The Blood of Heaven (10 page)

There was a time, he said, when you had a mother. And together we lifted up our voices and sang you into the world each day. There was a time, I still believe it, when you walked in the ways of the Lord with me. . . . I should’ve known what you were made for. But I fought against it. I fought to keep you from the fire.

His boots ground at the edge of the grave, which was bent and poorly shaped in my haste and wrecked vision. It curved uneven so that, when he said for me to put her in, I had to bend my Emily to fit. I stepped down into the hole, her gooseflesh rough against my hands, as though on any chill day when I would touch her; only now it would not go away, no matter how long I held her.

Set her down, he said.

But I couldn’t. I crouched with her and bore full-on the look of her twisted face until my eyes were closed and I was weeping.

Stop that, damn you, and put her down.

So I laid Emily in her grave, the weeping growing worse when my boot-heel took purchase in her thigh as I pulled myself out. When I stood, he pressed the shovel to me again, saying now I would cover her up.

And now I have to think of what’s to be done with you, he said.

Nodding dumbly, I began. And this was worse than the digging, for whenever I emptied the blade there was the sight of her, slowly being covered over. What began as doleful work became a frenzy as I slashed at the mound and slung earth into her grave. My mind was on dirt-beads at her neck, her jewelry of ringworm—how I’d loved them all when first I saw her, glowing in the tallow-light. And that had been underground, in the dark of the earth. Shoveling faster, her song playing in my mind:
There’s a lily in the garden, For you, young man; There’s a lily in the garden, Come pluck it if you can
.

Now I wasn’t even raising the blade, but scraping it across the ground. Preacher-father looked to the distant congregation—where Samuel leaned against the horse’s side, his father close in his ear—and spat, his hands seeking something.

If I only had the strength in me, he said, you’d be down there with your whore.

As he spoke, I drug the blade, saw the dirt settle softly at Emily’s face—those gaping eyes, that tortured mouth, saying, Love me. I held tight to the handle, hunching there, unable to look away from her or drive off Preacher-father’s words, which hung in the bitter air even as I lifted up the shovel and, in one brutal instant, swung.

My father dropped, tottering on one knee, black blood running from the gash in his head. From the mark I’d made. All words, all the curses I sought, were caught within my throat as I stood over him. And neither could he speak, but mouthed his shock, gulping and blinking ever-widening eyes against the drip. My own blood, my sorry heart, now thundered in my skull. Shouts came from the Chitites, who, as did my father, saw me raise the shovel high. For a moment, as the shouts grew nearer, my arms refused to move; but this, as all the pain and love and fear which make up this wretched world, did pass and I brought the shovel down upon his head.

The Chitites were all around me, grabbing for my weapon, treading in their rage over my struck-down father. Deacon Kemper howled, the blind Fladeboe father reached for my eyes as I was lifted up and the mother with a screech flung herself at me, climbing the bodies of her fellows. And I tore at them all, thrashed against them, sure that I would die in pieces but glad for it—to hurt as many as I could. In their hands I was turned facing upwards, to see the same sky as faced Emily’s dead eyes, and they were carrying me towards the grave when there came the sound of snorts and hoofbeats, and Samuel rode into them. I felt myself now falling as they stumbled back into the grave, but my brother’s hand caught me up, hauling me as though I were weightless across the neck of the horse, which he wheeled and gave heel to run. I clung there, jolting, unable to look back.

Book Two

THESE ARE THE NAMES

I

The Journeys of Israel

Indiana–Northwest Territory, Winter 1800

Into America

For weeks I scarcely looked up from the ground and only when Samuel demanded it did I allow myself the horse’s back, raising up my head to pursue the horizon and the Ohio tearing away at our right. Almost a month removed and my arms still ached from their work that day in Chit; my soul pained all the worse.

