The Blood of Heaven (27 page)

Lightning? said Ransom.

Again the thunder sounded, heading further away from this gathering of fools atop horses wild with fear for being so close to the fire, which now rose with the wind and shot up in a pillar, sucking the breath from my lungs.

Damn the lightning, said Reuben.

I think I saw some earlier, said Ransom.

It’s no God-damned lightning did this, I said.

That’s right, said Reuben. They mean to have us out of the country.

The roof had collapsed and its boards blew in shriveled husks upon the air. Rills of brighter fire worked between the beams and walls, and all was engulfed. I felt for my Bible at my breast, feeling instead the empty place above my heart as the flames roared louder and the near wall fell, revealing the inside of the cabin where we’d built the fireplace large for cooking and with good walls of river-stone for my wife to sit beside in the cold of mornings and be warm. My face was burning from the imminence of fire, and I was brought to childhood once again. And there was a coal upon my tongue and it was righteous hot.

My face didn’t cool even on the ride back to Bayou Sara, which we made in silence save for Crabbe and Ransom asking questions neither I nor Reuben answered. The thunder now was so far distant that I could no longer hear its sound, but felt its trembling in my bones. And when we came ashen into the house, we found Samuel sitting on the floor before the fireplace with his ladle and mold, melting lead and molding shot.

Did you see the fire? I asked him.

Samuel opened the clasps of the mold and a ball clattered to the floor. No, but I saw the smoke when I was passing.

Why in hell didn’t you stop? said Reuben.

What is it? said Red Kate, our son pawing at her breast and whining.

Samuel watched the lead bubble in the ladle, poured it into the mold. As he tamped the shot out he said, She says she’s going to marry Ira Kneeland. Then he resumed his work. Later he’d tell that he’d seen a man visiting the widow on a few of his rides out there, but he’d had no idea until that day that it was Kneeland, who could not resist the beauty of Ezmina any more than she could resist his money.

This whole place is rotten, said Reuben.

And I looked upon both my brothers, my friends, my wife now bringing our son to suck, life continuing even in the moment which would mark the end of normalcy.

The rot will be carved out, I said. By the wrath of God, it will.

IV

Israel Enraged

May–June 1804

Our Preparations

Samuel’s compulsion was catching and others brought their molds and ladles, and we had so many by May, when Commandant Grand Pré’s deadline was a month past, that we ran out of ingots and rendered everything else made of lead to smelt; and there was a constant sound of the balls of shot rolling along the floor, and they were found in the cushions of seats, in the corners of rooms, spilling out from cabinets as though they bred there in the dark. Each morning they were poured from boots by the men who’d now gathered with us; Abrams, whose wife offered no complaint over him leaving her to hole up with us, found one in his corn-mush one morning, and Arthur Cobb—who’d come to us after being a month in the debtors’ prison in Baton Rouge, cursing the name of Kneeland, who’d sent him there for the duration of his wedding to the widow and their honeymoon—swore, after a day of head-ache, that he had one jammed in his ear; Samuel Kirkland brought his son William along, and Henry Bradford brought his boys, John and Henry Jr., who flung small-caliber balls at each other when they were bored, breaking several of the windows, much to the displeasure of Red Kate, who in turn was visited by the wives of the married men like Bradford and Kirkland, sitting for a while with my Copperhead for a respite; and soon the house took on the air of a family reunion, with men in various states and children and women hustling through, and always the sound of lead rolling or dropping heavily to the floor. Ransom swept the shot up in the yard as Crabbe skittered by trying to get a claw-hold on the ground while borne upon a wave of them; and every cup, sack, cask, and barrel about the place was filled with shot according to its caliber, the containers marked D
RAGOON
P
ISTOL,
K
ENTUCKY
R
IFLE,
B
ESS,
B
USS,
S
HOTGUN
, and so on. The pockets of our billiard table overflowed with them, the bright red and white balls forced into a corner by a gray tide of seventy-five-caliber shot. Red Kate tolerated it all, sternly plucking lumps of lead from the mouth of our son when she feared he’d choke; but mostly she let him work his teeth, for she’d had to hide the whiskey she’d used to rub his gums from the others, who were all awaiting the day we’d face the Pukes’ men, getting steady drunk.

