Orson Scott Card - Alvin 4 - Alvin Journeyman

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ALVIN JOURNEYMAN

The Tales of Alvin Maker, Part 4

by Orson Scott Card

v1.1 (Jan-24-1999)

If you find and correct errors in the text, please update the version number by 0.1 and

redistribute.

Contents

1: I Thought I Was Done

2: Hypocrites

3: Watchers

4: Quest

5: Twist

6: True Love

7: Booking Passage

8: Leavetaking

9: Cooper

10: Welcome Home

11: Jail

12: Lawyers

13: Maneuvers

14: Witnesses

15: Love

16: Truth

17: Decisions

18: Journeys

19: Philadelphia

Chapter 1 -- I thought I Was Done

I thought I was done writing about Alvin Smith. People kept telling me I wasn't, but I knew why.

It's because they'd all heard Taleswapper and the way he tells stories. When he's done, it's all

tied up neat in a package and you pretty much know what things meant and why they happened. Not

that he spells it all out, mind you. But you just have this feeling that it all makes sense.

Well I ain't Taleswapper, which some of you might already have guessed, seeing how we don't look

much alike, and I don't plan on becoming Taleswapper anytime soon, or anything much like him, not

cause I don't reckon him to be a fine fellow, worthy of folks emulating him, but mainly because I

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don't see things the way he sees them. Things don't all make sense to me. They just happen, and

sometimes you can extract a bit of sense from some calamity and sometimes the happiest day is just

pure nonsense. There's no predicting it and there's sure no making it happen. Worst messes I ever

saw folks get into was when they was trying to make things go in a sensible way.

So I set down what I knew of the earliest beginnings of Alvin's life right up till he made him

the golden plow as his journeyman project, and I told how he went back to Vigor and set to

teaching folks how to be Makers and how things already wasn't right with his brother Calvin and I

thought I was done, because anybody who cares was there from then onto see for themselves or you

know somebody who was. I told you the truth of how Alvin came to kill a man, so as to put to rest

all the vicious rumors told about it. I told you how he came to break the runaway slave laws and I

told you how Peggy Larner's mama came to die and believe me, that was pretty much the end of the

story as far as I could see it.

But the ending didn't make sense of it, I reckon, and folks have been pestering me more and more

about the early days and didn't I know more I could tell? Well sure I know. And I got nothing

against telling it. But I hope you don't think that when I'm done telling all I know it'll finally

be clear to everybody what everything that's happened was all about, because I don't know myself.

Truth is, the story ain't over yet, and I hope it never will be, so the most I can hope to do is

set down the way it looks to this one fellow at this exact moment, and I can't even promise you

that tomorrow I won't come to understand it much better than anything I'm writing now.

My knack ain't storytelling. Truth is, Taleswapper's knack ain't storytelling either, and he'd

be the first to tell you that. He collects stories, all right, and the ones he gathers are

important so you listen because the tale itself matters. But you know he don't do nothing much

with his voice, and he don't roll his eyes and use them big gestures like the real orators use.

His voice ain't strong enough to fill a good-size cabin, let alone a tent. No, the telling ain't

his knack. He's a painter if anything, or maybe a woodcarver or a printer or whatever he can use

to tell or show the story but he's no genius at any of them.

Fact is if you ask Taleswapper what his knack is, he'll tell you he don't have none. He ain't

lying-- nobody can ever lay that charge at Taleswapper's door. No, he just set his heart on one

knack when he was a boy, and all his life that seemed to him the only knack worth having and since

he never got it (he thinks) why then he must not have no knack at all. And don't pretend you don't

know what knack-- it was he wanted, because he practically slaps you in the face with it whenever

he talks for long. He wanted the knack of prophecy. That's why he's always been so powerful

jealous of Peggy Larner, because she's a torch and from childhood on she saw all the possible

futures of people's lives, and while that's not the same thing as knowing the future-- the way

things will actually happen instead of how they might happen-- it's pretty close. Close enough

that I think Taleswapper would have been happy for five minutes of being a torch. Probably would

have grinned himself to death within a week if such a thing happened.

