Alvin Journeyman: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume IV (46 page)

And there sat beautiful Vilate Franker, tears streaming down her smooth and beautiful cheeks.

“An honest woman?” she said softly. “You know as well as I do how you hinted to me about how you needed corroboration for that Amy Sump girl, how if you just had some way of proving that Alvin did
indeed
leave the jail, then she would be believed and no one would believe Alvin. Oh, you sighed and pretended that you weren’t suggesting anything to me, but I knew and you knew, and so I learned the hexes from my friend and we did it, and now there you sit, lying again.”

“Your Honor,” said Webster, “the witness is clearly distraught. I can assure you she has misconstrued the brief conversation we had at supper in the roadhouse.”

“I’m sure she has, Mr. Webster,” said the judge.

“I have not misconstrued it,” said Vilate, furious, whirling on the judge.

“And I’m sure you have not,” said the judge. “I’m sure you’re both completely correct.”

“Your Honor,” said Daniel Webster, “with all due respect, I don’t see—”

“No, you don’t see!” cried Vilate, standing up in the witness box. “You claim to see an honest woman here? I’ll show you an honest woman!”

She peeled her shawl off her shoulders. At once the illusion of beauty about her face disappeared. Then she reached down and pulled the amulets out of her bodice and lifted their chains from around her neck. Her body changed before their eyes: Now she was not svelte and tall, but of middle height and a somewhat thickened middle-aged body. There was a stoop to her shoulders, and her hair was more white than gold.
“This
is an honest woman,” she said. Then she sank down into her seat and wept into her hands.

“Your Honor,” said Verily, “I believe I have no more questions for this witness.”

“Neither does the prosecution,” said Marty Laws.

“That’s not so!” cried Webster.

“Mr. Webster,” said Marty Laws quietly, “you are discharged from your position as co-counsel. The testimony of the witnesses you brought me now seems inappropriate to use in court, and I think it would be prudent of you to retire from this courtroom without delay.”

A few people clapped, but a glare from the judge quieted them.

Webster began stuffing papers into his briefcase. “If you are alleging that I behaved unethically to any degree—”

“Nobody’s alleging anything, Mr. Webster,” said the judge, “except that you have no further relationship with the county attorney of Hatrack County, and therefore it’s appropriate for you to step to the other side of the railing and, in my humble opinion, to the other side of the courtroom door.”

Webster rose to his full height, tucked his bag under his arm, and without another word strode down the aisle and out of the courtroom.

On his way out, he passed a middle-aged woman with brown-and-grey hair who was moving with some serious intent toward the judge’s bench. No, toward the witness stand, where she stepped into the box, put her arm around Vilate Franker’s shoulders, and helped the weeping woman rise to her feet. “Come now, Vilate, you did very bravely, you did fine, we’re right proud of you.”

“Goody Trader,” Vilate murmured, “I’m so ashamed.”

“Nonsense,” said Goody Trader. “We all want to be beautiful, and truth to tell, I think you still are. Just—mature, that’s all.”

The spectators watched in silence as Goody Trader led her erstwhile rival from the courtroom.

“Your Honor,” said Verily Cooper, “I think it should be clear to everyone that it is time to return to the real issue before the court. We have been distracted by extraneous witnesses, but the fact of the matter is that it all comes down to Makepeace Smith and Hank Dowser on one side, and Alvin Smith on the other. Their word against his. Unless the prosecution has more witnesses to call, I’d like to begin my
defense by letting Alvin give his word, so the jury can judge between them at last.”

“Well said, Mr. Cooper,” said Marty Laws. “That’s the real issue, and I’m sorry I ever moved away from it. The prosecution rests, and I think we’d all like to hear from the defendant. I’m glad he’s going to speak for himself, even though the constitution of the United States allows him to decline to testify without prejudice.”

“A fine sentiment,” said the judge. “Mr. Smith, please rise and take the oath.”

Alvin bent over, scooped up the sack with the plow in it, and hoisted it over his shoulder as easy as if it was a loaf of bread or a bag of feathers. He walked to the bailiff, put one hand on the Bible and raised the other, sack and all. “I do solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help me God,” he said.

