The Blood of Heaven (47 page)

Aliza, from between her teeth, said, It brings home the nature of their trip, does it not?

Polly Randolph, a-shudder, answered, I worry less over him leaving than being here unprotected—not that we are, she said, nodding to me. But the things he may encounter on the road—

I said, Samuel and me came a greater distance, and with but two pistols and a rusty rifle between us. Young boys. And Reuben, God knows he’s traveled.

I stopped talking when the brothers came through again, and when they left I was accused by their women’s faces. So much for comfort. Finished, they came into the parlor and towed chairs to sit beside wife and widow. Samuel was indeed coloring worse, his skin splotched with black like smears of ash or gunpowder. At first, when my vision returned, he was but a greenish blur. He’d spoken little to me that week, once it’d become clear that I could see and that they would leave as soon as was reasonable. Reuben had said nothing but to clap me on the back and claim how glad he was my sight had returned. I’d thought, I bet you are, you bastard. Now you can go without guilt.

A toast was made, our brandies drained. The standing order to keep all windows shut and nailed at their frames had allowed a mighty heat to settle in The Church, which remained even into the night. Broad and strong, Red Kate sat solidly beside me, the sweat upon her giving her a look like she’d been working in her truck-patch, while Aliza and Polly had begun to crumple; as it goes with weaker women, their backs were humped and sucking in their hollow breasts. Aliza called out for more brandy, her voice cracking to a shriek. Reuben put out a hand that covered both her knees, perhaps not without guilt of a kind, I considered.

How young were you, asked Polly of her man, when you and Angel made the trip down?

Twenty, Samuel said. Twenty-two? He was but a whelp. Fourteen, was it?

I never knew my age, I said. And anyway we didn’t come directly down. We went east, to Cincinnati, because he wanted to find Reuben. Then south for the same reason. We got waylaid from the search. It was almost a year.

And I was the one who found you, said Reuben.

I never knew that it was just you two for so long, said Polly Randolph.

It was, said Samuel, elbows on his knees and staring at the floor.

I looked at my brother, seeing now that he was thinking ahead, of the long road and a journey which would take months, encompass half a country and their final dissolution: the unwinding of the last two cords from our knot. Mine was already gone, a fallen twist withering in the dust at Pinckneyville—if it’d ever been rightly bound at all. Samuel felt his face; his powder had worn thin. I wondered if the president, in his fascination with the odd, might forgo their discussions and wish to examine his skin.

II

A Man of Business

Fall 1806

We Cannot Fail

Tavern gabble and chinking cups, the hacks of smoke-choked throats soothed by beer and liquor, above it all I hollered. I was preaching Burr. At first I wouldn’t use the great man’s name, but instead spoke loud of frontier destiny, eastern treachery, flags planted by the shores of other seas. But in the first week of September word was flapping about the country on the wings of a territorial rag, The Western World, which had printed some of the more egregious rumors and stated outright that Colonel Burr stood at the head of a treacherous imperial enterprise. So my work was simplified.

From the dock-side houses where the men stank of Mississippi water to the barrooms at the edge of the under-hill town where manure musk and plant-shrift reigned, I preached. The boatmen knew some of the enterprise and would invoke the colonel’s name or even that of Kemper, demanding to know where were the other, giant brothers. On a mission of importance, I’d say, the knowledge of that mission’s purpose burning in my throat like the remnants of my childhood coals. I promised the men of the river open commerce and an end to shipping tariffs. The farmers, fresh from being cheated at the markets, solemnly fumed and worried their corn-silk fobs. Sun-burnt and raw-knuckled, they regarded me, and I would make their eyes go wistful and watery with assurances of things to come: a country for the tiller and plowman, power taken from the merchant and his eastern master. This dream-nation I invented, caring nothing that I lied, so long as I was preaching; make the enterprise all things to all men just as any preacher knows to say to a cocker that Heaven is a great run and pit full of fine fighting birds, and to a drunk that it’s the draught that never ends. I gave instructions purposefully vague as those for Armageddon; I could’ve been telling them to await the trumpets and hundred-headed beasts as I railed and bought their drinks.

