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2011 The Kings of the Cannibal Islands Kent Wascom

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COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

THE KINGS OF THE CANNIBAL ISLANDS

By

KENT WASCOM

A Thesis submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts

Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2011

Copyright © 2011 Kent Wascom All Rights Reserved The members of the committee approve the Thesis of Kent Wascom defended on day of March 30, 2011.

______Mark Winegardner Professor Directing Thesis

______Robert Olen Butler Committee Member

______David Kirby Committee Member

Approved:

______R.M. Berry, Chair, Department of English

______Joseph Traves, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences

The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members. ii

To Lauren

iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank my wife, for enduring the process, my parents for a lifetime of support, and my country, the Gulf Coast, for existing despite all odds and providing me such a place to come of age in. Andrew Smith for being the first reader of this manuscript; no glass has been raised with a better friend. Bob Shacochis for his teaching and friendship, whose intense dedication to his craft I strive to emulate, and without whom this novel would not have been. Mark Winegardner, who was the first to see this novel in its germinal form, for his commitment to me and this program, and without whom I would not have breached the walls of the Academy; may I justify the faith he put four years ago in an unproven undergraduate with a miserable GPA and a worthwhile short story. Robert Olen Butler for instruction in intensity. David Kirby for the music of language. All of those who, whether already mentioned or by circumstance must go unmentioned, staked their reputations and prevented me from being ground in the gears of capricious fate. The writing faculty at LSU: Randolph Thomas for telling me, eight years ago, to put down Hemingway and Carver and pick up Hannah and Crews, and James Bennett, without whose encouragement and teaching I would not have made it here. And finally, those two who prove that blood is a poor provision for brotherhood: Chris Tusa and Michael Garriga.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Dedication ...... iii Acknowledgements ...... iv Abstract ...... vi Epigraph ...... vii

PROLOGUE ...... 1 BOOK ONE ...... 12 BOOK TWO ...... 105 BOOK THREE ...... 192 BOOK FOUR...... 372 EPILOGUE ...... 503

Biographical Sketch ...... 505

v

ABSTRACT

The following is a novel in the form of a gospel, telling the story of religious fanaticism in the early years of the United Sates and the rebellions in West Florida in the year 1805 and 1810.

vi

PROLOGUE A prayer for the city

Dec. 22, 1860

Tonight I went from my wife’s bed to the open window and pissed down blood on Royal Street. She shrieked for me to stop and use the pot, but below the secession revelers were packed to the streetcorners, giving up their voices, and I swear they cheered me on. They’re still out there, flying high on nation-making, suddenly gifted with a new country like children at Christmas. I could see their numbers swelling all the way to Canal, and in this corner of the crammed streets the celebrants were caught and couldn’t move away from my red blessing. A heard of broadcloth boys passed under my stream while a homegirl howled as I further wilted the flowers in her hair and drove her customers off; and yawping stevedores, too drunk to mind, were themselves bloodied even as they tried to shove others in. And if I could I would’ve written out a blessing on all their faces, signed it with my vitals in the mud, anointed them with the red, red water from my Holy Sprinkler, and had them pray with me. Pray for the children of this city drowned in sin, plague and muddy water. We breach the filmy surface but can only manage whiskey-choked howls. The season’s passed when diarrheal flags of bedsheets are flown from the windows and balconies of New Orleans and now come winter the city’s flying upstart banners, claiming to be free. There’s more tongues spoken than you’d expect to hear at Pentecost, in this place where lacy gentility meets whip-scored flesh sold pound by pound and fierce lamentations are only to be heard when the barrel’s run dry. I’ve made gold run from black flesh and built myself this perch of finery where I can slip from the arms of my catholic octoroon and pour out a prayer for wastrel thousands while our son sleeps in the next room. So pray for the deliverance of those who are annually subjected to tropical atrocities and do our carnival penance dancing and wailing in the streets. Pray for us who live along the fertile nethers of the Southern States, in hellish heat that purges the body with face-slickening expurgations, where we gather at the river’s edge and beat giant cane rats to death with clubs. Stretching eastward along the Gulf lays the Holy Land I wished to make with my brother, but failed. I lost him and we lost our war after we’d won it. Pray for that coastland, where the true seed is kept behind the gelded cock of Florida. The people here have suffered some and soon will suffer more. Pray for the ones who scream for War. This afternoon was a rage of flags, as every man whose wife knew how to stitch poured through the Square with his idea of a new nation’s standard trailing behind him like a cape. A madness of stripes and stars, of bloody-breasted pelicans, of crowns, of snakes, of skulls—all dragged, tossed, raised and trampled by the crowd. And it was in this chaos of colors that this prayer was fixed in me, which grew like a seed to bursting earlier in the night and overflowed into the gospel I now set out to write. The moment came while I watched some boys who’d fought through the tumult climb General Jackson’s statue and tie their flag to the hat he holds at the end of his outstretched arm. It hung limp at first, just dangling blue-colored cloth, until a gust of wind blew in from off the river and unfurled their flag to roars and cheers and churchbells; and in that instant, like a vision breaking over my head, I saw it was the same flag as we’d flown for old West Florida back in ’10—a field of blue shot through with a single white star, like the fist of God punched a hole right through the sky.

1

I might’ve hurrahed with the rest, I was so shook by the sight of my resurrected banner, which now they call it the Bonnie Blue. But it was a sorrowful kind of glory, and soon the ringleaders caught the people up in song. I listened hard for a word about our long-gone Republic of the coast, and finding there was none, I wept. Southern rights, Lincoln, niggers and cotton were all I heard from them. My War and my country were a lifetime ago for these children. I wept at that great fool voice of multitude. I wept to be forgotten, for my Cannibals and our flag now cannibalized. Pray for planter-boys like the one who saw my weeping and, amid their song and celebration, took me by the arm and said, Don’t squall now, old man, we’ve won! I shrugged him off and left that scene. He didn’t know that winning’s not the thing. We won our war at first, and afterwards lost more than just battles. My brother understood these things better than I ever did. The thing is you’ve got to win and win again. That’s the American way of War. You can’t just win; you’ve got to win forever. Kemper knew this, but I was a doubter. I was a slack brother and I failed him. Besides, the only planter wants to fight a war is bored so crazy with whipping his niggers that he’d like to try his hand at whipping something greater, so he can see if it cows. I’ve fought alongside planters and I know their stomachs for it. Atop lovely thoroughbreds and in fine uniform they’ll ride out to fool’s deaths, drawing scores of others behind them. There’ll be enough dead to pack the mouth of Hell with bodies, like the doors of an opera house on fire. And afterwards those left alive will be in tatters and in rags, defeated, riding to the cinders of their houses on stolen nags. Pray for all the soon-dead gentlemen and for the crackers who’ll follow them. Pray for all the wild rovers, for the nightgirls and the resurrection men, for the winebibbers and the riotous eaters, for the Kaintucks and duelists, for free niggers and slavish white men, for virtuous whores and whorish virgins; pray for the false prophets and the true. Pray for me, I am one of them. I am a victim of the Shepherd’s Curse. Once the raised-up shepherd who ate the flesh of the fat and tore their claws to pieces, only to become the idle shepherd. So my arm is clean dried- up, made a stump by the love of an axe-wielding woman, and my right eye is hid behind a patch—utterly darkened, as the Book says—a result of misfire at the moment of my greatest sin. I’ve been thirty years on and off in New Orleans and I’m dyed in the rank vats of this city’s fallen nature, sore in love with every boil and pustule in her womb. And any man, some late- comer to this city, any tee-totaling, blue-veined, high-stockinged son of a bitch who’d wince at the smell of lifted skirt or wafted glass, who calls this city Babylon the whore, I’ll take out his tongue and use it to show what kind of whore he is. I’m too far-gone to fight again. And if I had two hands, on one I’d damn the fools who want to battle with the North but on the other I’d admit I can’t resist. I am old but my hand still better fits the pistol grip than the walking stick or cane. I am the hand that does the will of His divinity. I am the instrument, killer and conduit elite. I’ve rendered man, woman, and child unto the Lord with shot, stick, knife, hanging rope and broken glass, but I’ve delivered many more with this voice I keep coiled down in my withered throat and with such expedience as would make the crashing bullet weep and the knife-blade, imperceptible in its sharpness, strike dull. And if there are none in these Disunited States who’ll pray for us, they’d better start clapping their soft hands together soon. Because I can talk to bones; and like Ezekiel I will call them up; and the soggy bones buried in our loam will do as good as the dry bones of the waste-

2 land Hebrews; and I will enkindle them with the breath of life and they will march with me and light the streets with their phosphorescence on our way to swallow up the world. Brothers and sisters, we aren’t the shining city on the hill but the rot-glowing hand that will pull the bastards down. # # # My prayer may not have been as good as what’s down on the page, but that’s the way it goes with Gospel. The urge in me to rage and preach is quickening even as the congregation of my blood and my desire sleeps and dreams peaceful, so I sit up another night and sling ink for the Lord. I don’t remember dreams, myself. I live the waking life and I see everything, past and now, like targets over the nip of a bead. There goes my father; there goes my brother Kemper and all the wars we fought. There goes my stolen life and stolen flag. Last night, as the prayer slipped out of this worm-ready body of mine, I was made again a vessel of their voices and the Word of the Lord. The eggs of corruption were cast out my skin and the hatchling worms pulled forth by Heavenly fingers. I am wounded and made whole. All my friends and enemies are back again. The Resurrection of the Dead is commencing down deep in my throat, and I hope this single wrinkled hand can let them out. I returned to bed, left the window and the people below it wringing out their clothes to be rid of my blood. But before dawn I was awake with my wife’s hand cupping my mouth, testing me for breath. She snatched away, my Alise, and feigning sleep she curled beside the socket stump of my arm—to which she kindly applies ointments when the skin grows too puckered and breaks. She says sometimes I hack myself awake, that it sounds like something’s terrible in me. How well I know she’s right. She’s frightened of my prayer and of the prospect of me dying, so I save what may upset her for the page and soothed her once again this morning with the fact that if I die there’ll coin enough to keep her and the boy. Sweet Alise, the color of the coffeemilk she sips, was no wife at first, and isn’t even now because she’s got a droppers’ worth of Negroe blood in her. For us to be legal I’d be forced to swear I had some of that blood in me, which I won’t. I thank God daily that I’ve mixed my blood with hers and made a son, but there are things this world won’t bear; the way I couldn’t stand the weeks before she birthed our son when Alise undertook with a gaggle of old Creole women, her creamy forebears who survived St. Domingue, twenty-five prayers and passes of the rosary per day that our child’s eyes would be born out blue as mine. They were, but only for a week. And he wore a thin crown of golden hair like mine, which he retains to this age of ten, and the old women snatched him from the doctor’s hands and pried his lids open to show me the promise of God. He’s grown up bathing in milk and lotions, receipts Alise learned from those same Mullatoe ghouls. She gives thanks each day for his color, and keeps him in wide hats for when he’s out in the city. I cherish her, even though she came to me like a parcel; in response to a notice my friend Billy Walker—when he was still just a newspaper man and not immortal or dead—placed for me in the Picayune for an Octoroon woman to come and share my bed. He said he only did it because she was a free hire, no slave wench, but young Walker wanted me to teach him a few things concerning being a filibustero, which is what the Pukes called me in my day and surely their descendents him in his. We’d walk the riverfront and I’d tell him how the West Floridian war went down, how my brother fought the same war again in Mexico long before the now- departed Union marched on her, and I hoped he’d gain from it and learn. I don’t know if he

3 listened to my words—all he had to do was look at me to know that nation-making is a bitch who chews you up. As it stands, he took whatever knowledge I gave him to his grave somewhere in Central America, but he brought me my Alise and I’m grateful. She believes her body’s wasted, though I don’t see how. Sure the boy was bad to pull at her tit, bad at tooth-cutting time, but that didn’t ruin her bodily for me. I’m an admirer of the pendulous in women. Seems a swaying judgment when she’s astride me, like the cantered weights of human justice when she dips her shoulder to lower the left or gnaw-nippled right to my mouth and I see the scales tipping always in this sinner’s favor. The round-heels are nowhere near her. Whiteness is all they’ve got going for them, and in this land of every son of a bitch with enough coin having his pick of African concubines that’s enough for them to charge a price to slip beneath their skin. Because I am so fair-haired and fine- featured, I’m considered of exemplary whiteness; the purest of the pure. The New Orleans people give me that credit; no one wishes to smirch the stainless in this city where all has swirled together. And even having added to the mix myself, I’m still given the ranging benefits of my snowy bloodline. Money makes a fine shield, but I must always assure her that she’ll be protected when I die. If she died I’d wear the black for some time and be like shining obsidian, made dark and sharp out of cataclysm. I’d bring my boy up in hardness and fear, strengthening him for the day I’d have him raise up his pistol and press it to my temple, then to fire and shatter his progenitor’s lobes with a minié ball. Understand this isn’t cruelty, but a gift. Not every boy has the chance to kill his father, though every man might should. And what kind of father do I make?—One who strops and shaves each morning, dresses in businessman’s suit and beaver, has his high boots put on by black hands, then goes out from our muddy way, in this less-fashionable street, to the pavers where the gutters run full from the rain, through the people huddled next to coffee-stands manned by clucking German boys whose hands are welted from tending their brass pots and dropping in the cloves and ground chicory which tang the air and open the lungs of ones like me cutting through the chambered palisade of the market where early morning butchery has spilt enough blood and fat to lacquer the floor so that it squeaks beneath my boots and I leave behind a trail of bloody prints on my stride across the square towards the St. Louis Hotel, and up the steps of the rotunda to the Nigger-sellers’ yawn, where I’m surrounded by bedizened society whores and toasted by sugar-rich boys in high hats and school colors accompanied by their fathers’ beady-eyed men to make the purchase or trade. There I am the father who speculates on human prices, listening to the other sellers sing today of being Southern Gentlemen and newly free while they prod their niggers to dance. What else for this father of lies to do but swig the champagne served cold and complimentary to all us men of business and wait till out of the watchers and buyers comes my agent, Dr. Sabatier, who shoots glances to the youths when he’s not scribbling in his ledger our daily earns and losses. I’m the father who hears the music and witnesses the great exchange, thinking that the barkers would make fine preachers and may yet be; so muddied is the face of this world and so lacking in the steel it had when I was young. On way may back home this afternoon, I stopped at a corner off Sabatier’s office still strung with fettered handbills and sagging drunks to watch a lay preacher rail at all us gathered sinners. I may’ve been the only one besides him standing. He was a pitiful sight. His words were sorry nothings, shrill and weak, and rightfully fell to the curbside where they laid with twists of offal and broken bottles. I looked for if he’d any children stashed around; little ones raised, like I

4 was, at the foot of a howler for Christ, playing in the mud and dust of his words until they know enough for their ears to prick and understand. Happy to say he had none. I imagined the one who raised me turning under his pack and puking like a buzzard when he sees what I’ve become. He was hard but charitable and wouldn’t have done what I did when the lay preacher tottered up to me and made a great show of his beggary, asking money for his ragged ministry. My heart’s become a rich man’s and I did him like a rich man does—with cane tip to his skullcap and vicious admonitions. The drunks all applauded and hurrahed me until I retreated to a tavern. If I’d been in my buggy, I would’ve ridden him down like a dog. I know my father better now than when he was real. He was so Godly that he wouldn’t even let me call him father, always Preacher. I don’t look like him and never really did. In fact, a good many things haven’t change in me since I was young, besides being bereft of limb and eye. It’s rare in New Orleans to look the way I do. Not made different by my missing pieces—no, this is a city of cripples in body and soul and I am like them in this respect—but by my hair. It’s clawed back on my head a bit, but still fine and shining. From when I was a boy it’s been golden and women and girls alike have coveted it. I wish I had your hair, they say, and run their fingers through it. I hated it for years for making me look weak or pretty, but I learned it is no bad thing to have the girls and their mothers stop behind you in the park or the street and let their fingers go to playing. The scars which lace my scalp don’t deter their nimble joints as they tell me what a pretty old thing I am with my hair that’s kept its color. Here everyone and everything is dark and they know not what to make of golden Angel Woolsack. I have the look of the Jesus I see in the stained glass of the cathedral where I leave my wife and child to their mass. Only I must seem a Christ who’s come down from His cross and out of his scourging alive. What I come from is nothing, from damn-near nowhere, moved placemeal across this nation before it ever was. And now that it’s no more, I’m further unencumbered of origins. Our seeds were scattered to the corners of the new country by breath passed through the anger- clenched teeth of God—the only memory of the old being the remnants of a thistle-assed Calvinism which made ugly the face of Almighty. Likewise if the earth did have a face for darkness and light and water to fall on, then we were the blue-tailed flies who crept across that countenance from place to pockmarked place, never lighting on one pus-drip for long. The rootless child learns the ways of different places and comes to know their equal shittiness. And he finds that coming from nowhere and nothing gives you fast legs and hands that grab at everything and have a feel for triggers and hilts, a stomach for whiskey, and rooted between those speedy legs a deep need for women. My hand’s not as strong as the one that brought me up, but I doubt such strength could survive these times. I’ve become weak out of kindness to my child, as I know he couldn’t survive that flinty education. Some days I see the boy off to Jesuit minders or let him wander close to home in his wide-brimmed hat. His youth has none of the punishment of my own, but with what I see coming he may yet know the fire. For now and whatever days of mine remain I have a son to teach what I know: riflery, the ride, and the Word of the Lord. He will learn his delineation, of our preacherly race, as I learned it from an early life led by the hand of the Baptist into worlds of our own making. # # # The burgeoning death columns of our New Orleans papers always list a man’s children as having survived him. This wording makes some sense of fathers to me. For mine was never so cruel in punishment or trial that I did not endure. But he wasn’t so weak either as to not make my life an

5 act of survival.

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BOOK ONE CHAPTER 1 Tell this to your sons

Preacher-father was a hard thing to have. No whiskey tits for your fevers or teething and no fairy-tale readings, as I give my own son. There were no such things as tales when I was a boy— you were read to from but one book and all of it was true. Bad word or bad deed Preacher-father punished with charcoal slivers pulled from the campfires we built beside baptismal rivers and from the stoves and fireplaces of believers who housed us from the northern neck of Virginia to the Missouri Territory. So it was his way not to holler you down the way he did the endless congregations on the mud fares of the border towns, or even to strike you, which was common in his preaching also, but to tell you to go to the fire and stir it with a pick, or an iron if we were in the house of a good family, and to find a coal guttering there and pull it aside, then to wait beside it while it cooled such to be handled. Pray on your transgression during this time, an hour or so, testing the coal with small hands getting welted and red worse than any ass could from belt or switch. Finally he’d have you take the coal up and pluck it into your mouth and go to chewing. Your lips would at first rebel, growing fat and cracked as the coal passed between them and the fire jumped up your teeth and into their roots so that your brain was burning. You chewed lightly, huffing breaths, or sucked it like a rare sweet, because you knew at the middle was a hotter heart that still burned live. And while you chewed he would say his first words since he’d ordered you to the fire: Do you taste the Hell in there? he’d say. And it would squeal between your teeth and he’d ask if you heard the cries of the sinners it held. Seeing you clench and grit when you came to the kernel of Hell at the white of the coal, when it was greater pain to cry and blow the heat through blistered lips, he’d say, And that’s but a taste of Hell there on your tongue. Now swallow it down. Later, you would hurry off to the woods to dig a hole for the shining black turds that were the last sign of your sin. So Preacher-father would say that sin is endless and passes only with great pains, and to take care you’d buried it deep. I know why the Lord appeared so often in the form of fire to his wasteland Hebrews. With so many years spent in the wastelands of America, you come to find that the in the empty places the immanence of fire is the only way a man can be made to feel something like the touch of God which rests upon us all, and to know that it is everywhere. # # # Because I was born shivery small and sickly, and because he thought I was sure to be damned, I was always kept close to the fire. It was his belief, some holdover from his predestined Scottish ancestry, that I was set for that Lake of Fire and it was his duty to callous me against it. So the first thing I remember is the hands of flame on me. All my earliest memories were given me by him. He never told my age. I’ve likened that I was born in 1776, just to be a completist in this country’s birth and dissolution. You could’ve told me it was 1800 when we left Ohio, which is my estimate, or that it was 1900, for all I knew of years and dates. All I had to know back then was Jesus died, Jesus rose, and he’d soon be coming back. # # #

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Early in that year, what once had been a family wandered out into the wilderness reduced to us two. I knew the story of the other Woolsacks only through him, and they lived to me like scripture: sister carried off by sodomites, brother rent to death by knives even as he stood preaching in a Lynchburg tavern, mother’s expiration from disease that ate her from womb to gifted rib. The public sickhouse where she died Preacher-father burnt as her prye—an act of anger he often repented, saying that it smelled like cooking years of rotten meat, but still not as awful as it’d smelled unburnt. The verses of my family history never grew or shrank, nothing revealed except that I was the final issue of a wrecked line, Hell-bound, as my testament will prove. So I was alone to be taught preaching and bore the brunt of his learning; to witness and call with my leathered tongue to the Lord those who’d not yet opened their hearts.

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CHAPTER 2 The people cross over

Before the western territories of this our ex-Republic had been redeemed or given any settled name, we passed into them. The lines of civilization had not yet been advanced by the great men, the good men whose stories are stamped with gilded illustrations of them rearing up on horseback above the cowering savages, perhaps protecting a similarly huddled bunch of settlers. To Hell with great men, there were none for me then. Only Preacher-father; and I trusted him like he trusted that I’d pass unscathed through the flames of Hell and walk hand in hand with Jesus, a child cured and ever-ready for apocalypse. We suffered for his faith, and maybe it was all that suffering, which seemed then to me normal, that later in my time with him would spill over in my accidental vengeance, my failure yet to come. His love for me was such that he thought I could turn the tongue of any serpent, that I could be brought up to the mountaintop and made to look down upon the cities of the world and not say I want them. He was a man of faith, blinder than my patched eye. So we were lost on our way to the Mississippi. Preacher-father gave no truck with guides or maps or caravans, and there came days of wandering through marshes, being eaten by insects till we were pocked and shivering in our soaked leathers. I was shorter than the grass, and the deeper we went into the marsh the taller it grew until I was swallowed up entirely and spent days without the sun. My skin turned gray and wrinkled, and I kept my eyes to his footprints in the slough—those that weren’t immediately swallowed by the water and the mud—so that I could follow in the good ground. He’d flatten reeds for me to sleep dry, but still I’d sink into the earth and by morning would be half-drowned. I’d lay with my head on my hands so that my ears wouldn’t fill with mud while Preacher-father wandered, and I could hear him sloshing and sending up a bogwater chorus of frogs and bug-leg fiddlings. He called on God and he called on the River, shouting Hey, Miss! Hey, Miss! like it was a woman out there waiting. Preacher-father never had a need for women, but all the same he made the Mississippi one, and he suffered to find it the same fool way most men hunt for women. All I did was follow, too young to doubt or know that I should. Everything was divined already, and all we had to do was keep on the path. Only there was no path where we were headed. So it went that the low roar of the River came one day and was everywhere, trembling the grasses and shutting up the bugs. Preacher-father was so happy I had to sprint to keep up after him, through the last of the marsh and up a low rise, then stumbling down through scrub oak to the muddy shore and my first sight of the Mississippi tearing away at the land, a dark and swirling parallel. We crossed it on a raft Preacher-father hewed and poled himself, but not before a night and morning making thankful prayers. I remember him happy for while after that, singing croak-voiced psalms once we were in the open country and heading north into the hills. In Ohio and Tennessee, we’d camped in tracts of brambles and thorns so that our clothes were studded with them. We wore nosegays of briar when we went out among the people to preach. Before that, in Kentucky, we’d crouched in the lees of hills and caves of limestone where I collected pocketfuls of eyeless creatures for lonesome games played in tallow-light. But on the plains he’d suffer no covering unless it were absolutely dictated by snow or rain—no aperture between us and the eye of God. Having sold off our horses for kit and meal, we carried our loads on our backs—

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Preacher-father weighted down like Bunyan’s Christian, and me a child’s primer version of the same. Skint but stricken with such powerful religion, Preacher-father would share with any wanderer we came across, mostly Frenchmen, who looked like stage bears in their beards and dangling furs, and some English, deserters from their armies which patrolled the river down from the north making crude log forts and cruder pacts with the Indian. Their nations scattered like birds at our approach. Never right ahead, but always on the periphery of our trail. If you didn’t see them outright, you were chilled by the owlsong of their retreat. I prayed they’d take no interest in us with their clubs and tomahawks, as fearing the red man was a constant thing of life back then. But I was never really afraid so long as Preacher- father led with his long-barreled musket across his back, hatchet slapping at his thigh. I’d seen him bring that weapon so hard on a man’s head that its handle snapped off and the blade remained skull-bound. I could never be afraid. See, he’d say, when a clutch of Indians would chance upon us only to go skittering into the trees. Even heathens know we go with God. But if it wasn’t one thing from the wilderness, it was another. Where the human inhabitants gave us clear passage, the beasts of the field rose up against us. One morning, after prayer, we rolled up our beds and took up our packs while the land was still in a deep fog. In the foothills of a valley where every turn we made was blind. When the fog opened on the land, all there was in the valley was a single tree. Above us, the rim of the encircling hill was ringed with forest, of which this one seemed a weird offshoot. And from those woods there came the sounds of a herd. Nothing like cattle or swine, it was a deep, roiling, ancient noise that called and responded and confirmed great numbers all around. No time to quiver or quake as the hoof-beats began in a low roll and forced their rhythm on my bones. On the hill, the dark of the treeline shifted and they came, like hillocks themselves, pouring out. Preacher-father, quick afoot, was on his bobbing way to the lone tree, which was all, besides his rattling burden, that occupied my fearful vision. Knocked twice to my knees under the weight of my own pack before I reached the tree, where he took my pack and boosted me over his shoulder and into the needling pine. Then he pitched the pack up to me and I fought to hold it best I could among the clawing limbs. I could see the hump of his burden still on his back and he was watching the grunting herd drumming down the hill. My screams came shrill for him to climb up, but Preacher-father stood stock still. Maybe it was amazement, maybe the need to witness, that kept him there until my screeching pleas and begs finally caught him and he hugged to the tree and pulled himself up onto my branch. I clung at his head and looked down at our legs dangling free in the air as the buffalo passed below us with their wooly heads and hump-backs, their fist-sized nostrils steaming. The herd was all around us in the valley, but now were stopped and grazing when Preacher-father fell from his perch to the ground, praising God amid the steaming pats they’d left behind, saying how it was made now abundantly clear that the Lord loves His true servants and blesses them according to their deeds. # # # In a moment of rare sense, we moved southward from the grazing tracts into the lowland plains. Preacher father’s good humor dried up on this leg of the trip. I suppose it might’ve been that he hadn’t found a flock yet or a promised land, both of which were our mission. Growing wrathsome in the grasslands, he began to talk of death. And like all his other thoughts, he conferred them upon me.

10

What I remember from those early revelations is that he despised a burial in the earth, fretted over the accompanying worm-dance. If there were no rocks or caves, then I should build a fire. This went on for days and miles until he’d talked himself out, and in the silence following he had us stop at the edge of a forest and make camp, where he laid with his coat pitched for shade over his head for God knows how long, waiting for a sign. I’d bring him water to drink, but he took nothing else when in that state, which didn’t matter anyway as all we had left food-wise was a little corn. And with Preacher-father quietly wasting under his blanket while my belly grew ever more hurtsome, I had no choice but to sling the powderhorn over my shoulder and set out with his musket and handful of shot for the woods. I was tempted to fire on the barking squirrels, but had a mind for bigger things. I never much favored small game—leave that to the lesser killers. Countable ribs poking through my tattered buckskins, I chewed acorns as I went and kept hungry eyes for any movement in the brush. My arms hurt for the weight of the gun and I had to often stop and rest. It was afternoon when I came to a creek that split the woods in reeds and lilies. I waited there, dozing in and out of hunger pangs. I woke in the near-dark, feeling emptier than ever, to see a doe toeing at the edge of the water. I looked for others in the trees, but it was only her—all legs and neck and downswept eyes. Musket at my shoulder, I leveled the barrel on my knee and aimed the bead between her neck and strap. She raised her head from the water for some sound I made but hunger had my trigger-finger desperate as the rest of me and I fired before she could bolt. I’d over-tamped the powder and my shot knocked me back. I could hear the doe thrash in the water, but when I’d picked myself up and clawed my way out of the powdersmoke she was gone. Chilling bite of the water at my back as I crossed the creek, gun reloaded and upraised. I wobbled over the ground where she’d stood. Bloodspoor in the hoofprints, thank God. Hunger, if it did a thing, gave me raptor eyes and, racing to beat the dark, I followed patches and strokes of blood through the woods until I found her, stiff at the foot of a tree. There I threw down the musket in feverish excitement and drew out my knife, but found I couldn’t move to make a cut as my head was swimming high. Once gathered, I knelt beside her head and forked my knife under her eye, turned up the blade and scooped the eye into my hand and ate it. I did this also with her tongue, stuck my knife into the ground and set down to a long chew, watching a pair of ravens gather in the trees, watching me. Weak from the meal as I’d been from hungering and hunting for it, I curled into the still-warm side of the doe and slept. I woke a few times in the night, listening for beasts. The last time I woke was to the shuffling of wings and in the moonlight saw I was surrounded by a flock of ravens that were pecking at the hole in the doe. It remembered Elijah and how well those birds had treated him, so I let them eat. And not a drowsing minute passed that a beak didn’t pluck a gobbet in my mouth. It was mad work the following morning to drag her back to camp, but I did; with a cloud of flies accompanying me, biting at me like coachman’s whips to hurry me on my way. There Preacher-father rose from his suttee and I steeled myself for his anger, but there was none. He kissed me and told me he was pleased and how he knew I was no prodigal then went to stoke up the fire and build a rack while I made my unskilled butchery of the doe. That day, while some meat roasted and some salted, Preacher-father told me that while I’d been gone the Lord had spoken to him. Head south, said the Lord. And so we listened, because we knew God’s will was always with us. It could be no other way.

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# # # Preacher-father’s mood returned, so much so that one day we were tramping through a trail in the woods, him testing out a sermon for the flock he hoped to find and me so weary from walking that I think my eyes were shut, and we came upon squat of Indians all laid up in a grove. They were covered in sores and too sick to move or talk, nor give us more than a roll of flyspecked eyes. He didn’t stop to minister to them, or even pause for a good look. We scuttled out of there and what I remember most was his happiness once we’d left them. The first thing he said to me was, That’s how you know you’re on the track to Christians, son. The heathen withers and dies even in their proximity. Otherwise, all I recall is the face of the squaw I passed nearest to; that her cheeks were so eaten away you could see through to her teeth, and she was breathing.

