The Crystal City: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume VI

by Orson Scott Card

  “They can see that I’m young,” said Roy, irritated again. To Mary and Rien he said, “Why don’t you ladies come on inside, then, and we’ll see about maybe something to drink, like…lemonade?”

  “Lemonade would be lovely,” said Mary. “But before we accept your kind invitation, we heard that your name is Roy, but not your family name.”

  “Why, we took our name from what we grow. Roy Cottoner, and my father is Abner Cottoner, after some general in the Bible.”

  “And in French,” said Mary, “your first name means ‘king.’”

  “I know that,” said Roy, sounding irritated again. He was quite an irritable boy.

  They followed him into the house. Mary had no idea if they were doing things properly—should Mother go first, or should she?—but they figured Roy wouldn’t know, and besides, they were already tagged as impostors, so it wouldn’t hurt if they got a few things wrong.

  “Master Cottoner,” said Mary.

  Roy turned around.

  “Our servants are thirsty. Is there…”

  He laughed. “Oh, them. Old Bart, our houseboy, he’ll show them around back to the cistern.”

  Sure enough, the elderly black man was already closing the front door behind him as he headed out to where Arthur Stuart and La Tia were waiting. Mary wished she had more confidence in Arthur Stuart’s knack. But Alvin seemed to have confidence in him, so how could Mary refuse to trust in his abilities?

  Roy led them into a parlor and invited them to sit down. He turned to Mr. Tutor. “Go tell Petunia we need lemonade.”

  Mr. Tutor looked mortally offended. “I am not a servant in this house, sir.”

  “Well what do you think, I should go tell them myself?”

  Mary suspected, from what she knew of manners, that that was indeed what he ought to do, but Mr. Tutor merely narrowed his eyes and went off to obey. Mary was just as happy to have him out of the room.

  She watched as Roy took a pose in the archway. It looked studied and unnatural, and she suspected that he was imitating the way he’d seen his father stand when company came. On a full-grown man, the stance would have seemed languid and comfortable.

  “Master Cottoner,” said Mary. “We have, as you guessed, come to ask for aid.”

  “Father isn’t here,” said Roy. “I got no money.”

  “It happens that we don’t need money. What we need is permission to bring a large group of people onto your land, and feed them from your larder, and let them sleep the night.”

  Roy’s eyes narrowed, and he dropped his pose. “So you are from those people who crossed Pontchartrain.”

  “We are indeed,” said Mary. “There are five thousand of us, and we’d rather have your help offered freely. But if we have to, we’ll just take what we need. We have hundreds of hungry children among us, and we don’t mean for them to go hungry.”

  “You get out of my house,” said Roy. “You just get out of here.”

  For the first time, Mother spoke. “You are young,” she said. “But it is the essence of dignity to pretend to desire what you cannot prevent.”

  “My father’ll shoot you down like dogs when he gets home.”

  “Roy!” A woman’s voice came from the hall, and a frail-looking woman came into view behind him, wan and bedraggled from sleep, a robe drawn around her shoulders. “Roy, in my house we will be polite.”

  “They’re a bunch of runaways from Barcy, Mama! They’re threatening to take food and such from us.”

  “That’s no reason not to be polite,” said the woman. “I am Ruth Cottoner, mistress of this house. Please forgive my ill-mannered son.”

  “You shouldn’t apologize for me, Mama, not to thieves and liars!”

  “If I weren’t so ill, I’d have reared him better,” said Ruth sadly.

  Then she pulled up a musket that she had been holding behind her leg. She aimed it straight at Rien and before Mary could even scream, she pulled the trigger.

  The gunpowder fizzled and sparked, and a double handful of smallshot dribbled out the end of the barrel.

  “How odd,” said Ruth. “My husband said it was loaded and ready to fire.”

  Arthur Stuart appeared behind her. “It was,” he said. “But sometimes guns just don’t do what you tell them.”

  She turned around to face him, and now for the first time there was fear on her face. “Whose slave are you! What are you doing in my house!”

  “I’m no man’s slave,” said Arthur Stuart, “nor any woman’s neither. I’m just a fellow who doesn’t take kindly to folks pointing muskets at my friends.”

