Canaan's Tongue (4 page)

“Where are your shoes?” I asked, pointing at his feet. His stockings were dusted with ash from the fire.

“Lost,” he said flatly.

I grinned at him. “However will you preach?”

“Don’t fret on account of my
stockings,
Kansas. My boys are bringing round a pair of boots directly.” As he said this his eyes fell, seemingly idly, to my own feet—; but he found nothing there to tempt him. “With luck, they may have something in your size,” he added. He jerked his chin toward the bar. “Kennedy’s already placed his order. Haven’t you, Kennedy?”

“Just so they pull the fuh!—fuh!—feet out of them first,” Kennedy said. The Redeemer guffawed. Looking from one of them to the other, it seemed to me that I was in the company of two boastful and precocious children.

The Redeemer stared down into his little cup of rye, seemingly forgetting me altogether. For the first time it occurred to me that he might possibly be drunk. There was a candle between us and he brought his own left eye close to it, holding it open with his fingers, as if to demonstrate its beauty and its health. An instant later he sat up with a start. His greasy, half-fermented breath seemed to stain the air between us.

“Come in on a boat of some stripe, did you, Kansas?”

“Yes,” I lied. Why I did this I can’t say—; there was only the conviction that the canoe, the one thing of value that I owned, should be kept from him.

“What boat?” the Redeemer said, still studying his cup.

“A stern-wheeler from Natchez.” I took a breath. “Put me off at Thompson’s farm.”

His eyes met mine. “I didn’t hear of any boat passing,” he said. “What landing was it?”

“I told you,” I answered hurriedly. “Back up the river—three miles or so—family name of Thompson—”

At this moment the door was shouldered open and three men entered, shambling and sullen-faced, dragging a fourth between them. Catching sight of the Redeemer, they stopped and laid their burden, whose head was wrapped in a muslin sheet, down in the middle of the room. One of them called out to Kennedy in a tired voice and he commenced drawing drafts of beer. All eyes came to rest on the Redeemer.

“You—: Harvey. Take off that swaddling,” the Redeemer said, rising from the table.

The man on the floor was arching his body with a languid, reptilian slowness, like a snake crushed under a cart-wheel. His head in its wrapping looked like a ball of fresh-ginned cotton waiting to be spun. Where the cloth met his shoulders a circlet of blood, the thickness and consistency of pig-suet, glistened in the fire-light. The man the Redeemer had spoken to pulled the cloth away in three easy jerks.

“This was Tull,” the Redeemer said thoughtfully.

The face thus revealed was split from forehead to chin like a kindling-wedge—: the two halves fell away from the wound as though forswearing any knowledge of it. Blood welled and receded in time to the body’s tiny, bird-like breaths. That there should be life behind that face was unthinkable—; but there was more than life. There was understanding. To either side of the gash, at its profoundest point, blue eyes looked out through a film of milk-white tears, blinking and trembling and rolling, flitting from one of our faces to the next. But always and again, as if at the tugging of a wire, they interrupted their circuit to fix beseechingly on the Redeemer.

With what emotion the Redeemer returned Tull’s look I couldn’t tell. I’d turned away from them both by then, fighting the urge to faint, holding on to the table for dear life. When at last I dared look, I saw only the Redeemer’s girlish back, and the faces of the three men watching him. They were cowed, spiteful, worshipful faces.

“Some manner of hatchet, was it?” the Redeemer said blandly.

“Shovel,” the man called Harvey mumbled. He spoke with a high, cloying lisp.

“Ah!” said the Redeemer. He chewed this over for a moment. “Where was he done?”

I could see only the left half of Harvey’s face in the fire-light. It was a weak-looking face, soft and all but chinless—; a tendon along his jaw-line tensed, relaxed, then tensed again. “Lawson’s farm,” he answered. His voice was brittle as a biscuit.

“Lawson’s
farm,
” the Redeemer said, turning the word over in his mouth. “What were you looking for at Lawson’s, boys?” He turned to look at each of them in turn. “Not my boots, I take it?”

