Alvin Journeyman: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume IV (6 page)

Then she realized that she heard singing coming from the house. And laughter from the yard. Singing and laughter, and yet not a heartfire to be seen. There had never been such a strange thing in ail her life. Was this a haint house? Did the restless dead dwell here, unable to let go of life? But who ever heard of a haint that laughed? Or sang such a cheery song?

And there, running around the house, was a boy not more than six, being chased by three older girls. Not one with a heartfire. But from the dirt on the boy’s face and the rage in the eyes of the red-faced girls, these could not be the spirits of the dead.

“Hallo, there!” cried Peggy, waving.

The boy, startled, looked at her. That pause was his undoing,
for the girls caught up to him and fell to pummeling him with much enthusiasm; his answer was to holler with equal vigor, cursing them roundly. Peggy didn’t know them, but had little doubt that the boy, in the fashion of all boys, had done some miserable mischief which outraged the girls—his sisters? She also had little doubt that the girls, despite the inevitable protests of innocence, had no doubt provoked
him
before, but in subtle, verbal ways so that he could never point to a bruise and get his mother on his side. Such was the endless war between male and female children. Stranger or not, however, Peggy could not allow the violence of the girls to get out of hand, and it seemed they were not disposed to go lightly in their determined battering of the bellowing lad. They were pursuing the beating, not as a holiday, but as if it were their bread-and-butter labor, with an overseer who would examine their handiwork later and say, “I’d say the boy was well beaten. You get your day’s pay, all right!”

“Let up now,” she said, striding across the goat-cropped yard.

They ignored her until she was on them and had two of the girls by the collars. Even then, they kept swinging with their fists, not a few of the blows landing on Peggy herself, while the third girl took no pause. Peggy had no choice but to give the two girls she had hold of a stern push, sending them sprawling in the grass, while she dragged the third girl off the boy.

As she had feared, the boy hadn’t done well under the girls’ blows. His nose was bleeding, and he got up only slowly; when the girl Peggy was holding lunged at him, he scurried on all fours to evade her.

“Shame on you,” said Peggy. “Whatever he did, it wasn’t worth this!”

“He killed my squirrel!” cried the girl she held.

“But how can you have had a squirrel?” asked Peggy. “It would be cruel of
you
to pen one up.”

“She was never penned,” said the girl. “She was my friend. I fed her and these others saw it—she came to me and I kept
her alive through the hard winter. He knew it! He was jealous that the squirrel came to me, and so he killed it.”

“It was a squirrel!” the boy shouted—hoarsely and rather weakly, but it was clear he
meant
it to be a shout. “How should I know it was yours?”

“Then you shouldn’t have killed any,” said another of the girls. “Not till you were sure.”

“Whatever he did to the squirrels,” said Peggy, “even if he was malicious, it was wrong of you and unchristian to knock him down and hurt him so.”

The boy looked at her now. “Are you the judge?” he asked.

“Judge? I think not!” said Peggy with a laugh.

“But you can’t be the Maker, that one’s a boy. I think you’re a judge.” The boy looked even more certain. “Aunt Becca said the judge was coming, and then the Maker, so you can’t be the Maker because the judge ain’t come yet, but you could be the judge because the judge comes first.”

Peggy knew that other folks often took the words of children to be nonsense, if they didn’t understand them immediately. But Peggy knew that the words of children were always related to their view of the world, and made their own sense if you only knew how to hear them. Someone had told them—Aunt Becca, it was—that a judge and a Maker were coming. There was only one Maker that Peggy knew of. Was Alvin coming here? What was this place, that the children knew of Makers, and had no heartfires?

“I thought your house was standing empty,” said Peggy, “but I see that it is not.”

For indeed there now stood a woman in the doorway, leaning against the jamb, watching them placidly as she slowly stirred a bowl with a wooden spoon.

“Mama!” cried the girl that Peggy still held. “She has me and won’t let go!”

“It’s true!” cried Peggy at once. “And I still won’t let go, till I’m sure she won’t murder the boy here!”

“He killed my squirrel, Mama!” cried the girl.

The woman said nothing, just stirred.

