![]() |
Hatrack River - The Official Web Site of Orson Scott Card |
Print | Back |
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.)
"So you don't need me," said Calvin. "I guess Peggy was wrong again."
"There's parts of you I need, all right," said Alvin. "The part that wants to
use his knack to help get a bunch of innocent or at least mostly innocent people
out of Barcy before the killing starts, I need that. But the part of you that wants
to pick fights with me and distract me from what I've got to do, that part can
go stick its head up a horse's butt."
Calvin just laughed. "I bet the horse would like that even less than me."
"You're right," said Alvin. "I was forgetting that horses got rights, too."
"Ease up, old Al," said Calvin. "Don't you know when a body's teasing you?"
"I reckon I do," said Alvin. "You think you're a quick dog teasing a slow
bull. But what you don't seem to realize is, sometimes the dog ain't that quick
and the bull ain't that slow."
"Threatening me?" said Calvin.
"Reminding you that I don't got all the patience in the world."
"Don't even have patience enough for me? Your beloved little brother?"
"A man could have eight barrels full of patience for you, Cal, and you'd just
have to keep goading him till you saw what happened when it turned out he needed
nine."
"Sometimes I rile people, I admit it," said Calvin. "But so do you."
"I reckon I do," said Alvin, thinking of Jim Bowie.
"So you'll make a bridge over this Paunchy Train?"
"I thought you spoke French."
"Paunchy Train is supposed to be French?" Calvin laughed. "Oh ... oh,
now I get it. Pont Chartrain."
He said it with an exaggerated French accent so his mouth looked all pursed
up like he'd just et a persimmon.
Alvin couldn't help himself. He put on his dumb American act. "Pone Shot
Train? I just can't ever hold my mouth right to speak them hard French words."
It was like the best of the old times, tossing words back and forth. "That
was the best French accent I ever heard from a journeyman blacksmith."
"Aw shucks, Cal," said Alvin. "I reckon you done made me want to haul my poke
over to Paree."
"Iffen you wash yourself proper, I'll take you to meet Bonaparte himself,"
said Calvin.
"No thanks," said Alvin. "I met him once and I'm done with him."
All at once the playfulness fled from Calvin's face and Alvin could see his
heartfire flare with anger. "Oh, excuse me, I forgot you already did everything
long before little Calvin come along."
"Oh, don't be a ..."
"Don't be a what? What were you going to call me, big brother?"
"I met him when I was a kid, and I didn't like him. You met him, and
apparently you did. What of it? He was here in America. It was before he
overthrew the monarchy. What am I supposed to do, pretend that I didn't meet
him, just so you don't get provoked? Are you the only one entitled to have met
famous people?"
"Oh, just shut up," said Calvin, and he stalked off in another direction.
Since Calvin was perfectly capable of finding Alvin's heartfire whenever he
wanted, Alvin didn't fret about it. He just headed home, wishing that Margaret
had decided that he needed a different helper. Like, say, Verily Cooper -- there
was a good man, and he didn't pick foolish fights. Or Measure. Alvin could have
used any of his brothers better
than Calvin.
But the truth was, Alvin had no idea whether he could sustain a good fog
and do the thing with the water,
not at the same time -- not reliably. Promising as Arthur Stuart was, he was
still flailing about with makery, and Alvin would be lucky if he could teach
Arthur to raise steam from a teapot, let alone a full-fledged fog. So he needed
Calvin. A good thick fog wouldn't be just to hide them on the other side. It
would cover the whole city tonight. It would keep people from finding them till
they were all across the lake and safely gone.
Margaret was right to send him, and Alvin would just have to swallow hard and
not let Calvin make him mad.
Arthur Stuart's big accomplishment of the day was coming up with fifteen
cloth bags that the older children could use to carry food for the journey. Papa
Moose and Mama Squirrel were supervising the loading of the bags, arguing back
and forth about what they'd need. Papa Moose was determined that they should
carry spare clothing, while Mama Squirrel wanted nothing but food.
"They'll get hungry before they get nekkid," she said.
"But no matter how much we carry with us, we'll run out of food soon, and if
we're going to have to forage or buy food anyway, we might as well carry spare
clothing so the children don't have to travel in rags."
"If we can afford to buy food we can afford to buy clothes, and we'll need
the food first."
"We can pick food off trees
and glean it out of fields."
"Well, if you're talking about stealing, Papa Moose, we can take clothes off
clotheslines."
"If we're lucky enough to find clothes that fit."
"There's not a child in this house who fits the same clothes for six months
in a row."
And on and on it went. Meanwhile, to Arthur Stuart's amusement, they were
unloading each other's bags almost as fast as they were loading their own. The
children seemed to be used to seeing this sort of thing and most of the bags
were in another room, where the children were carefully loading them with food
they were carrying out of the kitchen. Apparently they were voting with Mama
Squirrel.
"Don't like none of our clothes nohow," said one of the children to Arthur
Stuart. "Druther travel nekkid."
At that moment a cry from the kitchen sent them all running to see.
Papa Moose lay on the floor, doubled up, holding his crippled foot and crying
out with great groans of pain.
"What happened?" said Arthur, amid the clamor of the children.
"I don't know, I don't know," said Mama Squirrel.
Arthur Stuart knelt down by Papa Moose, moving some of the children out of
the way as he did. He took the man's ankle and foot in his hands and began
unwinding and unfastening the straps that bound it in place and held on the pad
at the heel. Almost at once the groaning stopped -- but not because the pain had
eased, Arthur Stuart soon realized. Papa Moose had fainted.
