Legends II Read online

  He wasn’t sure he so much persuaded her to want another baby as she decided to try again just to make him happy. And during this pregnancy, just like last time, she kept gallivanting up and down the country, working for Abolition even as she tried to find some way to bring about freedom short of war. While Alvin stayed in Vigor Church or Hatrack River, teaching them as wanted to learn the rudiments of makery.

  Until she had an errand for him, like now. Sending him downriver on a steamboat to Nueva Barcelona, when in his secret heart he just wished she’d stay home with him and let him take care of her.

  Course, being a torch she knew perfectly well that was what he wished for, it was no secret at all. So she must need to be apart from him more than he needed to be with her, and he could live with that.

  Couldn’t stop him from looking for her on the skirts of sleep, and dozing off with her heartfire and the baby’s, so bright in his mind.

  He woke in the dark, knowing something was wrong. It was a heartfire right up close to him; then he heard the soft breath of a stealthy man. With his doodlebug he got inside the man and felt what he was doing—reaching across Alvin toward the poke that was tucked in the crook of his arm.

  Robbery? On board a riverboat was a blame foolish time for it, if that was what the man had in mind. Unless he was a good enough swimmer to get to shore carrying a heavy golden plowshare.

  The man carried a knife in a sheath at his belt, but his hand wasn’t on it, so he wasn’t looking for trouble.

  So Alvin spoke up soft as could be. “If you’re looking for food, the door’s on the other side of the room.”

  Oh, the man’s heart gave a jolt at that! And his first instinct was for his hand to fly to that knife—he was quick at it, too, Alvin could see that it didn’t much matter whether his hand was on the knife or not, he was always ready with that blade.

  But in a moment the fellow got a hold of hisself, and Alvin could pretty much guess at his reasoning. It was a dark night, and as far as this fellow knew, Alvin couldn’t see any better than him.

  “You was snoring,” said the man. “I was looking to jostle you to get you to roll over.”

  Alvin knew that was a flat lie. When Peggy had mentioned a snoring problem to him years ago, he studied out what made people snore and fixed his palate so it didn’t make that noise any more. He had a rule about not using his knack to benefit himself, but he figured curing his snore was a gift to other people.He always slept through it.

  Still, he’d let the lie ride. “Why, thank you,” said Alvin. “I sleep pretty light, though, so all it takes is you sayin’ ‘roll over’ and I’ll do it. Or so my wife tells me.”

  And then, bold as brass, the fellow as much as confesses what he was doing. “You know, stranger, whatever you got in that sack, you hug it so close to you that somebody might get curious about what’s so valuable.”

  “I’ve learned that folks get just as curious when Idon’t hug it close, and they feel a mite freer about groping in the dark to get a closer look.”

  The man chuckled. “So I reckon you ain’t planning to tell me much about it.”

  “I always answer a well-mannered question,” said Alvin.

  “But since it ain’t good manners to ask about what’s in your sack,” said the man, “I reckon you don’t answer such questions at all.”

  “I’m glad to meet a man who knows good manners.”

  “Good manners and a knife that don’t break off at the stem, that’s what keeps me at peace with the world.”

  “Good manners has always been enough for me,” said Alvin. “Though I admit I would have liked that knife better back when it was still a file.”

  With a bound the man was at the door, his knife drawn. “Who are you, and what do you know about me?”

  “I don’t know nothing about you, sir,” said Alvin. “But I’m a blacksmith, and I know a file that’s been made over into a knife. More like a sword, if you ask me.”

  “I haven’t drawn my knife aboard this boat.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. But when I walked in onyou asleep, it was still daylight enough to see the size and shape of the sheath you keep it in. Nobody makes a knife that thick at the haft, but it was right proportioned for a file.”

  “You can’t tell something like that just from looking,” said the man. “You heard something. Somebody’s been talking.”

  “People are always talking, but not about you,” said Alvin. “I know my trade, as I reckon you know yours. My name’s Alvin.”

  “Alvin Smith, eh?”

  “I count myself lucky to have a name. I’d lay good odds that you’ve got one, too.”

  The man chuckled and put his knife away. “Jim Bowie.”

