Canaan's Tongue (10 page)

I made a face. “Who’ll take the stuffing out of Parson?”

“Parson thinks very highly of you, Virgil.
Very.
” He touched his finger solemnly to his nose. “You might say he’s your biggest backer, just now, in our little circle.”

For no reason I could name, Barker came to mind again. He and the Redeemer were of a piece, somehow. Some invisible thread connected them.

“I met a curious sort of Pinkerton on the boat,” I said, as offhandedly as I could. “Made a production out of being a bounty-hunter. Practically wore it on his hat.”

The Redeemer made no answer for a spell. “Name?” he said finally.

“Gave his name as Barker.”

“Barker,” the Redeemer said. Bar—
ker,
” he repeated, as though the name were Flemish, or possibly Japanese.

“A student of the black arts, apparently.”

“Morris P. Barker is familiar to me, thank you,” the Redeemer said curtly. “A known quantity.” His tongue clacked three times against his palate. When next he spoke, the words came out regular as playing-cards—:

“Morris P. Barker Is No Student Of The Black Arts.”

Just then the sound of rowing reached us, cautious and hollow-seeming in the dark, and a pirogue slid into view. A figure was standing in the bow like the prophet Elijah, his hands clasped fervently together—; the set of oars behind him looked for all the world to be managing themselves.

The Redeemer was still looking at me closely. “Have a chat with Parson, Virgil, the next time you’re feeling mystical. Mind the company you keep.”

“Shall I ask Parson about Barker, sir?”

“You’ll do
no such thing,
” the Redeemer hissed, seizing me by my collar. “You’ll leave Parson to watch over those fifty-seven
niggers,
Kansas, and you’ll see this run through—; then you’ll come straight back to
me.
” He let go of my collar disdainfully and turned away from me, struggling to catch his breath. I’d never seen him so distressed. “You’ll do no such thing as talk to Parson about Barker,” he said again, more evenly. “
No
such thing,
Virgil. Do you hear?”

The Redeemer was afraid of this Barker—; that much was plain. An idea—perhaps even, without my intending it, a plan—was beginning to take shape within me. “And Trist, sir?” I asked. “What am I to do with him?”

“I don’t give one cat’s
diddle
what happens to that sport of nature,” the Redeemer muttered. It was as near to a curse-word as I’d ever heard him use.

The pirogue pulled in soon after. Two shirtless niggers stood behind Parson in the bow. “Hey the boat!” the Redeemer sang out, stepping past me with evident relief.

Parson didn’t answer until he had firm land underneath him. “Fifty-seven souls?” he said, gathering up his skirts. His eyes were like two stones from the bottom of the river.

“Fifty-eight,” the Redeemer answered, giving me a wink. “Ziba Goss will be coming on this run.”

I breathed a quiet sigh of gratitude. Goss was one of our mulatto strikers, a sturdy sort, the first I’d ever shipped with—; with him along there was a chance, however slight, that we’d actually complete the run.

Parson only nodded. The two rowers turned the skiff about and glided off into the gloaming, stiff as undertaker’s dummies. Their manner didn’t surprise me terribly—: I felt much the same in Parson’s presence.

“Ziba Goss,” said Parson, furrowing his downy brow. He turned and started up the path, drawing the Redeemer in his wake. “I’ve heard old Ziba’s getting notions.”

I groaned aloud at this.

“Ah! Is it Virgil?” Parson said, squinting back over his shoulder.

“I made a run with Ziba two weeks ago, Parson. There’s no trouble with him at all.” I fixed my eyes on the Redeemer. “I
need
Ziba on this run.”

“Oh! There’s no trouble with Ziba, Virgil,” the Redeemer said. “You’re perfectly right. There’s no
trouble
with him, as such, but neither is there—”

“You’ll give me Ziba Goss, sir, or the run to Memphis can get buggered.”

The both of them regarded me silently for a time, their eyes identically narrowed. But I neither begged their pardons, nor averted my eyes, nor amended my declaration in the slightest—: I was determined to hold my ground at any cost. In doing so, I have no doubt that I confirmed their worst suspicions, and thereby sealed and ratified my fate. My fate was sealed already, of course—; but I didn’t know it then.