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CHAPTER 3 The Promised Land

They’d later say that the day we came into Chit Valley all the children’s fevers broke and everybody’s bowels were righted. But from the way the people treated us at first, you’d never think Preacher-father would be their fighting prophet, savior and general all in one. Dwelling in those wild and thinly populated reaches we found sullen Christians living at peril of soul and fearful of the avarice of the Indian. These beleaguered whites lived in holes they’d dug under the ground; the only watch kept over the endless plain was by their meager stock. A homestead could only be marked by the lonesome beasts in their pens and the stovepipes trailing smoke from the fires stoked below. Here were the very seeds of forsaken civilization, scattered along the prairie and waiting for us to sow them into a promised land. Or so much as Preacher-father said. This was the western corner of the Missouri territory, settled by no more worthless a pack of dirt-daubers than you’d find in all this awful world. They were ten or so families, with names like Shoelick and Backscratch and Auger, and we were met at the door of each one’s hole, which opened like a cellar, by similarly bewildered and mistrustful faces. Most had only been out there a year at best, but they’d become where they lived. Their thin, dirt-caked children slept in biers carved into the mud walls, and watched like rats as I stood beside Preacher-father at their family tables if they had any—in which case it wasn’t rare for you to sit upon the dirt floor and looked up and see insects struggling in the ceiling or for an earthworm to drop into your coffee cup. They’d become like moles or rabbits and would hear our footfalls on the sod before our voices. When Preacher-father spoke, they’d come out, if they did at all, holding guns or farm tools and with looks like they were expecting apparitions. This gawking would go on until they were satisfied we existed, and then their looks would change to awe. Their voices rasped with wonder for having gone so long speaking to no one but their own poor blood. When Preacher- father asked them about Jesus or being saved, they stared and grew more awestruck with whatever next he said. Poverty of soul, he called it. God knows we were bizarre, this growling man and little blonde-haired boy, travelling with supplies so lacking that the holediggers all said we should’ve been dead. Maybe that was what first made them all believe in him. They warned against pitching camp aboveground for the wind and the Indian to level. Instead, they said, start digging and bury yourself there for the empty horror of this land. But Preacher-father refuse to huddle in the dark, and what they said only served to convince him that these settlers were beset by nature and native alike because, in their foolishness, they’d insisted on hiding themselves from the eye of the Lord and increasing their proximity to Hell. He’d tell me this was the place and these were the people he’d lead to Heaven. They were, he’d say, sore in need of his preaching.

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CHAPTER 4 I see my own ruin

Once we visited a dugout that was armed to the teeth. Sharpened branches stuck like pikes around its door and there were holes cut in the boards for gun-barrels. It was early yet in our ministry of Chit, and this was our first time at this particular hole. When a man’s voice called for our names Preacher-father answered for us both. Leather hinges creaked and the door cracked open but an inch. Come here, said the man. Show me your hand. Preacher-father went and did as he’d been asked, then through the door-crack came a hand that took his up and felt it; as if to see that he was real. I’m a man of God, said Preacher-father, and white. So you are, said the holedigger, and let go his hand. He asked Preacher-father for his rifle, which he gave, and brought us down into the family hole. Inside the smell was not of dirt as you’d expect, but of people close and filthy. They were the Fladeboes: father, mother, and—God forgive me--daughter. See, it was there that I first came to feel the wriggling of the Devil-worms in me, found my wrack and ruination sitting there in the dark in a dingy sack-cloth dress. I remember the Fladeboe father saying, I suppose you do have the aspect of a prophet. He sat us at short table with only seats on one side, already occupied by mother and daughter hunching over steaming bowls. You can eat, the mother said. If you don’t mind to share bowls and spoons with us, as all we got is three. They could eat off knives, the daughter offered, with a glance that in the tallow-light looked crazy. Good girl, said her mother. Go and get them. The daughter huffed up from her place and disappeared into a darkened corner of the hole, returning, after brief scratch and scrabble, with a pair of smooth-blade knives and handed them to us. Emily, this boy’ll eat with you, said her mother. Preacher-father waited till the man had set himself down at one end of the bench, then went and stood beside him, dipping now and then from the bowl with his knife, talking between swallows of our mission in this place. I couldn’t be as deft, crouching next to Emily and examining her hard enough to lose my food a dozen times down the front of my wool shirt. She had an eye that wandered. Right or left, I can’t recall, but that it rolled untethered in her skull all the same. And I should’ve known from the moment I saw that lost mud-colored marble of hers giving glances to all corners that her body was a betrayer. She might’ve been ugly, my little starveling girl, but I grew in her presence then, counting the ring-worms in her neck and numbering them like jewels. She was similarly gaunt as me and greedily we watched each other eat. So while Preacher-father awed the Fladeboes with our plans for ministry, I went slopping up the corn-shuck gruel and lurching after Emily in my mind. The mother and father kept still and silent for his talk, and it was Emily who finally spoke, leaning over to her mother, whispering in her ear and rocking back and forth a little on her end of the bench. The mother frowned and gave her husband, who was rapt, a good jab with a

14 crooked finger. She’s got to pass, said the mother. She can wait, he said. At that, Emily whined. Dirt or water? asked her father. Just let her bring the gone gun, the mother said. She’ll be alright. Damn it, said the man. Boy, why don’t you bring your rifle and go watch for her out there. It hadn’t struck me yet full on what he was asking. And before it did, Preacher-father had given me the rifle and eased me up the steps and I was lifting up the door. Emily was soon to follow, clutching at her lap with both hands and wincing. She went right past me saying, Come on, it’s over here. I followed Emily a ways, past the pen of sickly-looking hogs I’d later come to know, over to patch of high grass that I saw, when she parted herself a place to squat, hid a trough of shit and piss. Soldierly I clutched the rifle to me and she got down on her heels, flipped up the backside of her dress and started singing. I’d turned by then, but not before I glimpsed her squatting, skirts bundled up and grass-stalks blooming all around her and the white of her knees and double-curve of fundament. I’m not looking, I said. Good, she sang. Or else you might find that you’ve gone blind. The Devil-worms lit into me like magpies to a lamb’s eyes as I stood out there with Emily and kept watch over her corruption. She sang on, whatever song it was, and I was busily recomposing Solomon’s for her. Who is this that cometh out of the wilderness like a pillars of blonde smoke, perfumed with black powder and campfire ash? We have a little sister who is mousy and flat-chested, she is covered in dirt and the blades of her hips show through her dresses; what shall we do for our little sister? The answer in my young and stupid brain of course was anything. A multitude of sins bloomed up which I’d never thought much of before. But I could tell her none and only do my best to hide the shame growing prodigious in my lap when she hitched up, left the ditch, and whistling passed me by. I would’ve plucked her out some grass to wipe with, but saw she’d taken out a handful from where it grew thick and green along the ditch’s lip. And besides, she was already at the door, fingering the sharp ends of one pike or another. Still singing, she waited while I headed over, she then lifted up the door and we descended. Once below she heard her father’s voice and puckered up quiet for the rest of the time we stayed. I swear, at that moment I could’ve killed a pile of him. Like lusting, murder was close on my mind before I’d ever even done the act itself. I’d seen both, so was familiar enough to imagine. And that silence of hers was as good as the Devil’s whisper in my ear. When I followed Preacher-father out into the sunlight from the dimness of the Fladeboe’s hole, I was amazed at the wickedness of my heart; and at that moment I understood his coals and why he always kept me so near to the fire.

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CHAPTER 5 The conversion of the Chitites

I never saw him prepare a sermon. He’d go off, sometimes late Saturday or even early Friday, only carrying his axe and Bible—a copy scarred and bitten as any barroom brawler—and return sometime before Sunday morning when he’d gather me up in the dark and we’d head to meeting. He always left me with a good fire going and the rifle to hold like a brother’s arm while I slept. Really, I can’t say whether it was even Sundays when he preached, for all the holediggers had forgotten days, dates and names. It didn’t matter; he made whatever day he wanted to the Sabbath. Going to preach those horseless summer days when the grass turned golden and everything was so brightly blazing, you learned like the wind to go on winding ways from dugout hole to hole, gathering the flock which was at first no more than a few of the wives and their children. Midday we’d arrive at the meeting place, which was nothing more than a bow in a stream that bisected several of the homestead holes, unique only in the two large stones set there and the pool of calm water below them being good for baptizing. It was also used for the holediggers’ laundry, so soap-fat clung at the reeds and the rocks were draped with drying clothes even on Sundays. No one could tell where the stones had come from, no mountains near enough or hills of worthwhile size to yield them. Storm gray and always warm to the touch on its sunward side, where if you climbed you’d catch a rain-dog whiff of sopping clothes. The biggest of the stones Preacher-father would climb and from the top start the service. The first and only regular congregation of his life began with just that smattering of women and children—the men preferring for a while to stay behind to guard their meager holdings. Never mind, he’d say. Son, it’s always Eves who come quickest to the call and bring their wailing broods along. Preacher-father on his perch cursed sin with such vehemence that the ears of the frontier women were burning red with his words. He danced on his stone and bid them do the same, sang songs self-composed and of the same vigorous roughness in condemnation of the evils of the world and so exultant of Christ and the Lord that, though harsh of lyric, could never be considered profane. Before long those women caught the fire and danced and sang as best they could to keep up with his furious inventions. And from my place in the lee of the stones I watched each flush of face and breast with my heart gone to raunch—to see the Fladeboe girl filled suddenly with the spirit, wheeling and shaking and stomping down the grass with the rest of them. More and more he’d call me up to preach, but only briefly; and even in those moments I was on her. My words were for her, though she seemed unmoved. Then, O God, the baptisms. Reveal to me the body of woman in all its shapes and ranges. She may be hard and underfed but a temple nonetheless. I was put to baptizing the little children downstream, and I watched Preacher-father drawing Rachels, Ruths and Hagars from the water. The distaff side borne out before me was a miracle of dripping jenny and hind. I’d seen many baptized before and have baptized many since, and have been baptized also within them, but to see it then at the very onset of my youthful urges was a revelation of clinging wool and sackcloth, of hair to be wrung out on the bank as he exhorted further converts into the drink. Emily Fladeboe went, dress ballooning as she stepped down into the water and was received.

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Heavenly Father, take this girl close to your heart and keep her, for she has forsaken sin and wickedness. This ewe is washed in the blood of the lamb. And so she was dipped and came up gasping slick and beautiful, reaching out her hands for someone on the bank to take. My own hand was on a small one’s head, holding him under while I lifted my voice to praise when she waded smiling to the bank. And because I was forgetful and forever sneaking looks to where she sat sodden in the canebreak, humming piously with the other women, I more than once withdrew a half-drowned child from the water. We sent the women off full of the spirit, though the children might’ve been a little logged, and soon the husbands gave up their guards and followed. By late summer the faithful were wearing out traces in the grass on their way to meeting time, bringing with them devotion of body and soul and, mercifully, vegetables. They remain the finest flock I ever witnessed other than my Cannibals. And both those congregations shared the desperation which breeds a love of the Lord. # # # With all that, I was lonesome. Or at least there came the realization in those days and nights of nothing more to dream or hope about but Emily, who was as much a skeleton in what I knew of her as she was bodily. I wrapped flesh on her and bathed her in my mind; baptized her until she drowned. But hopes aren’t company and somehow I knew what was coming. I wasn’t one for premonitions then. It’d take till I was older for the gift of true prophecy to hit, a cruel talent hard to shake and ever-often wrong. Yet you’ve got to listen when it comes or tells you something’s on the rise. If I’d seen it all what lay ahead, the foreknowledge of who was on his way and what he’d bring and how my life’s trajectory would become as like the bullet’s or the knife’s— through gore and smoke and screams—I may’ve just about laid down and died for the sight of it. Not to say the way it went was Kemper’s fault, it’s mine. But if it weren’t for him I’d never of been me. Such to say, I hurt for a friend and was brought a brother. I want to bring him to this gospel sooner, and if I were a liar here I’d hurry his arrival, shift the time to match my need to tell the later parts. But there’s still the matter of the plague that hailed him, how the locusts appeared first in singles, clumps and clusters, then in hordes and your every step sent up clouds of them playing dinnertime fiddles while they chewed, the sound of which was like a thousand-toothed mouth gnawing on and on. We’re thankful, Lord! said Preacher-father covered up in bugs. We’re thankful even for this!

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CHAPTER 6 The locusts and deliverance

God knows why they didn’t blame us for the plague. And if they’d seen what I’d seen while it raged, rather than hiding in their burrows, the holediggers might have come to know what kind of sorry savior Preacher-father was. We’d draped ourselves in sheets and blankets, sat that way for the locusts to make us mounds of their scritching bodies. Dawn to dusk of feeling tiny legs marching over you from sole to scalp had driven my brain off course and I was administering to myself a good and thorough daylong beating, without even time to wipe the still-twitching mush away before the open patch was filled by the kith and kin of the recently deceased. That night I was still slapping at myself and couldn’t sleep, peeking out from underneath my sheet, watching how the towering fire he’d built in the pit was doing no more to drive them off with smoke than our coverings did to keep them out—for even though I sat on the ends of it they still crawled through—when he cast his away and I saw he was aswarmed. They rode the ends of his hair and were mitts over his hands, they swole up from the ground and made crawling trunks of his legs, swallowed him so fully that the only way I knew he’d not been eaten all away was that he still retained some human shape and moved. Preacher-father’s steps were foreshortened like he was afraid to crush too many of his multitudinous clingers; blinking eye-holes in his shroud of insects, he reached into the mass of them at his chest and brought out his Bible, which they immediately covered. And I swear in the firelight I saw them nibbling at the leafs, eating pages clean of ink or else messing passages with juice when they found one not to their liking. He spread the book wide and stared out from his locust cloak at me, his eyes the only human thing about him left that I could see. Locusts issued from the center-binding of the Book, and above their ever-present drone came his voice screaming how he was thankful. They streamed around his words, poured in and out his throat. He went on like that for the remainder of the night. # # # I was out in the days following the plague, trudging rifle-slung through the scraggy woods at the northmost edge of Chit and seeing nowhere wasn’t bare. I’d brought a stolen hunk of honeycomb from a downed bees’ nest I’d found, thinking to make it a present to Emily, only there was no one topside but her father, who took the comb from me and, after listening to my lies of Preacher-father sending it to them, unwrapped the little bundle and sunk his nubby teeth into it. Sorrowing my way home, praying on Preacher-father’s words of thanks and thinking maybe they’d been whispered in his ear by all those insect voices. After being swallowed he’d sat another day under the shifting devourers who wouldn’t eat him, and waited until, on the second day, they became brittle and stopped shifting, then dried and fell away. He’d said other things that night and these too weighed on me while I went reading dried shit for any signs of bone and finding nothing when I stirred it with a twig, then down to what was now called Baptist Creek, the flow of which was chocked with locust husks. I could stop every step and make a scoop of my hand over the ground and come up with a palmful of dead—gorged to-death and now in mounds of shining bodies, covering the land even in demise—and pop them into my waiting mouth. Not bad to chew, and filling, but they did tend to stick between your teeth so that you’d spit the clinging legs and scales of wing. Likewise the holediggers were making meals of the fresh-dead swarm, and had found ingenious ways of frying and stewing the things. For his part,

18

Preacher-father made his breakfasts from the bees’ nest, the bees themselves being all dead and shriveled in the golden sweet, to be picked out for snacking just like the locust onto which he’d heap honey before grinding them down with tooth, tongue, and palate bound in sugar. I never knew sugar and damn me if I’m not still envious of him for those honeyed meals I never had. Because of my tongue, which wouldn’t know honey from bile, he said, I needed none and so I’d eat my plague-bugs dry. What he didn’t know was that the tongue he’d wrecked—burning it further and further every time I stepped out—hadn’t just cured me for Hell but given me the Devil’s tongue itself which knows no fire. It might be that I was already biding my time, storing up the lies I’d give him before the end. But for the moment I was alone and so I chewed my breakfast down and waited for the seed in me of all my later deeds to grow; I’d wait the way boys do wait for sin to come snapping at their heels to harry them towards fate. What I needed was an accomplice.

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CHAPTER 7 Our salvation comes

There is no other way than to say it was miraculous. And if this is a gospel then there is room in it for miracles like the arrival of the one who’d be my brother in Christ and battle, who I forsook or saved or was forsaken or saved by more times than I can tell. But before I try and tell those times, there’s got to be a start. My skin still crawled with locust legs though they’d since departed this world, in spirit, not the bodies which littered grass in dried-up drifts, when Preacher-father woke me of a morning to look and see a wagon tottering across the field, cutting sideways to our camp. Thinking on it, maybe Kemper’s coming wasn’t destiny at all but Preacher-father’s will, because their wagon would’ve moved on past us and departed Chit Valley within the day had he not stood up from his fire, telling me to stay, then gave a pat to his hip-slung hatchet, and went out to meet it. I itched the phantom legfalls, which now I think weren’t ghost-bugs at all but sinning angels pocking pecks at me while I stirred the ashes of our fire with a stick and watched his progress across the field. How he must’ve looked them on his approach: gape-eyed and grown even wilder-looking, all bit up by mandible nibs; yet it did seem that when he left me there his senses had returned somewhat. Perhaps he knew what he would find; perhaps that was the locusts’ answer. The wagon passed close enough for me to see its driver, a dark blob before the tarp, whip the reigns and turn his team towards us. It was a wide circle in the field before he had it aimed head on at Preacher-father. I thought he might be ridden down, but saw him sidestep the oncoming beasts and run along the sideboards of the wagon, waving at the man, who waved in answer. The scene came sharper into view and I could hear their voices joining. I scratched at my bites and watched these two—driver sounding joyous and Preacher-father walking alongside, every now and again pulling himself up onto the footboard to shout something in the driver’s ear. When the horses were near to trampling our fire he called to me, Up! Help the Deacon unhitch his horses! and I came barefoot through the dewy locust-crunching grass to the snorting beasts presided over by him and this clean-shaved man in good outfit, making me suddenly ashamed of my own mean clothes, only for the man to holler, Boy get up! and then from out the tarp came tumbling this great bleary-eyed bastard—Rueben Kemper—who, once he’d got his feet, proceeded to do the task, eyeing me as he did from two heads taller height but still a boy’s face. The look on him was one for fighting, and this would prove true down to the marrow. To be out from under this glaring behemoth I went around to the open back of the wagon and saw another smaller boy within, laid on his back amid the provisions, groaning and swathed in sheets. The sick boy rose up on his elbows and looked for a moment at me before jamming shut his eyes and letting out a long high keening wail that sent me scrambling back around to be knocked aside by the big one on his way to help the smaller. The fathers came to attend him and I followed mine, watched the bandages be changed and the salve applied to the wailer. These were the Kempers: the father, who mine called Deacon from the moment he met him, styled himself a student of the Lord, having given up meager but regular-yielding holdings in the Ohio valley, presently flushed with federal troops in war against brown liquor; his oldest son was the boy with hambone knuckles and the glare, named Rueben, and the screaming child

20 was Samuel, who now had the wagon rocking with jolts of struggle impressive for one so young and infirmed. Strange as it may seem, not a word of introduction was given me by any of the Kempers, but from Preacher-father as we waited on the doctoring, with nothing said on it thereafter and no questions asked about their place with us in Chit. They were joined immediately to us as providence, prophecy and the will of the Lord. At least that’s how Preacher-father saw it, and I couldn’t help but see it also what with the boys being of a similar age and motherlessness as me. I would’ve embraced them right off if it wasn’t for Kemper eyeing me so. Once the boy Samuel had been doctored, Deacon Kemper carried him out of the wagon, laid him on the ground, then brought Preacher-father and I back to the open tarp to show us his arsenal. I’d go on to see greater armories, finer death-dealing beauties, more fearsome weapons, and ones of better make, but the power of that first sight cannot be denied. Firearms for Preacher-father were no different from hammer or spade, but this Deacon Kemper gathered them to him like best-loved blood relations. He’s the one who’d teach me to appreciate the other kind of fire, the kind of fire kept in muzzle and in bore, as something more than a means to bring down meat or man, as a following of Jesus’ orders for his apostles to spend their money on swords before they set off to preach their gospels. For him, firing a gun was to shout up a prayer so loud as to hear the echoes of God’s answer reverberating in all the corners of His mouth. So Deacon Kemper explained all of this while he showed us his pieces, finishing by saying, How could we not be like those first and greatest preachers and go well-armed? Preacher-father heard all this with eyes alight, saying, Yes! Amen! Yes! I braved the secretly stabbing elbows of the elder son to get a better look. Not even bruises to my ribbage like a spurred-on horse could stop me from gaping wonderstruck at that collection. Indeed, Rueben Kemper would made cock-run circles of my person for some days, chancing blows which I took all Christ-like and would go on taking until such a time as I could have some advantage, and then, blessedly, satisfaction. And I wonder now if Preacher-father felt ashamed of our single rifle and meager shot. If he did, he never let on in his enrapturement with Kemper’s bestiary: two long Kentucky rifles, a brace of shotguns—some plain and some ornate—and short-stocked busses which could be loaded with slugs or pebbles or Indian corn and fired to wound and scare, and finally a matching pair of pistols kept in a pine box lined with velvet. All supplied with two kegs of powder and crates of shot packed in straw. How’d you come by those dandies? Preacher-father asked. There are stories to them all, said Deacon Kemper. I mean the pistols. Well, said the Deacon, taking up the open box. I was at seminary in Virginia. That’s what they’re teaching at seminary, eh? Preacher-father laughed, a miracle in and of itself. Deacon Kemper grinned and said, Not so much as that, but it could be said that I was a student of special purposes. It was a high-minded city and the seminary followed suit: with nigger footmen for our rooms, and Greek and Latin always on our tongues. I received nothing did not a coal-black hand present it to me. My father was Church of England clergy, and wanted me to go down the same road of the frock when he departed from it. This was the year before they put their wigs together in Philadelphia and decided to war for a republic that now drives a man out for making his own whiskey and is so wicked that it drives him to drink deeply. Anyway, I was drunk then on the plushness of my surroundings and went roughly with my

21 fellows out into town, raising rich boys’ Hell among the populace. I was a model sinner, yes. Going back to the class hall in the morning unable to see and reeking of sick. I was a pitiful creature indeed. A portwine swiller and brandied fool. I had some reputation when first I met Ruth, my wife and their mother, who is now gone, snatched from this world. I noticed that flower when she was but thirteen, dancing to Christchurch Bells while her father, a bald enfeebled man who’s look made you doubt his siring of such a fire-haired freckled beauty, played away on a his fiddle, which he’d never call a fiddle but a violin, stalking the room and fiddling too close to this lovely thing supposedly come from him. We boys were mostly drunk on sherry wine, or brandy, and let pass all the flitty things that went by grabbing at our hands for a minuet—but this one, she sobered me. When it came my turn to dance with her I was like the Devil to impress her with my footwork. See, when I was a boy I’d been the favorite of a travelling Dancing Master. I was wind under the soles with her and we never scuffed a board in the floor. I didn’t go rage on the town with my fellows after that night. I returned to my rooms, dismissed the nigger, and then fell to my bed, befuddled. While I lay there puzzled, a fire built in me from my heart to mind to gut. It welled in me and next day at chapel the dusty stiff hymns were all burnt away and all I saw seemed a silly mimicry of true religion. Amen, Preacher-father said. That’s the Lord’s fire you had in you, brother. Now then pistols. On their way, the Deacon said. The voice of God came to me in such fierceness as though it had to boom to be heard at all above the mumbling parishioners. It told me to be free of all this foolishness and be blind no longer. I listened, I did. Got up right then and made my way out of the so-called church. I passed Ruth by in the aisle and she turned her head after me. I knew it then, she was for me. Of course she had loads of suitors waiting for her to grow a little nearer to the age when her father would marry her off, limp-wristed fops and choir boys all. And by the time I called on her they were somewhere in their slow process of drumming me out of the college. Trumped up excuse of gambling, and I never laid down a hand of cards, good or poor, in my life. Old Reverend Fitzroy was so behind he wouldn’t know until later my poor academic standing, and Ruth and me fell in together quite nicely, much as we could under the hawk-glares of family and friends. She was enraptured with my epiphany and I was hers and put the others to shame. I made her grow by years in our short courtship, though we never were carnal. But then there was my expulsion from the ecclesiastical halls, made official by a couple professors with accompanying niggers, even my own, turning me and what belongings I’d yet to sell out of my rooms. Still I absconded with enough books to continue my education. On that, does your boy read? He can, said Preacher-father. But the pistols, tell them. Well, I have a few saved by in the wagon if he’d like to. I marveled at this offer while Kemper stealthily mashed my foot under his boot. You won’t read shit, he said. And I moved closer to the fathers for fear of that same orifice being boxed by this brutish sucker. I knew, said Deacon Kemper, that our match was ordained and let nothing, particularly not a doddering father and a few pointy heads, stand in my way. Was I rash? Sure. But rashness in the name of God’s Will is called fervor by those who know it, and I was a regular Zealot. I kept my courtship on with Ruth against all wishes and better judgements. She even told her father, probably causing a spill of tea at table from quaking hands at the news. She informed me of this one night as I brought her back from one of our clandestine meetings, now even more infrequent because of her indescretious remarks, one of these other boys—still in good with the

22 college, a minder and follower—who she’d put aside in favor of my fire, came upon us as we snuck and told me I was a cowardly heretic bastard or suchlike and was shaming this fine girl by leading her astray. Now, we were chaste. I swear there was never a more Christ-pleasing courtship. So I took ahold of this impudent rascal, who was weak and knobby from being so long and so contentedly deskbound, by his college gown and pulled it over his head and thrashed him right. Finished and turning from the weeping schoolboy, I expected to see Ruth either disappeared or weeping out of fear, but, by God, she was smiling and then and there she kissed my busted knuckles. This would’ve been the end of it, but the boy, whose family carried some weight, felt I’d done him a dishonor in the whipping I’d dealt. Chiefly by not giving him a fair warning before I waylaid him. His besmirched honor drove him, accompanied of course, to seek me out at the house where I was staying—gambling debts, Hell—and challenge me to a duel. I accepted and we met on the college green with the bells tolling suppertime. His second carried this very box of pistols and I took the one you see there with the notched grain, and you can see by that how the duel ended. The seminary had a marksman’s association which convened to shoot stuffed men with roses pinned where their hearts should be. I never went, but heard they could send those petals flying. I’d never fired a pistol in my life. Rifles, yes, but never the pistol. The boy missed his first shot and I took my time aiming and delivered the lead that would kill him later in the night. Never even thought of firing until he’d done it already. The Lord would have any lead sent my way pass over me and bless my own bullet. Thus I won Ruth and his pistols that day, and I know when she heard the result—for she was banned from attending—that that knuckle-kissing smile parted those beautiful lips. Her father yielded to the will of God, which all had now seen was squarely in my favor. That day I was golden in His light and strutted. Though it has been off somewhat since—me ending up with two boys and no mother for them that I fought so hard to have. But we are come here now, and finally well met. I remember Deacon Kemper’s words so clear because they were the first not Preacher- father’s or the holediggers’ grunts that I’d heard in some time. And the thought of a duel was a marvelous thing. I’d seen men stabbed or shot down in quarrels, but never before head of ordered, mediated slaughter. Preacher-father gasped heavy and said, That’s a hell of a parable you got there. If you said you didn’t preach for the Lord, I’d call you a liar. I appreciate it, the Deacon said. Particularly coming from a man like yourself. So that’s my ministry of firearms. And I’ll tell you now, Brother Woolsack, we may be in need of each and every one with the great load of bastards that are behind us, presently making their way to this very place. Preacher-father looked on him bemused and asked who. Wickedness, brother, like you’ve never seen. A whole slew of them, blinded, man, woman, and child. There’s not a girl they wouldn’t steal or barter off you to make a bride of her and they do try desperately to draw other in. I tell you, if I had daughters instead of fit boys I would’ve had to shoot them. But what are they? They are a religion unto themselves. I encountered them first in Ohio and I followed after them. Then in Indiana and I followed them again. They’re led by a man who styles himself as having written a latter day testament. They’ve been driven out from every civilized corner and now they’re heading here. As for me, I’ve decided following’s not enough. So I’ve come to lie in wait and spread the word. But, brother, how do you know they’re coming here? What if you miss them?

23

I won’t, said Deacon Kemper. I know them and their ways. And that was that for explanation. But Preacher-father drove him on for more and my ears pricked at the talk of child brides, thinking of the Fladeboe girl huddled out in her hole, and his great and bloody love story steeled some horrible resolve in me. And with no one until Sunday to give witness to, they evangelized each other. Deacon Kemper had a good soft voice, a learned voice, and through blind-bright days and howling nights it played counter-point to that voice I’d known all my life. Gentle enough to make you at first distrust him, but any man attuned to the rhythms of the lord could discern that his words were lit the same. In this man Preacher-father found, as he’d say, a same-such prophet of the course of John’s baptism with water and Christ’s baptism with fire, and at last we could truly walk the path to righteousness and glory.

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CHAPTER 8 Kemper’s cruelties

In the meantime, while the fathers were busy shoring up the particulars of their religion and going off most days to scout for the arrival of the aforementioned pilgrims, Rueben Kemper kept sneaking me blows and waiting me out. Proud to say I didn’t give in to his baiting, which was what he’d call it later when we were older, drunk and laughing. I tended to my tasks, even fetching water for his little brother, who was up and about barely and too weak to fend much for himself even as his sores closed over and blood returned to his face. Samuel’s fever blisters were dry now, but he still mostly laid up in the wagon, converted to shelter and storage, and groaned. Even without putting a hand on me, it was Kemper’s way to still strike. He was a masterly cusser, and I was alternately a fuckler, shitbird, cunnytwist and rag, a bullockflap, a scroter, a piss-leg, a cockswill and turd. Truth be told, though I didn’t outright throw down with him yet, I did try to give him back his prods and gouging as much I could—swiftly secret where I placed my retributions and with vicious intent. Kemper wouldn’t remember it that way, only that he was my enemy and I was some model of silent Christian suffering. He always saw the good in me, until he could see nothing, and I wish I could say he was right. Truth be told I might’ve killed him outright if I’d had the chance in those early days of our long and bloody brotherhood. We caught each other first in quick and bitter skirmishes when we were sent out together to the scrub forest for kindling while the fathers worked their voices by the fire. These instances never bore any real satisfaction and we would return to camp only to resume our tormenting of each other. Sundays Kemper would use being full of the Spirit to thrash at me when we were all in the melee of Pentecost. These were good days though, before the pilgrims came and set the Chit in uproar, because it was at meeting that I could have the upper hand; for Kemper was never called upon to witness or to preach and on occasion the mood would strike Preacher-father to call me out of the crowd and have me step up on his stone and wail at the congregation. That time was mine, by God, and I could lead the people to holler and yowl and look out on those pitiful listeners— seeing in their vibrations that I was such a vessel of the Lord that I could move even the lousiest ones—and hold my eyes on the Fladeboe girl. Say it all to her directly without a soul knowing. Or at least that’s what I thought. Sure enough one Sabbath evening, on our way back home, Kemper announced himself with an elbow to my side—which I endured without vengeance only because he was too far for my short arms to reach—and said, What’s that puny girl you’re eyeing? She looks like she’d blow over in a breeze. The fathers were walking up ahead, Samuel draped over the back of his and watching us. It’s no business of yours, I said. Maybe not yet, said Kemper. But I could tell your precious daddy that you’re lusting. Do it and you’re dead, I said. Kemper laughed. So you’ve got some fire in you after all, you shitwaller!

