Heartfire: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume V (4 page)

“So we’ll let it out,” said Arthur.

Alvin sighed. “Then we’d be thieves, wouldn’t we?”

“The window’s open,” said Arthur. “The blue jay can leave after the man comes in this morning. So he’ll think it escaped on its own.”

“And how will we get the bird to do that?”

Arthur looked at him like he was an idiot, then leaned close to the bluejay, which stood still on the worktable. Arthur whispered so softly that Alvin couldn’t hear the words. Then he whistled, several sharp birdlike sounds.

The jay leapt into the air and flapped noisily around the room. Alvin ducked to avoid it.

“He’s not going to hit you,” said Arthur, amused.

“Let’s go,” said Alvin.

He took Arthur through the back door. When he drew it closed, he stayed for just a moment longer, his fingers lingering on the knob, as he returned the pieces of the lock to their proper shape.

“What are you doing here!” The taxidermist stood at the turn of the alley.

“Hoping to find you in, sir,” said Alvin calmly, not taking his hand off the knob.

“With your hand on the knob?” said the taxidermist, his voice icy with suspicion.

“You didn’t answer to our knock,” said Alvin. “I thought you might be so hard at work you didn’t hear. All we want is to know where we might find the journeyman painter. The Frenchman. John-James.”

“I know what you wanted,” said the taxidermist.

“Stand away from the door before I call the constable.”

Alvin and Arthur stepped back.

“That’s not good enough,” said the taxidermist. “Skulking at back doors—how do I know you don’t plan to knock me over the head and steal from me as soon as I have the door unlocked?”

“If that was our plan, sir,” said Alvin, “you’d already be lying on the ground and I’d have the key in my hand, wouldn’t I?”

“So you
did
have it all thought out!”

“Seems to me
you’re
the one who has plans for robbing,” said Alvin. “And then you accuse others of wanting to do what only you had thought of.”

Angrily the man pulled out his key and slid it into the lock. He braced himself to twist hard, expecting the corroded metal to resist. So he visibly staggered when the key turned easily and the door slipped open silently.

He might have stopped to examine the lock and the hinges, but at that moment the bluejay that had spent the night slowly dying on his worktable fluttered angrily in his face and flew out the door. “No!” the man shouted. “That’s Mr. Ridley’s trophy!”

Arthur Stuart laughed. “Not much of a trophy,” he said. “Not if it won’t hold still.”

The taxidermist stood in the doorway, looking for the bird. It was long gone. He then looked back and forth from Alvin to Arthur. “I know you had something to do with this,” he said. “I don’t know what or how, but you witched up that bird.”

“No such thing,” said Alvin. “When I arrived here I had no idea you kept living birds inside. I thought you only dealt with dead ones.”

“I do! That bird was dead!”

“John-James,” said Alvin. “We want to see him before we leave town.”

“Why should I help you?” said the taxidermist.

“Because we asked,” said Alvin, “and it would cost you nothing.”

“Cost me nothing? How am I going to explain to Mr. Ridley?”

“Tell him to make sure his birds are dead before he brings them to you,” said Arthur Stuart.

“I won’t have such talk from a Black boy,” said the taxidermist. “If you can’t control your boy, then you shouldn’t bring him out among gentlemen!”

“Have I?” asked Alvin.

“Have you what?”

“Brought him out among gentlemen?” said Alvin. “I’m waiting to see the courtesy that would mark you as such a one.”

The taxidermist glowered at him. “John-James Audubon is staying in a room at the Liberty Inn. But you won’t find him there at this time of day—he’ll be out looking at birds till midmorning.”

“Then good day to you,” said Alvin. “You might oil your locks and hinges from time to time. They’ll stay in better condition if you do.”

The taxidermist got a quizzical look on his face. He was still opening and closing his silent; smooth-hinged door as they walked back down the alley to the street.

“Well, that’s that,” said Alvin. “We’ll never find your John-James Audubon before we have to leave.”

