Prentice Alvin: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume III (18 page)

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Authors: Orson Scott Card

BOOK: Prentice Alvin: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume III
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Wand
IT WAS A week before Hank Dowser found his way back to Hatrack River. A miserable week with no profit in it, because try as he would he couldn’t find decent dry ground for them folks west of town to dig their cellar. “It’s all wet ground,” he said. “I can’t help it if it’s all watery.”
But they held him responsible just the same. Folks are like that. They act like they thought the dowser
put
the water where it sets, instead of just pointing to it. Same way with torches—blamed them half the time for
causing
what they saw, when all they did was see it. There was no gratitude or even simple understanding in most folks.
So it was a relief to be back with somebody half-decent like Makepeace Smith. Even if Hank wasn’t too proud of the way Makepeace was dealing with his prentice boy. How could Hank criticize him? He himself hadn’t done much better—oh, he was pure embarrassed now to think how he railed on that boy and got him a cuffing, and for nothing, really, just a little affront to Hank Dowser’s pride. Jesus stood and took whippings and a crown of thorns in
silence, but I lash out when a prentice mumbles a few silly words. Oh, thoughts like that put Hank Dowser in a dark mood, and he was aching for a chance to apologize to the boy.
But the boy wasn’t there, which was too bad, though Hank didn’t have long to brood about it. Gertie Smith took Hank Dowser up to the house and near jammed the food down his throat with a ramrod, just to get in an extra half-loaf of bread, it felt like. “I can’t hardly walk,” said Hank, which was true; but it was also true that Gertie Smith cooked just as good as her husband forged and that prentice boy shod and Hank dowsed, which is to say, with a true knack. Everybody has his talent, everybody has his gift from God, and we go about sharing gifts with each other, that’s the way of the world, the best way.
So it was with pleasure and pride that Hank drank the swallows of water from the first clear bucket drawn from the well. Oh, it was fine water. sweet water, and he loved the way they thanked him from their hearts. It wasn’t till he was out getting mounted on his Picklewing again that he realized he hadn’t seen the well. Surely he should’ve seen the well—
He rounded the smithy on horseback and looked where he thought he had dowsed the spot, but the ground didn’t appear like it had been troubled in a hundred years. Not even the trench the prentice dug while he was standing there. It took him a minute to find where the well actually was, sort of halfway between smithy and house, a fine little roof over the windlass, the whole thing finished with smooth-worked stone. But surely he hadn’t been so near the house when the wand dipped—
“Oh, Hank!” called Makepeace Smith. “Hank, I’m glad you ain’t gone yet!”
Where was the man? Oh, there, back in the meadow just up from the smithy, near where Hank had first looked for the well. Waving a stick in his hand—a forked stick—
“Your wand, the one you used to dowse this well—you want it back?”
“No, Makepeace, no thanks. I never use the same wand twice. Doesn’t work proper when it isn’t fresh.”
Makepeace Smith pitched the wand back over his head, walked back down the slope and stood exactly in the place where Hank
thought
he had dowsed the well to be. “What do you think of the well house we built?”
Hank glanced back toward the well. “Fine stonework. If you ever give up the forge, I bet there’s a living for you in stonecutting.”
“Why, thank you, Hank! But it was my prentice boy did it all.”
“That’s some boy you got,” said Hank. But it left a bad taste in his mouth, to say those words. There was something made him uneasy about this whole conversation. Makepeace Smith meant something sly, and Hank didn’t know rightly what it was. Never mind. Time to be on his way. “Good-bye, Makepeace!” he said, walking his nag back toward the road. “I’ll be back for shoes, remember!”
Makepeace laughed and waved. “I’ll be glad to see your ugly old face when you come!”
With that, Hank nudged old Picklewing and headed off right brisk for the road that led to the covered bridge over the river. That was one of the nicest things about the westbound road out of Hatrack. From there to the Wobbish the track was as sweet as you please, with covered bridges over every river, every stream, every rush and every rivulet. Folks were known to camp at night on the bridges, they were so tight and dry.
There must’ve been three dozen redbird nests in the eaves of the Hatrack Bridge. The birds were making such a racket that Hank allowed as how it was a miracle they didn’t wake the dead. Too bad redbirds were too scrawny for eating. There’d be a banquet on that bridge, if it was worth the trouble.
