The Blood of Heaven (40 page)

Yes, gentlemen, the justice said, this will be a fine new country in the coming years.

Now we were rich and had something to protect, something owed. I wondered if I could put it in a letter to Colonel Burr, ask him how it was to be beloved of the low man and the high alike, but I couldn’t figure how to put it rightly into cipher. If in our letters men were flour-sacks, then should I ask him how it was to bear the cheers of the coarse Kentucky flour but eat only bread made of the finer grain? In his last letter the colonel had flattered me, said how pleased he was at the sound of our stores and how he so looked forward to doing business with a merchant of my quality.

And in our lives outside the letters, we worked within the indexes of code. Land meant more than dirt and trees, cotton more than bloom of bole. The books of the Bible had to be deciphered for their meanings, and we were the characters in one of Christ’s red-lettered parables; lead shot was candy in my son’s mouth and for my wife the knives and pistols in her bandoliers were jewels. And all was like the visions of a fevered man, wherein the bedside lamp becomes a block of ice, a loved one’s hand seems a smelting ladle pouring drops of lead upon the sweating brow instead of cool water from a rag, sheets and blankets turn to jangling chains with every thrash and roll of the afflicted.

I thought of Edward Randolph, wracked in bed, dreaming of Daniel Clark’s ship in the port of Vera Cruz, its hull packed with munitions but its manifest reading
CLOTH
,
COTTON
,
TAR
, and
NAILS
, and Clark himself there in name as a merchant of goods but in fact a salesman of revolution. And, in his delirium, would the cipher be reversed—guns splinter into nails, powder bleaches into flour, as all our codes and falsehoods are made clear when the accounts are parsed in Heaven?

I couldn’t have put any of this to Randolph if I’d wanted. That night, after the justice left for a room at a house in town, we went to see our friend and found he was too bad off for words. I could hear his teeth grinding from the doorway when Polly led us in. His eyes were squeezed shut and he wouldn’t know that we were there. Regardless, Samuel knelt beside him and talked to Edward Randolph of the declaration he’d written, how one day it would be famous from here to Mexico. I stood a ways back, at the foot of the bed with Polly. I told her of the money judgment and she took my arm. She said we’d been such good friends to her husband, that even with the trouble we’d been good. And, watching Randolph thrash and writhe while my brother tried to give him peace, the awful knowledge dawned on me that I’d lived beside this man for two years, preserved by his kindness, and that I didn’t know him. His wife squeezed my arm as he stained his sheets with yellow bile; then she let me go and went to clean him, drawing rags from a sloshing basin as Samuel tried to hold her. I didn’t know the man at all. In two days he’d be dead.

The Season of Giving

We waited until Christmas passed to do Justice Baker’s work. Since the hailstorm there’d been no rain and the squatters’ camps were dry and ready for the torch. As for killing, there was none. Instead we fired in the air and over grizzled heads to frighten and speed the stubborn on their departures. Most of our time was spent hollering and blustering them out. Skinny and gray, wearing too-old hides, most of them complied; and these we helped as much we could. Game was scarce and their few crops had failed.

We’re starving, said one withered woman, hefting holey blankets to their wagon.

Then you’d better find somewhere else to starve, I said.

Her husband spit at me and I rode back and watched Samuel give them his ration of dried venison for their journey, speak some words of comfort.

The ones who refused had their houses set aflame and we left them naked to the elements. Thankfully, they’d cut enough trees so that the fire wouldn’t spread.

I was hardened against their plight. I’d killed enough to know that it was mercy of a kind—they were poorly off wherever they were. The justifications of a hired hand, hired man; I was become like the ones I’d put to death in St. Helena. And so trash is set against trash. It took two weeks to clear them all out, and I sat coldly presiding over the enterprise with the same empty feeling as would visit me in later years when I chased runaways for sport or, still later, stood by tallying my gains at the slaver’s block. On the justice’s errands, I came to know that killing was better. I did it well. Never could plan, never could lead, but I could lay waste to a man and know I was right with the Lord. It was my only talent outside the Word.