Arthur Stuart looked at him in consternation. “And why won’t we?” He whistled a couple of times and the bluejay fluttered down to alight on his shoulder. Arthur whispered and whistled for a few moments, and the bird hopped up onto Arthur’s head, then (to Alvin’s surprise) Alvin’s shoulder, then Alvin’s head, and only then launched itself into the air and flew off up the street.

“He’s bound to be near the river this morning,” said Arthur Stuart. “Geese are feeding there, on their way south.”

Alvin looked around. “It’s still summer. It’s hot.”

“Not up north,” said Arthur Stuart. “I heard two flocks yesterday.”

“I haven’t heard a thing.”

Arthur Stuart grinned at him.

“I thought you stopped hearing birds,” said Alvin. “When I changed you, in the river. I thought you lost all that.”

Arthur Stuart shrugged. “I did. But I remembered how it felt. I kept listening.”

“It’s coming back?” asked Alvin.

Arthur shook his head. “I have to figure it out. It doesn’t just come to me, the way it used to. It’s not a knack anymore. It’s...”

Alvin supplied the word. “A skill.”

“I was trying to decide between ‘a wish’ and ‘a memory.’”

“You heard geese calling, and I didn’t. My ears are pretty good, Arthur.”

Arthur grinned at him again. “There’s hearing and there’s listening.”

There were several men with shotguns stalking the geese. It was easy enough to guess which was John-James Audubon, however. Even if they hadn’t spotted the sketchpad inside the open hunter’s sack, and even if he hadn’t been oddly dressed in a Frenchman’s exaggerated version of an American frontiersman’s outfit—tailored deerskin—they would have known which hunter he was, by one simple test: He was the only one who had actually found the geese.

He was aiming at a goose floating along the river. Without thinking, Alvin called out, “Have you no shame, Mr. Audubon?”

Audubon, startled, half-turned to look at Alvin and Arthur. Whether it was the sudden movement or Alvin’s voice, the lead goose honked and rose dripping from the water, staggering at first from the effort, then rising smoothly with great beats of his wings, water trailing behind him in a silvery cascade. In a moment, all the other geese also rose and flew down the river. Audubon raised his shotgun, but then cursed and rounded on Alvin,
the gun still leveled. “Pour quoi, imbecile!”

“You planning to shoot me?” asked Alvin.

Reluctantly, Audubon lowered the gun and remembered his English, which at the moment wasn’t very good. “I have the beautiful creature in my eye, but you, man of the mouth open!”

“Sorry, but I couldn’t believe you’d shoot a goose on the water like that.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s—not sporting.”

“Of course it’s not sporting!” His English was getting better as he warmed to the argument. “I’m not here for sport! Look everywhere, Monsieur, and tell me the very important thing you do
not
see.”

“You got no dog,” said Arthur Stuart.

“Yes! Le garçon noir comprend! I cannot shoot the bird in the air because how do I collect the bird? It falls, the wing breaks, what good is it to me now? I shoot on the water, then splash splash, I have the goose.”

“Very practical,” said Alvin. “
If
you were starving, and needed the goose for food.”

“Food!” cried Audubon. “Do I look like a hungry man?”

“A little lean, maybe,” said Alvin. “But you could probably fast for a day or two without keeling over.”

“I do not understand you, Monsieur Americain. Et je ne veux pas te comprendre. Go away.” Audubon started downstream along the riverbank, the direction the geese had gone.

“Mister Audubon,” Arthur Stuart called out.

“I must shoot you before you go away?” he called out, exasperated.

“I can bring them back,” said Arthur.

Audubon turned and looked at him. “You call geese?” He pulled a wooden goose call from his the pocket of his jacket. “I call geese, too. But when they hear this, they think, Sacre Dieu! That goose is dying! Fly away! Fly away!”

