The Blood of Heaven (46 page)

Forget the Reverend, brother. He’s a dream.

And what about Ira Kneeland? I said. Have you forgotten him? Forgot the ropes at our necks? I know you’ve got yourself another widow, Sam, but—

I’d spoken just as heels clacked upon the boards in approach and fell to thuds hushed by carpet. What stopped me was the voice of Polly Randolph, breathless, saying naught but Fuck before she made off. Samuel had raised partway from his chair with a squeak of pegs, and with the clap of her slamming door he fell back.

You’ve turned to a mean little bastard, he said.

And you’ve become a lap-dog to a man who’d rather shame a paper enemy than have his own country.

In bewildered voice he said, My God, would that you knew that I still loved you as a brother. Even as you spit at me, not even a friend.

You’re dancing, I said. Answer—would you go, right now, with me and finish Kneeland? Fulfill God’s will and vengeance?

Haven’t I killed enough with you to prove it? Shall we count the skulls? And for Christ’s sake what stupidity is this. Go with you? I couldn’t help you on a horse in good conscience. Much less ride with you on a killing. You’d shoot me in the back. But maybe you’d do that anyway. Don’t think that I don’t know you’re up there scribbling to Burr.

It’s nut-cutting time, I said. You’ve made your choice and I’ve made mine.

Samuel growled: For a month I’ve held Reuben back from going, said how it’d be wrong to leave you here alone and blind—

So you wouldn’t, I said.

No, damn you, I wouldn’t.

And you’ve told Reuben that you think I’m warning Burr?

I’ve said nothing. But I’m sure he suspects.

As always, I said, you give your brother more credit than he deserves.

Roaring off went Samuel, to beat on his bedroom door and shout for the widow to let him in. I sat alone, hearing another door burst forth, to Aliza’s chambers, and Reuben’s voice booming for this damned foolishness to stop.

The Blood and the Light

I’d not put more than a few weeks’ worth of creases in my fresh uniform when Colonel Burr’s response arrived, delivered by a rider to the Door-Knock tavern, and fetched by Red Kate on a Tuesday’s marketing.

Giddily she woke me, pressed the letter to my hands, and I drew out my knife from the lanyard and slit papers open, tried for a moment to feel the imprint of the words before I handed the letter back to her. My wife was by then so versed in the coded world that she could read it without the help of a cipher. So she read and read again, we both rocking in bed like excited children, our own child silently doing the same.

Burr spoke of my great worth, my unparalleled assistance. My place in the enterprise, he assured me, was elevated and secure despite what he called the misfortunes of my condition. You will, he wrote, attain the greatness inspired in you by the God of your fathers. I made Red Kate several times repeat that line. How couldn’t young men wish to follow him? He saw the greatness in you, and his only desire was to bring it to full flower. In his letter and the ones that followed, the colonel spoke of thronging acolytes, of hearts leaping from the breasts of would-be soldiers. He was apprised of the Spanish crossing of the Sabine, and judged Wilkinson would soon have his troops in Natchitoches, if they weren’t there already. Himself, he was presently at Philadelphia; he planned to leave in early August, gathering along the way the men and makings of the glorious event. Spread the word judiciously, he said, be prudent in who you choose to tell and what you say, and plan for my return.

All the household, free or not, was asleep; early morning, the false watchmen of the under-hill town barked lies about the time for sport. On the hill-top criers were in pay of the city government and called the hours proper, but by the river it was left up to whatever drunks caught the chronomic urge, so that at two in the morning you might hear a man fighting his own laughter to yowl, Nine o’clock and suck prick! The effect was to unseat you from your sense of forward-marching time, to make you think that the night was constantly in lurch either backwards or ahead and you were trapped in the limbo. So if you were watchless, clockless, or blind, you learned other ways to track the dark hours. My son might’ve been awake, doing as I did, but Red Kate had taken to lashing him to the bed, and he’d likely struggled himself to sleep. It was only me and Barbary, our usual vigil kept in the kitchen, my boots up by the stove and her tending pots atop, grinding cloves between her knuckles, dropping in bay leaves, her hands smacking slimily after cutting okra.

