Read The Crystal City: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume VI for Free Online Page B

to fight till the last possible moment.
    The cause of all this ruin was impossible for Alvin to find. Too small, or of a nature he didn’t know how to recognize. But that didn’t mean there was nothing he could do. The seeping blood—he could repair the blood vessels, clear away the pooling fluids. This sort of work, reconstructing injured bodies, he’d done that before and he knew how. He worked quickly, moved on, moved on. And soon he knew that he was well ahead of the disease, rebuilding faster than it could tear down.
    Until at last he could get to work on the liver. Livers were mysterious things and all he could do was try to get the sick parts to look more like the healthy parts. And maybe that was enough, because soon enough the woman coughed—with strength now, not feebly—and then sat up. “J’ai soif,” she said.
    “She’s thirsty,” said the girl.
    “Marie,” the woman said, and then reached for her with a sob. “Ma Marie d’Espoir!”
    Alvin had no idea what she was saying, but the embrace was plain enough, and so were the tears.
    He walked to the doorway, leaving them their privacy. From the position of the sun, he’d been there an hour. A long time to leave Arthur Stuart alone by the well.
    And these skeeters were bound to suck all the blood out of him and turn him into one big itch iffen he didn’t get out of this place.
    He was nearly to the end of the plank when he felt it tremble with someone else’s feet. And then something hit him from behind and he was on the damp grassy mound with Dead Mary lying on top of him covering him with kisses.
    “Vous avez sauvé ma mere!” she cried. “You saved her, you saved her, vous êtes un ange, vous êtes un dieu!”
    “Here now, let up, get off me, I’m a married man,” said Alvin.
    The girl got up. “I’m sorry, but I’m so full of joy.”
    “Well I’m not sure I did anything,” said Alvin. “Your mother may feel better but I didn’t cure whatever caused the fever. She’s still sick, and she still needs to rest and let her body work on whatever’s wrong.”
    Alvin was on his feet now, and he looked back to see the mother standing in the doorway, tears still running down her cheeks.
    “I mean it,” said Alvin. “Send her back to bed. She keeps standing there, the skeeters’ll eat her alive.”
    “I love you,” said the girl. “I love you forever, you good man!”
     
    Back in the plaza, Arthur Stuart was sitting on top of the four water jars—which he had moved some twenty yards away from the fountain. Which was a good thing, because there must have been a hundred people or more jostling around it now.
    Alvin didn’t worry about the crowd—he was mostly just relieved that they weren’t jostling around some uppity young black man.
    “Took you long enough,” Arthur Stuart whispered.
    “Her mother was real sick,” said Alvin.
    “Yeah, well, word got out that this was the sweetest-tasting water ever served up in Barcy, and now folks are saying it can heal the sick or Jesus turned the water into wine or it’s a sign of the second coming or the devil was cast out of it and I had to tell five different people that our water came from the fountain before it got all hexed or healed or whatever they happen to believe. I was about to throw dirt into it just to make it convincing.”
    “So stop talking and pick up your jars.”
    Arthur Stuart stood up and reached for a jar, but then stopped and puzzled over it. “How do I pick up the second one, while I got the first one on my shoulder?”
    Alvin solved the problem by picking up both the half-filled jars by the lip and putting them on Arthur’s shoulders. Then Alvin picked up the two full ones and hoisted them onto his own shoulders.
    “Well, don’t you make it look easy,” said Arthur Stuart.
    “I can’t help it that I’ve got the grip and the heft of a blacksmith,” said Alvin. “I earned them the hard way—you could do it too, if you wanted.”
    “I haven’t heard