Seventh Son

“That's right.”

“I don't like chicken soup.”

“Not just soup, Maggie. This one's a-roasting, except the neck and wings.”

“I hate roast chicken, too.”

“Does your Oldpappy ever lie to you?”

“Nope.”

“Then you best believe me when I tell you this is one chicken di

Little Peggy thought and thought, and then she smiled. “Bloody Mary?”

Oldpappy winked. “I always said that was a hen born to make gravy.”

Little Peggy hugged him so tight that he made choking sounds, and then they laughed and laughed.

Later that night, long after little Peggy was in bed, they brought Vigor's body home, and Papa and Makepeace set to making a box for him. Alvin Miller hardly looked alive, even when Eleanor showed him the baby. Until she said, “That torch girl. She says that this baby is the seventh son of a seventh son.”

Alvin looked around for someone to tell him if it was true.

“Oh, you can trust her,” said Mama.

Tears came fresh to Alvin's eyes. “That boy hung on,” he said. “There in the water, he hung on long enough.”

“He knowed what store you set by that,” said Eleanor.

Then Alvin reached for the baby, held him tight, looked down into his eyes. “Nobody named him yet, did they?” he asked.

“Course not,” said Eleanor. “Mama named all the other boys, but you always said the seventh son'd have–”

“My own name. Alvin. Seventh son of a seventh son, with the same name as his father. Alvin Junior.” He looked around him, then turned to face toward the river, way off in the nighttime forest. “Hear that, you Hatrack River? His name is Alvin, and you didn't kill him after all.”

Soon they brought in the box and laid out Vigor's body with candles, to stand for the fire of life that had left him. Alvin held up the baby, over the coffin. “Look on your brother,” he whispered to the infant.

“That baby can't see nothing yet, Papa,” said David.

“That ain't so, David,” said Alvin. “He don't know what he's seeing, but his eyes can see. And when he gets old enough to hear the story of his birth, I'm going to tell him that his own eyes saw his brother Vigor, who gave his life for this baby's sake.”

It was two weeks before Faith was well enough to travel. But Alvin saw to it that he and his boys worked hard for their keep. They cleared a good spot of land, chopped the winter's firewood, set some charcoal heaps for Makepeace Smith, and widened the road. They also felled four big trees and made a strong bridge across the Hatrack River, a covered bridge so that even in a rainstorm people could cross that river without a drop of water touching them.

Vigor's grave was the third one there, beside little Peggy's two dead sisters. The family paid respects and prayed there on the morning that they left. Then they got in their wagon and rode off westward. “But we leave a part of ourselves here always,” said Faith, and Alvin nodded.

Little Peggy watched them go, then ran up into the attic, opened the box, and held little Alvin's caul in her hand. No danger for now, at least. Safe for now. She put the caul away and closed the lid. You better be something, baby Alvin, she said, or else you caused a powerful lot of trouble for nothing.

Chapter Six – Ridgebeam

Axex rang, strong men sang hymns at their labor, and Reverend Philadelphia Thrower's new church building rose tall over the meadow commons of Vigor Township. It was all happening so much faster than Reverend Thrower ever expected. The first wall of the meetinghouse had hardly been erected a day or so ago, when that drunken one-eyed Red wandered in and was baptized, as if the mere sight of the churchhouse had been the fulcrum on which he could be levered upward to civilization and Christianity. If a Red as benighted as Lolla-Wossiky could come unto Jesus, what other miracles of conversion might not be wrought in this wilderness when his meetinghouse was finished and his ministry firmly under way?

Reverend Thrower was not altogether happy, however, for there were enemies of civilization far stronger than the barbarity of the heathen Reds, and the signs were not all so hopeful as when Lolla-Wossiky do

“What, is he ill?” asked Thrower.

Faith tightened her lips. “When I say he won't come, Reverend Thrower, it's not to say he can't come.”

It confirmed Thrower's gathering suspicions. “Have I offended him somewise?”

Faith sighed and looked away from him, toward the posts and beams of the meetinghouse. “Not you yourself, sir, not the way a man treads on another, as they say.”

Abruptly she became alert. “Now what is that?”

Right up against the building, most of the men were tying ropes to the north half of the ridgebeam, so they could lift it into place. It was a tricky job, and all the harder because of the little boys wrestling each other in the dust and getting underfoot. It was the wrestlers that had caught her eye.

“Al!” cried Faith. “Alvin Junior, you let him up this minute!” She took two strides toward the cloud of dust that marked the heroic struggles of the six-year-olds.

Reverend Thrower was not inclined to let her end the conversation so easily. “Mistress Faith,” said Reverend Thrower sharply. “Alvin Miller is the first settler in these parts, and people hold him in high regard. If he's against me for some reason, it will greatly harm my ministry. At least you can tell me what I did to give offense.”

Faith looked him in the eye, as if to calculate whether he could stand to hear the truth. “It was your foolish sermon, sir,” she said.

“Foolish?”

“You couldn't know any better, being from England, and–”

“From Scotland, Mistress Faith.”

“And being how you're educated in schools where they don't know much about–”

“The University of Edinburgh! Don't know much indeed, I–”

“About hexes and doodles and charms and beseechings and suchlike.”

“I know that claiming to use such dark and invisible powers is a burning offense in the lands that obey the Lord Protector, Mistress Faith, though in his mercy he merely banishes those who–”

“Well looky there, that's my point,” she said triumphantly. “They're not likely to teach you about that in university, now, are they? But it's the way we live here, and calling it a superstition–”

“I called it hysteria–”

“That don't change the fact that it works.”

“I understand that you believe that it works,” said Thrower patiently. “But everything in the world is either science or miracles. Miracles came from God in ancient times, but those times are over. Today if we wish to change the world, it is not magic but science that will give us our tools.”

From the set of her face, Thrower could see that he wasn't making much impression on her.

“Science,” she said. “Like feeling head bumps?”

He doubted she had tried very hard to hide her scorn. “Phrenology is an infant science,” he said coldly, “and there are many flaws, but I am seeking to discover–”

She laughed– a girlish laugh, that made her seem much younger than a woman who had borne fourteen children. “Sorry, Reverend Thrower, but I just remembered how Measure called it 'dowsing for brains,' and he allowed as how you'd have slim luck in these parts.”

True words, thought Reverend Thrower, but he was wise enough not to say so. “Mistress Faith, I spoke as I did to let people understand that there are superior ways of thought in the world today, and we need no longer be bound by the delusions of–”