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It's 1825, in a version of America's past that doesn't look like the history
books. The folk magic of the American people really works, though whites,
blacks, and reds go about their acts of power in different ways.
The land we call America isn't just one nation. New England is still a colony
of an England ruled over by the Lord Protector. The slave states of the south
are the Crown Colonies, ruled over by the King in exile. In the middle is the
United States, struggling to exist half slave and half free. This story,
however, takes place in Nueva Barcelona -- once called New Orleans, when the
French founded it.
To this city comes Alvin Smith, the seventh son of a seventh son, who makes
his living as a journeyman blacksmith; and beside him is Arthur Stuart, a free
young man, half white and half black, pretending to be Alvin's servant while
they're in slave country. They're on a mission here, and they're determined to
accomplish it ... if they can figure out what it is.
"Walking on Water" is the first third of The Crystal City, the
penultimate novel in the Tales of Alvin Maker. It will be serialized on the
Hatrack River site in 14 parts, a new one appearing every five days or so. (The
first two parts of this serialization appeared previously in The Rhinoceros
Times.)
After dinner they said good-bye to Abe and Coz, with promises to keep in
touch that Alvin found he actually meant. But now it was time for Alvin to get
down to business, which was complicated by the fact that he didn't know what his
business was.
But it wasn't Margaret's fault, for not telling him why she sent him here.
Alvin's ignorance ran much deeper than that. He had no idea why God had singled
him out to be the seventh son of a seventh son in the first place, and whatever
God's plan might have been, Alvin must have muffed it by now, because even the
Unmaker seemed to be leaving him alone. Once he had been so formidable that he
was surrounded by enemies. Now even his enemies had lost interest in him. What
clearer sign of failure could you find than that?
It was this dark mood that rode in his heart all the way into Barcy proper,
as he searched for a place for him and Arthur Stuart to stay. And perhaps it was
the cloud that it put in his visage that made the first two houses turn them
away.
He was so darkhearted by the time they come to the third house that he didn't
even try to be personable. "I'm a journeyman smith from up north," he said, "and
this boy is passing as my slave but he's not, he's free, and I'm blamed if I'm
going to make him sleep down with the servants. I want a room with two good
beds, and I'll pay faithful but I won't have anybody treating this young fellow
like a servant."
The woman at the door looked from him to Arthur Stuart and back again. "If
you make that speech at every door, I'm surprised you ain't got you a mob of men
with clubs and a rope followin' behind."
"Mostly I just ask for a room," said Alvin, "but I'm in a bad mood."
"Well, control your tongue in future," said the woman. "It happens you chose
the right door for that speech,
by sheer luck or perversity. I have the room you want, with the two beds, and
this being a house where slavery is hated as an offense against God, you'll find
no one quarrels with you for treating this young man as an equal."
Alvin held out his hand. "Alvin Smith, ma'am."
She shook hands with him. "I heard of an Alvin Smith what has a wife named
Margaret, who goes from place to place striking terror into the hearts of them
as loves to tell a lie."
"She puts a bit of a scare into them as hates lying, too," said Arthur
Stuart.
"As for me," said Alvin, "I'm neutral on lying, seeing as how there's times
when the truth just hurts people."
"I'm none too fanatic about telling the truth, myself," said the woman. "For
instance, I believe every girl ought to grow up in the firm belief that she's
clever and pretty, and every boy that he's strong and good-hearted. In my
experience, what starts out as a fib turns into a hope and if you keep it up
long enough, it starts to be mostly true."
"Wish I'd known that fifteen years ago," said Alvin. "Too late to do much
with this boy here."
"I'm pretty," said Arthur Stuart. "I figure that's all I need to get by in
this world."
"You see the problem?" said Alvin.
"If you're Margaret Larner's husband," said the woman, "then I'll bet this
pretty lad here is her brother, Arthur Stuart, who from the look of him is born
to be royalty."
"I wouldn't cross the road to be a king," said Arthur Stuart. "Though if they
brought the throne to me, I might sit in it for a spell."
By now they were inside the house, Alvin holding onto his poke, but Arthur
surrendering his bag to the woman readily enough.
"Y'all afraid of climbing stairs?" she asked.
"I always climb six flights before breakfast, just so I can be closer to
heaven when I say my prayers," said Alvin.
She looked at him sharply. "I didn't know you was a praying man."
Alvin was abashed. His light-hearted joke had apparently struck something
dear to her.
"I've been known to pray, ma'am," said Alvin. "I didn't mean to talk light
about it, if this is a praying house."
"It is," said the woman.
"Seems to me," said Arthur Stuart, "that it's also a house where folks are
all named 'you,' cause they haven't heard about 'names' yet."
She laughed. "I've had so many names in my life that I've lost track by now.
