Alvin Journeyman: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume IV (43 page)

“I don’t like being in the middle of this,” said Verily.

“You’re not,” said Peggy. “There’s no ‘this’ to be in the middle of.”

“There never
was
no ‘this,’ either, was there?” asked Alvin.

Verily was quite sure he had never heard a man sound so miserable.

Peggy took a moment to answer. “I’m not—there was and is a—it hasn’t a thing to do with you, Alvin.”

“What doesn’t have a thing to do with me? My still being crazy in love with you after a whole year with only one letter from you, and that one as cold as you please, like I was some kind of scoundrel you still had to do business with or something? Is that the thing that doesn’t have anything to do with me? I asked you to marry me once. I understand that things have been pretty bleak since then, your mother getting killed and all, that was terrible, and I didn’t press you, but I did write to you, I did think about you all the time, and—”

“And I thought of you, Alvin.”

“Yes, well,
you’re
a torch, so you
know
I’m thinking about you, or you do if you care to look, but what do
I
know when there’s no sign from you? What do I know except what you tell me? Except what I see in your face? I know I looked in your face that night in the smithy, I looked in your eyes and I thought I saw love there, I thought I saw you saying yes to me. Did I make that up? Is that the ‘this’ that there isn’t one of?”

Verily was thoroughly miserable, being forced to be a witness of this scene. He had tried to make his escape before; now it was clear they didn’t want him to go. If only he knew how to disappear. How to sink through the floor.

It was Arthur who saved him. Arthur, with Measure in tow; and, just as the sheriff had said, Measure had his hat so low and his head bent so far down that he really did need Arthur Stuart to lead him by the hand. “We’re here,” said Arthur. “You can look up now.”

Measure looked up. “Al,” he said.

“Measure!” Alvin cried. It took about one stride each, with those two long-legged men, for them to be in each other’s embrace. “I’ve missed you like my own soul,” said Alvin.

“I’ve missed you too, you ugly scrawny jailbird,” said Measure.
And in that moment, Verily felt such a pang of jealousy that he thought his heart would break. He was ashamed of the feeling as soon as he was aware of it, but there it was: He was jealous of that closeness between brothers. Jealous because he knew that he would never be that close to Alvin Smith. He would always be shut out, and it hurt so deeply that for a moment he thought he couldn’t breathe.

And then he did breathe, and blocked that feeling away in another part of himself where he didn’t have to stare it in the face.

In a few minutes the greetings were over, and they were down to business. “We found out Amy was gone and it didn’t take no genius to figure out where she went. Oh, at first the rumor was she got pregnant at the county fair and was sent off to have the baby somewhere, but we all remembered the tales she told about Alvin and Father and I went to her pa and got it out of him right quick, that she was off to testify in Hatrack. He didn’t like it much, but they’re paying them and he needs the money and his daughter swears it’s true but you could tell looking at him that he don’t believe her lies either. And in fact as we were leaving he says, When I find out who it was got my daughter pregnant I’m going to kill him. And Pa says, No you ain’t. And Mr. Sump he says, I am so because I’m a merciful man, and killing him’s kinder than making him marry Amy.”

They all laughed at that, but in the end they knew it wasn’t exactly funny.

“Anyhow, Eleanor says, Amy’s best friend is that mouse of a girl Ramona and I’m going to get the truth out of her.”

Alvin turned to Verily. “Eleanor’s our sister, Armor-of-God’s wife.”

Another reminder that he wasn’t inside this circle. But also a reminder that Alvin thought of him and wanted to include him.

“So Eleanor gets Ramona and sets her down inside that hex you made for her in the shop, Alvin, the one that makes liars
get so nervous, only I don’t know as how it was really needed. Eleanor says to her, Who’s the father of Amy’s baby, and Ramona says, How should I know? only it’s a plain lie, and finally when Eleanor won’t let up, Ramona says, Last time I told the truth it only caused Alvin Maker to have to run away cause of Amy’s lies, but she
swore
it was true, she
swore
it and so I believed her but now she’s saying it was Alvin got her pregnant and I know that’s not true cause she got into the freak show tent with—”

Alvin held up his hand. “Matt Thatcher?”

“Of course,” said Measure. “Why we didn’t just castrate him along with the pigs I don’t know.”

