Canaan's Tongue (6 page)

Beauregard kept his eyes on Virgil. “Of course, M——. What was it?”

“Your waist-coat. It’s exceeding pretty.”

Beauregard gave a laugh. “A happy accident, sir—; I can’t take credit for it. There’s a tailor in Exchange Alley, Christian name of Jessup—”

“Don’t, in the future, wear apparel with decided colors,” the R—— said, holding up a finger. “Or with pronounced patterns, either. What have men to do with pretty things?”

Beauregard blinked at him a moment. “And what the devil, sir, have
you
to do with my choice of—”

“It’s true that a waist-coat should be
becoming,
Lieutenant—; but also that it should lend dignity to the figure. A man’s costume should never be ornamental, pretty, or capricious, except at a fancy-dress ball.”

Beauregard let out a breath. Then he took a half-step backwards and put his right hand into his pocket. I looked from one of them to the other, thinking there’d be an affair of honor under the oaks next morning sure as I breathed. Then a long gray hand came to rest on Beauregard’s shoulder and he spun about as though a wasp had stung him. Parson stood behind him, as tall again to Beauregard as Beauregard was to the R——.

“What do you want?” Beauregard said, stepping back. His voice was no louder than a sigh.

“Have you ever laid eyes on a true idiot, Lieutenant?” Parson said. “A true idiot is a creature of heaven, and as such casts no shadow upon the ground.”

Beauregard opened his mouth and shut it. “I’m afraid,” he said at last. “I’m afraid that I don’t—”

“Can you describe your own shadow for me?” Parson said, the smile fixed slant-wise on his face.

“No, sir, I cannot,” Beauregard said. “Now, if you’ll permit—”

“By all means, Lieutenant,” Parson said. “But attend to what I tell you—: there is a second world alongside and atop the one you cherish. And if you think I am speaking of the kingdom of
heaven,
then you, Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard, are but a finger-puppet.”

God help me if I understood this, but I laughed anyhow. The R—— looked at me and winked. Beauregard nodded once, vaguely, then slipped from Parson’s hold.

“I’ll be in the bar, M——,” he said into his whiskers. He gave me a hard look as he passed.

When he was gone Virgil and the R—— and Parson stood close together. “Thank our Parson, Virgil,” the R—— said.

“I’m grateful to you, sir,” said Virgil. “If not for your intercession, I fear—”

“If he speaks of you that way again, kill him,” Parson said.

“Sir?” said Virgil. His neck went paler still.

The R—— laughed. “Our boy would never. He has our best interests in mind.”

“Kill him,” said Parson. He smiled at Virgil in a motherly way.

“Pay no attention, Kansas,” the R—— said, leading Parson off.

That left me alone with Virgil. He stood stock-still, staring out the door, opening his hands and closing them. But at last he condescended to remember me.

“They think I wouldn’t,” he said in a small voice.

I took his hand in mine. “Have you ever killed a man, Mr. Ball?”

“One thinks I’m too clever,” he said. “The other thinks I’m too dim.”

“Both think you’re too weak,” I said. Lord forgive me now for saying it. I was young then, and full of spite, and thought cowardice the most shameful of men’s failings. “Are you as weak as they think?”

“I’m a servant,” he said, turning his dull face toward me. “I told you that.”

“I didn’t believe it,” I said. “But I believe it now.”

He seemed not to hear me. “It’s a wonderful thing to have a purpose, Miss Gilchrist—; to know what it is, and to follow it.” He hushed a moment. “My purpose is to serve.”

“And mine is to take your masters to bed,” I said. “I wish you a pleasant evening.”

I gathered up my gown and left him. I had no gentlemen to wait on, only the rabble at the bar—; but his humiliation had worked itself under my stays. It had dug itself into me like a tick. Perhaps I felt a kinship to him already—: perhaps I felt it most when he’d been made a fool of by his betters. Love and shame both make your body hot, then chill it as the years pass near to freezing. Virgil tells me I loved him, and he may well be right. I know of no better word to describe the shame I felt—feel even now, remembering—than that word so abused by all who touch it.

“I’ll go down and find that lieutenant of yours,” I said to him.

And so I did.

The bar was well stocked with gentlemen, but I had no trouble finding Beauregard. He was seated at a corner booth, flanked by two great Araby ferns, talking quietly with the R——. The tiff upstairs looked to have been forgotten. Here and there, at tables or along the bar, I made out the others—; all were making a great show of being unacquainted. Virgil hadn’t followed me downstairs.

