Prentice Alvin

“What in the world are you thinking of, boy, to knock my door like that and start hullaballooing like there was a fire! Why can't you just come on in and set like any other folk, or are you so powerful important that you got to have a servant come and open doors for you?”

“Sorry, ma'am,” said Alvin, about as respectful as could be.

“Now what business could you have with us? If you're a beggar then I got to tell you we'll have no scraps till after di

“Eleven, ma'am.”

“Well, then, you're right big for your age, but I still can't figure what business you got here. I won't serve you no liquor even if you got money, which I doubt. This is a Christian house, in fact more than mere Christian because we're true-blue Methodist and that means we don't touch a drop nor serve it neither, and even if we did we wouldn't serve children. And I'd stake ten pound of porkfat on a wager that you don't have the price of a night's lodging.”

“No ma'am,” said Alvin, “but–”

“Well then here you are, dragging me out of my kitchen with the bread half-kneaded and a baby who's bound to cry for milk any minute, and I reckon you don't plan to stand at the head of the table and explain to all my boarders why their di

“Ma'am,” said Alvin, “I don't want food and I don't want a room.” He knew enough courtesy not to add that travelers had always been welcome to stay in his father's house whether they had money or not, and a hungry man didn't get afternoon scraps, he set down at Pa's own table and ate with the family. He was catching on to the idea that things were different here in civilized country.

"Well, all we deal in here is food and rooms, " said the roadhouse lady.

“I come here, ma'am, cause I was born in this house almost twelve years ago.”

Her whole demeanor changed at once. She wasn't a roadhouse mistress now, she was a midwife. “Born in this house?”

"Born on the day my oldest brother Vigor died in the Hatrack River. I thought as how you might even remember that day, and maybe you could show me the place where my brother lies buried. "

Her face changed again. “You,” she said. “You're the boy who was born to that family– the seventh son of–”

“Of a seventh son,” said Alvin.

“Well what's become of you, tell me! Oh, it was a portentous thing. My daughter stood there and looked afar off and saw that your big brother was still alive as you came out of the womb–”

“Your daughter,” said Alvin, forgetting himself so much that he interrupted her clean in the middle of a sentence. “She's a torch.”

The lady turned cold as ice. “Was,” she said. “She don't torch no more.”

But Alvin hardly noticed how the lady changed. “You mean she lost her knack for it? I never heard of a body losing their knack. But if she's here, I'd like to talk to her.”

“She ain't here no more,” said the lady. Now Alvin finally caught on that she didn't much care to talk about it. “There ain't no torch now in Hatrack River. Babies will be born here without a body touching them to see how they lie in the womb. That's the end of it. I won't say another word about such a girl as that who'd run off, just run right off.”

Something caught in the lady's voice and she turned her back to him.

“I got to finish my bread,” said the lady. “The graveyard is up the hill there.” She turned around agaid to face him, with nary a sign of the anger or grief or what-all that she felt a second before. “If my Horace was here I'd have him show you the way, but you'll see it anyhow, there's a kind of path. It's just a family graveyard, with a picket fence around it.” Her stern ma

There was a cradle by the kitchen table, with a babe asleep in it but wiggling somewhat. Something fu

“Thank you for your kindness, ma'am, but I don't ask for no handouts. I'll work to pay for anything I eat.”

“That's rightly said, and like a true man– your father was the same, and the bridge he built over the Hatrack is still there, strong as ever. But you just go now, see the graveyard, and then come back by and by.”

She bent over the huge wad of dough on the kneading table. Alvin got the notion for just a moment that she was crying, and maybe he did and maybe he didn't see team drop from her eyes straight down into the dough. It was plain she wanted to be alone.

He looked again at the baby and realized what was different. “That's a pickani

She stopped kneading, but left her hands buried to the wrist in dough. “It's a baby,” she said, “and it's my baby. I adopted him and he's mine, and if you call him a pickani

“Sorry, ma'am, I meant no harm. He just had a sort of cast to his face that gave me that idea, I reckon–”

“Oh, he's half-Black all right. But it's the White half of him I'm raising up, just as if he was my own son. We named him Arthur Stuart.”

Alvin got the joke of that right off. “Ain't nobody can call the King a pickani

She smiled. “I reckon not. Now get, boy. You owe a debt to your dead brother, and you best pay it now.”

The graveyard was easy to find, and Alvin was gratified to see that his brother Vigor had a stone, and his grave was as well-tended as any other. Only a few graves here. Two stones with the same name– “Baby Missy” –and dates that told of children dying young. Another stone that said “Oldpappy” and then his real name, and dates that told of a long life. And Vigor.

He knelt by his brother's grave and tried to picture what he might have been like. The best he could do was imagine his brother Measure, who was his favorite brother, the one who was captured by Reds along with Alvin. Vigor must have been like Measure. Or maybe Measure was like Vigor. Both willing to die if need be, for their family's sake. Vigor's death saved my life before I was born, thought Alvin, and yet he hung on to the last breath so that when I was born I was still the seventh son of a seventh son, with all my brothers ahead of me alive. The same kind of sacrifice and courage and strength that it took when Measure, who hadn't killed a single Red man, who near died just trying to stop the Tippy-Canoe massacre from happening, took on himself the same curse as his father and his brothers, to have blood on his hands if he failed to tell any stranger the true story of the killing of all them i

Wasn't wholly dead, anyway. But like the rest of the folk of Vigor Church, he'd never leave that place again. He'd live out all his days where he wouldn't have to meet too many strangers, so that for days on end he could forget the slaughter on that day last summer. The whole family, staying together there, with all the folks in the country roundabout, living out their days of life until them as had the curse all died, sharing each other's shame and each other's loneliness like they was all kin, every one of them.

All them together, except for me. I didn't take no curse on me. I left them all behind.

Kneeling there, Alvin felt like an orphan. He might as well be. Sent off to be a prentice here, knowing that whatever he did, whatever he made, his kin could never come on out to see. He could go home to that bleak sad town from time to time, but that was more like a graveyard than this grassy living place, because even with dead folks buried here, there was hope and life in the town nearby, people looking forward instead of back.