  La Tia appeared behind him. “Ma’am,” she said, “you lay down that foolish gun and sit.” La Tia was carrying a tray with a pitcher of lemonade and six glasses. “We gonna have a talk, us.”

  “You leave my mother alone!” shouted Roy. And he made as if to shove at La Tia. But Arthur Stuart was already there and caught his wrists and held him.

  “You will die for laying a hand on my son,” said Ruth.

  “We’ll all die someday,” said Arthur Stuart. “Now you heard the lady. Set.”

  “You have invaded my home.”

  “This ain’t no home,” said Arthur Stuart. “This is a prison, where sixty black people are held captive against their will. You are one of the captors, and for this crime you surely deserve terrible punishment, ma’am. But we ain’t here to punish nobody, so maybe you best be keeping your thoughts of punishing us to yourself. Now set.”

  She sat. Arthur propelled Roy to another chair and made sure he, too, sat down.

  La Tia put the tray on the small serving table and began to fill the glasses with lemonade. “Just so you know,” said La Tia, “we notice that some fool has lock all the black folk into their cabins. In the heat of the day, that be so mean to do.”

  “So I let them all out,” said Arthur. “They’re drinking their fill at the pump right now, but pretty soon they’ll be helping our company find places to camp on your lawns and in your barns, and setting out a supper to feed five thousand. It’s like being in the Bible, don’t you think?”

  “We don’t have food enough for so many!” said Ruth.

  “If you don’t, we’ll impose on the hospitality of some of your neighbors.”

  “My husband will be back any time! Very soon!”

  “We’ll be watching for him,” said Arthur. “I don’t think you need to fret—we won’t let him accidentally hurt somebody.”

  Mary couldn’t help but admire how cool he was, as if he was enjoying this. And yet there was no malice in it.

  “He’ll raise the county and have you all hanged!” said Roy.

  “Even the women and children?” asked Arthur Stuart mildly. “That’s a dangerous precedent. Fortunately, we aren’t killers, so we won’t hang you.”

  “I bet Mr. Tutor’s already run for help,” said Roy smugly.

  “I take it Mr. Tutor is that soft-bodied white man who has read more books than he understood.”

  Roy nodded.

  “He’s standing out in the yard with his pants down around his ankles, while some of the illiterate black folks are reading to him from the Bible. It seems they heard him make a big deal about how black folks couldn’t be taught to read because their brains wasn’t big enough or they got baked in the sun or some such theory, and they’re proving him wrong at this moment.”

  “You were busy out there,” said Rien.

  “I’m a sick and dying woman,” said Ruth. “It’s cruel of you to do this to me in the last weeks of my life.”

  Arthur looked at her and smiled. “And how many weeks of freedom were you going to give any of your slaves, before they died?”

  “We treat our servants well, thank you!” said Ruth.

  As if in answer to her, Old Bart came into the room. He didn’t walk slowly now. His stride was bold and quick, and he walked up to Ruth and spat in her lap. At once Roy leapt up from his chair, but Old Bart turned to him and slapped him so hard across the face t
hat he fell to the floor.

  “No!” cried Mary, and her mother also cried out, “Non!”

  “We don’t hit nobody,” said La Tia softly. “And no spitting, neither.”

  Old Bart turned to her. “The folks out back, they all wanted to do it, but I said, Let me do it just the once for all of us. And they chose me for the job. You know this boy already done had his way with two of the girls, and one of them not even got her womanlies yet.”

  “That’s a lie!” shouted Roy.

  “My son is not capable of—”

  “Don’t you try to tell black folks what white folks is capable of,” said Arthur Stuart. “But we’re done with all that now. We ain’t come here, sir, to bring vengeance or justice. Just freedom.”

  “You bring me freedom, and then say I can’t use it?” said Old Bart.

  “I know what you doing,” said La Tia. “You a house slave, you try make them field slave forget you sleep indoors on a bed, you.”

  Old Bart glared at her. “Every day I got them treating me like dirt, they in my face all the time, you think a indoor bed make up for that? I hate them more than anybody. Me slapping him stead of killing him, that what mercy look like.”