The faces assumed identical shame-faced looks.

“It’s been near on a month,” a stooped-over man to the left of Harvey said. “We’d thought possibly to pick up—”

“What you’ll pick up at
Lawson’s,
Johnson, is a dose of the private sorrows,” the Redeemer said. “And if that’s all you catch, consider yourself blessed of the Lord.”

“You left your own boots there,” the third man said in a quavering voice.

“What?” said the Redeemer, spinning about to face him. “What was
that,
now?”

The man’s mouth opened and closed to no discernible effect. The Redeemer took a few steps toward him, stared up a while into the poor fellow’s face, then reached quickly up and caught hold of his nose. The man let out a bright chirp of terror.

“Crangle, isn’t it?” the Redeemer said quietly.

“It is, Your Honor,” the man managed to reply.

“Don’t neglect the small hairs that project from your nostrils, Crangle—; or those that grow about the apertures of the ears. Such small matters of the toilet are often overlooked.” He let the man loose and glanced over his shoulder at the bar. “Am I right in saying so, Mr. Kennedy?”

“Ay,” Kennedy answered without looking up.

The man kept quiet for an instant, then took a deep breath and pointed at Tull’s feet. “Beg pardon, sir, but them’s your boots, I think.”

The Redeemer spun back toward the man, raising a hand to strike him—; then he stopped short, cocked his head, and looked at Tull. “Fry me for a chitterling!” he muttered. “Those
are
my little mollies.”

“Tull took ’em off Lawson,” Harvey put in. “Lawson took offense.”

The Redeemer was already pulling on the first boot. “What happened to Lawson?” he said, bracing a foot against Tull’s groin.

The third man made an indecipherable gesture with his hand. “Pffft,” he said. Harvey shook his head sweetly.

“Lend us a hand, Kansas,” the Redeemer said, tugging at my sleeve. As he did so I saw a vision of myself springing to my feet, throwing him aside and dashing head-long out the door. My skiff lay just at the bottom of the bluff—; I might easily have reached it. But I sat quiet as an owl.

“Ball!”

I looked up at him in alarm. “Present!” I stammered.

He smiled at me benignly. “Feeling a bit green?”

Before I could answer I found myself kneeling on the floor, holding Tull by the shoulders while the Redeemer worked a boot free. Tull was utterly unresisting now—: after a moment I realized he was dead. As the boot came away, exposing a filthy, butter-colored calf, a network of intersecting blue lines caught my attention. I raised the cuff of Tull’s trousers a half-inch further, disclosing the following design, not much larger than my thumb—:

“Ball,” said the Redeemer softly.

“Yes?”

“I asked whether you were feeling green.”

I passed a hand over my face. “What’s that mark there, on his leg?”

“Ah!
That,
” he said, stifling a yawn. “That’s an old Choctaw figure. They were fond of scratching it into boulders, I believe.”

The figure was familiar to me somehow. Its pedigree hovered playfully along the margins of my thought, refusing to come forward into the light.

“Who told you it was Choctaw?” I asked.

“A colleague of mine—; a parson,” the Redeemer said, spitting on the boot and polishing its uppers with his sleeve.

“I’ve seen that figure before.” I endeavored in vain to catch his eye. “Do you know anything else about it?”

He sniffed at the boot’s lining and made a face. “Some consider it an ideograph for ‘ladder,’ ” he said distractedly.

“What sort of ladder?” A moment more and I’d remember. “Leading where?”

The Redeemer stopped fussing with the boot and frowned at me. “There are more things on heaven and earth, Kansas, than a one-eyed prelate’s boy can see.”

But I’d already remembered. “The Tree of Life!” I said, a good deal louder than I’d meant to. Kennedy and the others turned and stared. “The Tree of Life. That’s what that figure is,” I said again, more quietly. “My father had a picture of it. In a book.”

