The Blood of Heaven (38 page)

III

The Covenant Renewed

Fall 1805

Woe to the Traitor

We rode in circles about Basil Abrams’ hovel and talked loudly of burning him out, so that he’d hear. The fool had left a trail of ill tales, smashed bottles, and pawned possessions from Woodville eastward to Pattersonville on the Amite River, which was where we found him, in the first days of October, living on the outskirts of town in a hut of pine limbs.

Come on out and take yours, Basil, I said.

Reuben should have killed you for what you did to your wife, said Samuel.

Abrams was retching; the thatch-work of pine-straw trembled with his gagging. When he was empty, he called back, I know it! He should’ve! But I won’t go out, you hear!

His cries were so pitiful they shamed me for a bit. Well, I said to Samuel, it’s our own fault for not doing it.

It is! Abrams cried. It’s you bastards’ fault! You tricked me into all of it!

We kept you on, you son of a bitch! Samuel said.

I didn’t have nothing! Lost my house, lost my wife—

Because you beat hell out of her, I said.

Because of you Kempers!

Samuel’s clay-daubed features were twisted in anger. We’d figured right that Abrams would be easiest to catch, and so we felt fine going after him while Reuben was in Natchez. A letter had arrived in Pinckneyville the week before, saying that Aliza had been stabbed. The deed was done by a new whore. They’d had strong words between them, and one morning the girl had put a knife into Aliza’s side as she went upstairs. The letter said the lady was recovering nicely, but the stabber went unmentioned; most likely she was weighted down with stones at the bottom of the river.

I hope the bitch is alive, Reuben said, hitching to the saddle not ten minutes after he’d read the letter. I mean the one who stabbed my Liza. He stroked his beard and said he wished he could shave. These damned cuts. I’ll make a poor bedside companion.

Reuben’s eyes were full of tears as he swung and left for the northward road. At least now he could compare scars with his wife. So it was the two of us brothers again, at least for a time. And the ride in search of Abrams had been long and sorry; following his drunkard’s trail was like pursuing a tuck-tailed dog for days and days just to give it a kick in the ribs. It almost made what we’d do seem hollow.

I say
almost
because it wouldn’t. If we’d have found Basil Abrams in a cave of lepers eating his own foot, it would have still felt good and righteous to kill him. In his sordid weeks of travel since that night in September, Abrams had gained a scrap of legend, and the people of Pattersonville whispered of the whiskey-pickled creature in the woods; their children sang songs about him and pelted him with clods when he ventured into town. When they asked our names, we said we were the Roy brothers, which was the name we used in our ciphered letters to Burr and his men.

We’d brought no torches or oil, so there wouldn’t be a burning, and though we were far enough away from any ear to rattle off as many shots as we wanted, neither of us fired. Instead we made our circles and shouted to the squalling Abrams.

God, he cried, be done with it!

Then come out, I said.

O, for Christ’s sake, Samuel said, rearing his horse and riding off to the edge of the clearing. There he straightened the beast to face Basil’s hovel and, jabbing his heels deep to horseflesh, charged.

Abrams made it partway out before his hut was trampled to splinters, and the horse’s hoofs were stuck with sappy limbs and blood as my brother reared his mount again and again to drive Basil Abrams’ spine through his ribs and into the dirt. Basil screamed at first but soon the sounds he made were of gory air being forced from his crushed bellows. Now my brother rode over his flattened form again, wiped the sweat from his brow, and asked me if I wanted a turn.

Well, I said, cantering and gripping twists of rein, why not.

