Canaan's Tongue (5 page)

But he wasn’t to be quieted. “I wouldn’t think we needed to be waited on, at this particular meeting,” he said in a careful voice.

So he knows more than he tells, I thought to myself. He looks a fool but isn’t.

“The R——’s not declined my services before,” I said.

“He comes here often?” His voice went thick. “He comes to you?”

I smiled. “Why, Aggie? Would you mind?”

He straightened on the bed. “I don’t mind dividing your attentions with—with the
rest,
” he said. He rolled over to face the wall. “But I’d prefer—
not
to share you—with that particular man. I would prefer not to. Uh—”

“You’re nothing but a horse-thief’s opera-glass, Mr. Ball. You’ve no call to dictate anything to anybody. Least of all to me.”

He got up fumblingly from the bed. “You understand me, I see,” he said. His voice was flat and bloodless.

I felt pity for him then. I should have taken that for a sign. I should have known already.

“I’m sure I don’t,” I said. “Not yet.” I held my arms out to him. “Come along back, Aggie, and explain.”

He looked hard at me for a spell. Then he passed a hand over his face and sat down on the bed. We stayed like that a while, listening to the bustle from the street—; I might have fallen into a nap. When I opened my eyes he was watching me like a dog would watch a plate of marrow. A look like that ought to have riled me—; instead it made me feel as light as flax. Another sign. I found that I was pleased to have him by.

“How long have you been with the R——, Aggie?”

He smiled. “How funny that you call him by that name.”

“We call him by whatever name he wants,” I said.

“Yes, miss. So does everybody.”

I laughed. “We get well paid for it.” I gave him a coquettish look. “Can you say the same?”

He only sighed.

“How does the R—— make his money? Is it only horses?”

Virgil gave me a thoughtful look. “No,” he said. “Not only horses.”

The skin on the back of my neck prickled in a way that has never done me any good. “What else, then?” I said.

My eyes were closed but I could hear him fumbling for his shirt. “The whist room is yours?” he said.

I nodded. “That’s where I receive my callers. If they don’t ambush me, Aggie, in my private chambers.”

“And you’ll be receiving there tonight.” The bed-springs squeaked as he got up.

I opened my eyes and watched him go. “I will.”

He stood an arm’s-length from the door, buttoning his shirt with slow twists of his thumb. “You’ll have your answer soon enough, then, Clementine.”

Asa Trist.

IN THE BEGINNING AMERICA WAS EMPTY, God said. There were no horses, God said. There were no cabins, God said. The air was quiet. The land was stupid—there were no noises in it, God said. There were no corn-fields, God said. There were no rice-fields, God said. There were no niggers.

There were no
Asas,
God said, to own them.

There were no women, God said. There were no horse-flies, God said. There was a quiet all around. There were no steam-boats, God said. There were no skiffs. There were no fathers, God said. There was this quiet, Asa. It was very black.

There were no armies, God said. There were no sparrows, God said. There were no serpents, God said. There were no catfishes in the river. The river was there, but it flowed quiet. The comings and goings were not in it. The air was stupid, God said. There were no sounds in it. It was a dead air, God said. And it was very sweet.

Sweet, I said. Yes! It was very sweet!

Then came the Asas, God said.

The Whist Room.

I GOT MY ANSWER THAT NIGHT, says Clementine. But not the way Virgil thought I would.

I’d expected a right crowd, what with all the to-do, but the whist room when I came in with my tray of chitterlings and beer held only seven men. I put the tray down on the felt-covered table and sat on a fainting-couch by the door. I recognized Virgil and the rough-neck Stuts Kennedy, who’d come to see me once. The rest were strangers to that house.

The R—— was speechifying—:

“A simple proposal, gentlemen, though you may find it hard to picture. It might be best, in beginning, to summarize the commerce in slaves and bondsmen as it functions this day and hour.”

“We know that well enough,” Kennedy said into his scruff.

