“So we stay another night?” asked Verily.
“If Mistress Louder hasn’t changed the sheets,” said Alvin.
“She hasn’t,” said Verily. “She said she wouldn’t till she saw you ride off.”
“So she knew I wouldn’t get away today?”
“She wished,” said Verily. “You know she’s set her cap for you.”
“Don’t be silly. She’s twenty years older than me at least, and I’m a married man.”
“Cupid shoots his arrows where they’ll cause the most mischief,” said Verily.
“She mothers me,” said Alvin. “That’s all it is.”
“To you it feels like mothering,” said Verily, “but to her it feels like wifing.”
“Then let’s get out of here tonight.”
“The harm’s already done,” said Verily, “and she’s not going to do anything about it, so why not stay tonight in a familiar bed?”
“And eat familiar food,” said Alvin.
“Which I smell right now,” said Verily.
“It’s not even suppertime,” said Alvin.
“How often a woman’s love comes out as cookies.”
“One more night in Mistress Louder’s house,” said Alvin.
“You’ll always come back here when you’re in Philadelphia,” said Verily.
“Why, you think I can’t turn away from a good meal and a soft bed?”
“I think you can’t bear the thought of breaking her heart.”
“I thought I was blind to other people’s needs and desires.”
Verily grinned. “I believe that the person who said that was in a bit of a snit. A rational person would never speak of you that way.”
“So we leave for New England in the morning?” said Alvin.
“Unless Arthur Stuart has another errand for us.”
“And Verily Cooper, attorney-at-law, comes along with us?”
“You never know when you might need someone to talk you out of jail.”
“No more jails for me,” said Alvin. “Next time somebody locks me up, I’ll be out before they turn around.”
“Don’t you think it’s ironic that you have no idea what you’re supposed to do,” said Verily, “and yet so many people have gone to so much trouble to prevent you from doing it?”
“Maybe they just don’t like my face.”
“I can appreciate the sentiment,” said Verily, “but I think it’s more likely that they fear your power. Once you made that plow, once you set Arthur Stuart free, it became known that such a man as you existed. And evil people naturally assume that you will use that power exactly as they would use it.”
“And how is that?”
“The greedy among them think of gold. What vault could keep you out? Since the only thing that keeps them from stealing is that they can’t get into the vaults, they can’t believe you won’t use the power that way. By the same reasoning, the more ambitious of your enemies will imagine you have designs on public power and prestige, and they will try to discredit you in advance by tarring you with whatever charge they think might be believed. The mere fact that you’ve been tried taints you, even though you were acquitted.”
“So you’re saying they don’t have any more idea what I’m spose to do than I have.”
“I’m saying that your chances of never getting locked up again are remote.”
“And so that’s why you’re coming along.”
“You can’t build your Crystal City from inside a jail, Alvin.”
“Verily Cooper, if you think I’m going to believe that’s why you’re coming with me, think again, my friend.”
“Oh?”
“You’re coming along because this is the most exciting thing going on and you don’t want to miss any of it.”
“Exciting? Sitting here all day in the heat while you watch a Frenchman paint?”
“That’s what made you mad,” said Alvin. “You wanted to be there yourself to see Arthur talk them birds into posing.”
Verily grinned. “Must have been a sight to see.”
“For the first couple of minutes, maybe.” Alvin yawned.
“Oh, that’s right, your life is so boring,” said Verily.
“No, I was just thinking that you would have gotten a lot bigger kick out of the way we broke into the taxidermist’s shop and set free a bird that wasn’t quite dead.”
Verily paced around the room, orating. “That’s it! Right there! This is intolerable! This is what makes me so angry! Leaving me out of everything fun! This is why you are the most irritating friend a man could have!”
“But Verily, I didn’t know when I left the house that anything like that was going to happen.”
“That’s exactly my point,” said Verily. “You don’t know what’s going to happen, and given what’s happened to you your whole life, it is unreasonable—indeed it is unconscionable—for you to presume that any task you set out on will proceed without dangerous and fascinating consequences!”
“So what’s your solution?”
Verily knelt before him and rested his hands on Alvin’s knees. Nose to nose he said, “Always take me with you, dammit!”
“Even when I have to whip it out and pee into a bush?”
“If I allow any exceptions, then sure as you’re born, there’ll be a talking badger in the bush who’ll clamp his jaws on your pisser and won’t let go till you give him the secret of the universe.”
“Well, hell, Verily, if that ever happens I’ll just have to pee sitting down for the rest of my life, cause I don’t know the secret of the universe.”
“And that’s why you’ve got to keep me with you.”
“Why, do you know the secret?”
“No, but I can strangle the badger till he lets you go.”
“Badgers got powerful claws, Verily. Your legs’d be in shreds in ten seconds. You are such a greenhorn.”
“There is no badger, Alvin! This was a hypothetical situation, deliberately exaggerated for rhetorical effect.”
“You’re spitting right in my face, Very.”
“I am with you through it all, Alvin. That’s what I’m saying.”
“I know, Verily Cooper. I’m counting on you.”
