Red Prophet: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume II (19 page)

Alvin Junior never felt small except when he was setting on the back of a big old horse. Not to say he wasn’t a good rider—he and horses got along pretty good, they never throwing him and he never whipping them. It’s just that his legs stuck way out on both sides, and since he was riding with a saddle on this trip, the stirrup had to be hiked up so far they punched new holes in the leather so he could ride. Al was looking forward to the day he growed up to be man-size. Other folks might tell him he was right big for his age, but that didn’t amount to nothing in Alvin’s opinion. When your age is ten, big for your age ain’t nothing like being big.

“I don’t like it,” said Faith Miller. “Don’t like sending my boys off in the middle of all these Red troubles.”

Mother always worried, but she had good cause. All his life Al was kind of clumsy, always having accidents. Things turned out fine in the end, but it was nip and tuck a lot of the time. Worst was a few months ago, when the new millstone fell on his leg and gave it a real ugly break. It looked like he was going to die, and he pretty much expected to himself. Would have, too. Surely would have. Even though he knew he had the power to heal himself.

Ever since the Shining Man came to him in his room that night when he was six, Al had never used his knack to help himself. Cutting stone for his father, that he could do, cause it would help everybody. He’d run his fingers on the
stone, get the feel of it, find the hidden places in the stone where it could break, and then set it all in order, just make it go that way; and the stone would come out, just right, just the way he asked. But never for his own good.

Then with his leg broke and the skin tore up, everybody knowed he was bound to die. And Al never would’ve used his knack for fixing things to heal himself, never would’ve tried, except old Taleswapper was there. Taleswapper asked him, why don’t you fix your leg yourself? And so Al told him what he never told a soul before, about the Shining Man. Taleswapper believed him, too, didn’t think he was crazy or dreaming. He made Al think back, think real hard, and remember what the Shining Man said. And when Al remembered, it come to him that it was Al himself who said that about never doing it for himself. The Shining Man just said, “Make all things whole.”

Make all things whole. Well, wasn’t his leg part of “all things”? So he fixed it, best he could. There was a lot more to it than that, but all in all he used his own power, with the help of his family, to heal himself. That’s why he was alive.

But during those days he looked death in the face and he wasn’t as scared of it as he thought he’d be. Lying there with death seeping through his bone, he began to feel like his body was just a kind of lean-to, a shelter he lived in during bad weather till his house was built. Like them shanty cabins new folks built till they could get a log house set up proper. And if he died, it wouldn’t be awful at all. Just different, and maybe better.

So when his ma went on and on about the Reds and how dangerous it was and how they might get killed, he didn’t give no heed. Not because he thought that she was wrong, but because he didn’t much care whether he died or not.

Well, no, that wasn’t quite so. He had a lot of things to do, though he didn’t know yet what they were, and so he’d be
annoyed
about dying. He sure didn’t
plan
to die. It just didn’t fill him up with fear like it did some folks.

Al’s big brother Measure was trying to get Ma to ease
off and not get herself all worked up. “We’ll be all right, Mama,” said Measure. “All the trouble’s down south, and we’ll be on good roads all the way.”

“Folks disappear every week on those good roads,” she said. “Those French up in Detroit are buying scalps, they don’t never let up on that, don’t matter one bit what Ta-Kumsaw and his savages are doing, it only takes one arrow to kill you—”

“Ma,” said Measure. “If you’re a-scared of Reds getting us, you ought to
want
us to go. I mean there’s ten thousand Reds at
least
living in Prophetstown right across the river. It’s the biggest city west of Philadelphia right now, and every one of them is a Red. We’re getting
away
from Reds by going east—”

“That one-eyed Prophet don’t worry me,” she said. “He never talks about killing. I just think you shouldn’t—”

“It don’t matter what you think,” said Pa.

Ma turned to face him. He’d been slopping the hogs out back, but now he was come around to say good-bye. “Don’t you tell me it don’t matter What I—”

“It don’t matter what I think, neither,” said Pa. “It don’t matter what anybody thinks, and you know it.”

“Then I don’t see why the good Lord gave us brains, then, if that’s how things are, Alvin Miller!”