  Arthur Stuart nodded. “I got respect for your feelings, sir. But right now I don’t care about justice nor mercy neither. I care about getting five thousand people safe to the Mizzippy. And I don’t need to have the whole country stirred up by a bunch of stories about slaves slapping the children of their former masters.”

  “They ain’t gonna tell no slapping story,” said Old Bart. “They gonna tell that we killed this white boy and raped that white woman, and cut that stupid teacher all up. So as long as they gonna tell it, why not do a little of it?”

  Ruth gasped.

  “You already done all you gonna do,” said Arthur Stuart. “I told you why. So if you raise a hand against anybody else while we’re here, sir, I’ll have to stop you.”

  Old Bart smiled patronizingly at Arthur Stuart. “I’d like to see you try.”

  “No you wouldn’t,” said Arthur.

  Mary tried to defuse the situation. She rose from her chair and approached Ruth Cottoner. “Please give me your hand,” she said.

  “Don’t touch me!” cried Ruth. “I won’t give my hand to an invader and a looter!”

  “I know something about disease,” said Mary. “I know more than your doctor.”

  “In Barcy,” said Arthur Stuart, “everybody came to her to know if they was gonna get better when they was sick.”

  “I’ll do no harm,” said Mary. “And I’ll tell you the truth of what I see. Your son will know if I’m lying.”

  Slowly the woman raised her hand and put it in Mary’s.

  Mary felt the woman’s body as if it became part of her own, and at once knew where the cancer was. Centered in her womb, but spread out, too, eating away at her inside. “It’s bad,” she said. “It started in your womb, but it’s everywhere now. The pain must be terrible.”

  Ruth closed her eyes.

  “Mama,” said Roy.

  Mary turned to Arthur Stuart. “Can you…?”

  “Not me,” said Arthur Stuart. “It’s too much for me.”

  “But Alvin, don’t you think he—”

  “You can ask him,” said Arthur Stuart. “It might be too much for him, too, you know. He ain’t no miracle worker.”

  “You have some kind of healer with you?” said Ruth bitterly. “I’ve had healers come before, the charlatans.”

  “He ain’t mostly a healer,” said Arthur Stuart. “He only does it kind of, you know, when he runs into somebody who needs it.”

  Mary let go of the woman’s hand and walked to the window. Already the people were walking onto the land in their groups of ten households and fifty households. Blacks from the plantation were guiding them to various buildings and sheds, and there were noises of pots and pans, of chopping and chattering coming from the kitchen.

  Among the swarming people, it was easy to pick out Alvin. He was as strong as a hero out of legend—Achilles, Hercules—and as wise and good as Prometheus. Mary knew he could heal this woman. And who could then accuse them of stealing, if he paid her back with years and years of life?

  Verily Cooper’s thighs always got sore when he rode. Sore on the outside, and sore in the muscles as well. There were people who throve on riding, hour after hour. Verily wasn’t one of them. And he shouldn’t have to be. Lawyers prospered, didn’t they? Lawyers rode in carriages. On trains.

  Riding a horse you had to think all the time, and work, too. The horse didn’t do it all, not by any means. You always had to be alert, or the horse would sense that no one was in control and you’d find yourself following a route to whatever the horse happened to smell that seemed interesting.

  And then there was the chafing. The only way to keep the saddle from chafing the insides of your thighs was to stand in the stirrups a little, hold yourself steady. But that was tiring on the muscles of your legs. Maybe with time he’d develop more strength and endurance, but most days he didn’t take such long rides on horseback. So it was raise yourself in the stirrups until your thighs ached, and then sit and let your thighs chafe.

  Either way your legs burned.

  Why should I do this for Alvin? Or for Margaret Larner? What do I actually owe them? Haven’t I given them most of the service since I’ve become their friend? What do I get out of this, exactly?

  He was ashamed of himself for thinking such disloyal thoughts, but he couldn’t help what entered his head, could he? For a while he’d been a friend and traveling companion to Alvin, but those days were gone. He’d tried to learn makery with the others in Vigor Church, too, but even though his own knack was to see how things fit and change them enough to make them fit exactly right—which, as Alvin said, was one of the key parts of making—he still couldn’t do the things that Alvin could.