“Alvin,” said Verily, “just tell us all how this plow came to be.”

Alvin nodded. “I took the iron my master gave me—that’s Makepeace, he was my master in those days—and I melted it to the right hotness. I’d already made my plow mold, so I poured it in and let it cool enough to strike off the mold, and then I shaped and hammered and scraped all the imperfections out of it, till near as I could tell it had the shape of a plow as perfect as I could do it.”

“Did you use any of your knack for Making as you did it?” asked Verily.

“No sir,” said Alvin. “That wouldn’t be fair. I wanted to earn the right to be a journeyman smith. I did use my doodlebug to inspect the plow, but I made no changes except with my tools and my two hands.”

Many of the spectators nodded. They knew something of this matter, of wanting to do something with their hands, without the use of the extraordinary knacks that were so common in this town these days.

“And when it was done, what did you have?”

“A plow,” said Alvin. “Pure iron, well shaped and well tempered. A good journeyman piece.”

“Whose property was that plow?” asked Verily. “I ask you not as an expert on law, but rather as the apprentice you were at the time you finished it. Was it your plow?”

“It was mine because I made it, and his because it was his iron. It’s custom to let the journeyman keep his piece, but I knew it was Makepeace’s right to keep it if he wanted.”

“And then you apparently decided to change the iron.”

Alvin nodded.

“Can you explain to the court your reasoning on the matter?”

“I don’t know that it could be called reasoning, rightly. It wasn’t rational, as Miss Lamer would have defined it. I just knew what I wanted it to be, really. This had nothing to do with going from prentice to journeyman smith. More like going from prentice to journeyman Maker, and I had no master to judge my work, or if I do, he’s not yet made hisself known to me.”

“So you determined to turn the plow into gold.”

Alvin waved off the idea with one hand. “Oh, now, that wouldn’t be hard. I’ve known how to change one metal to another for a long time—it’s easier with metals, the way the bits line up and all. Hard to change air, but easy to change metal.”

“You’re saying you could have turned iron to gold at any time?” asked Verily. “Why didn’t you?”

“I reckon there’s about the right amount of gold in the world, and the right amount of iron. A man doesn’t need to make hammers and saws, axes and plowshares out of gold—he needs iron for that. Gold is for things that need a soft metal.”

“But gold would have made you rich,” said Verily.

Alvin shook his head. “Gold would have made me famous. Gold would have surrounded me with thieves. And it wouldn’t have got me one step closer to learning how to be a proper Maker.”

“You expect us to believe that you have no interest in gold?”

“No sir. I need money as much as the next fellow. At that time I was hoping to get married, and I hardly had a penny to my name, which isn’t much in the way of prospects. But for most folks gold stands for their hard labor, and I don’t see how I should have gold that didn’t come from
my
hard labor, too. It wouldn’t be fair, and if it’s out of balance like that, then it ain’t good Making, if you see my point.”

“And yet you
did
transform the plow into gold, didn’t you?”

“Only as a step along the way,” said Alvin.

“Along the way to what?”

“Well, you know. To what the witnesses all said they seen. This plow ain’t common gold. It moves. It acts. It’s alive.”

“And that’s what you intended?”

“The fire of life. Not just the fire of the forge.”

“How did you do it?”

“It’s hard to explain to them as don’t have the sight of a doodlebug to get inside things. I didn’t create life inside it—that was already there. The bits of gold
wanted
to hold the shape I’d given them, that plow shape, so they fought against the melting of the fire, but they didn’t have the strength. They didn’t know their
own
strength. And I couldn’t teach them, either. And then all of a sudden I thought to put my own hands into the fire and
show
the gold how to be alive, the way I was alive.”

“Put your hands into the fire?” asked Verily.

Alvin nodded. “It hurt something fierce, I’ll tell you—”

“But you’re unscarred,” said Verily.

“It was hot, but don’t you see, it was a Maker’s fire, and finally I understood what I must have known all along, that a Maker is part of what he Makes. I had to be in the fire along with the gold, to show it how to live, to help it find its own heartfire. If I knew exactly how it works I could do a better job of teaching folks. Heaven knows I’ve tried but ain’t nobody learned it aright yet, though a couple or so is getting there, step by step. Anyway, the plow came to life in the fire.”

