Orson Card - Heartfire

"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 Larner. Margaret, I mean. You can't talk about things like that with a lady!"

"Ah," said Jean-Jacques. "Your schoolteacher began as Miz Larner, 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 l?" 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!"

"What do you mean?" said Mike Fink. "We got frogs and snails here."

"But you have no garlic."

"We got onions so strong they make you fart blue," said Mike. "And I tasted a Red man's peppercorn one time that made me think I was a fish and I woke up in the river."

"The food of France does nothing so wonderful. It taste so good that every day God send a saint down to Paris to bring him his dinner, but what does he know?"

They continued the bragging contest into the kitchen. But Alvin stopped off in the small parlor, where Verily sat comfortably with a book on his lap. He glanced at Alvin and then back down at the book.

"Oh, you're back," said Verily. "I assumed you had been killed and Arthur sold into slavery." He turned a page. "Next time, perhaps." He said it with no expression at all. Mike was right. Alvin had never seen Verily Cooper so mad.

"I'm sorry," Alvin said.

"All right then," said Verily, setting down the book and rising to his feet. "Let's go." Verily walked toward the door.