I said, When the call comes, we have a man in Ohio ready to lead his force, a man in Kentucky, a man in Tennessee, a man in Orleans. Brothers, be ready, for if the whole of the South and West will answer—so should you.

From one wag: And what kind of men are these?

Men of prominent station, I’d say. Men who can command the loyalty of troops.

Another calling out: And who’ll be the man in Mississippi? You?

At such words I’d raise my glass and give a tilt of my head, squaring the gold cross of my eye-patch to the unbeliever’s face. A nod, a bow of confidence; false, of course, for I commanded no force nor held any civic station. But I knew that I could, with time and the Word, stir war in the hearts of rough men. It was a glorious return to younger days, striding out of taverns to battle in the streets and silence with fists the doubters and unbelievers I couldn’t quiet with words; the tedious unlashing of my lanyard of weapons, the other drinkers following after, choosing sides and laying bets. After a while my backing grew great, my odds small. One man knocked me to the ground with his first punch, but I rose up and drew my Bible from my coat and struck him down with its spine. Some desired true satisfaction, and so the weapon-seller would be called for and the matter soon settled, whether in the street or rowing to river islands or riding miles out of town to stand on some hillock and dispatch a man whose name I’d forget by morning. By early September I’d fought four such duels.

Red Kate tsking briefly at a slash in my arm or a powder-burned cheek: I knew I’d be glad when your fire returned, she said. Pretty soon Colonel Burr won’t need an army. Just bloody you.

And that fire had arisen from the latest of Burr’s letters, received not a day after the brothers’ departure. Gone were the pronouncements, in their place facts and figures. The detachments from the territories, what he called a host of choice spirits, numbering some four thousand—notwithstanding what my efforts would yield—would convene at the mouth of the Cumberland River on the first of December, arrive in Natchez between the fifth and fifteenth of December, and from there meet with Wilkinson, if he were not engaged already with the Spanish in Texas, and decide which first to seize: New Orleans or Baton Rouge. It ended with the proclamation:

We cannot fail
.

Even in cipher the words stood out, condemning you to action. And I knew which city I’d advise. I could see the Pukes’ heads on pikes, the houses of Feliciana in ruins. Samuel may have forgotten the rope, but I never would. My fire was so fierce that I considered taking a week to ride down by myself and murder Kneeland and the rest, but I thought better of it; when the time came so would my vengeance. And how much greater would it be to extinguish them as they watched their world go up in flames.

I kept to matters within my reach—my tavern-preaching, stirring the people to glory. I kept no rolls of names, for what use was it to list the multitude? I’d tell them to be as a great voice and, when the call came, holler back. Afternoons I’d have an early supper with Red Kate and the boy, clean and oil my pistols, unload and reload them, making sure my flints were knapped. Polly Randolph hung about Aliza’s crimping and would only take meals with her. She pretended strength but, as Red Kate would say, you could see her sometimes strangling the air with her hands, or plucking and picking her fingers as though leafing the pages of letters yet to come. Sundown would find me at the door with my wife, kissing her goodbye like a tradesman off to work, undoing the bolts and locks and bars, then slipping out. On the way down the street, more than once I looked back at Aliza’s spire and saw that lady in the window watching, sunlight glinting off the lens of her spyglass.

Red Kate told her I was on a wild tear, drinking and brawling and God knew what else. She laughed it to her former mistress, playing the part of the shrugging wife aghast at her husband’s revels. Aliza posted slaves, like a guard, at the front door peep to be sure it was only me asking entrance in the early hours. The lady was no fool—Reuben had told her, no doubt long before, that I stood opposed to him; Samuel would’ve said the same to his widow. But, so it seemed, it was better to keep me close and watchable. Seeing Aliza in her window, hawking me, I’d smile and wave before I headed on.

He’d better watch himself, she said one night to my wife. At this rate he’ll have his other eye put out. And then where will you be?

Knowing we weren’t long for The Church, I made arrangements to let rooms in a hotel on the hill-top, where, if the mistress turned us out, we might look down upon her and the widow as they flitted about in lonesome madness. And Red Kate didn’t tremble at these plans; she was ready for her own place in the world.

We’ve been strung to others for too long, she said. It’s time we struck out for ourselves. But strung we were, bound now to the fate of a man a thousand miles away, the last of my leaders, teachers, fathers, and the one I’d know the least. Perhaps that was why it was so easy to believe in him, in the plans of the great man and my place in them.

I was of furious energy, going from place to place, giving up the Word, even unto the hill-top town, where, after arranging for the rooms to be kept open for the near future, I took on an agent, named Stephen White, to help increase my wealth and standing, bolster me in the business of the upper town. I brought my money to the territorial bank, my writs and liens against Horton’s estate. And it was for White to wield them in the markets. Through him I came to know the workings of the auction-block, the yield of slaves and the futures of cotton and sugar. He was older than me, but appeared somehow younger in his flower-patterned waistcoats, his hair cropped, his face smooth and scarless. He was late of Tennessee, and in his short time in the territories had advanced himself considerable, being in his other work an assistant to the surveyor general of the Mississippi Territory, a bitter old Quaker named Isaac Briggs. Introductions were forthcoming, and by such ways I’d slip into the houses of government. The nabobs, though, wanted little to do with me; they’d had enough of the novelty of back-woodsmen, so it seemed. And I didn’t cut the same gallant figure as Reuben, tending more to harshness and what was said to be a devilish appearance.

They don’t mind so much the duels, said Stephen White one day on our way from his office to the market. But it’s that you fight them against low men.

I considered this, and Stephen, thumbing snuff before he breached the crowd, said, Better wait back, sir. Even the niggers, it seems, are afraid of you. You unnerve them, patch and scars and all, if you’ll pardon me saying. Go have a drink and let me tend to our success.

So it went; and leaving Stephen counting coinage in the evenings, I would repair to the taverns on the down-hill side, less now to preach than to be hailed by the converted. And in my energy I neglected not my other duty, the search for the second of my teachers, the Reverend Morrel. When Samuel and Reuben returned I might have the Reverend’s head in a hat-box, show them, in this way if nothing else, that I knew better. Burr’s troops would be marching through the streets and while my brothers slumped dumbfounded at the sight of them, I would take out Morrel’s head and perhaps the tongue of Ira Kneeland, and bring the knowledge full upon them: I am the one.

So, I said, where is he?

Mother Lowde gave a look of puzzlement; she’d made me wait half the night, while she tended bar and went about serving her patrons, until the morning, when, smiling, she brewed her beer-mash and coffee just as she had done when Samuel and me used to sit with her and read her verses, when we were boys.

You know who I mean. Just tell me where.

Lowde, shaking her head, poured me a cup and I took it. She said, Why’d you do the Reverend that way? Not that treachery hasn’t treated you well, looking fat-pursed and press-suited, minus the eyes and the gouges in your pretty face.

That’s not what I asked, Mother.

Lowde went on: If you’d been sweeter, you might’ve earned a living by them looks alone. They used to say it, all the girls. Some chaps too. She laughed. If it weren’t for your disposition and that voice, who knows?

She’d talked that way all through the night, blithely twisting away whenever I tried to press her, shouting to her patrons that I was a pretty prodigal returned, how she’d cut the eyeholes in my robber’s mask. How I might’ve picked one of their pockets, and did they recall being nicked by a boy five or so years back? They mostly grumbled that they’d been robbed too many times to tell. One man played along, feigning the memory and bellowing rummy indignation to Lowde’s delight, until I screwed my eye at him, parting my coat for to show how many times over I could kill him. Now there were no patrons, her tenants shuffled up to the attic room once mine, and I was growing angry at the way she talked as though to ghosts in the wall.