  “Don’t sound like a trade name to me.”

  “It’s a Scotch word. Means ‘light-haired.’ ”

  “Your hair is dark.”

  “But I reckon the first Bowie was a blond Viking who liked what he saw while he was busy raping and pillaging in Scotland, and so he stayed.”

  “One of his children must have got that Viking spirit again and found his way across another sea.”

  “I’m a Viking through and through,” said Bowie. “You guessed right about this knife. I was witness at a duel at a smithy just outside Natchez a few years ago. Things got out of hand when they both missed—I reckon folks came to see blood and didn’t want to be disappointed. One fellow managed to put a bullet through my leg, so I thought I was well out of it, until I saw Major Norris Wright setting on a boy half his size and half his age, and that riled me up. Riled me so bad that I clean forgot I was wounded and bleeding like a slaughtered pig. I went berserk and snatched up a blacksmith’s file and stuck it clean through his heart.”

  “You got to be a strong man to do that.”

  “Oh, it’s more than that. I didn’t slip it between no ribs. I jammed it rightthrough a rib. We Vikings get the strength of giants when we go berserk.”

  “Am I right to guess that the knife you carry is that very same file?”

  “A cutler in Philadelphia reshaped it for me.”

  “Did it by grinding, not forging,” said Alvin.

  “That’s right.”

  “Your lucky knife.”

  “I ain’t dead yet.”

  “Reckon that takes a lot of luck, if you got the habit of reaching over sleeping men to get at their poke.”

  The smile died on Bowie’s face. “Can’t help it if I’m curious.”

  “Oh, I know, I got me the same fault.”

  “So now it’s your turn,” said Bowie.

  “My turn for what?”

  “To tell your story.”

  “Me? Oh, all I got’s a common skinning knife, but I’ve done my share of wandering in wild lands and it’s come in handy.”

  “You know that’s not what I’m asking.”

  “That’s what I’m telling, though.”

  “I told you about my knife, so you tell me about your sack.”

  “You tell everybody about your knife,” said Alvin, “which makes it so you don’t have to use it so much. But I don’t tell nobody about my sack.”

  “That just makes folks more curious,” said Bowie. “And some folks might even get suspicious.”

  “From time to time that happens,” said Alvin. He sat up and swung his legs over the side of his bunk and stood. He had already sized up this Bowie fellow and knew that he’d be at least four inches taller, with longer arms and the massive shoulders of a blacksmith. “But I smile so nice their suspicions just go away.”

  Bowie laughed out loud at that. “You’re a big fellow, all right! And you ain’t afeared of nobody.”

  “I’m afraid of lots of folks,” said Alvin. “Especially a man can shove a file through a man’s rib and ream out his heart.”

  Bowie nodded at that. “Well, now, ain’t that peculiar. Lots of folks been afraid of me in my time. But the more scared they was, the less likely they was to admit it. You’re the first one actually said
he was afraid of me. So does that make you themost scared? Or the least?”

  “Tell you what,” said Alvin. “You keep your hands off my poke, and we’ll never have to find out.”

  Bowie laughed again—but his grin looked more like a wildcat snarling at its prey than like an actual smile. “I like you, Alvin Smith.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” said Alvin.

  “I know a man who’s looking for fellows like you.”

  So this Bowie was part of Travis’s company. “If you’re talking about Mr. Travis, he and I already agreed that he’ll go his way and I’ll go mine.”

  “Ah,” said Bowie.

  “Did you just join up with him in Thebes?”

  “I’ll tell you about my knife,” said Bowie, “but I won’t tell you about my business.”

  “I’ll tell you mine,” said Alvin. “My business right now is to get back to sleep and see if I can find the dream I was in before you decided to stop me snoring.”

  “Well, that’s a good idea,” said Bowie. “And since I haven’t been to sleep at all yet tonight, on account of your snoring, I reckon I’ll give it a go before the sun comes up.”

