The Crystal City: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume VI (15 page)

Nueva Barcelona finally had something to take the people’s minds off the yellow fever. Folks were still dying from it, and you can bet their families weren’t losing track of the fever’s vicious progress through the city, but a whole bunch of men who had felt completely helpless in the face of the epidemic were now given a task that would cover them with honor for doing what they’d been longing to do since the first outbreak of the plague:

Get out of town.

It was the first move that the rich made, whenever the fever struck—they packed up their families and went to the plantation in the country. But regular folks didn’t have that option, and rather despised the rich because they did. No,
real
men stuck around. They couldn’t afford to get their families out of the city, so they had to stay with them and risk watching their wives and children get sick and die. Not to mention the risk of dying themselves. Not much of a way to die, moaning with fever till you became one of those corpses the body wagons picked up on their sad passage through the streets.

So when word spread that Gobernador Anselmo Arellano was calling for volunteers to go upriver and bring home all the runaway slaves—and kill the white renegades who had helped them—well, there was no shortage of volunteers. Especially among that element of the city that was commonly known as “drunk and disorderly.”

Not everybody thought them particularly brave or honorable. Few whores, for instance, gave them their fifteen minutes free just because “I’m a soldier and I might die.” Nobody knew better than prostitutes just how few men were more than talk. This wasn’t an army that was likely to stand up long if they got any resistance. Hanging helpless, unarmed French folk, that was all they’d be good for, and then only if the French didn’t do anything dangerous, like slapping them or throwing rocks.

That’s what Calvin was hearing in the taverns along the dock as the “soldiers” assembled for shipment upriver. The commander was the governor’s son, Colonel Adan, who, as longtime head of the Nueva Barcelona garrison, was grudgingly appreciated for being less brutal than he could have been. But Calvin could easily imagine the despair the poor colonel must have felt upon seeing this sorry lot that had assembled to take ship.

Yet maybe they weren’t so sorry. Most of them were drunk—but tomorrow they wouldn’t be, and they might look like better soldiers by then. And it wasn’t as if the enemy would be hard to find. Five thousand slaves and French people, moving at the pace of the slowest child—it wasn’t going to be hard to locate them, was it? And what kind of fight could they put up? Oh, Colonel Adan probably felt just fine about things.

He might feel differently if he actually believed those ludicrous reports about a bridge made out of clear water that disappeared when his soldiers were out on it, causing a score of deaths and a lot of splashing and spluttering. Perhaps he was so used to pathetic excuses from his men for their failures that it never occurred to him that this one might be true.

What will Alvin do, Calvin wondered. Probably not fight. He puts far too high a value on human life, poor fellow. It’s not as if half these oafs won’t get themselves killed in some meaningless fight or just by falling into the river one drunken night.

Well, whatever he does, I won’t be there to help.

Though Calvin was not against helping if it didn’t put him out of his way. That’s why he had searched out Jim Bowie this morning and arranged with him to lead Calvin to Steve Austin. They met in a saloon two streets back from the water, which meant it was relatively quiet, with no jostling. There were a few other men there, though none that Calvin cared much about. Either he’d get to know them later or he wouldn’t. Right now all that mattered was Austin and his Mexican adventure.

Austin was going on about how he owed it to help the governor return the slaves to their place before going on his expedition. “It won’t take long,” said Austin. “How far can a bunch of runaways get? We’ll probably find them crying on the north shore of Pontchartrain. Hang a few, whip a lot, and drag ’em on home.
Then
it’s on to Mexico.”

Calvin only shook his head.

Austin looked from him to Bowie. “I need fighters,” he said, “not advisers.”

“I’d give him a listen, Steve,” said Bowie.

“Colonel Adan’s little slave-catching venture is doomed,” said Calvin. “Don’t be with them when they go down in flames.”

“Doomed? By what army?”

In answer, Calvin simply softened the metal in their mugs until they collapsed, covering the table with ale and cold soft metal. With not a little of it flowing onto their laps.

All the men sprang up from the table and began brushing ale off their laps. Calvin avoided smiling, even though they all looked like they’d peed in their trousers. He waited while Austin realized that the metal pools on the table were the former mugs.