“I wonder if you do, Mr. Kennedy,” the R—— said. He was the same bundle of piss as always, the same little peacock, but no-one else seemed to see it—; and suddenly I found that I couldn’t see it, either. He leaned back in his high-chair, gave an elegant sigh, and set his hands on the table. He might have been Napoleon on campaign.

“The states along the Mason-Dixon,” he said at last, “have a marked glut in man-power—; the lower South, contrary-wise, suffers a desperate lack. For this reason, the slave trade, almost without exception, runs north to south. Although there’s a demand upriver, the few-odd head required are not worth the dealers’ trouble and often as not go unsupplied. In times of need, such slaves are acquired after much trouble and expense downriver in Natchez—; or, even more commonly, here in New Orleans.” He smiled. “This, of course, is why our city has grown so fat.”

He turned as he said this to a pallid-faced man whose eyes were as quick as Virgil’s were quiet. “Not from your sugar plantations, Asa. Though not for want of every good intention.”

“My father poured his blood into this ground,” the man replied. His eyes went from face to face as though he expected to be laughed at. He hushed a moment, hiding under his ruffed black hair, then sputtered out—: “We are all of us Asas tonight, dear sirs! Every one of us in these chambers—”

“To the slaves
themselves,
however,” the R—— interrupted, “nothing could be more dreadful than this fate of being barge-hauled down the river. The death rate on sugar and rice land is exceeding high, and this knowledge has managed to trickle north, with the consequence that most niggers would rather die the same place they were born.”

Kennedy snorted. The R—— waited patiently for him to hush.

“And among those that
do
get shipped, there are more than a few who’d give their last breath for a chance to reverse the above-mentioned flow of trade.”

Nobody gave a peep. The R—— settled back in his chair, fussing with his glove-tips. Finally a well-preserved specimen to the R——’s left sat forward. His hair was coiffed and silverish and he looked more like a country squire than anyone I’d seen outside of a penny-theater. I’d expected him to weigh in with quite a speech, from the look of him, but once all heads were turned he said only—: “Is the horse trade not going well enough for you, Mr. M——?”

“The horse trade is going
gloriously,
Colonel,” the R—— replied. “So well, in fact, that there are some—or so I’m told—who’d be content to spend the rest of their lives dealing in other people’s horses.” He cocked his head. “Might you, perhaps, be such a man?”

The Colonel took a breath. He thought of an answer, swallowed it, and sat back in his chair.

“This question—,” said the R——: “this question of
whether
to try our hand at reversing the flow of trade, is the least interesting of the questions I’m prepared to address this evening. Allow me to pass over the ‘should we,’ for the moment, in favor of the ‘how.’ ”

“By all means, let’s have it!” the Colonel said quickly.

The R—— nodded and began rifling through a stack of papers. Sitting behind him as I was, I could see what only Virgil and the R—— himself could see—: that they were blank as bed-sheets, every one. Here’s a crafty sort of blackguard, I thought to myself. We’re marbles to him, all of us—; to be tossed for and collected.

“Each of you may play a role in the effort I’m going to describe,” he said, still studying the papers. “Some of you have already given me your pledge.”

“You have my thupport, Thir—you know
that,
” said a lisping, wheedling fellow at the table’s near corner. His prim little face sat on a plump round body that looked to belong to a different man entirely. His chin was drawn into his face as though he was chewing on a lemon.

“Thank you, Harvey,” the R—— said. “Now, gentlemen. Kindly permit me to detail the logistics of our plan.”

“Whose plan, now?” came a hard-sounding voice from behind the Colonel.

“
Ours,
I hope, Lieutenant Beauregard,” the R—— said politely.

That one’s not his marble yet, I thought.

“I’ve no doubt that you
hope
it, M——; who
conceived
of it was my question.”

To my surprise the R—— took Virgil by the arm. “Ah! In that sense,
ours,
Lieutenant. Young Mr. Ball’s here and my own.”