All of us were weighted down with lead in our coats, in the pockets of overalls, in sacks tied to our belts; and we also bore powder-flasks always about our necks and were bandoliered with arms, adding to the weight. We moved slowly those days, and that shared heaviness seemed to give our party the weight of purpose.

And for the first time since Chit, when Deacon Kemper showed us his collection of armaments, I was in love with firearms. With every new recruit came the weapons we required; and we emptied the racks of billiard cues and filled their places with guns. The house became an armory, and now the problem became one of not having enough men to shoot all the guns; and so we were all carrying three at a time.

We had near a dozen men by the first week of June, mostly wifeless jacks who lived alone in the wilderness and clung to patches of rented property; they were often ones who charged with us at the store, or owed great debts to their landlords and were contemplating soon the cold walls of the debtors’ gaol in Baton Rouge. And the house was now so crowded with guns, shot, powder, and all the tools of fighting that there was scarcely room enough for my Copperhead to move and go about her daily chores.

She didn’t grumble or weep when I loaded her and our son up in the cart one morning and rode them across the line to the house of Edward Randolph in Pinckneyville. But this was because she was in her head, and had other plans. Reuben’s letters were now carried directly to Randolph, and for weeks since the elder brother’s return to New Orleans I’d made the ride up there to receive his missives and reports on our support from Claiborne and the general. This day would be no different, but that I carried with me my wife and son, intending to leave them there to avoid the imminent fray. She said not a word on the way, and I should have known. Red Kate had resigned herself to what would be my deeds. She’d spent the past weeks in a houseful of men and boys and suffered with little complaint. Similarly she made the ride up Thompson’s Creek, passing the remains of the widow Cobb’s house, which Samuel had put to the torch a few days before.

When we got down and the Randolphs came from their porch to greet us, Red Kate went off with Polly, the wife, to have tea, and I thought this was the end of the matter. Meanwhile, Edward Randolph asked after our progress at the house and gave me Reuben’s latest letter.

The day’s to come, I said. They have to know what we’re doing.

It’s well-known, said Randolph, even up here across the line, that you intend to defend your property, but you must remember that these men are fools. They think all they need is the law to make a man bow.

For my mind, I considered them not fools but sore afraid.

Randolph continued, You know, my friend, you could draw quite a few more men up here. There’s plenty who’d rally to your side when the time comes.

When the time comes, I said.

Consider this as counsel from a friend, he said. Rather than one bloody stand-off, why not give them the house now and come up to Pinckneyville, have time to plan. Draft a proclamation perhaps, make your aims clear. People hear gunshots and they know there’s a fight, but if they see a declaration of intents as well, they know it’s a revolution.

That’s what it is, I said—half-believing my agreement. The thought of turning a paltry land dispute into something greater seemed mad; but didn’t the Children of Israel fight their wars first for land?

You’d better come to accept it. You’re revolutionaries now. Come up to Pinckneyville and we’ll hash it all out.

I like the sound of it, I said. But I won’t be run off, not by the few measly soldiers they have in the country.

They’ll have the militia, he said.

Samuel and Reuben seem to believe that most Americans there won’t be a party to it.

I fear they may be wrong, he said.

If they are, I said, then whatever Americans rise against us will be made to suffer.

Randolph, eyes shut, nodded solemnly. I simply don’t want this to be finished in a bad way before it’s even begun. This is a movement, he said; we can’t have a revolution start and end on the same bloody day.

I held up Reuben’s letter, saying, Any word on when he’ll be back?