“Ho there, Picklewing, my girl, ho,” he said. He sat astride his horse, a-standing in the middle of the bridge, listening to the redbird song. Remembering now as clear as could be how the wand had leapt clean out of his hands and flung itself up into the meadow grass. Flung itself northeast of the spot he dowsed. And that’s just where Makepeace Smith picked it up when he was saying good-bye.
Their fine new well wasn’t on the spot he dowsed at all. The
whole time he was there, they all were lying to him, pretending he dowsed them a well, but the water they drank was from another place.
Hank knew, oh yes, he knew who chose the spot they used. Hadn’t the wand as much as told him when it flew off like that? Flew off because the boy spoke up, that smart-mouth prentice. And now they made mock of him behind his back, not saying a thing to his face. of course, but he knew that Makepeace was laughing the whole time, figuring he wasn’t even smart enough to notice the switch.
Well, I noticed, yes sir. You made a fool of me. Makepeace Smith, you and that prentice boy of yours. But I noticed. A man can forgive seven times, or even seven times seven. But then there comes the fiftieth time, and even a good Christian can’t forget.
“Gee-ap,” he said angrily. Picklewing’s ears twitched and she started forward in a gentle walk, new shoes clopping loud on the floorboards of the bridge, echoing from the walls and ceiling. “Alvin,” whispered Hank Dowser. “Prentice Alvin. Got no respect for any man’s knack except his own.”
School Board
WHEN THE CARRIAGE pulled up in front of the inn, Old Peg Guester was upstairs hanging mattresses half out the windows to let them air, so she saw. She recognized Whitley Physicker’s rig, a newfangled closed car that kept the weather and most of the dust out; Physicker could use a carriage like that, now that he could afford to pay a man just to drive for him. It was things like that carriage that had most folks calling him
Dr. Physicker
now, instead of just Whitley.
The driver was Po Doggly, who used to have a farm of his own till he got to likkering up after his wife died. It was a good thing, Physicker hiring him when other folks just thought of old Po as a drunk. Things like that made most plain folks think well of Dr. Physicker, even if he did show off his money more than was seemly among Christians.
Anyway, Po hopped down from his seat and swung around to open the door of the carriage. But it wasn’t Whitley Physicker got out first—it was Pauley Wiseman, the sheriff. If ever a man didn’t deserve his last name, it was Pauley Wiseman. Old Peg felt herself
wrinkle up inside just seeing him. It was like her husband Horace always said—any man who
wants
the job of sheriff is plainly unfit for the office. Pauley Wiseman wanted his job, wanted it more than most folks wanted to breathe. You could see it in the way he wore his stupid silver star right out in the open, on the outside of his coat, so nobody’d forget they was talking to the man who had the keys to the town jail. As if Hatrack River needed a jail!
Then Whitley Physicker got out of the carriage, and Old Peg knew exactly what business they were here for. The school board had made its decision, and these two were come to make sure she settled for it without making any noise about it in public. Old Peg tossed the mattress she was holding, tossed it so hard it near to flew clean out the window; she caught it by a corner and pulled it back so it’d hang proper and get a good airing. Then she ran down the stairs—she wasn’t so old yet she couldn’t run a flight of stairs when she wanted. Downward, anyways.
She looked around a bit for Arthur Stuart, but of course he wasn’t in the house. He was just old enough for chores, and he did them, right enough, but after that he was always off by himself, over in town sometimes, or sometimes bothering around that blacksmith boy, Prentice Alvin. “What you do that for, boy?” Old Peg asked him once. “What you always have to be with Prentice Alvin for?” Arthur just grinned and then put his arms out like a street rassler all set to grab and said, “Got to learn how to throw a man twice my size.” What made it funny was he said it just exactly in Alvin’s own voice, complete with the way Alvin would’ve said it—with a joke in his voice, so you’d know he didn’t take himself all that serious. Arthur had that knack, to mimic folks like as if he knew them right to the soul. Sometimes it made her wonder if he didn’t have something of the torchy knack, like her runaway daughter Little Peggy; but no, it didn’t seem like Arthur actually understood what he was doing. He was just a mimic. Still, he was smart as a whip, and that’s why Old Peg knew the boy deserved to be in school, probably more than any other child in Hatrack River.
She got to the front door just as they started in to knock. She
stood there, panting a little from her run down the stairs, waiting to open it even though she saw their shadows through the lace-curtain windows on the door. They were kind of shifting their weight back and forth, like they was nervous—as well they should be. Let ’em sweat.