Though I couldn’t see Virgil’s face I saw his neck go pale and heard him commence to groan and stammer. All heads turned to look at him.

“I’ve heard tell of this idiot of yours,” the lieutenant said in a comfortable way.

I sat up then and looked the lieutenant over. He sported a gleaming black moustache and a canary-yellow waistcoat. His face was cruel and prideful.

“D’Ancourt tells me you read him something like a compass,” he said.

“Good lord, Pierre!
I
never said so,” the Colonel wheezed.

The R——’s face crimped together. “Ah! Mr. Beauregard. You are new to our little company. I assure you Mr. Ball is anything but an
idiot,
as you express it. Quite the opposite.”

Virgil was still scratching busily with his pencil, his nose all but pressed against the table. He was taking the minutes even then. My hands balled together at the thought of it and my tongue thickened in my mouth. I wished the lieutenant every earthly evil. But a part of me wished Virgil even worse.

The R—— heaved a sigh. “Such japes, if you’ll pardon my saying so, waste precious minutes. We’ve still a great deal to discuss.”

That said, he went back to shuffling his papers. My eyes wandered about the room. There’s every kind of citizen here, I thought. One of each kind of American, like on board of Noah’s ark.

The room was poorly lit and the backs of the chairs threw great heavy shadows into the corners. There, where the dark was closest, I saw a man I hadn’t taken note of before. He was dressed in some manner of long black nightshirt and his body was as narrow and ganglish as I ever thought to see, with hairs on his face and forehead exactly like a possum’s. His mouth was bent sideways and his body was stiff and bristly as a broom. He came piece by piece out of the dark and when his leer fell upon me I went shivery right through. I shut my eyes and said a quick Our Father. When I opened them I saw that the R—— had a map open on the table.

“The
method,
friends, is simple—: it can well afford to be because we have great means at our disposal. Ample means.” He smiled at each of them in turn. “A body of mulattoes in our service, apprised only of the initial phases of our enterprise, will visit plantations and shanty-towns in the outlying country and offer aid to any able-bodied slave inclined to run. The capital, it will be explained, to finance the passage north to freedom, is to be raised through the re-selling of said escapee at a plantation farther up the river. A second liberation will follow after three months, resulting in safe passage into Canada. The bond of this covenant, which must be kept secret from all, upon
pain of death
—” (here the R—— gave a dramatic pause)—“shall be a plain and unworked silver ring, much like this one here.”

The R—— laid a hoop of silver on the table.

“Which ring the slave shall,
and must,
present to his liberators when his term comes due. As some of you may know—”

“Trust a nigger with a piece of silver?” Kennedy said, showing us his gums.

“Bear in mind, Mr. Kennedy, that this piece of silver will already have been balanced by two hundred dollars in gold, as we’ll have sold him once already. If the escapee should fail to produce the ring, it shall be taken as proof of a breach of faith, and said escapee will be left to his druthers.
We,
contrary-wise, will be left our
profit.
”

Kennedy rubbed his nose. “I don’t ruh!—ruh!—rightly see—”

The R—— all but rolled his eyes. “The man who comes for the runaway at the end of the three-month period, Mr. Kennedy, may not be the same man who deposited him. Some mark of identity is required. A slave is very respectful of a piece of silver, as you may know.”

He privileged the lot of us with an easy grin.

“What happens after?” said the lieutenant, twiddling his whiskers. It was clear he was disgusted by the others’ way of buttering the R——’s cake. “Your scheme seems of greater interest to the Abolitionists, Mr. M——, than to any natural son of Dixie.”

The R—— laughed. “And yet
you
are interested, Lieutenant Beauregard, are you not.”

“I’m interested to have you
answer
me, sirrah,” the lieutenant growled.

“A horse-thief steals horses, Mr. Beauregard—; an Abolitionist steals bondsmen. I see no difference between the two, aside from the margin of profit. It has simply never occurred to your Abolitionist, as near as I can tell, that he is in possession—ipso facto of having liberated it from its owner—of a highly remunerative piece of property.”