“Al’s going east to Hatrack River to be an apprentice blacksmith,” said Pa. “I’ll miss him, you’ll miss him, everybody except maybe Reverend Thrower’s going to miss the boy, but the papers are signed and Al Junior is going. So instead of jawing how you don’t want them to go, kiss the boys good-bye and wave them off.”

If Pa’d been milk she would’ve curdled him on the spot, she gave him such a look. “I’ll kiss my boys, and I’ll wave them off,” she said. “I don’t need you to tell me that. I don’t need you to tell me anything.”

“I reckon not,” said Pa. “But I’ll tell you anyway, and I reckon you’ll return the favor, just like you always done.” He reached up a hand to shake with Measure, saying good-bye like a man does. “You get him there safe and come right back,” he told Measure.

“You know I will,” said Measure.

“Your ma’s right, it’s dangerous every step of the way, so keep your eyes open. We named you right, you got such keen eyes, boy, so use them.”

“I will, Pa.”

Ma said her good-bye to Measure while Pa came on over to Al. He gave Al a good stinging slap on the leg and shook
his
hand, too, and that felt good, Pa treating him like a man, just like Measure. Maybe if Al wasn’t sitting up on a horse, Pa would’ve roughed his hair like a little boy, but then maybe he wouldn’t have, either, and it still felt grown-up, all the same.

“I ain’t scared of the Reds,” said Al. He spoke real soft, so Ma wouldn’t hear. “But I sure wish I didn’t have to go.”

“I know it, Al,” said Pa. “But you got to. For your own good.”

Then Pa got that faraway sad look on his face, which Al Junior had seen before more than once, and never understood. Pa was a strange man. It took Al a long time to realize that, since for the longest time while Al was just little, Pa was Pa, and he didn’t try to understand him.

Now Al was getting older, and he began to compare his father to the other men around. To Armor-of-God Weaver, for instance, the most important man in town, always talking about peace with the Red man, sharing the land with him, mapping out Red lands and White lands—everybody listened to him with respect. Nobody listened to Pa that way, considering his words real serious, maybe arguing a little, but knowing that what he said was
important
. And Reverend Thrower, with his highfalutin educated way of talking, shouting from his pulpit about death and resurrection and the fires of hell and the rewards of heaven, everybody listened to
him
, too. It was different from the way they listened to Armor, cause it was always about religion and so it didn’t have nothing to do with little stuff like farming and chores and how folks lived. But
respect
.

When Pa talked, other folks listened to him, all right, but they just scoffed sometimes. “Oh, Alvin Miller, you just go on, don’t you!” Al noticed that, and it made him mad at first. But then he realized that when folks was in
trouble and needed help, they didn’t go to Reverend Thrower, no sir, and they didn’t go to Armor-of-God, cause neither of them knew all that much about how to solve the kind of problems folks had from time to time. Thrower might tell them how to stay out of hell, but that wasn’t till they was dead, and Armor might tell them how to keep peace with the Reds, but that was politics except when it was war. When they had a quarrel about a boundary line, or didn’t know what to do about a boy that always sassed his ma no matter how many lickings he got, or when the weevils got their seed corn and they didn’t have nothing to plant, they come to Al Miller. And he’d say his piece, just a few words usually, and they’d go off shaking their heads and saying, “Oh, Alvin Miller, you just go on, don’t you!” But then they’d go ahead and settle that boundary line and build them a stone fence there; and they’d let their smart-mouth boy move on out of the house and take up as a hired man on a neighbor’s farm; and come planting time a half-dozen folks’d come by with sacks of “spare” seed cause Al Miller mentioned they might be a little shy.

When Al Junior compared his pa to other men, he knew Pa was strange, knew Pa did things for reasons known only to himself. But he also knew that Pa could be trusted. Folks might give their respect to Armor-of-God and Reverend Philadelphia Thrower, but they
trusted
Al Miller.

So did Al Junior. Trusted his pa. Even though he didn’t want to leave home, even though having been so close to death he felt like apprenticing and suchlike was a waste of time—what did it matter what his trade was, would there be smiths in heaven?—still he knew that if Pa said it was right for him to go, then Al would go. The way folks always knew that if Al Miller said, “Just do this and it’ll work out,” why, they should do the thing he said, and it’d work out like he said.