Arthur Stuart kept walking toward him, and instead of answering, he began to make odd sounds with his throat and through his nose. Not goose calls, really, or not that anyone would notice. Not even an imitation of a goose. And yet there was something gooselike about the babble that came from his mouth. And it wasn’t all that loud, either. But moments later, the geese came back, skimming over the surface of the water.

Audubon brought the shotgun to his shoulder. At once Arthur changed his call, and the geese flew away from the shore and settled far out on the water.

In an agony of frustration, Audubon whirled on Arthur and Alvin. “When did I insult you or the cauliflower face of your ugly mother? Which clumsy stinking Philadelphia prostitute was your sister? Or was it le bon Dieu that I offended? Notre Pere Celeste, why must I do this penance?”

“I’m not going to bring the geese back if you’re just going to shoot them,” said Arthur.

“What good are they if I don’t shoot one!”

“You’re not going to eat it, you’re just going to paint it,” said Arthur Stuart. “So it doesn’t have to be dead.”

“How can I paint a bird that will not stand in one place!” cried Audubon. Then he realized something. “You know my name. You know I paint. But I do not know
you
.”

“I’m Alvin Smith, and this is my ward, Arthur Stuart.”

“Wart? What kind of slave is that?”

“Ward. He’s no slave. But he’s under my protection.”

“But who will protect
me
from the two of you? Why could you not be ordinary robbers, taking my money and run away?”

“Arthur has a question for you,” said Alvin.

“Here is my answer: Leave! Departez!”

“What if I can get a goose to hold still for you without killing it?” asked Arthur Stuart.

Audubon was on the verge of a sharp answer when it finally dawned on him what he had just seen Arthur do, summoning the geese. “You are, how do you say, a knack person, a caller of gooses.”

“Geese,” Alvin offered helpfully.

Arthur shook his head. “I just like birds.”

“
I
like birds too,” said Audubon, “but they don’t feel the same about me.”

“Cause you kill ’em and you ain’t even hungry,” said Arthur Stuart.

Audubon looked at him in utter consternation. At last he made his decision. “You can make a goose hold still for me?”

“I can ask him to. But you got to put the gun away.”

Audubon immediately leaned it against a tree.

“Unload it,” said Arthur Stuart.

“You think I break my promise?”

“You didn’t make no promise,” said Arthur Stuart.

“All right!” cried Audubon. “I promise upon the grave of my grandmother.” He started unloading the gun.

“You promise
what
!” demanded Arthur.

Alvin almost laughed aloud, except that Arthur Stuart was so grim about it, making sure there were no loopholes through which Audubon could slip once Arthur brought the geese back.

“I promise, I shoot no gooses! Pas de shooting of gooses!”

“Not even powder shooting, whatever that is. No shooting
any
birds
all day
,” Arthur said.

“Not ‘powder,’ you ignorant boy. J’ai dit ‘pas de.’
Rien! No
shooting of gooses, that’s what I say!” In a mutter, he added, “Tous les sauvages du monde sont ici aujourd’hui.”

Alvin chuckled. “No shooting savages, either, if you don’t mind.”

Audubon looked at him, furious and embarrassed. “Parlez-vous français?”

“Je ne parle pas français,” said Alvin, remembering a phrase from the few halting French lessons Margaret tried before she finally gave up on getting Alvin to speak any language other than English. Latin and Greek had already been abandoned by then. But he did understand the word
sauvage
, having heard it so often in the French fort of Detroit when he went there as a boy with Ta-Kumsaw.

“C’est vrai,” muttered Audubon. Then, louder: “I make the promise you say. Bring me a goose that stand in one place for my painting.”

“You going to answer my questions?” asked Arthur Stuart.

“Yes of course,” said Audubon.

“A real answer, and not just some stupid nothing like adults usually say to children?”

“Hey,” said Alvin.

“Not you,” said Arthur Stuart quickly. But Alvin retained his suspicions.

“Yes,” said Audubon in a world-weary voice. “I tell you all the secret of the universe!”