So I drove the people from their homes with the memory of my own fireside close upon me, where on Christmas Eve we’d opened the crate of gifts sent down from Aliza and Reuben in Natchez. For my boy there was a rocking-horse, upon which somehow he managed to sit still. From her old mistress my wife received a dress in the latest fashion and a parcel of candied orange slices accompanied by a note in the lady’s hand which said she remembered these were her favorite. I sat before the fire as the gifts were opened, my son straddling his wooden horse, and asked Red Kate if this was true. She said of course it was, plucking a bright slice glinting with sugar to her lips, chewing gratefully. And I worried that perhaps I didn’t know her either—like Randolph, whose gift was a gilded desk set. The sight of it drove Polly weeping from the room, followed closely by my brother. She’d only taken part of the wrapping off before she’d seen the note and dropped the present clanging to the floor.

Samuel stayed with her in the back for a time, and so we went about balling up paper, stuffing-straw and twine, and pitched it all into the fire. I knelt with my wife and we watched it all consumed atop the embers. She smiled, red as ever in the firelight. Our son was at my side, holding fast in his still ride, and so I put my hand to the haunch of his mount, pushed down, and made it rock. He screamed so loud that Samuel and Polly came running from the back to see what was wrong.

At the last house there lived a pair of brothers near our age. We put the case to them with pistol out, and at first they both agreed. The elder, full-bearded, went to gathering their tools and horses while the younger stepped within their house, only to come suddenly out, brushing aside the blanket tacked for a door with a musket so old I couldn’t judge its make, strange locks and mechanisms hissing sparks. Before I could fire it exploded in his hands; and the man ran shrieking into the woods, waving arms that ended fingerless in the air.

The shock of it drew nervous laughter from the wicked depths of me. I couldn’t stop it and doubled on my horse, fighting against the bleating black cackles until there were tears in my eyes and Samuel was screaming for me to stop, God damn it, stop. And the laughter was my father’s, like the time in Richmond when we saw a drunkard tottering from a tavern and fall onto the iron head of a hitching-post, killing him outright. Preacher-father, laughing, stepped down from the crate where he’d been giving his sermon to a sparse, jeering crowd, took me by the back of the neck, and brought me to see the dent in the dead man’s skull. He held him up by the hair and said, loud enough for all to hear, See, son. The sinner gets his due, one way or another. I’d fought the laughter down to bitter hacks when Samuel took the bearded man to search the woods. I was choking on stillborn anger, the hatred for that voice, by the time Samuel and the man returned, having found no trace of his brother.

V

That Cursed Name

Spring 1806

The City and Her Associations

April in New Orleans and the slates and tiles of the roofs dripped rain-wash upon my false-colonel’s uniform as I strode the city for the first time, brought along by Reuben because Samuel was down with another of his fevers. There was work to be done, transactions to be made, creditors to sate, and meetings to make.

Now that we’re afloat again, Reuben said.

And we may have been bobbing upon Horton’s money, but the bowl of the city was rapidly filling from the downpour, which had been constant since we’d debarked that morning. Reuben hulked ahead of me, his shoulders draped with a great-coat oiled against the rain, pointing out spots of incident or importance in the city, which was still small in those days, but teeming. The American merchants we met along the way gave him tips of their wilted brims and occasional salutes, sending droplets flying from their soaked gloves. Storm or no, on our way to the meeting of the Mexican Association at the house of Judge Workman, he’d take me to the Place des Armes and show me where they’d stood, his American guard, in their bloodless victory. Men hollered from King’s Coffee-House at the sight of him, unmistakable in his size, but Reuben waved them off and said we’d see them later. From the open doors of little shops there issued the clucked haggling of Frenchmen; others stood beneath awning tarps struggling to eat sweets which crumbled to mush in their hands. And it was such a world I’d stepped into, with none of the honesty of Natchez, where all, at least below the hill, were united, if only in brawling. New Orleans seemed a clutch of islands populated by various tribes of outcasts, who only dealt with one another when there was no other choice.