“She
saw
them or is it hearsay?” asked Verily.

“Saw them and stood guard where they went under the tent and heard Amy cry out once and heard Matt panting and then it was done and she asked Amy what it was like and Amy looked positively stricken and says to her, It’s awful and it hurts. Ramona’s got no doubt Amy was a virgin up till then, so all the other stories is lies.”

“She’s not competent to testify about Amy’s virginity,” said Verily, “but she’d still be a help. It would take care of the pregnancy and make it plain that Amy is something of a liar. Reasonable doubt. How long will it take to get her down here?”

“She’s here,” said Peggy. “I got her to the roadhouse and Horace Guester’s feeding her.”

“I’ll want to talk to her tonight,” said Verily. “This is good. This is something. And until now, we had nothing.”

“
They
have nothing,” said Peggy. “And yet. . .”

“And yet they’d convict me if they voted right now, wouldn’t they?” Alvin asked.

Peggy nodded. “I thought they knew you better.”

“This is all so extraneous to Makepeace’s assertions,” said Verily. “None of this would have been permitted in an English court.”

“Next time somebody tries to get me arrested for larceny
and a crazy girl claims to be pregnant by me, I’ll arrange to have it tried in London,” said Alvin, grinning.

“Good idea,” said Verily. “Besides, we have a much higher grade of crazy girls in England.”

“I’m going to testify,” said Peggy.

“I don’t think so,” said Alvin.

“You aren’t a witness of anything,” said Verily.

“You saw how the rules go in this court,” said Peggy. “You can work me in.”

“It won’t help,” said Verily. “They’ll chalk it up to your being in love with Alvin.”

Alvin sighed and lay back on his cot.

“No they won’t,” said Peggy. “They know me.”

“They know Alvin, too,” said Verily.

“Don’t mean to contradict you, sir,” said Arthur Stuart, “but everybody knows Miss Larner here is a torch, and everybody knows that before she tells a lie, you can boil an
egg
in a pan of snow.”

“If I testify, he won’t be convicted,” said Peggy.

“No,” said Alvin. “They’ll drag you through the mud. Webster doesn’t care about convicting me, you know that. He only wants to destroy me and everybody near me, because that’s what the people who hired him want.”

“We don’t even know who they are,” said Verily.

“I don’t know their names, but I know who they are and what they want. To you it looks as though Amy’s testimony is a sidetrack, but it’s Amy’s testimony they wanted. And if they could get testimony about me and Peggy in the smithy on the night the plow was made—”

“I’m not afraid of their calumnies,” said Peggy.

“It ain’t calumnies I’m talking about, it’s the plain truth,” said Alvin. “I was naked, we was alone in the smithy. Can’t help what conclusions folks draw from that, and so I won’t have you getting on the stand and all that story coming out in the papers in Carthage and Dekane and heaven knows where else. We’ll do it another way.”

“Ramona will be a help,” said Verily.

“Not Ramona either,” said Alvin. “It does no good to have one friend betray another for my sake.”

The others were flabbergasted.

“You got to be joking!” cried Measure. “After I brought her all the way here? And she wants to testify.”

“I’m sure she does,” said Alvin. “But after the papers are through hacking at Amy, how will Ramona feel
then!
She’ll always remember that she betrayed a friend. That’s a hard one. It’ll hurt her. Won’t it, Peggy?”

“Oh, you actually want my advice about something?”

“I want the truth. I’ve been telling the truth, and so have you, so just say it.”

“Yes,” said Peggy. “It would hurt Ramona greatly to testify against Amy.”

“So we won’t do it,” said Alvin. “Nor do I want to see Vilate humiliated by having her hexes removed. She sets a store by being taken for beautiful.”

“Alvin,” said Verily, “I know you’re a good man and wiser than me, but surely you can see that you can’t let courtesy to a few individuals destroy all that you were put here on this earth to do!”

The others agreed.

Alvin looked as miserable as Verily had ever seen a man look, and Verily had seen men condemned to hang or burn. “Then you
don’t
understand,” he said. “It’s true that sometimes people have to suffer to make something good come to be. But when I have it in my power to save them from suffering it, and bear it myself, well then that’s part of what I do. That’s part of Making. If I have it in my power, then I bear it. Don’t you see?”

“No,” said Peggy. “You
don’t
have it in your power.”

