The Crystal City Part 37

Taleswapper greeted him with an embrace, and his arms were stronger than Arthur had feared, but feeble indeed compared to what they had been, years before, when last they met.

"You'll know when I'm dead," said Taleswapper. "Because suddenly all the jokes will run dry and all the gossip will go silent and people will just sit and look glum because they got no tales to tell."

"I reckon you heard what we were doing here and had to come and add it to your book."

"I don't think so," said Taleswapper. "I filled it already." He slid a thick volume from inside his deerskin jacket. "Every page in it, full, and I even added a few sc.r.a.ps to make more pages than the blamed thing had. No, I think I'm here because what you're building, it'll take the place of books like mine."

"I hope not," said Arthur Stuart. "I hope never."

"Well, we'll see," said Taleswapper. "You've grown a lot taller, but not a whit smarter, as far as I can see."

"Can't see smart," said Arthur Stuart.

"I can," said Taleswapper.

"Come on, then," said Arthur Stuart. "Even I'm I'm smart enough to know Alvin and Peggy'll want to see you smart enough to know Alvin and Peggy'll want to see you forth with." forth with."

"Forthwith?" asked Taleswapper.

"Abe Lincoln is reading law with Verily Cooper, and they let me listen in."

"I'd rather you kept on speaking English like the rest of us."

"Law is the biggest mishmash of languages. Two kinds of Latin, two kinds of French, and three kinds of English all made into a soup that n.o.body can understand except a lawyer."

"That's what it's for," said Taleswapper. "It's how lawyers make sure they'll always have work, cause n.o.body can understand what they wrote down except another lawyer."

Arthur led him down off the bluff to the flatland leading to the river. The trees were mostly gone from this area, cut down and turned into cabins and fence rails. "Eight thousand people living here now," said Arthur.

"Still more than half of them runaway slaves, though, right?" said Taleswapper. "And therefore subject to being taken back south?"

"All citizens here," here," said Arthur Stuart. "Ain't no catcher been able to claim a soul yet." said Arthur Stuart. "Ain't no catcher been able to claim a soul yet."

"Word outside is that Furrowspring County is in virtual rebellion against the laws of the United States, refusing to accept the Supreme Court ruling that slaveowners can recover their escaped property."

"I reckon so," so," said Arthur Stuart proudly. said Arthur Stuart proudly.

"There's war fever, and those as want to prevent the war, they might decide to sacrifice this town."

"As if they could," said Arthur Stuart. "With Alvin watching out for us!"

Taleswapper only shook his head.

They found Alvin down by the river, up to his knees in mud, helping with the sinking of posts to support a riverboat dock. "Howdy, Taleswapper!" cried Alvin. "About time you got here! You've missed all the best stories already, poor fellow. Too old to keep up with us boys, I reckon!"

"Reckon so," said Taleswapper. "But I got sense enough not to stand up to my neck in mud."

"This ain't just ordinary mud," said Alvin. "This is Mizzippy clay. It gets ahold of you and steals the boots right off your feet."

"Well, that's a recommendation for it. Make a cup out of such clay and it'll suck the tea right out of your mouth, is that the way of it?"

Alvin and all the men laughed. "Make a jar from it and it'll collect water from dry air."

"So you carry a bit of the Mizzippy with you even into dry land," said Taleswapper. "Why, with advertising like that, I reckon you could sell such jars for a dollar each and make fifty bucks in every town, as long as you hightailed it out before they found out the jars don't work."

"They'd work if Alvin made 'em!" shouted a man. That was enough to rouse a bit of a cheer for Alvin Maker, much to his embarra.s.sment.

"Well, if you're gonna waste time cheering a man covered in mud, I reckon I'll leave you to your own work and go show my good friend just what a perfect baby looks like."

"Show him your son, too, while you're at it!" shouted one of the workers, which was good for another laugh and another cheer for Alvin.

Alvin clambered out of the water and up the bank, and Arthur took due note that the mud just slid off his clothes and the water dried while he was watching and thirty steps from the river you'd never guess what Alvin had been working on not two minutes before. He won't use his knack to spare these men a moment's work, but he'll use it to spare himself a bath! Or at least to spare Peggy the task of cleaning up after a muddy husband ... so that was all right.

