Heartfire: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume V (8 page)

“Who asked you to paint birds?”

“Is this the question you wanted to ask me?” said Jean-Jacques.

Arthur stopped short. “No. Yes. The way you stuffed them birds back in the shop, that showed me you
know
the birds, you really see them, but then how can you kill them? You ain’t hungry.”

“I am often hungry. I am hungry right now. But it is not the bird I want to eat. Not goose today. What beautiful gooses. You love them flying, and I love them flying, but in France nobody ever sees these birds. Other birds they see, not the birds of America. Scientists write and talk about birds but they see only sketches, bad printing of them. I am not very good painter of people. Most of the people I do not like, and this makes my paintings not pretty to them. My people look like they are dead—etouffé—avec little glass eyes. But birds. I can paint them to be alive. I can find the colors, I see them there, and put them on the paper. We print, and now the scientist know, they open my book,
voilà
the American bird they never see. Now they can think about bird and they
see
them. God lets you to talk to birds, angry boy. He lets me to paint them. I should throw
away this gift of God except today, when you are here to help me?”

“It ain’t your gift when it’s the bird as dies for it,” said Arthur Stuart.

“All creatures die,” said Jean-Jacques. “Birds live the lives of birds. All the same. It is a beautiful life, but they live in the shadow of death, afraid, watching, and then, boom! The gun. The talon of the hawk! The paws of the cat. But the bird I kill, I make it into the picture, it will live forever.”

“Paint on paper ain’t a bird,” said Arthur Stuart sullenly.

Jean-Jacques’s hand flashed out and gripped Arthur’s arm. “Come here and say that to my picture!” He forced Arthur to stand over the open sketchbook. “You make me look at flying gooses. Now you look!”

Arthur looked.

“You see this is beautiful,” said Jean-Jacques. “And it teaches. Knowing is good. I show this bird to the world. In every eye, there is my bird. My goose is Plato’s goose. Perfect goose. True goose.
Real
goose.”

Alvin chuckled. “We aren’t too clear on Plato.”

Arthur turned scornfully to Alvin. “Miz Larner taught us all about Plato, lessen you was asleep that day.”

“Was this the question you had for Mr. Audubon?” asked Alvin. “Asking why he thinks it’s worth killing birds to paint them? Cause if it was, you sure picked a rude way to ask it.”

“I’m sorry,” said Arthur Stuart.

“And I think he gave you a fair answer, Arthur Stuart. If he was shooting birds and selling them to a poulterer you wouldn’t think twice cause it’s nature’s way, killing and eating. It’s all right to shoot a bird so some family can buy the carcass and roast it up and eat it gone. But iffen you just paint it, that makes him a killer?”

“I know,” said Arthur Stuart. “I knowed that right along.”

“Then what was all this shouting for?” asked Alvin.

“I don’t know,” said Arthur. “I don’t know why I got so mad.”

“I know why,” said Jean-Jacques.

“You do?” asked Alvin.

“Of course,” said Jean-Jacques. “The gooses do not like to die. But they cannot speak. They cannot, how you say, complain. So. You are the interpreter for birds.”

Arthur Stuart had no answer for this. They walked in silence for a while, as the road led them to the outlying buildings and then quickly into the city, the ground turning into a cobbled street under them.

“I think of a question for you, King Arthur,” said Jean-Jacques at last.

“What,” said Arthur, sounding far from enthusiastic.

“The sound you make, no goose ever make this sound. But they understand you.”

“Wish you could have heard him when he was younger,” said Alvin. “He sounded just like any bird you want.”

“He lost this when his voice change? Getting low?”

“Earlier,” said Alvin. He could not explain how he changed Arthur Stuart’s body so that the Finders couldn’t claim him. Though Jean-Jacques seemed a decent enough fellow, it wouldn’t be good to have any witness who could affirm that Arthur really was the runaway slave the Finders had been looking for.

“But my question,” said Jean-Jacques, “is how you learn this language. You never
hear
this language, so how to learn it?”

“I
do
hear the language,” said Arthur. “I’m talking their language right back to them. I just have a really thick human accent.”