“That may well be what it spells for
you,
Kansas,” the Redeemer said crisply. “For Tull, contrary-wise, it spelled something else entirely.”

“I know that symbol, sir,” I said, surprised at my own stubbornness. “It comes from the kabala. That’s a book of Jewish scripture.”

“You
have
done some book-reading, in your time,” the Redeemer said, taking a boot in each hand and banging them together. “Nevertheless, you’re up the wrong tree altogether.”

He set the boots down and climbed into them. They were much too large for him: he wore them as a boy might wear his father’s slippers. He stood up, a good four inches taller than he’d been, and did a pirouette in front of me, kicking the boots up gaucho-style for me to admire. “What do you think, Kansas! Hey?”

I thought he looked like a trained raccoon. “They’re very fetching, sir,” I said.

He smiled at me with genuine affection. “You’re not too proud a man. I’ll say that much for you, Virgil Ball.”

“I’ve done nothing to be proud of,” I replied.

He stamped his foot at this. “For
shame,
Kansas! You’re a philosopher and a scholar, are you not? A veteran of six years on the Mississippi? A rationalist? A man of the world?”

“The world might dispute it, sir.”

“Never mind the world, then,” he said, taking me by the shoulder. “Let’s confine ourselves to this stinking crick of ours. There’s not much call for an educated man round these parts, as you well know. A
worldly
man, on the other hand . . .” His eyes twinkled into mine. “Can you read chicken-scratch, prelate’s boy?”

“I’ve been schooled in it,” I said, unsure of him again. I sensed another question hidden behind the first.

“You can cipher?”

I nodded.

“And you’re a Jew by birth?”

This confounded me anew. “What on earth makes you think so?”

He jerked his chin at Tull. “You saw a Jewy symbol on the man’s shin-bone. I saw nothing but a doodle.”

I cleared my throat. “With due respect, sir, my recognition of that figure—”

“You are a Jew by birth?” he said again, narrowing his eyes.

I kept still a moment longer. “My mother was born Jewish, sir—; so I suppose I am, by the scriptures’ definition.”

“Excellent!” the Redeemer crowed. Why this was excellent to him I never understood. He extended a finger in the direction of the body stretched out at our feet and gave me a solemn wink. “Tull, here, was the scholar of our little company. Gracious knows you’re a hard man to look at, Mr. Ball, and as handy with cadavers as a box of smoke—; but you evidently know your letters, and we’re in dire need of a scribbler. You’ll fill old Tull’s boots, given time.” He reached up, grinning like a possum, and took hold of me by both ears, squeezing them till my eyes watered—:

“If you behave yourself, Kansas, I might even let you
wear
them.”

Samuel Clemens.

Jesse] James’s modest genius dreamed of no loftier flight than the planning
of
raids upon cars, coaches, and country banks. The R—— projected
negro insurrections and the capture of New Orleans; and furthermore, on
occasion, this R—— could go into a pulpit and edify the congregation. What
are James and his half-dozen vulgar rascals compared with this stately old-time
criminal, with his sermons, his meditated insurrections and city-captures, and his majestic following of ten hundred men, sworn to do his evil
will!

In a Brothel.

LOVE CAME TO ME LATE AND HATEFUL, Clementine says. I was standing at the bed with my arms held toward the door when he came in. A cart had tipped over on Chartres Street making a fearful racket and I’d raised my arms to close the shutters, so when he walked in it was as if I’d put them out to receive him—: as if I’d been schooled in the service of that moment and no other. He stopped and mumbled some odd thing and colored. He was passable to look at, comely in his way, but for that eye of his—; that eye made a fright of him. The R—— was just behind him in the hall.

He stood bolted to the floor turning his hat in his fingers, like so many of them do on their first come-round. After a piece he stepped to one side so the R—— could come in. But the R—— stayed where he was.

“Clem,” said the R—— in his sham-lofty tone of voice. “This here is Virgil Ball, from Kansas. You two get familiar.”

“I’m half-dead, Your Holiness,” I said. “I petition you for clemency.”

