll turn against you, all of them. They’ll run you out.”
Cavil knew she was right. Nobody would believe him. He was ruined. Unless he did one simple thing.
He walked out of her room. She lay there laughing at him, taunting him. He went to his bedroom, took the shotgun down from the wall, poured in the powder, wadded it, then dumped in a double load of shot and rammed it tight with a second wad.
She wasn’t laughing when he came back in. Instead she had her face toward the wall, and she was crying. Too late for tears, he thought. She didn’t turn to face him as he strode to the bed and tore down the covers. She was naked as a plucked chicken.
“Cover me!” she whimpered. “He ran out so fast, he didn’t dress me. It’s cold! Cover me, Cavil—”
Then she saw the gun.
Her twisted hands flailed in the air. Her body writhed. She cried out in the pain of trying to move so quickly. Then he pulled the trigger and her body just flopped right down on the bed, a last sigh of air leaking out of the top of her neck.
Cavil went back to his room and reloaded the gun.
He found Fat Fox fully dressed, polishing the carriage. He was such a liar, he thought he could fool Cavil Planter. But Cavil didn’t even bother listening to his lies. “Your vixen wants to see you ups
tairs,” he said.
Fat Fox kept denying it all the way until he got into the room and saw Dolores on the bed. Then he changed his tune. “She made me! What could I do, Master! It was like you and the women, Master! What choice a Black slave got? I got to obey, don’t I? Like the women and you!”
Cavil knew devil talk when he heard it, and he paid no mind. “Strip off your clothes and do it again,” he said. Fat Fox howled and Fat Fox whined, but when Cavil jammed him in the ribs with the barrel, he did what he was told. He closed his eyes so he didn’t have to see what Cavil’s shotgun done to Dolores, and he did what he was told. Then Cavil fired the gun again.
In a little while Lashman came in from the far field, all a-lather with running and fearing when he heard the gunshots. Cavil met him downstairs. “Lock down the slaves, Lashman, and then go fetch me the sheriff.”
When the sheriff came, Cavil led him upstairs and showed him. The sheriff went pale. “Good Lord,” he whispered.
“Is it murder, Sheriff? I did it. Are you taking me to jail?”
“No sir,” said the sheriff. “Ain’t nobody going to call this murder.” Then he looked at Cavil with this twisted kind of expression on his face. “What kind of man are you. Cavil?”
For a moment Cavil didn’t understand the question.
“Letting me see your wife like that. I’d rather die before I let somebody see my wife like that.”
The sheriff left. Lashman had the slaves clean up the room. There was no funeral for either one. They both got buried out where Salamandy lay. Cavil was pretty sure a few chickens died over the graves, but by then he didn’t care. He was on his tenth bottle of bourbon and his ten-thousandth muttered prayer to the Overseer, who seemed powerful standoffish at a time like this.
Along about a week later, or maybe longer, here comes the sheriff again, with the priest and the Baptist preacher both. The three of them woke Cavil up from his drunken sleep and showed him a draught for twenty-five thousand dollars. “All your neighbors took up a collection,” the priest explained.
Prentice Alvin: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume III Page 35
