Sion Crossing (10 page)

Latimer knew he’d been out-manoeuvred. “And where am I going, then—” He looked at Lucy Cookridge quickly “—Miss Cookridge—?”

Lucy Cookridge opened her mouth, but before she could speak Kingston twisted the steering-wheel, and the car sank one-sided on to its springs and shot off the motorway on to a slip-road lifting them up to the right, away from Latimer’s own British right-hand drive instinct.

Damn
! thought Latimer—
damn, damn
! There had been a sign, way back—
a hoot and a holla
back—and he hadn’t even thought to look at it—

“Smithsville, Oliver,” said Lucy Cookridge.

“Smithsville?” It was such a ridiculous place-name that he didn’t want to repeat it, but he couldn’t help himself.

“We’re not actually going right there.” As she spoke the car twisted to follow the slip-road, between cascades of
kudzu
creeper which blanketed the Georgian trees. “There’s a turn-off before we get there.”

Latimer stared at her, even more lost now. What with the trees, and the slip road … and the
kudzu
, and now a turn-off … it was enough to make a man wonder how General Sherman had been able to march from Atlanta to the sea, once upon a time.

“I beg your pardon—?” All he knew now was that the motorway—the ‘inter-state’—had disappeared like a dream, with all its dangerous juggernauts.

“We goin’ to the Promised Land now,” said Kingston. “The hill King David done build his city on—an’ King David Ben-Gurion done build
his
city on too …
‘Go round about her, an’ tell the towers thereof … Mark well her bulwarks, set up her houses, that ye may tell them that come after
…
For this God is our God for ever. And He shall be our guide unto death’
—Psalm Forty-Eight, verses eleven to thirteen—
‘A fair place, an’ the joy of the whole earth’
—verse two—right?”

“Smithsville?” It was difficult to imagine anywhere so prosaically named as the joy of the whole earth, but they could hardly be going to Jerusalem, the city of those two Davids. And yet, on second thoughts, perhaps that was exactly where they were going, for the early Americans had indulged in a wide variety of inclinations in filling the blank spaces on their maps with place-names. So if there was a Rome, and an Athens and a Corinth as well as a Smithsville and a Brownsville, why not a Jerusalem and a Jericho? “Do you mean—”

“The Promised Land.” Kingston pre-empted Latimer’s question by simultaneously repeating the words. “Although I guess the Cherokee had a different name for it before the paleface relieved them of it—if it was the Cherokees’ Promised Land that’d be just another broken promise.”

Lucy Cookridge sighed audibly. “Spare us the lecture on the perfidious paleface, please Kingston.”

“Huh! Don’t get me wrong—” Kingston directed the car to the right as the road forked, leaving the wider highway for a narrower one “—I got no time for noble redskins. Load of drunken bums—redskins, whiteskins, blackskins, yellow-skins—the hell with them! And yids and wogs too!”

Latimer studied the negro. “Is there anyone you like, Mr. Kingston?”

“There surely is, Mister Lateemah.” Kingston twisted a grin over his shoulder. “Winners is who I like—black, white, or khaki. All of the rest is bleeding-heart crap, about ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’, an’ all that Thomas Jefferson jazz—’cept one … Ain’t no rights but one.”

“And that is?” Kingston’s silence invited the question.

“To win, man, to win! To get what you can—how you can, when you can … fair means or foul, it don’t matter—it’s up to you to do it the way the good Lord made you, whether you’re
Saint
Francis of Assisi or Attila the Hun, just so you run with the ball … And then, what you’ve got, you sure as hell don’t let the other guy take it away from you until you’re dead. And that’s winning, Mister Oliver Latimer.”

“Meaning ‘Might is right’?” murmured Lucy Cookridge disapprovingly. “You’re a fascist, Kingston—a black fascist.”

“If you say so, ma’am. But I didn’t say nothin’ about right and wrong, ’cept that it don’t mean a thing.” Kingston shook his head happily. “Used to be a lot of cotton round here—you right plumb centre in the land of cotton now, Mr. Oliver Latimer. You know that?”

Latimer looked around him. They had at last broken away from the belt of trees, endless and boringly green, which had shut in the motorway: there were still a great many trees, but there were also some open spaces, and occasional buildings, and—there was an actual field, planted with something he had never seen in England—

Cotton? But, even apart from what Kingston had just said—
used
to be a lot of cotton round here—cotton ought to have a lot of white fluffy balls on it, surely?

