Canaan's Tongue (3 page)

Neither, when I made my way back inside, was there any sign of the “Redeemer.” A throng of bloodless-looking men stood packed together at the pulpit, cursing and whispering to one another—; it was impossible to guess whether he’d escaped or been bustled off to the nearest fork-limbed tree. A deep and righteous violence prevailed. A number of suspicious looks were directed toward me, on account of my ragged river-clothes—: I came to my senses, turned my back on the lot of them, and slunk quietly back to my skiff. Only when I was well out on the water did I notice the thick, oily throbbing of my brain, as though I’d spent the last hour drinking mash.

From Parson’s Day-Book.

What is America? What is it for?
America is a covenant, John Bunyan said.
America
is a race-horse, Robert E. Lee said. A fine proud dappled
horse, with a silver harness.

America is a balloon, Abraham Lincoln said. If you cut one piece out of it,
the rest sputters out the gap. No piece shall be cut out of this balloon.

America is a cutlet, the Redeemer said.

Certain of us agreed.

A Pair of Boots.

IT WAS A PAIR OF BOOTS THAT DAMNED ME, Virgil says. After the camp meeting I spent two days out in the middle of the river, drifting in no particular hurry toward Fort Pillow, Mississippi, where a cousin of mine had recently been elected rat-catcher. That thimbleful of destiny which is portioned out to each of us, however, had finally been bestowed on me, and there was to be no side-stepping it. On the third day I laid up in the little cropper’s hamlet of Stoker’s Bluff, whose landing lolled darkly out over the water—: I was reminded, pulling in, of the passage in Asaph’s psalm about the tongues of the wicked. Perhaps it was this that enticed me to put in there—; perhaps it was hunger. No matter. At the first house I called at I found the Redeemer.

The house was in fact a plain buck-board hotel, unpainted and porchless, with a bar of sorts giving out onto the street. I saw him at once behind an unmade table in the corner, stockinged feet stretched lazily toward the fire. I mistook him, in the gloom, for the bar-boy—; as I passed him, however, he turned to face the fire and the room was suddenly flooded in a cold, pale light.

“Preacher—?” I mumbled.

He gave no reply. The bar was empty save for the Redeemer, the bar-keeper, and myself. The object of my fascination was so fascinated, in turn, by our host’s least interaction with the bottles, steins, and barrel-heads of his trade that for a good stretch of time he took no notice of me at all. The table in front of him was not so bare as I’d supposed—: three wooden cups were set diagonally across it. Every so often he’d select one of the cups, seemingly at random, and raise it dreamily to his lips. When at last he marked my stare, the eyes he turned on me were the same two glittering poke-holes I remembered from the revival tent, his face the same blend of austerity and malice. There was no mistaking the Redeemer. It spite of this, it came as a surprise when he opened his mouth and, seemingly without moving his lips, said deliberately and slowly—:

“What are you gawking at, google-eye? Never seen a child of six sucking on a dram?”

The bar-keeper snorted belligerently. I mumbled something unintelligible, skittish as a fawn under the Redeemer’s sudden scrutiny. I’d never felt a thing to match it—: a cold, ill-meaning, stone-faced glare, but far from an indifferent one—
passionately
interested, in fact, with a school-boy’s curiosity suffusing his yellow, puff-cheeked school-boy’s face. Returning his look, I was struck by a vision of myself laid out naked on a pallet, my hands bound or pinned behind me, in mute anticipation of a surgery performed with the dullest possible tools. The effect of this waking dream, which fled as suddenly as it came, was terrifying beyond words.

The Redeemer registered it all without surprise.

“Struck dumb? Don’t fret, google-eye—; you’re not the first. I’m a curious-looking whoreson, heaven knows.”

“I’ve seen you before,” I said at last.

For an instant this seemed to discomfit him. “Is that so?” he said, glancing toward the bar-keeper. “Whereabouts?”

“At Lafitte’s Chute. I saw you preach.”

At first he seemed not to have understood me—; then, very gradually, a smile gathered at his mouth-corners.

“Lafitte’s Chute, you say?” His voice had a new quality to it now, one of sly bravado. “Tell us about it, pilgrim. Did you care much for our sermon?”

I broke with his look, struggling to compose a suitable reply. Already I was coming under his influence. “I liked your sermon well enough,” I said, venturing an ironic smile. “But then, I didn’t come on horse-back.”

“What?” said the Redeemer. His face was blank as milk.

“I reckon it served its purpose.”

His expression grew slightly pinched. “Ah! And what purpose was that, by your reckoning?”

