The Blood of Heaven (37 page)

Fort Adams and the First Justice

Judge Rodney sat behind a table piled with papers, a skull dug up from an Indian mound serving as weight to one teetering stack, scrivener at his side taking down the particulars of a case that was now, in the mind of the worthless Mississippi court, finished.

I am sorry, gentlemen, said the judge, but neither Mister Stirling nor Mister Barker are citizens. And as they committed no crime above the line—

Bull-shit, said Reuben. They were in conspiracy with men who did commit crimes above the line.

And Mister Horton has been apprehended and bonded, said Judge Rodney. You gave us no other names.

Give me an hour with Barker and I’ll have them, I said.

That’s probably true, said the judge. But the fact stands that we’re in a wild country, my friends. We’ve got no felony laws on the books for simple assault—if we did you’d have damn near every man in the territory clogging my courts. Kidnapping, no—the only people who kidnap are Indians and they’d be killed outright. No need for a felony law there.

Samuel said, They stole from Edward Randolph’s store, sacked his damned house!

I understand that, and they’ve been charged and bonded back to their own country. A thousand-dollar bond is no mean thing.

It is when you’ve got twenty thousand acres and a hundred fifty niggers! said Reuben.

And what about Horton’s niggers? I said. They were in it just as much as any white.

There’s no way to charge a Negroe with a crime he’s been led into by white men, and especially not when their master has fled so there’s no one to speak for the property. Could I level charges against the horse a highwayman rode? No. Could I charge the ox that tramples a child? No, you make the master pay. And for the time being I can do nothing with draught animals, bipedal or not.

You could shoot it like a mad dog, said Samuel.

Judge Rodney sat forward, elbows threatening tobacco-stained territorial writs and missives. The sockets of the ancient Indian skull were cocked sidelong at him in shared confidence. I guarantee you, said the judge, that even if Mr. Horton doesn’t return and forfeits his bond, you’ll have him or his heirs in the civil court for damages.

We did as you said! Samuel whacked the table, jigging the skull from its perch. We made no more moves against West Florida, no more plans—

Let me say once more that it is early yet in the process, the judge said. It’s not a blasted fortnight since this dismal incident took place.

I chewed my cheek with the nub-shards of my teeth and let my brothers roar.

What about Barker and Stirling? I said.

What about them? said the judge.

How long will you hold them?

Not much longer, I’m afraid. When their bonds are posted they will be escorted to the line.

And when can we go? said Samuel.

Immediately, Judge Rodney said. On honor that you will not raise trouble in the Spanish country. A collection has been made from the town, and you have three horses outfitted for your ride home.

Fine, said Reuben. But I will hold you to what you said about the civil case. The stitching in his face turned any look into a snarl and the flesh under his right eye bunched and puckered as we made our bonds of paltry honor and left the judge’s chambers.

We stepped out into the courtyard of the fort on feet busted from our run, and there, not two paces from the door, stood Edward Randolph, blanching, so I thought, at the look of us: our beards grown patchy and scraggly, as none of us could shave, for the blade would open our wounds; Samuel’s head bound in bandage and held in place with plaster, the corpse-color briefly abated. Reuben worst off, not from Kneeland’s knife but from the skin split by cudgel blows.

When I took a-hold of him, asking of Red Kate and my boy, Randolph was apologizing for his lateness, turning his face to not look upon mine.

They’re well, he said, well as can be expected. Polly’s been with her since that night.

She’s pregnant, I said.

I—Polly’s with her, Randolph said, and would say nothing further though I shook him and in my fit caught him across the face, screaming for him to speak. And my face then was mauled worse by rage and sorrow than it could ever be by any blow, my cuts opened, stung with tears as Samuel dragged me back and held to me. Go on, he said. Go to them. We’ll handle the pair here.

Randolph, picking himself up, said, I am sorry, Angel.

I tottered in my brother’s grip, clung to him.

