“Mother!” she cried. “Mother!”
And then the future became the present: Old Peg’s heartfire was gone before the sound of the second gunshot reached the smithy.
Alvin could hardly believe what he was saying to Miss Larner. He hadn’t known until this moment, when he said it, how he felt about her. He was so afraid she’d laugh at him, so afraid she’d tell him he was far too young, that in time he’d get over how he felt.
But instead of answering him, she paused for just a moment, and in that moment a gunshot rang out. Alvin knew at once that it came from the roadhouse: he followed the sound with his bug and found where it came from, found a dead man already beyond all healing. And then a moment later, another gunshot, and then he found someone else dying, a woman. He knew that body from the inside out; it wasn’t no stranger. It had to be Old Peg.
“Mother!” cried Miss Larner. “Mother!”
“It’s Old Peg Guester!” cried Alvin.
He saw Miss Larner tear open the collar of her dress, reach inside and pull out the amulets that hung there. She tore them off her neck, cutting herself bad on the breaking strings. Alvin could hardly take in what he saw—a young woman, scarce older than himself, and beautiful, even though her face was torn with grief and terror.
“It’s my mother!” she cried. “Alvin, save her!”
He didn’t wait a second. He just tore on out of the smithy, running
barefoot on the grass, in the road, not caring how the rough dirt and rocks tore into his soft, unaccustomed feet. The leather apron caught and tangled between his knees; he tugged it, twisted it to the side, out of his way. He could see with his bug how Old Peg was already past saving, but still he ran, because he had to try. even though he knew there was no reason in it. And then she died, and still he ran, because he couldn’t bear not to be running to where that good woman, his good friend was lying dead.
His good friend and Miss Larner’s mother. The only way that could be is if she was the torch girl what run off seven years ago. But then if she was such a torch as folks around her said. why didn’t she see this coming? Why didn’t she look into her own mother’s heartfire and forsee her death? It made no sense.
There was a man in front of him on the road. A man running down from the roadhouse toward some horses tied to trees just over yonder. It was the man who killed Old Peg, Alvin knew that, and cared to know no more. He sped up, faster than he’d ever run before without getting strength from the forest around him. The man heard him coming maybe thirty yards off, and turned around.
“You, smith!” cried the black-haired Finder. “Glad to kill you too!”
He had a pistol in his hand; he fired.
Alvin took the bullet in his belly, but he didn’t care about that. His body started work at once fixing what the bullet tore, but it wouldn’t’ve mattered a speck if he’d been bleeding to death. Alvin didn’t even slow down; he flew into the man, knocking him down, landing on him and skidding with him ten feet across the dirt of the road. The man cried out in fear and pain. That single cry was the last sound he made; in his rage, Alvin caught the man’s head in such a grip that it took only one sharp jab of his other hand against the man’s jaw to snap his neckbone clean in half. The man was already dead, but Alvin hit his head again and again with his fists, until his arms and chest and his leather apron was all covered with the black-haired Finder’s blood and the man’s skull was broke up inside his head like shards of dropped pottery.
Then Alvin knelt there, his head stupid with exhaustion and spent
anger. After a minute or so he remembered that Old Peg was still lying there on the roadhouse floor. He knowed she was dead, but where else did he have to go? Slowly he got to his feet.
He heard horses coming down the road from town. That time of night in Hatrack River, gunshots meant only trouble. Folks’d come. They’d find the body in the road—they’d come on up to the roadhouse. No need for Alvin to stay to greet them.
Inside the roadhouse, Peggy was already kneeling over her mother’s body, sobbing and panting from her run up to the house. Alvin only knew for sure it was her from her dress—he’d only seen her face but once before, for a second there in the smithy. She turned when she saw Alvin come inside. “Where were you! Why didn’t you save her! You could have saved her!”
“I never could,” said Alvin. It was wrong of her to say such a thing. “There wasn’t time.”
“You should have looked! You should have seen what was coming.”
