Eleanor paused a moment on the bank and looked back to where her father stood on the wagon seat. She glanced downstream, then looked back at him. Alvin understood the question, and he shook his head no. Faith was not to know of Vigor's sacrifice. Tears came unwelcome to Alvin's eyes, but not to Eleanor's. Eleanor was only fourteen, but when she didn't want to cry, she didn't cry.
Wastenot hawed the horse and the little wagon lurched forward, Faith wincing as the girls patted her and the rain poured. Faith's gaze was somber as a cow's, and as mindless, looking back at her husband, back at the river. At times like birthing, Alvin thought, a woman becomes a beast, slack-minded as her body takes over and does its work. How else could she bear the pain? As if the soul of the earth possessed her the way it owns the souls of animals, making her part of the life of the whole world, unhitching her from family, from husband, from all the reins of the human race, leading her into the valley of ripeness and harvest and reaping and bloody death.
“She'll be safe now,” the blacksmith said. “And we have horses here to pull your wagon out.”
“It's slacking off,” said Measure. “The rain is less, and the current's not so strong.”
"As soon as your wife stepped ashore, it eased up, said the farmer-looking feller. "The rain's dying, that's sure."
“You took the worst of it in the water,” said the blacksmith. “But you're all right now. Get hold of yourself, man, there's work to do.”
Only then did Alvin come to himself enough to realize that he was crying. Work to do, that's right, get hold of yourself, Alvin Miller. You're no weakling, to bawl like a baby. Other men have lost a dozen children and still live their lives. You've had twelve, and Vigor lived to be a man, though he never did get to marry and have children of his own. Maybe Alvin had to weep because Vigor died so nobly; maybe he cried because it was so sudden.
David touched the blacksmith's arm. “Leave him be for a minute,” he said softly. “Our oldest brother was carried off not ten minutes back. He got tangled in a tree floating down.”
"It wasn't no tangle, " Alvin said sharply. "He jumped that tree and saved our wagon, and your mother inside it! That river paid him back, that's what it did, it punished him."
Calm spoke quietly to the local men. “It run him up against that boulder there.” They all looked. There wasn't even a smear of blood on the rock, it seemed so innocent.
“The Hatrack has a mean streak in it,” said the blacksmith, “but I never seen this river so riled up before. I'm sorry about your boy. There's a slow, flat place downstream where he's bound to fetch up. Everything the river catches ends up there. When the storm lets up, we can go down and bring back the– bring him back.”
Alvin wiped his eyes on his sleeve, but since his sleeve was soaking wet it didn't do much good. “Give me a minute more and I can pull my weight,” said Alvin.
They hitched two more horses and the four beasts had no trouble pulling the wagon out against the much weakened current. By the time the wagon was set to rights again on the road, the sun was even breaking through.
“Wouldn't you know,” said the blacksmith. “If you ever don't like the weather hereabouts, you just set a spell, cause it'll change.”
“Not this one,” said Alvin. “This storm was laid in wait for us.”
The blacksmith put his arm across Alvin's shoulder and spoke real gentle. “No offense, mister, but that's crazy talk.”
Alvin shrugged him off. “That storm and that river wanted us.”
“Papa,” said David, “you're tired and grieving. Best be still till we get to the road house and see how Mama is.”
“My baby is a boy,” said Papa. “You'll see. He would have been the seventh son of a seventh son.”
That got their attention, right enough, that blacksmith and the other men as well. Everybody knew a seventh son had certain gifts, but the seventh son of a seventh son was about as powerful a birth as you could have.
“That makes a difference,” said the blacksmith. “He'd have been a born dowser, sure, and water hates that.” The others nodded sagely.
“The water had its way,” said Alvin. “Had its way, and all done. It would've killed Faith and the baby, if it could. But since it couldn't, why, it killed my boy Vigor. And now when the baby comes, he'll be the sixth son, cause I'll only have five living.”
“Some says it makes no difference if the first six be alive or not,” said a farmer.
Alvin said nothing, but he knew it made all the difference. He had thought this baby would be a miracle child, but the river had taken care of that. If water don't stop you one way, it stops you another. He shouldn't have hoped for a miracle child. The cost was too high. All his eyes could see, all the way home, was Vigor dangling in the grasp of the roots, tumbling through the current like a leaf caught up in a dust devil, with the blood seeping from his mouth to slake the Hatrack's murderous thirst.
Chapter Five – Caul
Little Peggy stood in the window, looking out into the storm. She could see all those heartfires, especially one, one so bright it was like the sun when she looked at it. But there was a blackness all around them. No, not even black– a nothingness, like a part of the universe God hadn't finished making, and it swept around those lights as if to tear them from each other, sweep them away, swallow them up. Little Peggy knew what that nothingness was. Those times when her eyes saw the hot yellow heartfires, there were three other colors, too. The rich dark orange of the earth. The thin grey color of the air. And the deep black emptiness of water. It was the water that tore at them now. The river, only she had never seen it so black, so strong, so terrible. The heartfires were so tiny in the night.
“What do you see, child?” asked Oldpappy.
“The river's going to carry them away,” said little Peggy.
“I hope not.”
Little Peggy began to cry.
“There, child,” said Oldpappy. “It ain't always such a grand thing to see afar off like that, is it.”
She shook her head.
“But maybe it won't happen as bad as you think.”
Just at that moment, she saw one of the heartfires break away and tumble off into the dark. “Oh!” she cried out, reaching as if her hand could snatch the light and put it back. But of course she couldn't. Her vision was long and clear, but her reach was short.
“Are they lost?” asked Oldpappy.
“One,” whispered little Peggy.
“Haven't Makepeace and the others got there yet?”
“Just now,” she said. “The rope held. They're safe now.”
Oldpappy didn't ask her how she knew, or what she saw. Just patted her shoulder. “Because you told them. Remember that, Margaret. One was lost, but if you hadn't seen and sent help, they might all have died.”
She shook her head. “I should've seen them sooner, Oldpappy, but I fell asleep.”
“And you blame yourself?” asked Oldpappy.
“I should've let Bloody Mary nip me, and then Father wouldn't've been mad, and then I wouldn't've been in the spring house, and then I wouldn't've been asleep, and then I would've sent help in time–”
“We can all make daisy chains of blame like that, Maggie. It don't mean a thing.”
But she knew it meant something. You don't blame blind people cause they don't warn you you're about to step on a snake– but you sure blame somebody with eyes who doesn't say a word about it. She knew her duty ever since she first realized that other folks couldn't see all that she could see. God gave her special eyes, so she'd better see and give warning, or the devil would take her soul. The devil or the deep black sea.
“Don't mean a thing,” Oldpappy murmured. Then, like he just been poked in the behind with a ramrod, he went all straight and said, “Spring house! Spring house, of course.” He pulled her close. “Listen to me, little Peggy. It wasn't none of your fault, and that's the truth. The same water that runs in the Hatrack flows in the spring house brook, it's all the same water, all through the world. The same water that wanted them dead, it knew you could give warning and send help. So it sang to you and sent you off to sleep.”