They pa.s.sed Measure, who was leading a team of men and horses doing stump removal. Arthur Stuart knew perfectly well that Measure was using as much makery as he had mastered to help free up the roots from the deep soil. But since there was still plenty of hard work for the men and teams to do, Alvin didn't say anything about it to him, and Arthur Stuart figured that as long as Measure kept his makery secret, n.o.body would give him the credit for how fast the clearing of the land was going.

But Measure left the work and came along. And when they got to Alvin's cabin, there inside it were a gaggle of women. La Tia seemed like the president of the women of Furrow-spring County, and what had gathered here might have been the great council: the leading women of the exodus, including Marie d'Espoir, Rien, and Mama Squirrel, and some of the women who had known Alvin and Peggy in years past, come to be part of the long-awaited city. Purity, a young preacher against Puritanism from New England, who still seemed to be in love with Verily Cooper-who hardly noticed she was there-and Fishy, a former slave from Camelot who had become something of a great woman among the abolitionists of the north in the years since her escape. And, of course, Peggy.

"I can't stay in this room," said Taleswapper. "So many glorious women, I have no choice but to be in love with all of you at once. It'll tear me apart."

"Live with it," said Peggy dryly. "I think you know them all."

"Them as I don't know, I hope I soon will," said Tale-swapper. "If I don't die in the next few minutes from pure happiness."

"That man talk some," said La Tia appreciatively.

"I didn't know there was a meeting," said Alvin.

"You wasn't invite," said La Tia. "My meeting. But you welcome a stay."

"What's the topic?" asked Alvin.

"The name of that thing what you build," said La Tia. "I don't like what Verily call it, me."

Peggy laughed. "n.o.body likes what anybody calls it," she said. "But La Tia was reading in the Bible and she has a name."

"You lead us out like Moses," said La Tia. "And Arthur Stuart, he lead us like Joshua when you gone. Not like Aaron, no! We got no golden calf! But we the book of Exodus, us. So this thing you build, I find out in the Bible, she a tabernacle." tabernacle."

Alvin frowned. "Makes it sound like a church meeting place."

"Oui!" cried Rien. "Only instead of you go and a priest pretend to be G.o.d, we go inside and find out where he live in our heart!"

"For a building that don't exist yet, everybody's got a good idea of how it's gonna work," said Alvin.

But of course they did. Alvin had already made thirty-two of the crystal blocks-big ones, heavy, hard to haul. They were stacked up waiting to be laid down as foundation stones, but there was hardly a soul in Furrowspring County what hadn't walked the corridor between those blocks and looked into their infinite depth. You walk among them and it feels like you're in a place larger than the whole world, with all of what was and is and is yet to come beside you on either hand, and the ordinary world looks so small and narrow, when you see it at the end of that glistening corridor. But then you walk away from the stacked up blocks and they get to looking small, and quite plain. Shimmery, yes, reflecting the trees and the sky, the clouds and the river, if you're standing where the reflection of the Mizzippy could be seen. Small on the outside, huge on the inside-oh, they all knew what this building was going to be like, when it was done.

"In the Bible," said Marie d'Espoir, "the tabernacle was a place where only the priest could go. He'd come out and tell everyone what he saw. But our tabernacle, everybody's the priest, everybody can go inside, man and woman, to see what they see and hear what they hear."

"It suits me fine," said Alvin. "I know I don't want it to be a church or school or such. Tabernacle's as fitting a name as any, and better than most. Though I know Verily's gonna be disappointed to find out you didn't like 'observatory.' "

"I like like it," said La Tia. "But I don't can it," said La Tia. "But I don't can say say it, me." it, me."

That issue decided, the women went on talking about which families didn't have clothes enough for their children, and which houses weren't big enough or warm enough, and who was sick and needed help. It was a good work they were doing, but the men weren't needed in the discussion and soon Arthur Stuart found himself outside. But not with Alvin and Taleswapper-they were off looking at the big house where Papa Moose's and Mama Squirrel's family were living even as the house was still being built. "Fifty-seven children," said Taleswapper. "And all of them born to this Mama Squirrel herself."

"We have the legal doc.u.mentation," said Alvin. "Not only that, but we know of another half dozen on the way."

"A remarkable pregnancy," said Taleswapper. "And such a small woman, she seemed, from what I saw of her."

Arthur Stuart stood outside the house and looked up at the bluff. The house was well placed. At the back door, you could look out onto the river and see any boat that might tie up at the new dock. And out the front door, you could see where the ... tabernacle tabernacle would stand, and even now you could see the two rows of stacked up crystal blocks waiting to be laid in place. would stand, and even now you could see the two rows of stacked up crystal blocks waiting to be laid in place.

