Canaan's Tongue (16 page)

The Eagle of History.

THE END OF ME BEGAN THAT MORNING, Virgil says. After parting from Clementine, I booked passage on the E. P.
Fairchild
—owned and operated by one of our guilds—and landed at 37 the next day. Following me off the boat were sixteen cattle-fixers, two assembly-men from Natchez Township, fourteen mulattoes carrying sackfuls of silver rings, and a dealer in Arabian thorough-breds. None save the assembly-men were there to meet with the great Redeemer, but all came on Trade business—; there was no other business any longer. Local competition had either been eaten alive or given generous permission to emigrate to the United States.

I discovered Morelle, after a long and byzantine search, on the same crumbling pier that the run up to Memphis had started from. Kennedy loitered a few yards down the bank, chucking pebbles at the current. Morelle was staring down the river with a melancholy, abstracted look, the look of a man who’s misplaced something very dear. He seemed greatly changed to me. In the dull light off the water he looked frayed and defeated, nearer the Colonel’s age than my own. He gave no sign of seeing me. In my confusion I began to wonder if he was waiting for the arrival of the E. P. Fairchild.

“The
Fairchild
is tied up across the way, sir,” I said tentatively.

“Thank you, Kansas,” he said. “I’m not waiting on the E. P.
Fairchild.
”

“What are you waiting on, then?” I hesitated. “Parson?”

“Parson? Why do you ask?” Now he turned and looked at me. “Do you have need of religious counsel?”

I hushed at once, studying his face for signs of spite or mischief. He was looking at me squintingly, as though he found me hard to see. He seemed impatient to turn back to the river.

“What were you doing in New Orleans, Virgil?” he said after a time. “You and I were to have a conference.”

I stared at him a moment. “But you walked me to the landing yourself, sir! You seemed to have no further need of me. I waited the better part of a week—”

“But you were
impatient,
” he said. His voice was low and thoughtful. “Impatient to get to town.”

All at once I recollected Clementine. “Let’s have that conference now,” I said.

Morelle cocked his head at me. “You’ve never been anxious for a conference before, dear K.”

I cleared my throat. “I’ve had a vision, sir.”

He frowned up at me, cautiously, circumspectly—; then suddenly his look brightened and he clapped his hands. “Without the aid of the candle? We’re finally making
progress,
Kansas! Now, if you remember the shapes clearly, we can—”

“There were no shapes, sir—; there were only pictures. And I understood them perfectly. I’ve no need of your charts and mummeries any longer.”

Morelle’s face went slack for the briefest of instants—; but he recovered himself straight-away. “It’s wonderful what one can
under
stand, dear K, with the help of a dram or two of port.” He scratched at his nose. “How’s our little general? Well oiled, I hope? Thoroughly brocaded?”

In spite of his care-free air I saw clearly that he was troubled. I decided to press my advantage. “I’m a different man since I came down from Memphis, sir. I believe in things that I’d have considered sheer madness this time last week.”

A change came over him as I said this. His untroubled manner was cast aside—all of it at once, as if it were a mummer’s cap—and his face began to redden. “If you’ve let that
idiot
Barker look into your eye, I promise you—”

“Barker left Memphis in a winding-sheet,” I said, cutting him short.

This news had an unprecedented effect on Morelle—: it robbed him, however fleetingly, of the faculty of speech. “Morris Phelps Barker,” he said finally, looking past me at the river. “Old Morris.”

“I want to tell you how it happened, sir,” I said, taking him by the arm. “Let’s go up and have our conference. Barker seemed to think my visions—”

“I don’t give a
toss
about your visions,” Morelle said peevishly, jerking his arm away. Kennedy let out a snort behind us.

My confidence drained away at once. “Please, sir—if you’ll but give me half an hour—”

Morelle shook his head emphatically. “I’m standing on this dock for a reason, Kansas. If you’ve in an itch to share your
pensées fantastiques
with me, you can do so here and now!”

My heart sank into my boots. “Out here?” I said in a whimper. “Where anyone can see?”

“Right here on the dock,” Morelle said irritably. “It’s private enough, isn’t it? You have no need of charts and mummeries any longer—; you told me so yourself!”

I could think of no reply to this. I stared down at the water for a time, then turned to go, abashed. But even as I did so, a new thought took hold of me—: it
was
private enough on the dock, save for Kennedy. In my eagerness to get Morelle alone I’d overlooked the fact that he was practically alone already.

