The Blood of Heaven (33 page)

Samuel and Randolph kept abreast of developments and egged each other on. Randolph had no reason not to; he’d never heard a shot fired. Samuel, though, should have been worn of such ideas, but he took each snip of news, whether from the mouth of a traveler, Reuben’s letters, or the territorial newspapers, like they meant something other than shit. He railed and stormed over them nightly. It was said that the governor of West Florida himself shipped over from Pensacola with a column of troops, bypassing New Orleans and landing in St. Ferdinand. From there and with a full brass band at the head, a pair of large cannon at the tail, and himself borne upon a gilded litter hefted by a dozen West Indies Negroes of ferocious character, the governor marched his column all the way to Baton Rouge, where Grand Pré received him with three weeks of fireworks and balls. The great cannon were filled nightly with champagne and on the corner of each street there was a woman singing with a detachment of the band.

I wonder if the bastards are having a bear-bait, said Samuel.

And as much as I tried not to hear, I did, aching with the piss-rotten knowledge of the revels held to celebrate our failure.

The night we’d arrived back from Baton Rouge, Red Kate dug the ball from my ribs and patched my wound with what she’d heard was the cure for felony: a poultice of onions applied three times a day for seven days straight, and held in place by porter’s plaster. Once Polly Randolph was visiting and overheard my wife remarking on the progress of both my wound and my soul.

After listening a while, Polly said, But, dear-heart, a felon is a canker on the finger.

Red Kate gave her a look like she was a perfect fool and said, My uncle wasn’t hanged in Georgia because he was a canker on a man’s pinkie. I know what
felon
means and this, so I hear, is the cure for the condition.

At that, Polly went away and my Copperhead finished applying her second poultice of the day, saying, I kept my family from the fever and flux in that flood. And that woman tells me I don’t know cures?

Her hands were so often mixing plaster that they were white and cracked to the elbows. I didn’t care what was true and half-hoped that her stinking wraps would cure me of my hunger for misdeeds. But truly the job had been well enough done in Baton Rouge—at least for a time, until the devil-worms reawakened. For now, I wanted only the touch of those dry, bleached fingers; and it did draw me from my desolation some to find that she still loved me. All her talk of winning was of the same piece as mine and Samuel’s, Reuben’s and Randolph’s; in the face of defeat there was nothing to do but endure.

And Reuben was enduring quite well in the comforts of New Orleans, scratching out his correspondence to us and claiming he’d come to Mississippi soon. In fact, he’d gone many times to visit his Aliza in Natchez, where travelers who’d passed through the West Florida country during our rides had put out wild stories to the papers—nearly all of them wrong or garbled, and most calling Reuben the one who’d led our boys to Baton Rouge. I learned, sitting in the Randolphs’ house while Samuel read the clippings, the way history is truly made—through the eyes of gossips and fools. And when, in late August, Randolph was erupting with the story that the vice-president of the country had shot the treasury secretary in a duel, I snorted and waited for the corrections of the rumor. None came, and the shootist’s name struck me from the memory of one of Reuben’s old letters: Aaron Burr. I was glad upon the news to know that there was still someone with steel in the world, that a man could kill his enemy outright and upstanding, unlike the way we’d so pitifully protracted our rebellion and revenge.

Claiborne stayed true to his word, and when the new governor of the Mississippi Territory sent a district judge from Fort Adams to Pinckneyville, all the old man did was question us and spend a night drinking in Randolph’s house.

Judge Rodney was portly and of good temper, though tending to fury a bit. With his first snifter of brandy he let us know that we were still beloved of the United States, and by his fourth he was deep into thundering denouncements of the Pukes.

The bastard dons have placed a tariff on American goods in Mobile Bay and Baton Rouge, but do we tax their goods in New Orleans? No, sir! An avaricious people to be sure.

No doubt, Samuel said.

And your fellows down in West Florida, said the judge, they’re feeling the sting now, I assure you. The dons have deigned not to allow any new American settlers into the country.

