Alvin Journeyman: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume IV (31 page)

Harrison, though, would take away all meaning from this river. If his laws came to be, the slave who crossed would still be a slave no matter what; only the slave who died would be free.

One of the ferrymen, the one poling on this side, he looked familiar to her. She had met him before, though he’d not been missing an ear then, nor had he any kind of scar on his face. Now a gash marked him with a faint white line, a little puckering and twisting at the eyebrow and the lip. It had been a wicked fight. Once no one had been able to lay a hand of harm on this rough man, and in the sure knowledge of that he had been a bully. But someone took that lifelong hex away from him. Alvin had fought this man, fought him in defense of Peggy herself, and when the fight was done, this river rat had been undone. But not completely; and he was alive still, wasn’t he?

“Mike Fink,” she said softly when he stepped ashore.

He looked sharp at her. “Do I know you, ma’am?”

Of course he didn’t. When they met before, not two years ago, she was covered in hexes that made her look many years older. “I don’t expect you to remember me,” she said. “You must take many thousands of people a year across the river.”

He helped her hoist her traveling bags onto the ferry. “You’ll want to sit in the middle of the raft, ma’am.” She sat down on
the bench that ran the middle of the raft. He stood near her, waiting, while another couple of people sauntered over to the ferry—locals, obviously, since they had no luggage.

“A ferryman now,” she said.

He looked at her.

“When I knew you, Mike Fink, you were a full-fledged river rat.”

He smiled wanly. “You was that lady,” he said. “Hexed up six ways to Tuesday.”

She looked at him sharply. “You saw through them?”

“No ma’am. But I could feel them. You watched me fight that Hatrack River boy.”

“I did.”

“He took away my mother’s hex,” said Mike.

“I know.”

“I reckon you know damn near everything.”

She looked at him again. “You seem to be abundant in knowledge yourself, sir.”

“You’re Peggy the torch, of Hatrack River town. And the boy as whupped me and stole my hex, he’s in jail in Hatrack now, for stealing gold off’n his master when he was a prentice smith.”

“And I suppose that pleases you?” asked Peggy.

Mike Fink shook his head. “No ma’am.”

And in truth, as she looked into his heartfire, she saw no future in which he harmed Alvin.

“Why are you still here? Not ten miles from Hatrack Mouth, where he shamed you?”

“Where he made a man of me,” said Mike.

She was startled then, for sure. “That’s how you think of it?”

“My mother wanted to keep me safe. Tattooed a hex right into my butt. But what she never thought of was, what kind of man does it make a fellow, to never get hurt no matter what harm he causes to others? I’ve killed folks, some bad, but some not so bad. I’ve bit off ears and noses and broken limbs, too,
and all the time I was doing it, I never cared a damn, begging your pardon, ma’am. Because nothing ever hurt me. Never touched me.”

“And since Alvin took away your hex, you’ve stopped hurting people?”

“Hell no!” Mike Fink said, then roared with laughter. “Why, you sure don’t know a thing about the river, do you! No, every last man I ever beat in a fight had to come find me, soon as word spread that a smith boy whupped me and made me howl! I had to fight every rattlesnake and weasel, every rat and pile of pigshit on the river all over again. You see this scar on my face? You see where my hair hangs straight one side of my head? That’s two fights I damn near lost. But I won the rest! Didn’t I, Holly!”

The other ferryman looked over. “I wasn’t listening to your brag, you pitiful scab-eating squirrel-fart,” he said mildly.

“I told this lady I won every fight, every last one of them.”

“That’s right enough,” said Holly. “Course, mostly you just shot them dead when they made as if to fight you.”

“Lies like that will get you sent to hell.”

“Already got me a room picked out there,” said Holly, “and you to empty my chamberpot twice’t a day.”

“Only so’s you can lick it out after!” hooted Mike Fink.

Peggy felt repulsed by their crudity, of course; but she also felt the spirit of camaraderie behind their banter.

“What I don’t understand, Mr. Fink, is why you never sought vengeance against the boy who beat you.”

“He wasn’t no boy,” said Fink. “He was a man. I reckon he was probably born a man.
I
was the boy. A bully boy. He knew pain, and I didn’t. He was fighting for right, and I wasn’t. I think about him all the time, ma’am. Him and you. The way you looked at me, like I was a crusty toad on a clean bedsheet. I hear tell he’s a Maker.”

