Seventh Son: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume I by Orson Scott Card

anymore. He lay there in his bed, all kinds of thoughts dancing in his head so fast he couldn’t lay hold of any one of them, and finally in all that confusion there wasn’t nothing for it but to sleep.
     
    In the morning he thought maybe it was all a dream, it had to be a dream. But there were new stains on the floor at the foot of his bed, where the blood of the Shining Man had dripped, so that wasn’t a dream. And his parents’ quarrel, that wasn’t no dream neither. Papa stopped him after breakfast and told him, “You stay up here with me today, Al.”
    The look on Mama’s face told him plain as day that what was said last night was still meant today.
    “I want to help on the church,” Alvin Junior said. “I ain’t afraid of no ridgebeams.”
    “You’re going to stay here with me, today. You’re going to help me build something.” Papa swallowed, and stopped himself from looking at Mama. “That church is going to need an altar, and I figure we can build a right nice one that can go inside that church as soon as the roof is on and the walls are up.” Papa looked at Mama and smiled a smile that sent a shiver up Alvin Junior’s back. “You think that preacher’ll like it?”
    That took Mama back, it was plain. But she wasn’t the kind to back off from a wrestling match just because the other guy got one throw, Alvin Junior knew that much. “What can the boy do?” she asked. “He ain’t no carpenter.”
    “He’s got a good eye,” said Papa. “If he can patch and tool leather, he can put some crosses onto the altar. Make it look good.”
    “Measure’s a better whittler,” said Mama.
    “Then I’ll have the boy burn the crosses in.” Papa put his hand on Alvin Junior’s head. “Even if he sits here all day and reads in the Bible, this boy ain’t going down to that church till the last pew is in.”
    Papa’s voice sounded hard enough to carve his words in stone. Mama looked at Alvin Junior and then at Alvin Senior. Finally she turned her back and started filling the basket with dinner for them as was going to the church.
    Alvin Junior went outside to where Measure was hitching the team and Wastenot and Wantnot were loading roof shakes onto the wagon for the church.
    “You aim to stand inside the church again?” asked Wantnot.
    “We can drop logs down on you, and you can split them into shakes with your head,” said Wastenot.
    “Ain’t going,” said Alvin Junior.
    Wastenot and Wantnot exchanged identical knowing looks.
    “Well, too bad,” said Measure. “But when Mama and Papa get cold, the whole Wobbish Valley has a snowstorm.” He winked at Alvin Junior, just the way he had last night, when it got him in so much trouble.
    That wink made Alvin figure he could ask Measure a question that he wouldn’t normally speak right out. He walked over closer, so his voice wouldn’t carry to the others. Measure caught on to what Alvin wanted, and he squatted down right there by the wagon wheel, to hear what Alvin had to say.
    “Measure, if Mama believes in God and Papa doesn’t, how do I know which one is right?”
    “I think Pa believes in God,” said Measure.
    “But if he don’t. That’s what I’m asking. How do I know about things like that, when Mama says one thing and Papa says another?”
    Measure started to answer something easy, but he stopped himself—Alvin could see in his face how he made up his mind to say something serious. Something true, instead of something easy. “Al, I got to tell you, I wisht I knew. Sometimes I figure ain’t nobody knows nothing.”
    “Papa says you know what you see with your eyes. Mama says you know what you feel in your heart.”
    “What do you say?”
    “How do I know, Measure? I’m only six.”
    “I’m twenty-two, Alvin, I’m a growed man, and I still don’t know. I reckon Ma and Pa don’t know, neither.”
    “Well, if they don’t know , how come they get so mad about it?”
    “Oh, that’s what it means to be married. You