Grinning Man

'You working too hard?' asked Alvin.

'Harder than is needed is always too hard,' said Arthur.

'Needed by whom and for what?' asked Alvin. 'You're right that I'm not making this canoe because we need to float down the river, and I'm not making it because it'll hurry up our travel.'

'Then why? Or have you give up altogether on doing things for reasons?'

'I'm not making a canoe at all,' says Alvin.

There knelt Arthur Stuart, up to his elbows in a hollowed-out log, scraping ash. 'This sure ain't a house!'

'Oh, you're making a canoe,' said Alvin. 'And we'll float in that canoe down that river over there. But I'm not making a canoe.'

Arthur Stuart kept working while he thought this over. After a few minutes he said, 'I know what you're making.'

'Do you?'

'You're making me do what you want.'

'Close.'

'You're making me make this tree into something, but you're also using this tree to make me into something.'

'And what would I be trying to make you into?'

'Well, I think you think you're making me into a maker,' said Arthur Stuart. 'But all you're making me into is a canoe-maker, which ain't the same thing as being an all-around all-purpose maker like yourself.'

'Got to start somewhere.'

'You didn't,' says Arthur. 'You was born knowing how to make stuff.'

'I was born with a knack,' says Alvin. 'But I wasn't born knowing how to use it, or when, or why. I learned to love making for its own sake. I learned to love the feel of the wood and the stone under my hands, and from that I learned to see inside it, to feel how it felt, to know how it worked, what held it together, and how to help it come apart in just the right way.'

'But I'm not learning any of that,' says Arthur.

'Yet.'

'No sir,' says Arthur Stuart. 'I'm not seeing inside nothing, I'm not feeling inside nothing except how my back aches and my whole body's pouring off sweat and I'm getting more and more annoyed at being made to labour on a job you could do with a wink of your eye.'

'Well, that's something,' says Alvin. 'At least you're learning to see inside yourself.'

Arthur Stuart fumed a little more, chipping away burnt wood as he did. 'Someday I'm going to get fed up with your smugness,' he says to Alvin, 'and I won't follow you any more.'

Alvin shook his head. 'Arthur Stuart, I tried to get you not to follow me this time, if you'll recall.'

'Is that what this is about? You're punishing me for following you when you told me not to?'

'You said you wanted to learn everything about being a maker,' says Alvin. 'And when I try to teach you, all I get is pissing and moaning.'

'You also get work from me,' says Arthur. 'I never stopped working the whole time we talked.'

'That's true,' says Alvin.

'And here's something you didn't consider,' says Arthur Stuart. 'All the time we're making a canoe, we're also unmaking a tree.'

Alvin nodded. 'That's how it's done. You never make something out of nothing. You always make it out of something else. When it becomes the new thing, it ceases to be what it was before.'

'So every time you do a making, you do an unmaking, too,' says Arthur Stuart.

'Which is why the Unmaker always knows where I am and what I'm doing,' says Alvin. 'Because along with doing my work, I'm also doing a little bit of his.'

That didn't sound right or true to Arthur Stuart, but he couldn't figure out an argument to answer it, and while he was trying to think one up, they kept on a-burning and a-chipping and to and behold, they had them a canoe. They dragged it to the stream and put it in and got inside it and it tipped them right over. Spilled them into the water three times, till Alvin finally gave up and used his knack to feel the balance of the thing and then reshape it just enough that it had a good balance to it.

Arthur Stuart had to laugh at him then. 'What lesson am I supposed to learn from this? How to make a bad canoe?'

'Shut up and row,' said Alvin.

'We're going downstream,' said Arthur Stuart, 'and I don't have to row. Besides which all I've got is this stick, which is no kind of paddle.'

'Then use it to keep us from running into the bank,' said Alvin, 'which we're about to do thanks to your babbling.'

Arthur Stuart fended the canoe away from the bank of the stream, and they kept on floating down until they joined a larger stream, and a larger, and then a river. All the time, Arthur kept coming back to the things Alvin said to him, and what he was trying to teach, and as usual Arthur Stuart despaired of learning it. And yet he couldn't help but think he had learned something, even if he had no idea at present what the thing he learned might be.

Because folks build towns on rivers, when you float down a river you're likely as not to come upon a town, which they did one morning with mist still on the river and sleep still in their eyes. It wasn't much of a town, but then it wasn't much of a river, and they weren't in much of a boat. They put in to shore and dragged the canoe on to the bank, and Alvin shouldered his poke with the plough inside and they trudged on into town just as folks was getting up and about their day.

First thing they looked for was a roadhouse, but the town was too small and too new. Only a dozen houses, and the road so little travelled that grass was growing from one front door to the next. But that didn't mean there was no hope of breakfast. If there's light in the sky, somebody's up, getting a start on the day's work. Passing one house with a barn out back, they heard the ping-ping-ping of a cow getting milked into a tin pail. At another house, a woman was coming in with the night's eggs from a chicken coop. That looked promising.

'Got anything for a traveller?' asked Alvin.

The woman looked them up and down. Without a word she walked on into her house.

'If you wasn't so ugly,' said Arthur Stuart, 'she would have asked us in.'

'Whereas looking at you is like seeing an angel,' said Alvin.

They heard the front door of the house opening.

'Maybe she was just hurrying in to cook them eggs for us,' said Arthur Stuart.

But it wasn't the woman who came out. It was a man, looking like he hadn't had much time to fasten his clothing. In fact, his trousers were kind of droopy, and they might have started laying bets on how quick they'd drop to the porch if he hadn't been aiming a pretty capable-looking blunderbuss at them.

'Move along,' the man said.

'We're moving,' said Alvin. He hoisted his poke to his back and started walking across in front of the house. The barrel of the shotgun followed them. Sure enough, just as they were about even with the front door, the trousers dropped. The man looked embarrassed and angry. The barrel of the blunderbuss dipped. The loose birdshot rolled out of the barrel, dozens of tiny lead balls hitting the porch like rain. The man looked confused now.

'Got to be careful loading up a big-barrel gun like that,' Alvin said. 'I always wrap the shot in paper so it don't do that.'

The man glared at him. 'I did.'

'Why, I know you did,' said Alvin.

But there sat the shot on the porch, a silent refutation. Nevertheless, Alvin was telling the simple truth. The paper was still in the barrel, as a matter of fact, but Alvin had persuaded it to break open at the front, freeing the shot.

'Your pants is down,' said Arthur Stuart.

'Move along,' said the man. His face was turning red. His wife was watching from the doorway behind him.

'Well, you know, we was already planning to,' said Alvin, 'but as long as you can't quite kill us, for the moment at least, can I ask you a couple of questions?'

'No,' said the man. He set down the gun and pulled up his trousers.

'First off, I'd like to know the name of this town. I reckon it must be called "Friendly" or "Welcome".'