He felt a hand on his shoulder.

He jumped. "Marie," he said. "You startled me."

"I meant to," she said. "All your makery, but you still don't notice a woman at all."

"Oh, I notice you," said Arthur Stuart.

"I know," said Marie, "You notice me all the time. You make sure you know exactly where I am, so you can always be somewhere else."

"Oh, I don't think that's what I'm..."

But it was was what he was doing. He just hadn't realized it. what he was doing. He just hadn't realized it.

"You afraid I kiss you again?" asked Marie.

"I didn't mind it, you know," he said.

"Or you afraid I won't?"

"I can live without it, if that's how you want it."

"Ignorant boy," she said. "You are supposed to say, I can't live without your kisses."

"But I can," said Arthur Stuart.

"All right," said Marie. She playfully slapped his shoulder as if brushing dust from it. Then she started to walk back to the house.

"But I don't want to," said Arthur Stuart.

He wasn't quite sure where he had found the courage to say it. Except maybe the fact that it was true, that he hardly went an hour without thinking about her and wondering whether she had kissed him to tease him or whether it meant something and how would he go about finding out. And so the words just spilled out of him.

She turned around and came back to him. "How much do you not not want to live without my kisses?" want to live without my kisses?"

He gathered her into his arms and kissed her, with perhaps more fervor than skill, but she didn't seem disposed to criticize. "Enough to do that in front of G.o.d and everybody," he said.

"Ah, look what you've done now," said Marie.

"What?"

"You kiss me so hard, now I'm going to have a baby."

It took him a moment to realize that she was joking, but in the meantime he'd been standing there with such a stupid look on his face that no wonder she laughed at him. "Why are you always so serious?" she said.

"Because when I kiss you," he said, "it's not a game to me."

"Life is a game," she said. "But you and me, I think we can win it together."

"You proposing something?" asked Arthur Stuart.

"Maybe," she said.

"Like marriage?" asked Arthur Stuart.

"Maybe a man should propose such a thing."

"And if I did, would you say yes?"

"I will say yes," said Marie, "as soon as Purity says yes to Verily Cooper."

"But he ain't asked her," said Arthur Stuart.

Marie laughed gaily and darted back into the cabin.

Leaving Arthur Stuart convinced that something really deep was going on between him and Marie d'Espoir, and he didn't have the least idea what it was.

He turned around and looked back at the rows of crystal blocks up on the bluff, and saw two men standing between them, looking into the walls. He knew them at once, without even sending his doodlebug out to confirm their ident.i.ty. Jim Bowie and Calvin Miller.

"Alvin," he murmured softly, then jogged around the cabin to where he could see the new house of Moose and Squirrel. Alvin and Taleswapper were out front, with Papa Moose talking all about this and that-he had so many plans for the house that now and then people had to remind him it was just a building-but Arthur Stuart could see that Alvin was looking up at the blocks and seeing just what Arthur Stuart had seen.

Alvin started moving away from the others and jogging toward the bluff. Taleswapper and Papa Moose followed behind, more slowly.

Arthur Stuart ducked inside the cabin again. "Peggy," he said, and beckoned.

"No, don't do that way," said La Tia. "You take her, all we talk about is why she go. Take us all!"

"Calvin's back," said Arthur Stuart. "And the man that's with him, he's a killer. I knew him on the river and in Mexico. "I should've known when I left him in True Cross that he'd join up with Calvin again."

The women started out of the house behind him, but Arthur Stuart didn't wait for them. He ran up the bluff and arrived just as Alvin did. They stood at the end of the corridor between the blocks.

"Calvin," said Alvin softly. "Glad to see you here."

"Could you lend a hand here?" said Calvin. "Seems old Jim Bowie here just can't tear himself away from whatever he's seeing in these mirrors of yours."

"He's seeing himself," said Alvin. "Like you did."

"I think he's seeing more than that," said Calvin. "Though I can't think what."

Was it possible that Calvin saw nothing but his own reflection, as simple as a mirror, when he looked into these walls? Arthur Stuart thought it might just be possible-Calvin wasn't known for being a deep thinker, and maybe the walls had no more depth than the person looking into them. But it was more likely that Calvin saw the same kinds of visions as everyone else, but just couldn't bring himself to tell the truth about it, any more than he could tell the truth about much of anything else.