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CHAPTER 9 The pilgrims

Their arrival was in winter, so they were either desperate or fools. I liken maybe both. The pilgrims settled in a dip at the edge of the woods which bordered Chit to the southeast, and within a week curious holediggers were already making visits to their camp. The people backslid and Deacon Kemper’s suspicions were confirmed along with the ones he’d sowed in Preacher- father. Naturally he was burning. Where’d you come by that egg I see you chewing, brother? Preacher-father asked a holedigger sitting crosslegged among the congregation the following Sabbath. The man took nervous and gulped his egg down. Them people at the woods, he said. Same place Magee’s wife got cloth for her dress. And what’s about that, sister? A woman in paisley, which the others had been pawing at from the minute she’d come to meeting, looked to her feet ashamed from Preacher-father’s gaze. Her husband beside her had his arms folded and he wouldn’t look away. Brother Magee, said Preacher-father. You’re ready to vouch for these people Deacon Kemper’s already told us are blasphemers? Magee said, I may can’t vouch, but they’ve got things. He sat in on one of their services! called out the man with a mouthful of eggs. Now understand, Preacher-father said. There’s nothing wrong with being Christian to others. With making trade and fellowship with newcomers. After all, my boy and I once were new to this blessed place and you all here showed yourselves to be the milk of kindness, taking us both in and allowing me the privilege of being your spiritual guider. In fact, aren’t you such good people that when we brought in the Kempers, here, you opened your arms just as wide to them? So of course you’d treat these people Christian. But ask yourselves, brothers and sisters, how can you treat them so if they aren’t Christian themselves. The holediggers by then were all nodding and some began to grin, thinking they’d avoided his admonishment and wrath. I spied out the Fladeboes, who’d been chief among the hissers when the man with the eggs was called out. Emily sat beside her mother, crosslegged in the beaten grass, eye doing whips in her skull. But they’ve got milk-cows! called one woman. But the mother Fladeboe shut her up with a thwack to the back of her bonneted skull. We don’t need any milk from wrong cows, she said. They’re probably demonized like the same pigs Jesus had to heal, right Preacher? Amen, sister Fladeboe, said Preacher-father. Now see that there are those among you who won’t stray from the path nor backslide into the things of the world. If we need to be refreshed in our understanding of these people, then let me ask Deacon Kemper to step up and witness again.

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CHAPTER 10 Israel’s sons

The following week; as it was the morning of the day before the Sabbath there were only the three of us boys at camp when the dead man’s wife came calling. Preacher-father and his Deacon were off hashing plans and had been gone the night and morning. And it was at dawn that me and Kemper took the opportunity to have our wellspring knockaround at last. We commenced it without a word, except Samuel’s squalling once we started throwing punches, though Kemper would toss an occasional few cusses. Rawboned at fist and shoulder but otherwise heavyset, even after some weeks of prairie subsistence, Rueben Kemper was Hell to grapple with. Ass-kissing midget! he called me. Fucksaken squirt! There was plenty room to move, to dig our feet into the dirt. Sunrise came with Kemper’s fists falling on my head, reigning down from his greater height, my own fists knocking at his briskets and his chin. My eyes began to boil shut and I thought Kemper’s did also, because his swings were glancing now. But after some time of blind flinging, we seemed granted second sight, and soon both our firsts were finding their marks and we were renewed in our violence— no need for sight when all is done by feel of hands. He leveled his blows at my arms and they became dead weight. I used my head to try and knock the breath from him. And when I was too tired to pull it back from his chest, his heart drummed through my skull. And when neither of us could throw knuckles anymore, we wrestled. I could still see sunlight through my swole-shut lids, and did I yet know it was the burning eye of God upon us? We kept our footing as we went on, grabbing with our swollen hands to force the other to the ground, only to get the false hope of a bent knee, blading my shins at his to cut him down. In bloody dance, we misted each other with the red breath from our busted noses, cussed through split lips puffed to African proportions. It was only when Samuel gathered up the strength to grab at us, crying how we’d be punished and there was someone coming, that we collapsed to the dirt, heaving and sending numb fingers which bent even on split knuckles to search out our loosened teeth. Little brother danced around us, clarion call in our blindess, no eyes to see the way, no sure hearing over the roar planted there by knuckle and thumb, feeling out the sharp and aching world with broken pieces unrendered of their touch. But Samuel I only heard dimly, and not for my fist-struck audition, but also that there were more resonant rhythms working in my head. He was making worried trips from me to Kemper, and having his hands slapped away by both from the sound of it, lamenting the future striping of his legs and ass and reporting on the progress of whatever figure approached, when I spoke. Kemper, can you see? Not a bitching bit, he said. You hit mean for such a puny shit. Samuel saying all the while, We’ll get whipped, whipped, whipped. Kemper said for him to shut up so loud I felt the bloodspray from his words. I said I felt like old Jacob after he wrestled the angel. You don’t miss a chance to sermon, do you? said Kemper. She’s coming, said Samuel. Damn me if it doesn’t seem that way, said Kemper. I feel more godly than I ever did. This place is our Pineal, I said.

27

Brothers, Samuel whined. She’s on down the rise. What’s that? Kemper asked. It’s in Ephesians, I said. Kemper sagged and winced. I’ve got to do better about the Book, he said. Samuel whimpered and fussed about as we went on driving each other into a scripturous drunk. It’s like the Lord had us lay into each other so we could tear off our old names. No more Woolsack, no more Kemper. We are Israel. God damn, Kemper said, sucking and sputtering with fat-lipped reverence. Israel. You hear that, little sucker? For a moment I thought that little sucker was me until Samuel answered yes. But there’s still someone coming, he said. God damn yes, I said. And yes we vained and blasphemed until we could stand, and Samuel hushed us; and I don’t regret it, or am ashamed about putting it down here, for if a man can’t blaspheme when he’s on the raw edge of revelation then he’s sorely misjudged how tight the Lord has him pressed to His chest and His willingness to judge lightly sins done by those who toil in His name. If you can hear the thunder of the Holy heartbeat, where the conscience rests that burns holes in the sky and call up pits of spiders to swallow the weak, do what comes natural and your actions will be smiled upon. Strength in our legs, buoyed with newfound righteousness of purpose, we wobbled there awaiting the arrival of the wife Magee, who came as a whip-thin fuzz in my vision. She carried a bundle in her arms we’d find out later, once she’d unwrapped it, was her child. You boys shouldn’t fight that way, she said. It’s settled now, sister Magee, said Kemper, whose vision must’ve been better. Sister Magee hugged her bundle to her, grunted, Where’s your fathers? Out praying, I said, still gogging blind to see her. Whenabouts might they be coming back? Before the service starts, I believe. Then I’ll wait, she said, and plopped herself right down beside our fire, in the dirt just now settled from our struggle. What’s the trouble, sister? Kemper said. If you don’t mind me asking. Well, she said. My husband’s dead yonder in the woods with his head split open and I was wanting your fathers’ help. # # # One full day and into the night she’d spent going to find her husband, discovering him with head split and sledge-mule missing in the lonesome woods. She said all this and also that she’d stay with us until our fathers returned, at which time we’d accompany her for the burial and perform the rites. We couldn’t find a thing to say for comfort, and she was so cold about it that I couldn’t think of what to do. Samuel shut up right and was horrified, but Sister Magee, after handing off her infant to me or Kemper, spent some time going around our camp and gathering up roots and grasses, which she ground into a poultice between two of the creek-bed rocks from the lip of our pit. This accomplished, and without asking, she squatted down between us and rubbed the poultice on our swollen eyes. We didn’t even think to thank her, for she was so quiet that the only thing to do was be silent yourself. So Kemper and I took turns rocking the baby and cooing it psalms, and with the sun rising high afternoon the swelling abated and our sight returned, revealing to us each other’s busted faces and the child’s sunburnt head lolling in our arms. When

28 it slept in Kemper’s arms I’d think it was dead and would be full of fear, but thereupon I’d see the child stir and know my new-found brother kept it well. # # # The fathers came talking out of the morning light and didn’t stop or take notice of Sister Magee and the baby, much less our wounded faces. They were concerned with their own, which were scored and cut with red slashes. Wake up, you boys! Preacher-father called, stumbling into camp, supporting Deacon Kemper with an arm. What a rotten stinking day it’s been. The disciples didn’t fare any better in the hands of the heathens, said Deacon Kemper. They both fell beside the fire and Preacher-father held up his arms to the light, examining his clothes. They ran us out with sticks and switches, he said. Whipped us like mules, said Deacon Kemper, holding out the flaps of his jacket, which were indeed shredded. What happened? I asked. Pilgrims, said Preacher-father. Sons of bitches, how? said Kemper. Watch your tongue, his father said. Sister Magee? What brings you here on a Sabbath morning?—No trouble, I trust, though there seems so much in this sorry world.

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CHAPTER 11 The widow’s oil

The days of the wife’s journey and ours back with her weren’t kind to the body of the husband. She’d covered him with a cloth and soaked his shroud in lye soap, thinking it would preserve him from the insects and the elements and abate the smell. She’d been about half right. The stink of rot was there but antiseptically different, and when Deacon Kemper lifted the sheet from the body, besides that it’d swollen and blackened, the flesh was welted and melted in places and came through his clothes. The husband’s face was a runny mess, but the maggots that’d nested in the split in his skull were all dead. I don’t know how she bared to look on all that and nurse her red-faced child. Preacher-father asked whether she wanted her man buried or burnt. The wife couldn’t suffer the idea of fire—perhaps lit by the very wood her husband had been cutting when he himself was felled. So we went to digging and the fathers rode off to gather a waking party and Kemper, using the shovel he’d brought, and me using the Magee’s, commenced to digging the grave a little ways from the mounded roof of her dugout and spent a long while hacking at the ground. All the while, Samuel stayed off to the side, never straying too close to use or to the woman beside the body. Looking at the depth and dimensions of our hole so far, Kemper said it should be deep enough that the dead man would be at about eye-level with her when she was in her dugout. If she could look through dirt, she’d be able to see him. And if he could, see her. It doesn’t look like he has much eyes to speak of anymore, I told him. Not had it passed my fool lips that I didn’t feel awful and, seeing Kemper looking over at me shameful, we withdrew our shovels from the dirt and quit our progress on the grave while my thoughts, and I’m sure his, were on the dead man. Brother Magee had been among the first of the menfolk to be baptized and near foremost in piety and devotion until he took up for the pilgrims. Never a loud shouter, nor a shaker, and never much one to give over to dancing, but he was there at the stones and beheld the Lord with such goodkindness you could not imagine after seeing his face boiled into a mask that gaped with empty eyeholes and wide-grinning smile with lips skinned back over teeth that’ve gone translucent and lost their divisions. But that face had spited Preacher-father too, and now was wretched and baked into the ground and the subject of adolescent mockery, melted by his poor wife’s foolishness so that he had no eyes to shut. And even if you were kind and had any coin to put on them, those pieces would sink and be his only oracles. I looked around for the wife and for Samuel, but its was only the three of us and a lone penned horse turning his hindquarters to the wind, shaggy, rotten-looking mane reaching out in fingers, the sledge harness still about its neck, untied from when it’d wandered back, so the wife had said, the sight telling her what’d befallen her husband. Smoke rose from the chimney pipe and I thought I might could hear some talking from the dugout. Better Samuel down there than us, I thought. Again putting blade to earth, the husband’s death was there for me, his axefalls the same as my shovel-blade, hacking, hacking as the trees spread apart to reveal the savage sneaking somehow between them, the husband’s eyes blinded with work as the World’s to the ways of the Devil, and so the Pilgrim devil I imagined, maybe stirring the beast as he slipped up behind him and without whoop or cry raised his axe and split the man’s skull to send blood and brains into

30 the splayed tree, filling back with Magee what he’d taken from the tree. I was not so shook by our work or the arriving father and Chitites who all now gathered round to pull onto a blanket so he could be lowered into the hole, that I wasn’t a little sad that the Fladeboe’s hadn’t come. It was nothing to me if Sweet Emily had to look on the tortured face of the corpse, just so long as I could look on her while she did. Spit out a word or two to soothe her for the horror. And horrors seemed to be the order of the day; with us all hoisting the body up on its blanket, only to have it tear through and spill to the lip of the grave in a revolting jumble. Kemper and I had to push him in with our shovels while Preacher-father gave the burial verses. The sermon following was nothing worthy of note or memory. It was like he was saving the finest burning words for the later drive to vengeance. The wife wouldn’t come out of her warren even when we’d stoked a fire to bon, instead sending out a haggard-looking Samuel, who, upon exiting the maw, huddled up to his father. One man, after a custom, poured a few necks of whiskey from a cask into the burial mound. At the fire, the bottle was being passed and Preacher- father and Deacon Kemper drank of it grimly. The Chitites were stealthily passing the whiskey and pressing the fathers for more of what’d happened at the pilgrims' camp, and us boys sat, arms aching, not offered a taste; like whiskey’d be the first burn I felt in my throat. Going off to pass water I stopped by the mouth of the hole and listened—not a cry, not a sound, but the mourners chattering behind, talk of the cultlings’ cruelties. Preacher-father and his Deacon had as yet only hinted. They were clean, said one Chitite who’d encountered them. Mostly wore beards. And I never saw such a number of women and children and so few lads. That is because they collect wives like the Jew collects gold, said Deacon Kemper, and are just as covetous. We’ll, they’re working. Building up houses and all kinds of smokers. One asked, How many are they? Hell, fifty—maybe more. Deacon Kemper nodded this was accurate and true. This sent them up in a flurry with cricket, nightbird and fire joining in to make the place roar low. Kemper sat beside me in crushed grass, listening to them with the great respect he would always give to talk that held the prospect of action. I cannot imagine it now, squatting with such a motley arrangement of fools struggling to let an idea rattle out of their mouths and brainpans, but we listened to them as elders and let their pitiful fingerlings of wisdom fall upon our youthful heads. And I could see, leastways in Preacher-father, the anger welling and working in him so bad he did not want it to quit in his people, but have anger do its work. He was silent for the most part, with Deacon Kemper egging on the mourners. I don’t know if I had it then, but it is good and clear the reason for their hatred of the pilgrims, who at that moment might as well have been skewered and blackening over the fire. These two who were both now wifeless would of course despise the wife-hoarders. Pain to them that was worse than a blade turned in their sides. These are rank suckers, Preacher-father said. They say they’re God’s children, the people He’s chosen for a New Testament and a Promised Land. This land. They’ve got a prophet—he spit the word out of his mouth—O yes, a man who leads them all and says that God himself handed him a testament through glorious angels. Suffering Christ, help us. Deacon Kemper shook his head, saying, And it’s a pervert’s prophecy at that. What lets men hound together gaggles of wifes. Disgusting.

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Not a scrap of it’s from the gospel. We heard it for ourselves. All of them sitting there and listening to their fool master bob his head in his black sugarloaf—the very picture of a preacher man—and read from his niggardly apings of the Truth. About to make me puke seeing them all line up on their benches with duckrows of women and children aside them. Makes you wonder how much time they wasted building those dunce’s seats, where they could listen like pure fools to that man’s fakery. It sounded like the gospel, it did, said Deacon Kemper, but none of it had the pure ring of the sweet James. The names of the people sounded Hebrew enough, but most were just a babble of poorly-learned Greek and jibbering. It might as well have been written on the skins of unrepentant whores and child diddlers, said Preacher-father. What about the Indians, Brother? Tell that. Preacher-father groaned and angled a boney finger from out of his robes as if to show them out in the shadows, saying: Savages, brothers and sisters. They even had a passel of savages at the back of their congregation. A fearsome lot of skull-splitting bastards, converted from heathenry to blasphemy—which is no real conversion at all. Know them not just by the color of their skin but by their necklaces of gleaming bones and raw-looking robes. They mend the leathers with their teeth. And when I saw this I said to Deacon Kemper, we’ve been too damn idle with the red man, now look what’s come down. We’ve neglected these wife-hoarders too, said Deacon Kemper. I knew it when we rode through them. I knew I was right watching them rise when their awful service was over, followed by their taildrag of women. Only the odd boy among the children— They probably cut their throats like calves for a sacrifice, said Preacher-father. I wouldn’t put it past them after how they treated us. Not judgeful, these, O no. When we came down to them, man, woman, and child all gave us hails and smiles and embraced us. See, the truly wicked always seem weak at first. Those men and their prophet seemed strengthless, son, until they had their thrashing-sticks in their hands. Thank the Lord not many of you’ve gone down there among those degenerates—the women’s hands went at me as though checking the haunches of a deer for its backstraps. Deacon Kemper shuddered. You could tell just a bit more rubbing of theirs and they’d lead you to thoughts lascivious. Preacher-father put up a hand to stop him from going further,but the gathered Chitites were astir. The rocked on the ground and begged more. He continued: My arms were tired from all that evil weight. And even before they commenced to whipping us, my hands were hurting for my firearm. Did you get a shot off, Preacher? Only had my axe and they had us surrounded, and to plug one or two would’ve done about as much good as squashing every tenth ant as they came out of their nest. It’s what we get for coming peaceably, Deacon Kemper said. But we took every slap and hit like true Christians. You didn’t venge any? Not a bit, the Deacon said. We took it. That’s how you make it right, friends. Take your suffering and the slings and arrows of your enemies. And after you’ve done that, then you’ve got the right to bring the sinners down. Right there, brother, Preacher-father said. Bear their whippings for just a little while and then you’ve got the anger of the Lord behind you and your tormentors underfoot. They started

32 whipping when Deacon here was talking to their prophet and I saw the red fiends shuffling off to the woods. I said to them, What’s all this sheltering of the savages who wouldn’t do nothing but shelter your head in the shade of his axe blade. No, no, the prophet said, they are converted— Nonsense all of it and I just shook my head over it and started grumbling. But old Deacon Kemper calmed me and whispered to listen for how this man’d make his noose with his mouth, so I listened. The piss-mouthed, pardon, prophet told us of the angels that’d visited him, the gospel they’d laid upon him, the ways of their worship—how they baptized all at the age of twelve. He said they’d come from the east to find the Promised Land ordained for them in their damnable book. Well, I couldn’t take a lick more of it and I said, What’s this shit you’re spouting? And one of the followers tried to tell it, all starry-eyed as he blabbed about the lovely Angels and the new gospel the Josephites, that’s what they called themselves, had been given. How lucky they were, God Almighty. The slick-faced bastard smiled the whole time, and when he was finished I looked over at Kemper here and I figured if his face looked that stony then mine must be carved out of fury and wrath. This prophet had been giving us a sermon—he’d been trying to put the conversion on us. You know that was all I could take. To the brim. So I squared up to him and I told that man I had ministered for the Lord for forty years, witnessed in His name, been His man in the lonesome places of the world. And I told him I’d seen visions, yes, wherein the belly of the earth is torn out from the inside by dead hands and the wicked are pulled screaming down. I said, Listen right here, the true theology is burnt in me like it was written in white fire on black fire in the linings of my gut, I’m so close to the Lord that I can smell it when He shits out one like you, and I haven’t heard a damn thing of what you’ve got there under your arm. Then one of the men who’d come around us after squiring away their wives back to their enormous beds starts hollering at me like a drunken child. The prophet didn’t stop him, so I did it myself. I laid my hands on him and he was healed, scrambling away on his hands and knees though the legs of his fellows. And I kept on him till they pulled me off and then we had them all to fight. When he’d finished, Preacher-father looked to Deacon Kemper and skinned his lips back from his teeth in a blood-daubed smile. The holediggers were enraptured on the heels. I don’t know how they plucked all those sticks and limbs so quick, said Deacon Kemper. But suddenly their hands were filled and swishing through the air to sting at us. I think they’d planned it all. Samuel shivered under his father’s arm. It doesn’t seem they’d be like that, said one holedigger. You traded them corn, said another. Still another said, Couldn’t it be them that did Magee? Hisses and whispers rose up from the Chitites. A man tippled back the whiskey and said, Preacher, you should’ve put them all down right then and there. Brother, he said, Jesus was beaming down at us while we were being switched, and every lash on my face is one we’ll return tenfold on their little sister Sodom. So their talk wound on with no end in sight and I sat shuddering with Kemper as snow began to blow through the lifting ash, lit in dance-twirls by sparks to fall on my shivering neck and smear my quaking hands gray. We pulled blankets and coats up over our shoulders and the air bit under the whirling drifts. Kemper turned to me, face shrouded over, saying, I can’t believe they didn’t take some. It’s not done yet, I said.

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Kemper shook the snow that’d gathered at his shoulders in the folds of his robe. I would’ve killed them all, he said.

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CHAPTER 12 Observations of corruption

Afterwards we’d go out on our daily stockpiling ventures well-armed; one guarding the sledge we’d lashed together to pull the lengths we’d cut for splitting back to camp, the other sawing at the log with rifle close by. Kemper would shout for all the pilgrims and their red sons of bitches to come out and try to hit us with their tomahawks, and I would raise my rifle and whoop like I imagined they did and we’d laugh like wild men. The only way the weather broke those days was to fall as rain from low, black-bellied clouds; and so we went beneath them one day to go and see the pilgrims for ourselves. We wore cloaks slicked with sap so that the rain would bead and run—but the droplets slipped the skins and still ran down the openings of my cloak to soak me to the bone, and when we came to rest under a line of trees, I took off my wilted hat and the water drummed my skull. Useless to bring rifles out in this, we each carried knives. Good and sharp and broad cutters; Kemper’s bearing some story of his father spilling the bellies of two usurers of their prodigious contents over their knees and onto the street in Ohio, and mine, the only story it could tell was in the ugly nature of its smithing and design, the chinks like teethmarks in the double-edged blade. We held them out to the rain while we rested and I imagined if we had to use our knives it’d need to be a loaves and fishes miracle of killing for us to win. The song says the earth will disappear like melting snow, and it did, with us slogging through fields of gray mud as the ground ran beneath our very feet. Snowmelt tainted by mud bled from the clefts of hillocks like milk from diseased teats. One of the sorriest sights in the world, I’m sure, going where the sun forebeared to shine as we went our soggy, chilled way. What did they seem like when you saw them? I asked, if, for anything, just to move my frozen lips and breath warmth with words into my chewing bones. They seemed clean, he said. But they were all looking in the same direction, you follow? I didn’t, but said amen. It’d been a long haul through the rain and valley gloom, so I was set to wondering things. Preacher-father was always looking forward and so was Kemper; the kind of burn in the mind that sets your eyeballs deepening into your skull like setting a fire in a stump to burn out its roots. I knew that look because it was in me; and had it lead us here to be trampled down by hordes of wicked pilgrims crawled straight from the devil’s nethers? The rain answered with the hillside before us sloughing off its grass in a wash. So we crossed it, legs sucked down through the broken roots and churned rain-beaten earth. This is the worst I’ve ever seen it, I said. The worst I’ve ever seen is General George Washington ride a man down and club his head in with a Chippawah warhammer. Washington? The man himself. He led the army in on the whiskey people. Rode on a white horse slung with all kinds of murderous things he’d collected on his travels and campaigns. Clubs, swords, French Pic-axes. Sometimes he swung a ball tied to a chain. That got his men going, I’ll tell you. I never imagined him being like that, I said. Gospel damn truth, he said. It was a ghoulish sight. Rows and rows of soldiers against men with fucksaken farming tools. With the downpour slackening we were able to make the ford of Baptist Creek and go down to the pilgrim camp and judge their place without having to stumble in amongst them.

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Kemper and I stooped under some low limbs at the valley’s lip. The trees below had been cleared and there were two long-houses and a passel of outbuildings. The people, it seemed, had waited for the rain to abate, and were presently going about starting fires in great pits—visions of sacrifice came scrabbling into my mind. Others went atop the houses and were mudding the roofs. All of it near-impossible work that bitter time of year, but they went about it. Crouching there, we counted the girls of age, counted the women, counted the children and men and the animals. A whole series of pens for hogs and cattle, these beasts, now steaming after the rain, were a miracle to the eyes of us so used to game and the stringy Sunday offerings of the holediggers. We hawked the girls, who were all toting bellies out in front of them besides buckets and pails. It was true they’d been manned and married off; and I marveled at their stroll and totter, their bowlegged walks and heads turned in chatter to each other, all similarly encumbered. I looked to Kemper as the authority in such matters, nd though their faces weren’t much more than darts of bonnet and unpinned hair that came and went in instants at the corners of our eyes, I asked him which he thought was best. Wait and see, he said. And we did, squatting and watching till one crossed from behind the nearest long-house toward the pens and he said, There she goes, see? See her? She was a knot of gold hair tucked into the high collar of her dress, swift legs in high boots slogging through the mud to go and slap the haunches of cows. No offense meant, Kemper said, but that hair of yours does look finer on a girl. I don’t much care, I said, I see it all the time. When she’d gone and the rain cleared some, others worked through the clearing and in and out of the houses, hustling herds of little children who bopped and swayed with workless freedom, driven by those great bellies of ones not much older than they. I was feeling the old worm coiling and uncoiling in my gut, thinking of what I did like: pitch and midnight hair like tar to suck me in. All the pilgrim girls, and all the children for that matter, had the same look as the one Kemper liked. They were ugly to me as looking down on the family I never had, the cloth blasted and wasted cloth I was cut from. That old worm turned in me again. The cold was soaking through my boots and I was numbly rooted, struggling in silence to stump my desirous itch while Kemper made his count and commentary. And it only made that worm slide worse, deep within my longing guts. Kemper took no notice, enamored with his bonneted flocks; he had no way of knowing that I I tore around with wretched little Emily Fladeboe down all the horned chambers of my mind. For another hour or so on our hillside we were a muddied winter picture of huntsmen above the herd. When we left Kemper kept casting back glances through the dripping limbs we left rattling behind. The broken twigs I collected and gathered into a bundle to make small fire in a dry patch we found a few hills over across the Baptist. You didn’t dare take off your boots for fear of the purpling, wrinkled sight of your feet, but let the leather dry around them, the fire not lasting long anyway that blustery day. We had no childish illusions about the slattern sex, having learned all there was to know of their workings and anatomy from animals and bawdy folk. So our talk was not all tits and angles, as I recall. I can’t see anything about that one, Kemper said. She looks too ratty. Not like those ones today. You’ve got a reason to like them pretty, good family and all. Don’t take everything my father says to be true.

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Even when he preaches? Well, that’s truth already written down. Any son of a bitch can say it and it’ll be true. This was a shock and sent a demon hunching up my back; and it clawed my shoulders with doubt. Suddenly I was thinking of the accompaniment of devils and dark angels whose bone wings would shelter me on my way to Satan’s bosom in the fire. I was only just laying out the way I’d take to get there. First with words dripping lies, then with deeds. Emily strikes me as being hard in the wicked places, I said. I know them, said Kemper. They’re aching right now like I climbed a smooth-barked tree and slid my way down. I’m praying on it, I said. If you need me to keep a watch for yall, I’ll do it. I haven’t said a word to her, I said—which was a flat-out lie. Every word I preached at the riverside was fire and brimstone to stoke love up in her. Ahead was the lip of our own valley and it looked like the rain had washed the snow clean from the hilltops. Kemper looked to them and said: Pray on it some more then. Or stop praying and get after it. The sundown melt was half true. Thin peels of frozen ground had been exposed by the rain, but all down below sat under gray, pockmarked snow. As we went, I wished the snow would chill the evil in me, but before any miracle could present itself there came Preacher- father’s voice in my head saying I’d melt it all with the hellfire I carried. We grinned each other down, but since we were both scrabbling at that thorny perch of adolescent need, the number of girls was probably the only one that was true and accurate that we gave to the fathers later that evening, while they sat in rainsoaked gravity at the fire. # # # They’d been stewing over the pilgrims now for weeks following Magee’s death and their scourging. At the time I didn’t consider that they’d waited for the first sign of true spring to come on and the melt to be finished. The good weather was providence for what was to be their crowning glory. Meanwhile, at camp there was the minor miracle of Samuel being up and about. Nothing for us to do while we waited on them; stir in the fire and read Deacon Kemper’s books which had gone fat with moisture and dried that way with leafs swollen between their bindings. Kemper never cared for the books; they’d been with him all his life like furniture. Instead, he stalked around our little camp, frightening Samuel into chores and baiting me. You could go see her now, he said. My fingers dug into the sickly yellow pages of perhaps Raleigh and I played dumb and wouldn’t look up. Only asking, Where? Don’t be fat-headed, said Kemper. You are. There’d be all kinds of Hell if I went over there now. Why, for God’s sake? Her people would be there and they’d tell him at the meeting. Or they’d have me on one of their pikes. How do you know? They’ll probably have you like a prince at their hole. Samuel, tottering by with an armful of wood, asked, Where are you going, Angel? You’re grown enough and so is she, Kemper said. Why not go and talk it out with them? At least you talk well.

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I could only imagine a dowry of mud and weedy flowers, Preacher-father giving the rites and blessings on me and my wife who’d be toothless before she was grown. I do know that the idea of dusty prairie wedlock with the Fladeboe girl was far from my mind. I’ve got to talk to the girl first, I said. Who? Samuel asked. You won’t breathe a word, Kemper said to him, then to me: And you shouldn’t call her that. Some lovestruck David you are. At the meeting I’ll minister to the children, have Emily there and bring the Word right down on her. Maybe pray with each one, and when we’re alone I’ll tell her. Tell who? piped Samuel. Kemper thrashed at him. Another word and you’ll be stiff as a board on the ground again. I’m already on the ground, he said, clacking together his grindstones. I’m doing the work while you two talk crazy. This sent Kemper on him. Brothers went a-warring. Or at least as much of a fight as there can be when one is double the size of the other. And while they thrashed about I returned to my reading, but the words only made me think of what I’d say to Emily in my sermon; how afterwards, when she was breathless for Amening I would tell her God loves her and there’d never be any judgment on us for whatever we did.

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CHAPTER 13 Israel is enraged

Emily’s wild eye went gyring while the other and those of the rest of our congregation pored over the welps and scratches the fathers showed during the service. I looked along with them, wondering at how now in the sunlight weeks later their wounds seemed worse than the night they’d received them. For all I knew they’d been flogging the Hell out of each other to have the marks just right. I may not’ve doubted it then, but I did laugh a little when they told the holediggers they’d been unarmed. I didn’t see whether Preacher-father scowled for my slip; I was searching out the corner of my eye for any breasts budding in the rumpled sackcloth front of Emily Fladeboe’s dress. I peered at her until Kemper gave me one of his correcting jabs to the ribbage, and I straightened up to watch the Deacon, lower, and Preacher-father high up on his rock, staring down on the collected rabble of dirt-caked believers and start his barbed sermon: Listen now closely and hear the voice of one crying in the wilderness. Prepare ye the way of the Lord, and make his paths straight. By his hand every valley shall be filled, and every hill and mountain shall be brought low. The crooked shall be made straight and the rough ways shall be made smooth. And now, the axe is laid unto the root of the trees, and every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is cut down and cast into my fire. There it is, friends, to be found in your familial Bibles in the Book of Luke, chapter three. And so, brothers and sisters, there is also to be found, not a half-day’s ride from here, a valley dug and planted with such malignant groves. And they are flourishing. O how they grow—in the sight of your good works, in sight of your hard lives, and your mercy they grow and grow, in bastard compact with the philistine who nightly disinters your crops and makes off with your animals . And I ask you, do they suffer like you do? No. They’ve made a peace with the cause of all your toil and hurt and the gaming chip of this unholy deal is our own hardscraped lands and our own people. But I’ll say this, they are a generous people. They are that. They freely and without guilt makes child-brides of their young girls to each other, and there isn’t a man among them who doesn’t have at least a quarter-dozen wives. Wives, I said. And don’t think for a moment , brothers and sisters, that they don’t want to pass this generosity on to your wives, and to your daughters. Maybe then they’ll have themselves even finer stock to pacify the savage with. Or maybe just their own vicious urges. But listen to me now valley neighbors, Christian families; you know me, you know my boy, you know the Kempers, who’ve come to aid our ministry, and you’ve know us through fertility and famine, through locust and through snowstorm and through flood. So then you know that all we’ve ever done is kept our humble duty of witnessing and baptizing, never trying to increase our stocks, often refusing even your own goodkindness because we’ve come to be your rock and we will not set ourselves up as usurer of our flock, with the Word and Salvation as our Jew’s Coin. We’ve asked you for no charity, nor do we now. We ask for the charity of your justice. The charity of bodies in the saddle—or afoot, as you can afford—to ride with us to this black encampment and cast out the spirit there. Now I can’t say that if you are kind, if you treat the blasphemers with sweetness, with mercy, that your crops will wither in the earth, that when you come upon hard times they will use your children as loan currency, that you will watch wives’ and husbands’ heads split by Indians who are given arm and reign over the land you’ve worked so hard to preserve. But I can promise you that your souls will shrivel, that your spirits will be cleaved and

39 gutted, and your children will grow up as slaves in a godless country, all because these blasphemous roots are allowed purchase by your kindness. So put away mercy and kindness and unlatch your horse from its bights, take your axe or rifle of scythe, and bring yourself some kindling fire and we shall burn out the tree and its roots. I did not wish for this, good people, but there is a time when the shepherd puts down the staff and takes up the fiery sword. In a week, at this place, those of you with righteousness at heart will come to meeting. And it will not be my sermon that’s delivered, but ours together accomplished with that same fire when we ride out. Now, let’s sing a hymn that fits such an enterprise. The boys will lead us in Arrows of the Angels. If you don’t know the words, listen for a verse and they’ll come directly.