He went on and I listened, caring little for what amounted to another in the endless recountings of the Pukes’ injustices. But Randolph and Samuel were rapt.

The judge said, They’re selling off all their land to their alcaldes and planters so that when the takeover comes there’ll be none for American interests to own. It’s a devious business. They know their downfall’s coming and they mean to make it hurt when our diplomacy wins out.

We’ve been failed by diplomacy, said Samuel.

Judge Rodney righted himself in his seat. Now, my good man, you were failed in your own designs.

It would seem so, said Randolph.

And I would urge you, the judge continued, as a representative of the American government, to not protract your plans any further. I should think you’ve had a taste enough of it.

We have indeed, said Samuel.

The judge seemed contented with the lie and left us, saying how we’d done a service to our country. And the moment Judge Rodney packed off, my brother fell again to planning with Randolph. They unfurled maps and drew up laborious lists of all the men who’d wronged us and the ones considered traitors; and there were so many names inked in those pages that I believe many were of their own invention and lived only in ink and parchment for them to hate and plot against.

Those nights I returned to my house on Randolph’s lot—which Reuben in his kindness had leased for us as permanent, along with a house further in town for Samuel and the ghostly Basil Abrams, who stayed drunk and out of sight most days, unless to be found face-down in the street—and Red Kate would hold our son down while I read to him verses of the Bible which might drive out the demon from his mind and put an end to his affliction. But God had turned his eye from me and the boy grew more and more enraged until one night when my wife was weeping as she clutched his thin arms in their struggle, I felt the Word on my tongue like a gob of rotten meat and I snapped my Bible shut and flung it to a corner of the room, where it would remain almost a year in the roach-dance darkness, gathering dust and twists of rat shit to its pages. Thereafter I’d try and be the doting father. I took my son on walks and rides into the countryside, never going south or near the line, but into northward groves of grape and honeysuckle, where his sullenness was all the more terrible set against the last glow of life before the winter.

On such a day, in October, we strayed into the outskirts of Abram Horton’s plantation, where there was a fine stream of water full of creatures for the boy to watch, and the man himself came riding up while we sat beside the stream and hollered, I do not believe this! Get on out of here!

Easy there, I said, toeing the cool water from the bank.

Horton bellowed, You and your whelp quit my property this instant!

I was broken, a numb fool sitting barefoot by the lilies watching my malformed child slap at frogs, but not near enough to take words from a planter before my son. And so, seeing that Horton held a fowling gun across his lap, I sat there and let him ride nearer and soon his polished boots were at my head and I looked up to see his jowled and powdered face looking down on me with scorn.

Do you understand me, Kemper? The law here may tolerate your character, but I shall—

Before Abram Horton could finish I rose up, snatching the shotgun from his hands and him from his saddle. He fell to the reeds and was sloshing on his hands and knees when I gave him the first kick to the face. He horse cantered off a ways and I circled him, stepping down into the gentle flow of the stream, and cracked him again, wishing I had on my boots. He was gurgling curses and trying to stand when I felt the weight of the shotgun in my hands, and I brought it up so that the barrel was between his gaping eyes. The water at my ankles grew warm as I cocked the hammers back, and I felt good and whole for the first time in months, soaked up his begs and pleadings, which were as much a balm to my soul as any onion poultice.

And I should have killed Abram Horton, for later he’d prove his planter’s enmity, but I broke the shotgun and emptied its load into the water, cast the thing off to the stream. Then I took him by the throat and held his head under the water till I was sure he’d tasted mud.

Listen to me, Mister Horton, I said once I’d released him to gasp for air. You and every other son of a bitch in this pisshole town needs to understand that I am not beholden to any fucksaken planters, and I will kill any man who speaks out of turn to me. You follow? So consider your God-damned mouth when you pass near me. And tell your little clutch of masters to do the same.

Horton’s lip was a-quiver, and I was so damned pleased with myself, so full of the spirit, that all I did was bend to spit in his face, then turn and gather my son, who smiled dully as I brought him to where my horse was tethered. On the way I reared back a hand and slapped Horton’s wandering mare across its haunch, sending the beast darting off into the woods. Laughing now, I set my son in the saddle and mounted behind him. As we rode past the sopping, red-faced Horton, I said to my son, See, that’s what a sinful man looks like.