My smile began to wilt. “I reckon, sir, that those horses—”

“Now look
here,
you cripple-faced river muck,” the Redeemer bellowed, slamming down his cup like a gavel. “Did you
once
look me in the face when I was on that pulpit?”

“I looked—; yes,” I managed to reply.

“You
looked
! Well, then! Didn’t you see me?” He was standing up now on the ricketing bench, swaying from side to side like a squirrel on its hind-quarters. “Didn’t you see me weep?”

The bench teetered frantically under his weight—: he was obliged to flutter his arms wildly to keep from falling over. He looked for all the world on the verge of weeping
now.
I kept my eyes fixed on the bench. It looked to have been pilfered from a school-house, or possibly even from a church.

“I saw you make your introductions to that poor spinster,” I said, mustering my last courage.

“I’ll tell you
once,
and once only, google-eye,” the Redeemer said, sitting reluctantly back down. “I meant every word I preached at Lafitte’s Chute.”

“To be honest, sir, I wouldn’t care a damn—”

“I’ll thank you not to use
curse-words
in my presence!” he shrieked at the top of his voice, his face going purple and white by turns.

This last utterance so bewildered me that I was unable to make any reply to it at all.

“Who was this spinster, then?” the bar-keeper called over after a time. Though still a young man, as far as I could judge, his face was creased like the skin of an old potato. He moved stiffly and drunkenly. “Put the fear of Guh!—Guh!—God into her, did you, Reverend?”

The Redeemer laughed. “I made the Word flesh for her passingly, Kennedy—; that’s all it was.” He turned to me and winked. “What’s your drink, pilgrim?”

“Rye,” I said cautiously, expecting some new paroxysm. But the Redeemer simply kicked a stool toward me. I sat down on it gingerly.

“Where do you hail from?” he asked, pushing a pint-flask across the table.

“Kansas,” I answered. In his last question I’d again heard the patois of the river-flats. I poured myself a middling swallow. “Yourself, sir? I’d guess from your accent—”

“Kansas!”
he crowed. “Well, I’ll be a bare-assed injun! I’d have taken you for one of our own, God’s truth!”

For some reason I blushed at this. “I’ve been on the river for quite some time, Mr.—”

“How old are you, Kansas?”

“Twenty-five.”

He nodded. “And what was your father, in the territories?”

“A distributor of the Holy Writ.” I stared down into my cup. “Not unlike yourself.”

“Ha! Of a different caliber
altogether,
by your way of talking, sir.” He grinned. “Quite a thing, in these parts, to come across a river-rat that talks like a king’s bishop. Eh, Kennedy?”

The bar-keeper waved a hand, whether in agreement or indifference I could not have said. The Redeemer’s eyes bored into me as before. I felt sullen and restless under their attention, like a cow in need of milking—; there was a quality to the Redeemer’s interest, however, that was more flattering than any compliment could have been. Question followed question in a fevered rush. He was not simply curious about my life—; he was intoxicated by its most trifling detail. As terrifying as his interest was, it was as undeniable as the packed-earth floor beneath us. My loneliness—the steady companion of my last years—cooked away, as we spoke, like hot oil on a skillet. I’d not have got up from that table for my weight in Spanish ivory.

“Your father, Kansas,” the Redeemer said, raising his cup to his lips. “What might have been his church?”

I’d not spoken of my father since the night I’d left his house. “Methodist,” I said.

“Meth-o-dist,” he echoed, still holding the cup suspended. “What rank?”

I hesitated a moment. “Prelate.”

The Redeemer sat forward and whistled. “A
prelate
! Tidy house and garden attached to
that,
if I’m not mistaken.” He regarded me narrowly. “Am I mistaken?”

“You are not.”

He smiled at me. “Not much of a talker, are you, Kansas.”

I shook my head, trying not to redden.

“I assume that’s
your
church, then? Methodist?”

I’d been expecting this question—been looking forward to it, in fact—and drew myself up with my best attempt at dignity. “I belong to
no
church, sir. I am a student of Spinoza and Descartes.”

To my chagrin this entertained him mightily. “A
rationalist
! Well, I’ll be dipped in butter!” He studied me even more intently than before—: some new thought seemed to have crept into his mind. “A firm believer in
God-in-man,
then, I suppose?”

“I am a believer, sir, in the scientific method.” I straightened in my seat, painfully aware of my sack-cloth shirt and britches.

His gaze, if possible, grew even keener. “And nothing else besides?”

“Nothing, sir. I consider myself a scholar.”

“Been away from your books for some time, by the look of you.”

I took a sip of whiskey. “Six years.”

“Had much luck, have you, in that time? Got your little pile together?”