“Perhaps, children,” said Peggy, “we should go talk to this lady in the doorway, instead of shouting like river rats.”

“Mother doesn’t like you,” said one of the girls. “I can tell.”

“That’s a shame,” said Peggy. “Because I like
her
.”

“Do not,” said the girl. “You don’t know her, and if you did you
stilt
wouldn’t like her because nobody does.”

“What a terrible thing to say about your mother,” said Peggy.

“I don’t have to like her,” said the girl. “I
love
her.”

“Then take me to this woman that you love but don’t like,” said Peggy, “and let me reach my own conclusions about her.”

As they approached the door, Peggy began to think that the girls might be right. The woman certainly didn’t look welcoming. But for that matter, she didn’t look hostile, either. Her face was empty of emotion. She just stirred the bowl.

“My name is Peggy Larner.” The woman ignored her outstretched hand. “I’m sorry if I shouldn’t have intervened, but as you can see the boy was taking some serious injury.”

“Just my nose is bloody, is all,” said the boy. But his limp suggested other less visible pains.

“Come inside,” said the woman.

Peggy had no idea whether the woman was speaking just to the children, or was including her in the invitation. If it could be called an invitation, so blandly she spoke it, not looking up from the bowl she stirred. The woman turned away, disappearing inside the house. The children followed. So, finally, did Peggy.

No one stopped her or seemed to think her action strange. It was this that first made her wonder if perhaps she had fallen asleep in the carriage and this was some strange dream, in which unaccountable unnatural things happen which nevertheless excite no comment in the land of dreams, where there is no custom to be violated. Where I am now is not real. Outside waits the carriage and the team of four horses, not to mention the driver, as real and mundane a fellow as ever belched in the
coachman’s seat. But in here, I have stepped into a place beyond nature. There are no heartfires here.

The children disappeared, stomping somewhere through the wood-floored house, and at least one of them went up or down a flight of stairs; it had to be a child, there was so much vigor in the step. But there were no sounds that told Peggy where to go, or what purpose was being served by her coming here. Was there no order here? Nothing that her presence disrupted? Would no one but the children ever notice her at all?

She wanted to go back outside, return to the carriage, but now, as she turned around, she couldn’t remember what door she had come through, or even which way was north. The windows were curtained, and whatever door she had come through, she couldn’t see it now.

It was an odd place, for there was cloth everywhere, folded neatly and stacked on all the furniture, on the floors, on the stairs, as if someone had just bought enough to make a thousand dresses with and the tailors and seamstresses were yet to arrive. Then she realized that the piles were of one continuous cloth, flowing off the top of one stack into the bottom of the next. How could there be a cloth so long? Why would anyone make it, instead of cutting it and sending it out to get something made from it?

Why indeed. How foolish of her not to realize it at once. She knew this place. She hadn’t visited it herself, but she had seen it through Alvin’s heartfire, years ago.

He was still in Ta-Kumsaw’s thrall in those days. The Red warrior took Alvin with him and brought him into his legend, so that those who now spoke of Alvin Smith the Finder-killer, or Alvin Smith and the golden plow, had once spoken of the same boy, little knowing it, when they spoke of the evil “Boy Renegado,” the white boy who went with Ta-Kumsaw in all his travels in the last year before his defeat at Fort Detroit. It was in that guise that Alvin came here, and walked down this hall, yes, turning right here, yes, tracking the folded cloth into the oldest part of the house, the original cabin, into the slanting
light that seems to have no source, as if it merely seeped in through the chinks between the logs. And here, if I open this door, I will find the woman with the loom. This is the place of weaving.

Aunt Becca. Of course she knew the name. Becca, the weaver who held the threads of all the lives in the White man’s lands in North America.

The woman at the loom looked up. “I didn’t want you here,” she said softly.

“Nor did I plan to come,” said Peggy. “The truth is, I had forgotten you. You slipped my mind.”

“I’m supposed to slip your mind. I slip all minds.”

“Except one or two?”

“My husband remembers me.”

“Ta-Kumsaw? He isn’t dead, then?”

Becca snorted. “My husband’s name is Isaac.”