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CHAPTER 14 They go to war

The people passed across the fields of Chit heading east; patchwork riders at rickety gallop, others loping along on foot. What they carried was the axe, the sickle, the clearing blade, and the maul—what Preacher-father and the Deacon called a fine lesson that no man is without the recourse of the tools of violence; if he needs to cut another down, a good spade will do as well as a sword. Those few with firearms had ancient pieces bearing Continental gravings or the marks of Deacon Kemper’s generosity. The man himself had those dueling pistols strapped at his belly; Preacher-father carried our hunting rifle—slung to the saddle for now. Kemper and I both rode saddleless, with busses, but he was stuck with his brother clinging tight to the blankets laid across their horse’s back, as there were too few wormy horses to carry even all the meager number of our camp. Samuel, armed only with our long-handled shovel, bounced and jostled behind his brother but for the first time looked well and clear in the eyes and complexion. The tip of the shovel showed in its sharpness the hours he’d spent sharpening it into a blade. Fog had rolled in from the Baptist and we passed the preaching rock with its tip nubbing through the gloom. So a few were separated in the mist and it was my task to drive the bloodthirsty lambs back to our group. I found them by their voices and somehow in the swirl managed to bring them back to bear in our rushing line of men jabbering as badly as those who’d been misplaced. And in the same way it was the song of the blasphemers’ service that gave us our bearings as we passed through the grounded cloud. They sang the dirge for their own funerals and we were the nails to be hammered in their coffins by the fist of the Almighty. We paced harder; farmers talked in animal tongues to their horses and mules, their beards touched with foam from the frothing mouths, and even those on foot kept up—appearing in flashes of just eyes and teeth and wild hair and blades. There was no effort made for quiet as we mounted the hill and climbed to the bordering trees. Preacher-father and Deacon Kemper called back and forth for the men to stop and join them in a prayer that became a howl, first in the voices of broken few, then in awful chorus. Kemper and Samuel beside me, we raised our voices along in that beastly beautiful shout to God. The pilgrim’s song stopped in the silence after our howl, so Preacher-father, as he’d blessed them earlier with the laying of hands now with his voice blessed again our tools of war: Let them be as your right hand, Lord. And let them never slip from our fingers, no matter how glutted and slick they are with evil blood. And so, those with guns were called to the front—the brothers and I following the call— and, pieces shouldered, we rode slowly into the bordering trees to the thinning where we could look down on the scrambling pilgrims. Preacher-father and the Deacon rode out ahead of us down to the foot on the hill and started hollering demands; that the pilgrims clear the territory, that they give themselves up peaceable. But the people below were rushing this way and the other, and they must’ve seen what stood behind the fathers. Most of the belly-slung women had tottered into their houses, and their men had done the same. It was all too loud for any to give an answer, and I don’t expect the fathers ever figured they would or could. There weren’t any Indians that I could see, but they must’ve seen a savage sight in us. The fathers steadied their horses amid the pilgrims’ shouts and wails, scanning an end

41 of the camp. But the prophet remained unseen. Soon the fathers split and came back into the trees, each to a side of our lie. The fools made themselves easy to fire on, what came out of their long-houses, and they only had a moment to gape at our lead-pitching host. So I fired a killing shot for the first time, though in the smoke from all the guns I couldn’t see who I’d taken, if any, with my slug. The Lord had spoken, and I knew in the roar He’d held my finger steady, made my shot true; and presently He filled me with all the warmth of His Love that only a true servant can feel, and like any good servant I wanted it more. I looked to Kemper and Samuel was shouting in his ear to go, and as the smoke cleared the Chitites flew screaming around us and down to the bloody service while we, wobbling atop our frightened horses, primed our busses, spilling ball-shot from our flasks into horses’ manes, then powder whipped by wind into our faces, then wildly tamping the whole thing down; and so we followed them. Sad to say, I was lost in it from the moment I came down into the pilgrims’ camp, where all around the long-houses were being emptied and men and women driven out, herds of children squalling, and those who’d armed themselves did stand and fight but they were few and far between, so that you’d see one pilgrim man who’d already emptied his gun using the stock to beat back a holedigger jabbing at him with a long-tined fork. I rode around these pairs, saw a pair of Chitites fall from a ripple of shots that came from around the corner of the far house. A few pilgrims had gathered there and made a line, and I was amazed at him close they were and at the dead men at my feet. I fired at them just to be rid of the bullet, and rode away wild through the madness, seeing Preacher-father cut across my line in pursuit of what appeared to be the shrieking prophet, circling him around his barrel pulpit, catching him with the club-end of his axe, then deftly flipping it round in his hand and burying the blade in his back; Deacon Kemper I marked by the doubleroar of his pistols, but my horse whirled me round, splintering benches, and I don’t know who was more forgone and wild, him or me—careening on in broken canters as the holediggers hoed down the pilgrims. Beast or me, I can’t say which, was persuaded to ride to the edge of what had become a conflagration. There went before me a pair of pregnant girls holding hands, giving fearful glances all about and hurrying towards the woods. I didn’t look to see where they’d end up, but leaned across the horse’s neck, which throbbed with its heart in throat, and I breathed along with him; jolted into wakefulness by the smoky air, to turn and pick Kemper out of the growing smoke, see him firing and then whipping folk with the ramrod while little Samuel swung his shovel to clear the way behind. Missing one with the blade, Samuel walloped a dazed and mud- caked straggler who’d been turned the other way. Some of his fury did catch me in my fear and made for them and clubbed at heads with the butt of my gun, no care for who I struck; losing my grip, the buss went sailing and knocked one of ours onto the tines of another man’s pitchfork, no time to hurt for him as we rounded a skillful bangstraw who was engaged in pulling his scythe blade from the shoulder of a laid-out pilgrim. The fury of wasted men and animals slowed to exhaustion. Both settler and surviving pilgrim stumbled and seemed caught in gasping pause, children wandered between the legs of the horses. And it was like in old Ezra; that the surviving blasphemers crowded in redoubt against the burning wall of their long-house and gave their hands that they would put away their wives; and being guilty offered them and heads of their stock for their trespass. Preacher-father and the Deacon stood before them, unmindful of the flames which now crept around the sides of the house and threatened those pilgrims brought too close but with nowhere else to move.

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Kemper circled behind the fathers to the far corner the redoubt, Samuel herding strays with his shovel. I went with them but there was no one left for me; and Kemper had his pilgrims huddled with the others and had turned to face me, grinning, when the roof of the house sloughed off and flames leapt skyward as the blackened timbers and tarring tumbled in a wave down on him, toppling the horse and swallowing Samuel in char, but flinging by the force of it Kemper far enough that he was unharmed. I sat like a fool while he scudded about on his hands and knees at the edge of the burning pile, wherefrom issued the screams of the horse, whose teeth I could see, great body struggling to be free from the fire which by then had taken with the air and grown to full-length licks and spread. Kemper was grabbing at the glowing timbers and his father had already got down and rushed to pull him away before I ever got down. And when I did it was to the cries of the children and women and the groaning begging of the men; and Kemper; scorched in the face and hands, was brought past me by the Deacon. The brim of my hat was wilted with sweat and I could feel the heat of the fires drying it. Kemper had been burnt short and was still smoking as I watched him be led off to where Preacher-father was corralling the children and few grownups remaining away from the flames and towards the treeline. He was singing gentle hymns and being so mindful in his herding that you’d think all the malice and wrath had been sucked out of him; and may have been, everything was so wrecked. The collapsed roof was joined by the wall below it and I led my horse out in a cloud of sparks, with no glance given to Samuel’s pile; and I was happy that it’d been further buried over. The children were whimpering still and so the pilgrims took up the song in shattered voices to hush their brood. When I saw Kemper amid the mad chorale, I turned away. At the pens, the holediggers had gathered the pilgrims’ beasts and watched them make fights over swine, goat and cow—all going wild from the fire and screaming. The father Fladeboe was in the hog pen, beating at another Chitite with a rifle broken in half; he held both ends in his hands and swung them at the man and made claims to the squealing hogs. The beasts wanted to run and so did I, but my feet were numb and heavy as when we’d spied out the pilgrim camp that winter day. It went that Preacher-father found me there and gave me tearful congratulations. My life, he said, there’s no greater gift than this. And he turned me round to look again on our works; and I saw again the keening people and the encroaching fire—through which passed our congregation in bloody and exhausted shamble—and I knew his love. Even with his hands on me I had to lean against him to keep me upright on the razed earth. # # # Samuel would go up with the settlement and his father spent the following days out wandering the valley, leaving his surviving son alone while he fire his pistols at invisibles, dancing weird and lonesome circles in the woods. Perhaps he hunted pilgrims there, but I never saw such fruit of it. Later, I’d hear that what remained of the sect retreated back east, where their numbers recouped, and that they’d settled in the southwest deserts in furtherance of their blasphemy. But when I did my time in that country no Texicans could tell me of any wife-maddened whites that’d wandered there. Swallowed up, I imagine, as they went from empty place to empty place; filling quickly the belly of the Devil on their own hunt for the Holy Land. For an instant we’d caused a sound to rise at last from the great slack-jawed gape of our own barren Judea, and then were all made small by its silence again, like Kemper, whose father

43 wouldn’t let him join him on his shoots. I’d sit beside him for awhile but he preferred to be alone. It went that way for weeks and afterwards, after the echoes of our howl died down, there’d be only wickedness played out.

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CHAPTER 15 Casting out demons

The days went bloodlessly by in the wake of the raid and the holediggers were soon again in a state of excitement in our little stretch of Chit. Preacher-father strutted and showed his teeth, barking bits of sermon in leftover anger. Deacon Kemper being useless, he rode out himself to collect the guns we’d leant the settlers, brought them back and cleaned them solemnly. The Deacon still made his daily walks and solitary dances with his pistols; no longer bothering even to load them—just making their noises with his voice. You could hear him start into it from the camp when he came upon his first assailant: pah, pah, pah, pah, he went, and without knowing it had invented the repeating pistol in his lunatic’s mind. And you knew he was keeping in step with the pistolfire, using it for a metronome, the Dance Master’s hand on his shoulder and him blowing holes in the offending air. His son would wince when he heard the mouthed shots. I sat with Kemper those days and listened with him to his father’s ghost shots, even went with him into the woods to see his father making pirouettes with his pistols. I tried to drown the Deacon’s madness out with talk or singing, so our days would start with me jabbering just as crazily and it’s a good chance I was taken with the madness too. And it was only Kemper who showed no signs of it, keeping quiet while I went on. Thinking it would help him to hear about my yearnings, I spent them out to him in long fool streams of talk. From what I saw at the service, it looks like she’s filled out a bit. You showed me then, Kemper said. She’s a prettier thing when she’s not sickly looking. That doesn’t take much. I’ve put my sermon together for her, listen— I don’t want to hear it. Why not? I said I don’t want to hear about you trying to Christ your way into her cunny. You don’t know about it, I said. Kemper folded his arms and didn’t speak again until the next day when the news came that the pilgrims’ animals taken in the raid had given fever to the Chitites’. Even Deacon Kemper was shook loose from his melancholy once Preacher-father told him what we’d found on his ride out to the nearest dugout that harbored any of the beasts. That it wasn’t so much a fever as it was pure meanness, and the meanness begun in the captured animals was passed on to the ones already there. There’d been a pilgrim horse with a blood-crusted face and the holedigger family’s mule wandering with half a neck; looking dead on its feet but refusing to die. At each pen from hole to hole it were similar scenes—spoiled spoils gone blood-crazy. He said it was demons. The holediggers had done their best to keep the beasts corralled and separated, but some of the meaner acquisitions had broken through their rickety yards and now were marauding around the countryside. The fear had set in all the people of Chit and so we set about going out in shifts to the dugouts to perform exorcisms of a sort on their flocks. I can’t speak for the others’ success, but mine was waiting there for me when I was sent to the Fladeboes’ tract. Maybe it was because it was hogs there afflicted, and, because I was slight the smaller beasts would be all I could handle; no chance of me being trampled or gored or gnawed. # # #

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Smoke pin-wheeled from the crooked stove-pipe stuck out the turf where the mother and father Fladeboe were standing at a spit nearby, turning a hog that was blackened and already missing a fair chunk of haunch—whether by the knives of the frontiersmen or the teeth of demonized hogs I couldn’t tell. As I rode past those remaining, which were kept in separate pens, the pilgrim pinks and the outland bristle-backs trying for each other’s throats through the fencing. The Fladeboes hailed me with mouths full of pork and I looked around balefully for that Emily at the trough ditch and in the high grass thereabouts, imagining her hid away in the cruddy dark of the family hole, stoking the fire beneath a pot where more pork surely cooked. I got down and tried to tether my horse to the hog pen but their squeals had him jittery and I whispered to him, I know, I know, as I led him over to the doorway pikes and lashed him there to be downwind from the smoke; but the winds would shift and all during my exorcism I’d hear him gagging and turning endlessly to be upwind of the smoke. The Fladeboes chewed on the recently-killed and for awhile watched me perform the deed on the living swine, half a dozen, bellies full of the flesh of their own. Fly! Unclean come likewise out of the unclean. For there is not a place on this earth for you to take purchase in that is good enough! Fly these pigs and trouble them no more! I went on for some time and the hogs took up a louder squeal when my voice ran out. I leaned against the fence and hollered out, but the hogs only gave me beady eyes and more squealing. At least their sounds I could take as some sign of progress; for their hogs gave nothing but demands to be put out. And I would’ve done it, out of my growing rage at her not being there and my only company being my hacking horse and these two rotten and withered parents, but I stayed with them into the night. Those awful progenitors fed me roast pork and I read the scripture to the hogs even as I ate of them. When it got too dark, and they withdrew into their hole, the Fladeboes set me out a jarred candle on the fencepost at my elbow and by its light I read verses pertaining and ones that hadn’t a damn thing to do with demons or hogs. The Song was what I read, and hogs never heard sweeter words. Their eyes turned red in the candlelight and burned accusatory holes in the dark. Pausing at the sound of the dugout door creaking open and my horse’s snuff and stomp, the words of Solomon still on my lips, I saw amid the shadowed pikes a figure moving out, holding by the sharpened points and easing the door-trap shut behind. Then it was another pair of eyes, watching me from the mouth of the dugout. I couldn’t see if one was wandering, but I knew if it was her she’d need my blessing as much as any shoat hog. Returning to the page, Solomon’s words on my lips again, but this on my mind: Little sister, come and listen. I’m not grown and neither are you. So show me where you’re tender and split for I’ve got my young man’s balms for your injurious places, wherever you’re hurt. The hogs’ drowned me out and I slumped over the fence-rail, jeered by demons of my own making as well as those in the hogs. I was about to hang it in and let the Devil reign when Emily Fladeboe spoke. It was whispered noise to make me look and she made it as she passed between the pikes and was nearing the hog pen. Coming close, she cocked her head to square me in her vision and said, Why do you talk like that? I turned, regaining my wind of a sudden. Talk what way? I said. Girl, this is the Bible I’m reading. I know it’s the Bible. I heard you do it plenty before. But you talk like you’re chewing leather. She was standing almost close enough touch and I prayed on what she’d said.

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I told her to come on over and I’d show her. She did and both me and the hogs regarded her with our animal intents. And with the Word silent on the air one of them came to stick its face between the boards and nibble at her skirts. I swifted it a kick and he went squealing away. Don’t kick at her, said Emily. But it’s biting, I said. They weren’t like that before we brought these others in, she said. They bit up my legs when I tried to get them apart and now they’re in there with our Sadie and she ate up all her piglet she was so scared. I was lost in thoughts of her chewed-up legs and sorely aware of the sound of my voice. Well, I said, they won’t be that way come morning. Do you think it’s God? She asked. Everything’s because of God. I think God must be mad at us, said Emily. Nothing’s happened to me, I said. You already talk funny. So maybe something worse than that. You got the crazy eye. Maybe you’ll get something worse than that. Emily Fladeboe grunted and I could see her trying to squint her eye still. I’m sorry, I said. She gave her boney shoulders a rise in response. I’ve seen you looking, said Emily. I said I couldn’t help but look. She hummed and the hogs rustled. The candle flickered in its jar and I thought I might could see her smiling. You can come and look me right here, I said, pointing to my mouth. I’ll show you why I talk funny. She squatted to be in the light and I got down with her, stuck out my chin as though to take a punch, and let flap open my jaw and flop out my tongue. God, she said and screwed he good eye into my mouth. You’re all burnt up. She looked so hard and close that all I saw was the top of her head wherefrom a nit jumped to ping off my face, making me flinch and catch her with my chin. And I looked down over my lip again she’d turned to look inside with her other eye and that eye was wonderful, like it had to spin and search all around to take in all of me. She let it go crazy and with the other she looked dead into mine and asked me could she touch it. I gagged yes, but when she reached her fingers in I gave my tongue the snake’s flicker and clamped shut and she giggled. The hogs snorted. We went away from the pens, maybe for the smell; as though we knew what heavenly smell I’d soon receive like a mask of ether cross my mouth. And a cross is what we made, her opening to mine, plumb line to my supine after she put me down in the grass and spread her legs to straddle my chest with the ends of her skirts tickling gentle at my nose, then got down low above me and brought my face under that curtain, saying, I washed on it. Scarcely could catch a breath while in that wiry patch; it was a prophet’s vision I saw in the dark of her underdress. No pricks for me to kick against, though my feet did jitter and jig. The words I said into her were my first true sermon, a sermon on the furry, clefted mount. She rocked and grabbed fistfuls of my hair and called it pretty, pretty, pretty, and I dug furrows in the prairie earth with my bootheels.

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The beasts at last were silent. She said afterwards it’s no sin to put the tongue in. And it made sense, my tongue being anointed and girded with hoary Holy callous as the Archangel’s loins; and I’d put that tongue to her and spoke the Word through her, uncoiling the evil from her entrails twisting so close above my head though seeming miles away. No, it couldn’t be sin. I knew you were looking, she said before I left. Emily was picking hairs from my teeth and ducking when I’d try and kiss her. No sin, I said. # # # I walked my horse back to our camp in the early morning, leaving Emily and some peaceful hogs behind. I couldn’t ride for the rubbing of the saddle only made worse my painful engorgement. I stopped at a creek and tried to wash the smell of her from my face while the horse drank. It was a pained and stiff-legged amble home, with a prodigious ache from bearings to gut, as if all my weight had fallen to collect there like supplicants who praised and begged for more.

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CHAPTER 16 Bridling the tongue

Some time spent in fear that the fathers in a lapse of clarity might realize what I’d done, smell it on me the way I could even days afterwards. But there were no questions, only congratulations at my eviction of the demons. Mine was the only of our exorcisms which was successful; the country still howled with crazed animals. Kemper kept his mouth drawn shut while I told him what’d happened. We were out hewing logs for splitting later and when he finally spoke it was only to say, Good Lord. It’s the same for me, I said. Well, I guess you’ve done it. I just never thought it’d happen. Not like that. Jesus. Like what? We leaned into the saw, pushing and pulling with the blade as we spoke. With your mouth on it, said Kemper. Damn, brother, I can tell you right here that I never heard of such a thing. I don’t even know what you’d call a thing like that. You call it one almighty mother of a sin. I won’t tell you any different, Kemper said and shook his head and wiped wood dust from an unhealed horse bit on his hand, earned in failed exorcism. You could tell this was heavy on him, but my sinfulness did at least seem to lift his mind above the burial ground it’d lately been hanging over. Whatever you call it, I said, it’s wondrous. Kemper moved with the saw. It’s as against God as sodomy or bestiality. Your ass, I said. I was down there weeping it was so awesome. Though I did hurt for that true when we were done. She wouldn’t let you at it? Not yet she says. There you go. That blue ache’s Him telling you you’re doing wrong. We’ll do that and more, I said. I feel like I can do anything. Did you play with yourself afterwards? Christ, I had to. Thought my guts would knot up and choke me if I didn’t. Onan himself stands here before me, groaned Kemper. Shit on you. You don’t know about it. Kemper stood up and flung aside his half of the saw so I was left with it rumbling false thunder up my arm. Don’t you tell me what I know and what I don’t know, he said. I’m the oldest and I have years and inches on you. City years. Which means I’ve done my share and seen it all smashed in tight together. I’m old enough to have a woman and a baby or two by now, you ass, you think I don’t know? I’d dropped and was yearning for it before you ever knew. In Richmond I’d sneak with girls to go play nasty in the alleyways. As much touching and feeling as you did, only not as awful. And do you know what came of it? We got caught and this neighborhood of bastards took me out and buggywhipped me with my father watching and counting the lashes. That’s what I know about it. I didn’t mean anything by it, I said. Don’t lie. You did. You think I don’t hurt for it. Son of a bitch, it’s supposed to be me. I got nothing out here but beating myself under a blanket. Dead brother and a crazy father. Just

49 waiting to go and holler once a week at those stupid bastards from the holes. I’m your brother, I told him. And I’m not going to die. You’re gone crazy as the both of them. You’re like a drunk. Listen, I said. When I left her and she was still on me like a sweat, I knew it then—I won’t die. Kemper took his end of the saw back up and leaned in heavy with it against the log. Maybe you won’t ever die, he said, but wish you had before it’s through. Back to his black mind, he worked and huffed, and did then as he always would, make me feel small. Fair and puny but monstrously lucky. As it went, I’d learn to trust his judgments of me. We talked on in clouds of sawdust and I did my best to work him down. Will you help me or not? I said. It doesn’t sound like you need any help. I think I need a lookout. You said before you’d do it. Lookout? Look around you. There’s no one here. We’re alone as we can be. If I get her out I can’t take her far. If I call, it’ll have to be on a lie. The rest’ll be sneaking, like you did. Don’t try and bring me down with you, he said, yanking the sawteeth deep. I pulled back hard and said, Will you be my brother, or not? And Kemper blew sawdust from his lips like a true carpenter and said he would.

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CHAPTER 17 False prophecies

I learned to lie with my religion and so did my newfound brother. Our departures I explained to Preacher-father as going to share the visions we’d been gifted with or to patrol the valley for outlanders. Evenings we’d return and relate to them what we’d been shown. Kemper rarely told his well, and so I’d tell enough wild visions for two. It was never hard to forge angelics and mystic sights unseen. They could be any madness that came to mind; and my mind was full of plans and other things. It went that I’d have to catch Emily working alone, and there were only a few chores allowing. But if she was out at the edge of the corn patch not a hundred yards from the family hole we’d lay down right there at the feet of the corn and in the bug-rustle and withered silk have a fast sin together. Kemper endured it, listening hard for the door or for the father Fladeboe banging about. They can probably God damn hear you, he said one day. They can probably feel it in the ground. So I’d have to lead her off a few paces behind the hillocks; and these distances did grow to runs into the scrub-wood nearby. I may can say for sure that my visions were lies, but what did Kemper see when he sat at the edge of the woods or at the hillsides, discreetly turned from our coilings? But then I knew he was the one given to true sight; my brother in God and war, who walked this world seeing far ahead of us. I tested my visions on Emily first. When we were finished and she would compose her clothes back, or if I was still in her lap—something in me refusing to be out of her. Emily’s ears were better than her eyes and I made my visions fit her. She’d feature in them along with the angels and the burning clouds. Once, when I was finished with the telling, she said, Keep on talking. That’s the end, I said. There isn’t any more. I like hearing you talk. I don’t care what it is you say. I thought my voice was funny. That don’t mean I don’t like it. It’s tough to make it all up. Lie on, Angel, my Angel. And I did. I could lie for hours straight, but we only had minutes to whisper. We stunk of each other and that was one of the pleasures of those days. We’d wash on Sundays, maybe, but often it was weeks of adding on and adding on the anointment of our couplings. So much that,--and this hurt me to do, I so loved that raunch,--I would go to dirt wallers and roll in them till I was covered in dust or mud. Neither of the fathers ever questioned any of it. Stranger things were done even by the lesser prophets in their times of grace. You could come and call on me with my folks there, she said one day. They’ll know it, then. They can know it. I don’t care. They’d be happy to know you were loving on me. I saw myself truly calling on her, tearing my shirts and baying from a hilltop. And would she come? Or return my howl with her own. I’d have to tell my people, and Preacher-father, he’d go blind.

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Why? A prophet keeps pure until his time comes. I’m your time. And he wouldn’t be angry with you. You want to make a wife of me, seed me and seed the land. A preacher should love that. Would I have been content to live out my days with her in our mud-hole of thatched cabin? With that girl who was thin and worn already at the age I knew her? I would be the shepherd of my father’s flock and another generation on dirt-caked worshippers would follow me. I would’ve been a millstone of suffering. # # # And it happened that the sky above Chit was filled one day for miles from the north with black plovers, waves of them pouring overhead, seeming endless. And when all the Chitites with guns, including me and Kemper, were out on the highest hill in the valley and firing into the clouds of birds which rained down from the sky in peals for the women to collect below us in the field, I took the chance to slip off from the roar and bird-shriek and hope that Emily saw me descending the hillside. When I’d made the even ground I could see the gunsmoke in a cloud hanging over the men, and I searched the hunched women amid the black-wing rain of falling bodies for her; and she came out of them, with bundled plover sacked in the lip of her dress. We were voiceless in the gunfire, but there was nothing to say. The dead birds were still warm and some spilled out when we laid down; beaks pressed into my belly and hers was swollen with death and the splintering of hollow bones. I should’ve known it was a sign, but the shots and cries of birds and her were all I knew then. # # # There’s no beauty in the thing when it’s done by the young. The heat was on us and it was only rushing to the meeting place and hustling quickly into Emily and she was no delicate thing about it—lifting and parting for hasty work done out of need. But she was no more a whore than I was a whoremaster. And it was a lovely thing she did to me. The world had lost me and gone were its bearings. It tilted under my feet and I would fall to the ground with her to make the thing right. And between my made-up visions and my Sunday work all I could think of was the next chance to ride her and could take stock of nothing else. The dead should walk if my vision were ever to right itself after that sweet laying down. # # # Remember once taking her out to the pilgrims’ burnt encampment to search for any usables that’d escaped the retreating pilgrims or the holediggers. Kemper was off being my brother, barely visible in the scorched treeline. I wandered aimless while she went among the blackened timber piles. The place had been picked clean; not only of good wood and most supplies, but also of carrion. I crossed over the burial mound and was gone from her for a moment. The remains of the longhouse that’d swallowed Samuel was covered in birdshit, as most things were for a time. Emily found me and came up smiling, holding a pouch of her dress as a basket for her fired keepsakes. Buttons, needles, nails; which I ignored to look instead on fleabit thigh and scabby knee, beautiful to me then. Before I could snatch her up, Emily went back to her work and when she was done stirring the ashpiles her arms were black to the elbows. On our way back, she said to Kemper, I didn’t see your little brother. I edged between them to make sure he couldn’t hit her, but Kemper made no move. He was never quick to temper as me.

52

He only said: You wouldn’t have. The fire was too hot. They burnt him up? No, we burnt the place and he fell in the fire. Kemper turned and pointed to the charred bones of the long-house. That’s where he fell, he said. Emily Fladeboe looked on those piled remains of beam and board she’d just been sorting through and let her wild eye roll over it. At least nothing could get at him once the fire did, she said. I guess that’s right, Kemper said. She couldn’t bring her treasures home, so she hid them in the knot of a tree. And we would visit them sometimes and she’d take out her playpretties and arrange them for me around her, talk about me calling on her or her manure-caked parents, their suspicions. Emily taught me her body, and I learned from her when comes the blood, when a woman’s flush, but it seemed all signs and wonders. In this way all my sins would be revealed.

53

CHAPTER 18 Jerusalem a wretched infant

So I kept on the thorny course with Emily and make myself a crown of them. It was Emily’s breast in mid-summer which would reveal the truth to me. I swear I thought she’d gone wormy and that explained her belly, like a boil from ribs to mound, distending that skinny thing. I could believe anything, providing enough foolishness and faith. Emily was sitting back against a tree as I went longingly at one she’d let out from her dress, and I pulled away to find my mouth still full as though I had her still enlipped and, choking down what was there, I saw the milk risen on the beads of her paps, sliding down the hairs that would’ve tickled my tongue if it had any feeling. And praise God it didn’t, for I would’ve tasted what I gaped at and still dribbled from my slackened mouth; yellow-white and almost clear, a ghostly avatar of my damnation. I scrambled away on legs stiff with fear and Emily hitched the top of her dress back, regarding me with such a look that said she knew, and damn me now for knowing too. And while that look in her eyes burned into me, two more eyes soaked through the front of her dress. O dumbstruck foolish seed sower; he plants in fields he thinks are barren, but he is so beloved of God that he makes all things fertile. I knew it’d come, she said. When she spoke, I raged like a fool, growling though I’d felt the hard slope of her belly like a fist against mine. Emily was crying a little now. You’ve gone and brought the milk too soon, she said. I shook off my spidery ways and came back and told her to show me where it was. You know it’s true, she said, rubbing at her new eyes. I don’t care. Show it to me. Emily worked at the buttons below her breast, wishing out of shame, I guess, to keep them covered, as she broke the buttons from their eyes and cast them to the dirt. I let out a yelp when I saw belly veined and split down the middle by a rippling long dark line. It was still small enough that it didn’t much show when her dress was on and aproned. But out like that it was an awful revelation. That yelp escaped me from the knowledge gained of months spent learning the seasons of woman from the girl; when the gorge rises and so their sparkling anger; when blood drops to fill the mound and cannot be contained and runs; when the need—not ever so prodigious as the anger—grows full; only to encounter the most terrible seasons—the final symptoms of the female disease. Kemper had come thrashing through the bushes at my sound, and now he stood beside me panting, staring at that bare bowed house of conception. He threw down his rifle and whipped from her to me, saying, Worms! Goddamnit! That’s no worms you blind shit! I thought for sure he’d hit me, level me and make me feel some justice, but he only took back up his rifle and, averting his eyes from the hurriedly fastening and covering Emily, stomped off. I gathered her up and we followed him silently, like children, back to the Fladeboe’s corn. Don’t remember Emily crying or lamenting on our way; she remained a hard one. Myself, I moved only because it was all I could do; animated by coursing guilt set and fixed into my marrow. She didn’t hang on me as we walked, I hung on her. But she was stony as her belly.