I spread my arms. “You see before you, sir, the whole of my estate.”

He clucked his tongue and nodded. “That doesn’t surprise me, Kansas. The teachings of Descartes are well and good for the
old
country—; but here they just don’t churn the butter. This nation was founded on belief—credulity pure and simple—just as the great French Republic was founded on skepticism. Faith, whatever clothes you put it in, is the corner-stone of our Union. You’re an American, sirrah—; not an Egyptian or a Swede. Without an understanding of belief—without a
sympathy
for it, a talent for it—you will never make your penny.” He shook his head. “No, my friend! The Enlightenment is not for us.”

“Evidently,” I said faintly.

The Redeemer held up a hand. “Not because it isn’t
interesting
—; don’t get peevish. I’m sure it’s a rare delight, this rationalism of yours. It’s just not useful—; not to me.” He leaned forward till his chin rested on the table. His voice, already mellow with drink, dropped to a satisfied whisper. “
Belief,
contrary-wise, is. Belief flows through this country like a river. There’s not a thing to match it. Compared to belief, Kansas, the Mississippi is a trickle down a pant-leg.”

I smiled at this—; how could I help but smile? The Redeemer’s face, however, showed no hint of its earlier mischief. I took a careful sip of rye.

“That’s all it’s ever been to me,” I said.

He sat back on his bench and nodded, a nod that carried over at some point to a slight, nervous bobbing of the head. “Tell me something else, prelate’s boy,” he said after a time. He raised a finger tentatively, almost shyly, and pointed at my left eye. “Was it Papa knocked that eye-ball of yours crooked?” He took my cup from me and refilled it. “Was he no follower of Descartes?”

This question, so simple and direct, made the floor shift subtly beneath my feet. I’d gone so long without thinking about my father that even his face had grown vague to me—; I hoped, one day, to forget it altogether. The Redeemer had asked the history of my eye, however, and I was helpless to refuse him. It took three cups more for me to tell it—; when at last I did, the words had a dry, uncertain sound, as though the years had leached the meaning out of them.

“My father endeavored—to corrupt me, you might say. I refused to be corrupted.”

“
Corrupt
you?” the bar-keeper said, leaning brazenly over the bar to gawk at me. “Come at you, did he? Come at you with his stiff little Muh!—Muh!—Methodist—”

“I was born a doubter,” I said quickly. “I had no use for my father’s eschatologies. That’s all it was.”

The Redeemer squinted at me. “His which?”

“His views on the end of the world.”

“Ah!” His squint changed, subtly, to a grin. “You preferred that the world
not
end, I take it?”

“Not just then.”

“And that’s when he stuck his foot in your eye?” the Redeemer said blithely.

In six years no-one had mentioned my eye at all, let alone asked its whyfores. The topic was skirted around with no small measure of distaste by everyone I met with on the river, on account of its being my left eye, white as a boiled egg, and terrible to look at—; it was taken for a hex by old and young alike. Before me, however, was a man who not only considered my disfigurement fit subject for a fire-side chat, but plainly wanted to talk of nothing else. As I related the history of my escape from my father’s house, ploddingly and with no end of pauses, it became clear that he held my eye in the highest possible esteem. Again and again his attention, diverted by this or that trifle, would swing back to it like the door of a saloon—:

“That
eye
of yours, now, Mr. Ball—: can you see aught out of it?”

“Very little.”

“But you
do
see?”

I gave a deprecatory shrug. “If it pleases you to call it seeing.”

His eyes moistened with excitement. “Describe it for us.”

I hesitated. “I can’t make out anything at all, stupidly, unless the other’s closed—”

“The hell you say!”

“—and when I do close it, I see only in a shadowy sort of way, as if through the bottom of a bottle. Not much light gets in.” I tapped the side of my head forlornly.

“No shapes?” said the Redeemer. He went quiet a moment. “No— forms of any sort?”

I shrugged. “Sometimes I can make out forms. The
idea
of forms, better said.” I smiled at him. “As in Plato’s cave.”

“I see,” he murmured. “Perhaps, however, your vision will improve?”

For the first time since I’d left home, a man of intelligence— however eccentric—had taken an interest in me. And what an interest! In my loneliness and gullibility I practically did the work of seduction for him. The Redeemer had only to open his mouth, like a crocodile, and let me totter in. What’s more, in some back larder of my brain, unconquered as yet by his whiskey and his guile, I knew this full and well. Had I guessed what lay in store for me—the killings, the privations, the final apocalypse in Memphis—I might have recovered myself in time. Or perhaps not. It was clear enough, staring into his narrow, sharp-eyed face, that he didn’t mean me well.