  Alvin lay back down and curled himself around his poke. His back was to Bowie, but of course he kept his doodlebug in him and knew every move he made. The man stood there watching Alvin for a long time, and from the way his heart was beating and the blood rushed around in him, Alvin could tell he was upset. Angry? Afraid? Hard to tell when you couldn’t look at a man’s face, and not so easy even then. But his heartfire blazed and Alvin figured the fellow was making some kind of decision about him.

  Won’t get to sleep very soon if he keeps himself all agitated like that, thought Alvin. So he reached inside the fellow and gradually calmed him down, got his heart beating slower, steadied his breathing. Most folks thought that their emotions caused their bodies to get all agitated, but it was the other way around, Alvin knew. The body leads, and the emotions follow.

  In a couple of minutes Bowie was relaxed enough to yawn. And soon after, he was fast asleep. With his knife still strapped on, and his hand never far from it.

  This Travis fellow had him some interesting friends.

  Arthur Stuart was feeling way too cocky. But if youknow you feel too cocky, and you compensate for it by being extra careful, then being cocky does you no harm, right? Except maybe it’s your cockiness makes you feel like you’re safer than you really are.

  That’s what Miz Peggy called “circular reasoning” and it wouldn’t get him nowhere. Anywhere. One of them words. Whatever the rule was. Thinking about Miz Peggy always got him listening to the way he talked and finding fault with himself. Only what good would it do him to talk right? All he’d be is a half-black man who somehow learned to talk like a gentleman—a kind of trained monkey, that’s how they’d see him. A dog walking on its hind legs. Not anactual gentleman.

  Which was why he got so cocky, probably. Always wanting to prove something. Not to Alvin, really.

  No,especially to Alvin. Cause it was Alvin still treated him like a boy when he was a man now. Treated him like a son, but he was no man’s son.

  All this thinking was, of course, doing him no good at all, when his job was to pick up the foul-smelling slop bucket and make a slow and lazy job of it so’s he’d have time to find out which of them spoke English or Spanish.

  “Quien me compreende?” he whispered. “Who understands me?”

  “Todos te compreendemos, pero calle la boca,” whispered the third man. We all understand you, but shut your mouth. “Los blancos piensan que hay solo uno que hable un poco de ingles.”

  Boy howdy, he talked fast, with nothing like the accent the Cuban had. But still, when Arthur got the feel of a language in his mind, it wasn’t that hard to sort it out. They all spoke Spanish, but they were pretending that only one of them spoke a bit of English.

  “Quieren fugir de ser esclavos?” Do you want to escape from slavery?

  “La unica puerta es la muerta.” The only door is death.

  “Al otro lado del rio,” said Arthur, “hay rojos que son amigos nuestros.” On the other side of the river there are reds who are friends of ours.

  “Sus amigos no son nuestros,” answered the man. Your friends aren’t ours.

  Another man near enough to hear nodded in agreement. “Y ya no puedo nadar.” And I can’t swim anyway.

  “Los blancos, que van a hacer?” What are the whites going to do?

  “Piensan en ser conquistadores.” Clearly these men didn’t think much of their masters’ plans. “Los Mexicos van comer sus corazones.” The Mexica will eat their hearts.

  Another man chimed in. “Tu hablas como cubano.” You talk like a Cuban.

  “Soy americano,” said Arthur Stuart. “Soy libre. Soy . . .” He hadn’t learned the Spanish for “citizen.” “Soy igual.” I’m equal. But not really, he thought. Still, I’m more equal than you.

  Several of the Mexica blacks sniffed at that. “Ya hay visto, tu dueño.” All Arthur understood was “dueño,” owner.

  “Es amigo, no dueño.” He’s my friend, not my master.

  Oh, they thought that was hilarious. But of course their laughter was silent, and a few of them glanced at the guard, who was dozing as he leaned against the wall.

  “Me de promesa.” Promise me. “Cuando el ferro quiebra, no se maten. No salguen sin ayuda.” When the iron breaks, don’t kill yourselves. Or maybe it meant don’t get killed. Anyway, don’t leave without help. Or that’s what Arthur thought he was saying. They looked at him with total incomprehension.

  “Voy quebrar el ferro,” Arthur repeated.

  One of them mockingly held out his hands. The chains made a noise. Several looked again at the guard.