Around here, folks just call me Mama Squirrel. And let's have no idle
speculation about how I got that name. My husband gave it to me, when he decided
that he was Papa Moose."
"Always good to accept the hospitality of moose and squirrel," said Alvin,
"though this is the first time I've been able to do it under a roof."
"This ain't no hospitality here," said Mama Squirrel. "You're paying for it,
and not cheap, either. We've got a lot of mouths to feed."
It wasn't till they got to the third floor that they saw what she meant. In a
large open room with windows all along one wall, a sturdy brown-haired man with
a look of beatific patience was standing in front of about thirty-five children
from five to twelve, who were sitting shoulder to shoulder on four rows of
benches. About a quarter of the children where black, a few were red, some were
white with hints of France or Spain or England, but more than half were of races
so mixed that it was hard to guess what land on earth had not
contributed to their parentage.
Mama Squirrel silently mouthed the words "Papa Moose," and pointed at the
man.
Only when her husband took a step, which dipped and rolled like a boat caught
in a sudden breeze, did Alvin notice that his right foot was crippled. There had
been no attempt to find a shoe to fit his twisted foot. Instead the foot was
sheathed and bound to the man's shin with leather straps, which also held a
thick pad under his heel. But he showed no sign of pain or embarrassment, and
the children did not titter or mock. Either the children were miraculously good
or Papa Moose was a man of impenetrable dignity.
He was leading the children in silent recitation of words on a slate. He
would print four or five words, hold them up so all could see, and then point to
a child. The child would then rise, and mouth -- but not speak aloud -- each
word as Papa Moose pointed at it. He would nod or shake his head, depending on
correctness, and then point at another child. In the silence, the faint popping
and smacking of lips and tongue sounded surprisingly loud.
The words currently on the slate were "measure," "assemble," "serene," and
"peril." Without meaning to, Alvin found himself making them into some kind of
poem or song. The words seemed to belong to him somehow. Of course, it helped
that the first word, measure, was the name of Alvin's beloved older
brother. Assemble was what he was trying to do, drawing together those
who might be able to learn the knack of makery. But he had walked away from his
community of makers in Vigor Church because he could not be patient with his own
inabilities as a teacher. Serene, therefore, was what he most needed to
become. And peril? He seemed to find it wherever he went.
Mama Squirrel led them up to the garret, which was hot, with a ceiling that
sloped in only one direction, from the east-facing front of the house to the
back.
"It's an oven up here on a hot day," said Mama Squirrel. "And it gets mighty
cold in winter. But it keeps off the rain, which around here is no mean gift,
and the beds and linens are clean and the floor is swept once a week -- more
often, if you know how to handle a broom."
"I been known to kill spiders with one," said Alvin.
"We kill no living thing in this house," said Mama Squirrel.
"I don't know how you can eat a blamed thing without causing something that
was once alive to die," said Alvin.
"You got me there," said Mama Squirrel. "We got no mercy on the plant
kingdom, except we're loath to cut down a living tree."
"But spiders are safe here."
"They live out their natural span," said Mama Squirrel. "This is a house of
peace."
"A house of silence, too, judging by the school downstairs."
"School?" asked Mama Squirrel. "I hope you won't accuse us of breaking the
law and holding a school that might teach blacks and reds and mixes how to read
and write and cipher."
Alvin grinned. "I reckon there must be a law that defines a school as a place
where children are required to recite aloud."
"I'm surprised at the breadth of your knowledge of the legal code of Nueva
Barcelona," said Mama Squirrel. "The law forbids us to cause a child to read or
recite aloud, or to write on slate or paper, or to do sums."
"So you only teach them to subtract and multiply and divide?" said Arthur
Stuart.
"And count," said Mama Squirrel. "We're law-abiding people."
"And these children -- from the neighborhood?"
"From this house," said Mama Squirrel. "They're all mine."
"You are a truly amazing woman," said Alvin.
"What God gives me, who am I to refuse?" she said.
"This is an orphanage, isn't it?" said Alvin.
"It's a boardinghouse," said Mama Squirrel. "For travelers. And, of course,
my husband and I and all our children live here."
"I suppose it's illegal to operate an orphanage," said Alvin.
"An orphanage," said Mama Squirrel, "would be obliged to teach the Catholic
religion to all the white children, while the children of color must be
auctioned off by the age of six."
"So I imagine that many a poor black woman would rather leave her impossible
baby at your door than at the door of any orphanage," said Alvin.
"I have no idea what you're talking about," said Mama Squirrel. "I gave birth
to every one of these children myself. Otherwise they'd be taken away from me
and turned over to an orphanage."
"From the ages, I'd say you had them in bunches of five or six at a time,"
said Alvin.
"I give birth when they're still very small," said Mama Squirrel. "It's my
knack."
Alvin set down his poke, took a step closer, and enfolded her in a wide-armed
embrace. "I'm glad to be paying for the privilege of staying in such a merciful
house."