Alvin didn’t understand her. “I can’t see what’s coming,” he said. “That’s your knack.”
Then she burst out crying, not the dry sobs like when he first came in, but deep, gut-wrenching howls of grief. Alvin didn’t know what to do.
The door opened behind him.
“Peggy,” whispered Horace Guester. “Little Peggy.”
Peggy looked up at her father, her face so streaked with tears and twisted up and reddened with weeping that it was a marvel he could recognize her. “I killed her!” she cried. “I never should have left, Papa! I killed her!”
Only then did Horace understand that it was his wife’s body lying there. Alvin watched as he started trembling, groaning, then keening loud and high like a hurt dog. Alvin never seen such grieving. Did my father cry like that when my brother Vigor died? Did he make such a sound as this when he thought that me and Measure was tortured to death by Red men?
Alvin reached out his arms to Horace, held him tight around the shoulders, then led him over to Peggy and helped him kneel
there beside his daughter, both of them weeping, neither giving a sign that they saw each other. All they saw was Old Peg’s body spread out on the floor; Alvin couldn’t even guess how deeply, how agonizingly each one bore the whole blame for her dying.
After a while the sheriff came in. He’d already found the black-haired Finder’s corpse outside, and it didn’t take him long to understand exactly what happened. He took Alvin aside. “This is pure self-defense if I ever saw it,” said Pauley Wiseman, “and I wouldn’t make you spend three seconds in jail for it. But I can tell you that the law in Appalachee don’t take the death of a Finder all that easy, and the treaty lets them come up here and get you to take back there for trial. What I’m saying, boy, is you better get the hell out of here in the next couple of days or I can’t promise you’ll be safe.”
“I was going anyway,” said Alvin.
“I don’t know how you done it,” said Pauley Wiseman, “but I reckon you got that half-Black pickaninny away from them Finders tonight and hid him somewhere around here. I’m telling you, Alvin, when you go, you best take that boy with you. Take him to Canada. But if I see his face again, I’ll ship him south myself. It’s that boy caused all this—makes me sick, a good White woman dying cause of some half-Black mixup boy.”
“You best never say such a thing in front of me again, Pauley Wiseman.”
The sheriff only shook his head and walked away. “Ain’t natural,” he said. “All you people set on a monkey like it was folks.” He turned around to face Alvin. “I don’t much care what you think of me, Alvin Smith, but I’m giving you and that mixup boy a chance to stay alive. I hope you have brains to take it. And in the meantime, you might go wash off that blood and fetch some clothes to wear.”
Alvin walked on back to the road. Other folks was coming by then—he paid them no heed. Only Mock Berry seemed to understand what was happening. He led Alvin on down to his house, and there Anga washed him down and Mock gave him some of his own clothes to wear. It was nigh onto dawn when Alvin got him back to the smithy.
Makepeace was setting there on a stool in the smithy door, looking at the golden plow. It was resting on the ground, still as you please, right in front of the forge.
“That’s one hell of a journeyman piece,” said Makepeace.
“I reckon,” said Alvin. He walked over to the plow and reached down. It fairly leapt into Alvin’s hands—not heavy at all now—but if Makepeace noticed how the plow moved by itself just before Alvin touched it, he didn’t say.
“I got a lot of scrap iron,” said Makepeace. “I don’t even ask for you to go halves with me. Just let me keep a few pieces when you turn them into
gold.
”
“I ain’t turning no more iron into gold,” said Alvin.
It made Makepeace angry. “That’s
gold
, you fool! That there plow you made means never going hungry, never having to work again, living fine instead of in that rundown house up there! It means new dresses for Gertie and maybe a suit of clothes for me! It means folks in town saying Good morning to me and tipping their hats like I was a gentleman. It means riding in a carriage like Dr. Physicker, and going to Dekane or Carthage or wherever I please and not even caring what it costs. And you’re telling me you ain’t making no more
gold?”