He had told Pa he didn’t want to go; Pa had said, Go anyway, it’s for your own good. That’s all Alvin Junior needed to hear. He nodded his head and did what Pa said, not cause he had no spunk, not cause he was scared of his
pa like other boys he knew. He just knew his pa well enough to trust his judgment. Simple as that.

“I’ll miss you, Pa.” And then he did a crazy fool thing, which if he stopped to think about it he never would’ve done. He reached down and tousled his
father’s
hair. Even while he was doing it, he thought, Pa’s going to slap me silly for treating him like a boy! Pa’s eyebrows
did
go up, and he reached up and caught Al Junior’s hand by the wrist. But then he got him a twinkle in his eye and laughed loud and said, “I reckon you can do that
once
, Son, and live.”

Pa was still laughing when he stepped back to give Ma space to say her good-bye. She had tears running down her face, but she didn’t have no last-minute list of
dos
and
don’ts
for him, the way she had for Measure. She just kissed his hand and clung on to it, and looked him in the eye and said, “If I let you go today, I’ll never see you with my natural eyes again, as long as I live.”

“No, Ma, don’t say that,” he told her. “Nothing bad’s going to happen to me.”

“You just remember me,” she said. “And you keep that amulet I gave you. You wear that all the time.”

“What’s it do?” he asked, taking it from his pocket again. “I don’t know this kind.”

“Never you mind, you just keep it close to you all the time.”

“I will, Ma.”

Measure walked his horse up beside Al Junior’s. “We best be going now,” he said. “We want to get to country we don’t see every day before we bed down tonight.”

“Don’t you do that,” said Pa sternly. “We arranged for you to stay with the Peachee family tonight. That’s as far as you need to get in one day. Don’t want you to spend a night in the open when you don’t have to.”

“All right, all right,” said Measure, “but we at least ought to get there before supper.”

“Go on then,” said Ma. “Go on then, boys.”

They only got a rod or so on the way before Pa came running out and caught Measure’s horse by the bridle, and Al Junior’s, too. “Boys, you remember! Cross rivers at the bridges. You hear me? Only at the bridges! There’s
bridges at every river on this road, between here and Hatrack River.”

.”I know, Pa,” said Measure. “I helped build them all, you know.”

“Use them! That’s all I’m saying. And if it rains, you stop, you find a house and stop, you hear me? I don’t want you out in the water.”

They both pledged most solemnly not to get near anything wet. “Won’t even stand downstream from the horses when they spurt,” said Measure.

Pa shook a finger at him. “Don’t you make light,” he said.

Finally they got on their way, not looking back cause that was awful luck, and knowing that Ma and Pa went back into the house well before they was out of sight, cause it was calling for a long separation if you watched a long time when folks were leaving, and if you watched them clear out of sight it was a good chance somebody’d die before you ever saw them again. Ma took that real serious. Going inside quick like that was the last thing she’d be able to do to help protect her boys on their way.

Al and Measure stopped in a stretch of woods between Hatchs’ and Bjornsons’ farms, where the last storm knocked down a tree half onto the road. They could get by all right, being on horseback as they were, but you don’t leave a thing like that for somebody else to find. Maybe somebody in a wagon, hurrying to make home before dark on a stormy night, maybe that’s who’d come by next, and find the road blocked. So they stopped and ate the lunch Ma packed for them, and then set to work with their hatchets, cutting it free from the few taut strands of wood that clung to the ragged stump. They were wishing for a saw long before they were done, but you don’t carry a saw with you on a three-hundred-mile trip on horseback. A change of clothes, a hatchet, a knife, a musket for hunting, powder and lead, a length of rope, a blanket, and a few odd tokens and amulets for wardings and fendings. Much more than that and you’d have to bring a wagon or a pack horse.

After the trunk was free, they tied both horses to it
and polled it out of the way. Hard work, sweaty work, cause the horses weren’t used to pulling as a team and they bothered each other. Tree kept snagging up on them, too, and they had to keep rolling it and chopping away branches. Now, Al knew he could’ve used his knack to change the wood of that tree inside, to make it split apart in all the right places. But that wouldn’t have been right, he knew. The Shining Man wouldn’t’ve stood for that—it would’ve been pure selfishness, pure laziness, and no good to anybody. So he hacked and tugged and sweated right alongside Measure. And it wasn’t so bad. It was
good
work, and when it was all done it was no more than an hour. It was time well spent.