“What did you do?”

“Not much,” said Calvin. “For a maker, anyway.”

Austin squinted at him. “You telling me you’re a maker?”

Another man muttered, “Ain’t no makers.”

“And your ale is still in your cup,” said Calvin cheerfully. “I ain’t much of a maker. But my brother Alvin, he’s a first-rater.”

“And he’s with them,” said Jim Bowie. “Tried to get him to join up with us, but he wouldn’t do it.”

“When Colonel Adan’s army finds those runaways,” said Calvin, “
if
he finds them, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if all their weapons turn into pools of metal on the ground.”

“Or plumb disappear,” said Bowie. “I seen him do it. Hard and heavy steel, and it was gone, like
that
.” He snapped his fingers.

Austin moved to a dry table and called for more ale. Then paused a moment to inquire, “I trust we’ll be allowed to finish these drinks?”

Calvin grinned.

Soon they were all seated at the new table—except for a couple of Austin’s men who found urgent business to attend to in some place where somebody wasn’t melting metal cups just by thinking about it.

“Mr. Austin, do you think I could be useful on your expedition to Mexico?” asked Calvin.

“I do,” said Austin. “Boy, howdy.”

“And I’ve got me a hankering to see what that tribe is like. My brother, see, he thinks he knows all about reds. But
his
reds is all peaceful like. I want to meet some of them Mexica, the ones who tear the beating heart out of their sacrifices.”

“Will it satisfy you if you see some of them dead? ’Cause we ain’t going there to meet them, we’re going there to kill them.”

“All of them?” said Calvin. “Oh my.”

“Well, no,” said Austin. “But I reckon the common folk’ll be glad enough to be shut of these human-sacrificing heathens.”

“I’ll tell you what,” said Calvin. “I’ll go with you to the end of your expedition, and help you all I can. Provided that you leave for Mexico by tomorrow morning.”

Austin leaned back and laughed. “So you think you can come here and start dictating when we’ll leave.”

“Not dictating a thing,” said Calvin. “Just telling you that any expedition to Mexico that sets out tomorrow, with all its men, I’ll join. And any that doesn’t, I won’t. You didn’t make your plans with me in mind, and you’re free to go on and carry them out without me.”

“Why are you so all-fired eager to keep us from helping catch them runaways?”

“Well, first, my brother’s with them, like I said. Since your men are probably the most dangerous in Barcy right now, I’m making my brother a little bit safer by keeping you all out of it.”

“That’s what I figured,” said Austin. “So what’s to say that as soon as Colonel Adan is gone upriver, you won’t just disappear?”

“Second reason is more important,” said Calvin. “If you go upriver with Colonel Adan, your men will get just as messed up as anybody else. My guess is that once Alvin’s through with them, you’ll never get them to invade their grandma’s privy, let alone Mexico.”

“I don’t know if your brother’s all that dangerous.”

Calvin got up, leaned over to their first table, and brought back a congealed swatch of metal that had once been a mug. “Can you just keep this in mind for a little while, so I don’t have to melt any more of them?”

“All right,” said Austin, “of course he’s dangerous, and I’m obliged to you for warning us.”

“And the third reason is, I don’t like sitting around waiting. If the expedition starts tomorrow, I’ll be with it. If it doesn’t, I’ll get bored and go off and find something entertaining to do.”

Austin nodded. “Well, I’ll think about it.”

“Good,” said Calvin.

“But you still didn’t answer my question about how do we know you’ll actually be there tomorrow.”

“I gave you my word,” said Calvin. “You can’t make me go if I don’t want to, but I tell you that I want to, and so I will. You get no better guarantee than that. You don’t have to trust me. You can do what you want.”

“How do I know I won’t have nothing but trouble from you along the way, trying to run everything? The way you’re bossing me around now?”

Calvin rose from his chair. “I can see, gentlemen, that some of you are more interested in being the big boss than in overcoming whatever powers these Mexica get from all the blood they spill. I apologize for wasting your time. I hear that the Mexica castrate the big boss before they cut out his heart. It’s an honor you’re welcome to.”

He started for the door.

Austin didn’t call him back. No one ran after him.