4
Stirred-Up
In the cheap boardinghouse where Calvin and Honoré were staying, the kitchen was in the back garden. This was fine with them. Arriving home from a night of carousing, they wanted something to eat but didn’t want to call the landlady’s attention to their late arrival. This was Camelot, after all, in which men were expected to drink, but only with absolute decorum, and never in a way that would discommode polite ladies.
Most of the food was in the locked pantry inside the house, on the ground floor where the slaves lived. No need to wake them up. The kitchen shed had a little food in it. There was a pot of cheap cooking molasses, some rancid butter, and leftover chickpeas stuck to the pot they had been cooked in. Honoré de Balzac looked at the mess with distaste. But Calvin just grinned at him.
“You’re too finicky, Monsieur Haute Société,” said Calvin. “This is all we need for a good batch of stirred-up.”
“A word that I thank God I am not familiar with.”
“It’s called stirred-up because you stir it up.” In moments Calvin had the stove hot and rancid butter melting in the frying pan. He ladled in some molasses and scraped chickpeas out of the pot, adding them to the mess. Then he stirred.
“See?” he said. “I’m stirring.”
“You are stirring side-to-side,” said Honoré. “And the mixture is going steadily down in quality. The one thing you are not doing is stirring up.”
“Ain’t English funny?” said Calvin.
“The longer I know you, the less sure I am that what you speak is English.”
“Well, hell, that’s the glory of English. You can speak it ten thousand different ways, and it’s still OK.”
“That barbarous expression! ‘O. K.’ What does this mean?”
<
br /> “Oll Korrect,” said Calvin. “Making fun of people who care too much about how words get writ down.”
“Now, writing down, that makes sense. The ink flows down. The pen points down. Your hideous mixture should be called ‘stirred-down.’”
The butter-and-molasses mess was bubbling now. “Nice and hot,” said Calvin. “Want some?”
“Only to ward off imminent death.”
“This cures not just hunger but the French disease and cholera too, not to mention making mad dogs whimper and run away.”
“In France we call it the English disease.”
“That bunch of Puritans? How could they catch a disease of coition?”
“They may be pure in doctrine, but they hump like bunnies,” said Honoré. “Nine children to a family, or it’s a sign God hates them.”
“I’m a-feared I done taught you to talk substandard English, my friend.” Calvin tasted the stirred-up. It was good. The chickpeas were a little hard, and Calvin suspected that in the darkness he had inadvertently added some fresh insect flesh to the mix, but he’d had enough to drink that he cared less than he might have sober. “Polite people don’t say ‘hump.’”
“I thought that was a euphemism.”
“But it’s a coarse one. We’re supposed to get into fine homes here, but we’ll never do it if you talk like that.” Calvin proffered the spoon.
Honoré winced at the smell, then tasted it. It burned his tongue. Panting, he fanned his open mouth.
“Careful,” said Calvin. “It’s hot.”
“Thank God the Inquisition didn’t know about you,” said Honoré.
“Tastes good, though, don’t it?”
Honoré crunched up some chickpeas in his mouth. Sweet and buttery. “In a crude, primitive, savage way, yes.”
“Crude, primitive, and savage are the best features of America,” said Calvin.
“Sadly so,” said Honoré. “Unlike Rousseau, I do not find savages to be noble.”
“But they hump like bunnies!” said Calvin. In his drunken state, this was indescribably funny. He laughed until he wheezed. Then he puked into the pan of stirred-up.
“Is this part of the recipe?” asked Honoré. “The pièce de résistance?”
“It wasn’t the stirred-up made me splash,” said Calvin. “It was that vinegar you made us drink.”
“I promise you it was the best wine in the house.”
“That’s cause fellows don’t go there for wine. Corn likker is more what they specialize in.”
“I would rather regurgitate than let the corn alcohol make me blind,” said Honoré. “Those seem to have been the two choices.”
“It was the only saloon open on the waterfront.”
“The only one that hadn’t already thrown us out, you mean.”
“Are you getting fussy now? I thought you liked adventure.”
“I do. But I believe I have now gathered all the material I need about the lowest dregs of American society.”
“Then go home, you frog-eating stump-licker.”
“Stump-licker?” asked Honoré.
“What about it?”
“You are very, very drunk.”
“At least my coat isn’t on fire.”
Honoré slowly looked down at his coattail, which was indeed smoldering at the edge of the stove fire. He carefully lifted the fabric for closer inspection. “I don’t think this can be laundered out.”
“Wait till I’m awake,” said Calvin. “I can fix it.” He giggled. “I’m a Maker.”
“If I throw up, will I feel as good as you?”
“I feel like hammered horse pucky,” said Calvin.
“That is exactly the improvement I want.” Honoré retched, but he missed the pan. His vomit sizzled on the stovetop.
“Behold the man of education and refinement,” said Honoré.
“That’s kind of an unattractive smell,” said Calvin.
“I need to go to bed,” said Honoré. “I don’t feel well.”
They made it to the bushes along the garden wall before they realized that they weren’t heading for the house. Giggling, they collapsed under the greenery and in moments they were both asleep.
