“I think you’re robbing me, sir!”
“I am if you don’t get in,” said Alvin.
By now the river rats were gathering near the wagon, and one of them had hold of the horse’s harness She glanced around, and her angry expression changed. Just a little. She stepped from the dock onto the wagon seat. Alvin took her hand and helped her arrange herself on the seat. By now, the loudmouth river rat was standing beside him, leaning on the wagon, grinning wickedly. “You beat one of us. blacksmith, but can you beat us all?”
Alvin just stared at him. He was concentrating on the man holding the horse, making his hand suddenly tingle with pain, like he was being punctured with a hundred pins. The man cried out and let go
the horse. The loudmouth looked away from Alvin, toward the sound of the cry, and in the moment Alvin kicked him in the ear with his boot. It wasn’t much of a kick, but then, it wasn’t much of an ear, either, and the man ended up sitting in the dirt, holding his head.
“Gee-yap!” shouted Alvin.
The horse obediently lunged forward—and the wagon moved about an inch. Then another inch. Hard to get a wagonload of iron moving fast, at least all of a sudden. Alvin made the wheels turn smooth and easy, but he couldn’t do a thing about the weight of the wagon or the strength of the horse. By the time the horse got moving, the wagon was a good deal heavier, with the weight of river rats hanging on it. pulling back, climbing aboard.
Alvin turned around and swung his whip at them. The whip was for show—it didn’t hit a one. Still, they all fell off or let go of the wagon as if it
had
hit them, or scared them anyway. What really happened was that all of a sudden the wood of the wagon got as slick as if it was greased. There was no way for them to hold onto it. So the wagon lurched forward as they collapsed back into the dust of the road.
They weren’t done, though. After all, Alvin had to turn around and head back
up
the road right past them in order to get to Hatrack River. He was trying to figure what to do next when he heard a musket go off, loud as a cannonshot, the sound hanging on in the heavy summer air. When he got the wagon turned around, he saw the portmaster standing on the dock, his wife behind him. He was holding one musket, and she was reloading the one he had just fired.
“I reckon we get along well enough most of the time, boys,” said the portmaster. “But today you just don’t seem to know when you been beat fair and square. So I guess it’s about time you settled down in the shade, cause if you make another move toward that wagon, them as don’t die from buckshot’ll be standing trial in Hatrack River, and if you think you won’t pay dear for assaulting a local boy and the new schoolteacher, then you really are as dumb as you look.”
It was quite a little speech, and it worked better than most speeches Alvin had heard in his life. Those river rats just settled right down in the shade, taking a couple of long pulls from a jug and watching Al and the lady with a real sullen look. The portmaster went back inside before the wagon even turned the corner onto the town road.
“You don’t suppose the portmaster is in danger from having helped us, do you?” asked the lady. Alvin was pleased to hear that the arrogance was gone from her voice, though she still spoke as clear and even as the ringing of a hammer on iron.
“No,” said Alvin. “They all know that if ever a portmaster got harmed, them as did it would never work again on the river, or if they did, they wouldn’t live through a night ashore.”
“What about you?”
“Oh, I got no such guarantee. So I reckon I won’t come back to Hatrack Mouth for a couple of weeks. By then all those boys’ll have jobs and be a hundred miles up or downstream from here.” Then he remembered what the portmaster had said. “You’re the new schoolteacher?”
She didn’t answer. Not directly, anyway. “I suppose there are men like that in the East, but one doesn’t meet them in the open like this.”
“Well, it’s a whole lot better to meet them in the open than it is to meet them in private!” Al said, laughing.
She didn’t laugh.
“I was waiting for Dr. Whitley Physicker to meet me. He expected my boat later in the afternoon, but he may be on his way.”
“This is the only road, Ma’am,” Alvin said.
“Miss,” she said. “Not madame. That title is properly reserved for married women.”
“Like I said, it’s the only road. So if he’s on his way, we won’t
miss
him. Miss.”