She nodded.

“So why’s he letting them hold him in jail?”

She looked at him quizzically.

“Oh, come now, ma’am. A fellow as can wipe the tattoo off my butt without touching it, he can’t be kept in no natural jail.”

True enough. “I imagine he believes himself to be innocent, and therefore he wants to stand trial to prove it and clear his name.”

“Well he’s a damn fool, then, and I hope you’ll tell him when you see him.”

“And why will I give him this remarkable message?”

Fink grinned. “Because I know something he don’t know. I know that there’s a feller lives in Carthage City who wants Alvin dead. He plans to get Alvin exerdited to Kenituck—”

“Extradited?”

“That means one state tells another to give them up a prisoner.”

“I know what it means,” said Peggy.

“Then what was you asking, ma’am?”

“Go on with your story.”

“Only when they take Alvin in chains, with guards awake and watching him day and night, they’ll never take him to Kenituck for no trial. I know some of the boys they hired to take him. They know that on some signal, they’re to walk away and leave him alone in chains.”

“Why haven’t you told the authorities?”

“I’m telling
you,
ma’am,” said Mike Fink, grinning. “And I already told myself and Holly.”

“Chains won’t hold him,” said Peggy.

“You reckon not?” said Mike. “There was some reason that boy took the tattoo off my butt. If hexes had no power over him, I reckon he never would’ve had to clean mine off, do you think? So if he needed to get rid of my hex, then I reckon them as understands hexes right good might be able to make chains that’d hold him long enough for somebody to come with a shotgun and blow his head off.”

But she had seen nothing of the kind in his future.

“Course it’ll never happen,” said Mike Fink.

“Why not?” she asked.

“Cause I owe that boy my life. My life as a man, anyway, a man worth looking at in the mirror, though I ain’t half so pretty as I was before he dealt with me. I had a grip on that boy in my arms, ma’am. I meant to kill him, and he knowed it. But he didn’t kill me. More to the point, ma’am, he broke both my legs in that fight. But then he took pity on me. He had mercy. He must’ve knowed I wouldn’t live out the night with broke legs. I had too many enemies, right there among my friends. So he laid hands on my legs and he fixed them. Fixed my legs, so the bones was stronger than before. What kind of man does that to a man as tried to kill him not a minute before?”

“A good man.”

“Well, many a good man might wish to, but only one good man had the power,” said Mike. “And if he had the power to do that, he had the power to kill me without touching me. He had the power to do whatever he damn well pleased, begging your pardon. But he had mercy on me, ma’am.”

That was true—the only surprise to Peggy was that Mike Fink understood it.

“I aim to pay the debt. As long as I’m alive, ma’am, ain’t no harm coming to Alvin Smith.”

“And that’s why you’re here,” she said.

“Came here with Holly as soon as I found out what was getting plotted up.”

“But why here?”

Mike Fink laughed. “The portmaster at Hatrack Mouth knows me real good, and he don’t trust me, I wonder why. How long you reckon it’d be afore the Hatrack County sheriff was on my back like a sweaty shirt?”

“I suppose that also explains why you haven’t made yourself known to Alvin directly.”

“What’s he going to think when he sees me, but that I’ve come to get even? No, I’m watching, I’m biding my time, I ain’t showing my hand to the law nor to Alvin neither.”

“But you’re telling me.”

“Because you’d know it anyway, soon enough.”

She shook her head. “I know this: There’s no path in your future that has you rescuing Alvin from thugs.”

His face grew serious. “But I got to, ma’am.”

“Why?”

“Because a good man pays his debts.”

“Alvin won’t think you’re in his debt, sir.”

“Don’t matter to me what he thinks about it, I feel the debt so the debt’s going to be paid.”

“It’s not just debt, is it?”

Mike Fink laughed. “Time to push this raft away and get it over to the north shore, don’t you think?” He hooted twice, high, as if he were some kind of steam whistle, and Holly hooted back and laughed. They set their poles against the floating dock and pushed away. Then, smooth as if they were dancers, he and Holly poled them across the river, so smoothly and deftly that the line that tied them to the cable never even went taut.