Calvin didn’t hesitate. He just kept on walking. Out into the street. And still no one ran after him. Well, doggone it.

No, there
was
somebody. Jim Bowie—Calvin recognized his heartfire. And he was stopping and throwing a—

Calvin ducked down and to the left.

A big heavy knife quivered from the wooden wall right where Calvin’s head used to be.

Calvin leapt up, furious. In a moment, Jim Bowie was there, grinning. Calvin ripped out a long string of French profanities—eloquent enough that a couple of people nearby, who spoke French, looked at him with candid admiration.

“What’s got your dander up, Mr. Maker?” said Jim Bowie. “Of course I aimed right at your head. Your brother would have made my knife vanish in midair.”

“I have more respect for cutlery,” said Calvin. Though truth to tell, he could no more make a knife disappear in mid flight than he could stop the world from spinning. He could work with mugs because they mostly sat on the table, very very still.

“The way I see it,” said Bowie, “you ain’t half the maker your brother is, but you want us to think that whatever he can do, you can do. And if that makes you mad to hear me say it, as it seems to be doing—”

“I’m not mad,” said Calvin.

“Glad to hear it,” said Bowie. “I’m laying it out the way I laid it out to Steve Austin. I wanted your brother because he would have guaranteed our success. He wouldn’t do it, and instead he got himself five thousand runaways to feed and no place to take them. Fine with me. But you, you
want
to come with us, and I think it’s because you want a chance to show off you’re just as good as your brother, only you’re not, and when that fact becomes plain and evident, I think a lot of good boys from this expedition are gonna be dead because they counted on you.”

Calvin wanted to blast him into pieces on the spot. But he had his own rules, even if they weren’t Alvin’s. You don’t kill a man just for saying something you don’t want to hear, even if it is a pack of lies.

So Calvin only nodded and walked on toward the dock. “Well,” said Calvin, “I reckon that’s a wise choice. You run on back to Steve Austin and tell him I said good luck.”

Bowie, however, did not turn and go back. A good sign. “Look, Mr. Calvin, I’m here to ask you to come back. We just got to know—what can you do? Turning a bunch of pewter mugs into mush is thrilling, of course, but we need to know what you can
do
. You saw my knife coming early enough to dodge it, but you couldn’t destroy it in flight, which suggests that Mexica bullets aren’t gonna disappear in midair either. So before we take you along with your brag and your bossiness—and I mean that in the nicest possible way, those being traits I’m proud of in myself—before we take you along, we got to know: What exactly can you do that’ll be of practical help in our fighting?”

“That fog yesterday,” said Calvin. “That was mine.”

“Easy enough to claim you caused the weather. Me, I’ve been running winter ever since my old pap left me the job in his will.”

In reply, Calvin cooled the air right around them. “I think we got us a fog starting up right here, right now.”

And sure enough, the moisture in the air began to condense until Bowie couldn’t see anything else in all the world but Calvin’s face.

“All right,” said Bowie. “That’s a useful knack.”

“My knack isn’t fog-making,” said Calvin. “Or weather, or any other one thing.”

A fish flopped up out of the water onto the dock. And another. And a couple more. And pretty soon there were scores of fish flopping around on the wooden planks right among the passersby. Naturally, some of the fishermen on the dock started picking them up—some to throw the fish back, others to try to keep them to sell. An argument immediately sprang up. “Those fish must be sick, you can’t sell them!” To which the reply came, “He don’t feel sick to
me
, a fish this strong!” Whereupon the fish flapped out of the man’s arms and back into the water.

“If you ever need fish,” said Calvin.

“Oh, yeah, sure,” said Bowie. “But can you do it if there ain’t no river?”

For a moment Calvin wanted to slap him. Couldn’t he recognize a miracle when he saw one? He would have made a perfect Israelite, complaining at Moses because all they had was manna and no meat.

Then Bowie grinned and clapped him on the shoulder. “Can’t you tell when you’re being joshed, man? Of course you can come. Nobody has a dodge-the-knife-from-behind knack
and
the fog-making knack
and
the knack of making fish jump out of the water right up onto the dock.”

“So I pass your test?” said Calvin, letting a little pissed-offedness seep into his voice.