This time Alvin didn’t laugh at his own joke. On the other hand, he thought, looking out of the corner of his eye, that he just might have caught a glimpse of her smiling. So maybe she wasn’t as hoity-toity as she seemed, Alvin thought. Maybe she’s almost human. Maybe she’ll even consent to give private schooling to a certain
little half-Black boy. Maybe she’ll be worth the work I went to fixing up the springhouse.
Because he was facing forward, driving the wagon, it wouldn’t be natural, let alone good manners, for him to turn and stare right at her like he wanted to. So he sent out his bug, his spark, that part of him that “saw” what no man or woman could rightly with their own eyes see. For Alvin this was near second nature by now, to explore people under the skin so to speak. Keep in mind, though, that it wasn’t like he could see with his eyes. Sure enough he could tell what was under a body’s clothes, but he still didn’t see folks naked. Instead he just got a close-in experience of the surface of their skin, almost like he’d took up residence in one of their pores. So he didn’t think of it like he was peeping in windows or nothing. It was just another way of looking at folks and understanding them; he wouldn’t see a body’s shape or color, but he’d see whether they was sweating or hot or healthy or tensed-up. He’d see bruises and old healed-up injuries. He’d see hidden money or secret papers—but if he was to read the papers, he had to discover the feel of the ink on the surface and then trace it until he could build up a picture of the letters in his mind. It was very slow. Not like seeing, no sir.
Anyhow, he sent his bug to “see” this high-toned lady that he couldn’t exactly look at. And what he found caught him by surprise. Cause she was every bit as hexed-up as Mike Fink had been.
No, more. She was layers deep in it, from hexy amulets hanging around her neck to hexes stitched into her clothes, even a wire hex embedded in the bun of her hair. Only one of them was for protection, and it wasn’t half so strong as Mike Fink’s had been. The rest were all—for what? Alvin hadn’t seen such work before, and it took some thought and exploration to figure out what these hex-work webs that covered her were doing. The best he could get, riding along in the wagon, keeping his eyes on the road ahead, was that somehow these hexes were doing a powerful beseeming, making her look to be something that she wasn’t.
The first thought he had, as I suppose was natural, was to try to discover what she really was, under her disguise. The clothes she wore were real enough—the hexery was only changing the sound
of her voice, the hue and texture of the surface of her skin. But Alvin had little practice with beseemings, and none at all with beseemings wove from hexes. Most folks did a beseeming with a word and a gesture, tied up with a drawing of what they wanted to seem to be. It was a working on other folks’ minds, and once you saw through it, it didn’t fool you at all. Since Alvin always saw through it, such beseemings had no hold on him.
But hers was different. The hex changed the way light hit her and bounced off, so that you weren’t fooled into thinking you saw what wasn’t there. Instead you really saw her different, the light actually struck your eyes that way. Since it wasn’t a change made on Alvin’s mind, knowing the trickery didn’t help him see the truth. And using his bug, he couldn’t tell much about what was hidden away behind the hexes, except that she wasn’t quite so wrinkled-up and bony as she looked, which made him guess she might be younger.
It was only when he gave up trying to guess at what lay under the disguise that he came to the real question: Why, if a woman had the power to disguise herself and seem to be anything she wanted, why would she choose to look like
that
? Cold, severe, getting old, bony, unsmiling, pinched-up, angry, aloof. All the things a woman ought to hope she never was, this teacher lady
chose
to be.
Maybe she was a fugitive in disguise. But she was definitely a woman underneath the hexes, and Alvin never heard of a woman outlaw, so it couldn’t be that. Maybe she was just young, and figured other folks wouldn’t take her serious if she didn’t look older. Alvin knew about
that
right enough. Or maybe she was pretty, and men kept thinking of her the wrong way—Alvin tried to conjure up in his mind what might’ve happened with those river rats if she’d been real beautiful. But truth to tell, the rivermen probably would’ve been polite as they knew how, if she was pretty. It was only ugly women they felt free to taunt, since ugly women probably reminded them of their mothers. So her plainness wasn’t exactly protection. And it wasn’t designed to hide a scar, neither, cause Alvin could see her skin wasn’t pocked or blemished or marred.