It was just like them folks on the school board, to send Whitley Physicker of all people. It made Old Peg Guester mad just to see his shadow at her door. Wasn’t he the one who took Little Peggy off six years ago, and then wouldn’t tell her where the girl went? Dekane was all he said, to folks she seemed to know. And then Peg’s husband Horace reading the note over and over, saying, If a torch can’t see her own future safe, none of us can look out for her any better. Why, if it hadn’t been for Arthur Stuart needing her so bad, Old Peg would have up and left. Just up and left, and see how they liked that! Take her daughter away and tell her it’s all for the best—such a thing to tell a mother! Let’s see what they think when I leave. If she hadn’t had Arthur to look after, she would have gone so fast her shadow would’ve been stuck in the door.
And now they send Whitley Physicker to do it again, to set her grieving over another child, just like before. Only worse this time, because Little Peggy really
could
take care of herself, while Arthur Stuart couldn’t, he was just a six-year-old boy, a boy with no future at all unless Old Peg fought for it tooth and nail.
They knocked again. She opened the door. There was Whitley Physicker, looking all cheerful and dignified, and behind him Pauley Wiseman, looking all important and dignified. Like two masts on the same ship, with sails all puffed out and bossy-looking. All full of wind. Coming to tell me what’s right and proper, are you? We’ll see.
“Goody Guester,” said Dr. Physicker. He doffed his hat proper, like a gentleman. That’s what’s wrong with Hatrack River these days, thought Old Peg. Too many folks putting on like gentlemen and ladies. Don’t they know this is Hio? All the high-toned folks are down in the Crown Colonies with His Majesty, the other Arthur Stuart. The long-haired White king, as opposed to her own short-haired
Black boy Arthur. Anybody in the state of Hio who thinks he’s a gentleman is just fooling himself and nobody but the other fools.
“I suppose you want to come in,” said Old Peg.
“I hoped you’d invite us,” said Physicker. “We come from the school board.”
“You can turn me down on the porch as easy as you can inside my house.”
“Now see here,” said Sheriff Pauley. He wasn’t used to folks leaving him standing on porches.
“We didn’t come to turn you down. Goody Guester,” said the doctor.
Old Peg didn’t believe it for a minute. “You telling me that stiff-necked bunch of high-collar hypocrites is going to let a Black child into the new school?”
That set Sheriff Pauley off like gunpowder in a bucket. “Well, if you’re so all-fired sure you know the answer, Old Peg, why’d you bother asking the question?”
“Cause I wanted you all down on record as being Black-hating slavers in your hearts’ Then someday when the Emancipationists have their way and Black people have all their rights everywhere, you’ll have to wear your shame in public like you deserve.”
Old Peg didn’t even hear her husband coming up behind her, she was talking so loud.
“Margaret,” said Horace Guester. “No man stands on my porch without a welcome.”
“You
welcome them yourself, then,” said Old Peg. She turned her back on Dr. Physicker and Sheriff Pauley and walked on into the kitchen. “I wash my hands of it,” she shouted over her shoulder.
But once she was in the kitchen she realized that she wasn’t cooking yet this morning, she was doing the upstairs beds. And as she stood there, kind of confused for a second, she got to thinking it was Pontius Pilate who did that first famous hand-washing. Why, she’d confessed herself unrighteous with her own words. God wouldn’t look kindly on her if she once started in imitating someone as killed the Lord Jesus, like Pilate did. So she turned around and walked
back into the common room and sat down near the hearth. It being August there wasn’t no fire in it, which made it a cool place to sit. Not like the kitchen hearth, which was hot as the devil’s privy on summer days like this. No reason she should sweat her heart out in the kitchen while these two decided the fate of Arthur Stuart in the coolest spot in the house.
Her husband and the two visitors looked at her but didn’t say a thing about her storming out and then storming back in. Old Peg knew what was said behind her back—that you might as well try to set a trap for a cyclone as to tangle with Old Peg Guester—but she didn’t mind a bit if men like Whitley Physicker and Pauley Wiseman walked a little wary around her. After a second or two, waiting for her to settle down, they went right on with their talk.
“As I was saying, Horace, we looked at your proposal seriously,” Physicker said. “It would be a great convenience to us if the new teacher could be housed in your roadhouse instead of being boarded here and there the way it usually happens. But we wouldn’t consider having you do it for free. We have enough students enrolled and enough basis in the property tax to pay you a small stipend for the service.”
“How much does a sty pen come to in money?” asked Horace.