You can tell the Spanish, he said, by the way they look at me.

And it was true at least in that the Pukes went hushed at his approach. There were many still scuttling about the town, long-time residents along with holdovers of the late government, whose uniforms signified as much authority as mine. They were gathered in the darkened porticoes, waiting out the rain, as we cut around the old church tolling mass and the smell of popery wafting out its doors borne by airs of Latin. We passed one clutch of them close by, fresh from their morning meeting with the Whore of Rome, their language jagging shrilly off the stone-work faster than seemed possible. It had been a while since I’d heard Spanish, and it sounded as it always would, like an endless disagreement. They cut their eyes and went quiet as we skirted them and came into the square, the drooping sodden stars-and-stripes suddenly in view, as if to tell me, And who are your enemies? Who have you killed but Americans? You fool, these others are a mask. You fight yourself.

I edged beside Reuben and let myself be buffeted by wind and rain. The flag, too heavy with water to unfurl, slapped soggy at its pole. In the far corner of the square, facing opposite the church, stood a scaffold for hangings.

Grinning and with a quick nod back to the Pukes, Reuben said, If they only knew, eh?

What’s that? I said.

If they only knew it was you.

By the third course my belly had grown to the lip of the table. I watched the others for what to do with the thing which sat upon the plate before me, a soft-shell crab fried and swimming in cream. Following suit, I pried off one by one the spidery legs and ate them along with sips of sauternes. Slaves set saucers of butter before us and tied napkins round the necks of the more eager eaters. One black, seeing that I’d flecked cream across the front of my uniform, tried several times to bib me, same as the others. I had to grab him by the frills of his shirt and say that I’d crack his woolly head if he approached me again, to the laughter of our end of the table.

Reuben, myself, and Daniel Clark—tanned from the Mexican sun and his transits of the Gulf—sat opposite Judge Workman, who reigned at the far head behind a bucket ringed with shrimp and filled with steaming ice. A judge in the superior court of Orleans, he was delicate-seeming, not portly like the other judges I’d encountered. Workman styled himself foremost as a man of letters, his apartments crammed with books, most prominently copies of his own slim volume, a play called Liberty in Louisiana. Upon entering, those of us who’d never shared the judge’s table were impressed with copies. Those who knew had brought their dog-eared own, producing them at the door like talismans to the delight of the host. Reuben nudged me early on, pointing out those who sat at Workman’s left and right.

That’s Lewis Kerr, he said, pointing to a tall man with powdered hair and spectacles. He’s president of the Bank. Last I heard he was suing for divorce from his wife. She had one of their nigger girls tied to the bedpost and whipped her to death. By the look of him the matter may have been settled at last.

Was the black girl his mistress? I said.

A man who sat beside Reuben and had been listening leaned round and said to me, Are you sure you’ve never been to New Orleans, Colonel Kemper?

Seems so, said Reuben. You understand the city already. And to the right there is Gutierrez.

The Mexican was young, offset by the older men. He wore a uniform of blue and gold, thick black side-whiskers tufting at the high collar as though they grew down his neck. From what I saw he didn’t speak, only watched the others with bright eyes peering out from matted hair. He had the appearance of a wolf in disguise, hair bristling out the worn seams in his man-costume.

Throughout the evening, as the crabs gave way to broiled fish and then to spring lamb and sweetbreads, Workman was encouraged by knowing guests to recite particular passages of his play. It was a comedy on a greedy Spanish don faced by a pair of buffoonish Scots-Irish grifters. I watched Daniel Clark redden each time Workman affected a brogue. After a time, the host noticed as well, standing a bit to address our end of the table, glass of wine held high as if in toast.

O, my dear Mister Clark, called Workman. I do hope you aren’t taking offense? I’d hate to upset our first congressman.