“Ziba might not be three-quarters
dead,
sir, like the niggers Parson scares up from God knows where to paddle his funeral barges—”

“Here’s our Asa!” the Redeemer said brightly, looking up the hill.

The figure in question was already half-way down the bluff, his limbs a blur of antic jerks and twitches. I’d met him only once before— in the whist room, at the Trade’s first meeting—and remembered him as little more than a brittle, anxious voice and a shock of coal-black hair. Clearly his condition, whatever it was, had worsened. His lips fluttered pauselessly, sometimes in accompaniment to a smile, sometimes an indignant tossing of the head—; his right hand clutched a hat-box, his left a parasol. He was less than six paces off before he noticed us. Never have I seen a man look more like the wretch that gossip and calumny would have him be.

“Mr. Ball!” he squeaked, stepping past the Redeemer and Parson and taking my arm eagerly in his. “I understand you’re my passage to the City of the Sun.”

“I’m bound for Memphis, as per our Redeemer’s orders,” I said, freeing myself from his grip.

But Trist took no notice of my manner. Turning back to the others, he exclaimed—:

“One sees the Jew in him, it’s true. There’s a sallowness to the skin, a richness—; a biblicality, in short. I’d die for the least scrap—?”

“You’ll have to ask Mr. Ball himself, Asa,” the Redeemer said, looking as though he’d bit into a peach-pit. Parson watched the two of us contentedly.

“Ideally, I’d take a cutting from the praeputium,” Trist continued. “However, in this case—”

“The which, Mr. Trist?” I asked, taking a step backwards.

Trist gave me a beatific smile. “The
praeputium,
Mr. Ball. The foreskin.”

“Quod ergo Deus coniunxit, homo non separet,”
¹
Parson intoned, holding up a finger.

WITH THAT I WAS LEFT to the readying of the boat. Ziba Goss appeared not long after, and we stretched ourselves out on the lee deck, passing a tin of tobacco back and forth. Goss had always been my favorite striker, largely on account of his extraordinary greed, which kept him sober and level-headed at all hours. Knowing exactly what he liked and how to get it made him a personable companion, rarely out of temper—; what’s more, he was possessed of common sense, an almost unheard-of quality among river-men. I asked him, after a time, what he thought about the run—; he simply shook his head and grinned.

“I don’t think
nothing
about it, Mr. Virgil. Not a thing.”

“You’re happy, I expect. There’ll be a fine cup of gravy on fiftyseven head.”

His answer took me by surprise. “Oh! I ain’t thinking about
that,
” he murmured. He beamed out sleepily at the river.

Ziba had a secret, and I guessed it soon enough—: chaw always quickened my wits. “You’re set to leave the Trade, aren’t you.”

His eyes fell closed. “Got me a new address, Mr. Virgil.” He began to grin. “A beef-steak-chewing woman, now! A full-on roly-poly.”

“There’s a term for men like you, Ziba,” I said, spitting over the rail. “A sacrificial lamb.”

Ziba laughed. “You won’t tell?”

I shook my head, yawned, and looked up toward the Panama House. To my surprise, Trist was already half-way down the path, waving his arms as though the boat might steam away without him—; Parson followed just behind. Both were traveling with all the speed their respective dignities would allow. Not surprisingly, Trist reached the landing first.

“Do you have any difficulty with leeches, Mr. Ball?” he called out in place of a greeting, clutching his battered hat-box to his chest.

I stared at him a moment, weighing all possible answers to this latest piece of poetry. Parson kindly answered for me.

“He wouldn’t be ferrying you to Memphis, Asa, if he did!”

Being a Brief History of
T. Merryl & His Trade

by Frank S. Kennedy.

IT WERE THAT COZY BASTARD G. Harvey thought it up, Kennedy says.

I were hunched back there slopping the evening’s cups, passing the time of the day with T.M., when be darmed but that fat cherry-popper comes waltzing in, a yaller silk jacket on him fit for the privy-master to the royal house of Brunswick.

It’s His Grace, Goodie Harvey, says I to T.M.

