Free Seventh Son: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume I by Orson Scott Card

left only two possibilities, each one worse than the other. Al was so mad at himself he smacked his own head with his fist, but it didn’t make him feel no better. Papa would probably give him a lick, but even worse would be Mama. She might give him a tongue-lashing, which was bad enough, but if she was in a real vile temper, she’d get that cold look on her face and say real soft, “Alvin Junior, I used to hope that at least one of my boys would be a born gentleman, but now I see my life was wasted,” which always made him feel about as low as he knew how to feel without dying.
    So he was almost relieved when the door opened and Papa stood there, still buttoning his trousers and looking none too happy. “Is it safe for me to step out this door?” he asked coldly.
    “Yup,” said Alvin Junior.
    “What?”
    “Yes sir.”
    “Are you sure? There’s some wild animals around here that think it’s smart to leave their do on the ground outside privy doors. I tell you that if there’s any such animal I’ll lay a trap and catch it by the back end one of these nights. And when I find it in the morning, I’ll stitch up its bung hole and turn it loose to bloat up and die in the woods.”
    “Sorry, Papa.”
    Papa shook his head and started walking toward the house. “I don’t know what’s wrong with your bowel, boy. One minute you don’t need to go and the next minute you’re about to die.”
    “Well if you’d just build another outhouse I’d be fine,” Al Junior muttered. Papa didn’t hear him, though, because Alvin didn’t actually say it till the privy door was closed and Papa’d gone back to the house, and even then he didn’t say it very loud.
    Alvin rinsed his hands at the pump a long time, because he feared what was waiting for him back in the house. But then, alone outside in the darkness, he began to be afraid for another reason. Everybody said that a White man never could hear when a Red man was walking through the woods, and his big brothers got some fun out of telling Alvin that whenever he was alone outside, especially at night, there was Reds in the forest, watching him, playing with their flint-bladed tommy-hawks and itching to have his scalp. In broad daylight, Al didn’t believe them, but at night, his hands cold with the water, a chill ran through him, and he thought he even knew where the Red was standing. Just over his shoulder, back over near the pigsty, moving so quiet that the pigs didn’t even grunt and the dogs didn’t bark or nothing. And they’d find Al’s body, all hairless and bloody, and then it’d be too late. Bad as his sisters were—and they were bad— Al figured they’d be better than dying from a Red man’s flint in his head. He fair to flew from the pump to the house, and he didn’t look back to see if the Red was really there.
    As soon as the door was closed, he forgot his fears of silent invisible Reds. Things were right quiet in the house, which was pretty suspicious to start with. The girls were never quiet till Papa shouted at them at least three times each night. So Alvin walked up real careful, looking before every step, checking over his shoulder so often he started getting a crick in his neck. By the time he was inside his room with the door closed he was so jittery that he almost hoped they’d do whatever they were planning to do and get it over with.
    But they didn’t do it and they didn’t do it. He looked around the room by candlelight, turned down his bed, looked into every corner, but there was nothing there. Calvin was asleep with his thumb in his mouth, which meant that if they had prowled around his room, it had been a while ago. He began to wonder if maybe, just this once, the girls had decided to leave him be or even do their dirty tricks to the twins. It would be a whole new life for him, if the girls started being nice. Like as if an angel came down and lifted him right out of hell.
    He stripped off his clothes quick as he could, folded