“The details remain to be worked out, but the sum of twenty dollars for the year was mentioned.”
“Well,” said Horace, “that’s a mite low, if you’re thinking you’re paying the actual cost.”
“On the contrary, Horace, we know that we’re underpaying you by considerable. But since you offered to do it free, we hoped this would be an improvement on the original offer.”
Horace was all set to agree, but Peg wouldn’t stand for all this pretending. “I know what it is, Dr. Physicker, and it’s no improvement. We didn’t offer to put up the schoolteacher for
free.
We offered to put up
Arthur Stuart’s
teacher for free. And if you figure twenty dollars is going to make me change my mind about that, you better go back and do your figuring again.”
Dr. Physicker got a pained look on his face. “Now, Goody Guester. Don’t get ahead of yourself on this. There was not a man
on the school board who had any personal objection to having Arthur Stuart attend the new school.”
When Physicker said that, Old Peg took a sharp look at Pauley Wiseman. Sure enough, he squirmed in his chair like he had a bad itch in a place where a gentleman doesn’t scratch. That’s right, Pauley Wiseman. Dr. Physicker can say what he likes. but
I
know
you
, and there was one, at least, who had all kinds of objections to Arthur Stuart.
Whitley Physicker went on talking. of course. Since he was pretending that everybody loved Arthur Stuart dearly, he couldn’t very well take notice of how uncomfortable Sheriff Pauley was. “We know Arthur has been raised by the two oldest settlers and finest citizens of Hatrack River, and the whole town loves him for his own self. We just can’t think what benefit a school education would give the boy.”
“It’ll give him the same benefit it gives any other boy or girl,” said Old Peg.
“Will it? Will his knowing how to read and write get him a place in a counting house? Can you imagine that even if they let him take the bar, any jury would listen to a Black lawyer plead? Society has decreed that a Black child will grow up to be a Black man, and a Black man, like ancient Adam, will earn his bread by the sweat of his body, not by the labors of his mind.”
“Arthur Stuart is smarter than any child who’ll be in that school and you know it.”
“All the more reason we shouldn’t build up young Arthur’s hopes, only to have them dashed when he’s older. I’m talking about the way of the world, Goody Guester, not the way of the heart.”
“Well why don’t you wise men of the school board just say, To hell with the way of the world, we’ll do what’s right! I can’t make you do what you don’t want to do, but I’ll be damned if I let you pretend it’s for Arthur’s own good!”
Horace winced. He didn’t like it to hear Old Peg swear. She’d only taken it up lately, beginning with the time she cussed Millicent Mercher right in public for insisting on being called “Mistress
Mercher” instead of “Goody Mercher.” It didn’t sit well with Horace, her using those words, especially since she didn’t seem to ken the time and place for it like a man would, or at least so he said. But Old Peg figured if you can’t cuss at a lying hypocrite, then what was cussing invented for?
Pauley Wiseman started turning red, barely controlling a stream of his own favorite cusswords. But Whitley Physicker was now a gentleman, so he merely bowed his head for a moment. like as if he was saying a prayer—but Old Peg figured it was more likely he was waiting till he calmed down enough for his words to come out civil. “Goody Guester. you’re right. We didn’t think up that story about it being for Arthur’s own good till after the decision was made.”
His frankness left her without a word, at least for the moment. Even Sheriff Pauley could only give out a kind of squeak. Whitley Physicker wasn’t sticking to what they all agreed to say; he sounded espiciously close to telling the truth, and Sheriff Pauley didn’t know what to do when people started throwing the truth around loose and dangerous. Old Peg enjoyed watching Pauley Wiseman look like a fool, it being something for which old Pauley had a particular knack.
“You see, Goody Guester, we want this school to work proper, we truly do,” said Dr. Physicker. “The whole idea of public schools is a little strange. The way they do schools in the Crown Colonies, it’s all the people with titles and money who get to attend, so that the poor have no chance to learn or rise. In New England all the schools are religious, so you don’t come out with bright minds, you come out with perfect little Puritans who all stay in their place like God meant them to. But the public schools in the Dutch states and Pennsylvania are making people see that in America we can do it different. We can teach every child in every wildwood cabin to read and write and cipher, so that we have a whole population educated enough to be fit to vote and hold office and govern ourselves.”
“All this is well and good,” said Old Peg, “and I recollect hearing you give this exact speech in our common room not three
months ago before we voted on the school tax. What I can’t figure, Whitley Physicker, is why you figure my son should be the exception.”

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