The Blood of Heaven (39 page)

When I’d caught up to my brother and was saddling, I reached and took him by the coat and said, Don’t, by God, go weak on me.

You don’t tell me that, he said, then gave his horse a thrash and rode on ahead.

Our last was called Will Everett, who lived but a few miles from the man we’d first met. And it was a strange thing to ride to his house in the silence of the pre-dawn hours, when we knew that behind us was miles of screaming and death. We didn’t kick his door in but shouted alarm and for help in the yard until the man came out. He was shouldering a musket and he trailed it between the two of us, asking what the trouble was.

You’re William Everett, I said.

That’s right, he said, jabbing the mouth of his musket at me. And who the hell are you?

Samuel gave our answer with his shotgun. I saw the flash of blue out the corner of my eye and Everett flying backwards like a doll flung aside by a child. Another house full of screams, another flick of the reins to our tired horses; and as we made for the road, closing on one another, Samuel popped me in the leg with the butt of his gun, saying, There’s not a weak bone in me, brother. Know this.

I smiled as he charged on ahead and I felt more whole in that moment, more blessed by God, more full of the spirit than I ever had. Even now I can’t curse myself for what we did that bloody night; that’s the way of vengeance. So it went that we crossed the line just after sunrise, going a few miles in to find a place to spell our horses for a while. My brother’s anger at me had cooled and morning broke to find us knelt in prayer, and I read from my Bible the story of the sword of Gideon.

IV

The Coded World

Winter 1805

Visitations of the Law

It’s a bloody outrage, said Justice Baker.

There’s more bad men about lately, I said.

Deserters from the army, Samuel offered. Gamesmen from Kentucky. They’re all wild, and as long as the Spanish government’s so weak, I’d expect it to continue.

Head tilted gravely above his cup of Blight, Justice Baker said, At least from what I hear it wasn’t blacks. We can all take heart in that.

Late December and outside the frost was being battered from the trees by hailstones as we sat with the justice, who’d braved the weather that day to come down from his court-seat in Woodville and inform us we were rich. Moreover it seemed he was there to test us over the night in St. Helena. Justice Baker had ears and was no fool; like the rest of the lower Mississippi, he’d heard tell of the Passover night and his conversation wound back to it. He was shrewd, and as I sat with Samuel at our corner tavern table, listening to Baker bemoan the lawlessness of the lower country and the hail pelt the world in rattling drifts, I was happy in the knowledge that since that night we’d done more of God’s good work, and the justice would never know nor could he wield any law against us.

Speaking of Negroes, Samuel said. Would it be possible to take part of the payment in Mister Horton’s slaves?

I don’t believe that would be a prudent measure, given the circumstances.

And if you were a money-loving man, the circumstances were fine indeed. The settlement with Horton’s estate, made in the absence of the man himself, was just over twenty thousand dollars, to be divided principally amongst the three of us brothers, with a provision to pay Randolph for damages and hurts incurred. And I judged it sorry that neither Edward nor Reuben were there with us to hear our wealth proclaimed—elder brother still in Natchez while his wife’s wounds knitted, and Edward Randolph down the road in bed with the sickness that would carry him over before Christmas.

At first I thought it was Samuel’s fever catched and spreading, but Randolph bore no corpse-color; suffering aches, chills, and yellow flux, his illness was entirely earthly, and so after a week’s worth of torment our friend would be put into the half-frozen earth, interred with a miniature of our revolutionary flag which Polly used to dab her tears while I read the service. I told her, when the last shovelful was patted down, that she could take heart in the judgment we’d gained, meaning both Justice Baker’s and another, the knowledge of which her husband had taken to his grave, whispered to him the day before he died: that Abram Horton was dead by my hand.

We went for him on the Sunday before the justice graced us, having heard the night before one of the tavern-goers say that he’d seen Abram Horton’s son, a boy no more than twelve, riding from their plantation every few days with a bundle of supplies. The man knew what his words did and he told his story loudly, the way I found that countrymen did bark when they wanted trouble stirred amongst others than themselves. He went on to tell that the boy was riding south and east to the Bayou Sara, Sundays and Wednesdays, he said, regular as clockwork.