Alvin knew it wouldn’t do no good explaining, but still he tried. “This ain’t no common gold, sir. This is a living plow—I ain’t going to let nobody melt it down to make coins out of it. Best I can figure, nobody could melt it even if they wanted to. So back off and let me go.”
“What you going to do, plow with it? You blame fool, we could be kings of the world together!” But when Alvin pushed on by, headed out of the smithy, Makepeace stopped his pleading and started getting ugly. “That’s my iron you used to make that golden plow! That gold belongs to
me!
A journeyman piece always belongs to the master, less’n he gives it to the journeyman and I sure as hell don’t! Thief! You’re stealing from me!”
“You stole five years of my life from me, long after I was good enough to be a journeyman,” Alvin said. “And this plow—making it was none of your teaching. It’s alive, Makepeace Smith. It doesn’t
belong to you and it doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to itself. So let me just set it down here and we’ll see who gets it.”
Alvin set down the plow on the grass between them. Then he stepped back a few paces. Makepeace took one step toward the plow. It sank down into the soil under the grass, then cut its way through the dirt till it reached Alvin. When he picked it up, it was warm. He knew what that had to mean. “Good soil,” said Alvin. The plow trembled in his hands.
Makepeace stood there, his eyes bugged out with fear. “Good Lord, boy, that plow
moved.”
“I know it,” said Alvin.
“What are you, boy? The devil?”
“I don’t think so,” said Alvin. “Though I might’ve met him once or twice.”
“Get on out of here! Take that thing and go away! I never want to see your face around here again!”
“You got my journeyman paper,” said Alvin. “I want it.”
Makepeace reached into his pocket, took out a folded paper, and threw it onto the grass in front of the smithy. Then he reached out and pulled the smithy doors shut, something he hardly ever did, even in winter. He shut them tight and barred them on the inside. Poor fool, as if Alvin couldn’t break down them walls in a second if he really wanted to get inside. Alvin walked over and picked up the paper. He opened it and read it—signed all proper. It was legal. Alvin was a journeyman.
The sun was just about to show up when Alvin got to the springhouse door. Of course it was locked, but locks and hexes couldn’t keep Alvin out, specially when he made them all himself. He opened the door and went inside. Arthur Stuart stirred in his sleep. Alvin touched his shoulder, brought the boy awake. Alvin knelt there by the bed and told the boy most all that happened in the night. He showed him the golden plow, showed him how it moved. Arthur laughed in delight. Then Alvin told him that the woman he called Mama all his life was dead, killed by the Finders, and Arthur cried.
But not for long. He was too young to cry for long. “You say she kilt one herself afore she died?”
“With your pa’s own shotgun.”
“Good for her!” said Arthur Stuart, his voice so fierce Alvin almost laughed, him being so small.
“I killed the other one myself. The one that shot her.”
Arthur reached out and took Alvin’s right hand and opened it. “Did you kill him with this hand?”
Alvin nodded.
Arthur kissed his open palm.
“I would’ve fixed her up if I could,” said Alvin. “But she died too fast. Even if I’d been standing right there the second after the shot hit her, I couldn’t’ve fixed her up.”
Arthur Stuart reached out and hung onto Alvin around his neck and cried some more.
It took a day to put Old Peg into the ground, up on the hill with her own daughters and Alvin’s brother Vigor and Arthur’s mama who died so young. “A place for people of courage,” said Dr. Physicker, and Alvin knew that he was right, even though Physicker didn’t know about the runaway Black slave girl.
Alvin washed away the bloodstains from the floor and stairs of the roadhouse, using his knack to pull out what blood the lye and sand couldn’t remove. It was the last gift he could give to Horace or to Peggy. Margaret. Miss Larner.
“I got to leave now,” he told them. They were setting on chairs in the common room of the inn, where they’d been receiving mourners all day. “I’m taking Arthur to my folks’ place in Vigor Church. He’ll be safe there. And then I’m going on.”