So it is, says he. I’d thought it was a banana.

Good-day to you both, says Harvey, lisping as he done. A pint of thith or that, Mithter Kennedy, if you would.

You’ll get as much as can fit in your eye till you pay debits outstanding, says I.

You’re not square with me either, Goodman, T.M. puts in.

The very aim of my vithit! Harvey chirps. Firthtly! Kennedy—: your two dollarth fifty.

And bedam but he pulls five chits out from his pocket and lays them on the counter.

I must of look like a monkey’s butler cause T.M. lets out a laugh and slaps me on the back. There’s an easy enough answer for it, Stuts, says he. I just heard the angel Gabriel sound his trumpet.

Thimpler than that, even, Harvey says. Gentlemen—: I have found me an eathy mark.

They are all of them easy to a snit of your caliber, Goodie, says T.M.

Christ, but that little rounder blushes. Thank you, thir. But thith one I can’t take no credit for. Thith nut ith cracked wide open. He leans forward on his hands. I thuppoth you have both heard tell of the Tritht thugar empire.

T.M. looks him hard in the face. You haven’t got hold of Sam Trist’s idiot son, says he.

Harvey says nothing, twiddling his mug.

Mister Harvey, says T.M. You aren’t come in here jabbering and japing to take the vow of silence on us now. Give out.

Harvey digs at the corner of his gob with his tongue. I’m blue moldy for the want of a drink, says he.

T.M. grins. Give the man his due, Kennedy.

I could always tell it when something were cooking with T.M. Harvey takes up his mug and sucks it and the story comes out of him like piss from a horse’s croppers.

It happened thith way, says he. Tritht the father is getting on, and our dear boy ith hith one and only. Deedth him three old family parcelth to keep in running order, for to learn the rigging of it. Thee? And young Atha barely out of thort panth, and crazy ath a beaver into the bargain.

He stops a bit.

Lets hear it, Harvey, you dithered little shite, says I.

All right, says he. What do you reckon our nutter planth on doing firtht?

Enlighten us, says T.M.

He meanth to let em
go,
Harvey yells, slapping both hams on the counter.

Who? says I.

HITH NIGGERTH!

What, to liberate em? says T.M., frowning.

Harvey hops and titters. You heard rightly! Every ounth of plucked cotton up the old River Jordan. Fare thee well, ye thport of thpring and nature . . .

You must be off your parsnips, Goodie boy, says I.

True ath I live and breathe. Thomething about
puckerth
in their thkin. Harvey rubs his face. Thinkth blackneth ith an ailment. Or the cure for one. Taketh
cuttingth
from ’em.

He what? says T.M.

Harvey nods. Cuttingth, he says again. He did all manner of fiddling, and now he’th decided to let ’em go. But not out of brotherly good-feeling, mind—: he’th afeared of them. He told me.

So he’s no liberationist, then, says I.

Elbow
-litionist, Stuts, T.M. says. He goes quiet for a bit. Well, Mr. Harvey—; I would recommend—

I reckon we could
thell
’em, Harvey whispers. The lot. Up in Memphith, maybe. Or Natchez.

I look down at the cups in front of me. Seven wet cups in a row.

That’s D’Ancourt’s godson, says I. The old Colonel who drinks down at Cheney’s. He’ll not be very keen.

He’ll be keen ath a cricket, says Harvey. I know him.

T.M. tips his head back and lets out a cluck. Harvey! says he. You’re forgetting Trist senior. You think old Sam Trist can’t keep count of his niggers?

If he can’t, there’s plenty on his payroll knows better, says I. There’s no way we could peddle those niggers and live.

Tritht would put a bounty on em, that’th all, Harvey says. We thell ’em here and there, one or two niggerth at a time. Around Memphith. In the townth.

Or take them back to Daddy Trist and collect the bounty on them ourselves, a voice says from the corner booth.

Goodman, I believe you know our Parson, says T.M.

Harvey suckles on his beer for a time. I know him, says he.

T.M. has his head cocked toward the booth. Would it work?

But the old bogey is done for talking. T.M. turns it over for a spell.