“All right,” I said. “We’ll do it here. But send Kennedy off somewhere.” I lowered my voice. “My vision featured him in a position he might not care for.”

Morelle laughed. “What if I want the old sodomite to hear it?”

“You’ll grow fonder of him for his absence,” I said, turning and shooing Kennedy away.

Kennedy looked at me as if I’d spat onto his shoes. “Do that again, google-eye,” he said.

“It’s all right, Stuts!” Morelle said, giving me a wink. “Run and find our friends from the Natchez Assembly. Tell them I’ll be along presently.”

Kennedy said nothing for a spell. “Fuh!—fuh!—
fishing,
ain’t I.”

“Go on, Stuts,” Morelle said, jerking his chin.

Kennedy kept still another moment, then threw a fistful of gravel into the river and stomped off, practically on all fours.

I ambled slowly out to the end of the dock, trusting that Morelle would follow me. Eight steps, by my reckoning, ought to bring him well away from the rushes and snags along the river-bank—; the rest should be easy as passing water. The current was stiff along the west shore of the island, and the bank fell away steeply beneath the pilings. In addition to being illiterate, I happened to know, our exalted Redeemer couldn’t swim.

Morelle, however, stopped short after only three steps. “
Out
with it, Virgil! Tell us what fancies you fancied on old Pierre Beauregard’s tab.”

“I had a vision,” I answered, speaking quietly to draw him nearer. “In my cabin on the
Hyapatia Lee.
I saw the future, plain as milk.”

“Had a vision, did you? Was I in it, tearing my hair out in clumps?” He took two more steps and gazed up at me forlornly. “I don’t mind telling you, Kansas—: our little enterprise is in a dire way.”

“Judging by the six-ring circus I got off ship with, I’d have thought we owned a controlling share of North America,” I said.

“That’s just the
farce
of it!” Morelle cried, taking my hand in his. “We’ve never been more flush. We’ve grown too big for our britches at last, dear K. This island is an open secret, a burr in the collective arse, from Natchez Trace to the Capitol Bulge.” His eyes widened as he spoke, as if he were describing a natural disaster, an act of God. “We’re quite the cause célèbre now, I’m told. Bigger than the territories—; bigger than paper currency—; bigger, even, in some circles”—his voice dropped now to the most gossamer of whispers—“than the question of slavery
altogether.
”

I gaped at him, thunder-struck. Had his paranoia grown so vast? What had Parson and the rest been feeding him? “Bigger than slavery, sir? Beg pardon, but you’re talking about—”

“What I’m talking about, Kansas, is a joint Federal Commission. North and South together.” Morelle led me three more steps down the dock, his arm slung comfortably in my own. “All the states on the lower river, free and slave, collaborating in our complete demolishment.” He seized his collar as he spoke and pulled it up under his chin, sticking his tongue out like a lynched nigger. “A gradual, inescapable tightening of the noose.
Attendez?
”

I shook my head resolutely. “Dixie would never cooperate with the Union now—; not for any purpose. Beauregard told me as much on the
Hyapatia Lee.
We’re practically at war.”

“That’s just it!” Morelle hissed, pulling me closer still, as though we were gossiping in a theater—: “A ‘Great Cause’ is being sought to re-unify the Union. It may not be too late, even at this eleven-and-three-quarters hour. A universal wrong is all that’s needed—: an evil on which every Christian soldier can agree.” His fingers rapped painfully against my collar-bone. “A common enemy, Virgil. What the red-coats were for us in 1812, and the red-
skins
were before and after.” He let go of my arm and gave me a stiff, unsmiling bow. “You and I, dear K, have been judged to fit the bill.”

Neither of us spoke for a time. The light was fading from the bluff, and the preliminary noises of debauchery fell to our ears from the Panama House. The current burbled contentedly at our feet, indifferent to history. Morelle stared morosely at his shoes.

“They’ve deeded this island to Louisiana,” he said finally. “They mean to flush us out like pigeons.”

I watched Morelle calmly, contemplating his end. I felt entirely capable of killing him now. “So it’s ended, then,” I said.