54

Kemper turned around when we were at the edge of the Fladeboe’s tract. God damn it, he said. Will you look at her! She’s wet at the tits! We’ll have to wait for her to dry off. Shut the Hell up, I said. He ignored me. Emily, he said, go get in that sun. They’ll know anyway, Emily said. Kemper didn’t look at her, but to me. I don’t care, he said. They won’t yet. So I told her it was the right thing; we should wait until she was dry. She nodded stonyfaced and whirled to be in the full light of the sun and sat herself in the grass. The way she hunched showed her belly even more, and my mind lurched to know the little thing I’d made was turning over in her. # # # Some weeks without seeing her and she thinned in my memory while she thickened round the middle in life. Sorry prayers for fire or Indian attack or sudden disease to sweep through the dugouts filled my days. Thinking of nighttime forays with a shovel to bury over their door and seal her underground with what I’d done or that she’d trip and fall gut-first upon a doorway pike. I couldn’t muster any more angelic visions for Preacher-father, gave him a child’s vision of the apocalypse instead. Skies of blood, roads of blood; if blood could be smeared with blood, it was in that vision. A lazy red vision of the end. Paul’s scorpions made appearances, and so did that famous quartet: the skin and bones, the pox-house man, the soldier armored in plates of dried flesh, and the long-haired grinning harrier of souls. It was all another lie, for I was at last given a true vision. Shrouded in steam, Emily Fladeboe held in her bare arms a child bloody and slick with afterbirth, like a dog’s, and all around her were pale, rawhead women working great scalding pots, and into them they dropped other squalling infants; they cooed in sweet voices to the vats and drew the reddened babes from the boil, sitting them, steaming and rendered for the scraper, on butcher’s tables. Not yet the color of a person, our child mewled viciously. I was there with her and together we cleaned the child and I swaddled it in towels until the blood was gone, then we handed the thing over to one of the ghouls, cooing ourselves as she dropped our mewling baby in.

55

CHAPTER 19 They will eat wormwood

Along with the awful prayers I’ve already detailed, there were the thoughts of marriage—bizarre ceremonies came to me often those days. Emily covered in milkweed flowers, the only white bloom on the prairie, and the morning sunlight attendance of the entire muddy population, Preacher-father performing the deed with a smile on his face. Another, fire-lit and shadow; the holediggers there as an accompaniment of freaks, and only Kemper not present. Preacher-father there again and in his hands he holds a needle, threaded from a long spool of thread. We betrothed would stand naked before him. And he’d perform the vows and I’d say mine with my mouth moving for me like a nightmare scream that comes even when you are unafraid. Then he’d start with his needle at our heels and sew me and Emily together up our legs and backs and skulls, unwinding his spool and twining us down the front. When it’d be done, there’d come the awful cheers and we could only shuffle our feet to turn and face them. I know I tortured Kemper, telling him things like this. He’d listen like a disciple then cuss me half-heartedly; say he hoped they found me out soon; that he couldn’t stand waiting anymore and would threaten to tell them, threaten everything. I’d listen back to him and know I deserved it. When death was farthest away from me, I wished it close. I was a pitiful little bastard who didn’t know what to do but let rattle hideously stupid things through his head. It went that Emily’s condition was finally made known to the Fladeboes on one of the rare trips taken by mother and daughter to the Baptist for a bath; the old woman’s notice being drawn to Emily’s rippling belly wherein all my magic and shame worked in red-dark corridors of womb, and the shock of the sight took such a hold of the old hag Fladeboe that she sloshed shrieking through the water and took her daughter by the neck and had her doubled and breathing water. When he told me all this, Preacher-father would also say that Emily’s face turned blue and her eyes bugged and her mother let her sink to the bottom; her father had to hunt downstream for miles to collect the corpse.

56

CHAPTER 20 God’s anger for their disobedience

Like I’d made one in poor drowned Emily, I was made a child again when Preacher-father told me to build up the fire and sit myself by it. I was alone with him in camp; the Kempers having gone off ghost-shooting and not yet returned. In our time in Chit our fire pit had grown as a laid-out man and deep enough when its ashes were dug to swallow you to your chest. I knew from his voice what was coming when he had me keep adding lengths to the fire on that summer night that didn’t call for any. The fire took its dimensions from sinful me and I was laid out across it and I was swallowed in it. When the smoke had thinned and the blaze suited him, Preacher-father gave me the story as if it’d been him that was there and he had not a word of reproach for what the old woman had done. He’d heard it all from the mouth of the father Fladeboe that morning on his ministering ride. They’d already buried her. I was crawling deeper into the fire with every word he said and the Lord’s voice saying, Down, boy, down into the pit and fulfill your father’s prophecy for you. Too stunned to be repentant, too angry to move, I watched the flames suck wood to blackness and thought of vengeances. Come out of the fire, child of the element, and bring it down upon the world. Preacher-father squatted across the pit from me, barely the shape of a man; the flames parted for his eyes to look on me and for his mouth when he spoke. Now, he said, tell me all your visions were lies. I told him they were. But truly I can’t remember saying a thing If I did speak it was how I always spoke, with his burning hand reached up my throat and working my jaw like a puppet’s. Preacher-father said, What does it matter? You’ve proved yourself a liar. Before me, before God. He stood up, saying, Look me right here and tell me all of it was lies. I said I was a liar. Preacher-father fell back to the ground and the fire shook out sparks. He said: I still can’t believe you, but I know your spirit now and it turned towards one that was the same and went a- whoring after her. I know it, I said. No you don’t. You don’t know a damn thing. You don’t care about what you’ve done, how you’ve dragged Rueben down with you. The only sons we have left and you cursed our love and turned away. I would’ve done what was right, I said. He laughed at me the way they laughed at Christ. And maybe it was then I began to realize what I’ve come to know; for wasn’t the Son cast into this world by an uncaring Father?— with powers given him by the same. No sooner had he invoked them that the Kempers, father and son, came to the fire. A side-curtain entrance onto the stage of my fool’s passion play—the Deacon with a driver’s stick and rifle, Kemper’s neck wrung solemnly with a brace of squirrels. His father came over to me and tapped in the dirt with his stick and told his son to sit there. Kemper did, not giving any eye to me. Meanwhile, the fathers were counseling each other on the other side of the fire. Did he lie to you? Preacher-father asked. No, said the Deacon, he told me all of it.

57

That’s more than I can say for this one. Deacon Kemper tapped his stick knowingly across his leg and I hoped that he would move to strike me with it so that I might take it from his hand and rail both my judges. But he only went and got our tripod and cookpot, and, uncaring or unmindful of the flames, set it up. I had to crane around the pot to see him, and his cuffs were black and smoking when he took his place by Preacher-father again, looking like he’d already cast one of us boys into Hell. You can start cleaning supper, Deacon Kemper said. So Kemper untwisted a squirrel from his lanyard, putting it lengthwise on his thigh, and drew out his knife. I thought then of my own knife and the bellies of the fathers and all the people of Chit, and what warmth would fall from them to tangle the legs of my oppressors. Mind that you still listen, said his father. You fall in this as badly as he does. So Preacher-father started back again. He said to me, You must think you’re some kind of great cocksman, eh? I said nothing, listened to Kemper make hurried work of the squirrel—the slip of the knife not so easy, the gutting a sloppy enterprise, the skin pulling wrong—and I wondered in my boy’s mind what such a man could be, and how one attained that station. Well, you must think yourself one. You’re grown enough by now to have that dead girl and that child, but you were supposed to be a man of God and wait for him to show the way. I know it’s a hard thing to be so old and have to follow this path, but it’s what I was instructed with, and you’ve damned not just yourself but me in His eyes. And what kind of union would it’ve been? As worthless as the corruption you filled that girl with. You gave her the bellyful of maggots she has now. A handful of guts tossed by Rueben out of the corner of my vision sailed by me and through the flames and into the pot, then in went the skinned squirrel. I know I did, I said. Like Hell you do. You don’t know it the same as you don’t know my love for you. Don’t know of have forgotten it. I remember wanting to tell him again and again that I knew what I’d done, knew it worse than he ever would. But he continued. There was a time, said Preacher-father, when you had a mother and brother and sisters, and together we lifted up our voices and sang you into the world each day. But when they all were swept away, I knew what you were made for. But I fought against it. I fought to keep you from the fire. With these words I took my hair in my hands and wept. I had to turn away from him and there was Kemper squeezing the offal from a ribbon of intestine, looking like he was choking, then putting the gut to his lips and blowing a note. Whether you know it or not, said Preacher-father, you’ve whored it all away. Dear God I wish it was back when we could ride and witness together and glory in the Lord. I do. Badly, son. And you are and will remain my boy. My final and most troublesome issue and offering to Him. But now you’ve made it so I’ve got to turn my face away from you. With that, Preacher-father got up and strode off and Deacon Kemper started in. I looked to my brother, who sat with his head between his legs and squirrels curled at his feet. The talk he got went over the same ground scattered with a father’s barbs and snares of disappointment. He finished by telling us the nature of our punishment; that if we intended on being prodigals, we would go and live out some stretch of time that way. Six months, a year. And if we couldn’t find

58 the love of God here then we should have to seek it in the world, to return when we’d found it and were ready to live in their little Jordan. I was already planning in my wracked mind my return. They would scatter palms for me I’d be so pure. I’d find Emily’s plot and say a Lazarus prayer, if not for her body to rise then at least her wisp of a soul, which I’d surely sent to damnation. I imagined my ascension and the place of glory that’d be given me by my father. But all of this was riddled also with vicious anger, thoughts of a different ride; to return with an army of fellow sinners and make the valley howl that it’d ever lost me. Let them throw their bodies in my path to be trampled into corpsemash spiked with bones, for I’d ride the pale horse. Christ and killer tugged in me and Preacher-father had returned before Deacon Kemper had finished. He fixed on me above the crackling pot and I saw that old coalburn anger in his face and I waited for him to tell me to draw one out. But it guttered back inside him and the worms were lively in me. I doubled over them. If this land had but worthwhile stones, he said, you’d be with your whore.

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BOOK TWO CHAPTER 1 Rebellious sons

For days I scarcely looked up from the ground, making the tread of the guilty man at first on foot and only later allowed myself the horse’s back, raising up my head only when it was to pursue the horizon. They’d given us the two good horses and their saddles. They expected us to return. Kemper would call back to ask if I wanted to stop and I’d say nothing or tell him no until he understood, and by nightfall of our first day, when he stopped, I didn’t get down with him, but stayed upright on my father’s horse, looking out when it was too dark to see, until sleep finally hunched me over and my head kept time against the horn. I remained a-saddle, gathering sores while the sun and the moon rolled overhead and the plains went beneath us like a carpet pulled away. Kemper’s voice eachoed God’s and Preacher- father’s that’d led me there to start; we’d go south. To keep his mind and maybe bring mine back, Kemper maintained a steady stream of talk, like I’d done for him when Samuel fell. He inventoried our belongings; the rifles which the fathers had lashed to our saddles the morning we were sent off; our food, grain for the beasts; the dueling pistols in their mahogany box, given not without weeping and some ceremony between father and son—and which I could thank Brother Kemper eternally for how those pistols would set us on our path and guide us across the country; shot for both and powder; blankets for bedrolls, our clothes; the Bibles we both wore at our breasts. Sometimes Kemper would search out verses to read from his and thankfully the book is loaded with fornication, condemnation, and exile. We were Children of God, but children not at all. We were overgrown of our innocence and ignorantly pursued the world. Strange to be set loose when the body’s outpaced the brain, I prayed hard on that ride. I was visited by blue Emily. Water had swelled her belly to an enormous pregnancy and she was carrying all my sins to term. I prayed her away like a demon and stayed up in my perch of shame. By the third day of our ride towards the river port of New Madrid, I’d grown used to the ache and throb of the boils on my thighs and ass—the only revenge my poor horse could have on me for being such a bastardly weight on his sloping back. The boils rose on my nethers and I accepted them also, thinking, let it rot. I didn’t drink enough to piss nor eat enough to pass, so I had no cause to look upon my growing swarm of wounds. Instead I envisioned something like the syphilitic’s fungal-looking bits or John’s many-headed beast; all of them with eyes and pus- weeping mouths. On the fourth day my horse was crawling and Kemper was a ways ahead, still calling out scriptures on occasion. He’d ride back and his horse would nibble at the bent neck of mine. I wouldn’t look at him, but rather to my legs, and I could see the boils bloating through my pants. On morning of the fifth day my boils broke, and I rode soaked in their spoil until I fell. I awoke on the ground with my horse’s chest throbbing for breath beside my throbbing head and Kemper looking down on us. The earth rocked under me like I was still riding; my head lolled when I tried to pick it up, and it was hard to see my brother’s face. I let my head fall back to the grass and saw that in my lap the fabric was crusted with dried yellow pus—evil expelled. When did I fall? You didn’t, said Kemper, I knocked you down. 60

Why? I croaked. It’s been long enough. Look at you. You need to lay the Hell down. You could’ve broken my neck. It’s been better than you dying up there. I nodded, or my head was just used to flopping by then. Sleep, crazy, said my brother, and he threw me a blanket to cover up from flies. I grabbed at the blanket and handfuls of grass, pulling myself down onto my side. I laid there in my soiled pants and felt clean.

61

CHAPTER 2 The flood

We dangled our heads over the side of the barge to watch the muddy water roll with stars reflected like they were punched there by a leather man’s auger; not distant and cold like they’d been over the plains. Floating south, we were cast into Eden. Preacher-father hadn’t left me; he visited me day by day, sometimes brought guilt, sometimes avarice or wrath. For a while I thought of going back so he could see what good the prodigal could do, otherwise I thought he’d died or ever would. I’d think like this for years after the time he would’ve surely gone to rot. And I knew even then, laid out on the flat-boat’s deck, that if he had one follower yet he would not go into corruption; he’d be burnt, taken by the wind and scattered in his ashy wisdom; or that same follower would scrape his ashes into a sack, take them to the baptizing creek and let him silt the waters which would carry him through the wiry latticework of tributaries, slowly churning him with the mud until he reached an artery of the Mississippi and came into that muddy organ and lived in it, possessing all and watching me with the milky eyes of catfish, with the stalks of crawfish; seeking land at the banks and islands. Those nights we listened to the groan and creak of the flatboat’s timbers, to the men fighting over tobacco or liquor or money, or just to fight—the sounds of something being slowly torn apart in the current. The flatboat men gave us tastes of their drink and smoke, probably because they thought our coughing and gagging funny. But this wouldn’t go on for long as our appetites grew fierce and their gifts were soon rescinded. We had no money to speak of; what price our mules had gotten at the knackers’ in New Madrid had provided for our passage only, so we worked shucking loads at pitiful landings all down the river, and before long we could afford our own drink and smoke—though we only had one broken clay pipe to split between us and neither could hold liquor well. And when we’d pass the pipe while we toted crates and bales and sugarsacks they’d say, Some preachers! and go on making fun like that, singing bawdy hymns at us until their captain, a man named Finch, would holler them quiet. He carried with him at all times the biggest knife I’d ever seen, and would use the breadth of its flat sides to knock you awake or get you working at a faster clip. Not to say Finch was unkind; the work on the river was bizarrely a thing of speed. We floated slowly, poling in the shallows, sometimes lashing ropes to great live oaks to pull ourselves along, but so did many others, and we’d be sidled up next to them at the docks and there we’d unload against them and whoever was clear first to get his stock ashore would get the first fair market price of the day and the choice of cargo to move farther downwards, with the loser gaining nothing but the merchants’ pennies and some brawling. When work was through, Captain Finch would let us go out into the docks and landings and start preaching. I’d weep and tell the people my story with Kemper standing like the God of Judgment behind me. And after I’d finished even the hardest of listeners who’d jeered and hissed me would straighten up when Kemper would lumber forward and take my perch from me and deliver the moral. But it was rare that any coin would sail into our hats; what little off-chance money we did receive we gave an equal share to Captain Finch. # # # I don’t remember which of us took the pistols from our pack, unclasped their box and went to cleaning, but the other followed without a word. At a shabby landing in Tennessee the boys

62 departed for the night into the taverns and we followed after them. But while they carried razors or knives in their shirts, we wore each a pistol in our belts beneath our rotten clothes. Crime is spiritual. Robbery is an act of faith. Like saving a man’s soul or healing the sick, the hand of the healer being as under as the robber’s; in the process, both parties are brought closer to God; one to gain and one to lose. There were more prayers said during our knickings than in any church. And those were prayers that saw us clawing back to the first prayers man ever gave: let me survive, let me retain. Raw-eyed and loaded we went out into the town, past the taverns where the river men drank and whored and battled to the finer establishments up the way where the cozy imbibing of the merchants went on behind unbroken windows, which only meant that they had walls for the drunkards to stand within and didn’t smell so badly of shit,. Tucked into an alleyway, watching groups too large to trifle with go by, we awaited our first transaction. They’re full of liquor and money, said Kemper. They’re laughers. They eat money. I can hear it jangling in their guts. The wait was long and once our chance showed itself we’d worked up a murderous righteousness. But we’d murder none that night, no matter our anger at the thin-backed merchants. I believe we’d both had our sate of killing for a while. Stepping with a shout out of the alley’s mouth with pistols extended mule dick fashion we robbed a chance of dandies on their drunken nighttime way. I recall one fumbling for his purse and puking on his boots. We made it right by saving the souls of twice as many as we’d robbed, at our dockside sermon the following morning. Finch stood by and bellowed songs with us, his tribute in his pocket and God now squarely in his heart. And it was that we were learning.

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CHAPTER 3 Israel redeemed

More soul-saving and purse-nabbing on to Natchez, passing first the fine city on the hilltop, then easing round the banks to lower Natchez where the goods were put in and somehow the money would ascend that peak to tickle the fingers of merchants and planters. On the downhill side of the finery and the respectable was where we’d make our home for years, where we’d come to find our true mission. Time being, our eyes were softened slightly by the spoils of our recent robberies and we were bacon-fed with beards of grease around our lips. It was Kemper’s idea to buy the bacon and to share it with the others, who’d given us those first whiskeys and cover from the law. The work that day went easy, chewing rind while you sacks of Kentucky flour and molasses in kegs; the whole time looking out to the town all filthy with hopes for gains ecclesiastical and profane. Thus were the prospects of the rough places of the world, that they could satisfy both the sinner and the savior in us. All down the great landing other crews worked on after we were done. And while we readied ourselves to go out and preach, a few of the men from our boat went to fall in with the dockers still desperately unloading, their foremen hollering out the journeyman wage as they came and joined in, if their price was right, or shucked off through the piled goods to town. The sun had shot up to its afternoon height and I swear there was steam coming off the river. I felt my stomach sitting easy and solid. My brother clapped me on the leg. Look out there, he said. There’s not a thing wrong with robbing. That’s honest labor you’re seeing, I said. This is the only honest labor, he said, gesturing with the Bible he’d drawn from his rucksack. They’re just Caesaring. They may be. But half of them’s niggers who can’t help it besides. Kemper rose, stepped out into the sun and said, pointing to a stack of crates raised high above the toilers, There’s where well preach. And so we walked out armed with our Bibles and strapped with the pistols still loaded from the fire night out into the sun-beat docks. Captain Finch, having his first dip of the day, raised his cup to us as we went by. Go to it, my boys! Go to it! So at the space between two barges, where the crates and sacks and barrels had already grown to great piles, Kemper mounted the goods and hollered out in the name of the Lord. Not a head turned. Work on, men, he said. It’s fine not to look on me—but don’t you dare turn your eyes from God, for he won’t ever turn His from you! I said, Brothers, I turned my back on Him and cut my eyes from glory. I thought he couldn’t see me if I wasn’t looking at him and I laid down with a girl and made her fill up with a baby. Hoots and jeers amid the crack of crate and commerce. I continued. But both of them were struck dead—dead sure as if I’d killed them with my own hands. That is the power of God’s eyes. One called out, What’d you kill her with, your prick? Kemper put a hand to my shoulder and said: He knows what all you do. You do it in his

64 sight, so don’t turn your sight from him. He’ll love everything you do if you just look on Him and be cleaned. Ask my ass! called another. We’re young! I cried, and I know we look fresh-faced to you, but we work this river with you and we’ve packed in a few hot Hells’ worth of sinning into our short time. Here the hands from Finch’s boat whooped praises and now were black faces giving us swift glances over work-bent shoulders. I’d never seen so many in one place, long strings of slaves played out upon the dockworks, working alongside others that were free. I started back up my sermon in the swelter and some bedraggled whites hollered for me to shut my cottonheaded ass up. Kemper nudged me to see Finch’s men sidle them with hooks and razors and we preached on. Now the overseers and the merchants’ clerks grew restless and one came to us with his hand in the pocket of his waistcoat and said why didn’t we just save it for the Sabbath. When he gave us his back, satisfied, Kemper let out a yawp and went even harder into the Word. Soon men were dropping off from their work and came to listen and shout back in refrain. You work, said Kemper. You work hard! Hell yes! they cried. You work hard here on earth, but you’re only paid in gold. And you’ve forgotten your Father’s work. Do your Father’s work in all your ways, do it all your days and you’ll be paid by Him with a mountain of Heavenly gold! Your misdeeds on earth aren’t but a fly speck in His drink if you are only washed in the blood of His son, Jesus Christ. Wash yourselves clean of work-sweat and whore-juices, everything! Now’s the time for your baptism, not later, not the Sabbath. Every day’s the Lord’s Day! Under that eye of fire up there, make it clean. Make it joyous in his sight and if you’re a sinner like me, get yourselves up now, and go to the end of these boards you walk with so many earthly burdens and cast off Satan’s weight—and fly into that water! Fly into that muddy water! It may look dirty but it’ll make you clean in Jesus’ eyes! And they did fly. At first a few gathering at the edge, timid with their overseers screaming for them to stop, then joined by a press of more; and a few negroes broke through and ran to their backs, howling, Jesus! and in the crush of bodies and outstretched arms and whipping heads both black and white which searched the sky for signs of Christ they all went tumbling over. Kemper was beating me over the back with his Bible he was so happy, and from the men splashing in the froth there came much laughter and singing. The baptized beat the sides of the boats with joy. Their drivers stood shook for a time before they began to try and call the men out of the water. The work stood idle down the landing but for a few untouched by grace and the water was a tumult of goodness. The braver of the overseers laid out on the dockside, reaching for necks and arms, only to be turned away by gouts of Mississippi water. They called for the captains to gather up their men, but found the captains too were in the water. High hats flew from heads as a dripping clutch of overseers hurtled down the docks towards us. They mounted out makeshift pulpit howling curses and we scurried back the other side and went clattering along the docks to our boat with the cheers of the saved tailing our safe passage. And when we came to our landing, merchants’ men biting our heels, there stood Finch waving us by with his knife, giving me a slap with it cross the backside and some steeling words before he whirled to catch them each by each across their rage-puffed faces with the fat of his blade, shouting, Glory halleluiah! And we turned, feet beating the air from our bellows, up the front street and into the town.

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CHAPTER 4 Christ comes as a thief

That first night we spent hiding in a carriage house, stumbling out when the stallboy came to tend; a young black face above a lantern, staring at us in our huddle of warm straw rolled in dung; he didn’t try to run us off, but stared at us with that sullen understanding of the madness of white people. We stumbled out into the morning streets deserted by the moon and by the whores and not bright enough to sell other wares by. The lights from the landing showed above the roofs of the shabby buildings and the city up the hill was shrouded. We made our way in the peeling- away dark which slowly revealed the whole lovingly sordid thing. As for Kemper, he changed with the growing light and by sunrise was reborn a man of the town. Confidently he walked the streets, buying bread and coffee from vendors and asking after work. And that day we passed through the outer ring of the town, encountering the names of bow-wow shops and bawdy houses and testing them on our tongues; Rowder’s, Clay’s, Door-knock alley, the Church. In the evening my brother found us quarters in a room above Mother Lowde’s tavern, which was shoehorned by larger such establishments. She was good to us boys, that old Rachel. We’d hear she was once a whore of some repute, famous for her barrenness but now in her dowager years she only took callers on occasion. She was nimble for being so hard and withered, for she’d been a river rider in the early days of its commerce; hopping from barge to barge on the slow go to New Orleans, taking advantage of the lonesome polers. It was said that if two boats were close enough she’d stretch herself across their sides and pleasure a man on one craft mouthwise while another on the adjoining craft would have her from behind. Thus she was enfamed. She ran no young fillies now, just kept the tavern and its rooms, which we left to wander streets warped like woodgrain along the river-bend and there were many places that looked good to preach, many places also good to hide and spring from. We left our Bibles holstered, though, and kept our voices low. Our own Corinth; the place was hellish fine and chocked with sin and unrepentance. We watched the vendors’ stalls change through the course of the day; bread to pies, the coffee urns going cold, liquor tinctures before the taverns opened their doors. There was even one who pushed what looked to be a tinker’s cart but sold only weapons; knives mostly, but also cudgels and guns, a few all-nations pistols hanging on nail heads. He’d go with his cart of deadlies up and down the rows of bawdy houses from midday through the night and when some under-armed man, a drunken sufferer of drunken insults, would come storming out of a tavern, he’d find the weapon-seller and lay down however much he had and would receive the tool corresponding. So the now-armed insulted man would march back into the house of his insult—sometimes the insulter would follow the aggrieved and wait behind him at the cart to buy his own piece—and then they’d have their fight in the streets, the seller dragging his jangling cart out of the way of combat. It made for some lopsided contests when one man had spent all his coin back in the tavern on drink. Evenings we shuffled by the whores, who cawed and mocked or offered of themselves. I was chaste at first but only out of fear. Often as not they’d bee a head taller than me on their iron-point heels. We talked with them and came to know the bawdy houses and their legends. And I do remember from their warty lips the warnings not to stray too near the Church, a sympathy also held by Lowde; for it was not Church at all but a house of the most vicious

66 whores, the mistress of which was a woman who cut the pricks from unlucky customers. They called her Raw Liza, Bloody Lizzy, Miss Chop-and-swing Liz. This was our first hint of the woman of bones, of what would be my brother’s love and both our sorrow. But she was only stories then, and so we kept away from the Church, that house with parapets and spires and windows of red-colored glass, and set upon a foundation of tales of the horrors that waited within for the unwary, unlucky, and unwise. At the time, I’d always toss such rumors aside, for how else was a business full of working girls to operate if all they did was maim and steal? and even if they did slip the occasional razor to the pecker of some prick, or poison a rich man to get at his purse, it couldn’t be so common as was said or they’d just be piss-angry violent paupers, bloody waifs and terrorful gamines. I’d see the razor-whores dancing in the windows of the row of finer bawds, each house being differently owned and featuring ranging talents; some had Negroe girls in African garb of skins, and hoop-rings in the strangest of places. I considered its parapets and spires, how it reached higher in the sky above Natchez-Under-the-Hill than anything besides the boatmen’s watchtower, and it was said that from the highest tower room, belonging to the mistress, you could see even down into the Devil’s Pisspot. Kemper eyed it more than I did, even then. He listened closer to the stories of the mistress. Hardest of all wasn’t avoiding those mantraps, but the lonesome Sundays spent not preaching and hearing the bells of the finer churches on the hilltop and the rusty whomp of iron drums beat with pans to sound worship time down our way. Instead we robbed; and I, more missable, would corner the mark first with my pistol poking from my coat. Hold tight, whiskey bibber! Then Kemper would appear from behind some shadowy overhang, saying, Stiff as a plank, now. We’ll have that money. To some I’d slip a little evangelism. Your coin for tithings, I’d say, raising up my pistol so the barrel hole was square in his face, for the eyes of the Lord is upon you. Once, while hunting ones with full pockets and an empty head, a voice called out from behind us and we turned to see a fellow pistoleer holding on us. We’d both turned with ours drawn and when our assailant looked on this he gaped for a moment before bursting into wild peals of laughter. And it must’ve been a contagious madness, for so did we, walking backwards watching him make the same awkward trek to the corner. No ill-feeling in robbing the heathen or the wicked man, but not too wicked—the place was full of bastards tougher yet than us.

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CHAPTER 5 Whoredom and wine

Mother Lowde would tell us whoretales, of New Orleans line-ups and the boat game, of the mistress of the Church. And in kind we’d give her a little gospel or singing. In the early morning hours we’d return loose-tongued with excitement from the night’s work to find her lipping the nub of a clay pipe. We’d drink with her a mash of coffee grounds and rum, and when we’d speak there’d be delight in every bed-rattled bone of her. I never heard a preacher man talk the way yall do, said Mother Lowde. And I’ve known a few. Some almost had it right, but you two surely do. We were brought up for it, I said. It couldn’t be any other way, said Kemper. You know, she said, tapping her tribute on the arm of her rocker, I wouldn’t have it if you didn’t preach to me. I do appreciate the cut but I don’t require it. I run no little thieves’ home, no billiards, and no whores. I’d just as soon have a bunch of biddie sluts to mind, taking my very life with their pecks. We’re not so little, Kemper said. Maybe you aren’t, but Angel here’s runted. They both laughed and I can’t say I didn’t sulk a bit over my steaming coffee-mash. Mother, he said, do you keep up with any of the home girls here? I mean, could you speak for quality. Miss Lowde took a tipple and wore a beard of dark foam. You must be losing your sight if you walk the streets and don’t see them, she said. Well, I see them and I’ve tried the street market, but I can’t say that I fancy them. Course not, she said. Humping in alleys. I know there’s not any pleasure in it. Kemper’s go the blue boar, I said. You shit. Lowde grinned. I can cure that for you, son. He’s a liar, said Kemper. But if you know a good house, with girls of good reputations and maybe not so many scabs, would you point a friend that way? Ask me why I’d want my good preacher boys in such a place? Well, he said, we’re here. I was sure this would fetch him a slap, but the lovely old broad only smiled. There you go, she said. I can take care of the both of you. Ask me who’s the Abbess when you’re looking right at her. You want beauty? Well I got beauty in places you don’t even know to peek in. Now, what Kemper told her was true: we’d lately done a share of whoring. Even I’d broken my lonesome vows, in an attic room with a girl whose mouth was fuzzy dry, discovering it was the same way with her nethers. She knocked my head with her heels when I went for with my mouth. My thoughts were still of innards and the misery of inner female workings even while I jumped one. But Kemper was glad those days, turning to head back to Mother Lowde’s of a morning as bats beat for their rooms, and I’d catch him staring at the red windows of the Church. Kemper said, We’ve got to find better things, brother. I’m with you, I said.

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He nodded and we walked on, leaving behind the Church. And I think it’s high time we preach again, I said. The place is screaming for it. You’re the one who couldn’t resist the cunny and now you’re telling me you want to go back to shrieking? Let’s give our sermons just to Lowde. She likes them better anyway. You still itching from the blue? I said. Ask my ass, said Kemper. We flew at each other and it turned to halfhearted wrestling almost immediately. Some sidestreet late-night stragglers gave a few whoops and while I tried to thumb-hook Kemper’s eyes the blasted weapon-seller’s cart came rattling up the way, the old man rushing towards us with his knives chiming. His voice over the din of his equipment, calling, Ho, lads! Knives, bludgers, and barking irons all here! Kemper wrenched free from me enough to turn and holler, Go away God damn it! I’ve got a pistol already if I wanted to kill him! That served to clear out the street. So we sat on the nearest curbstones, the weapon seller watching us like a scorned dog from what he perceived as a safe distance. There’s a reason we’re here, I said. What’s that? said Kemper. To be God’s men in the world. Kemper began to pick his teeth, but snuffed something on his hand that made him take it away, saying, You ever consider maybe we aren’t?