Ma, said the boy, pointing at the glaring planter.

That’s right, son, I said, a sinful, stupid man who knows better now than to piss about with us.

Colonel Kemper

We set to work converting Samuel’s house into a tavern before Christmas. We had no money to speak of, but bought the lumber and later liquor on credit from Randolph, who considered in his fool’s way that the eventual profits would finance our next revolution and that having customers would offer a steady stream of fresh ears to hear the railings against the Pukes. And there was always such talk, even as we hewed boards to make the counter and polished railings of brass for travelers to rest their heels upon, took stock of spittoons and ashbins, enlarged the fireplace and built, in the yard behind the house, a ramshackle still which, when it cooked, seemed constantly near explosion and produced such a mean cane liquor that the drinkers called it the Blight-Cock. I went about the work for the sake of something to do, hewed and planed until I was whipped each day and shuffled back to my house so that I could avoid the nightly prattle of future rebellions, now spilled over from Randolph’s parlor to the newly christened Kemper Bros. Tavern, where chancing men gathered from all-about—deserters from the army and even Indians from the Creek nation to the east ambled through to have their taste. Randolph wore his throat out from talk within a month, but my brother seemed bolstered by the business somehow, as though the guzzlers, who only listened to his voice when they weren’t fighting or singing, were the shades of our departed army.

It was about that time that they began to call me Colonel Kemper. The first man who did was but a drunken traveler staying the night at the tavern who’d heard wild stories of our fight; and I thought he meant it for a joke and so dragged him out into the road and beat him till my fingers were like loose sacks of bone. But stories of our revolution had grown so wide-spread, and were so warped, that you’d have thought we’d won; and more and more who passed through called me Colonel until there was no stopping its proliferation and it spread like a fever; and the men of the town said the word when I passed them, tipped their hats and offered makeshift salutes; soon Samuel, who was always glad to shirk glory and praise onto someone else, introduced me as such to newcomers and guests. He called me the leader of our uprising and corrected those who asked if I was Reuben. Accounts of our wasted war were so often called for by the drinkers that my brother did beg me to make appearances, and to wear something besides my working clothes when I did. Those times were only a few moments of me stepping in to hails and hurrahs for my great effort against the Pukes. And it was like a ghastly joke played on the minds of men: to think that what we’d done and failed at so miserably was something great.

When winter grew bitter, Samuel was laid out with bouts of his recurring sickness, which a New Orleans doctor had given every name from ague to feverous impetigo. More than once he called me to his bedside—a pallet in a back room of the tavern—and had me hold his sweating hands and pledge that I would carry on the fight. I didn’t have the meanness to ask him what fight he meant, the only one present being his and Randolph’s paper war, their endless correspondences, and the tavern battles fought between tankards of liquor.

The ship, he said one night. A black ship just bristling with guns . . .

I was kneeling beside him, his hands cold in mine. He was deep in fever and rambling on a trip to the Bahamas, a British commission, and the warship we’d take up the river to rain down retribution on the Pukes.

We’ll reduce them, said my brother. Hammer them to fucking ashes.

I told him that, yes, we damn sure would; sat with him through visitations of both our fathers, which, shuddering and wracked, he’d describe to me. And I saw them also, a pair of old gangling ghosts who he’d shout were chasing him around the room, breathing fire, though my brother was on his back and bundled in sheets so that he could only kick his feet to run from them. It was only in his sickness that I saw guilt ever take him, addressing Ransom and Crabbe with tears in his eyes. His fever finally broke with the news that Reuben would be coming to Pinckneyville in late January on his way up to Natchez, where he’d winter with Aliza. When Randolph told him, Samuel’s face cleared of grayness and he sat up in his pallet like Lazarus from his tomb, more-so for the fact that his color remained that of a fresh corpse before it yellows and blackens.