He gave a stutter of surprise at this. “
‘Ended,’
the man says! ‘Ended’! Business such as ours has no beginning, no middle, and certainly no end—; our business simply
is.
” He took a small step backward, as though to appraise me better. “Demand is our life’s-blood, Virgil. Recollect demand. When there was a shortage of horse-power in my native state, I was the first to meet it. When there was need of honeyed words among the well-heeled farther up-river, I saw to that, as well. Now—: if the demand for niggers slackens, or—heaven forfend!—lets up altogether, I’ll be the first to bow out, and move on.” He held up a finger. “But not before then, Kansas. Not before my time.”

“With all due respect, sir, perhaps that time’s arrived,” I said. His death was becoming realer to me by the instant.

“Nonsense!” He ran the tip of his tongue along his gums as he spoke, as though he’d eaten something bitter. “Clap-trap, nonsense, and
twaddle
! Has the demand for niggers let up one
centime
along this river?”

I confessed that it had not. “What about 37, sir?” I asked.

“What!
This
place?” He leaned to one side and spat into the current. “We’ve resided here at the whim of the powers-that-be, plain and simple—; it was convenient for them to find us here. We won’t make
that
mistake again.”

“And the Federal Commission?”

“The commission?” His look darkened. “The commission, dear K, is another matter.”

He was just within reach. Soon, I thought, you’ll have nothing else to tell me.

“You have a scheme, sir, I suppose?”

He looked guardedly up the bluff, then along the bank, then back to me. His head bobbed very slightly.

“I
had
a scheme—; now you might say it’s a policy. In a matter of two weeks, perhaps a little more, it will ripen into a fact. A fact of
history,
no less.” He smiled shyly. “I’ll tell you about it, if you’re curious. I’ve borrowed a page—or should I say a leaf?—from our pagan brethren-at-arms.”

I regarded him blankly for a spell. “The Indians?” I said at last.

He snapped his fingers. “
Exactement!
Now listen, Kansas. The great advantage of being the common enemy is that your opponents carry the seed of dissent within them—; otherwise they wouldn’t
need
you. Do you follow?” He waited patiently for my nod. “Good. You are acquainted, I suppose, with the Nauva-Hoo tribe of the Rio Grande head-waters?”

I confessed that I was not.

“What!” He clucked his tongue at me. “You, who were born and raised in the territories?”

“You never see them in the territories,” I said. I paused a moment. “I don’t think they’ve been sent there, as of yet.”

“Ah! And why is
that,
do you suppose?”

I shrugged. My hands were twitching in my pockets. “Perhaps nobody cares about the Rio Grande head-waters.”

He scoffed at this. “Think a little, Virgil.
Think!
Who borders the Nauva country to the east?”

“We do.”

“And to the south?”

I considered this a moment. “Mexico.”

“Spot of trouble with Mexico a few years back, I seem to recall.”

“A spot of war,” I answered.

He gave a triumphant little jump. “Do you remember the incident that set it off, Virgil? An unprovoked attack, by the Mexicans, on a unit of Federal infantry?”

“The papers were full of it for weeks,” I said, bringing my hands out of my pockets. “There were rumors that it was staged.”

“It
was
staged,” Morelle said tenderly. “Beautifully staged. But not by
our
army, Virgil. Or by Mexico’s.”

I stared out at the river in perplexity. What he was proposing was so far-fetched that I felt foolish giving voice to it. “Do you mean to suggest, the Indians—?”

Morelle let out a war-whoop at this and jabbed me in the ribs. “The Nauva-Hoo country is rich in salt-peter and copper, and we wanted it
tout de suite
! Plans were in place for the inevitable rounds of treaties, pacts, and heaven-mandated coercions—; the land was to be carved up like pork-shoulder. A joint invasion would have left the natives with no means of escape. The Nauva-Hoo were finished, Kansas!
Finished!
”

I took a breath. “That’s all well and good—”

“Hssst!”
He put his hand on my nape and drew me gently toward him, as one might a bashful lover—:

“A sudden stroke of genius—a pau-wau before dawn—a clutch of stolen uniforms—a strike at sunrise, with the morning sun behind them—and
voilà
! From enemy to indispensable ally in a morning’s work.” He beamed approvingly at me, as if the plan had been my own. “The Nauva-Hoo of the upper Rio Grande will endure for a thousand years yet—; mark my words.” He clucked contentedly. “And so, Mr. Ball, will we.”