Truth was he couldn’t guess at why she was all hid up under so many layers of lies. She could be anything or anybody. He couldn’t even ask her, since to tell her he saw through her disguise was the same as to tell her of his knack, and how could he know she could be trusted with such a secret as
that,
when he didn’t even know who she really was or why she chose to live inside a lie?
He wondered if he ought to tell somebody. Shouldn’t the school board know, before putting the town’s children into her care, that she wasn’t exactly what she seemed to be? But he couldn’t tell them, either, without giving himself away; and besides, maybe her secret was her own business and no harm to anyone. Then if he told the truth on her, it would ruin both him and her, with no good done for anybody.
No, best to watch her, real careful, and learn who she was the only way a body can ever truly know other folks: by seeing what they do. That’s the best plan Alvin could think of, and the truth is, now that he knew she had such a secret, how could he
keep
from paying special attention to her? Using his bug to explore around him was such a habit for him that he’d have to work
not
to check up on her, especially if she was living up at the springhouse. He half hoped she wouldn’t, so he wouldn’t be bothered so much by this mystery; but he just as much hoped she would, so he could keep watch and make sure she was a rightful sort of person.
And I could watch her even better if I studied from her. I could watch her with her own eyes, ask her questions, listen to her answers, and judge what kind of person she might be. Maybe if she taught me long enough, she’d come to trust me, and I her, and then I’d tell her I’m to be a Maker and she’d tell her deep secrets to me and we’d help each other, we’d be true friends the way I haven’t had no true friend since I left my brother Measure behind me in Vigor Church.
He wasn’t pushing the horse too hard, the load being so heavy, what with her trunk and bags on top of the iron—and herself, to boot. So after all their talk, and then all this silence as he tried to figure out who she really was, they were still only about a half a mile out of Hatrack Mouth when Dr. Physicker’s fancy carriage
came along. Alvin recognized the carriage right off, and hailed Po Doggly, who was driving. It took all of a couple of minutes to move the teacher and her things from wagon to carriage. Po and Alvin did all the lifting—Dr. Physicker used all his efforts to help the teacher lady into the carriage. Alvin had never seen the doctor act so elegant.
“I’m terribly sorry you had to suffer the discomforts of a ride in that wagon,” said the doctor. “I didn’t think that I was late.”
“In fact you’re early.” she said. And then, turning graciously to Alvin. she added, “And the wagon ride was surprisingly pleasant.”
Since Alvin hadn’t said a word for most of the journey, he didn’t rightly know whether she meant it as a compliment for him being good company, or as gratitude that he kept his mouth shut and didn’t bother her. Either way, though, it made him feel a kind of burning in his face, and not from anger.
As Dr. Physicker was climbing into the carriage, the teacher asked him, “What is this young man’s name?” Since she spoke to the doctor, Alvin didn’t answer.
“Alvin,” said the doctor, settling into his seat. “He was born here. He’s the smith’s apprentice.”
“Alvin.” she said, now directing herself to him through the carriage window. “I thank you for your gallantry today, and I hope you’ll forgive the ungraciousness of my first response. I had underestimated the villainous nature of our unwelcome companions.”
Her words were so elegant-sounding it was like music hearing her talk, even though Alvin could only half-guess what she was saying. Her expression, though, was about as kindly as her forbidding face could look, he reckoned. He wondered what her real visage might look like underneath.
“My pleasure, Ma’am,” he said. “I mean Miss.”
From the driver’s bench, Po Doggly gee-ed the pair of mares and the carriage took off, still heading toward Hatrack Mouth, of course. It wasn’t easy for Po to find a place on that road to turn around, either, so Alvin was well on his way before the carriage came back and passed him. Po slowed the carriage, and Dr. Physicker leaned
over and tossed a dollar coin into the air. Alvin caught it, more by reflex than by thought.