Seventh Son

“Mostly we call thern Al and Cally,” said the father.

“Mostly you call us 'shutup' and 'get over here,'” said Cally.

Al Junior gave him a whack on the shoulder and sent him sprawling in the dirt. Whereupon his father placed a boot on his backside and sent him head over heels out the door. All in fun. Nobody was hurt. How could I have thought there was murder going on here?

“You come with a message? A letter?” asked Alvin Miller. Now, that the boys were outside, yelling at each other across the meadow, the grown men could get a word in.

“Sorry,” said Taleswapper. “Just a traveler. A young lady in town said I might find a place to sleep up here. In exchange for whatever good hard work you might have for my arms.”

Alvin Miller gri

“Just tell me before we start,” said Taleswapper, “whether I'll get a better supper if I throw you, or if I don't throw you.”

Alvin Miller leaned back his head and whooped like a Red. “What's your name, stranger?”

“Taleswapper.”

“Well, Mr. Taleswapper, I hope you like the taste of dirt, cause that's what you'll eat before you eat anything else here!”

Taleswapper felt the grip on his forearm tighten. His own arms were strong, but not like this man's grip. Still, a game of throws wasn't all strength. It was also wit, and Taleswapper had a bit of that. He let himself slowly flinch under Alvin Miller's pressure, long before he had forced the man to use his full strength. Then, suddenly, he pulled with all his might in the direction Miller was pushing. Usually that was enough to topple the bigger man, using his own weight against him– but Alvin Miller was ready, pulled the other way, and flung Taleswapper so far that he landed right among the stones that formed the foundation for the missing millstone.

There had been no malice in it, though, just the love of the contest. No sooner was Taleswapper down than Miller was helping him up, asking him if anything was broken.

“I'm just glad your millstone wasn't in place yet,” said Taleswapper, “or you'd be stuffing brains back into my head.”

“What? You're in Wobbish country, man! There ain't no need for brains out here.”

“Well, you threw me,” said Taleswapper. “Does that mean you won't let me earn a bed and a meal?”

“Earn it? No sir. I won't allow such a thing.” But the grin on his face denied the harshness of his words. “No, no, you can work if you like, because a man likes to feel that he pays his way in the world. But truth is I'd let you stay even if you had two legs broke and couldn't help a lick. We've got a bed all ready for you, just off the kitchen, and I'll bet a hog against a huckleberry that them boys already told Faith to set another bowl for supper.”

“That's kind of you, sir.”

“Not at all,” said Alvin Miller. “You sure nothing got broke? You hit them stones awful hard.”

“Then I imagine you ought to check to make sure none of those stones got split, sir.”

Alvin laughed again, slapped him on the back, and led him up to the house.

Such a house it was. There couldn't be more screeching and shouting in hell. Miller tried to sort out all the children for him. The four older girls were his daughters, busy as could be at half a dozen jobs, each one carrying on separate arguments with each of her sisters, at the top of her voice, passing from quarrel to quarrel as her work took her from room to room. The screaming baby was a grandchild, as were the five toddlers playing Roundheads and Cavaliers on and under the dining table. The mother, Faith, seemed oblivious to it all as she labored in the kitchen. Occasionally she'd reach out to cuff a nearby child, but otherwise she didn't let them interrupt her work– or her steady stream of orders, rebukes, threats, and complaints.

“How do you keep your wits together, in all this?” Taleswapper asked her.

“Wits?” she asked him sharply. “Do you think anyone with wits would put up with this?”

Miller showed him to his room. That's what he called it, “your room, as long as you care to stay.” It had a large bed and a feather pillow, and blankets, too, and half of one wall was the back of the chimney, so it was warm. Taleswapper hadn't been offered a bed like this in all his wandering. “Promise me that your name isn't really Procrustes,” he said.

Miller didn't understand the allusion, but it didn't matter, he knew the look on Taleswapper's face. No doubt he'd seen it before. “We don't put our guests in the worst room, Taleswapper, we put them in the best. And no more talk about that.”

“You have to let me work for you tomorrow, then.”

“Oh, there's jobs to do, if you're good with your hands. And if you ain't ashamed of women's work, my wife could use a help or two. We'll see what happens.” At that, Miller left the room and closed the door behind him.

The noise of the house was only partly dampened by the closed door, but it was a music that Taleswapper didn't mind hearing. It was only afternoon, but he couldn't help himself. He swung off his pack and pried off his boots and eased himself down on the mattress. It rustled like a straw tick, but there was a feather mattress on top of that, so it was deep and soft. And the straw was fresh, and dried herbs hung by the hearthstones to give it the smell of thyme and rosemary. Did I ever lie upon so soft a bed in Philadelphia? Or before that, in England? Not since I left my mother's womb, he thought.

There was nothing shy about the use of powers in this house; the hex was right in the open, painted above the door. But he recognized the pattern. It wasn't a peacemaker, designed to quell any violence in the soul that slept here. It wasn't a warning, and it wasn't a fending. Not a bit of it was designed to protect the house from the guest, or the guest from the house. It was for comfort, pure and simple. And it was perfectly, exquisitely drawn, exactly the right proportions. An exact hex wasn't easy to draw, being made of threes. Taleswapper couldn't remember seeing a more perfect one.

So it didn't surprise him, as he lay on the bed, to feel the muscles of his body unknotting, as if this bed and this room were undoing the weariness of twenty-five years of wandering. It occurred to him that when he died, he hoped the grave was as comfortable as this bed.

When Alvin Junior rocked him awake, the whole house smelled of sage and pepper and simmered beef. “You've just got time to use the privy, wash up, and come eat,” said the boy.

“I must have fallen asleep,” said Taleswapper.

“That's what I made that hex to do,” said the boy. “Works good, don't it?” Then he charged out of the room.

Almost immediately Taleswapper heard one of the girls yelling the most alarming series of threats at the boy. The quarrel continued at top volume as Taleswapper went out to the privy, and when he came back inside, the yelling was still going on– though Taleswapper thought perhaps now it was a different sister yelling.

“I swear tonight in your sleep Al Junior I'll sew a skunk to the soles of your feet!” Al's answer was muffled by distance, but it caused another bout of screaming. Taleswapper had heard yelling before. Sometimes it was love and sometimes it was hate. When it was hate, he got out as quickly as he could. In this house, he could stay.

Hands and face washed, he was clean enough that Goody Faith allowed him to carry the loaves of bread to ihe table– “as long as you don't let the bread touch that gamy shirt of yours.” Then Taleswapper took his place in line, bowl in hand, as the whole family trooped into the kitchen and emerged with the majority of a hog parceled out among them.