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CHAPTER 6 God opens and shuts the prophet’s mouth

Whether we were His men or not, I was still prey to the Lord; visions came and hunched on my chest while I slept and I couldn’t kick them off; great masses on the move, armies as would invade my later life. But we spoke no more of holiness or missions, and next night we were luckless. The drunks were in vicious groups and we figured this couldn’t be for our sake alone, though for a moment it was something to consider that the bleary-eyed world had to arm itself against you. Someone’s here, said Kemper. I can’t damn see, I said. It’s too dark. I mean someone’s on the town. There’s too much wariness. I laughed and kicked some trash aside, saying, Might be the wicked women herself’s come down from the Church to cut your pisser off. I’d like to see her try, he said. I’d like to see her try. # # # There were a few still in Lowde’s just before morning and we sulked unnoticed through the small gathering of tumbler-bottom contemplators, and didn’t wait up to give her prayers or stories. And whereas after a normal night’s chip I could sleep until the early afternoon, that morning I couldn’t stay in my pallet—a recent purchase since Kemper had taken to complaining of my sleeping visions. Driven up out of the uncomfortable luxury of horsehair to pull on boots, coat, and hat, I headed down the stairs and was met by the remnants of the night before. The Bible was with me, but I’d left my pistol behind. At a bow in the riverfront street where the whorehouse way was slung like an arrow, I left my Book pocketed, took off my hat so that they could see my hair—show them Angel as well as sinner. It was far enough from the river for there to be no pavers, and without a box to give me height, I dug into the dirt with my bootheels and built up a small mound, which I then took and began to give the Word. I hear you crying out. I know what sinner’s groans sound like—I’m with you, I’m one of you. Say I’m a whelp or stripling; stolen sweets maybe, or picked a pocket? No, no, no. I’ve put it to girls. I even killed one. But I am washed; I opened my heart up to the Lord. My sins are all since my baptism, but that’s the beauty of it when you open up to Him, get yourself naked before His eyes and your baptism’s like a gun with barrels at both ends, blowing away all sins before and all sins ahead. Steal, whore, murder, cheat—do it all and repent and if you do it again it’s in the name of God. I know your wrongs, brothers and sisters, I know how you’ve wept over them. And I’ve wept for them, too! Come to me and take the hand of Jesus and he’ll lead you like he’s led me here. Come on, now! We’ll go to the river together! The late-morning passersby were for the most part unmoved. Vendors doing far brisker business watched me from their stalls, sniggering. And my voice was worn to a rasp and my tongue grown thick and dry like the Word burnt there had gone bad. By noon only a pair of raggedy old men had come forward to be saved. They were both so filthy I didn’t want to put my hands on their greasy heads when they took off their shredded hats to be touched, and I wouldn’t go down to the river with just these two. I had them stand by while I resumed the call to

70 salvation so that they jabbered behind me a list of their own sins. My idiot chorus drew no further followers, only more scorn and derision, which harried the Word out of me. I was tearing at my hair, cursing them all. My old converts followed suit and I sprung up onto a store-front railing with every cuss I knew, found a rain barrel there and clawed water from it to cast on my mumbling supplicants; and they lifted up their hands and sang praises. I was slapping them across their faces when a man going by said, Some preacher. I flung myself at him and I was the good shepherd indeed; and the crowd parted for me when I got up from the battered heckler to go home. No one suspected Angel, small and golden, for his viciousness—not until it was gloriously revealed. My fingers hurt for all the blood caked under my nails and my followers didn’t follow; they’d fled while I’d been clawing at the man on the ground and now were gone.

71

CHAPTER 7 The shining one appears

I might’ve gone in straightaway and tossed my Bible in the fire if it weren’t for the roomful of guests at Mother Lowde’s. The lady herself was at the long table with them, as was Kemper, and they all hallooed me when I came in and I stopped for a moment and looked. The man at the far head of the table was bejeweled and shining as Lucifer himself. At his neck he wore a silver collar-guard, his hands—one holding a glass, the other round the bare shoulders of a mullatoe girl—were covered in rings; chains of crosses drooped over his shirts onto a coat of fine cloth and polished buttons. Kemper rose, clapped a hand to my back and escorted me tableside to be introduced to the Reverend Ivan Morrel. I gathered from his crosses that he was a preacher of one kind or another. So the Reverend Morrel put out a gold and silver-decked hand and I forgot how battered mine was from the heckler’s face and gave it to him without a thought. Knuckle splits barely dried on my walk were reopened by his grip. So you’re the other preacher boy, eh? he said. He had a sweet voice that could lead you far places, and you knew he’d do justice to a psalm. The Reverend still held my hand and he lifted it delicately, close to his eyes, and examined my cuts. My, my, he said. You brained some poor body, didn’t you? I might’ve, I said to the titters of those seated at the table. The Reverend adjusted in his seat, let loose of his mullatoe and, propping his elbows with his rings entwined, stared me down. Did you kill him? asked the Reverend. I don’t believe, I said. More laughter all around, loudest from Mother Lowde, who seemed to know him. He had me put my hands out on the table and the others all leaned across and leered at my busted claws, squinted at my fingernails like a roomful of barbers. Morrel took my hand again and dug beneath the nail of my forefinger. Picking out a peck of flesh, he let go my hand to have a closer look at his find—rolling it into a ball between his fingers. Not taking his eyes away from the pearl of flesh, he said, You must be a fine preacher. Any man willing to dig at someone’s skin to get at his heart is a true Christian. The rest agreed. The mullatoe girl was bent over him trying to see my hands, which I’d returned to the pockets of my coat. The haphazardly pinned neck of her dress was where I found myself gawking, so I took out my hands for her to see—a fair trade. Kemper came behind me and pulled me from the girl and I’s shared gaping. The Reverend’s the reason they’re all latched together in town, he told me. So I looked again at this man and knew how he’d come by his jewels. Before I knew it Lowde had ahold of my hands and was wiping them clean of blood as best she could with her apron, which was daubed and spotted with bloodstains older perhaps than me or even Kemper. And I hear, said the Reverend while she wiped, that you boys even managed to bring the lady Lowde here into the fold. I’ve known her for years, and tried and tried—but none of it ever stuck. Mother Lowde near broke my knuckles when he said that. We’d baptized her the other

72 morning with beer from the bottom of that night’s barrel. She’d been struck with grace after hearing the story of Rachel, and had demanded to be dunked. Good as any river Jordan, she’d said, as we ladled beer over her head. When she let me go, Kemper and I found places at the table—myself next to some raunchy-looking sucker.The Reverend Morrel’s fellows were nowhere near as decked in finery as him. The man himself seemed pleased to have us there and called to Lowde for a round of coonboxes. I only got three eggs, she hollered back. Well, Hell, said the Reverend. Then one coonbox for each preacher you see here. There was no grumbling from any of the others, and I swelled a bit in the chest at being favored. Behind the counter, Lowde had taken a pin from her hair and was presently twirling the point of it against the small of an egg until she made a tiny hole there; and, pressing a finger over the opening, she turned the egg delicately over and made another such hole at its base. With this accomplished, holding fingers over both holes, she pulled a glass in front of her and put her lips to the hole at the small end and blew into it so that the white and yolk began to flutter out the larger into the glass. When the shell was empty, she set it beside the glass and went out into the street, returning with a handful of blue clay dug from the roadside. She took a pinch of the clay, put it in her mouth, and began chewing. The Reverend said, I suppose you’re both too young to have been caught yet. Yes sir, said Kemper, beaming. Mr. Woolsack, said the Reverend. You’ve got yourself some hands, but have a look at this. Morrel put out the hand I’d shook and turned it palm-up. I have been caught, he said. It was a line of raised dark flesh in a slash across his palm. We were leaning to look closer when Mother Lowde called for me to come over and I did. She was smoothing clay over the small holes in the eggs. Take they yellow to the table, she said. And as I approached with the glass of yolk, the Reverend took it from me with his free hand and continued with his story, the whole time holding out his palm for all to see the scar. The iron wasn’t hot enough when they first tried it on me. They did it right there in the God damned courthouse—my sentence for stealing horses. Horses. God knows I’ve done better than that. His men laughed. His whore was rapt as Kemper and me. Tennessee’s a strange country. They are cruel people from plowman to judge. They caught me with the bridles in my hand—not even having taken the horses proper. I ask you, how could a man have a horse full-stolen if he’s not even on its back and riding? So they dragged me into their ratty courthouse, rapped the gavel a few times, then came the man with his tinner’s glover and brand. It was smoking in his hand, but they’d been too eager. Nurse that yellow, boys, while you wait on the drink. So they had me put my hand on the rail and I saw the iron wasn’t red, and I said, It’s not hot enough, brothers. Ha! And I bet they thought I was real demon then, though the bastards knew it was right Reverend they were assaulting. But they wouldn’t hear me. I looked in the eyes of the man with the brand and when he laid it on me there was no smoke, no sizzle. O it burned, but no more than a panhandle. The tinner’s eyes bugged and he took the iron from me and went running back to his stove. They all looked at me like I’d run, but I stayed. And I didn’t ask for any reprieve for already being punished once—I wanted to see if they could burn me. There was not even a man who’d come to hold me down. They knew I was staying, to test

73 them. When the thinner returned, the brand’s end glowing red now, I said unto them, You can visit torments on me, but like Jesus, I’ll endure. And after that, when he laid it on me, I didn’t give so much as a whimper for pain. I didn’t even grit my teeth. Didn’t have to. Eggslime rolling on my tongue, I wanted to spit it out and tell him about all the coals I’d eaten. My childhood of fire. But the Reverend would hear it all from me soon enough. In the wake of a revival, sitting in our camp in the crater northwards called the Devil’s Pisspot. He’d hear it first when he called me up to witness and at that time would say nothing but, Praise God! But afterwards, in the deep black of the Pisspot, he’d pull me from our crowded camp and say that we were so alike as to be blood kin. And there he’d make a prophecy for me, of my future fortunes and blessings. The Reverend was still on his scourging when Mother Lowde brought us our coonboxes; the eggs now filled with sweet rum and sealed at both ends with clay so that you had to tooth out the hole to suck at the liquor that’d mixed with the remaining white which clung to the walls of the shell. I went baby-birdy at mine, Kemper’s cracked in his hand on his first attempt at the juice and he plucked it into his mouth and licked the rum from his hands. The Reverend for his part was an expert with coonboxes, feeding drops to the mullatoe girl while he continued. They said they’d hang me, that I’d ride the horse sired by an acorn. But they wouldn’t and it wasn’t finished after my branding. Next they took me to the post and the townspeople gathered there to watch me get my lashes. Thirty of them with a whip as big around as your arm. They stripped me of the good clothes I worn to court figuring on them respecting respectability and they threw them in the dirt. I only asked for rest twice in the whipping. And that’s why I don’t feel guilt for helping my African brothers escape their masters, because I have as many lash-scars as they do. If my whipping did anything, and I could even thank those Tennessee shits for it, was to show me my calling besides liberating horses and white souls, but black bodies as well. This had the others going, a few slapped the table and started in with their own stories but Morrel brought them down with a look. One side, split tail, said Lowde to the mullatoe as she squeezed herself onto the bench. The mullatoe started cussing her but the matron whore said nothing. Now Misses Lowde, said the Reverend. Don’t be judgy. After all, you’re one of those yourself, and the best. Or maybe it’s not a split a split no more but a ditch, said the girl. You shut your fucking mouth, Kemper said, popping up from his seat and spitting eggshell down the table. The girl was up, too, but Morrel put his eyes on her. She sat back down without even a hiss. Poor Lowde beamed at my brother, who, when Morrel turned his gaze on him, got back in his seat. We’re all friends here, said the Reverend. None of this will pass. And besides, I’m not finished. Listen close. With no time I was taken from the post to the stocks. They clamped me in and that was when I deigned to speak. For the three days of that torture I preached a sermon to the townsfolk. After a while of watching them I knew all their sins and wrongdoings and made sure they heard every bit of it. Man there, your wife lays with your mule when you’re in town! Ha! When they finally took me down, I slept for another three days. And when I woke I had a mad energy for Christ. I left that place renewed and thanked them for it all. Did you go back there? I asked.

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Of course I did—like an angel myself, some weeks later in the night with a sword and a shotgun for quick loading and wide-spraying patterns of leads—the better to bring down roomfuls. And I went from house to house and visited them in the dark. They fell halved to the ground. And they fell quartered as my anger grew hotter. By morning that horseshit-filled street where they’d thrown my coat was ankle-deep in blood, and I had to wade to get out of the town. Morrel finished his coonbox and crushed the shell in his branded hand. I’m here to preach a great revival, he said. and what a lucky chance to find here in the house of my good friend, Misses Lowde, a pair of boys who preach the Gospel. I know from Mr. Kemper and sister Lowde that you two are also brother chips as well, and I admire that just as much. You boys have God’s gift. I can see it. Drink another with me, sons, and we’ll go down and do the work of salvation together. For the love of God, let’s have full glasses!

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CHAPTER 8 The word of the Lord

All the preaching I’d missed those weeks at Mother Lowde’s was then visited back upon me in hundredfold measures of the fiercest religion I’d yet seen. After a week’s preparation of the site, building the stage, the pine-limb piles to hide barrels of whiskey and rum, and stacking chords for the the great bonfire, the Reverend Morrel’s Revival and Camp Meeting roared itself to life. He convened the revival on a Thursday and it ran like a battle into the next week with the tents of an army of frothing worshippers set up in a swatch of a field out east of the town, on the very lip of the half-mile wide crater called the Devil’s Punchbowl by citizens with clean mouths; called the Devil’s Pisspot or Devil’s Asshole by those most likely to frequent its depths. Regardless of who was doing the naming, the ownership of the aperture was always Lucifer’s. And this was fitting, as the Pisspot was said to’ve been flat land once that had been struck by a falling star. We thought we’d seen things, but the Reverend’s revival put it all in the ditch. Women would take men by the hand like picking a partner at a dance and lead them off into the bushes or a tent if he were lucky. When the drums got going and the singing started to pitch people fell flat to the dirt, stiff as boards. They were being plucked up by the spirit all around, and some just dropped with their partners to the ground and went at it. Like good Christians they kept their liqour well-hidden for the first few days, and we kept them well- supplied. But by the first Sunday of the bash the lines at the limbpiles were long and bottles and cups were held out proudly, jumping to lips, changing hands, and striking heads rapt with real religion. But it was a legion of wild believers even without the drink. With just the Reverend on the stage they’d be struck mad by the Spirit. You could look two ways and see one tossing his head and babbling, sending up ropes of spittle like streamers flung in celebration of Morrel’s words, while another would have the shakes starting in her—aquiver from her very insides. And when you looked back again the man would be nodding fiercer and slobbering long trains of strange words and sounds, and the woman would be quaking in full fit. Finally, as I said, it was likely that the two would fall together to the ground and writhe with the hand of God mashing them together. More and more would be touched with writhing, all working to the rhythm of his words. Now Morrel’s dress had changed considerably before the Revival—gone were the jewels and dandies, the fine clothes. He wore the dusty black outfit of the preacher. A thin man, despite his libertine nature, in this kit he was a black skeleton dancing on the stage, urging the mass onwards. And those words he said were of a man of Heaven and Hell. He’d raise you up into ecstasy so high that you could almost kiss Christ’s feet, and then he’d cast you down and you’d be perched on a smoking rock overlooking the lake of fire, all the while with him making note of how you burned. God Almighty! Kemper said, daring the grip of a wriggling, Spirit-shook woman. This is it! He’s the preacher, brother! If we could do this— I strained to hear him I was singing so loud, and would soon appear as though I was Spirit-struck, waving my arms madly to keep the wild women off. For our part we worked odd jobs with Morrel’s other trustees, dealing out whiskey from the woodpiles with the master of the mash, who was awed at the Mississippi folks’ capacity for it; marking the fargone drunks for pocket-picking. Walking morning with the Reverend through

76 the camp as he, great admirer of horseflesh that he was, would pass let’s say a fine stallion some farmer had ridden there to hear preach the man at that very moment saying, Brother Woolsack, Brother Kemper—that’s a fine horse. Yes it is, Reverend, we’d say. So Morrel would nod and say how he’d sure like to own a horse just like that one. And that was all he needed say, for we knew it meant we’d soon be slipping the reigns from their post and leading off the beast under cover of evening down one of the secret trails into the Pisspot. He’d schooled us in the preceding days and his followers had done the same, but in our drunkenness or inexperience we did lead a few astray at first, slipping off into the trees where we thought a trace ran, but instead would end up looking down a precipice some fifty feet high into the Pot, having to lead the whinnying horse away and hunt even harder to find the way down. And when it was that the worshippers were whipped to full froth there would be cripples sent onstage to beg and be healed. But our Reverend Morrel was no mean huckster or mere magician. He claimed no powers he didn’t have. And why would he? The man was already so punishingly gifted. He’d embrace the cripple and call out that he would be most blessed of all in Heaven, and the worshippers would scream louder than if he’d healed the poor bastard, which he’d done anyway with money. The Reverend was a patron of the odd and the afflicted and all who approached the stage were in his employ. For Morrel they paraded on withered legs or no legs at all. One who walked on all fours, with his limbs cocked at weird angles in their joints, called Johnny Crabbe; a whole mess of hairlips sputtering praises—forever speaking in tongues, those perfect Pentecostals; a man born with two heads, called Look-Twice Philbert; the clutch of the regular crippled, with withered legs or crooked spines, or blindness; and the last was Thorny Rose, who’d be called just Rose if it weren’t for the pants-leg-tearing briar-patch thorn of an endowment fixed on her cunny. She had both a both players pieces for the game, and it had to be handled delicately onstage when she appeared, only spoken of—maybe a flutter of skirt for a hint as though a propitious wind had blown through. And later she’d go down from the stage to her wagon and charge fees for gawkers. Further in our time under the Reverend, when one of his Blest Creatures was too tired or pained to go up, or if it’d run off, he’d have Kemper and me perform as the lame. Our ailments changed with his sermons and the villages we came to. But none of this had happened yet, and we were out in the throng in awe like the rest, having only just shook off a pair of Spirited women, listening to him bless his freaks with a song. One of the women had come away with a hunk of my hair in her hand, and as she ran I saw strands floating golden after her. And at the close of a hymn that shook the ground Morrel called me out of the crowd to witness. You’ll see, said the Reverend, why this boy’s name is Angel! I do not recall going up to the stage as much as being drawn by hands all around, swallowed by bodies but still moving and flung up onto the boards at the black stovepipe legs of the Reverend Morrell, who helped me up and turned me to face the biting, jumping, farting, singing congregation that I’d just been passed through and was now desperate for me. The man at the skin drums began to beat out a rhythm to preach to and I said some cruel words to Preacher-father in my mind: Who is the hand of God now? Prodigal? Was Christ a prodigal son? You rotten old pig fucking bastard, I Am. And I would’ve gone on that way, but there came

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Morrel’s voice in my ear saying, My throat’s done. They’re yours, sonny. Buy me time to get a drink. I spread my arms wide and opened my mouth as though I’d swallow all their moans and calls and wild tongues and spit Salvation back at them. # # # I thought the Reverend was trying to carry me off the stage. I’d fallen to my knees when the last of the story left me and there were arms at my shoulders and I raised my head to see my brother and Morrel weeping above me, holding up my shoulders so that I didn’t collapse face-down. They lifted me up like a pelt to show the crowd, which was blistering the air with hallelujahs. Morrel took my face in his hands and kissed me. Jesus walks, he said. In their elation they dropped me back down again. Kemper went to find my coat where I’d thrown it aside in the throes of my witnessing and he draped it over my shoulders. They began to lead me off as the drummer beat a slow dirge and the crowd grew mad with glory and let out peals of concern for my hunched and shuddering person. And before they had me to the steps I was fulfilled again and I threw off their hands, cast my coat aside, and went scrambling back to the stagefront—drummerman beating crazily—and started up again, my legs jittering and stomping as to splinter the boards. There was nothing but the sorest kind of exhaustion after that. Those week-long howlers were good training for war and it would take me a few to learn how to survive them. For days afterwards it was like you’d been kicked near to death by angels—a glorious ache. # # # One of those dog-tired nights we’d returned to the Pisspot with some horses and I was too whipped to even have a drink of whiskey with the others. I slept in a heap there on the ashy dirt before the fire while they played dice off my back. I was popped awake by a hand at my shoulder, and sat up, aching from deeds both ill and good, waiting for my eyes to come clear like river water draining through a stocking. When the Reverend Morrel spoke, his voice was gone and I had to bend close for him to rasp me this prophecy: My father was a preacher, he said. But he was the preacher of a limp little flock in a one- room church. Him and the rest of my people’d go mad if they saw all this. He was lazy and stupid, and his God was lazy and stupid. He made me hate him and the God he led his worms to sing to so softly. I hated that God so damned much that I set out to take apart his carcass with my own hands and build something worthwhile out of it. You have that in you already at such a young age. Our God is hungry for souls, for everything. And he needs hungry people to do the chewing for him. There are those that he loves and favors in all we do. We owe it to Him to go out into the lying world and shape it. Who cares if we kick holes in something that’s rotten? Listen to them all crying and singing up there—we have the dominion of faith in our hands, and if we help them to grace we can help ourselves to them, when they deserve it. It’s only fair commerce. And we’re still not coming out ahead. And you know this all already. I look at you and see the promise of the Lord fulfilled. Don’t fail me and don’t fail Him. I see you being known in all the land, and you’ll have the sword so that the heathen may know you. All that I do is to get nearer to the time of the great battle. And it will be soon, and He’ll rain down blood to anoint us. My God, boy, I lift niggers by the dozens from their masters as easy as cockleburs from my pantsleg. Now imagine if you kept them all—and what about that army? It will come to pass, and we’re the ones to make it so. Do you understand me?

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I nodded that I did. But to be truthful, I was lost in it all. Good, said Morrel. And rising up to go, he told me now he knew how the Baptist felt. He said, I saw that sky open up when you took back the stage and a voice was in my head and it said to me; Through him My work shall be done. Take him to you and teach him. The Reverend’s face was clenched in the sternness of his prophesy and the toll it’d taken on him to speak. When he left, hacking and spitting off into the camp, I laid awake a while prying apart his words and hunting them for truth. I found them utterly golden, and my purpose was confirmed.

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CHAPTER 9 Falling away

We said goodbye to Mother Lowde. Whores, even retired, rarely give kisses. But she did. Sweaty embraces to their bosoms, yes, but not kisses. When we returned from the camp meeting she told us we looked changed. Lowde was not in Natchez when Kemper and I returned a year later, a pair of Morrels in our own right, on the way to fulfilling the Reverend’s prophecy. Someone told us she’d abandoned her house of a night and some said they saw her go to the river and throw herself in; others that she walked right onto a barge as it debarked and was carried happily away just as she’d come. Both are just as fitting for that queen of her profession, who, as we gathered our things, wept a little that her boys wouldn’t be there to give her stories in the mornings. Heavy-hearted, Kemper promised her we’d return in the winter, when the evangelical mission season with the Reverend was finished. I was too shook myself to say much of anything to Mother Lowde and watched her doubt his every word, as the whore of age long learned to judge false the words of men. # # # No man I ever loved the fine life more than Reverend Morrel. If some fool asked him why he loved jewels, good clothes, and all the trappings of wealth, he’d tell him that he worked hard for his little luxuries; perhaps propping his gleaming knee-boots on the tableside, adjusting one of his rings as though it could tell him its purpose, he’d say that he may be a libertine, but he was also a driving, singing, preaching, working libertine. All I have and will ever have, the Reverend would say, I’ve worked for. He was in his town-going attire, waiting for us in the street outside Lowde’s with his lieutenants that weren’t down in the Devil’s guarding the take from the Revival; they were horsed in cordon around him and they waved us into their circled and presented us with two fine mounts—no doubt the prides of some farmer at that very moment cursing his ill luck. The Reverend must’ve seen how stricken I looked, or seen Kemper sending his freckled knuckles to his eyes to avoid the looks of the others, for he said: Now there, that woman’s a damn-near saint in my book and I know she’s been good to you boys—and you’ll be back and you can buy her the whole damn street if you want. And suddenly these hard-looking men in their ill-fitting finery were tipping their beavers to Kemper as he hitched his kit to the saddle, all of them in hushed reverence and gravity extolling the virtues of both mothers and whores. It’d be a night more in the Pisspot readying all the stealings. At the close of the Revival, as was his custom on such occasions, Morrel had the stage and all the stalls and whiskey blinds burnt and the remaining worshippers celebrated their salvation before a pillar of fire. So when we rode through the place on our way to the downward trail into the crater, it was like passing again through the remains of the pilgrim village. I was quiet as a trap unsprung, watching Kemper. Don’t start thinking you’re Jesus himself just yet, he said. I did not know what to say. He’d barely spoken since that Sunday, but it’d all been a wheeling ride of exhaustion, and I hadn’t thought that he might have misgivings. I never blasphemed like that, I said to Kemper. You may not’ve, but I don’t want you getting carried off by what he says. You did good in front of all those drunks—it was a beautiful thing. It was. I learned then and there that you

80 were the one built for preaching. I would’ve told it to you, but he got to you first. I wondered had he heard the prophecy I’d groggily received. They’re all scared of you, Angel. None of them’s said two words to me. Well they talk to me. They don’t know if you’re sixteen or a hundred. And with what Morrel’s said about you, they already think he’s bringing you up as his side man. We circled down into the crater and were set to burying crates and boxes by lantern light; in a place directed by the Reverend which would remain marked only in his head, kindly removed for his later redemption the same as he’d do with any treasures too great to carry off, or the bodies of some who’d struggled against robbery. Death by misfortune warranted Christian-like concealment, but his enemies would be left out in the open for possums to make homes of them. And the Reverend knew where they all lay. I admire the hell out of him, I said. So do I, and I’m grateful for everything—even though we’re digging holes like we did before—but I’m worried. You’re my brother, and I want your head right. I’m sound, I said. And even as I said it in the lights of the fires scattered in the crater woods where the shadow-forms of Morrel’s misshapen blessed shambled through the trees—at what tasks, I did not know, but figured even oddities had their jobs in this man’s army. And army was the right word; for even repaired to the depths of the Pisspot our company retained that aspect of battlefield camp. Tents and fires; monotonous work interrupted by brief outbreaks of rage. We finished burying the goods and redded to ride out in the morning before bedding down. Listening to the sounds of brawl starting and fizzling, we spoke no more on divinity that night. Next morning would be arduous, working the horses up out of the Pot for half the day, with the herd of ill-gots taken off to market in Natchez by agents of the Morrel, other squadrons breaking off to ride ahead of our main party to scout the towns and settlements. When we were on plumb ground, Kemper and I fell in, weary already, and rode beside the cart lashed with the great drums, and every so often a hand holding a stick wrapped in leather at one end would appear from out of the tarp which covered the cart and beat a note or two of march for our long procession. We sang hymns right along.

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CHAPTER 10 Slaves to whomever we obey

Black skin called out to the Reverend Morrel as much as horseflesh, or the gold that either would yield. Between Revival stops that season he couldn’t restrain himself if he saw one or a few niggers bent to some task at the lonesome edge of a plantation. These were older family retainers who could be trusted out of sight of master and seer. And with one falling under his eyes or the eyes of one of his scouts, Morrel would gather to him some of the friendlier-looking fellows and ride out to meet his quarry. He bore a malicious pity for the nigger man. Morrel was always prepared for such dubious blessings as an unsupervised slave; if we came upon one such as that, we were to hush and hide the misshapens, who’d without fail stick out their heads, legs, and claws, to ask why we’d stopped; have them put away their offending limbs, hide our own armaments, and, as Morrel said it—put on our Christly faces before we went to meet the poor thing. Morrel seemed to bring out of you things that’d been there all along. I became sure at the pulpit; I hardened to the wildness of the Revival days and by that October with a trail of scorched stages behind me, had the endurance for it down and I’d learned his kind of pity for the lot of blacks. We’d come into a country of women. They outnumbered the men in those frontier places, and I could take the stage with those drums beating to my voice and make a lake of ladies drop to the ground. Those who weren’t satisfied by the touch of Spirit I’d given them would find me and lead me off to the bushes. Kemper had by then surrendered me the preacher’s spot and had taken on some minor leaderships. To the scrubby few who ranked below him, he’d give any orders he could, even if they were secondhand. I let him have at it. Like when the old Negroe was first sighted, Kemper was the one sent to ask me if I’d checked the horribles and if my pistol was hidden. And what a sight it was, riding over to the Blest’s wagon to find Thorny Rose sitting spread-legged in the gunchair, holding loose to reins. I tried to keep my eyes from where her cleft and thorn we bared out to the sunlight. Yall have to get inside, I said, eyes skyward. I don’t, said the Thorny Rose. All I got to do is put my legs together and pull down my dress. And she did neither, only bounced her knees a bit like the wagon was still rolling. That’s all fine, she said. But I won’t listen to any man who won’t look me in the eye. I would if I could, but— And why can’t you look me in the eye? Well, I said, keeping fixed up at the roof of the wagon so that she was only fuzzy movement in the dirty corner of my vision, you’ve got your bush bared. Thorny Rose laughed. No preacher should be scared of a bush, she said, nor a little rick of thorn. I’m not scared, I said. You might need be. What I’ve got’s like nothing you’ve ever seen. I’ve been to Natchez. I’ve dropped in plenty vats. Not like this, yelowhead. I might just curl your pretty hair. And so I looked down at her. It was then that Kemper rode up behind me, and after yipping in surprise, shook himself free of that same sight which still held me transfixed, said,

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The Reverend wants you to come with us. I said I would but didn’t move nor look away. Kemper rode off laughing. Come around one night, sonny, said the Rose as she adjusted to cover. But if you want to pick my flower, you’ll have to catch a prick. And with that I whirled on my horse and clattered off towards the others. When I caught up, Kemper was leaning in among the four that’d come with Morrel and they were all laughing and giving me little taunts. All except Morrel, who seemed not to hear a thing and kept his eyes on the dark figure walking a mule lashed to a cart full of cane strippings towards a distant millhouse, offering a wave of the hand which the old Negroe didn’t return. So we all got down from our horses and followed Morrel out across the field. Often as not niggers would still take off running, but this one pulled up his mule and stayed. He looked back over his shoulder at us, Morrel in the lead, waving and smiling well before the old thing could’ve seen him. The Reverend sped towards his prize, arms out as though to embrace him, which he did; wrapping the black bones tight and holding him close to his chest—for the Reverend was a head taller than his quarry—whereas the old slave remained immobile, watching us. Morrel talked as though he already knew him, saying: Brother Zach, I’d give you a coat to wear but I know surely as you’ve got a master who’d send a man out to work this biting day in nere but his shirtsleeves would also whoop you for bringing in new clothes. The old man’s eyes were on us as he said, He do. He think I stole it. And you wouldn’t have. The coat would be a gift from one friend to another. A nod of the black head. Your suffering in life will be rewarded in Heaven, my friend, said the Reverend, who’d yet to let him go. I pray for it. I pray all day. Good, said the Reverend. But that doesn’t mean you can’t help yourself here on earth. Ain’t no helping it, said Brother Zach. Can I offer you the help of a little whiskey? Morrel held out his silver flask and began unscrewing the cap. I can’t. I insist, said the Reverend, holing the flask gleaming before the man’s face, which was tucked up under the crook of Morrel’s arm like a bosom barroom friend. Brother Zach shook his head, but Morrel held out that flask like a beacon to his eyes. It’s awfully bitter this morning, and a touch of this will warm your faithful soul. When Brother Zach took Morrel’s offering, tipped down his throat for so long his gullet bobbed—but he didn’t take his lips from it or wave the flask away—we all congratulated him. And when he’d exhausted it, Brother Zach’s thanks were all raspy coughs while the Reverend made sure he saw him take that same flask to his own white lips and drink. I can’t say whether it was this act of brotherliness that did it, or Morrel’s words, or his steady embrace, or the course of whiskey now running in him, but Brother Zach now looked on the Reverend Morrel with lovesome awe. But, then again, so did we all. The business at hand never left the Reverend’s mind and when Brother Zach’s fit had ended and his eyes had watered down, he addressed him again. What keeps a good man like you here with such a wicked master? He keeps me, said Brother Zach. They’s nowhere else.

