The Blood of Heaven (50 page)

If he’d sent the letter by post, I said, it would’ve been there months ago.

Swartwout looked at me as though I were mad. Too delicate, he said, to be trusted with some clod-hopper on a horse, wedged in his sack with the love-letters and condolences.

Damned if that’s not how I’ve gotten all mine from Burr, I said.

That’s between you and him, said Swartwout. But I’ll have you know the colonel keeps up many correspondences. Too many letters from too many different places for one man to read. So he puts his trust often in associates. . . . Who is it you address your letters to?

I sign them as Thomas Roy, and they go to John Fitzsimmons of Nashville.

I hate to break it to you, friend, but those letters you’ve been getting back are probably not from the colonel himself—though, hearten up, they are in his spirit and from a trusted friend.

There was nothing I could say. Know your place.

All I know, said Swartwout, is that I’m bound to hand-deliver the message and it’s of great importance. The colonel did assure me of that.

He was a New Yorker, his talk a harsh ramble, as though the thoughts were heading too fast on their way and intersected strangely. And he was a young man, face fresh despite the road-grime smeared across his cheeks, no lines for it to gather in, no scars like mine to hold it. Aloud he wondered how many years these months of travel had put on him, holding up a wishbone, offering.

I didn’t take the bone, instead thinking, Did the dust of those same roads try my brothers’ joints? Did Samuel gather it in handfuls to hide his putrefying face? No, I judged, they’d be out of the West by now; in the capital, plying the president’s fears.

And so, I’d later come to find, they were: Jefferson cloistered in his office among the curiosities when in walked two more. He was unimpressed by their size, for he himself was a tall man, but he was piqued by their appearance, which even among the hides and headdresses and strange brass tools stood out. For a week they’d been waiting in Washington, wheedling and lying and trying to worm their way into an audience with the atheist, who coolly received them, bade them sit upon chairs made of fossilized wood. Reuben had claimed, to the president’s men, that he was there to discuss the prospect of contracting out the building of a new road from Pinckneyville north through Tennessee, as the one that stands now, Mister President, I assure you, is lousy with brambles and sinks, places for highwaymen and runaways to skulk. The way Samuel recalled, Jefferson watched while Reuben made his proposition, but he didn’t listen. He’d heard such cant before; he was inoculated. What he did was keenly look, taking measurements for the taxidermist, taxidermy being a skill he may have possessed, so plentiful, it seemed, were his interests; among which was not the construction of a new road, for one was presently commissioned and being dug from Natchez up, so the atheist said—my road, little did the brothers know, paved with the bones of indigo slaves.

Swartwout held the wishbone out again, fat upon it shining in the lamplight. Come on now, he said. For fortune’s sake.

This time I took the bone, squeezing for a grip; and with a wide smile and a roar of glee Sam Swartwout yanked his end, coming away with the wish still whole in his hand. He puzzled over it and shook his head at me. Too slick, I said, tiring of his silliness. He laid the bone aside.

The atheist needed no deftness, no supreme turn of phrase to maneuver Reuben into revealing his true purpose; he blundered into it directly; having built himself too small an entrance with his talk of road contracts, now he knocked the door-jamb loose with his shoulders—blacking Burr’s designs, holding up Senator Smith as foremost among the conspirators, implicating Wilkinson and the businessmen of New Orleans. Jefferson let him unspool: Do go on, no need to say their names again, Mister Kemper. He was quite capable of remembering even the paltriest of details. And these two were among the insignificances.

The president made no mention of our rebellion, but Reuben would invoke it like we’d served at Yorktown: we did right by our country, trying to add to her borders. Then of course there was the attack upon us not long thereafter, which he recalled to Jefferson also: our patriotism in the face of foreign attack. I read, said Reuben, that even some members of congress were for raising an army in reprisal. What came of that? The atheist tried his best to stay out of the affairs of legislature. Our glorious separation, he called it.

