Prentice Alvin

Alvin had to look forward, too. Had to find his way to what he was bom to be. You died for me, Vigor, my brother that I never met. I just haven't figured out yet why it was so important for me to be alive. When I find out, I hope to make you proud of me. I hope you'll think that I was worth dying for.

When his thoughts was all spent and gone, when his heart had filled up and then emptied out again, Alvin did something he never thought to do. He looked under the ground.

Not by digging, mind you. Alvin's knack was such that he could get the feel of underground without using his eyes. Like the way he looked into stone. Now it might seem to some folk like a kind of grave-robbing, for Al to peek inside the earth where his brother's body lay. But to Al it was the only way he'd ever see the man who died to save him.

So he closed his eyes and gazed under the soil and found the bones inside the rotted wooden box. The size of him– Vigor was a big boy, which was about what it would take to roll and yaw a full-sized tree in a river's current. But the soul of him, that wasn't there, and even though he knowed it wouldn't be Al was somewhat disappointed.

His hidden gaze wandered to the small bodies barely clinging to their own dust, and then to the gnarled old corpse of Oldpappy, whoever that was, fresh in the earth, only a year or so buried.

But not so fresh as the other body. The unmarked body. One day dead at most, she was, all her flesh still on her and the worms hardly working at her yet.

He cried out in the surprise of it, and the grief at the next thought that came to mind. Could it be the torch girl buried there? Her mother said that she run off, but when folks run off it ain't unusual for them to come back dead. Why else was the mother grieving so? The i

“What's wrong with you, boy?”

Alvin stood, turned, faced the man. A stout fellow who was right comfortable to look upon; but his face wasn't too easy right now.

“What are you doing here in this graveyard, boy?”

“Sir,” said Alvin, “my brother's buried here.”

The man thought a moment, his face easing. “You're one of that family. But I recall all their boys was as old as you even back then–”

“I'm the one what was born here that night.”

At that news the man just opened up his arms and folded Alvin up inside. “They named you Alvin, didn't they,” said the man, “just like your father. We call him Alvin Bridger around here, he's something of legend. Let me see you, see what you've become. Seventh son of a seventh son, come home to see your birthplace and your brother's grave. Of course you'll stay in my roadhouse. I'm Horace Guester, as you might guess, I'm pleased to meet you, but ain't you somewhat big for– what, ten, eleven years old?”

“Almost twelve. Folks say I'm tall.”

“I hope you're proud of the marker we made for your brother. He was admired here, even though we all met him in death and never in life.”

“I'm suited,” said Alvin. “It's a good stone.” And then, because he couldn't help himself, though it wasn't a particularly wise thing to do, he up and asked the question most burning in him. “But I wonder, sir, why one girl got herself buried here yesterday, and no stone nor marker tells her name.”

Horace Guester's face turned ashen. “Of course you'd see,” he whispered. “Doodlebug or something. Seventh son. God help us all.”

“Did she do something shameful, sir, not to have no marker?” asked Alvin.

“Not shame,” said Horace. “As God is my witness, boy, this girl was noble in life and died a virtuous death. She stays unmarked so this house can be a shelter to others like her. But oh, lad, say you'll never tell what you found buried here. You'd cause pain to dozens and hundreds of lost souls along the road from slavery to freedom. Can you believe me that much, trust me and be my friend in this? It'd be too much grief, to lose my daughter and have this secret out, all in the same day. Since I can't keep the secret from you, you have to keep it with me, Alvin, lad. Say you will.”

“I'll keep a secret if it's honorable, sir,” said Alvin, “but what honorable secret leads a man to bury his own daughter without a stone?”

Horace's eyes went wide, and then he laughed like he was calling loony birds. When he got control of hisself, he clapped Alvin on the shoulder. "That ain't my daughter in the ground there, boy, what made you think it was? It's a Black girl, a runaway slave, who died last night on her way north. "

Now Alvin realized for the first time that the body was way too small to be no sixteen-year-old, anyhow. It was a child-size body. “That baby in your kitchen, it's her brother?”

“Her son,” said Horace.

“But she's so small,” said Alvin.

“That didn't stop her White owner from getting her with child, boy. I don't know how you stand on the question of slavery, or if you even thought about it, but I beg you do some thinking now. Think about how slavery lets a White man steal a girl's virtue and still go to church on Sunday while she groans in shame and bears his bastard child.”

“You're a Mancipationist, ain't you?” said Alvin.

“Reckon I am,” said the i

“I reckon so,” said Alvin.

“I hope you are, cause if word gets out that I was helping a slavegirl run off to Canada, there'll be finders and cotchers from Appalachee and the Crown Colonies a-spying on me so I can't help no others get away.”

Alvin looked back at the grave and thought about the babe in the kitchen. “You going to tell that baby where his mama's grave is?”

“When he's old enough to know, and not to tell it,” said the man.

“Then I'll keep your secret, if you keep mine.”

The man raised his eyebrows and studied Alvin. “What secret you got, Alvin, a boy as young as you?”

“I don't have no partickler wish to have it known I'm a seventh son. I'm here to prentice with Makepeace Smith, which I reckon is the man I hear a-hammering at the forge down yonder,”

“And you don't want folks knowing you can see a body lying in an unmarked grave.”

“You caught my drift right enough,” said Alvin. “I won't tell your secret, and you won't tell mine.”

“You have my word on it,” said the man. Then he held out his hand.

Took that hand and shook it, gladly. Most grownup folk wouldn't think of making a bargain like that with a mere child like him. But this man even offered his hand, like they were equals. “You'll see I know how to keep my word, sir,” said Alvin.

“And anyone around here can tell you Horace Guester keeps a promise, too.” Then Horace told him the story that they were letting out about the baby, how it was the Berrys' youngest, and they gave it up for Old Peg Guester to raise, cause they didn't need another child and she'd always hankered to have her a son. “And that part is true enough,” said Horace Guester. “All the more, with Peggy ru

“Your daughter,” said Alvin.

Suddenly Horace Guester's eyes filled up with tears and he shuddered with a sob like Alvin never heard from a growed man in his life. “Just ran off this morning,” said Horace Guester.

“Maybe she's just a-calling on somebody in town or something,” said Alvin.

Horace shook his head. “I beg your pardon, crying like that, I just beg your pardon, I'm awful tired, truth to tell, up all night last night, and then this morning, her gone like that. She left us a note. She's gone all right.”

“Don't you know the man she run off with?” asked Alvin. “Maybe they'll get married, that happened once to a Swede girl out in the Noisy River country–”