Come on, said Reuben, who remained stony, hiding with his hand the blighted eye from the sun. We’ll walk you to the stables, brother. I need to see the man there about some whips.

The Fires of Home

I made Pinckneyville with Randolph in a night and a day, riding straight and crossing Bayou Sara the second evening with a fog heavy on the land. The soldiers at Fort Adams had taken to us—Reuben had made sure of that—and their outrage at what we’d suffered, plied with beer and whiskey we brought for them from the outlying town didn’t dampen their desire to be helpful. And in the stable the day I left, when Reuben asked the livery-man for two good whips, he’d been happily obliged. Later, my brothers would tell me how Stirling had been spirited across the line by an officer while we were still in Judge Rodney’s chambers, but also how Barker was given a guard more fitting his station—four corporals, who my brothers drank with that night after I was gone. The detail was to escort Barker to the line in the morning, arriving there sometime in late evening and bivouacking with the patrols now swarming the border-lands. The soldiers, they said, were amenable to their plans; and so my brothers left the following morning under the eye of Judge Rodney, were presented with pistols for their safety by the commander of the garrison, and, with their whips packed away under their saddles, took the southeast road for Pinckneyville but cut west some miles down and crossed over Tunica Bayou and awaited there, a few yards above the line, the arrival of their new-found friends, who came, singing Yankee Doodle, with nightfall.

When Barker was brought down from the wagon and saw my brothers, he tried to run, but the soldiers held him, and with few parting words they made their exchange and set off north, leaving Barker bound at the hands and legs with rope between my brothers. The way Samuel told it, Reuben held the lamp low on their walk across the line and they happened to see in the light the piss-stain growing at Barker’s pants.

A few yards over, where the trees resumed, they moved into the woods and tied off the end of Barker’s rope to the low limb of an oak.

They told me Barker only jabbered questions and that they made him understand within the first half-dozen cracks of the whip. He screamed so loud they thought the whole damned country would hear. So Samuel took Barker’s shirt and made a knot of it and bound his mouth, and the brothers took their turns.

Samuel said that when he undid the gag from Barker’s mouth, it was so soaked with sweat and tears and bile coughed up in his agony that it wrung out in a great stream while the man told what he knew. When Barker had finished Reuben told him to say it all again—slower this time. They’d been organized by Horton’s overseer Minor Butler, some from Woodville and Pinckneyville in Mississippi, others from West Florida, St. Helena mostly. Stirling and Kneeland oversaw the West Floridians, who were mostly squatters they’d promised to pay in deeds and titles to the lands they lived on. Their names were repeated in a litany, the names of their wives, their work, a jabbered collection of names misplaced, switched from town to town and country to country, blended equal and alike in pain-wracked recognition, and even as he gave his last sob-stuttered recollections of the men and circumstances that had led him to this sorry fate, Reuben was finishing the job of digging his grave.

By that time I was home, on my knees on the porch, holding my wife and my son while she wept and when I could open my eyes for my own weeping, I saw he stared at me same as if I’d never left. His dead glances didn’t hurt me; that there was life behind those eyes, whatever kind, was all that mattered. I tried to lift them up, my wife and child, and carry them inside, but the ghosts of the cudgels were at my head and ribs and arms again and I faltered. Red Kate wrapped my arm over her shoulder and helped me stand when she shouldn’t have been on her feet herself.

Our second child had been born a puddle at the bottom of a basin-pot not five nights before, which I imagined, once I heard, that Polly Randolph spirited away to empty in some secret place, a better place than the trough at the far edge of the property.

Back to bed, dear, she said, tipping me into a chair which I soon flung aside, making quick apologies to Polly and following the thin figure of my wife to our bedroom, hearing from behind our son yawping and being taken up in the arms of Mrs. Randolph. I shut the door and thought as I did that I’d put a brace on it and cut a good length of stout wood for a bar, cage the windows with iron, fix pikes in the yard as what guarded sorrowing Emily, and how I hadn’t saved her or Kate.