  He could set a broken bone—which wasn’t a bad knack to have—but he couldn’t heal an open wound. He could make a barrel fit so tight it would never leak, but he couldn’t open a steel lock by melting the metal. And when Alvin left his own makery school to go a-wandering, Verily couldn’t see much reason to stay and continue the exercises.

  Yet Alvin asked him to, and so he did. He and Measure, Alvin’s older brother—two fools, that’s what they were. Working to teach others what they hadn’t learned themselves.

  And not making much money at lawyering.

  I’m a good lawyer, Verily told himself. I’m as good at law as I am at coopery. Maybe better. But I’ll never plead before the Supreme Court or the King’s Bench or any other lofty venue. I’ll never have a case that makes me famous—except defending Alvin, and then it was Alvin who got all the notoriety, not that Verily minded that.

  And here his attention had wandered again, and the horse was not on the main trail. Where am I this time? Will I have to backtrack?

  Just ahead the road he was on crossed a little stream. Only instead of a ford, as most such roads would have, there was a stout bridge—a covered one, too—only ten feet long, but well above the water, and showing no signs of weakening even though as Verily knew, all the covered bridges on this road had been built by Alvin’s father and older brothers, so no other travelers would lose a beloved son and brother because some insignificant river like the Hatrack happened to be in flood on the very day they had to cross.

  So the horse had taken a turn somewhere and now they were headed, not direct west to Carthage and on into Noisy River from there, but northwest to Vigor Church. It would be a little longer getting to Abe Lincoln that way, but now that Verily thought of it, this was the better way. It would give him a place for respite and resupply. He might hear news. And maybe the love of his life would be there, ready to introduce herself and take him away from all these complicated things.

  Alvin’s got him a wife and a baby on the way, and what do I have? Sore legs. And no clients.

  What I need is to find a lawyer in Noisy River who
needs a good courtroom lawyer in his practice. I think I know how to partner with another lawyer. I’ll never be a partner to Alvin Maker. He’s his own best partner, except perhaps for his wife, and as far apart as they always are, it’s hard to call that much of a partnership either.

  I’ll take a look at Springfield, Noisy River, and see if it looks like home.

  And I won’t go through Vigor Church. The love of my life is not there. For good or ill, it’s my love of Alvin Maker that shapes my life, and I was sent to serve him in Springfield. I’ll take no circuitous side trip.

  He turned his horse and did not go far before he found the fork in the road where the horse had taken the wrong turning. No, be honest, he told himself. Where you took the wrong turning, hoping to flee like Jonah from your duty.

  Arthur Stuart watched Alvin close, hoping to learn how to heal this kind of disease. He hadn’t caught the details of how Alvin fixed up Papa Moose’s foot, but he grasped the main lines of it. This woman’s cancer, it was going to be harder. Once Dead Mary had pointed out what was going on in her body, then Arthur had been able to find it, but it was hard to see the boundaries of the cancer, to know where the good flesh left off and the bad began. And there were lots of little spots of it scattered here and there inside her—but there were some he wasn’t sure about, whether they were cancer or not.

  So when Alvin came into the house and greeted him and La Tia and Rien and Dead Mary, Arthur Stuart could hardly wait to take him to Mistress Cottoner.

  Alvin bowed over her hand, and gravely shook the hand of the boy as well, though Roy was sullen about it.

  Then Alvin asked if he might sit beside her and take her hands, “because this goes easier if I’m touching you, though I can do it without if you prefer.”

  In answer, she placed her hands in his. And there, sitting in the parlor, with all the noise of the business of camp outside, and some of it inside, too, as people bounded in from time to time, demanding a decision from La Tia or Rien, Alvin set to work changing her inside.

  Arthur Stuart tried to follow along, and this time Alvin was moving slowly and methodically. Almost as if he were trying to make it clear for Arthur—and maybe he was. But always the most important details seemed to elude him. He’d see what Alvin was looking at, and he’d feel how he was seeking out the boundary between good flesh and bad. But how Alvin knew when he had it right, that’s what Arthur Stuart just couldn’t fathom.