The Blood of Heaven (24 page)

And what are we to do? I said. I’ve got a wife and child to care for. I’ve got my parcel and it’s not in this judgment. Should I go there and start splitting logs for a cabin in the God-damned woods?

Calm yourself, said Reuben. We’re not had yet.

We aren’t? I said. Won’t we be run out of here in eight months because you were too damn stubborn and I was too stupid not to call you on it?

Everything you have, everything you both have, is because of my stubbornness.

Then tell me what we’re to do. Wait?

Reuben sat upright and glowered at me. You’d be running niggers and whiskey for that Reverend, or be dead, if it weren’t for me.

Fine enough. What are we going to do besides let you worry about it?

The rain was coming hard and we turned at the sound of yipping and clattering up the steps. The voices belonged to Ransom and Ferdinand, who danced about outside to try and stamp the soak from their clothes.

Now, he said. I will explain it to you again. They’ve made their own noose with the eight months. Louisiana will be American and I have it on good authority that the government will honor no Spanish judgments.

Even when the man you owe money to is a senator in the blasted American government?

Then we’ll fight him again and it’ll take another three years.

This is too much intrigue, I said. I can’t cipher any of it.

Reuben clapped the table. If we hold here and now until the flag flies over the whole territory, then the price of the land will double, triple even, and we sell everything we have except the house and landing ground.

We just have to hold out, Samuel said to me.

It’s all for nothing, I said.

Ransom and Ferdinand came into the house, laughing and sopping and shaking off like dogs. They eyed us, then went and stood before the fire. The river’s rising up, said Ferdinand.

Did you mind the boat? Reuben said.

She’s fine, said his slave. It gets any worsen I’ll ride it out on her.

What’s the trouble? Ransom asked, wringing out his pants-leg.

The kind we just have to wait on and it’s fixed, I said.

Reuben gave the table another thwack. Don’t you doubt me, he said. I won’t have it.

Go and kill the bastards then, I said. Hell, I’ll help you.

I just might, he said, laughing, sounding now as he had when he’d told us that the foreskins legend was false. But it’s not time for that yet. If we hold and make them act, what Americans will help them drive us out? They won’t follow Britishers like Stirling or a rich bastard like Kneeland to run off one of their own countrymen.

I think you’ve got too much faith in Americans, I said.

Reuben frowned. And I think you haven’t got enough.

With that I left them and went out onto the porch, where Ferdinand and Ransom had brought the horses, which now stood snorting at one corner; and the wind was bearing down upon the river and driving the water over its banks. I watched the Cotton-Picker rise with the flood and in my time out there alone the water swallowed up Red Kate’s truck-patch and drowned the first steps. I leaned over the railing, letting my head be battered and soaked, and saw the water was at the two-foot mark on the pilings. The door opened and Samuel stepped outside.

This is our land, he said. Ours. And there’s nothing more than that. Let them come and try to take it.

And if they do? I said.

They have the militia. Thirty soldiers, maybe, in Baton Rouge. We could beat them all.

And what about Red Kate and the boy?

We can get them to Randolph’s across the line before any trouble starts.

You’re really praying on this, I said. And now, damn it, so am I.

Samuel spoke low and his words were almost lost in the roar of wind and water and the drumming of the rain. Pistols out again, powder-smoke—I can’t help that I see it in our future.

That night I talked with Red Kate about leaving. She was holding our son over her shoulder, patting his small back to a rhythm she hummed deep in her chest. I never had a home that wasn’t burnt down or a whorehouse, she said. I won’t let you abandon this one. Her eyes grew bright in the lamplight and she held so tight to our son that he mewled. She continued: If you have to fight, then do it. By God I won’t be put out to the wilds and whims again.

The rain had slackened by dark and when it stopped the water stood at the height of the pilings and could be seen sloshing through the knotholes in the floorboards. Waves came over the porch and by morning the damp was all about the house. Crawfish found their way beneath our bed and there was a constant scuttle of creatures seeking shelter in dark nooks and corners. Next day the sun shone clear and bright upon the flooded land, and Reuben and Ferdinand had to wade out to the Cotton-Picker to moor it at the porch.

This water’ll stand for a month, Reuben said. There’ll be a plague.

I said, You tell me on one hand to stay and the other to run from a fever.

No, he said. There’s nowhere. The cities are worse, most likely. If you can get inland to Pinckneyville, stay there with Randolph till the sickness subsides.

We’ll see, I said.

And there would be a sickness on the land. In the coming days news was brought by pirogue, word of who was ailing and who’d already given up the ghost. Red Kate and the widow Cobb burnt camphor on the porch and all about the house, boiled everything, went around jabbing red-hot fire-irons into tubs of vinegar, sticking their fingers in to judge its sourness gone—purifying the air; they scattered ground wormwood, burnt pots of tar on the windowsills. The house’s smell was a bizarre and constant assault, and I went through those days with an aching head, stench-to-stench, but none of us took ill.

One morning the corpse of a nigger floated by and became caught in the pilings of the store. Ransom and I had to swim out to get him loose so that he wouldn’t stay there and spread contagion; and when we came through the swirl to the bedraggled corpse and pulled it free, the thing rolled belly-up and burst. We thrashed through our own vomit back to the porch-steps and hacked while the corpse sailed off into the bayou channel and soon passed out of sight. The women wouldn’t have us in the house until we’d spent a night out there on the porch bathing from pots of scalding water they brought. But we remained free of fever and in two weeks the water was low enough that when Samuel and Reuben returned they had only to slosh through it at their knees. They’d talked with Clark in New Orleans, where the fever was rampant and bodies were being burnt in great piles, and he’d told them that the handover would commence in November, less than four months away. So Reuben was once again flush with possibilities.