A believer in the healing powers of the dark, Polly Randolph had snuffed every wick in our bedroom, and Red Kate slept beside me while the darkness was emboldened and surrounded us. I lay there, fearing it, careful not to grip my wife too tightly round her middle. Truly I can’t say she was sleeping, for she was turned away from me, and if I took my face from the hair at her neck when my breath grew too hot, raising my head like a swimmer for air, she’d inch closer into me.

I wanted light, and so I left the bed and went searching for matches and, finding them, lit the lamps. Red Kate sat up and as the wicks burnt off their top-oil, I went to her. A horseshoe of yellowing bruise wore her right eye and her jaw was swollen on the left-hand side. I knelt at her bedside and the lamps sent black twists of smoke to join the dark. I took her hand and made myself a wretched thing, begging her for forgiveness like a sinner at the foot of Judgment until she said for me to shut up.

These were all they did, she said, touching her face.

Thank God, I said, and my thanks felt immediately loathsome. I told her that I’d kill them all. I’ll bring you their fucking ears, I said.

Not tonight, said my wife with more steel than any man. Stay with me tonight.

But I was shook and I told her, jabbering, what Reuben and Samuel would do; I told it to her thinking that this first vengeance would soothe her heart, and I was too foolish to know that such things never do and revenge is a sorry balm for the wronged. I don’t believe I ever understood that. I hate to think it’s true, but whether I knew or not I saw it in my wife’s eyes that night and I denied it in my heart.

Polly came and put the boy, pink and still warm from the hot water rag-down she’d given him, to bed with us. I took him and suddenly realized I was still in my clothes, my soldier’s boots hiked over woolen pants, the pistol still tucked at my belt. I set my son between me and his mother. Polly leaned against the doorframe, lingered for a moment, and before she shut the door, in the light from the outer rooms I saw a place in the frame where a cudgel had struck and the wood was dinted and hairs of splinter shone.

My wife had awakened and taken the boy from where I’d put him and as the light shortened I saw she had him curled in front of her. I heard her pat the spot behind her and I returned there, aware now of the pistol pressing to my side, trying to edge it away from her back. But when I did she rolled partway and stayed my hand, saying, Keep it there.

God damn you, stay, said Red Kate.

I’d been tossing in our bed for a while and she’d cussed me when I sat up. There was no chance for sleep, my mind wrought with the fear that Abrams and the bounty-men might have run too far to be caught, that I was in bed while Horton and all the rest were getting further and further away. The awful idea gripped me in a claw of bones. Horton’s slaves slept peaceful, not ten miles from here; Kneeland and Stirling were dozing in their fine houses in a country that stood only because I was too foolish to take it. No sleep, but I stayed with my wife that night and was tormented, by Red Kate’s comfort and the way she seemed resigned, by the thought of retribution slipping through my fingers.

When they returned the following afternoon, Samuel sat with me on the porch at my house. His pallor was poor and we talked over the details again. I learned the names and whereabouts like scripture, like the endless lists of begetting. We’d find them all. Samuel stretched in his chair and put his hands on his knees. We were looking out on the yard where we’d been beaten and bound, and the marks of our struggle were in the ground amid the hoofprints and weeds.

Do you recall how many you’ve killed? asked my brother.

Not enough, I said, that’s how many.

We sat together until we were too tired to talk. And passing sleeping Reuben on my way inside, hearing Samuel lay himself on his mattress brought over from the tavern, I wandered to the far corner of the room, to the wood-grate by the fireplace. There, as in a dream, I reached my hand behind the grate and felt in the cobwebbed reaches for my Bible. Slip of dusty leather at my fingertips, I seized upon it, shook the twists of vermin shit and insect husks from the testaments, and gathered the good book to me again; that night it joined me in my sleep, slipped in my belt alongside the pistol; and this was how it would be: boots, weapon, wife, child, Word—never, I believed, to be taken again.