“You won’t see any cotton round here, Oliver.” Lucy Cookridge craned her neck at the negro. “What was it finished cotton in the south, Kingston—the boll-weevil, was it?”

“Lawd, Miz Lucy—ah thought it wuz de Yankees! If’n it weren’t de Yankees, ah doan know. But all de cotton done grow wes’ o’ de Missippy now—an’ deys got machines dat works a whole lot better’n de nigras, too.” Kingston looked over his shoulder at Latimer. “And that what I mean.
Autres temps, autres moeurs
—what’s right one time isn’t necessarily right forever. Once ’pon a time cotton was right for Georgia—an’ nigras wuz raht fo’ pickin cotton—and slavery was right for Georgia and negroes and cotton, they preached that from the pulpits, so you had better believe it—”

“Watch the road, Kingston,” said Lucy Cookridge. “And do please stop drivelling … I told you, Oliver—he has this hang-up. So he produces this Uncle Tom character of his, if you give him half a chance … Just don’t let him rile you, that’s all.”

They were passing more fields, with mote mysterious crops. Perhaps it was what the Americans called “corn” in these fields, even if it was nothing like the good wheat, oats and barley of his remote childhood? And there were occasional dwellings too, planted behind a scatter of trees, long and low houses with long and low cars in attendance, variously dilapidated. It was nothing like what he had imagined.

“No … yes.” He didn’t know quite how to react, and he still wanted to know where they were going. But he wasn’t going to ask that question again, for fear that it might give Kingston another chance to go off at a tangent on one of his hobby-horses.

“No-yes?” Kingston seized on his indecision. “Now what’s that meant to mean? Do I rile you, Mister Oliver Latimer? Or don’t I rile you?”

The challenge—or was it a test of some sort?—was casual on the surface, but something more than that beneath it, Latimer sensed. And putting it directly to himself he was quite suddenly surprised by the answer which his brain supplied, even though it was vague and incomplete.

“I can’t honestly say that you do either, Mr. Kingston.” He tried to match Kingston’s tone. And if the man was merely trying to sting him, then he might as well sting back. “With a little more effort you might make me curious, I suppose. But as my work at home doesn’t bring me into close contact with persons of your race I still wouldn’t know whether you’re par for the course these days, or something out of the ordinary, do you see?”

But that wasn’t true—

The angle of the car changed. Almost imperceptibly they had been following a gradual rise in the ground on to a plateau. But now the road fell away sharply into a heavily-forested little valley.

But that wasn’t quite true, about Kingston. Or … it was true that the only negroes he came into contact with were the British versions of Kingston’s own
motees
,
doodas
and
moanbacks.
But what was Kingston himself—and who were the
moanbacks
?

The land on the other side of the valley was higher, and he caught a glimpse of a white building—not a house, by the miniature steeple on it, but a church, he guessed—on the highest point, before trees obscured the view.

But Kingston himself … there was something about Kingston, in spite of all the talk, jokey or serious, Uncle Tom-ignorant or Anglo-American erudite, and in spite of the coal-blackness … there was something about Kingston that he recognized from his own experience.

A bridge came into view—of course, a valley like this would have a river running down it. Once this had all been King Cotton’s land—Scarlett O’Hara’s rich red earth, and to support such crops then and such thick vegetation now it must be as well-watered as the Thames valley, if not more so—and much hotter, as he had cause to know.

A bridge—it was not only a narrow bridge, but also a wooden one, almost like something from a cowboy film. The planks rumbled under the car, and his attention was torn apart by another brief glimpse of the little church, now high above them, and an equally brief sight of the river—more a stream than a river—half-obscured by overhanging trees beneath them. Then the trees closed round them again.

“Sion Crossing,” said Kingston. “We on old Sion land now.”

“Sion?” But of course! realized Latimer. Not Jerusalem, but
Sion
—
Zion
—that was the hill of Jerusalem on which the City of David was built, and so the centre of the Jewish and Christian religions as the site of the House of God, and by the psalmists’ poetic extension also the Promised Land of Heaven itself! He had said as much himself, to Cookridge, too!

He craned his neck as the car began to climb again. “Was it a church I saw up there?”