“Is that the honest torch talking? Or my friend?”

She hesitated only a moment. “Your friend. This passage in your heartfire is dark to me.”

“I figured it was. And I think the reason is because I got to
do some Making. I got to do something that’s never been done before, to Make something new. If I do it, then I can go on. If I don’t, then I go to jail and my path through life takes another course.”

“
Would
you go to jail?” asked Arthur Stuart. “Would you really stay in prison for years and years?”

Alvin shrugged. “There are hexes I can’t undo. I think if I was convicted, they’d see to it that I was bound about like that. But even if I could get away, what would it matter? I couldn’t do my work here in America. And I don’t know that my work could be done anywhere else. If there’s any reason to my life at all, then there’s a reason I was born here and not in England or Russia or China or something. Here’s where my work’s to be done.”

“So you’re saying that I can’t use the two best witnesses to defend you?” asked Verily.

“My best witness is the truth. Somebody’s going to speak it, that’s for sure. But it won’t be Miss Larner, and it won’t be Ramona.”

Peggy leaned down and looked Alvin in the eye, their faces not six inches apart. “Alvin Smith, you wretched boy, I gave my childhood to you, to keep you safe from the Unmaker, and now you tell me I have to stand by and watch you throw all that sacrifice away?”

“I already asked you for the whole rest of your life,” said Alvin. “What do I want with your ruin? You lost your childhood for me. You lost your mother for me. Don’t lose any more. I would have taken everything, yes, and given you everything too, but I won’t take less because I can’t give less. You’ll take nothing from me, so I’ll take nothing from you. If that don’t make sense to you then you ain’t as smart as you let on, Miss Larner.”

“Why don’t those two just get married and make babies?” said Arthur Stuart. “Pa said that.”

Her face stony, Peggy turned away from them. “It has to be on
your
terms, doesn’t it, Alvin. Everything on your terms.”

“
My
terms?” said Alvin. “It wasn’t my terms to say these things to you in front of others, though at least it’s my friends and not strangers who have to hear them. I love you, Miss Larner. I love you, Margaret. I don’t want you in that courtroom, I want you in my arms, in my life, in all my dreams and works for all time to come.”

Peggy clung to the bars of the jail, her face averted from the others.

Arthur Stuart walked around to the outside of the cell and looked guilelessly up into her face. “Why don’t you just marry him instead of crying like that? Don’t you love him? You’re real pretty and he’s a good-looking man. You’d have damn cute babies. Pa said that.”

“Hush, Arthur Stuart,” said Measure.

Peggy slid down until she was kneeling, and then she reached through the bars and took Arthur Stuart’s hands. “I can’t, Arthur Stuart,” she said. “My mother died because I loved Alvin, don’t you see? Whenever I think of being with him, it just makes me feel sick and . . . guilty . . . and angry and . . .”

“My mama’s dead too, you know,” said Arthur Stuart. “My Black mama and my White mama both. They both died to save me from slavery. I think about that all the time, how if I’d never been born they’d both still be alive.”

Peggy shook her head. “I know you think of that, Arthur, but you mustn’t. They want you to be happy.”

“I know,” said Arthur Stuart. “I ain’t as smart as you, but I know
that.
So I do my best to be happy. I’m happy most of the time, too. Why can’t you do that?”

Alvin whispered an echo to his words. “Why can’t you do that, Margaret?”

Peggy raised her chin, looked around her. “What am I doing here on the floor like this?” She got to her feet. “Since you won’t take my help, Alvin Smith, then I’ve got work to do. There’s a war in the future, a war over slavery, and a million boys will die, in America and the Crown Colonies and even New England before it’s done. My work is to make sure those
boys don’t die in vain, to make sure that when it’s over the slaves are free. That’s what my mother died for, to free one slave. I’m not going to pick just one, I’m going to save them all if I can.” She looked fiercely at the men who watched her, wide-eyed. “I’ve made my last sacrifice for Alvin Smith—he doesn’t need my help anymore.”

With those words she strode to the outer door.

“I do so,” murmured Alvin, but she didn’t hear him, and then she was gone.

“If that don’t beat all,” said Measure. “I ask you, Alvin, why didn’t you just fall in love with a thunderstorm? Why don’t you just go propose to a blizzard?”