“And I petition you for Clemen
tine,
” the R—— said. He laughed.

I shrugged my shoulders.

“I’ll be needing the whist room tonight,” he said. Then he turned with a squeak of his high leather heels.

“The whist room?” I said. I’d just got up from bed and was barely loused and powdered. It was always that way with the R——: he had a way with the darkies downstairs and liked to come up unannounced.

“You’d best ask Madame!” I said. But the R—— was already down the hall and gone.

That left the two of us to look each other over. There was plenty to look at, Jesus knows, with his dead eye knocked backwards in his face and his queer way of shuffling about. There’d been a time, when I was yet a girl, that I’d have sent him off with nary but a laugh. But that was once.

“Sit down off your feet, Mr. Ball,” I said.

“I’m beholden, miss,” he answered, putting down his hat. That voice of his gave me a turn. Like the voice of an attorney-at-law, or a gentleman poet, but given over to a fool. I’d made a game of finding a thing to hate in each man who came to Madame Lafargue’s quimhouse but that voice of his, like the rustling-together of fancy parchments, got inside of me and settled. I hated that voice straightaway.

“Sit where you like,” I said, going to the shutters though the racket had largely stopped.

“Thank you kindly, miss.”

I looked at him sharply. “My name, sir, is Clementine.”

“I know,” he said. He pointed back over his shoulder. “He’s told me most of what there is to tell about you, I reckon.”

I gave him a smile that would have frighted away any but a firsttimer. “Mr. Myrell is a great visitor to this house, Mr. Ball—; but he rarely visits
me.
I can’t see what he could have told you.” I went to the vanity, keeping my front toward him so he’d not see me from behind without my stays. “Why don’t you sit?”

“Beholden,” he said in his fuddled way. He sat down on the day-bed and began taking off his boots. Now here’s a man, I thought. Already pulling his gear off like a share-holder. The boots were spattered with muck from the street, but I saw that they were new and of a fine, creamy leather.

“Will you be needing help with your britches buttons?” I asked, thinking to see him turn colors again. But no such thing happened.

“He told me I’d find you lovely,” he said, kicking his boots under the bed. “He told me that.”

“Don’t go trifling, Mr. Ball.”

“I think you are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever laid eye on.” He covered his blighted eye, then, and grinned at me with the other.

With the leer on his face he looked like a Red Indian. I thought—: If your talk was as ugly as your face, Mr. Ball, or your face as pretty as your talk, we might pass an easy hour. I suddenly found him pleasing to look at, save for that eye of his. “And that’s why you’re in such a hurry to get out of your pants, Mr. Ball—; is that it?”

“It is,” he answered. “You do a brisk business here, don’t you, miss?”

I looked at his face. It was grave as a deacon’s. “Brisk enough,” I answered.

“Then I should get out of my britches briskly,” he said. “Before you might be called away.”

I had my back to him just then, touching perfume to my neck and bubbies. Turning round I saw him looking at me as I knew he would—: squintish but keenly, out of his good blue eye.

“There’d be another girl in here before you could say Jackson,” I said quietly. “If I was called away.”

“Other sins for other sinners,” he said, giving me the leer. It was then I could see he’d passed time with the R——.

The R—— came less than some, but from the day he’d first climbed the filigreed steps he’d carried on as if the house was his own green acre. He paid in coin always, never in paper. And he was free-thinking with his money. Some girls were amused on account of his smallishness but it never discouraged him and they forgot it quick enough. He’d come to me but once, and then only to watch me get fixed. He must have been thinking of me for his darling Virgil even then.

“Did you bring your French letters, Mr. Ball?” I asked.

His eyes went wide and starting. “I don’t speak French.”

“French
letters.
Envelopes. For your—” I made a gesture.

His eyes went wider yet. “What would
that
need an envelope for?”

A farmer’s boy, I thought. Or a brother from St. Benedict’s. “Just bring one along next time.” I winked at him. “Or two.”