  “No con la mano,” said Arthur. “Con la cabeza.”

  They looked at each other with obvious disappointment. Arthur knew what they were thinking—This boy is crazy. Thinks he can break iron with his head. But he didn’t know how to explain it any better.

  “Mañana,” he said.

  They nodded wisely. Not a one of them believed him.

  So much for the hours he’d spent learning Spanish. Though maybe the problem was that they just didn’t know about makery and couldn’t think of a man breaking iron with his mind.

  Arthur Stuart knew he could do it. It was one of Alvin’s earliest lessons, but it was only on this trip that Arthur had finally understood what Alvin meant. About getting inside the metal. All this time, Arthur had thought it was something he could do by straining real hard with his mind. But it wasn’t like that at all. It was easy. Just a sort of turn of his mind. Kind of the way language worked for him. Getting the taste of the language on his tongue, and then trusting how it felt. Like knowing somehow that even though “mano” ended in “o,” it still needed “la” in front of it instead of “el.” He just knew how it ought to be.

  Back in Carthage City, he gave two bits to a man selling sweet bread, and the man was trying to get away with not giving him change. Instead of yelling at him—what good would that do, there on the levee, a half-black boy yelling at a white man?—Arthur just thought about the coin he’d been holding in his hand all morning, howwarm it was, how right it felt in his own hand. It was like he understood the metal of it, the way he understood the music of language. And thinking of it warm like that, he could see in his mind that it was getting warmer.

  He encouraged it, thought of it getting warmer and warmer, and all of a sudden the man cried out and started slapping at the pocket into which he’d dropped the quarter.

  It was burning him.

  He tried to get it out of his pocket, but it burned his fingers and finally he flung off his coat, flipped down his suspenders, and dropped his trousers, right in front of everybody. Tipped the coin out of his pocket onto the sidewalk, where it sizzled and made the wood start smoking.

  Then all the man could think about was the sore place on his leg where the coin had burned him. Arthur Stuart walked up to
him, all the time thinking the coin cool again. He reached down and picked it up off the sidewalk. “Reckon you oughta give me my change,” he said.

  “You get away from me, you black devil,” said the man. “You’re a wizard, that’s what you are. Cursing a man’s coin, that’s the same as thievin’!”

  “That’s awful funny, coming from a man who charged me two bits for a five-cent hunk of bread.”

  Several passersby chimed in.

  “Trying to keep the boy’s quarter, was you?”

  “There’s laws against that, even if the boy is black.”

  “Stealin’ from them as can’t fight back.”

  “Pull up your trousers, fool.”

  A little later, Arthur Stuart got change for his quarter and tried to give the man his nickel, but he wouldn’t let Arthur get near him.

  Well, I tried, thought Arthur. I’m not a thief.

  What I am is, I’m a maker.

  No great shakes at it like Alvin, but dadgummit, I thought a quarter hot and it dang near burned its way out of the man’s pocket.

  If I can do that, then I can learn to do it all, that’s what he thought, and that’s why he was feeling cocky tonight. Because he’d been practicing every day on anything metal he could get his hands on. Wouldn’t do no good to turn the iron hot enough to melt, of course—these slaves wouldn’t thank him if he burned their wrists and ankles up in the process of getting their chains off.

  No, his project was to make the metal soft without getting it hot. That was a lot harder than hetting it up. Lots of times he’d caught himself straining again, trying topush softness onto the metal. But when he relaxed into it again and got the feel of the metal into his head like a song, he gradually began to get the knack of it again. Turned his own belt buckle so soft he could bend it into any shape he wanted. Though after a few minutes he realized the shape he wanted it in was like a belt buckle, since he still needed it to hold his pants up.

  Brass was easier than iron, since it was softer in the first place. And it’s not like Arthur Stuart was fast. He’d seen Alvin turn a gun barrel soft while a man was in the process of shooting it at him, that’s how quickhe was. But Arthur Stuart had to ponder on it first. Twenty-five slaves, each with an iron band at his ankle and another at his wrist. He had to make sure they all waited till the last one was free. If any of them bolted early, they’d all be caught.