Pain without killing. Why had he put such a ridiculous limitation on himself? There was no reason not to kill Harrison. Hadn’t the man ordered the death of Calvin’s own brother Measure? Hadn’t he slaughtered all those Reds and caused all of Calvin’s family and neighbors to be under a curse for most of Calvin’s life? Nothing brought a man lower than dying. Six feet under the ground, that was as low as a body ever got.
The day of the inauguration, the first day of the new year, was bitterly cold, and as Harrison walked through the streets of Philadelphia to the temporary stand where he would take the oath in front of several thousand spectators, it began to snow. Proudly he refused even to put on a hat—what was cold weather to a man from the west?—and when he reached the platform to give his speech, Calvin was delighted to see that the new president’s throat was already sore, his chest already somewhat congested. It was really a simple matter of Calvin to send his doodling bug inside the chest of White Murderer Harrison and encourage the little animals inside his lungs to grow, to multiply, to spread throughout his body. Harrison, you’re going to be one very, very sick man.
The speech lasted an hour, and Harrison didn’t cut out a single word, though by the end he was coughing thickly into his handkerchief after every sentence. “Philadelphia is colder to hell,” Honoré said in his feeble English as they finally left the square. “And your President he is one dammit long talker.” Then, in French, Honoré asked, “Did I say it right? Did I swear properly?”
“Like a stevedore,” said Calvin. “Like a river rat. I was proud of you.”
“I was proud of you too,” said Honoré. “You looked so serious, I thought maybe you were paying attention to his speech. Then I thought, No, the lad is using his powers. So I hoped you might sever his head as he stood there and make it roll down splat on his speech. Let him put his hands on that to take his oath of office.”
“That would have been a memorable inauguration,” said Calvin.
“But it wouldn’t be good for you to take another man’s life,” said Honoré. “All joking aside, my friend, it isn’t good for a man to get a taste for blood.”
“My brother Alvin killed a man,” said Calvin. “He killed a man who needed killing, and nobody said boo to him about it.”
“Dangerous for him, but perhaps more dangerous for you,” said Honoré. “Because you are already filled with hate—I say this not as criticism, it’s one of the things I find most attractive about you—you are filled with hate, and so it is dangerous for you to open the faucet of murder. That is a stream you may not be able to damp.”
“Not to worry,” said Calvin.
They lingered in Philadelphia for several more weeks, as Harrison’s bad cold turned into pneumonia. He struggled on, being something of a tough old nut, but in the end he died, scarcely a month after his inauguration, having never been healthy enough even to name a cabinet.
This being the first time a president of the United States had died in office, there was some unresolved ambiguity in the Constitution about whether the vice-president merely acted as president or actually took the office. Andrew Jackson neatly resolved the issue by walking into Congress and placing his hand on the Bible they kept there as a reminder of all the virtues they worked so hard to get the voters to believe they possessed. In a loud voice he took the oath of office in front of all of them, daring them to deny him the right to do so. There were jokes about “His Accidency the President” for a while, but Jackson wasn’t a man to be trifled with. All of Harrison’s cronies found themselves with sore backsides from bouncing down the steps of the George Washington Building where the executive branch of the government had its offices. Whatever Harrison had planned for America would never happen now, or at least not in the way that he had planned it. Jackson was in nobody’s pocket but his own.
Calvin and Honoré agreed that they had done a great service for the nation. “Though my part of it was very small,” said Honoré. “A mere word. A suggestion.” Calvin knew, however, that in his own heart Honoré undoubtedly took credit for the whole thing, or at least for everything beneficial that resulted from it. That knowledge scarcely bothered Calvin, though. Nothing really bothered him now, for his power had been confirmed in his own heart. I brought down a president and no one knew that I did it. Nothing messy or awkward like Alvin’s killing of that Finder with his own bare hands. I learned more than the honing of my knack on the continent. I acquired finesse. Alvin will never have that, crude frontiersman that he is and always will be.
How easy it had been. Easy and free of risk. There was a man who needed to die, and all it took was a little maneuvering in his lungs and it was done. Well, that plus a few adjustments as the man lay in his sickbed in the presidential mansion. It wouldn’t do to have his body fight off the infection and recover, would it? But I never had to touch him. Never even had to speak to him. Didn’t even have to get ink on my fingers, like poor Honoré, whose characters never really breathe despite all his skill, and so never really die.
Calvin allowed himself, on the last night he and Honoré spent in Philadelphia, to lie in bed imagining Alvin’s death. A slow agonizing death from some miserable disease like lockjaw. I could do that, thought Calvin.
Then he thought, No I couldn’t, and went to sleep.
Alvin Journeyman: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume IV Page 42