He was still staring down at his britches. “France must be a singular nation,” he said at last.

“I wouldn’t know to tell,” I said. I went and pulled the shutters closed. “Have you ever been with a working lady, Mr. Ball?”

“I don’t recall,” he said, avoiding my look. “Virgil, miss, is my Christian name.” So saying he undid his britches and let them drop.

I stopped short in the middle of the room. “Mother of Providence,” I murmured.

His face went flat. “I can’t help the way I’m fashioned,” he said quietly.

I laughed at him then! I couldn’t help but laugh. He’d never been with any sort of girl at all—I knew that now. “Don’t curse your lot too hard, sirrah. The Lord might reconsider.”

He blinked both eyes at this—: his blue one and his white. “Do you mean to say—”

“Pay me no mind,” I said, throwing back the bed-covers. They’d not been aired and as I parted them they gave off a sour, pricklish smell—; but he made no gesture or remark. I smiled at him. “Step out of your trappings, Virgil, if you’re ready.”

But my laughter had unsteadied him and he stood mute and stone-bodied by the bed. Had he not dropped his bottoms I might have found reason to laugh again—; but there were qualities to his naked self would have commanded respect in any house of fun in Louisiana.

“This room has a peculiar smell to it,” he said after a time. He turned about in a circle, sniffing. “Is it coming from the street?”

As I watched him the memory of my first day in that house came out of the dark and brushed me. The smell of it. A chicken-yard smell, sourish and stifling. The noises half-muffled by the thin cane doors. I’d sat on the iron steps for half the day, tracing the arabesques and curls. I was a girl even then—; I knew I was. But a little girl no longer.

“It’s the smell of the house,” I said. “You’ll get adjusted.” I patted the sheets. “Come over here to me.”

When he came to the bed he seemed to remember why he’d taken off his pants. He reached out and slid the night-shirt off my shoulders. “I don’t mind a bit of laughter,” he said. “I’ve been laughed at before. I’m well out from under my mother’s skirts.”

“How old are you?” I asked, pulling him down.

“Twenty-seven.”

A moment passed, no longer than a breath, and I was ready.

He was lying beside me now and I undid the rest of the buttons. “Kiss me, Virgil,” I said, laying his hands on my belly. He obeyed with a singular will and the hour passed quicker than many I’d spent in that house. He was one of those whose first pass is slow and arduous and nearly without release, but he had a patience with himself that took me quite aback. I’d expected a rough time of it from the look of him, but he handled me as though I was one of his fancy parchments. When it was done he asked, as so many of them do, what was my reckoning of it and I said I imagined there to be some small hope. He seemed satisfied with that for an answer.

DIRECTLY HE’D FINISHED I went to the night-pot and had a wash. He watched me like I was turning pig-shite into beer. I made a face at him. “Find this very appetizing, do you?”

“It’s an education to me, miss,” he said.

“Come over here, then. I’ll educate you something more. Bring that bottle with you. There—: that one, from the night-stand.”

He did as he was told.

“Unscrew the top of it.” I turned a cart-wheel then, and stood up on my hands.

“Catch hold of me now!” I said. “Catch hold of me with your hand. There! Keep the bottle in the other, mind.”

“Do you do this with every caller?” he asked, gawking down at me.

“With every one that forgets his envelopes,” I answered. “That’s poison in that bottle, Mr. B.”

“Poison?” he stammered. “Ma’am—I mean to say, Miss Clementine—”

“It’s a
caution,
you silly man! That’s all.” I opened up my legs. “Now! Pour it on my shemmy.”

And he did.

“There,” I said. “Now you’ve gotten your degree.”

“I have at that,” he said, and kissed my heel.

I was beginning to see his merits.

As there were no further callers that day we lay back down in bed, sipping rum-and-bitters, watching the afternoon roll over.

“I’d not have thought it was like
that,
” he said.

“What?” I said. “The befores or the afters?”