I came and sat down between them, pretty as you please. My anger made me bold. Neither looked at me. Beauregard was trying to get something out of the R——.

“Don’t condescend to me, M——,” he said.

“I’d not dream of it, Lieutenant. Drink your sherry.”

Beauregard scratched at the corner of his mouth. “You’ll have to kill those niggers,” he said. “That much is sure. They’d bear witness against you.”

“As I understand it, the bounty on escapees applies whether alive or dead,” the R—— said in a comfortable way.

A silence fell. I looked from one of them to the other. My mouth was dry as parchment.

“Good God, sir,” said Beauregard.

The R—— did not blink. His mouth was straight and solemn but it was not impossible to imagine it in a grin.

“You mean to carry this through, I see,” Beauregard said at last. “I appreciate that now.”

“You’ve never doubted my resolve in the past.” The R—— sipped at a glass of rye. “Or my discretion.”

“No,” said Beauregard, the dash gone from his face.

“I have your support, then?” the R—— said, letting his eyes drift idly across the room. They found Kennedy, hunched over at the bar, and settled.

“You have it,” said Beauregard. He looked weak and disbelieving, but there was something else in his look besides—: a flicker of excitement. “You have it, M——! You have it. Let your Irishman drink his porter.”

A Baptism.

THE HOW OF IT WAS SIMPLE, Delamare says.

I came in on a packing-boat, by foot if the place was set back from the river, found myself a room or a corner someplace in the nigger-town, and stayed there. I might stay for a day, I might stay for a week. Sometimes one afternoon was enough to see I wasn’t welcome. But if the mood was right, if there was the slow, suspicious eagerness in their eyes and in the way they talked, if they stopped to say good-night as they came in from the fields, not looking me in the face but only at my clothes, my hair, my skin, I’d know the lay of the land was fine, and I’d stay on.

First I’d lay my clothes out on the cot, or on the pallet, if that was all I had—: jacket at the top, pressed shirts underneath, linens at the bottom. My second pair of boots I’d set at the open window, as if I hardly cared whether somebody ran off with them in the night. I’d sit on the stoop (if there was such a thing) and black them in the early evening, when it was still light. When they asked me about the boots and the rest, about the sweet blonde tobacco that I smoked, about the tonic for my hair, I’d say I’d got it up in Louisville, or Baltimore, or Cincinnati. No more than that. But that was all it took.

I looked about as much like them as a sherry-glass looks like a plate of beans, but anyone could see that I had nigger in me. That and the clothes, and the way I carried on, light-hearted and conceited, was enough to put the thought into their heads. I did no
selling
of it—: no prompting, no whispering, no missionary work. I let the idea do my whispering for me.

They came when it got toward dark, full and ready to receive. One or two might want to hear details of life in Boston, or Sandusky, or Ottawa, if only to hear those names spoken aloud. But by the time they asked they were as good as struck already. A white man, however nimble, would have held no sway for them—; but I was living, preening proof of freedom’s alchemy. The South they knew could never have engendered me.

Finding shelter was the hardest part of it, and that was no great work. I arrived in the early forenoon, when the men and a good deal of the women were in the fields, and looked for a cabin apart from the rest, neatly kept, with a woman inside it. Whether she was fat or thin, bright-eyed or stony-faced, made no difference to me at all. I looked for signs of children, and if I found any I moved on. If not, I stayed. Sometimes I was traveling for religion—; sometimes I was peddler—; I could have told them anything I liked. By the second or third night the men would start coming round and I’d bring out the idea and let it loose. Once I started I worked quick, pausing only to sleep, so that by the time word reached the big house I was back out on the river. I learned that early, about the quickness. I had marks on my back and on the soles of my feet to keep me mindful. By the end of a week—if I’d stayed that long—the marks would begin to itch and I’d light out within the hour. But not before I’d looked in on each of the men I’d struck. Not before I’d left each of them a token.

Often as not a woman would be waiting for me when I called, sitting with her arms crossed in the middle of the room, mute and blank-faced as a cinder. My man would be sound asleep beside her, half-covered by a quilt, or hid behind a dirty sack-cloth curtain.

“The wind’s up, auntie,” I’d say to the woman.

“Then get you gone,” she’d say. “Gone back down under the river.”

“Get him roused, auntie,” I’d say. “Wake him, or I’ll take him tonight.”

“I’ll wake the marse, that’s who. I’ll wake his hounds.”