The sun was shining brightly and Calvin was a mass of sweat when he finally came to. He could feel bugs crawling on him and his first impulse was to leap to his feet and brush them off. But his body did not respond at all. He just lay there. He couldn’t even open his eyes.
A faint breeze stirred the air. The bugs moved again on his face. Oh. Not bugs at all. Leaves. He was lying in shrubbery.
“Sometimes I just wish we could build a wall around the Crown Colonies and keep all those meddlesome foreigners out.”
A woman’s voice. Footsteps on the brick sidewalk.
“Did you hear that the Queen is going to grant an audience to that busybody bluestocking abolitionist schoolteacher?”
“No, that’s too much to believe.”
“I agree but with Lady Ashworth as her sponsor—”
“Lady Ashworth!”
The ladies stopped their ambulation only a few steps away from where Calvin lay.
“To think that Lady Ashworth won’t even invite you to her soirees—”
“I beg your pardon, but I have declined her invitations.”
“And yet she’ll present this Peggy person—”
“I thought her name was Margaret—”
“But her people call her Peggy, as if she were a horse.”
“And where is her husband? If she has one.”
“Oh, she has one. Tried and acquitted of slave-stealing, but we all know a slaveholder can’t get justice in those abolitionist courts.”
“How do you find out these things?”
“Do you think the King’s agents don’t investigate foreigners who come here to stir up trouble?”
“Instead of investigating, why don’t they just keep them out?”
“Oh!”
The exclamation of surprise told Calvin that he had just been spotted. Even though some control was returning, he decided that keeping his eyes closed and lying very still was the better part of valor. Besides, with his face covered by leaves, he would not be recognizable later; if he moved, they might see his face.
“My laws, this boardinghouse should be closed down. It brings entirely the wrong element into a respectable part of town.”
“Look. He has fouled his trousers.”
“This is intolerable. I’m going to have to complain to the magistrate.”
“How can you?”
“How can I not?”
“But your testimony before the court—how could you possibly describe this wretched man’s condition, while remaining a lady?”
“Dear me.”
“No, we simply did not see him.”
“Oh!”
The second exclamation told Calvin that they had found Honoré de Balzac. It was comforting to know he was not alone in his humiliation.
“Worse and worse.”
“Clearly he is no gentleman. But to be out-of-doors without trousers at all!”
“Can you... can you see his ...”
Calvin felt that this had gone far enough. Without opening his eyes, he spoke in a thick Spanish accent, imitating the slavers he had heard on the docks. “Señoritas, this tiny White man is nothing compared to the naked Black men in my warehouse on the Spanish dock!”
Shrieking softly, the ladies bustled away. Calvin lay there shaking with silent laughter.
Honoré’s voice emerged from the bushes not far away. “Shame on you. A writer of novels has a brilliant chance to hear the way women really talk to each other, and you scare them away.”
Calvin didn’t care. Honoré could pretend to be a writer, but Calvin didn’t believe he would ever write anything. “How did you lose your pants?”
“I took them off when I got up to void my bladder, and then I couldn’t find them.”
“Were we drunk last night?”
“
I hope so,” said Honoré. “It is the only honorable way I can think of for us to end up sleeping together under a hedge.”
By now they had both rolled out from under the bushes. Squinting, Honoré was staggering here and there, searching for his trousers. He paused to look Calvin up and down. “I may be a little bit nude, but at least I did not wet my trousers.”
Calvin found them, hanging on the hedge, wet and stained. Calvin pointed and laughed. “You took them off and then you peed on them!”
Honoré looked at his trousers mournfully. “It was dark.”
Holding his dirty laundry in front of him, Honoré followed Calvin toward the house. As they passed the kitchen shed, they caught a glare from the tiny old Black woman who supervised the cooking. But that was as much of a rebuke as they would ever hear from a slave. They went in through the ground floor, where Honoré handed his wet trousers to the laundress. “I’ll need these tonight before dinner,” he said.
Keeping her head averted, the slave woman murmured her assent and started to move away.
“Wait!” cried Honoré. “Calvin’s got some just as bad off as mine.”
“She can come up and get them later,” said Calvin.
“Take them off now,” said Honoré. “She will not look at your hairy white legs.”
Calvin turned his back, stripped off his pants, and handed them to her. She scurried away.
“You are so silly to be shy,” said Honoré. “It does not matter what servants see. It is like being naked in front of trees or cats.”
“I just don’t like going up to our room without trousers.”
“In trousers wet with urine, you will be disgusting. But if we are both naked, everyone will pretend not to have seen us. We are invisible.”
“Does that mean you plan to use the front stairs?”
“Of course not,” said Honoré. “And I must lead the way, for if I have to climb three flights of stairs looking at your buttocks I will lose the ability to write of beauty for at least a month.”
“Why do you think the cook glared at us?” asked Calvin.
“I have no idea, my friend,” said Honoré. “But does she need a reason? Of course all the Black people in this place hate all the White people.”
Heartfire: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume V Page 7
