'You keep saying that, but the things you do, I keep wondering,' said Arthur Stuart. 'I'm not the one gallivanting all over creation while my pregnant wife is resting up to have the baby back in Hatrack River. I'm not the one keeps getting himself throwed in jail or guns pointed at him.'
'You're telling me that when I see a thief I got to keep my mouth shut?'
'You think these folks are going to thank you?'
'They might.'
'Put their miller in jail? Where they going to get their corn ground then?'
'They don't put the mill in jail.'
'Oh, you going to stay here, then? You going to run this mill for them, till you taught the whole works to a prentice? How about me? You can bet they'll love paying their miller's tithe to a free half-Black prentice. What are you thinking?'
Well, that was always the question, wasn't it? Nobody ever knew, really, what Alvin was thinking. When he talked, he pretty much told the truth, he wasn't much of a one for fooling folks. But he also knew how to keep his mouth shut so you didn't know what was in his head. Arthur Stuart knew, though. He might've been just a boy, though more like a near-man these days, height coming on him kind of quick, his hands and feet getting big even faster than his legs and arms was getting long, but Arthur Stuart was an expert, he was a bona fide certified scholar on one subject, and that was Alvin, journeyman blacksmith, itinerant all-purpose dowser and doodlebug, and secret maker of golden ploughs and reshaper of the universe. He knew Alvin had him a plan for putting a stop to this thievery without putting anybody in jail.
Alvin picked his time. It was a morning getting on towards harvest time, when folks was clearing out a lot of last year's corn to make room for the new. So a lot of folks, from town and the nearby farms, was queued up to have their grain ground. And Rack Miller, he was downright exuberant in sharing that corn with the geese. But as he was handing the sack of corn flour to the customer, less about a quarter of its weight in goosefodder, Alvin scoops up a fine fat gosling and hands it to the customer right along with the grain.
The customer and Rack just looks at him like he's crazy, but Alvin pretends not to notice Rack's consternation at all. It's the customer he talks to. 'Why, Rack Miller told me it was bothering him how much corn these geese've been getting, so this year he was giving out his goslings, one to each regular customer, as long as they last, to make up for it. I think that shows Rack to be a man of real honour, don't you?'
Well, it showed something, but what could Rack say after that? He just grinned through clenched teeth and watched as Alvin gave away gosling after gosling, making the same explanation, so everybody, wide-eyed and happy as clams, gave profuse thanks to the provider of their Christmas feast about four months off. Them geese would be monsters by then, they were already so big and fat.
Of course, Arthur Stuart noticed how, as soon as Rack saw how things was going, suddenly he started holding the sacks by the top, and taking smaller handfuls, so most of the time not a kernel fell to the ground. Why, that fellow had just learned himself a marvellous species of efficiency, returning corn to the customer diminished by nought but the true miller's tithe. It was plain enough that Rack Miller wasn't about to feed no corn to geese that somebody else was going to be feasting on that winter!
And when the day's work ended, with every last gosling gone, and only two ganders and five layers left, Rack faced Alvin square on and said, 'I won't have no liar working for me.'
'Liar?' asked Alvin.
'Telling them fools I meant to give them goslings!'
'Well, when I first said it, it wasn't true yet, but the minute you didn't raise your voice to argue with me, it became true, didn't it?' Alvin grinned, looking for all the world like Davy Crockett grinning him a bear.
'Don't chop no logic with me,' said Rack. 'You know what you was doing.'
'I sure do,' said Alvin. 'I was making your customers happy with you for the first time since you come here, and making an honest man out of you in the meantime.'
'I already was an honest man,' said Rack. 'I never took but what I was entitled to, living in a godforsaken place like this.'
'Begging your pardon, my friend, but God ain't forsaken this place, though now and then a soul around here might have forsaken Him.'
'I'm done with your help,' said Rack icily. 'I think it's time for you to move on.'