Mister Harvey, says he. Run along to your nutter and ask him when he’d like to loose his niggers on the world.

A Sacrifice.

THE RUN TO MEMPHIS ENDED IN A BUTCHERY, Virgil says. It cured me of airs and fancy clothes forever.

We weren’t three hours out of 37 when a commotion started up in the front hold. It was pitch-dark already—: aside from Trist, asleep beside me on the pilot’s bench, I was entirely alone. I called for Ziba Goss and Parson, listened a moment, then called out again. Neither answered. The noise from the hold carried up in swells, now harsh and cutting, now strangely musical and mild—; within a quarter-hour I was desperate to know its cause. I resisted my curiosity as best I could, knowing the danger of giving the wheel over to Trist. It was not uncommon, after all, for the niggers to sing or pray together on a run. But this was neither the sound of singing nor of prayer—: it was a small noise, solitary and beseeching, that rose every so often into a chorus, then quickly fell away to nothing. At times it was so unearthly, so melancholy, that I questioned whether it was made by human tongues at all.

Soon I could no longer bear not knowing. Shaking Trist awake, I propped him up behind the wheel, ordered him to keep us hard into the current, and left him to the questionable charity of the river.

That was the first of my mistakes that night. I was fated, within the hour, to make two more.

I stepped out onto the star-lit deck and listened. No sound could be heard but the hissing and stuttering of the boiler. I felt my way along the rail to the front hold, listened another moment, then pressed my ear against its cast-iron shutters. For the space of a breath I heard nothing but the churning of the current—: then the current seemed to hush, the sound from the hold came up terrible and clear, and I was running back to the pilot-house as fast as my legs would carry me.

A man was being tortured in the hold. I had a trap-door Derringer in my vest pocket, little or no confidence in its kick, and none at all in my ability to put the fear of God into a boat-ful of death-crazed niggers. Such things fell under Parson’s jurisdiction. I shouted his name, and Ziba’s, again to no avail. Where in heavenly blazes had they gone? Were they still on board at all? Had they perhaps heard the sound in the hold themselves, weighed its credits and its debits, and jumped head-first into the river?

I found Parson soon enough, as it happened, but it brought me little comfort. He was leant stiff as a musket behind the boiler-house door. I lit a match and held it toward him—: he neither twitched nor blinked nor shed a tear. His face was ungiving to the touch, like a plaster-of-paris mask—; for his final, immortal expression he’d selected a thin-lipped leer. That was not all, however. His tongue protruded a good half-inch from his mouth, slack and slate-colored and fat, like the tongue of a yellowjack victim.

At the sight of that tongue I lost my last crumb of composure. I screamed and cursed and abused Parson’s name every way I could think of, jumping up and down in front of him, slapping him, throttling him, shaking him back-and-forth by the collar. Parson remained effortlessly status quo. The sound from the hold was eclipsed, for the time being, by the workings of the boiler, and by my tantrum—; but the
idea
of the sound was more terrible than the sound itself. I screamed Parson’s name one last time—I could think of no worse insult—and left him as he was.

When I returned to the pilot’s house the sound was shriller than before, more plaintive, more severe. I couldn’t stand it another instant. I knew better than to send Trist down, and I’d found no sign of Ziba—: for all I knew Parson had swallowed him alive. There was no commandment set down in the scriptures of the Trade, of course, that the cargo need be ministered to at all, let alone at night-time, out in the black middle of the river, under a topping head of steam. But I was not interested in the Trade and its protocols just then. I was not acting out of sympathy, or humanity, or even out of fear—: I was spurred on by my hatred of that noise, by a passionate desire to kill it off, and by a curiosity that admitted neither of caution nor delay. I had good reason to hurry. Acting in concert, even a dozen men could easily have forced the hatch—; I’d seen it done before. This, at least, was the rationale I gave myself while I fumbled with the padlock and the bolt. I was to repent it bitterly, and soon.

