The Blood of Heaven (36 page)

They flung me from the porch into the yard, where I saw Reuben on his back with a pair of men kicking in his face with their boot-heels before the clubs began to rain on me and I struggled to keep my knees, spitting teeth, until one caught me across my nape and I fell to the dirt. I was rolled over and held down, seeing now the faces of the men who were upon us. They all were black, but only some were true—niggers with cudgels milled with painted bounty-men and their masters. The boot-black was smeared now from the faces of the whites and in streaks and moonlight I knew them. The hirelings I didn’t recognize, but I saw Kneeland and Horton drawing knives before my brother’s face even as they called out orders to their slaves and hires. Kneeland was the first to make his cut and I cried out louder than Reuben when he pulled the blade across my brother’s cheek. Some of the bounty-men were on Randolph’s porch and they’d drug him and his wife out and were tearing through the place. Hearing me, Horton hurried over and called for his niggers to hold me fast and when he bent low with his knife I cast my head at him but he pulled back, laughing.

You won’t catch me that way twice, you little son of a bitch, he said, and flicked his knife to my face.

My eye was filled with blood and the blade screamed against my brow-bone when more bounty-men on horses rode into the yard, one with a rope round his arm dragging Samuel at the other end. The rider stopped and my brother lay there and didn’t move. Horton put his boot into my stomach and stood. His niggers were mumbling yessirs and driving their cudgels to my ribs. A bounty-man came and tossed the niggers rope and Horton said to lift me up and tie me. And when they had me on my feet I saw Reuben being lashed with rope about his hands and neck and Samuel still unmoving. I tore a hand loose and grabbed at the slaves’ eyes and at their throats but my hands were weak and the hemp came twisting about me and I was facing Kneeland and Horton, who stood together, watching.

Let me see my wife, I said, sputtering blood.

At that moment there came Red Kate’s voice shrieking from the house and she was at the door, clawing and crying out in rage. One of the bounty-men knocked her back with his shotgun and slammed the door shut.

You’re coming to Baton Rouge, said Kneeland. You won’t see your whore again.

I was screaming that I’d kill them all when the sassafras root was pulled over my mouth; and I gagged on rage and tried to force the root from between my teeth. Blood and spit gathered in my throat and came burning out my nose as the rope was cinched about my hands and the bounty-man gave it a jerk and I stumbled forward, past Reuben, whose face was slashed and busted unrecognizable, his eyes wandering balefully to Samuel, now being pulled upright by Horton’s niggers only to crumple again and again to the ground.

You like to make people run, said Kneeland, now a-horse along with Horton. So we’ll see how you like it. Hup!

The horses reeled and we were dragged towards the southward road, and in those first steps I wondered was this justice that I’d called down. Reuben blew gouts of blood from his nose as the pace quickened, and we passed on the road Basil Abrams, who we had once saved from this very man, sitting high atop a fine horse and holding a bottle. The men all gave him tips of their hats and Abrams wouldn’t meet my eyes. Samuel hitched in his run and now and again shouted through his gag. And it was worse to dwell on his pain than my own, and in his wounds I saw the first fights of our youth and our brotherhood in its infancy and I wept, eaten up with fear for my wife and son. The niggers ran beside us, and one came jogging by me, cudgel pumping in his hand, and he skirted towards Reuben and struck him across the back. Reuben fell and was dragged so far in the road I thought they’d let him die that way, before Horton saw and called his bounty-man to stop.

Damn it, Minor! he said. Wait until we’re there!

The bounty-man, Minor Butler, slowed to a stop and we were on a ways before he trotted back, grinning, Reuben slouched and trailing with his head down. And the wrath of the Lord washed over me, for this was truly His hatred of us made manifest. And even Christ Our Savior in his agony did break. He screamed to His father, asking why he’d been forsaken. So I did on our run, harried by that horde of blacks and bastards and knowing that the end of my world had come. And when I could howl no more for breath I chewed the bonds at my mouth, left some teeth in it before the end. The riders were whooping and I saw that Samuel would fall again and I jogged over to my brother and gave him my shoulder to lean on as we ran. And it was that my kindness was jeered by the bounty-men, by Horton, by Kneeland most of all, and even by the niggers who trotted alongside, singing, Bad men! Big bad men! Ain’t but shit now, bad men!