General laughter from the assembly. Beauregard was neatly put away. Virgil could have done that much, I thought. But Virgil was still scratching at his notes.

The R—— smoothed the map out with his palms. “Abolitionizing for profit, gentlemen—: such is my proposal. I consider it no less grand for its simplicity. What’s more, I have fifty-seven share-holders—both here and in Memphis—who agree with me whole-heartedly.” He looked about the room. “I foresaw, of course, that some of you might not. That’s why we’re not going to steal the above-mentioned slaves.”

The Colonel sat up straight as a rod. “
Not
steal them? Do you mean to tell us, M——, that we’ve come all this way—”

The R—— raised his hands and the map closed with a snap. In this pose, tidy in his costly clothes, he put me in mind of a well-scrubbed toddler waiting on his Sunday porridge. He brought his palms together then, as if saying grace, and the likeness was complete. But it bewitched me regardless.

“What I mean, Colonel, is that we’re going to borrow them.”

OVER THE NEXT HOUR each guest learned the reason for his being at table.
No end of cash,
it was said and repeated, had been put behind the venture. The stock-holders would know next to nothing of the goings-on—; only that slaves were being dealt in for a profit, and that the profit, in this case, was near one-hundred percent. The rest, the R—— said with a wink, would be left to their fancy and leisure.

The R—— himself would recruit the mulattoes—“strikers,” he called them—whose names would be known to him alone. A ramshackle property of Asa Trist’s on the Cane River would serve as a
concentration
point,
as the R—— called it, before the shippage north. Kennedy and Virgil, who’d spent time on the river, would manage the passage, each in their own boats—; Beauregard would see that the army left those boats alone. The Colonel, who made his home in Memphis, would deal with the up-river buyers. When sprung the second time, the runaways would come out of the boat’s hold expecting to see St. Louis, or Cincinnati—; instead they’d find the plantation they’d run off from. Goodman Harvey—the lisper—was to minister to the runaways—: the R—— spoke of him as a doctor. He’d played some role, it seemed, in the conception of the thing—; but the R—— made a point of paying him no mind.

At the end they’d all been accounted for except the ghost in the corner.

“What’ll
hith
job be, then?” Harvey said, pointing at him. The ghost gave a grin. He might have been grinning at anybody, his eyes were so flat. But he was grinning at nobody but the R——.

“Me?” said the ghost.

“Gentlemen—: our Parson,” the R—— said. “Parson’s handy with niggers.”

Nobody gave a coo.

“Well!” the R—— said. “Are we ready to adjourn?”

There was never any yessing to the plan, but they were for it just the same. Every one of them was for it. They’d agreed in themselves, before they came, to whatever the R—— would offer them. The reason was different, each to each—: some were spiteful, some were greedy, some were cowardly, some were sly. But each had a hollow part that this business would fill.

One by one they got to their feet, straightened their cravats, and went downstairs. Some of their glasses were empty, some were full. I marveled at the coziness of it all. All of them kept quiet except for Beauregard, who was set on having sport with the R——.

“Neat enough, M——, I grant you,” he said. He stopped as he passed and took the R—— by the shoulder. The difference in their size was fit to laugh over, and Beauregard savored it in a way that showed the weakness in him. “Neat enough,” he said again. “If no war breaks out, it should turn a pretty profit.”

“War?” squawked Trist. “What war? With Mexico?”

“I think the lieutenant is thinking of a war between the states, Asa,” the R—— said, looking up at Beauregard. “An Abolitionist war.”

“I can’t see how that would affect
us,
” Virgil said. “Such a fight would center on the territories, surely. We’d have breathing-room regardless.”

Beauregard raised his eyebrows. “Does it speak?”

The R—— made a subtle movement and Beauregard’s hand fell off his shoulder. “Mr. Beauregard, there is something I wished to mention to you,” he said. “But I’d forgotten it till now.”