There’s things I do remember by and by, she said. Things I don’t forget.

And among them was the Reverend. Before Samuel had gone questing of Mother Lowde, I’d asked the people Morrel most preyed upon—the blacks. All the slaves of The Church remembered him, a decked-out man in black, and most had heard his legend: freedom, the months flush with cash, and then the final sale. They shook their heads for the fate of country niggers, who would’ve benefited greatly for their city knowledge. Only Barbary knew his dreams of stirring revolution among slaves.

She’d said, He told me it. Came down about one in the morning, stinking of the girl he’d laid with, sat right there in the chair you’re in, and told me how it’d be. A woman like you, Barbary, he said, you could be a queen. White and black alike would curtsy to you. No more mistress or master, everybody free. And who’d be king? I asked him. He said he would, naturally.

Barbary gave no truck to the Reverend’s claims. Said the mention of kings and queens made her mistrustful. That talk’s for dazzling simple brains, she said. And when I asked if she’d heard whether he was still alive, or moving about Natchez, her answer was that I should go uptown to the auction and find the weepingest nigger on the block. Ask him, and you’ll know.

Something put a stop to the crier’s pranking; it sounded like a bottle—a pop of glass and a crumple to the ground. Barbary snorted. Jeers followed, turning into calls to buy the hero rounds. One swift move, a snuck blow dealt from behind, and the hours were righted. The world could move on, knowing now the night would end.

Bitter mood returning like the tide, that evening I’d been awoken with word from the docks that General Wilkinson and his army were still in St. Louis, and the fat man had seen fit to keep the Louisiana troops in garrison, unable to march without his orders. And so it seemed the Pukes had matched his inactivity, staying encamped fifteen miles from Natchitoches. A test, a provocation untaken. If they were paying Wilkinson, he was giving them their every penny’s worth, his weight in reales. Burr knew his treasons, as did most men of substance in the country, but it was thought at last we’d found a situation that called for Wilkinson to act; after all, what difference was Spanish silver whether received in a hogs-head at the dock in St. Louis or by the sword in San Antonio? Surely more to be had that way, but all misjudged the quality of the general’s laziness, and that he was smarter than us all—understanding that power didn’t care that you betrayed a country, so long as you didn’t do the same to the administration.

I’d yet to receive Burr’s next letter, but could guess its contents: Wilkinson does not matter. If he chooses to cover his expansive ass and thus reveal himself to be a pensioner of a foreign country, then so be it. His action against the Spanish would be a happy eventuality, my boy, so carry on and look ahead. And remember that the path to greatness is littered with ones such as him; their bones are buried and they are forgotten, while the men who stride over them on their way are remembered forever.

In bed that day my dreams were terrible, and whenever my son would try to nuzzle close, I’d put out my hand to keep him away. I thrashed, felt his blood on my face, saw his gape-mouthed expression as the slit opened in his throat. In some dreams he spoke words beyond that which he’d know in life. I woke once, wiping my brow. Was it blood or was it sweat? I tasted salt and was drawn back into my torments, this time deeper.

When next I awoke, it was to pain in my left eye and swirls of fire burning in the blackness of my vision, eaten away. I was squinting, so hard that I had to pry my eyelid open with my fingers, quickly shut it back for the fire and hurt. I reached about the bed, found my son, felt for his throat, which was still there. The light like an arrow out of Heaven, shot through my left eye. I couldn’t open it but for the barest crack, the blazing arrow stabbing deeper, its tip churning the blackness of my brains. I knocked the boy aside, the room filling with light as on the night of his birth, me stumbling out of bed to draw the curtains, sinking to the floor and seeing, dimly seeing in what was the last light of afternoon, the bobbing blur of my son. And when, soon after, Red Kate came into the room, she shrieked with joy so loud that the whole house thought me murdered, instead of risen, which I was.

