Seventh Son

“David can be mayor,” said Measure.

“Not me,” said David. “All that politics business is too much. It's Armor wants that, not me.”

“Armor wants to be king,” said Calm.

“That's not kind,” said David.

“But it's true,” said Calm. “He'd try to be God, if he thought the job was open.”

Measure explained to Taleswapper. “Calm and Armor don't get along.”

“It ain't much of a husband that calls his wife a witch,” said Calm bitterly.

“Why would he call her that?” asked Taleswapper.

“It's sure he doesn't call her that now,” said Measure. “She promised him to give them up. All her knacks in the kitchen. It's a shame to make a woman run a household with just her own two hands.”

“That's enough,” David said. Taleswapper caught just a corner of his warning look.

Obviously they didn't trust Taleswapper enough to let him in on the truth. So Taleswapper let them know that the secret was already in his possession. “It seems to me that she uses more than Armor guesses,” said Taleswapper. “There's a clever hex out of baskets on the front porch. And she used a calming on him before my eyes, the day I arrived in town.”

Work stopped then, for just a moment. Nobody looked at him, but for a second they did nothing. Just took in the fact that Taleswapper knew Eleanor's secret and hadn't told about it to outsiders. Or to Armor-of-God Weaver. Still, it was one thing for him to know, and something else for them to confirm it. So they said nothing, just resumed notching and binding the sledge.

Taleswapper broke the silence by returning to the main topic. “It's just a matter of time before these western lands have enough people in them to call themselves states, and petition to join the American Compact. When that happens, there'll be need for honest men to hold office.”

“You won't find no Hamilton or Adams or Jefferson out here in the wild country,” said David.

“Maybe not,” said Taleswapper. “But if you local boys don't set up your own government, you can bet there'll be plenty of city men willing to do it for you. That's how Aaron Burr got to be governor of Suskwahe

“You make it sound like murder,” said Measure. “It was a fair duel.”

“To my way of thinking,” said Taleswapper, “a duel is just two murderers who agree to take turns trying to kill each other.”

“Not when one of them is an old country boy in buckskin and the other is a lying cheating city man,” said Measure.

“I don't want no Aaron Burr trying to be governor over the Wobbish country,” said David. “And that's what kind of man Bill Harrison is, down there in Carthage City. I'd vote for Armor before I'd vote for him.”

“And I'd vote for you before I'd vote for Armor,” said Taleswapper.

David grunted. He continued weaving rope around the notches of the sledge logs, binding them together. Taleswapper was doing the same thing on the other side. When he got to the knotting place, Taleswapper started to tie the two ends of the rope together.

“Wait on that,” said Measure. “I'll go fetch Al Junior.” Measure took off at a jog up the slope to the quarry.

Taleswapper dropped the ends of the rope. “Alvin Junior ties the knots? I would have thought grown men like you could tie them tighter.”

David gri

“Don't any of you have knacks?” asked Taleswapper.

“A few.”

“David's got a knack with the ladies,” said Calm.

“Calm's got dancing feet at a hoedown. Ain't nobody fiddles like him, neither,” said David. “It ain't on tune all the time, but he keeps that bow busy.”

“Measure's a true shot,” said Calm. “He's got an eye for things too far off for most folks to see.”

“We got our knacks,” said David. “The twins have a way of knowing when trouble's brewing, and getting there just about in time.”

“And Pa, he fits things together. We have him do all the wood joints when we're building furniture.”

“The womenfolk got women's knacks.”

“But,” said Calm, “there ain't nobody like Al Junior.”

David nodded gravely. “Thing is, Taleswapper, he don't seem to know about it. I mean, he's always kind of surprised when things turn out good. He's right proud when we give him a job to do. I never seen him lord it over nobody because he's got more of a knack than they do.”

“He's a good boy,” said Calm.

“Kind of clumsy,” said David.

“Not clumsy,” said Calm. “Most times it isn't his fault.”

“Let's just say that accidents happen more common around him.”

“I wouldn't say jinx or nothing,” said Calm.

“No, I wouldn't say jinx.”

Taleswapper noted that in fact they both had said it. But he didn't comment on their indiscretion. After all, it was the third voice that made bad luck true. His silence was the best cure for their carelessness. And the other two caught on quickly enough. They, too, held their silence.

After a while, Measure came down the hill with Alvin Junior. Taleswapper dared not be the third voice, since he had taken part in the conversation before. And it would be even worse if Alvin himself spoke next, since he was the one who had been linked with a jinx. So Taleswapper kept his eye on Measure, and raised his eyebrows, to show Measure that he was expected to speak.

Measure answered the question that he thought Taleswapper was asking. “Oh, Pa's staying up by the rock. To watch.”

Taleswapper could hear David and Calm breathe a sigh of relief. The third voice didn't have jinx in his mind, so Alvin Junior was safe.

Now Taleswapper was free to wonder why Miller felt he had to keep watch at the quarry. “What could happen to a rock? I've never heard of Reds stealing rocks.”

Measure winked. “Powerful strange things happen sometimes, specially with millstones.”

Alvin was joking with David and Calm now, as he tied the knots. He worked hard to get them as tight as he could, but Taleswapper saw that it wasn't in the knot itself that his knack was revealed. As Al Junior pulled the ropes tight, they seemed to twist and bite into the wood in all the notches, drawing the whole sledge tighter together. It was subtle, and if Taleswapper hadn't been watching for it, he wouldn't have seen. But it was real. What Al Junior bound was bound tight.

“That's tight enough to be a raft,” said Al Junior, standing back to admire.

“Well, it's floating on solid earth this time,” said Measure. “Pa says he won't even piss into water no more.”

Since the sun was low in the west, they set to laying the fire. Work had kept them warm today, but tonight they'd need the fire to back off the animals and keep the autumn cold at bay.

Miller didn't come down, even at supper, and when Calm got up to carry food up the hill to his father, Taleswapper offered to come along.

“I don't know,” said Calm. “You don't need to.”

“I want to.”

“Pa– he don't like lots of people gathered at the rock face, time like this.” Calm looked a little sheepish. “He's a miller, and it's his stone getting cut there.”

“I'm not a lot of people,” said Taleswapper. Calm didn't say anything more. Taleswapper followed him up among the rocks.

On the way, they passed the sites of two early stonecuttings. The scraps of cut stone had been used to make a smooth ramp from the cliff face to ground level. The cuts were almost perfectly round. Taleswapper had seen plenty of stone cut before, and he'd never seen one cut this way– perfectly round, right in the cliff. Most times it was a whole slab they cut, then rounded it on the ground. There were several good reasons for doing it that way, but the best of all was that there was no way to cut the back of the stone unless you took a whole slab. Calm didn't slow down for him, so Taleswapper didn't have a chance to look closely, but as near as he could tell there was no possible way that the stonecutter in this quarry could have cut the back of the stone.