My wife hadn’t cried or said a word when we’d left three days before. Red Kate wore her own bandolier, strapped with knives and a pair of pistols, when she’d walked me to the door. She said she wouldn’t take them off till I returned. I thought of her as I made my last few gallops over Abrams, the man who’d bought a mirror for the wife he’d beaten, and there was Ransom O’Neil sheepishly handing a comb to the bandaged woman. Ransom was dead and my wife had suffered greatly, all because of me. And now death was my gift, my mirror and ivory comb, proffered to a woman who’d endured so much for my sake. There was nothing to do for Ransom but live on, protract the dream. I struck hard with my heels for the last trample and trod, wondering was there a difference between me and the one we left amid the splintered limbs and pine-straw to rot. No point in concealing him, a scrape-trough of red flesh pocked through with bone; he’d have no mourners. The children in this lonesome town would find something new to sing about.

The Lord’s Passover

The Lord made His will known in the ease of our passage into the country, across the line here overgrown and wild and into the district of St. Helena, the parts of West Florida where there were no planters, no Puke patrols to hinder us.

At the first squatter’s house, a cabin guarded by a herd of skinny pigs, we said we were surveyor Kneeland’s men, here to inspect their tracts for claims and future titles. We’d had our hands ready to draw pistols if the owner of the place was one of our bounty-men, but he was an old man eking out a living in the backcountry alone. His name I don’t remember, but when Samuel asked him the names of the other squatters nearby, he gave them and I had to fight back a smile at hearing that five of the hirelings were among them. We walked with the man and gave survey to what he considered his property; I even jotted notes, mapped the country with a pencil, the way I’d seen Kneeland and Pintado do when they eyed land. I had him show me on my drawing where the houses of the other squatters were, their distances and particulars. We left him in the afternoon with assurances that his claim would soon be recognized, his toils not in vain.

I remember that he blessed us, called us good men as we rode away with our map.

The houses of the bounty-men were scattered among the other squatters’ plots, in a dead line down the western bank of the Amite. That night we made a fire and looked over the map, figuring how and where we’d make our strikes. We slept in shifts so as not to be surprised, but nothing came and we set out before dawn. We’d ride to the southernmost house and wait until evening and make our way up from there, so that if things went poorly we’d be heading north and back to the line anyway. It was twenty miles back to Mississippi; our work could be done in a night.

Crouching in cane, on a hillock overlooking his squat, we watched Nehemiah Hunter jab his dusty rows with a hoe-blade and go about the other chores of his day, bending to dig out potatoes, which he left in piles for his scraggly children to pare of their roots and bring to the house. Afternoon he went inside to dinner, and returned to the field as the sun began to set. His name was among the ones we’d learned by rote, though I didn’t recognize his face.

But he knew our faces, for when I came upon him, riding down from the hillock and with my pistol out, he dropped his hoe and gave a yelp. Samuel had ridden up ahead to keep him from the house, and when he saw this, Nehemiah Hunter tripped on a pile of dirt and potatoes, then rolled onto his back with his palms up as I closed on him.

He was saying, No, no, no, when I shot him through the chest.

And there came a woman’s shriek from up ahead, where Samuel was. I rode past the corpse of Hunter towards my brother, who whirled as a shot sounded from the cabin. He wasn’t hit, and so we kicked off and passed Hunter’s wife where she knelt among the squealing pigs, trying to pour powder and shot into the barrel of a musket, wind whipping the black grain from her shaking hands. The sun was low and the shadows long upon the earth. The wife was crying, spilling powder and ball; she looked up at us, red-faced, and revealed her toothless mouth in a scream of fury, casting down the powder-horn and all the implements of firing, screeching that, damn us, she didn’t know how to load it.

Nightfall and five miles north, we kicked down the door of George and John Barton. They lived on their own, so the old man had said, and were whiskey-makers. We didn’t know which was which, but both sat before a fire with their bare feet propped on the knees of a squaw who was rubbing their toes. The Bartons tried to stand and I swear the squaw gave a little smile as we shouldered our shotguns and fired each to each. I’d shot the nearest and he lay on the ground with his neck mostly gone, while the other had received Samuel’s shot to the belly and was hunched over the hole in himself, mumbling. He took no notice of us as we turned over his brother’s body and checked to see that his wound was good. He didn’t even pick his chin up when I bent to look and saw through his gut to the ladder-back of the chair he sat in, seeing also that the squaw had been caught in the scatter. She lay at our feet and the bare feet of the Bartons, still breathing, a smile on her face. I said a prayer for her. She’d been heating water in a kettle, I supposed to wash their feet, and there was an empty basin set beside the fire, which I kicked away as the kettle began to whine and we crouched among the dead and dying to reload our pieces.