That was Ta-Kumsaw’s White name. “Don’t quibble with me,” said Peggy. “Something called me here. If it wasn’t you, who was it?”

“My untalented sister. The one who breaks threads whenever she touches the loom.”

Aunt Becca, the children had called the weaver. “Is your sister the mother of the children I met?”

“The murderous little boy who kills squirrels for sport? His brutal sisters? I think of them as the four horses of the apocalypse. The boy is war. The sisters are still sorting themselves out among the other forces of destruction.”

“You speak metaphorically, I hope,” said Peggy.

“I hope not,” said Becca. “Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space.”

“Why would your sister have brought me here? She didn’t seem to know me at the door.”

“You’re the judge,” said Becca. “I found a purple thread of justice in the loom, and it was you. I didn’t want you here, but I knew that you’d come, because I knew my sister would have you here.”

“Why? I’m no judge. I’m guilty myself.”

“You see? Your judgment includes everyone. Even those who are invisible to you.”

“Invisible?” But she knew before asking what it was that Becca meant.

“Your vision, your torching, as you quaintly call it—you see where people are in the many paths of their lives. But I am not on the path of time. Nor is my sister. We don’t belong anywhere in your prophecies or in the memories of those who know us. Only in the present moment are we here.”

“Yet I remember your first word long enough to make sense of the whole sentence,” said Peggy.

“Ah,” said Becca. “The judge insists on correctness of speech. Boundaries are not so clear, Margaret Larner. You remember perfectly now; but what will you remember in a week from now? What you forget of me, you’ll forget so completely that you won’t remember that you once knew it. Then my statement will be true, but you’ll forget that I said it.”

“I think not.”

Becca smiled.

“Show me the thread,” said Peggy.

“We don’t do that.”

“What harm can it do? I’ve already seen all the possible paths of my life.”

“But you haven’t seen which one you’ll choose,” said Becca.

“And you have?”

“At this moment, no,” said Becca. “But in the moment that contains all moments, yes. I’ve seen the course of your life. That isn’t why you came, though. Not to find out something as stupid as whether you’ll marry the boy you’ve nurtured all these years. You will or you won’t. What is that to me?”

“I don’t know,” said Peggy. “I wonder why you exist at all. You change nothing. You merely see. You weave, but the threads are out of your control. You are meaningless.”

“So you say,” said Becca.

“And yet you have a life, or had one. You loved Ta-Kumsaw—or Isaac, whatever name you use. So loving some boy, marrying him, that didn’t always seem stupid to you.”

“So you say,” said Becca.

“Or do you include yourself in that? Do you call yourself stupid in having loved and married? You can’t pretend to be inhuman when you loved and lost a man.”

“Lost?” she asked. “I see him every day.”

“He comes here? To Appalachee?”

Becca hooted. “I think not!”

“How many threads broke under your hand with that pass of the shuttlecock?” asked Peggy.

“Too many,” said Becca. “And not enough.”

“Did you break them? Or did they simply happen to break?”

“The thread grew thin. The life wore out. Or it was cut. It isn’t the thread that cuts the life, it’s the death that cuts the thread.”

“So you keep a record, is that it? The weaving causes nothing, but simply records it all.”

Becca smiled thinly. “Passive, useless creatures that we are, but we must weave.”

Peggy didn’t believe her, but there was no use in arguing. “Why did you bring me here?”

“I told you. I didn’t.”

“Why did
she
bring me here?”

“To judge.”

“What is it that I’m supposed to judge?”

Becca passed the shuttlecock from her right hand to her left. The loom slammed forward, then dropped back. She passed the shuttlecock from her left hand to her right. Again, the frame slammed forward, weaving the threads tight.

This
is
a dream, thought Peggy. And not a very pleasant one. Why can’t I ever wake up to escape from some foolish useless dream?

“Personally,” said Becca, “I think you’ve already made your judgment. It’s only my sister thinks that you deserve a second
chance. She’s very romantic. She thinks that you deserve some happiness. My own feeling is that human happiness is a very random thing, and bestows itself willy-nilly, and there’s not much deserving about the matter.”

“So it’s myself that I’m supposed to judge?”

Becca laughed.