The miller rode nearer, and turned his gaze to Arthur Stuart. 'And how did you guess such a thing?'
'You spoke with authority,' said Arthur Stuart, 'and you're riding a horse, and people made way for you. In a town this size, that makes you the miller.'
'And in a bigger town?' asked the miller.
'You'd be a lawyer or a politician,' said Arthur Stuart.
'The boy's a clever one,' said the miller.
'No, he just runs on at the mouth,' said Alvin. 'I used to beat him but I plumb gave out the last time. Only thing I've found that shuts him up is a mouthful of food, preferably pancakes, but we'd settle for eggs, boiled, scrambled, poached, or fried.'
The miller laughed. 'Come along to my house, not three rods beyond the commons and down the road towards the river.'
'You know,' said Alvin, 'my father's a miller.'
The miller cocked his head. 'Then how does it happen you don't follow his trade?'
'I'm well down the list of eight boys,' said Alvin. 'Can't all be millers, so I got put out to a smith. I've got a ready hand with mill equipment, though, in case you'll let me help you to earn our breakfast.'
'Come along and we'll see how much you know,' said the miller. 'As for these folks, never mind them. If some wanderer came through and told them the sun was made of butter, you'd see them all trying to spread it on their bread.' His mirth at this remark was not widely appreciated among the others, but that didn't faze him. 'I've got a shoeing shed, too, so if you ain't above a little ferrier work, I reckon there's horses to be shod.'
Alvin nodded his agreement.
'Well, go on up to the house and wait for me,' said the miller. 'I won't be long. I come to pick up my laundry.' He looked at the woman that Alvin had first spoken to. Immediately she ducked back inside the house to fetch the clothes the miller had come for.
On the road to the mill, once they were out of sight of the villagers, Alvin began to chuckle.
'What's so funny?' asked Arthur Stuart.
'That fellow with his pants around his ankles and birdshot dribbling out of his blunderbuss.'
'I don't like that miller,' said Arthur Stuart.
'Well, he's giving us breakfast, so I reckon he can't be all bad.'
'He's just showing up the town folks,' said Arthur Stuart.
'Well, excuse me, but I don't think that'll change the flavour of the pancakes.'
'I don't like his voice.'
That made Alvin perk up and pay attention. Voices were part of Arthur Stuart's knack. 'Something wrong with the way he talks?'
'There's a meanness in him,' said Arthur Stuart.
'May well be,' said Alvin. 'But his meanness is better than hunting for nuts and berries again, or taking another squirrel out of the trees.'
'Or another fish.' Arthur made a face.
'Millers get a name for meanness sometimes,' Alvin said. 'People need their grain milled, all right, but they always think the miller takes too much. So millers are used to having folks accuse them. Maybe that's what you heard in his voice.'
'Maybe,' said Arthur Stuart. Then he changed the subject. 'How'd you hide the plough when you opened your poke?'
'I kind of opened up a hole in the ground under the poke,' said Alvin, 'and the plough sank down out of sight.'
'You going to teach me how to do things like that?'
'I'll do my best to teach,' said Alvin, 'if you do your best to learn.'
'What about making shot spill out of a gun that's pointed at you?'
'My knack opened the paper, but his own trousers, that's what made the barrel dip and spill out the shot.'
'And you didn't make his trousers fall?'
'If he'd pulled up his suspenders, his pants would've stayed up just fine,' said Alvin.
'It's all unmaking though, isn't it?' said Arthur Stuart. 'Spilling shot, dropping trousers, making them folks feel guilty for not taking you in.'
'So I should've let them drive us away without breakfast?'
'I've skipped breakfasts before.'
'Well, aren't you the prissy one,' said Alvin. 'Why are you suddenly so critical of the way I do things?'
'You're the one made me dig out a canoe with my own hands,' said Arthur Stuart. 'To teach me making. So I keep looking to see how much making you do. And all I see is how you unmake things.'
Alvin took that a little hard. Didn't get mad, but he was kind of thoughtful and didn't speak much the rest of the way to the miller's house.
So nearly a week later, there's Alvin working in a mill for the first time since he left his father's place in Vigor Church and set out to be a prentice smith in Hatrack River. At first he was happy, running his hands over the machinery, analysing how the gears all meshed. Arthur Stuart, watching him, could see how each bit of machinery he touched ran a little smoother - a little less friction, a little tighter fit - so more and more of the power from the water flowing over the wheel made it to the rolling millstone. It ground faster and smoother, less inclined to bind and jerk. Rack Miller, for that was his name, also noticed, but since he hadn't been watching Alvin work, he assumed that he'd done something with tools and lubricants. `A good can of oil and a keen eye do wonders for machinery,' said Rack, and Alvin had to agree.
But after those first few days, Alvin's happiness faded, for he began to see what Arthur Stuart had noticed from the beginning: Rack was one of the reasons why millers had a bad name. It was pretty subtle. Folks would bring in a sack of corn to be ground into meal, and Rack would cast it in handfuls on to the millstone, then brush the corn flour into a tray and back into the same sack they brought it in. That's how all millers did it. No one bothered with weighing before and after, because everyone knew there was always some corn flour lost on the millstone.
What made Rack's practice a little different was the geese he kept. They had free rein in the millhouse, the yard, the millrace, and - some folks said - Rack's own house at night. Rack called them his daughters, though this was a perverse kind of thing to say, seeing as how only a few laying geese and a gander or two ever lasted out the winter. What Arthur Stuart saw at once, and Alvin finally noticed when he got over his love scene with the machinery, was how those geese were fed. It was expected that a few kernels of corn would drop; couldn't be helped. But Rack always took the sack and held it, not by the top, but by the shank of the sack, so kernels of corn dribbled out the whole way to the millstone. The geese were on that corn like - well, like geese on corn. And then he'd take big sloppy handfuls of corn to throw on to the millstone. A powerful lot of kernels hit the side of the stone instead of the top, and of course they dropped and ended up in the straw on the floor, where the geese would have them up in a second.
'Sometimes as much as a quarter of the corn,' Alvin told Arthur Stuart.
'You counted the kernels? Or are you weighing corn in your head now?' asked Arthur.
'I can tell. Never less than a tenth.'
`I reckon he figures he ain't stealing, it's the geese doing it,' said Arthur Stuart.
`Miller's supposed to keep his tithe of the ground corn, not double or triple it or more in gooseflesh.'
'I don't reckon it'll do much good for me to point out to you that this ain't none of our business,' said Arthur Stuart.