When Taleswapper says he's got no knack, though, I'll tell you, he's wrong. Like a lot of folks,

he has a knack and doesn't even know it because that's the way knacks work-- it just feels as

natural as can be to the person who's got it, as easy as breathing, so you don't think that could

possibly be your unusual power because heck, that's easy. You don't know it's a knack till other

people around you get all astonished about it or upset or excited or whatever feelings your knack

seems to provoke in folks. Then you go, "Boy howdy, other folks can't do this! I got me a knack!"

and from then on there's no putting up with you till you finally settle down and get back to

normal life and stop bragging about how you can do this fool thing that you used to never be

excited about back when you still had sense.

Some folks never know they got them a knack, though, because nobody else ever notices it either,

and Taleswapper's that way. I didn't notice it till I started trying to collect all my memories

and everything anybody ever told me about Alvin Maker's life. Pictures of him working that hammer

in the forge every chance he got in case we ever forgot that he had an honest trade, hard come by

with his own sweat, and didn't just dance through life like a quadrille with Dame Fortune as his

loving partner-- as if we ever thought Dame Fortune did anything more than flirt with him, and

likely as not if he ever got close to her he'd find out she had the pox anyway; Fortune has a way

of being on the side of the Unmaker, when folks start relying on her to save them. But I'm getting

off the subject, which I had to read back to the beginning of this paragraph to see what in hell I

was talking about (and I can hear you pricklehearted prudes saying, What's he doing putting down

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curses on paper, hasn't he no sense of decent language? to which I say, When I curse, it don't

harm nobody and it makes my language more colorful and heaven knows I can use the color, and I can

assure you I've studied cussing from the best and I know how to make my language a whole lot more

colorful than it is right now, but I already tone myself down so you don't have apoplexy reading

my words. I wouldn't want to spend half my life just going to the funerals of people who had a

stroke from reading my book, so instead of criticizing me for the nasty words that creep into my

writing why don't you praise me for the really ugly stuff that I virtuously chose to leave out?

It's all how you choose to look at it, I think, and if you have time to rail on about my language,

then you don't have enough to do and I'll be glad to put you in touch with folks who need more

hands to help with productive labor), so anyway I looked back to the beginning of this paragraph

again to see what the hell I was talking about and my point is that when I gathered all these

stories together, I noticed that Taleswapper seems to keep showing up in the oddest places at

exactly the moment when something important was about to happen, so that he ended up being a

witness or even a participant in a remarkable number of events.

Now, let me ask you plain, my friends. If a man seems to know, down in his bones, when something

important's about to happen, and where, and enough in advance that he can get his body over there

to be a witness of it before it even starts, now ain't that prophecy? I mean why was it William

Blake ever left England and came to America if it wasn't because he knew that the world was about

to be torn open to give birth to a Maker again after all these generations? Just cause he didn't

know it out in the open didn't mean that he wasn't a prophet. He thought he had to be a prophet

with his mouth, but I say he's a prophet in his bones. Which is why he just happened to be

wandering back to the town of Vigor Church, to Alvin's father's mill, for no reason he was aware

of, at exactly the day and hour that Alvin's little brother Calvin Miller decided to run off and

go study trouble in faraway places. Taleswapper had no idea what was going to happen, but folks, I

tell you, he was there, and anybody who tells you Taleswapper's got no knack, including

Taleswapper himself, is a blame fool. Of course I mean that in the nicest possible way, as Horace

Guester would tell you.

So as I pick up my tale again that's the day I choose to start with, mostly because I can tell

you from experience that nothing interesting happened during those long months when Alvin was

still trying to teach a bunch of plain folks how to be a Maker like him instead of... well, all in

time. Let's just say that while some of you are bound to criticize me for not telling all of

Alvin's lessons about Makering and every single boring moment of every class he held trying to

teach fish to hop, I can promise you that leaving out those days from my tale is an act of

charity.

There's a lot of people and a lot of confusion in the story, too, and I can't help that, because

if I made it all clear and simple that would be a lie. It was a mess and there was a lot of

different people involved and also, to tell you the truth, there's a lot of things that happened

that I didn't know about then and still don't know much about now. I'd like to say that I'm

telling you all the important parts of the story, telling about all the important people, but I

know perfectly well that there might be important parts that I just don't know about, and

important people that I didn't realize were important. There's stuff that nobody knows, and stuff

that them as knows ain't telling, or them as knows don't know they know. And even as I try to

explain things as I understand them I'm still going to leave things out without meaning to, or

tell you things twice that you already know, or contradict something that you know to be a fact,

and all I can say is, I ain't no Taleswapper, and if you want to know the deepest truth, get him

to unseal that back two-thirds of his little book and read you what he's got in there and I bet,

for all he claims to be no prophet, I bet you'll hear things as will curl your hair, or uncurl it,

depending.