"My, what strong arms you have," said Mama Squirrel.
"Oh, now you done it," said Arthur Stuart. "He'll be bragging on them arms
all month now."
"You wouldn't need any wood-chopping," said Alvin. "Of wood from trees as
died naturally, of course. And no stomping any ticks or snakes as come out of
the woodpile."
"The biggest help," said Mama Squirrel, "would be the hauling of water."
"I heard there wasn't no wells in Nueva Barcelona," said Alvin. "On account
of the ground water being brackish."
"We collect rain like everybody else, but it's not enough, even without
washing the children more than once a week. So for poor folks, the water wagon
fills up the public fountain twice a week. Today's a water day."
"You show me what to tote it in, and I'll come back full as many times as you
want," said Alvin.
"I'll go along with him to whisper encouragement," said Arthur Stuart.
"Arthur Stuart is so noble of heart," said Alvin, "that he drinks his fill,
then comes back here and pisses it out pure."
"You two bring lying to the level of music."
"You should hear my concerto for two liars and a whipped dog," said Alvin.
"But we don't actually whip no dog," Arthur Stuart assured her quickly. "We
trained an irritable cat to do the dog's part."
Mama Squirrel laughed out loud and shook her head. "I swear I don't know why
Margaret Larner would marry such a one as you."
"It was an act of faith," said Alvin.
"But Margaret Larner is such a torch, she needs no faith to judge a man's heart."
"It's his head she had to take on faith," said Arthur Stuart.
"Let's go get some water," said Alvin.
"Not unless I get me to a privy house first," said Arthur Stuart.
"Oh, fie on me," said Mama Squirrel. "I'm not much of hospitaler, specially
in front of an innkeeper's son and son-in-law." She bustled over to the stairs
and led Arthur Stuart down.
Alone in the garret, Alvin looked about for a place to store his poke while
he lived in this place. There wasn't much in the way of hiding places there. The
floorboards didn't fit tight together, so there was a chance someone might catch
a glimpse of something if he hid the golden plow in the floor.
So he had no choice but to go to the chimney and pull out a few loose bricks.
Not that they were loose to start with. He sort of helped them to achieve
looseness until he had a gap big enough to push the plow through.
He pulled the plow from the sack. In his hand it was warm, and he felt a
faint kind of motion inside it, as if some thin golden fluid swirled within.
"I wonder what you're good for," Alvin whispered to the plow. "I been
carrying you asleep in my poke for lo these many years, and I still ain't found
a use for you."
The plow didn't answer. It might be alive, in some fashion, but that didn't
give it the power to speak.
Alvin pushed it through the opening into the sooty coolness of the chimney.
There being no convenient shelf to set it on, and Alvin not being disposed to
let it drop three-and-a-half stories to the hearth on the main floor, he had no
choice but to wedge it into a corner. He had to let his doodlebug into the
bricks to soften them up like cork while he pushed the plow in, then harden them
up around the plow to hold it firmly in place. Then he closed the hole and bound
bricks to mortar once again. There was no sign that this corner of the chimney
had been changed in any way. It was as good a hiding place as he was likely to
find. Depending on who was doing the looking.
Now his poke contained nothing but a change of clothes and his writing
materials. He could leave it lying on his bed without a second thought.
Downstairs, he found Arthur Stuart just washing up after using the privy. Two
three-year-old girls were watching him like they'd never seen handwashing
before.
When he was done, instead of reaching for a towel -- and there was a cloth
not one step away, hanging from a hook -- Arthur Stuart just held his hands over
the basin. Alvin watched as the water evaporated so rapidly that Arthur Stuart
suddenly screeched and rubbed his hands on his pants. To warm them up.
"Sometimes," said Alvin, "even a maker lets things happen naturally."
Arthur Stuart turned around, embarrassed. "I didn't know it would get so
cold."
"You can get frostbite doing it so fast," said Alvin.
"Now you tell me."
"How was I supposed to know you were too lazy to reach for a towel?"
Arthur Stuart sniffed. "I got to practice, you know."
"In front of witnesses, no less." He looked at the two girls.
"They don't know what I done," said Arthur Stuart.
"Which makes it all the more pathetic that you were showing off for them."
"Someday I'll get sick of you bossing and judging me all the time," said
Arthur Stuart.
"Maybe then you won't come along on journeys I told you not to come on."
"That would be obeying," said Arthur Stuart. "I got no particular interest in
doing much of that."
"Well then set your butt down and wait here and don't help me one bit while I
go haul water from the public fountain."
"I'm not that easily fooled," said Arthur Stuart. "I'll obey you when you
tell me to do what I already want."
"And I thought all you were was pretty."
"Walking on Water" is Copyright © 2003 by Orson Scott Card. All rights
reserved.