Unwinding the Knot

They were packing, the brothers; coming in and out from the carriage house where quartered the two new horses they’d bought in the time since I’d regained my sight. Shapes and bounds hardened their lines, realizing again their forms. I tripped and stumbled worse than when I’d been full-blind—my senses having grown acute to the feel of space and darkness, I was untrusting of the blurred world which slowly came into being over the course of a week in which August broke and Reuben and Samuel readied for their journey. It was the night before they’d leave, and I sat with the women while the brothers worked, careful where I turned my head, for a glance of lamp or candle would burn spots into my vision like the dullard gets from staring at the sun.

Virginia, Reuben said, for the first since you were—what?—twelve?

Longer, said Samuel.

On this trip they were carrying tied parcels of clothes fit for their reception by the president, who was evidently an appreciator of frontier fashion: buckskin suits cut in the latest style, hats fringed in coon-fur. Reuben had heard of the president’s tastes, and he intended to meet the mark, blend in among the walls draped with head-dresses and Indian costumes, the stuffed specimens of our American wildlife, to seem at home propping his boots up on Jefferson’s footstool, which legend held to be a mammoth’s skull. Once Red Kate had seen the clothes, she said to me, Why don’t they just wear their best day-suits? Now they’ll look like pioneer buffoons. While she shook her head I’d laughed, saying, Let them look like fools.

Now my wife sat beside me on a couch, facing Aliza and Polly Randolph in their separate chairs, the mistress’s throne-like and enormous, its occupant the sharp and angled thing of my memory. I wondered how often Barbary darned and patched the seat for the slip of elbow-blade or wrong turn of razored hip. Polly, for her part, was plumping, powdered flesh a-strive at her Natchez dresses. She eyed Samuel on his to-and-fro, the nibble of her painted lip betraying her poor nerves at the prospect of him leaving. She did it so often that red soon showed on the tips of her front teeth, as though she’d been sucking blood.

According to Red Kate you could tell they were worrisome because they’d both dressed and made themselves up so fine. The pair had made work for the slave-girls, piled hair held carefully by pins and charms, Polly’s borrowed from the mistress, perhaps thinking that what one brother sought so would the other. She was more right than she knew. Supposedly it was all for their farewell dinner, many courses and champagne dusted off from Aliza’s cellar, which had ended but a few minutes before, the brothers springing immediately from their settings of half-eaten cakes and going to their final preparations.

Another hurried passage bearing necessaries, chatter of roads and routes. And would the horses hold it all?

They’re like boys, said Polly. So excited.

Off on an adventure, said Aliza, smiling until the brothers were gone, then allowing her face to glint into a scowl.

But, so Red Kate had said, it wasn’t for the dinner that they’d dressed. Now that Polly Randolph followed her fashion like a courtier, Aliza would’ve imparted this wisdom: dress finest before they go, give them guilt not for coming but for having left. My wife had asked if I remembered how she’d always be in a fine dress, different from the one she’d worn before, whenever I’d leave The Church. Make you dally in the barroom, give me time to change and make up, then come downstairs resplendent to lay the parting memory upon you, just as Miss Aliza had taught her. That memory could drag a man back from half-way across the country. I’d said that she never played such tricks on me, but stayed in bed until I’d go. Hearing this, my wife had turned from her mirror, where, refusing slaves, she did her own hair and powdering, and considered it true. I guess I never gamed you, she’d said. Knew I didn’t have to.

Presently came Barbary with a tray of brandies, doling them out to us in silence and departing without thanks. That night had seen my first supper taken with the white people of the house since we’d arrived. I’d returned to sleeping nights, and Barbary no longer gave me words, but treated me as any other master. Once, forgetting I could see, she’d tried to take my arm to lead me upstairs. I’d snatched it away, and on her face there was the briefest look of hurt before she turned stony and went on about her work. She hadn’t lied about her features—the Arabic hook to her nose and the light, papery skin—but by week’s end she’d blended in appearance with the rest of the slaves, not to be looked upon directly in the face, just hands that brought and bodies that should move quicker, damn it, we’re waiting.

A rifle and shotgun, scabbards to be lashed to their saddles. Reuben would be the long shot and Samuel the scatter.