There's one mystery, though, that I plain don't know the answer to, even though everything

depends on it. Maybe if I tell you enough you'll figure it out for yourself. But what I don't

understand is why Calvin went the way, he did. He was a sweet boy, they all say it. He and Alvin

were close as boys can be, I mean they fought but there was never malice in it and Cally grew up

knowing Al would die for him. So what was it made jealousy start to gnaw at Calvin's heart and

turn him away from his own brother and want to undo all his work? I heard a lot of the tale I'm

about to tell you from Cally's own mouth, but you can be sure he never sat down and explained to

me or anybody why he changed. Oh, he told plenty of folks why he hated Alvin, but there's no ring

of truth in what he says about that, since he always accuses his brother of doing whatever his

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audience hates the most. To Puritans he says he came to hate Alvin because he saw him trucking

with the devil. To Kingsmen he says he hated Alvin because he saw how his brother went so far as

to murder a man just to keep him from recovering his own property, a runaway slave baby named

Arthur Stuart (and don't that set them Royalists' teeth on edge, to think of a half-Black boy

having the same name as the King!). Calvin always has a tale that justifies himself in the eyes of

strangers, but never a word of explanation does he ever have to those of us who know the truth

about Alvin Maker.

I just know this: When I first set eyes on Calvin, in Vigor Church during that year when Alvin

tried to teach Makering, that year before he left, I'll tell you, folks, Calvin was already gone.

In his heart every word that Alvin said was like poison. If Alvin paid no attention to him, Calvin

felt neglected and said so. Then if Alvin did pay attention to him, Calvin got surly and sullen

and claimed Alvin wouldn't leave him alone. There was no pleasing him.

But to say he was "contrary" don't explain a thing. It's just a name for the way he was acting,

not an answer to the question of why he acted that way. I have my own guesses, but they're just

guesses and no more, not even what they call "educated guesses" because there's no such thing as

education so good it makes one man's guess any better than another's. Either you know or you

don't, and I don't know.

I don't know why people who got what they need to be happy don't just go ahead and be happy. I

don't know why lonely people keep shoving away everybody as tries to befriend them. I don't know

why people blame weak and harmless folks for their troubles while they leave their real enemy

alone to get away with all his harm. And I sure don't know why I bother to go to the trouble to

write all this down when I know you still won't be satisfied.

Let me tell you one little thing about Calvin. I saw him one day taking class with Alvin, and

for once he was paying attention, real close attention, heeding every word that came from his

brother's lips. And I thought: He's finally come around. He finally realized that if he really

wants to be a seventh son of a seventh son, if he really wants to be a Maker, he has to learn from

Alvin how it's done.

And then the class ended, and I sat there watching Calvin as everybody else went on out to get

back to their chores, until only me and Calvin was left in the room, and Calvin actually talks to

me-- mostly he ignored me like I wasn't there-- he talks to me and in a few seconds I realize what

he's doing. He's imitating Alvin. Not Alvin's regular voice, but Alvin's schoolteachery voice. You

all remember when he got that way-- I remember he learned that flowery fancy talk when he was

studying with Miss Larner, before she came out of disguise and he realized she was the same Peggy

Guester who kept his birth caul and protected him through his growing-up years. The big five-

dollar words she learned in Dekane or from them books she read. Alvin wanted to sound refined like

her, or sometimes he wanted to, anyway, and so he'd learn them words and use them and talk so fine

you'd have thought he learned English from an expert instead of just growing up with it like the

rest of us. But he couldn't keep it up. He'd hear himself talking so high-toned and he'd just

suddenly laugh or make some joke and then he'd go back to talking like folks. And there was Calvin

talking that same high-toned way, only he didn't laugh. He just did all his imitating and when he

was done, he looked at me and said, "Was that right?"

As if I'd know!

