Seventh Son

The whistling stopped. “Sorry,” said Measure. “Does it bother you?”

“No,” said Alvin.

Measure started in whistling again. It was a strange tune, one that Alvin didn't recollect he ever heard before. In fact it didn't sound like any kind of tune at all. It never did repeat itself, just went on with new patterns all the time, ,like as if Measure was making it up on the way. As Alvin lay there and listened, the melody seemed like it was a map, winding through a wilderness, and he started to follow it. Not that he saw anything, the way he would following a real map. It just seemed always to show him the center of things, and everything he thought about, he thought about as if he was standing in that place. Almost like he could see all the thinking he had done before, trying to figure out a way to fix the bad place on his bone, only now he was looking from a ways off, maybe higher up a mountain or in a clearing, somewhere that he could see more.

Now he thought of something he never thought of before. When his leg was first broke, with the skin all tore up, everybody could see how bad off he was, but nobody could help him, only himself. He had to fix it all from inside. Now, though, nobody else could see the wound that was killing him. And even though he could see it, he couldn't do a blame thing to make it better.

So maybe this time, somebody else could fix him up. Not using any kind of hidden power at all. Just plain old bloody-handed surgery.

“Measure,” he whispered.

“I'm here,” said Measure.

“I know a way to fix my leg,” he said.

Measure leaned in close. Alvin didn't open his eyes, but he could feel his brother's breath on his cheek.

“The bad place on my bone, it's growing, but it ain't spread all over yet,” Alvin said. “I can't make it better, but I reckon if somebody cut off that part of my bone and took it right out of my leg, I could heal it up the rest of the way.”

“Cut it out?”

“Pa's bone saw that he uses when he's cutting up meat, that'd do the trick I think.”

“But there ain't a surgeon in three hundred mile.”

“Then I reckon somebody better learn how real quick, or I'm dead.”

Measure was breathing quicker now. “You think cutting your bone would save your life?”

“It's the best I can think of.”

“It might mess up your leg real bad,” said Measure.

“If I'm dead, I won't care. And if I live, it'll be worth a messed-up leg.”

“I'm going to fetch Pa.” Measure scuffed back his chair and thumped out of the room.

Thrower let Armor lead the way onto the Millers' porch. They couldn't very well turn away their daughter's husband. His concern was unfounded, however. It was Goody Faith who opened the door, not her pagan husband.

“Why, Reverend Thrower, if you ain't being too kind to us, stopping up here,” she said. The cheerfulness of her voice was a lie, though, if her haggard face was telling the truth. There hadn't been much good sleep in this house lately.

“I brought him along, Mother Faith,” said Armor. “He come only cause I asked him.”

“The pastor of our church is welcome in my home whenever it pleases him to come by,” said Faith.

She ushered them into the great room. A group of girls making quilt squares looked up at him from their chairs near the hearth. The little boy, Cally, was doing his letters on a board, writing with charcoal from the fire.

“I'm glad to see you doing your letters,” said Thrower.

Cally just looked at him. There was a hint of hostility in his eyes. Apparently the boy resented having his teacher look at his work here at home, which he had supposed was a sanctuary.

“You're doing them well,” said Thrower, trying to put the boy at ease. Cally said nothing, just looked down again at his makeshift slate and kept on scrawling out words.

Armor brought up their business right away. “Mother Faith, we come cause of Alvin. You know how I feel about witchery, but I never before said a word against what you folks do in your house. I always reckoned that was your business and none of mine. But that boy is paying the price for the evil ways that you've let go on here. He witched his leg, and now there's a devil in him, killing him off, and I brought Reverend Thrower here to wring that devil on out of him.”

Goody Faith looked puzzled. “There ain't no devil in this house.”

Ah, poor woman, said Thrower silently. If you only knew how long a devil has dwelt here. “It is possible to become so accustomed to the presence of a devil as not to recognize that it is presene.”

A door by the stairs opened up, and Mr. Miller stepped backward through the doorway. “Not me,” he said, talking to whoever was in that room. “I'll not lay a knife to the boy.”

Cally jumped up at the sound of his father's voice and ran to him. “Armor brung old Thrower here, Papa, to kill the devil.”

Mr. Miller turned around, his face twisted with unidentified emotion, and looked at the visitors as if he hardly recognized them.

“I've got good strong hexes on this house,” said Goody Faith.

“Those hexes are a summons for the devil,” said Armor. “You think they protect your house, but they drive away the Lord.”

“No devil ever came in here,” she insisted.

“Not by itself,” said Armor. “You called it in with all you're conjuring. You forced the Holy Spirit to leave your house by your witchery and idolatry, and having swept goodness from your home, the devils naturally come right in. They always come in, where they see a fair chance to do mischief.”

Thrower became a little concerned that Armor was saying too much about things he didn't really understand. It would have been better had he simply asked if Thrower could pray for the boy at Alvin's bedside. Now Armor was drawing battle lines that should never have been drawn.

And whatever was going on in Mr. Miller's head right now, it was plain to see that this wasn't the best of times to provoke the man. He slowly walked toward Armor. “You telling me that what comes into a man's house to do mischief is the devil?”

“I bear you my witness as one who loves the Lord Jesus,” Armor began, but before he could get any further into his testimony, Miller had him by the shoulder of his coat and the waist of his pants, and he turned him right toward the door.

“Somebody better open this door!” roared Miller. “Or there's going to be a powerful big hole right in the middle of it!”

“What do you think you're doing, Alvin Miller!” shouted his wife.

“Casting out devils!” cried Miller. Cally had swung the door open by then, and Miller walked his son-in-law to the edge of the porch and sent him flying. Armor's cry of outrage ended up muffled by the snow on the ground, and there wasn't much chance to hear his yelling after that because Miller closed and barred the door.

“Ain't you a big man,” said Goody Faith, “throwing out your own daughter's husband.”

“I didn't do but what he said the Lord wanted done,” said Miller. Then he turned his gaze upon the pastor.

“Armor didn't speak for me,” said Thrower mildly.

“If you lay a hand on a man of the cloth,” said Goody Faith, “you'll sleep in a cold bed for the rest of your life.”

“Wouldn't think of touching the man,” said Miller. “But the way I figure it, I stay out of his place, and he ought to stay out of mine.”

“You may not believe in the power of prayer,” said Thrower.

“I reckon it depends on who's doing the praying, and who's doing the listening,” said Miller.

“Even so,” said Thrower, “your wife believes in the religion of Jesus Christ, in the which I have been called and ordained a minister. It is her belief, and my belief, that for me to pray at the boy's bedside might be efficacious in his cure.”

“If you use words like that in your praying,” said Miller, “it's a wonder the Lord even knows what you're talking about.”