Your brother, said Randolph, is staying in New Orleans as far as I know. Most likely he’ll miss the first of the action. He trusts you and Sam to start things off.

I’d rather have him here, I said. It’s his business.

No, said Randolph. It is all of our business. You’re the vanguard of what will drive the Spanish out. Reuben will be there when the time comes.

I considered the elder brother; far from the fight, sitting daily in the coffee-houses, forming and joining the various American societies and clubs, seeing Claiborne when time allowed. And it went that Polly and Red Kate came out the house, and I heard my wife tell her that they did have quite a fine place, but—

Dear, said Polly Randolph, I can’t persuade you to stay?

Your pardons, said my wife, looking from one Randolph to the other, you do have quite a house here, but I won’t leave my husband. Then she, toting our son, walked past us and went to the cart, climbed up, and took her seat, awaiting me there with a stony look upon her face.

When I was at the cart, looking up at my wife, I said, You will stay here.

Red Kate glared down at me and shook her head, and our son seemed to do the same, nuzzling into her breast.

I won’t have you or my son killed, I said.

Red Kate’s face twisted and she hissed at me in a whisper: Then why do any of this shit if you aren’t willing to risk us? Do you not know me? Do you think I’ve never seen blood or heard a gun sound out and people screaming? I saw my daddy’s hair peeled from his skull while he was still alive and my mother’s brains were in my lap. You’re my husband and father to my son, and you forget me. You think all I’ve done was lay on my back or cook meals? I’ve killed, love. Killed and killed that night until my arms were sore, and that was just for me. Now, what do you think I’d do for my son?

While she spoke our son had begun to grouse, and once she’d finished my wife pulled aside her dress-front, took out her breast, and pressed his face to her. Her pap was dark and somehow it seemed to swirl in anger against me as my son drew from it, taking her fury into him. Most men with sense would have struck her a blow across the face, then drug her to the Randolphs and left, but what she’d said worked in me like a contagion, revealing the selfishness of every unsurrendering fool—that it was somehow a finer thing to put not just what you owned but the lives of all you loved at hazard.

On our return, passing Cobb and Abrams pitching horseshoes in the yard, the Bradford boys pinging each other with shot, I found Samuel and we shut ourselves up in the back and read over Reuben’s letter. Elder brother would remain in New Orleans as an emissary of a kind. He’d miss the first of the fight, but, he assured, he’d be there for the final settlement. For now he needed to keep at Claiborne, and with the grace of God and the United Sates, we would be victorious.

I thought as much, I said.

Samuel was bent over a shotgun, cleaning it. He’s doing what’s right, he said. We need him there.

We need bodies. Not diplomats.

My brother turned from me so that his necklace of fangs dangled down and trickled against the barrel. Worry about yourself. If even half of what Reuben’s doing works, you’ll be thankful.

I’d be thankful if he was here, I said. But then again, I’m not sure he can back up all his talk.

I waited for Samuel to speak, but he only went on cleaning.

During the days that followed, I gave readings from the Book concerning war, giving sermons at the slightest provocation. Our gathered friends never seemed to tire of my words, nor of our gifts of drink, and they were filled with the spirit. And it was that Senator Smith passed into Feliciana without us knowing, until days later when Ransom and Samuel came tearing towards the house of an afternoon, their commotion causing many to burst outside with weapons loaded and raised. Presently, they said, he was housed at Pintado’s plantation, under the guard of five Puke soldiers. That June morning there was a feeling that the time had come, and yips of nervous laughter filled the house amid a flurry of pouring powder and the knapping of flints; the balls of shot were rolling and drummed the ground as they spilled from shaking hands; Red Kate hurried off into the bedroom with the shotgun and hatchet I’d given her, the blade of which bore the impression of a weeping heart, and in her arms our son wore the necklace of tigers’ teeth, Samuel’s offering of peace; and everywhere there was the sound of hammers nailing shut the windows and bars slipping heavily before the doors.