And I says back to him, "Calvin, sounding like an educated man don't make you educated," and he

says back to me, "I'd rather be ignorant and sound educated than be educated and sound ignorant,"

and I said, "Why?" and he says to me, "Because if you sound educated then nobody ever tests you to

find out, but if you sound ignorant they never stop."

Here's my point. Well, maybe it's not the point I started out to make, but I long since lost

track of that. So here's the point I want to make now: I know more about what happened during

Alvin's year of wandering than anybody else on God's green Earth. But I also am aware of how many

questions I still can't answer. So I reckon I'm the one as knows but seems ignorant. Which kind

are you?

If you already figure you know this story, for heaven's sake stop reading now and save yourself

some trouble. And if you're going to criticize me for not finishing the whole thing and tying it

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up in a bow for you, why, do us both a favor and write your own damn book, only have the decency

to call it a romance instead of a history, because history's got no bows on it, only frayed ends

of ribbons and knots that can't be untied. It ain't a pretty package but then it's not your

birthday that I know of, so I'm under no obligation to give you a gift.

Chapter 2 -- Hypocrites

Calvin was about fed up. Just this close to walking up to Alvin and... and something. Punching

him in the nose, maybe, only he'd tried that afore and Alvin just caught him by the wrist and

gripped him with those damn blacksmith muscles and he says, "Calvin, you know I could always throw

you, do we have to do this now?" Alvin could always do everything better, or if he couldn't then

it must not be worth doing. Folks gathered around and listened to Alvin's babbling like it all

made sense. Folks watched every move he made like he was a dancing bear. Only time they noticed

Calvin was to ask him if he would kindly step aside so they could see Alvin a little better.

Step aside? Yep, I reckon I can step aside. I can step right out the door and out into the hot

sun and right out onto the path going up the hill to the tree line. And what's to stop me from

keeping right on? What's to stop me from walking on to the edge of the world and then jumping

right off?

But Calvin didn't keep walking. He leaned against a big old maple and then hunkered down in the

grass and looked out over Father's land. The house. The barn. The chicken coops. The pigpen. The

millhouse.

Did the wheel ever turn in Father's mill anymore? The water passed useless through the chase,

the wheel leaned forward but never moved, and so the stones inside were still, too. Might as well

have left the huge millstone in the mountain, as to bring it down here to stand useless while big

brother Alvin filled these poor people's minds with hopeless hopes. Alvin was grinding them up as

surely as if he put their heads between the stones. Grinding them up, turning them to flour which

Alvin himself would bake into bread and eat up for supper. He may have prenticed as a blacksmith

all those years in Hatrack River, but here in Vigor Church he was a baker of brains.

Thinking of Alvin eating everybody's ground-up heads made Calvin feel nasty in a delicious kind

of way. It made him laugh. He stretched his long thin legs out into the meadow grass and lay back

against the trunk of the maple. A bug was scampering along the skin of his leg, up under his

trousers, but he didn't bother to reach down and pull it out, or even to shake his leg to get it

off. Instead, he got his doodlebug going, like a spare pair of eyes, like an extra set of fingers,

looking for the tiny rapid flutter of the bug's useless stupid life and when he found it he gave

it a little pinch, or really more like a squint, a tiny twitch of the muscles around his eyes, but

that was all it took, just that little pinch and then the bug wasn't moving no more. Some days,

little bug, it just don't pay to get up in the morning.

"That must be some funny story," said a voice.

Calvin fairly jumped out of his skin. How did somebody come on him unawares? Still, he didn't

let himself show he'd been surprised. His heart might be beating fast inside his chest, but he

still waited a minute before even turning around to look, and then he made sure to look about as

uninterested as a fellow can look without being dead.

A bald fellow, old and in buckskins. Calvin knew him, of course. A far traveler and sometime

visitor named Taleswapper. Another one who thought the world began with God and ended with Alvin.

Calvin looked him up and down. The buckskins were about as old as the man. "Did you get them

clothes off a ninety-year-old deer, or did your daddy and grandpa wear them all their lives to get

them so worn out like that?"

"I've worn these clothes so long," said the old man, "that I sometimes send them on errands when

I'm too busy to go, and nobody can tell the difference."

"I think I know you," said Calvin. "You're that old Taleswapper fellow."

"So I am," said the old man. "And you're Calvin, old Miller's youngest boy."

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