“Sion Church.” Kingston nodded. “That about the oldest thing they got in Barksdale County now, after Bill Sherman’s boys passed this way—the second Sion Church, built by Colonel James Alexander of Sion—James the Third and Last, the
preux chevalier
… You dig Colonel James Alexander, Oliver?”

“Yes.” That, at least, had been one name—one fact—that Senator Cookridge had given him.

“Well, that about all there is left of Sion—the church on the hill, an’ Colonel James the Third in the history books, an’ the other Alexanders that were before him and went down with him.” Kingston nodded again.

“Watch the road!” snapped Lucy, gripping the back of Kingston’s seat. “For God’s sake—
watch the road
, Kingston!”

“No sweat, Miz Lucy.” Another hairpin bend whirled the trees around them. “We’re nearly home now—we’ll get there—”

“I hope so.” Lucy subsided.

Latimer looked back, through the rear window of the car, instinctively.

“Sion Crossing,” said Lucy Cookridge. “That’s the name on the maps, Oliver.”

The car breasted another rise, on another bend, and Latimer had a sudden and quite unexpected view of Sion Church from ground level, across a wide expanse of well-cut grass on which an irregular line of mature trees stood sentinel.

Kingston slowed the car, to let him get an unhurried sight of the oldest building in Barksdale County, which General Sherman’s men had not put to the torch.

He had crossed into Sion now
, thought Latimer. And he could only hope that getting out of the Promised Land would be less confusing than getting into it.

THEY FOUND HOWARD MORRIS
in the fourth public house on Audley’s Saturday short-list, after a tip-off from the Special Branch.

“Hullo there, David.” The American greeted Audley with a raised palm and a big smile, and no apparent surprise. Then he saw Mitchell. “Oh-ho!” The palm came down to rest flat on the top of the bar beside his glass; and, although the smile stayed in position, the eyes became as dull as pebbles on a dry beach.

“Oh-ho what?” Audley had not been pleased at being taken from the bosom of his family, and the passage down the river had not improved his temper. “What does ‘Oh-ho’ mean? You can’t possibly be pissed this early in the evening. And Dr Mitchell is not unknown to you.”

“Quite right—he isn’t, and I can’t be.” Morris bowed towards Mitchell. “The Doctor is well-known to me, both by reputation and through his published works. And I have been drinking, but am not drunk, as your boys in blue would have it.” He smiled again at them both. “I have been drinking, but I hope to drink quite a lot more before morning, to drown my sorrows, the natives being friendly.” To suit the words he took a drink from a straight pint glass, reducing it substantially. “At least, that was the plan. Will you have something with me?” He looked at Mitchell.

“Draught Guinness,” said Mitchell. “Thanks.”

Howard nodded. “At least you brought something of use to you back from your stay in Dublin … David?”

“Dry sherry.”

“What?” The American looked askance at Audley. “You don’t like sherry.”

“I’m not here to enjoy myself. And you haven’t answered my question yet: what does ‘Oh-ho’ mean?”

“‘Oh-ho?’ Oh-ho!” Morris finished his beer, pushed the glass up the bar, caught the barman’s eye expertly, and ordered the drinks.

“It’s an old Navaho exclamation. You meet one chief on the trail, he’s hunting for the pot. But you meet
two
chiefs … that means there’s a war party out—and it could be
you
for the pot, see?” He addressed Mitchell mock-seriously. “Metaphorically speaking, of course. Because the Navahos didn’t eat people, they were a fairly civilized lot. But ‘Oh-ho’ covers the occasion.”

Mitchell’s Guinness arrived. He raised the glass to the American. “But I’m not a chief.”

“Oh yes you are. That department of yours—it’s all chiefs. No Indians at all … like All Souls—no students, only academic brass.” Only half a smile this time. “Your war parties are on contract … from other tribes. The more bloodthirsty ones.” He raised his glass back to Mitchell. “The finest irregular light cavalry of all time … But being a military historian you’ll know all about that.”

“Balls!” snapped Audley. “And that’s an old Anglo-Saxon expression. We use it particularly when we find strangers hunting in our coverts.”

“Sure.” Morris nodded, as though interested. “I guess that’s the same the whole world over. You need an invitation for that sort of thing.”

“And you have an invitation?”

“No.” Morris shook his head. “But I’m not hunting. I’m just drinking.” He raised his glass to his lips.