Seventh Son

Cally touched his cheek.

“You crying cause it hurts so bad?”

Alvin probably could have spoke to him, but it seemed like too much work to open up his mouth and push words out, so he kind of shook his head, slow and gentle.

“You going to die, Alvin?” asked Cally.

He shook his head again.

“Oh,” said Cally.

He sounded so disappointed that it made Alvin a little mad. Mad enough to get his mouth working after all. “Sorry,” he croaked.

“Well it ain't fair, anyhow,” said Cally. “I didn't want you dead, but they all said you was going to die. And I got to thinking what it'd be like if I was the one they all took care of. All the time, everybody watching out for you, and when I say one little thing they just say, Get out of here, Cally, Just shut up, Cally. Nobody asked you, Cally, Ain't you spose to be in bed, Cally? They don't care what I do. Except when I start hitting you, then they all say, Don't get in fights, Cally.”

“You wrestle real good for a field mouse.” At least that was what Alvin meant to say, but he didn't know for sure if his lips even moved.

“You know what I did one time when I was six? I went out and got myself lost in the woods. I just walked and walked. Sometimes I closed my eyes and spun around a few times so I'd sure not know where I was. I must have been lost half the day. Did one soul come looking for me? I finally had to turn around and find my own way home. Nobody said, Where you been all day, Cally? Mama just said, Your hands are dirty as the back end of a sick horse, go wash yourself.”

Alvin laughed again, near silently, his chest heaving.

“It's fu

Alvin worked hard to make a sound this time. “You want me gone?”

Cally waited a long time to answer. “No. Who'd play with me then? Just the dumb old cousins. There ain't a good wrassler in the bunch of them.”

“I'm going,” whispered Alvin.

“No you ain't. You're the seventh son, and they'll never let you go.”

“Going.”

“Course the way I count up it's me that's number seven. David, Calm, Measure, Wastenot, Wantnot, Alvin Junior that's you, and then me, that's seven.”

“Vigor.”

“He's dead. He's been dead a long time. Somebody ought to tell that to Ma. and Pa.”

Alvin lay there, near wore out from the few things he said. Cally didn't say anything much after that. Just sat there, still as could be. Holding Alvin's hand real tight. Pretty soon Alvin started drifting, so he wasn't sure altogether whether Cally really spoke or it was in a dream. But he heard Cally say, “I don't never wish you dead, Alvin.” And then he might have said, “I wish I was you.” But anyway Alvin drifted off to sleep, and when he woke up again there was nobody with him and the house was still except for nightsounds, the wind rattling the shutters, the timbers popping as they shrunk from the cold, the log snapping in the hearth.

One more time Alvin went inside himself and worked his way down to the wound. Only this time he didn't have much to do with the skin and muscle. It was the bones he worked on now. It surprised him how lacy it was, pocked with little hollows all over, not solid straight through like the millstone was. But he learned the way of it soon enough, and it was easy after a while to knit the bones up tight.

Still, there was something wrong with that bone. Something in his bad leg just wouldn't get exactly like the good leg. But it was so small he couldn't see it clear. Just knew that whatever it was, it made the bone sick inside, just a little patch of sickness, but he couldn't figure how to make it better. Like trying to pick up snowflakes off the ground, whenever he thought he had ahold of something, it turned out to be nothing, or maybe just too small to see.

Maybe, though, it would just go away. Maybe if everything else got better, that sick place on his bone would get better by itself.

Eleanor was late getting back from her mother's house. Armor believed that a wife should have strong ties with her family, but coming home at dusk was too dangerous.

“There's talk of wild Reds up from the south,” said Armor-of-God. “And you traipsing about after dark.”

“I hurried home,” she said. “I know the way in the dark.”

“It's not a question of knowing the way,” he said sternly. “The French are giving guns as bounty on White scalps now. It won't tempt the Prophet's people, but there's many a Choc-Taw who'd be glad to come up to Fort Detroit, gathering scalps along the way.”

“Alvin isn't going to die,” said Eleanor.

Armor hated it when she turned the subject like that. But it was such news that he couldn't very well not ask after it. “They decide to take off the leg, then?”

“I saw the leg. It's getting better. And Alvin Junior was awake late this afternoon. I talked to him awhile.”

“I'm glad he was awake, Elly, I truly am, but I hope you don't expect the leg to get better. A big wound like that may look to be healing for a while, but the rot'll set in pretty soon.”

“I don't think so this time,” she said. “You want supper?”

“I must have gnawed down two loaves just pacing back and forth wondering whether you were even coming home.”

“It isn't good for a man to get a belly.”

“Well, I got one, and it calls out for food just like any other man's.”

“Mama gave me a cheese to bring home.” She set it out on the table.

Armor had his doubts. He figured half the reason Faith Miller's cheeses turned out so good was because she did things to the milk. At the same time, there wasn't no better cheese on the banks of the Wobbish, nor up Tippy-Canoe Creek neither.

It put him out of sorts when he caught himself compromising with witchery. And being out of sorts, he wasn't about to let anything lie, even though he knew Elly plain didn't want to talk about it. “Why don't you think the leg will rot?”

“It's just getting better so fast,” she said.

“How much better?”

“Oh, pert near fixed.”

“How near?”

She turned around, rolled her eyes, and turned back away from him. She started cutting up an apple to eat with the cheese.

“I said how near, Elly? How near fixed?”

“Fixed.”

“Two days after a millstone rips off the front half of his leg, and it's fixed?”

“Only two days?” she said. “Seems like a week to me.”

“Calendar says it's two days,” said Armor. “Which means there's been witchery up there.”

“As I read the gospels, the one that healed people wasn't no witch.”

“Who did it? Don't tell me your pa or ma suddenly figured out something as strong as that. Did they conjure up a devil?”

She turned around, the knife in her hands still poised for cutting. There was a flash in her eyes. “Pa may be no kind of church man, but the devil never set foot in our house.”

That wasn't what Reverend Thrower said, but Armor knew better than to bring him into the conversation. “It's that beggar, then.”

“He works for his room and board. Hard as anyone.”

“They say he knew that old wizard Ben Franklin. And that atheist from Appalachee, Tom Jefferson.”

“He tells good stories. And he didn't heal the boy neither.”

“Well, somebody did.”

“Maybe he just healed up himself. Anyway, the leg's still broke. So it ain't a miracle or nothing. He's just a fast healer.”

“Well maybe he's a fast healer cause the devil takes care of his own.”

From the look in her eye when she turned around, Armor kind of wished he hadn't said it. But dad-gum it, Reverend Thrower as much as said the boy was as bad as the Beast of the Apocalypse.

But beast or boy, he was Elly's brother, and whereas she might be as quiet as you please most of the time, when she got her dander up she could be a terror.

“Take that back,” she said.

“Now, that's about as silly a thing as I ever heard. How can I take back what I said?”