“So now the plow was as we have seen it—or rather, as we have heard it described here.”

“Yes,” said Alvin. “Living gold.”

“And in your opinion, whom does that gold belong to?”

Alvin looked around at Makepeace, then at Marty Laws, then at the judge. “It belongs to itself. It ain’t no slave.”

Marty Laws rose to his feet. “Surely the witness isn’t asserting the equal citizenship of golden plows.”

“No sir,” said Alvin. “I am not. It has its own purpose in being, but I don’t think jury duty or voting for president has much to do with it.”

“But you’re saying it doesn’t belong to Makepeace Smith and it doesn’t belong to you either,” said Verily.

“Neither one of us.”

“Then why are you so reluctant to yield possession of it to your former master?” asked Verily.

“Because he means to melt it down. He said as much that very next morning. Of course, when I told him he couldn’t do that, he called me thief and insisted that the plow belonged to him. He said a journeyman piece belongs to the master unless he gives it to the journeyman and, I think he said, ‘I sure as hell don’t!’ Then he called me thief.”

“And wasn’t he right? Weren’t you a thief?”

“No sir,” said Alvin. “I admit that the iron he gave me was gone, and I’d be glad to give that iron back to him, fivefold or tenfold, if that’s what the law requires of me. Not that I stole it from him, mind you, but because it no longer existed. At the time, of course, I was angry at him because I was ready to be a journeyman years before, but he held me to all the years of the contract anyway, pretending all the time that he didn’t know I was already the better smith—”

Among the spectators, Makepeace leapt to his feet and shouted, “A contract is a contract!”

The judge banged the gavel.

“I kept the contract, too,” said Alvin. “I worked the full term, even though I was kept as a servant, there wasn’t a thing he
could teach me after the first year or so. So I figured at the time that I had more than earned the price of the iron that was lost. Now, though, I reckon that was just an angry boy talking. I can see that Makepeace was within his rights, and I’ll be glad to give him the price of the iron, or even make him another iron plow in place of the one that’s gone.”

“But you won’t give him the actual plow you made.”

“If he gave me gold to make a plow, I’d give him back as much gold as he gave me. But he gave me iron. And even if he had a right to that amount of gold, he doesn’t have the right to
this
gold, because if it fell into his hands, he’d destroy it, and such a thing as this shouldn’t be destroyed, specially not by them as has no power to make it again. Besides, all his talk of thief was before he saw the plow move.”

“He saw it move?” asked Verily.

“Yes sir. And then he said to me, ‘Get on out of here. Take that thing and go away. I never want to see your face around here again.’ As near as I can recall them, those were his exact words, and if he says otherwise then God will witness against him at the last day, and he knows it.”

Verily nodded. “So we have your view on it,” he said. “Now, as to Hank Dowser, what about the matter of digging somewhere other than the place he said?”

“I knew it wasn’t a good place,” said Alvin. “But I dug where he said, right down till I reached solid stone.”

“Without hitting water?” asked Verily.

“That’s right. So then I went to where I knew I should have dug in the first place, and I put the well there, and it’s drawing pure water even today, I hear tell.”

“So Mr. Dowser was simply wrong.”

“He wasn’t wrong that there was water there,” said Alvin. “He just didn’t know that there was a shelf of rock and the water flowed under it. Bone dry above. That’s why it was a natural meadow—no trees grew there, then or now, except some scrubby ones with shallow roots.”

“Thank you very much,” said Verily. Then, to Marty Laws: “Your witness.”

Marty Laws leaned forward on his table and rested his chin on his hands. “Well, I can’t say as how I have much to ask. We’ve got Makepeace’s version of things, and we’ve got your version. I might as well ask you, is there any chance that you didn’t actually turn iron into gold? Any chance that you
found
the gold in that first hole you dug, and then shaped it into a plow?”

“No chance of that, sir,” said Alvin.

“So you didn’t hide that old iron plow away in order to enhance your reputation as a Maker?”

“I never looked for no reputation as a Maker, sir,” said Alvin. “And as for the iron, it ain’t iron anymore.”

Makepeace nodded. “That’s all the questions I’ve got.”