No one even heard the knock at the door -- if there was one. The first they
knew that they had a visitor was when he spoke.
"This is what comes of having a kitchen built right onto the house."
Arthur Stuart looked up. It was Alvin's younger brother Calvin.
Calvin shook his head. "Burn himself on the stove?"
"Don't know," said Arthur Stuart.
"Hasn't Alvin taught you anything?"
Arthur Stuart seethed, but stuck to the subject. "It's something with his
foot."
Calvin knelt down across from Arthur and began to examine Papa Moose. "This
looks like a club foot," said Calvin.
Arthur Stuart looked up at Mama Squirrel, raising his eyebrows to say, Isn't
it wonderful to have a real doctor here to tell us what we already knew.
Mama Squirrel was not, however, in the mood for sarcasm. "Who are you, sir?
And get your hands off my husband's foot."
Calvin looked up at her and grinned. "I'm Calvin Maker, the brother of a
certain journeyman blacksmith who's been living in your house, I think."
Now that really did make Arthur Stuart mad. Calling himself a maker, as if
that was his profession, when Alvin didn't make no such claim, and him ten times
the maker Calvin would ever be!
But Arthur held his tongue, since there's be nothing gained by going to war
with Calvin.
"I'm getting the lie of the bones in his foot. The muscles have grown up all
wrong around the bones." Calvin palpated the foot some more, then pulled off the
thick stockings.
"What are you doing?" demanded Mama Squirrel.
"I can't believe Alvin's been in this house so long and didn't do a blamed
thing about your husband's foot."
"My husband gets along just fine on his foot the way it is."
"Well, he'll get along better now," said Calvin. "Got everything back in
place." He stood up and offered his hand to her. "It'll take him some getting
used to, but in a few weeks he'll be walking better than he ever has in his
whole life."
"A few weeks?" said Mama Squirrel, ignoring his hand. "Maybe you're all proud
of your miracle working, but you might have thought to ask if this was a
convenient day to go fixing up his foot. We've got miles to walk tonight! And
for weeks to come."
"And he was going to do that with a club foot?" said Calvin.
Arthur Stuart knew, from the slight snideness now creeping into Calvin's
tone, that he was irked by Mama Squirrel's lack of gratitude.
"Some folks," said Mama Squirrel, "is so proud of their knacks that it just
don't occur to them that other folks might not want them to do their public
demonstrations on them."
"Well, then," said Calvin, "I'm pretty sure I remember how the club foot was.
I think I can put it back."
"No you can't," said Arthur Stuart.
Calvin looked at him with cool, amused hostility. "Oh?"
"Because his foot had already been changed before you got here," said Arthur
Stuart. "That's what made him cry out with pain and fall down. Something moved
all the bones around while the foot was still all strapped up. And that was a
good five minutes ago."
"How interesting," said Calvin.
"So you see," said Arthur Stuart, "the bones the way you found them when you
knelt down here, that ain't how they was."
Calvin shook his head sadly. "Arthur Stuart, does Alvin know you've been
trying to heal this poor man without him even asking?"
"I've done no such thing!"
"If you knew how his foot was before, and how it was different when I got
here, that says you been doodling around in there," said Calvin. "Don't deny it,
you've always been a bad liar."
"How do you know what I've
always been."
"Oh, then I suppose you're a good liar," said Calvin. "Not a thing
I'd have expected a body to be proud of, but there you go." Calvin went to the
door and looked out into the back yard. "Mind if I use your privy? It's a long
time since I left the riverboat as brought me here, and I could use a pissoir."
Mama Squirrel gestured for him to go ahead. As soon as he was gone, she knelt
again beside Papa Moose. "He did it, didn't he?" she said. "Before he even
walked in the door."
"He likes to make grand entrances," said Arthur Stuart. "And he loves to show
Alvin up, if he can."
"Daring to cause my husband so much pain. Do you think we don't know what
Alvin is? Do you think we couldn't have asked him to fix that foot iffen we'd
wanted it done?"
"Calvin's never going to admit he done it," said Arthur Stuart. "So you might
as well work on helping him learn to walk with his foot this way. Have you got
the other shoe to this pair?"
"Other shoe? Pair?" Mama Squirrel snorted. "He's never bought a pair of shoes in his life."
"Well, is this the only shoe he's got?"
"He has another, for Sundays."
"Let's get it on his other foot."
"They don't match."
"One shoe on and one foot bare match a good bit worse," said Arthur Stuart.
Mama Squirrel sent a couple of children to go look for Papa Moose's Sunday
shoe. Then she turned back to Arthur Stuart. "I don't reckon you'd know how to
wake my husband up."
"I don't mess around inside people's heads or feet," said Arthur Stuart.
"Besides, Calvin didn't do all that good a job. It's still a mess inside his
foot, even if it is shaped mostly right on the outside. I think when Papa Moose
wakes up, there's gonna be a lot of pain."
"Best let him sleep then," said Mama Squirrel. "I just. I ... ever since I
knowed him, I never seen Papa Moose laid out like that. In all these things
that've been happening, I never been scared till this moment."
"When Alvin gets himself back here, he'll make it OK," said Arthur Stuart.
"Oh, I hope so, I sure do," said Mama Squirrel.
"We might as well get back to loading up the pokes," said Arthur.
And in moments, the children were back to loading up with food. The extra
clothing, all unloaded now, was left in a pile in the parlor. "For the poor,"
said Mama Squirrel.
Arthur wondered if she had some definition of the word poor that didn't include her and her
huge hungry family.
"Walking on Water" is Copyright © 2003 by Orson Scott Card. All rights
reserved.