'But I haven't even looked at the machinery you use for weighing the corn wagons,' said Alvin. , Rack hadn't been in a hurry for Alvin to check them over - the heavy scales out front was only used at harvest time, when farmers brought in whatever corn they meant to sell. They'd roll the wagons on to the scales, and through a series of levers the scale would be balanced with much lighter weights. Then the wagon would be rolled back on empty and weighed, and the difference between the two weights was the weight of the corn. Later on the buyers would come, roll on their empty wagons and weigh them, then load them up and weigh them again. It was a clever bit of machinery, a scale like that, and it was only natural that Alvin wanted to get his hands on it.
But Rack wasn't having none of it. 'My scales is my business, stranger,' he says to Alvin.
'I've et at your table and slept in your house,' says Alvin. 'How am I a stranger?'
'Man who gives away my geese, he's a stranger here for ever.'
'Well, then, I'll be gone from here.' Still smiling, Alvin turned to his young ward. 'Let's be on our way, Arthur Stuart.'
'No sir,' says Rack Miller. 'You owe me for thirty-six meals these last six days. I didn't notice this Black boy eating one whit less than you. So you owe me in service.'
'I gave you due service,' says Alvin. 'You said yourself that your machinery was working smooth.'
'You didn't do nought but what I could have done myself with an oilcan.'
'But the fact is I did it, and you didn't, and that was worth our keep. The boy's worked, too, sweeping and fixing and cleaning and hefting.'
'I want six days' labour out of your boy. Harvest is upon us, and I need an extra pair of hands and a sturdy back. I've seen he's a good worker and he'll do.'
'Then take three days' service from me and the boy. I won't give away any more geese.'
'I don't have any more geese to give, except the layers. Anyway I don't want no miller's son, I just want the boy's labour.'
'Then we'll pay you in silver money.'
'What good is silver money here? Ain't nothing to spend it on. Nearest city of any size is Carthage, across the Hio, and hardly anybody goes there.'
'I don't use Arthur Stuart to discharge my debts. He's not my -'
Well, long before those words got to Alvin's lips, Arthur Stuart knew what he was about to do - he was going to declare that Arthur wasn't his slave. And that would be about as foolish a thing as Alvin could do. So Arthur Stuart spoke right up before the words could get away. 'I'm happy to work off the debt,' he says. 'Except I don't think it's possible. In six days I'll eat eighteen more meals and then I'll owe another three days, and in those three days I'll eat nine meals and I'll owe a day and a half, and at that rate I reckon I'll never pay off that debt.'
'Ah yes,' says Alvin. 'Zeno's paradox.'
'And you told me there was never any practical use for that "bit of philosophical balderdash", as I recall you saying,' says Arthur Stuart. It was an argument from the days they both studied with Miss Larner, before she became Mrs Alvin Smith.
'What the Sam Hill you boys talking about?' asked Rack Miller.
Alvin tried to explain. 'Each day that Arthur Stuart works for you, he'll build up half again the debt that he pays off by his labour. So he only covers half the distance towards freedom. Half and half and half again, only he never quite gets to the goal.'
'I don't get it,' says Rack. 'What's the joke?'
By this point, though, Arthur Stuart had another idea in mind. Mad as Rack Miller was about the goslings, if he truly needed help at harvest time he'd keep Alvin on for it, unless there was some other reason for getting rid of him. There was something Rack Miller planned to do that he didn't want Alvin to see. What he didn't reckon on was that this half-Black 'servant' boy was every bit smart enough to figure it out himself. 'I'd like to stay and see how we solve the paradox,' says Arthur Stuart.
Alvin looks at him real close. 'Arthur, I got to go see a man about a bear.'
Well, that tore Arthur Stuart's resolve a bit. If Alvin was looking for Davy Crockett, to settle things, there might be scenes that Arthur wanted to see. At the same time, there was a mystery here at the millhouse, too, and with Alvin gone Arthur Stuart had a good chance at solving it all by himself. The one temptation was greater than the other. 'Good luck,' said Arthur Stuart. 'I'll miss you.'
Alvin sighed. 'I don't plan to leave you here at the tender mercy of a man with a peculiar fondness for geese.'
'What does that mean?' Rack said, growing more and more certain that they were making fun of him underneath all their talk.
'Why, you call them your daughters and then cook them and eat them,' says Alvin. 'What woman would ever marry you? She wouldn't dare leave you alone with the children!'
'Get out of my millhouse!' Rack bellowed.