Samuel huffed a breath and said, Shit.

It was my shot that did her, I said.

Damn, said my brother.

Job was a good man and God took his children, I said. We can’t help who’s huddled up with shits like these if they get in the way.

Samuel nodded. The squaw’s eyes rolled up in her skull as though to catch my glance. I’d never killed a woman, and even if it was by accident it didn’t make a damn—killing felt the same, like the last twitching moments of love, when you can’t keep your seed from spilling; you have no control and are the glorious instrument of the Lord’s Will. Samuel couldn’t know this; it wasn’t in his nature. He sorrowed over the squaw and for a long time would pray daily for her soul and his own. Myself, I was content to slaughter the world. Until the Lord put a stop to me, until I felt His hand on my shoulder and heard His voice in my ear, saying, Enough, I’d go without guilt, which seemed like nothing more than weak and brittle snakeskin to be sloughed from the hearts of the righteous.

Next was Roger Washburn, who surrendered himself like a fool without a fight. He’d heard our horses, evidently, and came outside armed, but threw his rifle to the ground and pled mercy for his family if we’d take him. He’d cast the rifle beside a fire-pit, upon which cooked a pot of pitch, perhaps for tarring his house in the morning against the draughts of winter. It was midnight and he was dressed in his nightshirt same as I’d been when we were taken; he seemed about my age, worse worn by life. Scattered about the fire-pit and steaming pot were trowels, spades, and ladles. Washburn was on his knees, hands clasped, saying, It was just for money, sirs. The Bartons were the ones who thought it up—they said Kneeland would grant us our titles to the land, said we’d all get our plots and more for free.

We were down off our horses and candles shone in the window-hole of the house; before the netting that was tacked where glass would be a woman and a pair of young boys peered out.

I said, We’ve got no time for this.

But Washburn’s words caught Samuel, his story of being led down a wicked path by wicked men.

Barker didn’t say that Kneeland had promised them land, Samuel said.

What difference does it make?

For a poor man, said Washburn, it makes a matter.

The pitch was roiling in the pot and I was tired of this talk. I looked again to the window, where the woman and her sons were pressing their fingers to the netting. I shouted for them to get away from the God-damned window before I filled it with shot, and the woman hustled her children off.

Spare them, Washburn said. You got me.

We will, Samuel said.

Another hissing spit from the pot struck me under my eye. Do you like to paint yourself black? I said.

Washburn turned from Samuel to me. It’s what the others said to do.

Did you think playing nigger would help you? I said. Do you think that hides you from God?

It’s what we were told, said Washburn.

Just because the Lord turns His eye and favor from the black man doesn’t mean He can’t see him, I said. So I say again—do you like to be made black?

I don’t follow, sir, said Washburn, turning to Samuel for maybe more sense.

My brother looked to me; I’d taken up a ladle and presently dipped it to the pitch and drew it full. The man’s face was dumb and unknowing and I was reminded of the words of Judge Rodney about punishing beasts of burden. I held the brimming ladle for a moment, then slung the pitch into Washburn’s face.

His screams drew his wife and children from their house, but Samuel kept them back; and I was shouting over Washburn’s wailing, How’s being black? How is it, now?

Washburn batted his hands at his tarred face, rolling and thrashing so much that I had to stand on his legs to hold him still enough to shoot. In the after-roar of the shotgun I heard his family crying. Samuel had started for his horse and I followed after him, giving a kick to the tripod leg and toppling the pitch-pot over. I had to scamper fast to escape the flow of black that spilled out onto the ground and swallowed the dead man.