At this, Jean-Jacques burst out laughing, and so did Alvin. “Human accent,” Jean-Jacques repeated.

“It ain’t like the geese talk in words anyway,” said Arthur. “It’s more like, when I talk, I’m making the sound that says, Hi, I’m a goose, and then the rest of it
says things like, everything’s safe, or, quick let’s fly, or, hold still now. Not words. Just... wishes.”

“But there was a time,” said Alvin, “when I saw you talking to a redbird and it told you all kinds of stuff and it wasn’t just wishes, it was complicated.”

Arthur thought about it. “Oh, that time,” he finally said. “Well, that’s cause that redbird wasn’t talking redbird talk. He was talking English.”

“English!” said Alvin, incredulous.

“With a really thick redbird accent,” said Arthur. And this time all three of them laughed together.

As they neared Mistress Louder’s boardinghouse, they could see a burly man bounding out into the street, then returning immediately through the garden gate. “Is that a man or a big rubber ball?” asked Jean-Jacques.

“It’s Mr. Fink,” said Arthur Stuart. “I think he’s watching for us.”

“Or is it Gargantua?” asked Jean-Jacques.

“More like Pantagruel,” said Arthur Stuart.

Jean-Jacques stopped cold. Alvin and Arthur turned to look at him. “What’s wrong?” asked Alvin.

“The boy knows Rabelais?” asked Jean-Jacques.

“Who’s that?” asked Alvin.

“Alvin was asleep that day, too,” said Arthur Stuart.

Jean-Jacques looked back and forth between them. “You and you have attend to school together?”

Alvin knew what Audubon must be thinking—that Alvin must be a dunce to have gone to school at the same time as a child. “We had the same teacher,” said Alvin.

“And she taught us in the same room at the same time,” said Arthur Stuart.

“Only we didn’t always get the same lesson,” said Alvin.

“Yeah, I got Rabelais and Plato,” said Arthur Stuart, “and Alvin married the schoolteacher.”

Jean-Jacques laughed out loud. “That is so pleasant!
Your wife is a schoolteacher but this slaveboy is the top student!”

“Reckon so, except one thing,” said Alvin. “The boy is free.”

“Oh yes, I’m sorry. I mean to say, this Black boy.”

“Half-Black,” Arthur Stuart corrected him.

“Which make you half-White,” said Jean-Jacques. “But when I look at you, I see only the Black half. Is this not curious?”

“When Black folks look at me,” said Arthur Stuart, “they see only the White half.”

“But the secret about you,” said Jean-Jacques, “is that deep in your heart,
you know Rabelais
!”

“What does that have to do with Black and White?” asked Alvin.

“It have to do that all this Black and White just make this boy laugh inside. When you are laughing deep down where no one else can see, Rabelais is there. Yes, Arthur Stuart?”

“Rabelais,” said Alvin. “Was that the book about the big huge fat guy?”

“So you did read it?”

“No,” said Alvin. “I got embarrassed and gave it back to Miz Lamer. Margaret, I mean. You can’t talk about things like that with a lady!”

“Ah,” said Jean-Jacques. “Your schoolteacher began as Miz Lamer, but now she is Margaret. Next you will call her ‘mama,’ n’est-ce pas?”

Alvin got a little tight-lipped at that. “Maybe you French folks like to read nasty books and all, but in America you don’t go talking about a man’s wife having babies.”

“Oh, you plan to get them some other way?” Jean-Jacques laughed again. “Look, Pantagruel has seen us! He is coming to crush us!”

Mike Fink strode angrily toward them. “You know what damn time it is!” he called out.

People nearby looked at him and glared.

“Watch your language,” Alvin said. “You want to get fined?”

“I wanted to get to Trenton before nightfall,” said Mike.

“How, you got a train ticket?” asked Alvin.

“Good afternoon, Pantagruel. I am Jean-Jacques Audubon.”

“Is he talking English?” asked Mike.

“Mike, this is John-James Audubon, a Frenchman who paints birds. Jean-Jacques, this is Mike Fink.”