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There is, though—up to the free and clear North. And I can take you there. I am a man of God, and we’re travelling up that way. Do you see those wagons yonder? We can take you in secret comfort and spirit you away to freedom. No more work, no more, toil, no more cruelty. Would you want that? O, Rev, I want it. I want it terrible. Morrel hugged him harder and both looked near to weeping. Good man, he said. You’re a good man, Brother Zach. But listen, I’ve done this many times before with many of your brothers and sisters, and what you’ll need when you get up there is money. A little something to stake yourself with. Free or not, coin is the thing. Money, said Brother Zach, the word itself falling from his blue gums like a silver coin dropped to a tabletop. Yes, and the way you can have you money and your freedom is if you come with me, and as we go along I’ll sell you a time or two, then come and rescue you from your new masters. Each time I’ll give you half of the money. Brother Zach nodded so gravely deep his head touched the Reverend’s chest. Do you have any family here? Anyone you’d want to bring with you? No, Rev. Is your house close enough to hear me fire a pistol on this road? Plenty close. I’ll hear it. I’d hear it if I was drowned. Good man. But don’t be overeager and make your dash for freedom before you hear my pistol speak. We don’t want any of your fellows following you, or worse, your master or one of his men. They won’t hear me, I’ll slip out quiet. Good. Then wait for the pistolshot and come to meet me out on this road. Jesus I’ll be running. And so went the Reverend Morrel’s acquisitions. They were always easy on the front end and I never saw him fail. We’d ride on far enough, to the next town, and meanwhile the Reverend would wait along the roadway, and would sound off with his pistol, and soon enough there’d appear one like Brother Zach. Those black faces—wide-eyed and giddy with the freedom Morrel had given them—haunted our caravan for weeks. God, they could take suffering with a smile. Standing up on the block in some little town in Mississippi, Brother Zach looked like he had not a care in the world, beaming white teeth while the other Africans, sold and unsold, sulked all around him. So I came to know the awful kind of powerful faith the nigger man has. When he escaped the first time, Morrel got Brother Zach drunk and let him palm half his worth in silver for a night, before taking it back for safekeeping. But while he had that money in his hands, old Zach held it like a talisman and wept. He talked about his woman and his children. Morrel might take off his shirt and showed him the scars from his lashing. I know the sting of the whip, my friend, said the Reverend. And Brother Zach would go on weeping. This business with Brother Zach was but an instance. I could fill this gospel with accounts of his nigger stealing. But was all of a piece, all horrible, all enough to make you hate the white man and the black. You had to be drunk to bear it, as it would be with me later in life. And there were times when I wanted to squall along with Brother Zach or whoever we held that week. This was harder than any killing or robbery. Kill a man and you don’t carry his corpse along with you so that each day you witness his putrification; you dispatch him and your guilt with the same killing

84 shot. Even if you have to fill his belly up with sand and sink him in the river—which we learned to do also those days with Morrel—he’s gone soon enough and stolen gold mixes in your pockets and is soon passed to pay for other sins. But this was to live with a breathing, talking, crying corpse that’d eat breakfast with you of a morning, beaming about with free.

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CHAPTER 11 The borders of the land

While the Reverend went to sell Brother Zach for the second time, I was left behind with Kemper and a man named Jasper, to help him put away the man he’d shot mid-robbery. But all this Jasper did was spend the better part of half an hour while we were digging in the dirt just off the roadside, trying to write his name in blood on a plank. Dribbling at the wood with a switch he’d run off and pulled before the smoke had even cleared, and which he dipped continuously at the well of the shot man’s wound. It was Kemper and I digging, and my brother kept on shaking his head at Jasper, who scratched and clawed and whipped at the plank and I don’t think he even knew how to write, much less spell. He cussed his stiffening inkwell and wondered aloud if it’d be better to cut him open. Kemper threw his shovel down, went over and knocked Jasper’s hat off, saying, I’ll smash the board over your God damned head if you don’t get moving and help. Jasper, fixing his hat atop his greasy head, was now cocked all funny at Kemper. Eat shit, preacherboy, he said. I got me a name to make. You’ll have one with the Reverend for all this bullshit, said Kemper. Fuck you, said Jasper, switch a-popping. You know what? I’m putting my mark on you, boy! I’m putting my mark on you and him! Jasper was pointing back and forth from Kemper and me with his switch, and I don’t know if it was that I felt the blood from its tip flecking me in the eyes and face so that I had to shake my head or if it was that I was sick to death of nigger misery or if it was what he said next, which was something about us being fresh off the tit, but I drew my pistol from my coat—the same pistol I’d held on the now-dead man, and I shot him. He fell and was able to watch himself redwash his name from the placard. Christ, said Kemper. We’ll hear about this. No we won’t, I told him. Not when you tell the Reverend what this fool did. Kemper only shook his head and went over to Jasper and took him by the ankles and began dragging him over to the trees, where we’d been digging our hole for the tradesman. I heard Jasper sputter a breath and groan a little while Kemper drug him, and every so often, while we dug, I thought I heard him moaning. But when I’d look, he wasn’t moving. When the hole was deep enough for one, Kemper got out, rolled the tradesman in, and said, I’m not digging a grave for that son of a bitch. Fine by me, I said. And so we filled in the grave and brought Jasper deeper into the woods, set him up against a tree with his smeared placard in his lap. Buzzards don’t often have a menu for their meals, I said. This got my brother laughing, and we went on like that, in good humor. By then I’d already lost track of how many men I’d killed. Not because they were many, that I was some great murder-machine, but because I’d come natural to the conclusion that you don’t keep ledgerbooks or hunter’s counts of killing. If a man said he’d killed five, he’d maybe killed one, and if he said he killed ten, he’d probably killed none. Keeping numbers was for schoolboys, sportsmen, and clerks. I was none of these, but the winecup of God’s fury, overfull and brimming.

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CHAPTER 12 The prophet’s message

Later, when we’d caught up, I told Morrel that Jasper had been gunning for posterity and I’d written his name in the Book of Life. Those days I’d just speak and out would come the knowledge. More often than not what I said was truthful. And the Reverend Devil himself seemed to see the truth in what I said, for no punishments of chastisements came. But he was trailed by an at-the-moment grateful Brother Zach, and who knows if what he said was true, pulling me aside, saying, Not in front of Brother, here. Then when I told him it all, he only said, That’s fine, son. You did right. Some of the old hands watched me more carefully after that, and I can’t say it was a punishment but Thorny Rose was all girly-giggly upon hearing about it—probably from the sputtering mouths of the pair of hairlips who made up her court. I rode by once and she was whispering in one of the hairlips’ ears, cutting her eyes—which I swear were yellow—at me, and the hairlip had his own eyes closed and his lips were fluttering with laughter. So I had to avoid her wagon while we rode on to Natchitoches, Morell hours ahead with Brother Zach, already in town and finalizing his sale to one of the French planters—for what I’m sure seemed to that Frenchman a very fair price. Surely this preacher was a good man, to give such a fair deal on such a smiling and well-mannered Negroe. So the Reverend made an arrowhead of respectability before us, the boys, and the Blessed—punching a way for us right through the fat head of Louisiana. He would be in camp with us that night, riding back niggerless in the late evening to meet us, having already staked out a spot for the Camp Meeting on land that same French planter, no doubt feeling grateful for the deal he’d received, had granted us to use. In the catholic country, the preaching would be toned down, and instead the affair would take on a carnival atmosphere. The musicians would reign, and the Blessed. Kemper and I still had some fear that there’d be reprisals for shooting Jasper, so we kept watches that first night across the border, in what would be our home state for some warring years. After while it seemed clear that the fool man had made no friends, and there was nothing for me to watch but sleeping and some bodies jostling under blankets and billowing tent flaps. It was sometime into the late dark, that I saw, by our fire, Morrel come from out of his tent and go to where his horse was hitched. After that I couldn’t see him, but I heard him mount up and ride off. Call him a demon for seeing so well in the dark—not even morning dark, or moonlit dark but stars-out dark—and yet I’d one day see just the same. In the morning the Reverend was still gone, but we went straightaway into hewing and rigging and I tell you I had to be light on my feet to dodge the affections of Thorny Rose. I was with Kemper and some others laying piney limbs over whiskey kegs when up came Rosey strutting imperious and holding up her hems for the tall grasses yet to be mashed down by the crowds’ feet. We’d cut the limbs just before from the logs they’d use to build the stage, and my arms were all covered in tar. If you’d put a match to me I’d have burnt good and long, like a human pine knot. She had a cup in her hand and was trialed by a smattering of her freakly court—the hairlips, and Johnny Crabbe, who was a ways behind them, skittering down the hillside. Thorny Rose marched around us cockwise, like she wanted a fight, but with honey in her voice. Fellows, said the Rose, and they parted for her to get to the spigot. When she’d filled her

87 cup and quaffed a dram, she passed the cup to one of the hairlips and while he slopped and slurped she squared up to me, bending close and sniffing the air. You smell sweet today, little Angel. The boys all went to laughing, even Kemper. The hairlip was laughing, too, as he passed her back the cup, which she drank from again, and, giving off a hiss of whiskey, sidled closer to me, looking momentarily sated. You might get stuck if you get too close, I said, winning a few guffaws myself. She didn’t bristle at this but handed me her cup, grinning possumly at me while I drank and Johnny Crabbe presently arrived. Destinately named, he was, walking as he did on all fours, with hands and feet warped into leathery claws—for he could fit no boots to them they were so misshapen—and skin redder than any Indian’s. I offered him a sip, but he declined and instead gamboled past Rose, giving her skirts a flip of the claw for which she returned him a shoe to his backside while he got his head under the spigot and drank, shoulders shaking with laughter. That’s plenty, said one of the boys. Yall get on if you’re not gonna work. That’s right, Crabbe, said Kemper, toeing at him. The Blessed did a little frowning and grousing, but all soon left. Thorny Rose snatched her cup from me, saying, If you want another drink, then you’d better come to me, my sweet. Then she goosed Johnny Crabbe on his way. Sorry boys! he called. I’d help you, but I’m just a poor Crab! Lucky you’re a crab or we’d work you to the bone! Kemper hollered back. I smelled the tar on me and did wonder where in the Creator’s plan did these mistakes of his fit. Then I apologized to the Lord for doubting him, calling his Blessed mistakes. Forgive me, Lord, for I know that all Your creatures have their talents and abilities, divinely given. And this was true, for even Crabbe was not so crippled—the little scuttler could crush a pecan in his claw. # # # As happened so often, when they day’s work was done, I met Kemper by the fire and sought out his council. Giving him my fears in one great burst, I moved closer and closer to the fire as I talked until I must’ve stood with my boots half over the lip of the pit. I didn’t care that the leather smoldered. Such was the habit of my youth—when I felt lost, I moved near to the only sure thing I’d ever known. When my coattails were smoking, my brother grabbed me by the collar and yanked me from the fire. Christ, he said, patting out the flames. You’re a prize fool. I know it. My head’s screwed wrong suddenly. Shouts came from the attending boys: Preacher boy’s lit himself! Better keep the whiskey from him! Shit, keep the guns from him! You gonna let him talk like that, Angel? Get after him, killer! Amid all of this went Johnny Crabbe, aced for sure, making crazy-legged circles of us, laughing. And his laughter and his dance drew the same from the boys. Someone plucked strings, a keybox groaned to life. Round the fire became the place of jigging and the singing of hymns modified to rough uses. Kemper took me dazed aside and we made the the capering men to the edge of the camp. You’d be mad to want you wick in her, he said. She’s touched and weird.

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Mine eyes behold strange women, and mine heart does utter perverse things, I said. It’s because you’re just as wopped as she is, said Kemper. Johnny Crabbe scampered to our knees, singing: Tell me where’s the loverman? Where’s that loverman gone? Loverman don’t ta-rry too long at the wine For your mamma’s a-waiting you at home. Kemper jabbed at him. What’re you doing, Crabbe, spying for her? Maybe I am, said Crabbe. Get on, he said, kicking harder. But Johnny Crabbe was too used to beats and kicking, and he took Kemper’s boots right off his and sped off into the dark. Kemper cussed and stomped in his sock-feet for a minute, and once he’d recovered himself he was on me again. You dip your wick in her and she might snuff your candle out. My wick’s so waxed I don’t care a bit. Lord, said Kemper. He prayed on this, all the while being given a round of back-claps by the ring-dancing revelers. You’re in trouble, brother. Drink deep, if you’re going into that breech. The boys jigged more furiously and though they were singing to Jesus it moved me just as well through the dust and sparks their dancing raised, to lift a bottle from an unwise hand. And so I went armed with Kemper’s words and the bottle to make my war on Rose’s cloven place. Like the Lamb, I was led by chords invisible; the Heavenly knot digging deep into me, saying, Son of man, go see yourself greater abominations. I walked and drank and it was like I was an unjust weight on the Lord, and it seemed he tried to shirk me. The camp was all turned out and little revels like the one I’d left had broken out all around. Spirits were in the trees, with everyone rattling skewers along the legs of their spits, made bells of pots dangling from tripods. The banging and the ringing went on as wove the trees, and I recall testing the bottle for its weight so that I’d have something else to bring her besides my furious need. I thought I heard shrieks from down Thorny Rose’s way, of the women taking up their own part of the song which had by then swept through our encampment and joined them all at throat and leg and hand in dancing, singing, flailing music. Again to the whiskey and it struck me in my throat as stern father’s hand. So I laid me at the foot of a tree, to loll with the great and terrible music I’d hear reproduced so many times—the gutstring-plucking flutters and hard-drink yowling of the Camp. This Loverman swore to God he’d never tarry at the wine again—those pleas and offers to be repeated all the drinking man’s life—and choked back bile, reeling to look about for some place that wasn’t furious with movement, then busily studying the undersides of my eyelids only to open them and find the Reverend Morrel seated beside me, the line of his hatbrim covering his face but the lips skinned back in a smile. The Reverend had some of the finest, whitest teeth I’ve seen, and he was baring them then—whether out of pain or satisfaction, I did not know. My own mouth was all spittle, and upon recognizing him I could do nothing but dribble ropes of it from my dumb lips. To this day whiskey gets my froth up, but I don’t want to be counted among the dripping droolers who dot the corners and all the air with their babble and spit. This brain of mine was borne on a sea of whiskey, hearing Morrel say, You’ve got too weak a liver to be drinking that way. And this vision—for how else had he seen my liver? buried as it was within my other sin-

89 black guts—made him seem all the more like a demon-angel, lighting briefly on this earth, dispensing wisdom and dread fear to young apostles such as I, suffering in my liquor-swirled mind to bear the teachings and rebukes of that master. Son, said the Reverend. There’s nothing worse than that wandering drunk going to and fro with no guide or bearings. Is he not unlike the man who’s forsaken the Lord and gone his Godless way, lost, lost, lost. With that triplication I was caught and listening hard, watching Morrel become two or three in my vision. Drink until you feel just the fingertips of the liquor at your mind, he said, uncorking a bottle of his own. This is brandy, son. And it steers your head clearly towards fine thoughts and finer things. He drank and put the bottle to me, saying, Drink this and tell me where it is you think you’re going. Drink I did, then filled with sweetness said, To see that Rose. The Reverend Morrel did not laugh as I expected, but again passed me the bottle—and in such times one is not unlike the mewling infant, always hurting for a pull—and with a wave of his bedizened fingers dashed away the thought. I suppose you’re sitting on that wicked ramrod now, eh? All it wants is to push powder, right? Ah, poor Angel. Be content and avoid that strange. You’ve seen the show and you know that she’s not right. Suddenly I croaked, She’s been after me. Can’t help that. She could be bat-winged or have frog’s feet, or— Ah, but what she does have is more wondrous and worse than all that. You’ve got some experience in the rough downunder, I know, but do you know its construction? The hew and cut of that clave? God hides it with bristle but on the youngest or the rarely bald. Have you made a study of it enough to know? When you were playing nasty with that young prairie thing you sinned yourself down the river with, how much did you notice? There was no telling the Reverend how I’d talked into her that night out by the hog pens. It would’ve brought me to tears. I only shook my head. Well, that’s just youth’s fault, and where in youth is there not fault? You’re half-made at your age; unfinished maquettes of what one day will be real people. And in those fully-formed people of the distaff side—the women, son—beneath their skirts and pettys and hair is that clutch of longing what drives us all to ruinous ways, and behind even that there is hidden something greater. And its crown is the house of uterine fury. This jewel, normally infinitesimally tiny, in Rose’s bloom has outgrown its setting. The cliver’s what it’s called in physicians’ books. Have you noticed the place where you rub when they groan and direct and landlords of your tenant in their womb? Do you know that time when all of a sudden they’re fearsome angry because you’ve forgotten them in all your rooting? That is all because of the cliver. And the secret of the cliver is that it’s just like what we’ve got, minus the stones, and even more sparky to the touch—but small, pitiful small. So much you cannot tell its configuration, unless you go on the rabbit-hunt through the brambles that it takes to find her. But our Miss Rose has no such troubles of genital subterfuge. Her cliver’s overlarge and stands there like a boychild’s endowment, lording over her queen’s clutch. Now I was leering not from brandy or whiskey but from words, and my head was tripping perilous close to wrack and ruin. No virtue was he preaching, but some deeper wisdom like Solomon might’ve known. My sister, my spouse, your cliver is like the tower of Babel, and I

90 am so confused. The timpany of makeshift the camp instruments was broken by gunfire and louder whoops. And yet the Reverend Morrel didn’t shudder or seem to notice; only taking a further swig from his brandy and going on: Angel, don’t trouble yourself with things like that just now. In a day and a night we’ll be laid down with beauties fresh off the continent. Iberia! Iberia calls to us! This place is different, son, from Tennessee or the Mississippi—it’s hair so dark and eyes so dark you’ll want more than anything to put your light inside and make them glow. Daughters of Spain and France await you, and their names are unpronounceable, but that’s just the tip of their mystery. They wear purple and are like fruit with bruised skin, and in them is the knowledge. Yes! Save your wandering and humping from tonight and bottle it up, boy. Like a fine vintage, you should keep it. You will never be stronger in all your life as you are now. This is the country for sportsmen. This is where the camellia’s always dripping and full. This is a place full of darkies, all wounded and harshly treated, and one day I’ll own them all in one way or another. Every one of my dark children from here to New Orleans, enough niggers for a great black army. And one day my shiny children will march and we’ll take it all. That’s my destiny, Angel, as ordained by God. To lead black Israel out of bondage and be their Moses, crowned and ensconced as Lord of this realm. You’ve followed me here, and don’t think I don’t know this is part of His Plan. I’ll share it all with you. A kingdom, son. So don’t spill your seed on that rocky patch that is being wasted even as we speak. Save it for the coming glory. And, God, in every part of me knotted to that tree by drink and shame, when the Reverend rose and put a healing hand to my head, saying, You’re cured, before disappearing off into the night, I did believe him. And was wary forever afterwards of those long in the cliver.

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CHAPTER 13 Fools for Christ’s sake

Having avoided that Rose’s thorn, I went untroubled about my work setting up the carnival while ghostlike went the Reverend Morrel for those days, appearing at camp only to depart at odd hours for Natchitoches. I imagined him to be sharing those coonboxes he loved so well with the locals, bringing them closely in, shortening the distance between his jeweled hands and their purse-strings. One day, finished with work and swimming in drink, Kemper and I walked out westwards down the road, towards the river but not the town,—which Morrel had banned—, trading good-natured punches and half-strength kicks like in our early days. And maybe it was all this chancing and boyhood feeling—so recent, but so long banished by our crimes—that made me say what I did. Brother, I said, I’m glad we were run out. Kemper prayed on it for a few paces and I thought perhaps I’d done him some injury until he spoke: I’m glad, too. There wasn’t a thing there for us but dirt and plague and infamous fathers. I couldn’t have lasted. I thank the Lord we’re gone from there. You barely lasted the trip down, brother. It’s because there was nothing I could do, sent away like that. If I’d have stayed I would’ve killed all the holediggers and set the entire place afire. What’d you do if we went back? Just what I said. Find those Fladeboes and march them at gunpoint to the river, and there I’d tie heavy stones to their legs and have them wade in to the edge of the deepest water. Then I’d kick them both in and watch them gurgle. All that for your girl? asked Kemper. No, I said—the word escaping the clamp of my teeth before I could stop it, and I spent the next few moments trying to reconcile this in my head, but for my miserable life could not. Next in my mind was more and more murder, all of the settlers, blowing them to pieces and burying over their holes. And finally Preacher-father, who I’d meet no doubt on a wind-whipped hillside, both of us in decked in deep black clothes—befitting men of God—that would show no shadows from the fire that’d surely be built there, all full of coals perfect to be handled by child- me, all sized to be brought into a tiny whimpering mouth, chewed at high heat, suffered in the boy’s mouth their righteous burning, so that I would talk with this crinkled, toughened tongue, even more wounded versions of King James speech; he would’ve filled the pit with endless glowing coals, and have me eat them. And when I’d finished them all I would be nothing but a singed and smoking rack of bones; and I would speak through chattering teeth, gasping out breaths of ash before I collapsed into cinders. But I would not eat the coals my father set out for me. I would meet him at the edge of the glowing maw of the pit with my pistol outraised and I know he would stand secure on the other side, feeling that he was safe from my anger and wrath because the gulf of fire he’d lain down would keep us separate and him from harm. And I would raise my boot up and take that first step onto his plied coals and stride onwards toward him with the mouth of my pistol swallowing him when I stepped out of the fire unscathed and speaking clearly in a voice with no fat tongue and no fire-harm to him That I am the Lamb come to baptize you; and the smoke through which I’d passed would whirl into a perfect pillar reaching up to

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Heaven; and my shot would be a tiny guttering coal rolling through the air towards the very bridge of his nose, and he would know. My brother, unawares of the vision raging through my drunken mind, replied: Whatever it’s for, he said, I know the feeling. When we rode on those pilgrims, I didn’t know why and I was sorry for it afterwards. Then when I sat that man in Crawford, remember? The one with the long beard, the one who cried, it didn’t trouble me to shoot him and it bothered me none that he lay there and wept until he finally went—because I knew he was the man who pulled Samuel into the fire, or maybe he’d stood by laughing while I tried to get him out. I swear I heard a voice above all the flames and screaming, laughing at me then. And I hear it still, every time I take hold the gun there’s that laugh and I don’t know where it’s coming from, just that I’ve got to shut it up. When he’d finished, I told Kemper that I’d pray for him. Pray for yourself, he said. I’m not so pitiful yet. All right, I said. Sorry, brother, said Kemper. It’s all whiskey and pissedness. But I knew that was untrue and we walked on some ways and could hear the waters of the Red distantly rushing. I’d found a branch beside the road and was using it for a walking stick, thrashing absentmindedly with it at weeds, Kemper humming as I did. I looked at the shining buckles on my boots and felt the new leather creak, impressed upon my mind the figure I surely cut in my fine wool breeches, shirts barely stained after a day’s work, my vest full of pockets where gold and silver piece fought for space with balls of shot, and how good and safe it felt to be tucked up to the jaw in the high collar of my coat. Looking to Kemper and seeing a similar figure of fortune—remembering our clothes- rotting days on the river and before that the raggedy stinking animals skins we wore on the plains, I said: I won’t go back. They said we should be gone a year? Or they gave no time but just that we come limping back like perfect prodigals. Look at us, we’re better off and further with the Lord than they’ll ever be. The Reverend teaches and we learn, that’s the way it’s written. We’re on the path and it doesn’t lead back up the river. For emphasis I gave a twirling swipe of my walking stick and we stood in a whirl of weed-heads. Kemper swigged and spat in the dust of the road, tracing a shape there with his toe. I already knew I wouldn’t be going back, he said. I knew from the second we left. When I finally got you off that horse and was pretty sure you wouldn’t die, I knew. And it was at that moment, with my brother’s steely words running in my brain, we were made to know that there would ever be grasping thorns and snags and death-filled potholes in our way, as we came around to a bend in the road we did hear voices and the sounds of animals, and, rounding that bend we saw the shadowy earthworks of the fort. Rising ominously, dirt out of dirt, as though set there ages before just to stand in our way. Approaching the fort closer we saw that it was set into a bluff above the river. By then we could see some of the attendants working at the feet of the battlements—men with carts and commerce, women toting pails. And when we’d drunkenly lingered there long enough that there was no doubting they’d seen us, we left. Turning back up the road, truly we were staggering with heat and drink, but this didn’t stop us from trading pulls at the bottle. At a bend some ways down I heard through my stupor and the din of preaching voices in my head—working as we walked on a sermon I’d never give—the unmistakable sound of a

93 horse coming down the road. Looked to Kemper—Break for the woods, or stay? He waved his arm and belched that we’d stay on the road; after all we were armed and respectable looking. But Kemper still held the bottle—changing us from gentlemen out for a walk to a pair of wobbling slaggards—and I remember this because I checked my own dumb hands for it, and before I could tell him to pitch it away the horseman was on us. He was a portly man, half-uniformed in white and blue tunic, and, so I figured, a Frenchman. Riding by, the horseman addressed us first in French, though for all we knew it was startling jibberish of a madman escaped the stockades. When we didn’t respond, her pulled up on his reins, cowed his horse between Kemper and me so that we were on either side of the beast, and I could barely see my brother for the great neck of the huffing thing. The horseman spoke again. This time perhaps in Spanish. I don’t recall indignance in his voice. Saw that he was wearing a pair of filigreed dragoons out over his tunic on a braided sash. The sight of those had me worried over my own pistol, tucked into my coat; hidden so I thought beneath the folds and buttons. What’s that? Kemper said. The man said nothing; seemingly regarding Kemper very close. His horse snuffed and resoundingly broke wind, as if to answer for its master. With that—as I was shuddering to hold back my own laughter—the horseman bowed his head, and, taking off his hat, began to roar with laughter, fanning the air before his face. Let’s go upwind, boys, he said, wiping tears from his eyes and still chuckling. And we followed him a ways back towards the fort, the short trot not shaking the humor entirely from him. Now, said the horseman, may I ask your names and business? See, I am a lieutenant to the Commandant and such things are quite important. Kemper gave him both our names, and said that we were here with the Reverend Morrel and the carnival. Morrel is the man’s name who brings the carnival? asked the horseman. Of course it is, said Kemper. He’s met your commandant. And with that I was wincing and wishing I’d been the one to speak, for who knew what name the Reverend had given to them. Yes, yes, said the horseman. I met this man with M. Coulon. Are you coming to the carnival, sir? Kemper said. Well, I was riding back to the fort for the night. But I passed your carnival on the way; it looks to be quite a time. He shifted on his horse, wiping his brow and looking skyward—the way he talked was to pause often and worry his face with his hands. But I may pass by again tonight. There will be dancing, yes? Two tents of dancing, Kemper said. And horse races, cockfights, a show. Excellent, said the horseman. I do love good dancing. There’s already people there? I asked. Oh yes. It is difficult to keep the people here from a party. I thanked him, trying for airs like the Reverend’s, and said, May I ask you your name, sir? Emmanuel de Courire. Adjunct to Commandant Coulon Villiers. He finished with a flourish of his hand, slipping on its downflutter perilously near the handles of his pistols. I thanked him again, repeating his flourish. You are most welcome mister Woolsack. And, not to press our interlocutions past the

94 bounds of comfort and congeniality, but is that whiskey your friend has in his bottle? I stiffened. The way Courire said whiskey was as funny as the fruitsome bowels of his horse, but the laughter had sucked out of me. If Kemper did not know that this man was trouble and serious, I did. And would have him know. You’ll have to ask him, I said. Kemper didn’t wait for Courire to ask, he said it was whiskey, and legally bought whiskey at that. Very well, said Courire. You both appear to be respectable young men, and perhaps a bit more courteous than your fellows.—Here he paused, smiling, and cupped his hand to the side of his mouth as though about to tell a secret—In the territories we have enough troubles with rum, much less American whiskey. And so, though I am sure your drink was made and purchased legally in your country, in the Territory of the Sabine, it is not legal. Now, I enjoy imbibing myself, but it is Negroes, the Indians, and the rougher elements that are my concern. Your master is not selling whiskey to Negroes, is he? We both said no. He wouldn’t do a thing so foolish, Kemper added. This is most heartening to know. To have the whiskey is allowable, if it is in reasonable amounts, its taxes paid, and that we are sure of its security. Security is the most important thing—have you heard the news from Saint-Domingue? We haven’t, I said, not knowing what meaning that name held. Dreadful things are happening there, the Negroes run wild. Half the island is in flames. The cannibals of that terrible republic are doing unspeakable things. He was wringing his hands, presumably over thoughts of fired plantations and sharp- toothed niggers full of hate. If what you say’s true, sir, and the carnival’s started, then it’s best if we get back to it, I said. Our course, said Courire, dispensing in an instant with his worry over the troubled isle, giving us a lofty wave of his hat. And before he rode off, leaving we two dazed and gaping for a few instants before we beat our hasty path back, he assured us that the carnival had indeed begun.