Peggy said nothing to him as he worked. She watched instead, watched the muscles of his arms and back rippling under the skin, watched the slow and graceful up-and-down of his legs as he danced with the river. There was beauty in it, in him. It also made her think of Alvin at the forge, Alvin at the anvil, his arms shining with sweat in the firelight, the sparks glinting from the metal as he pounded, the muscles of his forearms rippling as he bent and shaped the iron. Alvin could have done all his work without raising a hand, by the use of his knack. But there was a joy in the labor, a joy from making with his own hands. She had never experienced that—her life, her labors, all were done with her mind and whatever words she could think of to say. Her life was all about knowing and teaching. Alvin’s life was all about feeling and making. He had more in common with this one-eared scar-faced river rat than he had with her. This dance of the human body in contest with the river, it was a kind of wrestling, and Alvin loved to wrestle. Crude as Fink was, he was Alvin’s natural friend, surely.

They reached the other shore, bumping squarely against the
floating dock, and the shoreman lashed the upstream corner of the raft to the wharf. The men with no luggage jumped ashore at once. Mike Fink laid down his pole and, sweat still dripping down his arms and from his nose and grizzled beard, he made as if to pick up her bags.

She laid a hand on his arm to stop him. “Mr. Fink,” she said. “You mean to be Alvin’s friend.”

“I had in mind more along the lines of being his champion, ma’am,” he said softly.

“But I think what you really want is to be his friend.”

Mike Fink said nothing.

“You’re afraid that he’ll turn you away, if you try to be his friend in the open. I tell you, sir, that he’ll
not
turn you away. He’ll take you for what you are.”

Mike shook his head. “Don’t want him to take me for that.”

“Yes you do, because what you are is a man who means to be good, and undo the bad he’s done, and that’s as good as any man ever gets.”

Mike shook his head more emphatically, making drops of sweat fly a little; she didn’t mind the ones that struck on her skin. They had been made by honest work, and by Alvin’s friend.

“Meet him face to face, Mr. Fink. Be his friend instead of his rescuer. He needs friends more. I tell you, and you know that I know it: Alvin will have few true friends in his life. If you mean to be true to him, and never betray him, so he can trust you always, then I can promise you he may have a few friends he loves as much, but none he loves more than you.”

Mike Fink knelt down and turned his face away toward the river. She could see from the glinting that his eyes were awash with tears. “Ma’am,” he said, “that’s not what I was daring to hope for.”

“Then you need more courage, my friend,” she said. “You need to dare to hope for what is good, instead of settling for what is merely good enough.” She stood up. “Alvin has no
need of your violence. But your honor—that he can use.” She lifted both her bags herself.

At once he leapt to his feet. “Please ma’am, let me . . .”

She smiled at him. “I saw you take such joy from wrestling with the river just now. It made me want to do a little physical work myself. Will you let me?”

He rolled his eyes. “Ma’am, in all the tales of you I’ve heard around here, I never heard you was
crazy
”

“You have something to add to the legend, then,” she said, winking. She stepped onto the floating dock, bags in hand. They were heavy, and she almost regretted turning down his help.

“I heard all you said,” Mike told her, coming up behind her. “But please don’t shame me by letting me be seen empty-handed while a fine lady carried her own luggage.”

Gratefully she turned and handed the bags to him. “Thank you,” she said. “I think some things must be built up to.”

He grinned. “Maybe I’ll build up to going to see Alvin face to face.”

She looked into his heartfire. “I’m sure of it, Mr. Fink.”

As Fink put her bags into the carriage in which the men who had crossed with them impatiently waited for her, she wondered: I just changed the course of events. I brought Mike Fink closer than he would ever have come on his own. Have I done something that will save Alvin in the end? Have I given him the friend that will confound his enemies?

She found Alvin’s heartfire almost without trying. And no, there was no change, no change, except for a day when Mike Fink would go away from a prison cell in tears, knowing that Alvin would surely die if he wasn’t there, but knowing also that Alvin refused to have him, refused to let him stand guard.

But it was not the jail in Hatrack River. And it was not anytime soon. Even if she hadn’t changed the future much, she’d changed it a little. There’d be other changes, too. Eventually one of them would make the difference. One of them would turn
Alvin away from the darkness that would engulf the end of his life.