Prentice Alvin

Arthur Stuart pitched his wad of clothes out into the river. The current wasn't all that strong; they watched the clothes turn lazily and float downstream, gradually drifting apart. Arthur stood there, up to his butt in water, watching the clothes. No, not watching them– he didn't turn a speck when they drifted far to the left. He was just looking at the north shore, the free side of the river.

“I been here afore,” he said. “I seen this boat.”

“Might be,” said Horace. “Though you was a mite young to remember it. Po and I, we helped your mama into this very boat. My daughter Peggy held you when we got to shore.”

“My sister Peggy,” said Arthur. He turned around and looked at Horace, like as if it was really a question.

“I reckon so,” said Horace, and that was the answer.

“Just stand there, Arthur Stuart,” said Alvin. “When I change you, I got to change you all over, inside and out. Better to do that in the water, where all the dead skin with your old self marked in it can wash away.”

“You going to make me White?” asked Arthur Stuart.

“Can you do that?” asked Po Doggly.

"I don't know what all is going to change," said Alvin. "I hope I don't make you White, though. That'd be like stealing away from you the part of you your mama gave you.

“They don't make White boys be slaves,” said Arthur Stuart.

“They ain't going to make this partickler mixup boy a slave anyhow,” said Alvin. “Not if I can help it. Now just stand there, stand right still, and let me figure this out.”

They all stood there, the men and the boy, while Alvin studied inside Arthur Stuart, finding that tiny signature that marked every living bit of him.

Alvin knew he couldn't just go changing it willy-nilly, since he didn't rightly understand what all that signature was for. He just knew that it was somehow part of what made Arthur himself, and you don't just change that. Maybe changing the wrong thing might strike him blind, or make his blood turn to rainwater or something. How could Alvin know?

It was seeing the string still co

“I thought we wasn't supposed to touch the boy,” said Po.

“Hush up you blame fool,” said Horace Guester. “Alvin knows what he's doing.”

I wish that was true, thought Alvin. But at least he had an idea what to do, and that was better than nothing. Now that their living skin was pressed together, Alvin could look and compare Arthur's secret signature with his own. Most of it was the same, exactly the same, and the way Alvin figured, that's the part that makes us both human instead of cows or frogs or pigs or chickens. That's the part I don't dare change, not a bit of it.

The rest– I can change that. But not any old how. What good to save him if I turn him bright yellow or make him stupid or something?

So Alvin did the only thing as made sense to him. He changed bits of Arthur's signature to be just like Alvin's own. Not all that was different– not all that much, in fact. Just a little– But even a little meant that Arthur Stuart had stopped being completely himself and started being partly Alvin. It seemed to Alvin that what he was doing was terrible and wonderful at the same time.

How much? How much did he have to change till the Finders wouldn't know the boy? Surely not all. Surely just this much, just these changes. There was no way to know. All that Alvin could do was guess, and so he took his guess and that was it. That was only the begi

Hundreds of them, and hundreds more, and still he had changed no more than a tiny patch of skin on Arthur's chest. How could he hope to change the boy's whole body, going so slow?

“It hurts,” whispered Arthur.

Alvin drew away from him. “I ain't doing nothing to hurt you, Arthur Stuart.”

Arthur looked down at his chest. "Right here, " he said, touching the spot where Alvin had been working.

Alvin looked in the moonlight and saw that indeed that spot seemed to be swollen, changed, darkened. He looked again, only not with his eyes, and saw that the rest of Arthur's body was attacking the part that Alvin changed, killing it bit by bit, fast as it could.

Of course. What did he expect? The signature was the way the body recognized itself– that's why every living bit of a body had to have that signature in it. If it wasn't there, the body knew it had to be a disease or something and killed it. Wasn't it bad enough that changing Arthur was taking so long? Now Alvin knew that it wouldn't do no good to change him at all– the more he changed him, the sicker he'd get and the more Arthur Stuart's own body would try to kill itself until the boy either died or shed the new changed part.

It was just like Taleswapper's old story, about trying to build a wall so big that by the time you got halfway through building it, the oldest parts of it had already crumbled to dust. How could you build such a wall if it was getting broke down faster than you could build it up?

“I can't,” said Alvin. “I'm trying to do what can't be done.”

"Well if you can't do it," said Po Doggly, "I hope you can fly, cause that's the only way you can get that boy to Canada before the Finders catch up with you. "

“I can't,” said Alvin.

"You're just tired, " said Horace. "We'll all just hush up soyou can think.

“Won't do any good,” said Alvin.

“My mama could fly,” said Arthur Stuart.

Alvin sighed in impatience at this same old story coming back again.

“It's true, you know,” said Horace. “Little Peggy told me. That little black slave girl, she diddled with some ash and blackbird feathers and such, and flew straight up here. That's what killed her. I couldn't believe it the first time I realized the boy remembers, and we always kept our mouths shut about it hoping he'd forget. But I got to tell you, Alvin, it'd be a pure shame if that girl died just so you could give up on us at this same spot in the river seven years later.”

Alvin closed his eyes. “Just shut your mouth and let me think,” he said.

“I said that's what we'd do,” said Horace.

“So do it,” said Po Doggly.

Alvin hardly even heard them. He was looking back inside Arthur's body, inside that patch that Alvin changed. The new signature wasn't bad in itself– only where it bordered on the skin with the old signature, that was the only place the new skin was getting sick and dying. Arthur'd be just fine if Alvin could somehow change him all at once, instead of bit by bit.

The way that the string came all at once, when Alvin thought of it, pictured where it started and where it ended and what it was. All the atoms of it moving into place at the same time. Like the way Po Doggly and Horace Guester fit together all at once, each doing his own task yet taking into account all that the other man did.

But the string was clean and simple. This was hard– like he told Miss Larner, turning water into wine instead of iron into gold.

No, can't think of it that way. What I did to make the string was teach all the atoms what and where to be, because each one of them was alive and each one could obey me. But inside Arthur's body I ain't dealing with atoms, I'm dealing with these living bits, and each one of them is alive. Maybe it's even the signature itself that makes them alive, maybe I can teach them all what they ought to be– instead of moving each part of them, one at a time, I can just say, Be like this, and they'll do it.