My brother would call behind to ask if I wanted to stop and I’d tell him to take back his horse, but he always refused. So I remained a-saddle, gathering sores while the sun and moon rolled overhead and the plains went beneath us like a carpet pulled away. All the crossings were too dear, and so we went amongst the tribes, who still held the territory north of the Ohio River. I recalled the pox-faced Indians, and in my trot-lolling head the cheekless squaw became Emily—a confluence of desiccation and bloat-tongued strain, as though I saw her rotting in her grave, the earth of which was surely as frozen as the brittle riverside woods we now traveled. From them came calls and whoops and the crackle of dead leaves, the smell of fires, dragging me for moments from out my delirium of guilt. I had no fear of the savages, no fear of dying, but rather of living on.

To keep his mind and maybe bring mine back, Samuel maintained a steady stream of talk, like I’d done for him after Nathan fell. He inventoried our belongings: the rifles he’d hurriedly lashed to the saddle; some twenty dollars in silver from his father’s purse, which he would hold to for when we reached our destination; our food—bony blackened squirrels and hares we’d gathered on the way; the dueling pistols in their mahogany box, which were the last thing my brother grabbed in our frantic scouring of the camp; meager shot and a single horn; bear-cloaks for our bedrolls; our only clothes upon our backs; the Bibles we wore at our breasts.

By Shawnee-town the snow began. My brother cut his blanket down to wrap his boot-legs for the drifts. I’d grown used to the ache and throb of the boils on my thighs and ass—the only revenge our poor horse could have on me for being such a bastardly weight on his sloping back. The boils rose on my nethers and I accepted them, thinking, Let it rot. I didn’t drink enough to piss nor eat enough to pass, so I had no cause to look upon my growing swarm of wounds. Instead I envisioned something like the syphilitic’s fungal-looking bits or John’s many-headed beast, all of them with eyes and pus-weeping mouths.

On the third day out from Shawnee the horse was crawling and Samuel, stepping high through the snow, fell back and gave a rub to the bent neck of the horse and I would not look at him, but rather to my legs, where I could see the boils bloating through my pants.

Not unlike the river itself, Samuel’s talk would ever flow back to his brother Reuben. The eldest Kemper had thrashed fourteen men in an Ohio tavern with nothing but a busted chamberpot, sat on river-docks reading the philosophies of the Greeks in one hand and lifting sugar barrels with the other, had never married for there was no woman who could content him. Samuel bandied legends and dangled them out before me as my vision dimmed. We would find him, he said, in Cincinnati.

I was harried in my dreams by Preacher-father’s face, the way he’d looked at me before I brought the shovel down the second time, waking with the question of whether he was dead, and knowing in my soul the answer. Sometimes instead it would be Emily I struck, beating her back into the pit. So I awoke one night from such visions in the chill of my snow-soaked cloak with the horse’s chest throbbing for breath beside my head and Samuel looking down on us. The earth rocked under me like I was still riding, and it was hard to see my brother’s face. I raised my head as much I could from the packed snow and saw that in my lap the jean was crusted with dried yellow pus.

When did I fall?

You didn’t, said Samuel. I knocked you down.

Why? I croaked.

It’s been long enough. Look at you. You need to lay the hell down.

You could’ve broken my neck.

It’s better than you dying up there.

I nodded, or my head was just used to flopping by then. It’s cold, I said.

Samuel took a rifle up and examined the flint; seeing that it sparked, he said, Sleep, you rot-crotched lunatic, and I’ll start the fire.

Cloak bundled about my burning ears, I laid there in my soiled pants and wallowed.

The Village of Cincinnati

Our horse died that night in the snow, and so we butchered its haunches and shoulders and cooked what we could, and carrying a few pounds each, we made the rest of the way afoot, passing through patchy towns that had been attacked and burnt. Still we didn’t fear the tribes. They surrounded us but we saw no feather of them. Samuel kept up his talk of Reuben and a house full of mulled wine and turkey while we chewed horse-steak and shuffled ever onwards through the white, preserved occasionally at the cabins of settlers outlying the village.