When the bolt slid open the sound stopped short, leaving a sudden vacancy in the air, as though a piano-wire had snapped. A humid silence met me as I raised the hatch, broken only by a rasping—or a
wheezing,
better said—in the far corner of the hold. The smell of piss and sweat and excrement seized me by the throat and commenced to wring the breath out of me slowly. A step-ladder extended two rungs downward, perhaps three, before vanishing into darkness. The stench and the dampness and a steady tightening of my bowels, as though in anticipation of a blow, were all there was to tell me I was being watched by two-score pair of eyes.

I could not say how long this spell of quiet lasted. Finally there was a scuffling below me, and a single clap of hands—; then a low, easy whisper of command that frightened me worse than all the rest combined.

“We at yin chopping-block yet, Savior?” a voice said mellowly.

“What’s your name?” I called down. My own voice seemed grotesquely high and quavering.

A silence. “John yin Baptist,” the voice said at last.

“You take this, Johnny, and you light it,” I said, throwing down a match and a candle-stub.

This was my third error of the night.

A dull click followed, as of a jack-knife being opened—; then a scraping along the bottom of the hold. The match flared to life and was brought up to the candle. So dark was the hold, so much darker even than the night outside, that the match-flame all but blinded me. When I recovered my sight, I was dumbfounded by what I saw—: no more than an arm’s length down the ladder, near enough to touch, two dozen head stood crushed together like kippers in a jar. A white-haired titan of a man stood just below me, balancing the candle on his left shoulder and watching me out of bolt-steady, ginger-colored eyes.

His look took me so aback that I was unable to speak for a moment, let alone to act—; but I saw, looking past him, why the hold seemed packed so tightly. There was a gap half-way back, the size of a bale of cotton, where nobody wanted to stand.

“What have you got back there?” I asked the white-hair. My voice cracked as I said it, like the voice of a pubescent boy, and I knew in that instant that all was lost. “Well? Give me an answer, damn your eyes! What are you fussing with?”

“Nobody
fussing,
Savior,” he answered, his eyes widening as he spoke. All at once I saw the fear in them—: the fear, and the unmistakeable death-knowledge. My throat began to close, then, and my legs commenced to buckle. I had no intention of going down that ladder. There was a brightness, now, to every pair of eyes, the kind that comes to men with violence fermenting in their mouths. Those niggers knew what was waiting for them in Memphis. They didn’t reckon, or suspect—; they
knew.
All that could be done was to close the hatch and leave them to their knowing.

Toward the back of the hold, at the edge of the mysterious gap, someone shifted his weight and a sharp cry of agony rose up. The man with the candle took a deep breath, smiled sorrowfully at me, and let his eyes fall closed.

I took my pistol out and brought it forward to catch the light. “What the hell was
that,
you lying sons-of-bitches?”

The man looked up at me again. “Nobody trying to fraud you, Savior,” he murmured.

“Move aside or
Christ-help-me
I’ll unload into the middle of you!” I shrieked. My voice was tremulous and slight. I marveled at how far from the Redeemer’s easy bark of command it sounded. Panic was run through my voice like fat through a strip of bacon.

For perhaps the space of a breath all was quiet. Then came a shuffling and a scrambling and a falling of body over body and I made out a man pressed flat against the floor, his arms pinned beneath him, his face so badly beaten that I couldn’t have guessed his age within thirty years. I saw at once that the remainder of the poor wretch’s life would be measured in hours, if not in minutes.

A more prudent man would have let the hatch fall closed at that instant, stumbled back to the pilot-house, and let them pound their victim into pudding. The difference between fifty-seven head and fifty-six, after all, was not worth quibbling over. It was not prudence, however, that held me fixed above them—; nor was it Christian feeling. The only means of quieting that hold, I knew, was to make a show— however laughable—of sovereignty.

I leaned away from the square of candle-light, looked above me at the sky, and cursed the Redeemer, Parson, the Trade, and my own servile nature with a passion that was altogether new to me. Then I brought my face back into the light, wearing what I hoped was a look of homicidal ecstasy.

“You bring that man over here or so help me the Father, the Son, and the Heavenly Spirit,” I said.

Two things happened as I spoke—: (I) the white-hair began to laugh—a deep, unhurried laugh full of scorn and melancholy, and (II) the pulped and mangled body was carried forward to the ladder. I could tell from the way this was done—playfully, almost coyly—that I’d never be allowed near it. My panic was replaced at once by an overwhelming drowsiness. I wanted nothing more than to curl up next to the hatch and go to sleep.