So we waited until the appointed day, when at an out-wash of the bayou, the boy appeared, tethered his horse, and dragged a pirogue from the bushes, then loaded himself and his bundle in and shoved off into the swamp. We kept low until he returned, when it was nearing sundown. Horton had a better son than he deserved, who’d ride the roads alone knowing we were about. But from what I’ve seen sons often do exceed their fathers and this one I wouldn’t make suffer for the sins of his. We let him pass. And so the good son returned from his errand in the swamp, pulled himself atop his horse, sat there for a moment puny-looking, then hied for home, supper, mother. It hurt me some to think of it; but then I’d had neither home nor mother, my meager suppers wasted on a tortured tongue.

We paddled quiet as we could, thumping cypress knees and edging past the moon-struck eyes of alligators, hearing the slosh and coil of snakes slipping from the low limbs to the water. Samuel rode at the fore, and we craned and peered for any light ahead on our slow progress. In the belly of the boat rode our shotguns, tamped and ready. The light grew, wriggling shadows between the trees as we neared a small island where two men sat talking before a campfire. By their voices it was Horton and his man, Minor Butler. There was a good stand of cypress between us, and so Samuel pulled the paddle from the water, set it in the boat, and we floated there, listening. We were no more than fifteen feet from the island, a patch of soft-suck mud where nothing grew but a scattering of bright green moss. I took up my shotgun, wondering why in God’s name was this man such a fool as to not have gone below the line. Pride, I figured. But what pride was there in skulking through the swampland? I couldn’t grasp it. All I knew was there he sat: Abram Horton, spooning beans from a pot and chatting with his overseer; they were covered up in furred blankets for the cold, which grew worse in the damp. Brothers to the deep, we’d act together and without words, all in murderous motion. Samuel had his shotgun up and aimed, covering Minor Butler; and I raised and leveled mine, balancing the barrel on a branch, thinking, We are all made to pay in kind for our foolishness and pride.

Abram Horton was telling a story of his youth: a night in a bawdy house in Virginia. From the sound of the overseer’s laughter, he’d heard it more than once. Butler was turned more towards Samuel, who had a good shot at his front, while Horton had his back to me. It didn’t matter—the shot I’d tamped in my piece was of a brutal gauge; it wouldn’t spread far, but put a knothole through to his chest if my aim was right.

I fired first, followed closely by Samuel; and in the briefest noise and flash both men dropped. We held to the trees, for the force of our shots had the pirogue near to swamping; we negotiated the trunks of them and banked upon the island, where the two now lay dead. Butler had taken his in the chest and was splayed wide with his arms out-thrown; Horton was face-down, the evidence of my shot staring up at me from the fist-sized hole in his back.

What followed was the hours of struggle through the swampland, after we’d loaded the corpses in the pirogue and shoved off for the deeper reaches. Over and again I swore I felt Abram Horton stirring at my feet. I’d give a jerk and prod him with the barrel, but he was only ballast; and my brother’s mind was also on ghostly things as we inched our way through low brambles and tangling vines, until what passed for land in the bayou rose up beneath our boat and the paddle struck in muck. Samuel debarked first, stepping knee-deep into the slough, and held out the lamp, revealing an expanse of sallow pock-marked mud which wriggled when he moved. Looking out, I realized it was the color of my brother’s face when he’d neglect his clay and powders; and he peered into it as though contemplating himself in a window.

He said, God, this would be the place you’d find Sara herself wandering.

The ancient, deathless killing-whore now skulked through my mind—her toothless mouth, the seat of her womanhood still filled with the contagion that had damned her, moving like a water-bug, picking bony limbs up high and swift to go circling us atop the mud, which presently accepted me in suck and chill up to my hips. We tried to move forward, hauling the boat behind us, but made little way.

Shit, I said, let’s put the bastards here. No one’s braving this.

