bay.
Miller didn't come down, even at supper, and when Calm got up to carry food up the hill to his father, Taleswapper offered to come along.
"I don't know," said Calm. "You don't need to."
"I want to."
"Pa - he don't like lots of people gathered at the rock face, time like this." Calm looked a little sheepish. "He's a miller, and it's his stone getting cut there."
"I'm not a lot of people," said Taleswapper. Calm didn't say anything more. Taleswapper followed him up among the rocks.
On the way, they passed the sites of two early stonecuttings. The scraps of cut stone had been used to make a smooth ramp from the cliff face to ground level. The cuts were almost perfectly round. Taleswapper had seen plenty of stone cut before, and he'd never seen one cut this way - perfectly round, right in the cliff. Most times it was a whole slab they cut, then rounded it on the ground. There were several good reasons for doing it that way, but the best of all was that there was no way to cut the back of the stone unless you took a whole slab. Calm didn't slow down for him, so Taleswapper didn't have a chance to look closely, but as near as he could tell there was no possible way that the stonecutter in this quarry could have cut the back of the stone.
It looked just the same at the new site, too. Miller was raking chipped rock into a level ramp in front of the millstone. Taleswapper stood back and, in the last specks of daylight, studied the cliff. In a single day, working alone, Al Junior had smoothed the front of the millstone and chipped away the whole circumference. The stone was practically polished, still attached to the cliff face. Not only that, but the center hole had been cut to take the main shaft of the mill machinery. It was fully cut. And there was no way in the world that anybody could get a chisel in position to cut away the back.
"That's some knack the boy has," said Taleswapper.
Miller grunted assent.
"Hear you plan to spend the night up here," said Taleswapper.
"Heard right."
"Mind company?" asked Taleswapper.
Calm rolled his eyes.
But after a little bit, Miller shrugged. "Suit yourself."
Calm looked at Taleswapper with wide eyes and raised eyebrows, as if to say, Miracles never cease.
When Calm had set down Miller's supper, he left. Miller set aside the rake. "You et yet?"
"I'll gather wood for tonight's fire," said Taleswapper. "While there's still light. You eat."
"Watch out for snakes," said Miller. "They're mostly shut in for the winter now, but you never know."
Taleswapper watched out for snakes, but he never saw any. And soon they had a good fire, laid with a heavy log that would burn all night.
They lay there in the firelight, wrapped in their blankets. It occurred to Taleswapper that Miller might have found softer ground a few yards away from the quarry. But apparently it was more important to keep the millstone in plain sight.
Taleswapper began talking. Quietly, but steadily, he talked about how hard it must be for fathers, to watch their sons grow, so full of hope for the boys, but never knowing when death would come and take the child away. It was the right thing to talk about, because soon it was Alvin Miller doing the talking. He told the story of how his oldest boy Vigor died in the Hatrack River, only a few minutes after Alvin Junior was born. And from there, he turned to the dozens of ways that Al Junior had almost died. "Always water," Miller said at the end. "Nobody believes me, but it's so. Always water."
"The question is," said Taleswapper, "is the water evil, trying to destroy a good boy? Or is it good, trying to destroy an evil power?"
It was a question that might have made some men angry, but Taleswapper had given up trying to guess when Miller's temper would flare. This time it didn't. "I've wondered that myself," said Miller. "I've watched him close, Taleswapper. Of course, he has a knack for making people love him. Even his sisters. He's tormented them unmerciful since he was old enough to spit in their food. Yet there's not a one of them who doesn't find a way to make him something special, and not just at Christmas. They'll sew his socks shut or smear soot on the privy bench or needle up his nightshirt,