'Well, I think you think you're making me into a maker,' said Arthur Stuart. 'But all you're making me into is a canoe-maker, which ain't the same thing as being an all-around all-purpose maker like yourself.'

'Got to start somewhere.'

'You didn't,' says Arthur. 'You was born knowing how to make stuff.'

'I was born with a knack,' says Alvin. 'But I wasn't born knowing how to use it, or when, or why. I learned to love making for its own sake. I learned to love the feel of the wood and the stone under my hands, and from that I learned to see inside it, to feel how it felt, to know how it worked, what held it together, and how to help it come apart in just the right way.'

'But I'm not learning any of that,' says Arthur.

'Yet.'

'No sir,' says Arthur Stuart. 'I'm not seeing inside nothing, I'm not feeling inside nothing except how my back aches and my whole body's pouring off sweat and I'm getting more and more annoyed at being made to labour on a job you could do with a wink of your eye.'

'Well, that's something,' says Alvin. 'At least you're learning to see inside yourself.'

Arthur Stuart fumed a little more, chipping away burnt wood as he did. 'Someday I'm going to get fed up with your smugness,' he says to Alvin, 'and I won't follow you any more.'

Alvin shook his head. 'Arthur Stuart, I tried to get you not to follow me this time, if you'll recall.'

'Is that what this is about? You're punishing me for following you when you told me not to?'

'You said you wanted to learn everything about being a maker,' says Alvin. 'And when I try to teach you, all I get is pissing and moaning.'

'You also get work from me,' says Arthur. 'I never stopped working the whole time we talked.'

'That's true,' says Alvin.

'And here's something you didn't consider,' says Arthur Stuart. 'All the time we're making a canoe, we're also unmaking a tree.'