We hustled and grumbled as though we served some master other than ourselves. Perhaps we complained against the Lord, as we laid hands on the bodies of those we’d slain, hauled them atop the jiggling mud and in the light of the sinking lamp pressed against them until they were deep enough in to step up on like ramps and drive down with our boots. Abram Horton’s eyes had been open, his mouth agape; and as I’d shoved him down his head had bobbed through the parting mud, nodding to me—the only kind of deference I’d ever have from such as him.

In the following days my lungs filled up with bile and my throat was burning, but Red Kate made me honeyed drinks and though my throat still felt clawed it was like the good rasp a full day of preaching had given me in the past. It let you know you’d done your work.

The storm went on and worse cold came down upon the country, freezing drops first into sleet and then the hail which kept up its rattle-pat falling throughout Justice Baker’s visit.

The justice reared up in his chair, giving rise as though he sat at the bench before a pair of misbegotten boys. Listen now, he said, and listen well. I’m not so loose in my doings as Judge Rodney. We are trying to make something out of this country, more than just scrappers and a few scant plantations, and I won’t have it ruined by acts which engender reprisal either here or from below the line. When war comes, it comes. But for now I want peace and control. Now, I’ll let this matter lie, but I want to have a handle on your doings. When your hands are idle, it seems, they end up covered in blood. So I intend to make sure you aren’t idle.

There’s no blood on us, said Samuel.

Be that as it may, said the justice, you are twenty thousand dollars in my debt, and moreover you owe me for turning an eye to your acts.

Here it is, I said.

Is this ingratitude?

Before I could answer him, Samuel cut me off, saying, What would you have us do to show that we were grateful?

For Christ’s sake, Sam, you’ll cow to another of these—

Enough, said my brother.

The justice looked to each of us, studying, measuring, as though he could see the seams wearing out of our brotherhood. I understand, he said, that in your time in West Florida you had your own trouble with squatters and timber-thieves?

I kept shut my mouth, for anger and disgust, as Justice Baker told what he required: his land outside of Woodville was being preyed upon, and he needed men to clear it of what he called
ruffians
. Like most of the horsed and booted, he was awaiting the arrival of what he thought were better settlers, people from the East with money and designs on homsesteads who’d eagerly sign papers, pay rents, subject themselves to liens and forfeitures, incur debts, and allow their landlords and creditors to make for them paper nooses out of mortgages and titles, shackles out of law. I listened to him talk of his acres awaiting the axe, how his holdings would provide for his descendents with the coming flood of immigrants if they could only be preserved from poachers, and I wanted to spit. They had, he said, despoiled fine quarters and some had gone so far as to harass his carts of cotton on their way to New Orleans. The justice hadn’t enough constables or militia, and he wanted to keep the matter private so as not to stir up further indignation; he grew more excited, saying how he eagerly awaited the new blood coming into the country, once the Spanish matter was settled—The coming tide of sober, industrious folk would serve to wash away the trash.

They are illiterate and rude, he said. Of low morals and unworthy of public confidence or private esteem; they will never take a foothold because they are disunited, and knowing each other, distrust each other in kind.

He went on like that, the justice did, blind as all his kind are to the trajectories of trash—the trash who came on prison-ships windswept across the Atlantic to the new world, where they were indentured or set loose in the wilds of Georgia and South Carolina, and there carved out a life for their children and grandchildren to abandon for the promise of the southern motherland Virginia, where though they went among those who for a century had sent tobacco leaves to English queens and kings, they were still trash; and it was our fathers who quit the cavaliers’ commonwealth and set out for the western territories, going willingly into newer wilds whereas their begetters went in chains for stealing fish from an Edinburgh monger’s cart; and they brought with them into the wilderness the sons they’d sired, our generation. And though the names of ones like Baker and Smith bore the marks of menial origins, that past was forgotten, or worse, remembered but kept locked away in a strongbox, buried underneath their ever-rising wealth. Already Samuel was nodding in agreement, and I, damn me, was too weak to tell him no.