“Who is it?” I said, once the body had been set down. I could see now that he was not a young man—: a bald spot was just visible at the crown.

“Just one of yin
angels,
Savior, sent down here amongst us,” the white-hair said. As he said this he rose, raised his right foot in the air, and came down with all of his great weight against his victim’s chest. I saw who it was in that same instant. It was Ziba Goss.

His shirt was ripped clean away, one of his feet was bare, and his breeches were in tatters—; but I saw, to my amazement, the butt of a one-shot pistol peeping from his boot. By some perversion of chance no-one had come across it in the dark. I knew then that I had to go down to them. So down I went.

The white-hair was so astonished to see me tumbling toward him that he simply stepped aside to give me room to fall. No sooner had I hit the floor than I snatched up Ziba’s one-shot, giddy at my own folly, and pulled the hammer back. The entire hold hushed at once. It took them a moment to accept this newest offering—; but a moment only. I turned to the white-hair just in time to see him nod to me respectfully and tip the candle from his shoulder.

My life in the Trade ended with that gesture. I could taste my own death, luke-warm and ferric, against the roof of my mouth, and my past was taken from me like a hat in a gust of wind. As the candle went out I emptied Ziba’s pistol at its after-glow and felt a jet of brackish liquor strike my cheek. The first pair of hands was already at my shoulders when I fired the second pistol, this time without any effect at all. Both guns were torn from my grip soon after and I heard furious curses when they refused to discharge. But even as I smiled at this my body was being tossed about and fought over and awareness was slipping out of me like a cat from out of a burning house.

MY FIRST SENSATION ON AWAKENING was pain—:my second was disbelief that I was still in my own body. For a time my eyes refused to clear, and when at last they did I shut them again at once. A great number of people were about me, muttering to one another and moaning, and behind them was the curved wall of the hold. This knowledge sickened me and gave the pain free run of my brain and body. I was not so well off as I’d thought. After a very great while, in which nothing whatsoever happened, I heard Parson’s voice behind me.

“I prefer my baptisms the old-fangled way, Virgil. I prefer them to be done with water.”

A drawn-out, comfortable sigh.

“People are
amenable
to it, you understand. They trust it—; they think of it as clean. I can see, of course, how such orthodoxy might bore you, free-thinker that you are. I’m often bored with it, myself. But
this,
Virgil—this
display . . .
”

I kept as quiet as a fish. Never in my life have I felt such a reluctance to come back to my senses. As understanding returned, so too did the memory of the struggle in the hold, and a good idea of what I’d see when I finally looked about me. Or so, with my last scrap of innocence, I believed.

Eventually I could stand it no longer and let my eye-lids flutter open. The sight that greeted me was the following—:

Parson sitting Indian-style in the middle of the floor, swaying to and fro like a hindoo snake-charmer. Trist just behind him, fiddling with something or other in his hat-box. A power of black bodies to every side, twitching and shuddering and weeping.

I thought, at first, that there were fewer niggers in the hold—; then I saw that they were simply pressed back even more impossibly against the walls, as far from Parson as their tangled bodies would allow. I took a careful breath and tried to move my fingers and my toes. All appeared to be in working order.

“How goes it, Captain?” Parson said, seeing me awake. He straightened slowly as he spoke, closed his eyes and smacked his lips together. His vertebrae clicked against one another like dominoes in a paper sack.

I shut my eyes at once. I took a breath, then rolled over onto my belly and tried to stand. My legs seemed to answer, for which I mumbled a silent hosanna—; when I made to push myself up, however, the room went all the colors of the rainbow and my face smacked resoundingly against the floor. “Christ preserve us!” I gasped. My right shoulder felt as if it had been chewed away by ants.

Parson’s left eye opened. “Collar-bone’s broke, Captain.”

I could only sob in answer. Parson regarded me in his cold, contented way, keeping his right eye closed, shifting his weight every so often with an indolent little coo.

“We’re past due for Memphis,” he observed after a time.