Who would’ve thought, he said, that a French despot would bully the Spanish into giving them ownership of the land, keep the Spanish on it, governing it like tenant farmers, and then sell it right off to the States. What a world.

But there were already rumblings that the Pukes would hold the West Florida territory, and that our atheist president would do nothing but sit on his hands and wait for them to give in. Also that General Wilkinson, commander of the American army, was poised to invade and take the land by force should Spain not give her up along with the rest of the Purchase. There were so many rumors in those days I couldn’t keep them straight. When the water had entirely receded and the land now appeared balded and riven as a lake-bed, Pintado and the alcaldes would ride by, harassing us with writs and claims; and so we began going about well-armed.

Don’t be foolish, said Kneeland one day. Fools come to fools’ ends.

And the work of fools was many and varied in that country. For there was the night that Basil Abrams, on a drunk, beat his wife near to death at their place on the outskirts of St. Francisville. He came thundering to our house on his horse, rousing all of us with the beast’s stamping and his shouts of consternation. We came outside and saw Abrams leap down from the horse, only to be cracked across the skull with a musket-butt by Ransom O’Neil, who’d taken him for a Puke rider come to ambush us. Abrams lay prone in the yard and Reuben said, God shit, Ransom. He went down to tend the man and we followed.

You might’ve killed him, said Samuel.

Serves him right, riding up like that, Ransom said, panting and still holding the musket.

At least you didn’t shoot him, I said.

O, said Ransom. If it was light and I could’ve had a mark—

Shut up, all of you, Reuben said, lifting Abrams like a rag and bringing him into the house, where he was laid out across the settee and his wound wiped with rags by the widow and Kate. We all watched him for a while, hearing the horse still tearing circles outside.

Of a sudden Basil Abrams awoke with blood in his eyes and bolted up, saying, I killed her. God help me I think I killed her.

Reuben took him by the collar and demanded to know who.

Abrams’ head lolled and the cut across his forehead began to bleed freely so that he had to blink. With my own hands, he said, holding them up; and we saw his knuckles were well-split.

Who? God damn it! shouted Samuel, who’d by then also taken a-hold of the babbling Abrams.

Lily, he said, eyes fixed on the widow and Kate as though they were a double vision of the one he’d struck down. My poor wife, he groaned, then crumpled again, and the brothers let him collapse and turned to me.

He’s killed his fucking wife, I said.

Samuel and Reuben’s eyes were alight.

Should we ride out and check? said Ransom. To be sure?

Abrams, laid out, moaned and mumbled something about love and women.

No, said Reuben. Basil wandered in here, drunk and wild, and passed out. That’s all we know, you follow?

Before Reuben’s words had time to sink in, there came the sound of more horses riding up. I was first outside and saw Kneeland and Senator Smith dismounting. Kneeland was hastily dressed, but the parson-politician was in full riding kit, having eagerly accompanied the alcalde on this official errand of territorial justice, to see the puny and sordid workings of the province of which he was a pretend-citizen. It was near dawn and both looked haggard and their horses were frothed. Abrams’ beast, wandering loose, was popping its head to the side of Kneeland’s; he bent to check its haunch, saying, Yes, that’s the man’s brand.

Then he’s here, said the Senator, excitement in his voice for a minor adventure to tell at table in the capital.

Kneeland shoved away from the horse. Do you have Basil Abrams in your house?

From behind me Reuben answered that we did.

Then, sir, let’s have him out!

What’s the trouble? I said.

He has assaulted his wife, said Smith. To a vicious extent.

She hovers near death in my parlor even as we speak, said Kneeland. Let’s have the wretch!

Reuben pushed me aside and went down the steps to meet them.

Samuel said into my ear, We may just have it out here and now.

The man rode up here drunk, surprised our boy, and was knocked quite bad across the head.

Then he won’t be difficult to take, said Kneeland, starting for the steps.

Reuben took him by the arm and hauled him back. This is my house, surveyor, and until the commandant’s writ is up, you’ve got no right to be on my property.

Reuben, said the Senator, be sensible. The woman is beaten to a pulp.

Kneeland whirled loose of Reuben’s hand, saying, She came crawling to my doorstep, eyes black, lips smashed, all manner of gore about her. My daughter is fighting to keep her in this world so that she may depose the villain you say you will keep in your house!

The villain is unconscious, said Reuben. And he’s said nothing of doing her any injury. And did she tell you that he did it, with her busted lips and blackened eyes?

You, sir, are a cad and friend to worse. To defend such a man—

Reuben, said Smith, you know I won’t allow the man to be harmed. We simply don’t want him to flee the country before there’s justice done.

You’ve got no power here, said Reuben. Save your spit for Washington. And you, Mister Kneeland, can hie your way back home and make a complaint to Pintado.

Kneeland stamped his boot and tugged at the front of his night-shirt. His voice broke into a high whine when he spoke: I did not, sir, watch my wife suffer and die of fever this very month just to have a man who savages his own wife go unpunished!

Stay calm, Ira, said Smith.

I shall not be calm while a brute like that—

In that instant I stopped him with the only words I’d speak to the alcalde that night, saying, If he awakes and tells what he did, I’ll personally lash him for it.

My brothers turned and looked at me cockeyed, shrugging while the two others shook their heads. Both pairs shirked my words and went back to their stand-off.

And I should trust any of you with justice? said Kneeland. Wild savages yourselves: coarse, illiterate—

Reuben took him by the throat and raised Kneeland’s feet up off the ground, saying, I can go inside and pick out a volume of Gibbon and break your skull with the spine of it. He cast the surveyor to the ground and Smith quickly stepped between them.