When at last we arrived it was dark and we were so tired that we snuck into a carriage house to spend the remainder of the night, stumbling out before dawn when the stallboy came to tend. A young black face above a lantern, staring at us in our huddle of warm dung-rolled straw—he didn’t try to run us off, but watched with a sullen understanding of the madness of white men.

We went out into early morning streets deserted by the moon but still too dark for selling wares. Revived by the chill that blew between the ramshackle houses, we set off down what Samuel said was Main Street towards the river, where Reuben kept his house. I watched the lights from the landing at the foot of Main fade as Samuel gave me his description of the place. He changed with the growing light and was reborn a man of town, greeting people who didn’t know him from any other frontier straggler, but he beamed as though he counseled them all.

That’s the place where I was whipped, he said, pointing to a house which leaned heavy on its neighbor. And that is the church my father founded.

The church was set on wooden blocks, painted and windowed, and seemed too fine a place to leave; the sign told it was a Presbyterian meeting house, not Baptist. But I had no care for truth that morning, save for the fact that he did have a brother and that brother was here and somewhat moneyed and had a fire going in the grate.

At his brother’s house, Samuel rapped the door and what came in answer were harsh shouts from a man’s voice. He grinned at me and I noticed the hollowness of his cheeks, thinking also of my own. The door was presently flung open and a man still in nightclothes stood in the jamb.

What’s this? said the man. It’s too early to ask for work, boys.

Samuel bristled, said his name, and asked where was his brother.

The man in the doorway shook his head. I bought this house, he said, outright this April. You want to talk more, go wake the judge.

A woman’s voice piped from within the house. I could smell fatback cooking, felt my knees go weak and was unable to parse what words Sam and the man exchanged before he slammed shut the door and left my brother standing ashen-faced on the step.

I know where to go, Samuel said. Don’t worry.

So we broke off from the street and went along the bottom of a hill, slopping through muddy snow, slipping and falling so that we had to hold each other by the hands to stay upright. He said this was a short-cut to the house of a man who would have answers. Through a grove of dead and girded trees we came to the home of a lawyer named Van Nuys.

He’s a Dutchman, but a good friend of my father’s, Samuel said as we made yet another porch; only this one was finer and gabled and lights shone through the windows.

Samuel’s knock was answered by an Irishwoman who squinted at him when he said his name.

You’re not Mister Reuben, she said.

Samuel, said my brother. Please tell Mister Van Nuys that I need to see him and it’s urgent.

The Irishwoman stuck her head out the doorframe and eyed me. And who’s this?

Angel Woolsack, I said.

She shuddered and slipped back inside and soon produced Van Nuys, who, thankfully, smiled upon us both and took Samuel in his arms.

The mud fell from my boots upon the rug as I trailed Van Nuys and Samuel.

Take off your packs, Van Nuys called back, grabbing Samuel’s shoulder strap. I let mine fall straight from my back to the floor, heard the butt of my rifle rap the boards and the Irishwoman cuss, and followed the pair of them to the family table, where sat the wife and three children eating breakfast. Samuel was given the only open chair, and I stood behind them wobbling now with the sight of their food until the Irishwoman hustled another chair to a corner of the table for me. Samuel told the lawyer his lie of our departure as brightly as though we hadn’t but taken a walk down the valley. Meanwhile, plates were brought for us and heaped upon them were trout and chipped potatoes, eggs black from cooking in lard, boiled chicken, and broad swaths of bacon shining in the lamplight. I thought I would vomit, and when a cup of beer was set down for me I drank it quick to choke the bile back, sat holding the mug while the Irishwoman refilled it from an earthen pitcher.

Glad to hear that your father’s well, said Van Nuys, spearing a cut of fish.

Samuel nodded and chewed over a mouthful. But Reuben—

He has gone south to make his fortune, said Van Nuys, which I have no doubt that he will. His contract with Mister John Smith is fair.