“That’s right, I’m Mike Fink! I’m half bear and half alligator, and my grandma on my mother’s side was a tornado. When I clap my hands it scares lightning out of a clear sky. And if I want a bird painted, I’ll pee straight up and turn the whole flock yellow!”

“I tremble in my boots to know you are such a dangerous fellow,” said Jean-Jacques. “I am sure that when you say these things to ladies, their skirts fly up and they fall over on their backs.”

Mike looked at him for a moment in silence. “If he’s making fun of me, Alvin, I got to kill him.”

“No, he was saying he thinks you make a fine speech,” said Alvin. “Come on, Mike, it’s me you’re mad at. I’m sorry I didn’t get back. I found Arthur Stuart pretty quick, but then we had to stay and help Mr. Audubon paint a goose.”

“What for?” asked Mike. “Was the old colors peeling off?”

“No no,” said Jean-Jacques. “I paint on
paper
. I make a picture of a goose.”

Before Alvin could explain that the former river rat was making a joke, Mike said, “Thanks for clearing that up for me, you half-witted tick-licking donkey-faced baboon.”

“Every time you talk I hear how much of English I have yet to learn,” said Jean-Jacques.

“It wasn’t Mr. Audubon’s fault, Mike. It was Arthur Stuart who made us stay while he talked a goose into
holding still. So Mr. Audubon could paint a picture without having to kill the bird and stuff it first.”

“Well that’s fine with me,” said Mike. “I’m not all that mad about it.”

“You get more mad that this?” asked Jean-Jacques.

“None of you ain’t seen me mad,” said Mike.

“I have,” said Alvin.

“Well, maybe a little bit mad,” said Mike. “When you broke my leg.”

Jean-Jacques looked at Alvin, seeing him in a new light, if he could break the leg of a man who did indeed seem to be half bear.

“It’s Verily who’s about ready to explode,” said Mike.

“Verily?” asked Alvin, surprised. Verily Cooper hardly ever showed his temper.

“Yeah, he drummed his fingers on the table at lunch and on the porch he snatched a fly right out of the air and threw it at the house so hard it broke a window.”

“He did?” asked Arthur Stuart, in awe.

“I said so, didn’t I?” said Mike Fink.

“Oh, yeah, I forgot who was talking,” said Arthur.

“Arthur and Mr. Audubon are hungry and thirsty,” said Alvin. “You think you can take them in and see if Mistress Louder can get them a slab of bread and some water, at least?”

“Water?” said Audubon with a painted expression. “Do you Americans not understand that water can make you sick? Wine is healthy. Beer is good for you as long as you don’t mind making urine all the time. But water—you will get, what you call it, the piles.”

“I been drinking water all my life,” said Alvin, “and I don’t get no piles.”

“But this mean you are, how you say ...” Then he rattled off a stream of French.

“Used to it,” said Arthur, translating.

“Yes! Yoost a twit!”

“Used. To. It,” Arthur repeated helpfully.

“English is the stupidest language on Earth. Except for German, and it is not a language, it is a head cold.”

“You speak French?” Alvin asked Arthur Stuart.

“No,” said Arthur, as if it were the stupidest idea in the world.

“Well, you understood Mr. Audubon.”

“I guessed,” said Arthur. “I don’t even talk English all that good.”

Right, thought Alvin. You can talk English any way you want to. You just
like
to break the rules and sound like this is your first day out of a deep-woods cabin.

“Come on in and get something to eat,” said Mike. “And if you won’t drink water, Mr. Odd Bone—”

“Audubon,” Jean-Jacques corrected him.

“I hope hard cider will do the trick, cause I don’t reckon Mistress Louder has anything stronger.”

“Can
I
have some hard cider?” asked Arthur Stuart.

“No, but you can have a cookie,” said Alvin.

“Hurrah!”

“
If
she offers you one,” said Alvin. “And no hinting.

“Mistress Louder always knows what a fellow’s hungry for,” said Arthur Stuart. “It’s her knack.”

Jean-Jacques laughed. “The food I am hungry for has never been served in this whole continent!”