Alvin Journeyman: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume IV Read Free Page B

with God and endedwith Alvin. Calvin looked him up and down. The buckskins were about as old as the man. “Did you get them clothes off a ninety-year-old deer, or did your daddy and grandpa wear them all their lives to get them so worn out like that?”
    “I’ve worn these clothes so long,” said the old man, “that I sometimes send them on errands when I’m too busy to go, and nobody can tell the difference.”
    “I think I know you,” said Calvin. “You’re that old Taleswapper fellow.”
    “So I am,” said the old man. “And you’re Calvin, old Miller’s youngest boy.”
    Calvin waited.
    And here it came: “Alvin’s little brother.”
    Calvin folded himself sitting down and then unfolded himself standing. He liked how tall he was. He liked looking down at the old man’s bald head. “You know, old man, if we had another just like you, we could put your smooth pink heads together and you’d look like a baby’s butt.”
    “Don’t like being called Alvin’s little brother, eh?” asked Taleswapper.
    “You know where to go for your free meal,” said Calvin. He started to walk away into the meadow. Having no destination in mind, of course, his walking pretty soon petered out, and he paused a moment, looking around, wishing there was something he wanted to do.
    The old man was right behind him. Damn but the old boy was quiet! Calvin had to remember to keep a watch out for people. Alvin did it without thinking, dammit, and Calvin could do it too if he could just remember to remember.
    “Heard you chuckling,” said Taleswapper. “When I first walked up behind you.”
    “Well, then, I guess you ain’t deaf yet.”
    “Saw you watching the millhouse and heard you chuckling and I thought, What does this boy see so funny in a mill whose wheel don’t turn?”
    Calvin turned to face him. “You were born in England, weren’t you?”
    “I was.”
    “And you lived in Philadelphia awhile, right? Met old Ben Franklin there, right?”
    “What a memory you have.”
    “Then how come you talk like a frontiersman? You know and I know that it’s supposed to be ‘a mill whose wheel
doesn’t
turn,’ but here you are talking bad grammar as if you never went to school but I know you did. And how come you don’t talk like other Englishmen?”
    “Keen ear, keen eye,” said Taleswapper. “A sharp one for details. Dull on the big picture, but sharp on details. I notice you talk worse than
you
know how, too.”
    Calvin ignored the insult. He wasn’t going to let this old coot distract him with tricks. “I said how come you talk like a frontiersman?”
    “Spend a lot of time on the frontier.”
    “I spend a lot of time in the chicken coop but that don’t make me cluck.”
    Taleswapper grinned. “What do
you
think, boy?”
    “I think you try to sound like the people you’re telling your lies to, so they’ll trust you, they’ll think you’re one of them. But you’re not one of us, you’re not one of anybody. You’re a spy, stealing the hopes and dreams and wishes and memories and imaginings of everybody and leaving them nothing but lies in exchange.”
    Taleswapper seemed amused. “If I’m such a criminal, why ain’t I rich?”
    “Not a criminal,” said Calvin.
    “I’m relieved to be acquitted.”
    “Just a hypocrite.”
    Taleswapper’s eyes narrowed.
    “A hypocrite,” Calvin said again. “Pretending to be what you’re not. So other people will trust you, but they’re trusting in a bunch of pretenses.”
    “That’s an interesting idea, there, Calvin,” said Taleswapper.“Where do you draw the line between a humble man who knows his own weaknesses but tries to act out virtues he hasn’t quite mastered yet, and a proud man who pretends to have those virtues without the slightest intention of acquiring them?”
    “Listen to the frontiersman now,” said Calvin scornfully. “I knew you could shed that folksy talk the minute you wanted to.”
    “Yes, I can do that,” said Taleswapper.