It was near dawn when we crossed the line into West Florida, and not a dozen yards from the demarcation stood Alexander Stirling, holding a lamp at the head of a few more men. Our train stopped and I couldn’t help but fall to the ground along with my brothers, and we lay there half-piled like whipped dogs, gasping and heaving while Horton and Kneeland spoke to their fellow.

You’re late, said Stirling. It’s almost sunrise.

Kneeland said, I only wish that I could see them all at the mines in Cuba.

Speaking of which, said Horton. I must get my boys back to the house. Too much excitement, you know. Wouldn’t want them too riled to work.

Minor Butler dropped Reuben’s rope and began herding the niggers together for their journey back. And I put my elbow to Reuben, trying to rouse him, but my brother wouldn’t move. Once Kneeland and Horton had gone, the bounty-men got down and lashed all our ropes together, which Stirling took up, hauling it taut. I ground my teeth into the sassafras root and tried to help my brothers stand.

By the Waters of Babylon

Water poured over the pirogue’s lip where we were set with a tarp thrown over us between Stirling and a bounty-man called Barker, who held the barrel of Stirling’s shotgun to the back of my head. The other hirelings manned three more boats and we floated down the bayou heading for its mouth at the Mississippi, where we’d turn and go to Baton Rouge. I sucked at the muddy water some and heard one of my brothers do the same. Sweltering under the tarp, I gave chew to the root once more and felt it break, but my hands were still tied and I held the root in my mouth, hearing the paddles dip and slap as we passed into the low roar of the confluence and were drawn into the current of the father of waters, which had borne us down here years before when we were searching boys, and which now seemed would carry us to damnation.

The pirogue spun wild in the swell and the bounty-men hollered to one another and Stirling and his man battled with their paddles, giving us kicks with every stroke. Our boat rocked and leaned and was caught now and again in rushes that spun us round until they’d beat the water enough to right the thing. Samuel lay beside me, and I don’t know if he slept, but I could feel his breath against my face there in the dark beneath the tarp; and my life wound out before me as the river; I felt it rushing under my cheek and its taste was our blood that had gathered sloshing at the bottom of the boat and churned with muddy water and the spice root now pulped from all my grinding. I sucked what was left of the sassafras like the coals of old, knowing this too was punishment.

I gave out over and again, waking when the sun had gained the sky and beat down on our tarp. The men in the other boats were chattering, having games of dice and singing until Stirling called for them to quiet.

Edge to the east bank, Stirling ordered.

What’s that? called a man from another boat.

Away from the American side, damn it!

I took from Stirling’s fear and the way they went hard to the paddles that we were nearing Pointe Coupee, where we’d pass at the outskirts of the American fort. By then I’d nursed my root of all taste and I spit it out and whispered to Samuel if he was awake. My brother groaned. The sunlight shone through the tarp, showing his and Reuben’s busted faces, their eyes swollen near-shut. Stirling’s boot came down hard upon Reuben as they thrashed the water. Barker’s heel was at my side, but he’d put his shotgun down to paddle.

Who goes? came a shout from the western bank.

The bounty-men were cussing up ahead and our boat tottered for the fury of Stirling and Barker’s paddling. The sentry called out again. And so I pressed my palms to the belly of the boat, caught one last sight of my brothers gaping in their bonds, and flung myself up from under Barker’s boot, sent him toppling backwards as I tore my way from the tarp into the clean air, spitting sassafras root at him and seizing the shotgun, and its weight was glorious as the shouts of fear now from Stirling behind me.

It was a few soldiers on the American bank who stood washing pots in the river and I swung the shotgun on Barker, crying out, It’s the Kempers they’re taking to the mines! Come get us, God damn it we’re American!

Barker was upon me and I fell back atop my struggling brothers and had the barrel of the shotgun jammed into his stomach, but when I pulled the trigger there was only misfire. The soldiers were calling to their fellows and I heard their boats take to the water and their oars slapping fast. The river swole and roiled while I fought, and Samuel was up now, beating at Stirling with his bound hands. I buried what teeth I had left in Barker’s arm, at the elbow, and I bit and he was beating me with his oar when I heard the first shot fired.