I’d say nothing, looking at her as I might at a cow laid in the middle of the road. It was always the same. After another stretch of dullness she’d get stiffly to her feet and walk out of the shack without a word.

I was sixteen years old when I began as a striker, reckless and full of bluster—; I was caught on my very first strike. A foreman and two boys tied me to a fence-post with a length of hemp and laid into me with a switch for a while, but their hearts weren’t in it. They’d heard of the Trade by then, heard of it and feared it, and they had little regard for the master of the house. He came down himself after a time, looked me over indifferently, then dismissed his men. I could smell his anise-scented breath as he examined my cuts. I can’t abide anise to this day.

“You a right fortunate little coon,” he whispered. Then he cut me loose. I learned later he was one of our share-holders.

Once the husband, or the son, or the lover of the cinder-faced woman was roused from the bed, I’d refuse whatever hospitality was offered—a slice of cold scrapple, perhaps, or a wedge of boiled yam— then press a silver ring into his palm, holding it there until his fingers closed on it. I’d remind him that he must have the ring on the first finger of his left hand when my associates came for him, and that they’d come for him within a fortnight. Then I’d have him repeat what I said word for word.

“If you don’t have that ring, they’ll shoot you in the belly,” I’d say. “These aren’t patient men.”

And he’d look me in the face at last, sober and respectful, and swear to me he understood. I did my work well—; I did as right by them, each one, as I was able. Not a one of the niggers I struck failed to turn out for his rendezvous. Not a one of my strikes was wasted.

I began to build a name for myself, in circles. But the more I grew inside that name the tighter it became, and the more I wanted to slip out of it like a cicada from its shell. I was bigger than my name already, and I knew it. I was not yet nineteen years of age.

THE REDEEMER HAD BEEN PARTIAL to me from the start, and had talked to me long and lovingly about the Trade—; in reality, however, the sum of what I knew could have fit into a pipe-stem. One afternoon, when I was sitting with him in his quarters, he leaned back in that high-chair of his and sucked musingly on his pipe. “You’ve been a capital striker for us, Oliver,” he said finally. “Capital.”

“Thank you, sir.”

He squinted at me then. “What’s that you’re wearing?”

“Broad-cloth, sir. A recent cut.” I smiled at him. “They call it a smoking-jacket.”

“Don’t wear black cloth in the morning, Oliver.” He pursed his lips. “Don’t wear evening-dress, of any kind, on any occasion before six o’clock. The French, of course, wear evening-dress on ceremonious occasions at whatever hour they may occur—; here, however, we follow the English custom.”

He shuffled some papers about on his desk. He’d said things of this sort to me before, and I wasn’t too put out by them. “The exception is New Orleans, of course. Follow French custom in that city.”

“I will, sir. Thank you.”

He studied me for a time. “You’ve never been to pick up any of the niggers you’ve struck, have you?”

“No sir,” I answered. My throat tightened with excitement.

He flipped idly through a stack of ledgers. “There’s one by the name of Bosun, not too far down-river. His time is nearly due. Perhaps you and Mr. Kennedy—”

“Not Kennedy,” I spat out, helpless to keep still. The Redeemer looked up sharply from his desk, not so much in anger as in surprise—; his surprise, however, lasted but a moment. When he spoke it was clear that he knew how Kennedy had found me, and what had happened after.

“No—; not Kennedy, of course,” he said.

I said nothing then, waiting for some reference to my disgrace. But instead he struck a match, took another pull from his pipe, and said in an amicable voice—:

“It
is
strange that it was Kennedy, of all people, who brought you to us. You two are so very disalike.” He looked at me. “Your mother must have been
une femme sans pareil.
”

“Beg your pardon, sir. I never knew her.”

He nodded at this, his coy little mouth running over with smoke. “Of course, Oliver. Yes. I mean the woman you were—
indentured
to, when Mr. Kennedy came across you.”

“Mrs. Bradford was never a mother to me, sir,” I lied. “She was the woman who took me and put me to work.”

“She did a good deal more than
that,
as I understand it,” the Redeemer said warmly. “She fed you, she clothed you, she taught you to read and cipher—”

“She’d been a school-teacher,” I answered, cutting him short. I cleared my throat and continued, if only to keep him from saying any more—: “It was more for her pleasure, sir, than for mine.”

“All right, Oliver—; yes.” He smiled indulgently. “You’d know
better,
of course.” He made a clucking noise with his tongue, the same noise that I’d often heard Parson make. “Mind you,” he said. “I had no school-teachers to give me my finishing, when I was of tender years.”