Now Reuben was back on Burr and meanwhile Samuel had been sitting in his chair of wooden stone, growing iresome in his quiet. It had been a long trip: sorry roads and houses, buggy tavern beds, the heat withering away and in the highlands the leaves gone orange. A season he couldn’t recall, for down our way everything just died, got straight to the business of winter. He felt his own color changing like the leaves, only not so prettily.

December’s still the goal? I asked. He’ll be here then?

Last I heard, said Swartwout. The Ohio rich have outfitted us with enough boats and meal and pork to feed five hundred for eight weeks. He should be in Tennessee now, and there’s another man in that place who’ll give us even more.

I said, I thought the colonel convened the armies at the falls of the Ohio in November.

He will. He’ll have to travel back up through Kentucky. Rotten place, but not as bad as the Ohio country. He’s just in Tennessee to iron out the details. The man’s put in almost as many miles as me!

More to come, I hope.

Jefferson seemed displeased that their meeting had lasted long enough for a slave to come in with coffee. By then Reuben was bulling on to his purpose. Let it be known that none of the Kempers are involved in this scheme, and that they have, once again, done right by their country, this time in the face of a cabal who’d have it split West from East. They were, he said, so willing to do her right that he requested a commission to raise troops to defend Pinckneyville. We could easily fall back upon New Orleans, reinforce her when she’s under siege. They’d take a commission on grants of land or the dispensation of some debts from the treasury, which he’d heard had been done in the past. So it’s come to that, has it, said the president. Samuel had been watching him, wondering why was the man so unsurprised. His vice-president out to split the Union and march on Mexico, his senators and generals in support—how could he be so cool? Unless, of course, he knew.

I said, Do you know if he’s dead-set on New Orleans?

Of course, said Swartwout. Absolutely. We need it for the navy. The port. The banks, for financing. Mister Kerr has promised silver from the vaults enough to recruit, feed, and arm seven thousand men. And more, it’s a point of leverage. Our men down there haven’t softened, have they?

Not from what I know, I said. They were strong for it when we last met.

No letters?

It’s been tough to keep in touch.

If anybody knows that, it’s Sam Swartwout. He rolled his neck for cricks and stretched wide for his aches.

The same aches trying Samuel’s joints, Reuben’s words, in outpour, heaping weight upon the hurt: that for expenses paid they’d harry Burr all the way down to New Orleans, keeping yourself, Mister President, informed of his whereabouts and movements. Jefferson, as he’d done with all of Reuben’s offers, took it in—agreeing to nothing, giving nothing away. He’d already sent a pair of confidential agents west, two weeks before, and these men would be at Burr’s heels, seeing that he went before a grand jury in Kentucky. At the end of October, he would send another, in official capacity and with the blessings of his cabinet, to oversee the proceedings of the court.

So it was an era of errand-boys. All the great men of the time delighted in their Christ-like position of sending others out on missions—Jefferson his Lewis and Clark, then his spies after Burr, who had his Swartwout and what-all else tramping the roads; even Wilkinson had dispatched someone, a man called Pike, into the far reaches of the southwest, to scout out the mountains and dry red-baked lands he assumed to conquer. All of them traveling, through trial and deprivation, for the ill-defined sake of America.

Samuel never told me whether he numbered himself among those missionaries of the United States, with so many miles to go and naught to do but sit there sipping bitter coffee, but only that Reuben—having talked himself to the end of his abilities—grew frustrated by the atheist’s lack of alarm, and so invoked the newspapers. Surely, Mister President, your papers here have the same stories as ours do in the West; the plan and its allies are all laid bare. The atheist angled: I do not trust the newspapers, he said. I rely on facts, by which pamphleteers and newsmen are not governed. Then, sir, said Reuben, take what we’ve said here as fact. From experience and worthy of your concern and that of the entire nation. Jefferson looked grave. Of course, he said. Reuben, rising from his seat, asked: And what of the commissions? At least let us serve. Meanwhile, in Samuel’s hand the china cup had grown cold. His brother’s words, the damned
us,
he saw falling at Jefferson’s feet like the multitude of birds about the office, briefly on the wing but quickly downed, their fate to be stuffed and mounted for the president’s pleasure, so that he might know the varieties of wildlife.

Tell me again, said Swartwout—what would be the quickest way for me to reach the general?

If he’s still in Natchitoches, you’ll take the Red River up. Two days, nothing more.

Thank God, he said. If I didn’t have to rush Wilkinson’s response back to the colonel, I might return here and settle in for the wait, which should be brief.

You should be on your guard with Wilkinson, I said. The man didn’t act as though he had much love for the enterprise.

The colonel’s told me how to deal with him. And, besides, anything’s better than the cutthroats here. First I was told you were in that lower section; spent a day floundering down there. Christ, the people. The fishmonger who held your letters wouldn’t tell me, didn’t even know your name—you must’ve paid him well. Another sent me to this monstrous brothel—what they said was a brothel, though I’ve never heard of one where the whores jam a pistol at you from out the letter box. You must’ve spent a bawdy night there, sir, for the whore says to me, His bastard ass is up the hill. Go and find him there and spit in his eye.

Aliza, I thought. Or it may have been Polly Randolph, the mistress whispering the words in her ear. When I first brought Red Kate into our rooms at the hotel, I’d made a joke of promising her that we’d get our own spyglass, watch the pair of them fret and wither. She hadn’t laughed with me, but the boy did mock a chuckle. Instead, she went from room to room, touching the furniture, the rugs, the wall-paper, asking me how much a dent this put in our money. We’re fine, I said; there’s more to come. And anyway I want you in a good place for when the general comes and I march with him, I don’t know for how long.

Rubbing the tassel-fringe of a cushion between her fingers, she looked up at me. I forget what lies ahead, she said. Spyglass or no, I can’t make fun. When you go I’ll be just like them.

And among the curiosities, as darkness fell on Washington and their audience neared its end, the brothers listened to the president’s response: By your own admission, you have served your country admirably already. I should hope not to put you to further trouble, you who have at great expense and hardship brought me this intelligence. Reuben’s scars were twisting, blood fattening his veins; he said, It is no trouble, sir. We only ask your favor. The atheist waved his favor away with a flip of his long thin fingers. I am in no position to give out commissions, contracts, or dispensaries, he said. I thank you for your fidelity, and ask only that you return home and maintain you considerable vigilance over the matters of your country. By then Reuben was standing, his bulk in full fury threatening the glass cases of preserved eggs, the tubes and bells of glass blown by the same lips which now dismissed him. When Samuel rose and led him out, he was shouting only names: Remember these, the betrayers. But as Samuel hauled his brother off, the name he shouted over and again was that of Senator Smith. Reuben cried it in the hall—Smith of Ohio—as though it were that man alone from whom all troubles sprung.

Swartwout fiddled with the carcass of his meal. The people down there, in that rat-trap, talked a great deal of your duels. Four in a week?

I believe so, I said.

Not unlike our Colonel Burr, he said.

I thought he only had the one.

Well, hell. Swartwout flushed. One’s all you need when you use it to take out a man like Hamilton, with one shot dispatch the greatest cause of evil in the country!

I considered this, evils and their multiplicity. Did this boy, who I wished to reach across the table and take by the lapels, know their number? The world would be an easy place if evilness were reconciled to but a single man. Instead, I thought, it holds in the soul of each and every one, twisted and tormenting until it is let loose.

From the White House to the muddy road which led into the town—a few buildings set among open fields filled with the stumps of trees—Samuel brought his brother, who still raged. By God he’d follow Burr himself, raise alarm in every town he came to. Sling so much bile in Cincinnati they’d hang him right there. He’d have him sunk in the river. Samuel let him go, knowing who his brother meant. He was tired, and going back to their tavern-room through the bare-bones capital, where there weren’t enough citizens for even pigs or dogs to roam the streets, he saw that it was all a waste.