“All of it.” He smiled. “You’ll laugh at me, miss. My ideas about it came from Byron.”

“Who?” I said.

He looked at me. “George Gordon, Lord Byron,” he said very slowly.

“I see,” I said. “A
lord.
Is he another of your crew?”

He gave a little cough. “Byron is the bravest of our poets.”

“We’ve never had any lords here, that I can remember. Some as claimed they were lords. I’ll ask the girls—”

“Do you not read poetry at all?” he said. He sat up in the bed. “I have a book for you to read.” His eyes were bright. “Books. I have several volumes—”

“Pray don’t leave your volumes
here,
Mr. Ball. I want nothing with any volumes of yours, I’m sure.”

“What?” he said. “What’s that?” He looked as though I’d caught him at something. “Do you not read books?”

“You could teach me,” I said. I said it the way I might have said—: You could bring me my lousing-powder from the cupboard. But I said it just the same.

He went quieter than before. “Have you never learned at all,” he said at last.

I rolled my eyes.

“But you speak elegantly,” he said. “I wish I could speak half as elegantly as you.”

“I’m not half-witted, Mr. Ball.”

“No! Decidedly you aren’t.” He grinned.

He said nothing for a piece after that and when he did it was with the voice he’d used when he’d first stepped in. Could we have another try, he asked me, and of course I let him. But I wasn’t to be fooled. Something had started him to thinking. He was thinking on it all the time he was having his way and when at last he’d spent, more properly this time, he still hadn’t done with it.

We were lying just as we’d been before. From the hall came sounds of the whist room being readied for the R——.

“Why bring his fancy friends here?” I asked. “There’s many finer accommodation-shops in the Quarter.”

Virgil opened his good eye. “Ask me no questions, miss,” he said. I cursed him. “You’ve got no idea yourself,” I said, hoping to shake an answer from him. “Your sweet R—— hasn’t told you jack-all.”

He looked at me sharply. “Why ask me, then, if you know his ways and means so well?”

I sat up very straight. “You have no idea? Really?”

He shook his head.

I laughed at him. “I see the kind of gang you’ve got. Does he tell you anything at all?”

He didn’t answer straightaway. The noise of a trap and harness carried brightly up from the street. “It’s me who tells
him
things,” he said at last.

“What’s that, Mr. B?” I laughed again. “Are you his privy counselor?”

“Look here,” he said, and held his blighted eye open. “Closer.” He took me by the shoulder. “This is how.”

I looked into the eye, or what little I could see of it—: most of it was tucked under the lid. It peeped out at nothing like a new moon, jet-colored and set. I was in Tennessee once, where there was snow on the ground, and the meat of that eye was that very same color—: snow over a dark, empty rabbit-hole. I looked closer and saw my own pale face reflected.

“How like a piece of glass it is,” I said. “A fine black aggie.”

“That’s what he keeps me for, miss,” he said, giving me a wink. “I’m his champion marble.”

I kept quiet and let him tell it.

“Once a day the R—— sends for me. He takes me somewhere dark, strikes a match, and holds it to my eye. When the match goes out I tell him what I see. I have to tell him straight off, without an instant’s pondering. That’s all. Once I’ve told him he goes off.” Virgil rolled onto his side. “That’s why he always keeps me by.”

I stared at him. “And you believe in that? In what he puzzles out?”

Now his face did a funny turn—; I suppose he was trying to look dignified. “I’m a rationalist, miss,” he said. “I have no faith in witchery.”

But I was more curious about the R——. “The R—— tells you nothing?”

“Nothing I can use.” He let out a breath. “I write things down for him—; he never learned to cipher.”

“What sort of things?”

“I’ll be in the whist room tonight,” he said. “Taking the minutes.”

It was my turn to give a crafty look. “So will I.”

“The pox you will!”

“The whist room is
my
room on Thursdays.”

“The R—— asked you?” His hand ran nervously along the coverlet.

“That room is mine on Thursdays, Mr. Ball. Your R—— comes here often enough to know.”