The soldiers were calling halt and I brought the shotgun hard between Barker’s legs, hearing Stirling’s lamentations as both wrecked brothers piled atop him; and I had my foot raised to stomp Barker’s manhood when we overturned.

As in the days of Preacher-father, the Mississippi embraced me and drew me down into its whirl, and with Reuben and Samuel lashed along we spun in the murk, fighting each other, kicking whoever was closest, battling to drown rather than swimming together to live. The rope caught round my throat and as my brothers thrashed and yanked I spun and came facing the surface of the river, which seemed miles away, and the sunlight was gleaming upon it and upon the oars that broke it and the blue-cuffed hands of men reaching down while darkness gathered at the corners of my eyes. I was between them now, my brothers, and the rope coiled about me in all its length, so tight around my neck that when my jaws pried open on their own to take a lungful of water none could pass my throat. The rope went slack, our fight lessened, and we were sinking into the dark reaches of the river, and there was in me, on that downward glide, a coward’s want to die for the thought of the world I’d have to survive in: wife dead or worse and holding our unborn’s fate, idiot child I loved as much as hated. And it would have been better that way, for all three brothers, the two blooded and me the false third, to be sucked out of the world in that instant and rendered sopping to the gates of Hell, where the endless heat would dry us to the bone the instant we stepped inside; it would have been a blessing to the world for us to die, but there came at that moment our final baptism as the poles and oars and bale-hooks of the soldiers jabbed into the water and snatched our rope; and I saw Reuben grab for one pole and draw himself to it and we were suddenly rising towards the surface, cupped by the hand of God and the soldiers now in the water kicking us lightwards.

We were strewn like flotsam on the bank at the foot of the American fort where the soldiers had brought us, and some were sawing the gags from my brothers’ mouths and pushing the water from their bellies and others now made to sever our wildly tangled bonds. I rolled my head and saw that Reuben and Samuel were breathing and up the bank an officer was shouting questions at Stirling and Barker, who sat cross-legged with their heads hung. Later, when we were being doctored, they’d tell that the rest of the bounty-men had escaped to the Spanish bank. I was the last to be cut loose, and when the soldier came with his knife I lifted my hands for him, and while he went to work, saying that we were some lucky fellows, I looked again to my brothers—Samuel on his side now, eyes shut, retching water and blood.

Brother, I said, can you see?

Samuel hacked himself empty and his corpse-color was worse than ever. He raised his head from the ground and searched my voice with squints. Not a bitching bit, he said.

And what awful broken dregs we were of those boys who’d blacked each other’s eyes back on the plains of Chit.

Reuben groaned and I saw the wounds in his face which one day would become horrible scars; and I sat there dumbfounded when he rose up and gained his feet to the surprise of the attending soldiers, and hobbled up the bank towards Stirling and Barker, who rose and made to run, but were restrained by the men as Reuben came lumbering on. He couldn’t see either, but he wobbled before them and one man said, Why not let him get in a lick, Cap? Reuben swung at the air, and I was on my feet and would’ve joined him before an officer stepped in and put a stop to it.

Christ Almighty, said the officer. Get them to the doctor and let’s have this thing sorted!

Stirling and Barker were hollering that we were criminals and fugitives from justice when they carried us off for the fort. It took four men to load Reuben onto a plank, but Samuel and I needed only a pair a-piece to haul us; and I remember them saying how my brother was strangely light for such a big one. I was begging them to send riders to Fort Adams in Mississippi and to Pinckneyville, babbling the names of Horton, Butler, Kneeland, and Basil Abrams. I know I sounded like a madman, for when they set me and Samuel in cots in the garrison hospital, where Reuben was laid out stripped on his plank and the doctor was bent over his face with compresses, I looked at the sick men now leaning out of their beds, eyeing us with wonder, and when one said, Damnation, fellows, where’s the war? I laughed and wept so long and hard it hurt the nubs of my teeth.