“You had Parson,” I said.

To this day I wonder at my imprudence. The Redeemer froze in mid-puff and glowered crookedly at his pipe, as though it, not I, had spoken out of turn. Then he went on cheerfully—:

“You looked like the Dauphin himself when Kennedy brought you in, dear boy. I remember it well. All done up in sashes and chenille—”

“She made good money with that still,” I said hoarsely. “But you know that, of course.”

He raised his eye-brows. “Why the deuce should I?”

“Because you own it now.”

He laughed heartily at this and turned the talk to trifles. We spoke no more about my history, then or after—; but a small, true thing had happened. Out of my shame I’d rebelled, however briefly, and the Redeemer had indulged me.

Two nights later we set out for Bosun’s rendezvous.

THE RAFT WE RODE ON was a modest one, little more than tree-stems lashed to a birch-plank floor. The Redeemer and I were the only riders—; I didn’t know, then, of the years he’d spent flat-boating, and was amazed at his skill with the steering-oar and pole. As we drifted, seemingly without effort, just in sight of Louisiana, he pointed out banks, chutes, and snags to me with a confidence born of a lifetime spent on the river. He took particular pleasure, I remember, in identifying the stars. The commonest constellations were known to me, of course, but the Redeemer mapped out dozens upon dozens across the sky, many of which I’ve never heard of since. One in particular seemed to delight him, a dim cluster to the left of Cassiopeia that he called Herod’s Ladder—:

“It’s an entertainment to me, that one,” he said. “I’ve pointed it out to any number of our boys, and each of them sees something different in it.”

“Beg pardon, sir, but that’s natural enough.”

He set the pole aside and took me by the shoulder. “Listen closely, Oliver. Belief is like a river—: you can channel it any way you like. Channel it as easily as water.” He watched me a moment. “Do you follow?”

He’d lost me utterly. “Yes, sir. Belief is like a river.”

“That’s right, boy.” He grinned. “Belief in anything is a kind of madness—; and there’s nobody so gullible as a cracker.” He made a face. “Look at poor Asa Trist.”

I grinned back at him. “Yes, sir.”

We hushed for a time, our eyes on the firmament.

“Well?” he said finally.

“Sir?”

“What do
you
see in it?”

I looked up at the stars. “A ladder,” I said.

He laughed loudly at this. “A ladder! Truly?”

“Yes, sir. Isn’t that what you called it?”

He laughed again. “That’s right, Oliver. Herod’s Ladder. And you’ll climb that ladder yet, boy. Just you wait.”

THE PLAN WAS THIS—: to collect Bosun at an out-of-the-way landing (little more than a damp tongue of earth jutting east from Louisiana) and keep on down-river to the old Trist estate. Bosun was an enormous man, with hands the size of shovel-tips—; we’d sold him twice already for a mint. I spent the better part of the journey asking myself what he’d do when he found himself headed south yet again, rather than north, as arranged—; but the Redeemer was absolutely free of care. It had been years, he said—
years
—since he’d had cause to work the river. I wanted desperately to ask him what the cause was that particular day, but I sensed it had something to do with my future, and kept my wonderment to myself. We rode the last few miles in silence.

“By gum!” the Redeemer said suddenly. “If this ain’t just the way to run the river!”

I nodded and fussed with the collar-buttons of my coat. I’d drifted off for a time, but my sleep had been troubled. The nearer we drew to our rendezvous, the more the thought of Bosun began to harry me. When we’d last met, seven months before, I’d all but promised him Cincinnati.

“I’m pleased it brings back bygones for you, sir,” I muttered. “I’d much prefer the state-room of the old
Vesuvius.
Or even the
Hyapatia
Lee.
”

“That’s the dandy in you, Oliver,” the Redeemer said fondly. He was managing the raft entirely by himself, darting from one corner of the platform to the other. “Look lively, now!” he whispered. “There she is! To starboard!”

I couldn’t have found that landing to save myself from drowning, even in perfect daylight—; and yet in the next instant it emerged, dark and undeniable, from the gray vagueness around us. Bosun was there as well, not ten paces off, panting and cursing and grappling with the tie-line, pulling us in hand over hand—; the next thing I knew we were off again, the weight of his gargantuan body adding a good two inches to our draft. As the landing fell away, Bosun looked about him as I feared he would and, ignoring the Redeemer altogether, said in a dubious voice—: