the day my oldest brother Vigor died in the Hatrack River. I thought as how you might even remember that day, and maybe you could show me the place where my brother lies buried. "
Her face changed again. "You," she said. "You're the boy who was born to that family - the seventh son of - "
"Of a seventh son," said Alvin.
"Well what's become of you, tell me! Oh, it was a portentous thing. My daughter stood there and looked afar off and saw that your big brother was still alive as you came out of the womb - "
"Your daughter," said Alvin, forgetting himself so much that he interrupted her clean in the middle of a sentence. "She's a torch."
The lady turned cold as ice. "Was," she said. "She don't torch no more."
But Alvin hardly noticed how the lady changed. "You mean she lost her knack for it? I never heard of a body losing their knack. But if she's here, I'd like to talk to her."
"She ain't here no more," said the lady. Now Alvin finally caught on that she didn't much care to talk about it. "There ain't no torch now in Hatrack River. Babies will be born here without a body touching them to see how they lie in the womb. That's the end of it. I won't say another word about such a girl as that who'd run off, just run right off."
Something caught in the lady's voice and she turned her back to him.
"I got to finish my bread," said the lady. "The graveyard is up the hill there." She turned around agaid to face him, with nary a sign of the anger or grief or what-all that she felt a second before. "If my Horace was here I'd have him show you the way, but you'll see it anyhow, there's a kind of path. It's just a family graveyard, with a picket fence around it." Her stern manner softened. "When you're done up there you come on back and I'll serve you better than scraps." She hurried on into the kitchen. Alvin followed her.
There was a cradle by the kitchen table, with a babe asleep in it but wiggling somewhat. Something funny about the baby but Alvin couldn't say right off what it was.
"Thank you for your kindness, ma'am, but I don't ask for no handouts. I'll work to pay for anything I eat."
"That's rightly said, and like a true man - your father was the same, and the bridge he built over the Hatrack is still there, strong as ever. But you just go now, see the graveyard, and then come back by and by."
She bent over the huge wad of dough on the kneading table. Alvin got the notion for just a moment that she was crying, and maybe he did and maybe he didn't see team drop from her eyes straight down into the dough. It was plain she wanted to be alone.
He looked again at the baby and realized what was different. "That's a pickaninny baby, isn't it?" he said.
She stopped kneading, but left her hands buried to the wrist in dough. "It's a baby," she said, "and it's my baby. I adopted him and he's mine, and if you call him a pickaninny I'll knead your face like dough."
"Sorry, ma'am, I meant no harm. He just had a sort of cast to his face that gave me that idea, I reckon - "
"Oh, he's half-Black all right. But it's the White half of him I'm raising up, just as if he was my own son. We named him Arthur Stuart."
Alvin got the joke of that right off. "Ain't nobody can call the King a pickaninny, I reckon."
She smiled. "I reckon not. Now get, boy. You owe a debt to your dead brother, and you best pay it now."
The graveyard was easy to find, and Alvin was gratified to see that his brother Vigor had a stone, and his grave was as well-tended as any other. Only a few graves here. Two stones with the same name - "Baby Missy" - and dates that told of children dying young. Another stone that said "Oldpappy" and then his real name, and dates that told of a long life. And Vigor.
He knelt by his brother's grave and tried to picture what he might have been like. The best he could do was imagine his brother Measure, who was his favorite brother, the one who was captured by