“Little enough!” The fretfulness was almost gone from Mama's voice now. “Why, my husband says you do the work of two grown men. And when you tell stories to the little ones I get more peace and quiet in this house than I've had since– since ever.” She turned back to Alvin, but now her anger was more an act than real. “Will you do what Taleswapper tells you, and come to church right quick?”
“Yes, Mama,” said Alvin Junior. “Quick as I can.”
“All right then. Thank you kindly, Taleswapper. If you can get that boy to obey, that's more than anybody else has managed since he learned to talk.”
“He's a real brat,” said Mary, from the hallway outside.
“Shut your mouth, Mary,” Mama said, “or I'll stuff your lower lip up your nose and tack it there to keep it shut.”
Alvin sighed in relief. When Mama made impossible threats it meant she wasn't all that angry anymore. Mary put her nose in the air and flounced down the hall, but Alvin didn't even bother with it. He just grinned at Taleswapper, and Taleswapper grinned at him.
“Having trouble getting dressed for church, lad?” asked Taleswapper.
“I'd rather dress myself in lard and walk through a herd of hungry bears,” said Alvin Junior.
“More people live through church than survive encounters with bears.”
“Not by much, though.”
Soon enough he got dressed. But he was able to talk Taleswapper into taking the shortcut, which meant walking through the woods up over the hill behind the house, instead of going around by way of the road. Since it was right cold outside, and hadn't rained in a while, and wasn't about to snow yet, there'd be no mud and Mama'd probably not even guess. And what Mama didn't know wouldn't hurt him.
“I noticed,” said Taleswapper as they climbed up the leaf-covered slope, “that your father didn't go with your mother and Cally and the girls.”
“He doesn't go to that church,” said Alvin. “He says Reverend Thrower is a jackass. Course, he don't say that where Mama can hear.”
“I suppose not,” said Taleswapper.
They stood at the top of the hill, looking down across open meadowland toward the church. The church's own hill hid the town of Vigor Church from view. The frost was just beginning to melt off the brown autumn grass, so that the church looked to be the whitest thing in a world of whiteness, and the sun flashed on it like it was another sun. Alvin could see wagons still pulling into place, and horses being tied to the posts on the meadow. If they hurried right now, they'd probably be in their places before Reverend Thrower started up the hymn.
But Taleswapper didn't start down the hill. He just set himself on a stump and started to recite a poem. Alvin listened tight, because Taleswapper's poems often had a real bite to them.
"I went to the Garden of Love, And saw what I never had seen: A chapel was built in the midst, Where I used to play on the green.
"And the gates of this chapel were shut, And 'Thou shalt not' writ over the door, So I turned to the Garden of Love, That so many sweet flowers bore,
"And I saw it was filled with graves, And tomb-stones where flowers should be. And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds, And binding with briars my joys and desires.
Oh, Taleswapper had a knack, he did, for as he recited, the very world changed before Alvin's eyes. The meadows and trees looked like the loudest shout of spring, vivid yellow-green with ten thousand blossoms, and the white of the chapel in the midst of it was no longer gleaming, but instead the dusty, chalky white of old bones. “Binding with briars my joys and desires,” Alvin repeated. “You ain't got much use for religion.”
“I breathe religion with my every breath,” said the Taleswapper. “I long for visions, I search for the traces of God's hand. But in this world I see more traces of the other. A trail of glistening slime that burns me when I touch it. God is a bit standoffish these days, Al Junior, but Satan has no fear of getting down in the muck with mankind.”
“Thrower says his church is the house of God.”
Taleswapper, he just sat there and said nothing for the longest time.
Finally Alvin asked him right out: “Have you seen devil traces in that church?”
In the days that Taleswapper had been with them, Alvin had come to know that Taleswapper never exactly lied. But when he didn't want to get pinned down with the true answer, he'd say a poem. He said one now.
"O Rose, thou art sick. The invisible worm, That flies in the night, In the howling storm
“Has found out thy bed, Of crimson joy, And his dark secret love, Does thy life destroy.”
Alvin was impatient with such twisting answers. “If I want to hear something I don't understand, I can read Isaiah.”
“Music to my ears, my lad, to compare me to the greatest of prophets.”
“He ain't much of a prophet if nobody can understand a thing he wrote.”
“Or perhaps he meant us all to become prophets.”
“I don't hold with prophets,” said Alvin. “Near as I can tell, they end up just as dead as the next man.” It was something he had heard his father say.
“Everybody ends up dead,” said Taleswapper. “But some who are dead live on in their words.”
“Words never stay straight,” said Alvin. “Now, when I make a thing, then it's the thing I made. Like when I make a basket. It's a basket. When it gets tore, then it's a tored-up basket. But when I say words, they can get all twisted up. Thrower can take those same very words I said and bend them back and make them mean just contrary to what I said.”
“Think of it another way, Alvin. When you make one basket, it can never be more than one basket. But when you say words, they can be repeated over and over, and fill men's hearts a thousand miles from where you first spoke them. Words can magnify, but things are never more than what they are.”
Alvin tried to picture that, and with Taleswapper saying it, the picture came easy to his mind. Words as invisible as air, coming out of Taleswapper's mouth and spreading from person to person. Growing larger all the time, but still invisible.
Then, suddenly, the vision changed. He saw the words coming from the preacher's mouth, like a trembling in the air, spreading out, seeping into everything– and suddenly it became his nightmare, the terrible, dream that came on him, waking or sleeping, and spiked his heart to his spine till he like to died. The world filling up with an invisible trembling nothing that seeped into everything and shook it apart. Alvin could see it, rolling toward him like a huge ball, growing all the time. He knew from all the nightmares before that even if he clenched his fists it would thin itself out and seep between his fingers, and even when he closed his mouth and his eyes it would press on his face and ooze into his nose and ears and–
Taleswapper shook him. Shook him hard. Alvin opened his eyes. The trembling air retreated back to the edges of his sight. That's where Alvin saw it most of the time, waiting just barely out of sight, wary as a weasel, ready to flit away if he turned his head.
“What's wrong with you, lad?” asked Taleswapper. His face looked afraid.
“Nothing,” said Alvin.
“Don't tell me nothing,” said Taleswapper. “All of a sudden I saw a fear come over you, as if you were seeing a terrible vision.”
“It wasn't a vision,” said Alvin. “I had a vision once, and I know.”
“Oh?” said Taleswapper. “What vision was that?”
“A Shining Man,” said Alvin. “I never told nobody about it, and I don't reckon to start now.”
Taleswapper didn't press him. “What you saw now, if it wasn't a vision– well, what was it?”
“It was nothing.” It was a true answer, but he also knew it was no answer at all. But he didn't want to answer. Whenever he told people, they just scoffed at him for being such a baby about nothing.
But Taleswapper wouldn't let him slough off his question. “I've been longing for a true vision all my life, Al Junior, and you saw one, here in broad daylight, with your eyes wide open, you saw something so terrible it made you stop breathing, now tell me what it was.”