Alvin Jorneyman

“I think not.”

Becca smiled.

“Show me the thread,” said Peggy.

“We don't do that.”

“What harm can it do? I've already seen all the possible paths of my life.”

“But you haven't seen which one you'll choose,” said Becca.

“And you have?”

“At this moment, no,” said Becca. “But in the moment that contains all moments, yes. I've seen the course of your life. That isn't why you came, though. Not to find out something as stupid as whether you'll marry the boy you've nurtured all these years. You will or you won't. What is that to me?”

“I don't know,” said Peggy. “I wonder why you exist at all. You change nothing. You merely see. You weave, but the threads are out of your control. You are meaningless.”

“So you say,” said Becca.

“And yet you have a life, or had one. You loved Ta-Kumsaw– or Isaac, whatever name you use. So loving some boy, marrying him, that didn't always seem stupid to you.”

“So you say,” said Becca.

“Or do you include yourself in that? Do you call yourself stupid in having loved and married? You can't pretend to be inhuman when you loved and lost a man.”

“Lost?” she asked. “I see him every day.”

“He comes here? To Appalachee?”

Becca hooted. “I think not!”

“How many threads broke under your hand with that pass of the shuttlecock?” asked Peggy.

“Too many,” said Becca. “And not enough.”

“Did you break them? Or did they simply happen to break?”

“The thread grew thin. The life wore out. Or it was cut. It isn't the thread that cuts the life, it's the death that cuts the thread.”

“So you keep a record, is that it? The weaving causes nothing, but simply records it all.”

Becca smiled thinly. “Passive, useless creatures that we are, but we must weave.”

Peggy didn't believe her, but there was no use in arguing. “Why did you bring me here?”

“I told you. I didn't.”

“Why did she bring me here?”

“To judge.”

“What is it that I'm supposed to judge?”

Becca passed the shuttlecock from her right hand to her left. The loom slammed forward, then dropped back. She passed the shuttlecock from her left hand to her right. Again, the frame slammed forward, weaving the threads tight.

This is a dream, thought Peggy. And not a very pleasant one. Why can't I ever wake up to escape from some foolish useless dream?

“Personally,” said Becca, “I think you've already made your judgment. It's only my sister thinks that you deserve a second chance. She's very romantic. She thinks that you deserve some happiness. My own feeling is that human happiness is a very random thing, and bestows itself willy-nilly, and there's not much deserving about the matter.”

“So it's myself that I'm supposed to judge?”

Becca laughed.

One of the girls stuck her head into the room. “Mother says it's nasty and uncompassionate when you laugh during the weaving,” she said.

“Na

The girl laughed lightly, and Becca did too.

“Mother mixed up something really vile for your supper. With dumplings.”

“Vileness with dumplings,” said Becca. “Do sup with me.”

“Let the judge do that,” said the girl. “She really is a bossy one. Telling us about right and wrong.” With that the girl disappeared.

Becca clucked for a moment. “The children are so full of themselves. Still very impressed with the idea that they aren't part of the normal world. You must forgive them for being arrogant and cruel. They couldn't have hurt their brother much, because they haven't the strength to strike a blow that will really harm him.”

“He bled,” said Peggy. “He limped.”

“But the squirrel died,” said Becca.

“You keep no threads for squirrels.”

“I keep no threads for them. But that doesn't mean their threads aren't woven.”

“Oh, tell me flat out. Don't waste my time with mysteries.”

“I haven't been,” said Becca. “No mysteries. I've told you everything that's useful. Anything else I told you might affect your judgment, and so I won't do it. I let my sister have her way, bringing you here, but I'm certainly not going to bend your life any more than that. You can leave whenever you want– that's a choice, and a judgment, and I'll be content with it.”

“Will I?”

“Come back in thirty years and tell me.”

“Will I be–”

“If you're still alive then.” Becca gri

Two girls came in with a plate and a bowl and a cup on a tray. They set it on a small table near the loom. The plate was covered with a strange-smelling food. Peggy recognized nothing about it. Nor was there anything that she might have called a dumpling.

“I don't like it when people watch me eat,” said Becca.

But Peggy was feeling very angry now, with all the elusiveness of Becca's conversation, and so she did not leave as courtesy demanded.

“Stay, then,” said Becca.

The girls began to feed her. Becca did nothing to seek out the food. She kept up the perfect rhythm of her weaving, just as she had done throughout their conversation. The girls deftly maneuvered spoon or fork or cup to find their Aunt Becca's mouth, and then with a quick slurp or bite or sip she had the food. Not a drop or crumb was spilled on the cloth.

It could not always be like this, thought Peggy. She married Ta-Kumsaw. She bore a daughter to him, the daughter that went west to weave a loom among the Reds beyond the Mizzipy. Surely those things were not done with the shuttlecock flying back and forth, the loom slamming dowd to tamp the threads. It was deception. Or else it involved things Peggy was not going to understand however she tried.

She turned and left the room. The hall ended in a narrow stair. Sitting on the top step was, she assumed, the boy– she could see only his bare feet and trouser legs. “How's the nose?” she asked.

“Still hurts,” said the boy. He scootched forward and dropped down a couple of steps by bouncing on his bottom.

“But not too bad,” she said. “Healing fast.”

“They was only girls,” he said scornfully.

“You didn't think such scorn of them when they were pounding on you,” she said.

“But you didn't hear me callin' uncle, did you? You didn't hear no uncle from me.”

“No,” said Peggy. “No uncle from you.”

“I got me an uncle, though. Big Red man. Ike.”

“I know of him.”

“He comes most every day.”

Peggy wanted to demand information from him. How does Ta-Kumsaw get here? Doesn't he live west of the Mizzipy? Or is he dead, and comes only in the spirit?

“Comes through the west door,” said the boy. “We don't use that one. Just him. It's the door to my cousin Wieza's cabin.”

“Her father calls her Mana-Tawa, I think.”

The boy hooted. “Just giving her a Red name don't mean he can hold on to her. She don't belong to him.”

“Whom does she belong to?”

“To the loom,” he said.

“And you?” asked Peggy. “Do you belong to the loom?”

He shook his head. But he looked sad.

Peggy said it as she realized it: “You want to, don't you.”

“She ain't going to have no more daughters. She don't stop weaving for him anymore. So she can't go. She'll just be there, forever.”

“And nephews can't take her place?”

“Nieces can, but my sisters ain't worth pigslime, in my opinion, which happens to be correck.”

“Correct,” said Peggy. “There's a t on the end.”

“Correckut,” the boy said. “But what I think is they ought to spell the words the way folks say 'em, stead of making us say 'em the way they're spelt.”

Peggy had to laugh. “You have a point. But you can't just start spelling words any which way. Because you don't say them the same os someone from, say, Boston. And so pretty soon you and he would be spelling things so differently that you couldn't read each other's letters or books.”