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CHAPTER 14 Lucifer’s fall

The whiskey bottle sailed from Kemper’s hand, flung off like the first-draft tablets of the commandments, and I had to whip fast my head to look back and see it shatter against a tree. Terror-struck I’d taken off once de Guerra had gone—but Kemper had paused there for a moment and I was a good ways ahead when he finally pitched the bottle and followed, barreling hard as he could; with lumbering rawbones swinging, calling Wait! Wait! after me. I slowed, and by the time my brother caught me he had no breath to ask Wait or Why, and I no breath to answer, so we ran like electrified frog—pinioned, leg muscles flayed and rewound with copper wire and by the raging current sent kicking everywhichway—checking in the corners of our wind-whipped eyes to see if the other was still keeping pace, then knowing it by footfalls and hitching breaths. If we’d not been full-tilt running one of us would’ve heard the voices and the music and stopped long before we see the carnival, but our hearts thundering in our ears, the shuddering for breath, the rattle of our bones like they were shook in a conjure sack as they jolted with our steps, all served to rendered us deaf. And even as we came into the clear where fag piles and bonfires had only just begun to burn—I could hear nothing. The world was dumb, and we went through it; hurdling a ditch of tar set smoking for moskitoes, then forced to slow and knock through the pocket crowds of people engaged in games: the men throwing knives or shooting or baiting a sullen sore-covered bull, while their ladies hunted ribbon-tied fortune fish that swam in a great glass bowl, with long thin needles and sharper eyes—one jabbing hers down into the water and proudly withdrawing a speared fish to the cackling delight of the others who all grabbed so fiercely for the ribbon that she had to use the needle to keep them back. And what is your fortune, boy?—Not to be told by a silver piece tied to a squirming fish. Searching for Morrel; we leapt the crude amusements, making quick turns round the half- hidden whiskey kegs to the shouts of fellow Morrelites, while the air all seemed filled with the jangling spin of coinslost, received, returned— like the ghost of Jesus Christ ran along with us, overturning all the tables of the moneylenders, moneylosers, moneyspenders; but we lost him at the row of tents hung with placards telling which of the Reverend Morrel’s Blest was held within—a shriek tore out from one and judging by the looks of the exiting gawkers, heads shaking, hands over their mouths, they’d been to see the hairlip. A commotion commencing but we left it behind and its sound was soon swallowed up by the driving fiddlework of bow ‘cross gut string, echoing from the dancing tent. We slowed on the approach and both petered out at the very edge, where the dancer’s elbows swung outstretched and passed before our choking faces. I couldn’t make them out but as a many-legged creature taken straight from Revelation and dressed up for a ball, with a hundred-count of every appendage all horrifically enjoined in movement. My fear made everything sinister; gave the joyful the caste of Apocalypse. And why not, with the air ringing strange music and the chittering of unknown tongues. When my eyes were not so bleary from the sweat and toil of our run I saw them all and couldn’t pick Americans from French or Puke. Above them hung a chandelier—a prize possession of the Reverend’s—and the smoke from the lamps and the candles, from the cigars the men chewed as they spun their ladies, hung in a cloud above the dancers’ heads. I looked away from that smoky vision to see Kemper wiping bile from his chin; trying with his hand to sling it aside, but it only dangled from his lip to his palm. A few nearby dancers turned their eyes

96 on us and quickly looked away. Kemper hacked and thrashed like a fly enwebbed until he freed himself. We need to find the Reverend, I said. For what goddamnit? Because of that man? He wasn’t shit! They’ll Of course he did you God damn fool. Christ, look around you. They’re all here and what’re they doing? Of course he lied, you nigger. He paid to lie. Kemper had his hands again on his knees, looking ready to empty himself. When he spoke it was around quick deep breaths. I’ve still got to tell him, I said. Go find him then, he said, and lurched off, hunchbacked, trailing puke. So I left my brother and stepped inside the tent, weaving to avoid the dancers and trying for the front but becoming one myself. The fiddlers and the keybox men were presently joined by a man with a wide guitar, which he began to pick and strum in tune with them. Shook with music, I searched among the dancers. I moved with them, stepping in twisting circles like rope being knotted for a noose and pulled ever tighter. I spun, partnerless, and in a blaze-flash of jewels saw the Reverend Morrel. In his finest clothes, palms pressed to those of a dark-haired woman like he’d promised in his speech to me some days before, and they were making smiling circles of each other. I thought I might could still hear Kemper puking close by, which, along with the music, and the shouts and calls of a commotion outside the tent, added to my fear. I made my turns closer and closer to the Reverend and his lady, calling out to him, Sir! Sir!—fearful as I was to say his name—but Morrel gave no answer besides a cut of his eyes, red and glaring as the stones in his rings. His partner paid shuffling-gadfly-me no mind and bent to Morrel’s cheek, whispering so close with her painted lips that I thought his ear would be turned red as my face now boiling frustration which turned instantly to shock as my right hand was taken up by someone else’s and I was faced with the spinning prospect of a girl—a smaller version of Morrel’s inky-haired partner—leading me through the steps of the dance. O those fiddlers were master of intestines, and for a moment I could feel my own fluttering beneath my ribs with this dark creature bearing down on me with soft palm and purple eyes. We turned with all the others and by then I’d lost the Reverend. Poor Angel entrapped and enraptured again—content to dance and pray that if I couldn’t have this one, then by God one just like her. To unloose that hair from where it was fixed high and slicked to the sides of her head, and let it fall and follow it to where her hair is darkest. My fool head full of poetry, it seemed the world responded in kind and when she turned me the Reverend passed by with his woman again;— Her head was thrown back in a laugh and he put his mouth to her neck so that she, wolflike, showed her teeth. Which seemed sharp as needles and incredibly white in the lamplight and ready to tear out the throat of the man kissing hers. My partner did not reveal such fine ivory points, keeping her mouth smiled shut as the crowd of dancers parted seemingly for us and so we were at the center of it all. I smiled back and saw her eyes, in but a moment, change, her mouth drop open in a scream. But still we spun and in that final revolution I was turned to see one of the Reverend Blest, a hairlip, come staggering through the tent. No longer just cut from nose to lip, someone had split him all the way to his throat, so was but a bloody face with fleshy mounds for eyes; mumbling for help—trying to force the shapes of words out through his flapping aperture—He reached for the dancers, who were dancers no more but gapers stranded in horror gasping and backing away.

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I still held the girl—who was no longer screaming, but shaking—and so made no move to help him. From behind us came a figure shoving past to take ahold of the blinded ‘lip and try to right him. It was Morrel who held the poor thing wobbling in his grip. And they would share a gruesome dance for a moment, with Morrel upbraiding him and asking what’d happened. The hairlip, unable to make more than a bloody gurgle for his words, faltered in the Reverend’s hands and tried again and again to speak before he finally quit and went to weeping at Morrel’s chest, a stream of sobs and mumbles being fed into those fine shirts along with flows of blood—when into the tent surged a group of men with canes and cudgels. The hairlip shrieked and Morrel flung him aside to avoid a blow meant for the ruined thing’s head. Now the tent was full chaos; dancers fleeing and Morrel digging frantically in his coat; and I found that the girl was struggling against me and that I held her in a tight fear clench only broken that instant by the butt of a gun which came crashing down on her head. I let her fall to the ground and Kemper, holding his weapon by the barrel, charged past me and into the crowd, swinging short shotgun—to clear a path to where Morrel was fending off kicks and cane handles with a long dagger. The hairlip was gone, swallowed up and carried off, and it was only the Reverend and Kemper, who, waved his gun so expertly that the Reverend, for a moment, was able to gain his feet. They fought against men in fine clothes and men in rags—in that tide of fists and bootheels it was all alike. For a time I just stood watching, untouched. And the Grace of God, like the shrieking crowd, washed suddenly over me and I felt the pistols hugging my ribs like frightened pups. I stepped through the fleeing people towards Morrel and Kemper, thinking, Be not afraid, little ones. Put out all their noise with your barks. Flare, fire, and powdersmoke spit into the clubbers—who scattered back, leaving one of their number screaming on the ground. Kemper and the Reverend looked at me with thanks in the moments before the men realized I’d fired both my shots and were upon us again. The one I’d shot was looking at me while I squatted low and swung the handles of my pistols at his fellows’ softer places. I saw him blink, I saw him weeping. Sheltering my head with one arm, the other I swung at the nearest man and knocked his kneecap round the back of his leg. I sent a few more sprawling before more came piling on to try and snuff me out like a fire. But my burn was too great and I let go my pistols and clawed at them—and I tore at them with my teeth even as my head felt near to powdering, my bones beaten into my guts. I would have an awful smile afterwards, when I’d crushed enough men’s stones and bit enough skin, and was able to raise myself afoot, and must’ve been seemed like a ghoul staggering over to Kemper, who was now alone; Morrel nowhere to be found. None of them would come near me, and they started back from Kemper, holding the places I’d bitten and were weeping like the man on the ground, who was now between us and them. Some brave ones at the front tried to pull the man over by his legs, but I batted away their hands and stomped the shot man limp. My mouth felt full and I spit at them a meal of tooth bits and fingertips, so that they wept and wailed and tried to wipe their faces. At this, Kemper, using his shotgun for a cane, started laughing; then so did I. I had to fight the hideous laughter back down my throat to ask him: Can you run? Kemper laughed still harder in reply and we sprang from that place out into the carnival gone wild. We’d left them to count up their wounds on the boney nubs of their fingers. I wouldn’t know the pain they’d put on me until the next day; but that night I ran with my brother

98 through the warring Morrelites and townsfolk. Soldiers from the fort in their suspenders rode through them, slashing, and we did not stop to catch a blade but kept on running. A ways out, Kemper hollered for me to look back. The dance tent fluttered in flames and sent scraps of canvas sailing through the air. Everything was on fire—the whiskey kegs in their limb piles had been put to the torch; the tents of the blest were already ash and sparks swarmed the air. I tried to pick out faces or at least voices that I knew, but screams are all of a piece and beaten faces are hard to discern. And I was afraid. We were heading for the camp, to get our things and horses and fly when we came upon a man mired to his knees in the ditch of burning tar. He was only eyewhites gaping at me when I stopped and tried to take his arm. The tar man jerked away before I even could black my hands. Kemper said, We don’t know him. Then he kicked the man so hard in the face that the bastard landed flat as a board in his shallow, smoking grave. We cleared the ditch and up ahead the campfires showed through the trees; or where those our burning tents? It didn’t matter, we made for them. Some had already come and gone and the camp was empty but for the horses going jittery where they were tied. I tore through my tent, taking what I could, filling pack and saddlebag. When I emerged, I found Kemper squatting before a pile of guns, pouring from his powderhorn into the mouth of each, then tamping down the shot. Realized that I left my pistols back with the tar ditch man and went off to load my horse. I returned to find Kemper cutting his tent into long strips. These he took and began to lash himself with weapons, so that he was bound tight with firearms. Finished, he went around the tents gathering up bottles and cups. He put these in a pile and smashed them with his boots, gathering up the shards and loading them into the barrel of his shotgun. Take you some, Kemper said, cinching a lanyard around the stock of the shotgun. There were still guns and canvas strips at the ground, so I took a blunderbuss, three pistols, and a long rifle. Once I had them bodily bound, I asked Kemper where we’d go. There was the sound of riot in the distance, and singing. We’ll cross over to the river and get back to Natchez, said my brother. I looked towards the raging carnival. We’ll have to ride back by them on the road, I said. Why do you think I got so ready. Feeling hugged by all those arms I said, We’re like porcupines of guns. I want them to go piss-legged when we ride by. We could ride north and cross back. We’d never have to see them. No, he said. Why the Hell not? We can revenge later. Let’s just go. Kemper eyed me with more anger than I’d seen in him since we were jabbing elbows on the prairie. More than anger it was like I’d spoke another language. There was a thrashing through the trees behind me and I had to dive aside for Kemper had pistol out and fired where the head of the sneaker would’ve been, had it not been Johnny Crabbe, who, on his cursed customary fours, came scuttling into the firelight, cussing us fiercely, and, alternating hands to walk and wipe his weeping eyes—for joy or horror, who knew?—fell on me in an embrace. O Jesus, boys! he said, holding to my knees. Crabbe went from me to Kemper, saying the Savior’s name. hugging and ignoring when we asked after the others. When he’d tired out from praising and embracing he flopped to his

99 side on the ground like a dog and lay there panting. Crabbe, I said, is there anybody left? Between huffs he told me there wasn’t, that they would’ve gotten him too if they hadn’t been so scared. They were afraid to touch him and he’d gotten away under the smoke. We need to go, Kemper said. Give him a gun. I dug out a pistol from my bindings and gave it to Crabbe, saying, What about the rest? Johnny Crabbe looked up baleful. I didn’t really see, he said. It’s all legs and screaming to me. # # # Kemper hitched Crabbe behind him on his horse, tying him down with the rest of the pack and rigging. We rode out of the camp and into the open field, cutting towards the road. The carnival was all smoke that filled the sky and rolled across the field and broke on the legs of our horses. Out of it there appeared faces of those going to loot the camp. We made a wide run of the burning place and tried to stay where the smoke met the road, but the people had gathered there down a ways, all thrown together in a heap of scrapping and minor fight. Wretched and awful things, Kemper must’ve broke his horse’s ribs for how hard he heel-thwacked the thing into a full gallop, tearing down the stragglers at the edges of the crowd. I dug in and begged my own horse go, get me out from here and these people who even now are tearing at the clothes of some whip-whirling creature—man or woman, who can tell?—haplessly caught in their midst, suddenly scattered by raging Kemper bursting through their sorry number. Guns cracked and he was through them. My horse, the fool thing, slowed as the crowd turned to face me and I saw with perfect clarity a woman among them who held propped a girl with a bloody face; and this woman stepped out before the horse even as the others ran and even in the slow, jerky gallop he’d been in, she was trampled and her charge made all the more bloody. A swirl of screams and reaching hands, and, Damning each and every one of them, I fired into them, and passed through the whip cracks of branches still on my horse. I looked back and saw he’d cut them down like chaff. The wind kept the smoke at our backs so that we were kept from the eyes of our enemies for miles down the road. The moon faded and Kemper slowed and veered off. I followed him through creek and swamp, woods or Indian confield patches grown wild in abandonment. We did not talk, and I think by that time Crabbe was asleep—still tied to Kemper. We would find a place to wait out the day before we could ride again, but in the meantime Preacher-father smiled down on me as a fiery tunnel of stars and Hate poured blessedly in for something besides him. Even the horseback jog and jolt I felt with every nubbed and shattered tooth in my mouth couldn’t keep me straight; and I was soon set upon by visions clawing at the back of my fist- numbed skull. What I saw was the woman I’d held, my dancing partner, by the road. She stared at me from underneath the branches of an oak, from the hollow of a snakehole, from the banks of a muddy creek, holding out to me my partner, whose head—I saw—was stoved in. I shut my eyes from the sight, but she’d keep showing it to me all night. Finally, the woman asked me if I knew the Reverend Morrel. I told her yes and there was no cock crow, only possum hiss and chitter from the branches, horrible avian shrieks. And I saw Morrel seated on a throne at the end of a great hall full of high columns and packed with Negroes moving between them, all hailing and saluting King and Savior—not a white face there but his. He was draped in jewels and gold and in his hands he held a scepter which he waved above their bowed heads, saying: This is the hour of our triumph. We’ve won over blood and fire and whips, my children.

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You are led out of bondage and I have parted the seas of white for you to pass into the halls of Glory. My dark sons and daughters, we are all crowned now. Praise God! And the blacks all rose up in wild cheers and bore him on their backs out of the temple, shouting, Rev-rend! Rev-rend! Rev-rend! So my visions broke with the morning and we beat the light and hid within a thick bower of briars—where there was no sun or chance of being spotted and the needles were so vast and so many and so close to our faces that we couldn’t barely blink. The horses laid down like dogs on their sides and panted.

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CHAPTER 15 Offerings—Prey divided

We went for weeks through roads and woods, by blood-colored clay thoroughfares, and we’d not made yet made Natchez. There was coin in our pockets but we were afraid to spend it anywhere of size—and with Crabbe there was no going into any rat scrabble town; so we bypassed them and would wait until we were back safe under the hill. Kemper had us put our guns away and return to carrying only pistols. The rest we’d lash to the horses underneath blanket and pack for the rest of the journey. We crossed the river and into America. All that time, the Lord tried us various ways: heat, oppressive and unending; swarms of cut-flies to bleed us; rain that smelled like sulphur falling for a night and day, turning the road gold—which Kemper saw as a great sign of our success, but it seemed an awful omen to me; and I could only take some heart in that Satan couldn’t piss down on us from Heaven, unless, of course, the Battle had been played out and Michael fallen on his fiery sword, the pearly gates surrendered and the Seals all flung open and the Covenant smashed. It would be in my times of greatest trial and weakness that I’d wonder was Heaven in despoil. It was one of those awful apocalypse-stinking days, we were passing down a fresh cut road—still west of the river, before the hills begin to the north of Natchez—and were rode upon by a man saying he was the land agent of some planter and that this was his master’s road, carved out at his expense by his niggers, and there was a dollar toll to pay to travel on it. We would’ve paid him nothing, not even any mind, except his voice made my tooth nubs hurt and I couldn’t help but hear him when he rode after us bawling for his money. You boys ride down that road, there’ll be ten men waiting for you! I promise that! I’d forgotten that we were boys at all; sat there puzzling over my age and how old I looked for a time. Why don’t you go drink piss, said Johnny Crabbe with a rude wave of the claw. The agent yelped: What is that? What in God’s name is that thing? I wish that I’d told him we were damn sure going on in God’s name; that the I Am was the very reason We Were here, and, until He reached His hand down and plucked us from it, we’d be beating on this earth. Instead I shot the agent in the chest and he went sprawling from his horse, which had reared up with the doomcrack of the shot, and when he’d fallen off was already heading back up the road in a flutter of tail and mane. Shit, Crabbe said. I need myself a horse. We’ll get you a horse, said Kemper, tugging either the reigns or the knots that kept crippled Johnny tied to him, moving his mount over to where the land agent lay sputtering last breaths and looked on the dying man for a moment. It’d be my job to bury him, so I was down already and digging for a stake or spade of flange in my pack and found nothing but a wide-blade knife, which I took past the land agent now going wild eyed to see what I was going to do with it. Cussing, I went off the road a bit into the woods and fell to my knees and started hacking with my knife at the earth. This was worthless lousy work, grave digging, and it always would be; whether it was with six men and shovels or as it was then, jabbing with a good blade to churn the black dirt, my tongue always finding the tips of my busted teeth, searching out the holes and shards that sent fires raging brainwards and made me double over, eyes shut. The worst part of our robberies was the sneak

102 before the pinch, an awful time but no worse than being hunched on the ground in the dank woods off some road in the wilds of the country, digging for what seems like hours before seeing that the hole you’ve been scratching out is only six inches deep and not even shaped right for a man. Head throbbing, I stood up and went back to the road where Kemper and Crabbe were trying to see who could spit on the land agent’s face from the furthest and most creative distances and I took him by the collar and dragged him to the woods, said a damnation prayer over him, palmed up a handful of dirt I’d loosed, and tossed it on his face. The land agent kept goggling out awful breaths and I would have left then, but the inclination hit me to dip into my pocket, draw out two silver pieces, and put them on his eyes.

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CHAPTER 16 God speaks to Rueben

We were hiding in the nape of a hill some miles north of Natchez, overlooking a road where commerce passed freely and it was not uncommon to see long snaking trails of Negroes being led by men on horseback to whatever planter’s home and acreage, or see a barge drawn dripping from the river and towed on rolling logs for overland passage. When we’d been with Morrel and seen the lines of blacks and passed them in our caravan; and if you were close enough to him you’d see the Reverend slyly wink or raise the fingers deftly from his palm in secret blessing on them. None of them knew him, and I never saw the stir of recognition in any of those dark and haggard faces. Looking on that road again, so few months after having departed on it with Morrel and hungers deep churning in us for spoils and the fools who carried them, we’d found a place on the hillside where the grass grew in a blind so that you couldn’t be seen from the road, but—peering through a parting in the blades—you could see the travelers, or slide a gun barrel out. Kemper and me waited in the blind; Johnny Crabbe skulking in the roadside brambles, ready to appear on the road at our signal and immediately unsettle whoever passed us by. After I’d shot the land agent, on our way south to Natchez, Kemper had taken to letting Crabbe down off the horse and letting him stretch his four legs out and walk alongside us. Crabbe was grateful for it, but it’d be once a day that someone would round a bend going north and see that Crabbe gamboling spiderlike along, and either that rider would be thrown from his horse, or his cart would flip, or his wife would shriek and hide her children’s heads, his nigger take off for the woods. Crabbe was a scrambling fright for those who’re only used to upright walkers and live every day in fear of the wonders of God, and it was from this that we came upon the idea of using Crabbe for a shock on our marks. So we’d set him up down there with a pistol just in case, then climbed atop the hill and fixed our eyes to watch for riders from our perch. A wagon passed in the evening with men with rifles riding among the barrels and sacks. We wanted none of this; wait for the weaker ones to stumble. We watched them go on down the road, which was fast becoming murky with night, and we knew that there would be no take tonight; and I wonder what Crabbe, the pinching scuttle-fighter, made of those hours. Cussing, for we couldn’t build a fire or set up any kind of camp unless to give ourselves away, Kemper and I sat up in the blind and regarded each other’s disappearing faces. They’d been fat days with the Reverend Morrel, and my brother still showed the mark of health, but I could see the bones were wearing his skin tighter and tighter; not the hard days with the fathers, but, God, the memory was enough to make me hate the look of it. We could just go on into town, I said. We’ve got money to spend. Not enough, said Kemper. We’ll set ourselves up and won’t have to roll drunkards or dandies no more. There was no arguing with him; I was just as tired of the nick and grift. Night came and lit a pilot fire in the distant Natchez—the sparkle of the high town and the hearth-glow of the one underneath—and you could just see it burning there waiting for you to come back and embrace the sooty river-stinking people, to wade into the streets and let yourself be consumed. I was fed up with countrysides and byways; of going by myself into settlements while Kemper and Crabbe waited on the outskirts so that I could buy some sacks of grain from fat-headed ex-pioneers, now clerks and shopkeepers who glared so dumbly at me that I’d want to

104 carry long, long matches so that I could reach into their ears with the head of the match and put their brains alight and maybe then their eyes wouldn’t be as those of cows and asses. Christ, the country. And I’d spend so many years out in it, scrabbling and fighting not just men but every day the brambles and thorns and snakes and on rare mornings bears lurching through the trees with most of their hair fallen out and their flesh covered in knobby barnacles of skin they were so old; rains that washed whole swaths of earth away; buzzards making rookeries above our camps, following and puking down on us for days. We were only boys abandoned yet again and seeking out fortunes in the country of the blindly-going. Mid-night Kemper sat with his head in his hands and I was playing with thin smears of gunpowder between my fingers, snapping my middle and thumb on a broken sliver of flint, sending up quick bursts of sparks like piddly fireworks to stave off boredom. I was snapping the fingers of both hands to make twin spark-shots flick into the air, pop and sizzle in the dark, when Kemper—I saw by the briefest fizzle of light cast by my fiddling—brought up his head and said for me to stop playing silly shits with myself. There’s not a God damn other thing to do, I said, now in the dark again with yellow smudges on my eyes left behind by the sparks, wanting a book or other voice or anything to kill tedium and Time. You’ll give us away doing those tricks and when you’ve got your neck in a noose you’ll be crying to me. Bull shit, I said,—all the croaks and insect wheezes starting to make me feel I had to shout,—Who the Hell’s here to see us? We’re five miles from town out in the frog’s asshole and sitting on our asses waiting for a gift to wander by. There’s nothing to do. Kemper stewed in silence awhile and I’m glad I couldn’t see him, for anger was always easy on his face and I hate to call back on those times when my brother had some hate for me. Just keep quiet, he said. What’ll you do, shoot me? That may give you away and you’ll be stuck with just the Crabbe. Kemper groaned and from below came the sound of Johnny Crabbe trying to yell to us and whisper, both. Go fuck an anthill, Angel, said Kemper. Tie your cock in a knot, I said. Crabbe’s voice grew more harried, but we wouldn’t hear him. Get to town, then. Go whore it up. I’ll show you whoring, I said. Damn it fellows, can you hear it? Crabbe said scuttling into our blind, and even in the moonlight I could see he was afraid. Hear what? Kemper said. All I’ve been hearing is this sucker bitching. The anger was twanging in his voice and thrown on poor Crabbe instead of me. Let him tell, I said, hollering. Keep your damn voice down, Kemper said. I can feel it in my hands, said Crabbe. He slapped his forelegs against the ground, put his ear to it. Jesus God Almighty it’s an army! He jerked his head up and by then I could feel it shaking in my legs and crawling up into my stomach. I heard it rolling on the air and it was like a thunderclap ongoing. Kemper stood up, wobbling, and looked briefly to the northern run of the road then threw himself down on the ground and took up his rifle and flattened a place in the blind with the barrel.

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Crabbe, he said. Get down there on the other side of the road and when you see a rider, spook him to us! So Johnny Crabbe took off downhill and the thunder roll grew louder. Meanwhile, I’d done as Kemper had, and damn near knocked the breath from my belly jumping to the ground, reaching round everywhere for my own rifle—growing frantic with the thunder-roll mounting. And how can I tell what the sound was like? Thunder isn’t right, but more like when it says in the Book that there were giants moving in the earth. It was the sound of Leviathan going on a thousand legs before I finally found it, and, with the Lord’s will made manifest the sun shot up behind us like a rocket and lit the road enough for me to draw a bead. It was miracle of morning light come hours early and we were shadow-sharps waiting on that hill when the horses peeled into view; rider-less hundreds, cordoned off by a man at the front and maybe three more keeping the flanks of the herd. Bless Crabbe’s bravery, for a hundred yards before the man at the head would cross us he went scrambling out onto the road in his most twitching and crabby way of moving so that I’m sure he looked worse than any gunman—a demon cripple lusting after souls, which it’d suck out with the fangs it surely had and spit into the skin pouch it wore around its neck. That’s the vision I imagine dawning in shambling horror on the foremost rider, causing him to yank hard on his reins and come away from his herd—now charging past and leaving him behind—towards us. Kemper put him off his horse and I couldn’t even hear the shot. Onwards surged the horses with endless whipping legs and hoofs that clipped the ground full of pocks; and the next rider came to see where his fellow had fallen and my shot put them together; their mounts looking befuddled at each other for a moment before the third man came; and I realized as the horses were now pouring southward down the road that Kemper had run down the back of our hill and was on his own horse, charging round the foot of the hill after them. The third rider, quicker than his fellows, saw Kemper tearing off and had his heels upraised to spur his beast after my brother, but I fired as his boots struck horseflesh and I didn’t know if he was shot or not because the horse took off with him and it wouldn’t be until later, when Crabbe and I saw his horse grazing a mile up the road with its rider slumped over its neck, but still saddled that I knew Kemper, unless he’d been run down and trampled, was still alive and at the head. But in the meantime I thought Crabbe, in his jaunt to scare the rider, had been caught up amongst the horses and squashed in quick terrified stomps like one of his smaller kinsmen might be stamped into a mush of legs by the toe of a lady’s shoe. The road was sowed with so much plops of horse shit and I didn’t brother to step lightly but trudged through the slough of it and found Crabbe tucked in a ball of weirdly-jointed arms and legs, covered in a smack of manure himself but appearing otherwise unmolested, peering up at me with one open eye. Where’s Kemper? he said, unwinding from his tuck. At the time I couldn’t answer, but I knew sure as the Lord had put the Sun in a sling and shot it up so we could place our rounds in the unfortunate riders, that my brother lived and we only had to go after him. A tremor of worry over whether he would take off and not bother with Crabbe nor I again did wriggle through me for an instant, but I said a longish prayer as I went to get my horse and, pulled Johnny Crabbe onto the saddle with me—latching his forelegs at my chest, which still ached at times from the carnival beating. We followed the steaming trail of pats down the road, full-bore, passing the third rider’s corpse still clinging to his horse until we reached the tail of the herd—which Kemper had caught and slowed enough for us to catch, but they were still so many that even at a trot they kicked my eyes and busted teeth full of dung and dirt. I spat and spit and Crabbe was laughing there behind

106 me The herd tired out before we hit the city proper, so we were able to ride through and overtake them, finding Kemper flung high in the spirit, whooping and waving his arms at us. Crabbe and me, we waved back—yowling too. When we’d settled down and slowed the horses almost to a stop—no more than three or four miles outside of Natchez-Under-the-Hill—Kemper said to go back and clear the bodies from the road and drag them off. And if they had some writs or papers for the horses to bring them back with us—but get the dead bastards from the road or else we’re through and it’s all for nothing. Beaten from the ride, but awed at the prospect of the horse-money, I told my brother we’d catch him up the road, and turned back the way we’d came, making quick but better work of the dead ones than I’d done with the land agent; the one still saddled I unseated and drug off into the woods fairly deep until I found an upturned tree that showed it’s bare roots and, in its toppling, had left behind a deep hollow, half-covered by an outcropping of dirt and a mound of earth piled up beside—a home for foxes or snakes. Crabbe had followed after me, leading the man’s horse. I got one now, said Johnny Crabbe. I left Crabbe there with the third rider, so that he could go through the dead man’s packs and pockets, and when I returned with the two others draped over the back of my horse, Crabbe had taken all his things and arranged them like a store display—a pocketwatch, a pair of knives, a purse, a pistol, livery, and musket, clothes, boots, blankets, and a short coil of rope, flints, matches, and a stone that was clear and blue. The stone was what Crabbe had set nearest to him, and while I was dragging the dead man into the pit, Johnny went around with it pressed in his eye, gawking through it while he pulled the others down from my horse and stripped them just the same of their belongings. Between the three of them Crabbe found the bills of sale for some sixty Sabine horses. Of course Crabbe couldn’t know this; all the writing was just scribble to him and once I’d pushed the last of the riders into their burial hole he brought me the papers crumpled in his claw and I had to sit there, whipped, and soaking thumbprints through the pages, and cipher their contents— a magical enough thing just to read again, to hear the sound of words in my head after not having seen one so much as scratched into a tree in weeks. Folding the papers into my coat, I resolved to buy a fine copy when we’d sold off the herd. No more would I be without a Bible at my side, and I would carry with me sometimes more than one—tiny copies of the Testaments tucked all throughout my kit. Crabbe pushed the mounded dirt over the now-full mouth of the pit and sealed it off with pats and slaps as he crawled over it. Are we rich? asked Crabbe as I pulled him ahorse. I said we would be, and forever.

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BOOK THREE CHAPTER 1 The seeds of an army are sown

Those days back in Natchez my old left arm was constantly in tilt, bent at the bow and swiping up piles of gold to fling at various merchants and pouring fine drinks down my burned-out gullet. Kemper had negotiated a fine quick sale for the horses and must’ve made the speculator feel like he’d tricked the skin off some poor country boy. While he made the sale, Crabbe and I had gone to Lowde’s and found she wasn’t there. I looked through the smashed-in windows and saw not a stick of furniture remained; little evidence of her keeping. Even the fireplace was collapsing, so I saw with Crabbe beside me nervously picking at the ground with his limbs, raising himself up to peek inside. I left Crabbe there to watch the horse and climb through the window and clamber through the ruins, and I went to ask her neighbors down the street after the grand old whore. The weapons-seller was pushing his cart same as always and the early drunks went clear-eyed pastthe ones left over from the night before. I stopped a man with a high hat full of Indian feathers and asked him what happened to Mother Lowde, but got nothing other than whiskey breath and being brushed to the side. I went about knocking on doors only just now shut to question bleary-eyed barkeeps; I made the rounds of scaling the rotten stair-works to the attic rooms of the young whores. After slipping them some coin so that I could sit on their flea-bit pallets liberally doused with perfumes and oils sweet enough to send my sun burnt head spinning, they’d lay some knowledge on me. I must’ve gone through four or more—each time finding it harder and harder to deny myself a dip between thighs and the feel of good scratchy-soft whoreskin. But all I’d gather was the mish- mash of tales I’ve already given, with some slight illuminations; Lowde’s walk to the river in her finest dresses, carrying a bag and strutting imperiously to the dock, where she only had to raise one sharp-heeled foot over the water before a boat slid beneath it and carried her away. The young whores hadn’t seem saddened when they told me; even the ones who said she’d walked into the water, in full outfit, and drowned herself when she’d found that no one on the docks would pay her price. The versions of her story were like as to the girls themselves; the more pitiful they were, the skinny things with red hair and white faces with spattered butcher’s aprons of freckles, the more hopeful the story; while it was the whores gone to fat like corpses lying in state and stuffed with sawdust, smelling of sugary sweat and asking to press me between their sticky clefts so they could but squeeze a little and shatter my bones, who told the saddest versions of Lowde’s passing. Some said that they’d even seen her body, floated up from the riverbed and poled over to the bank by some captain and laid out in the sun. She hadn’t stunk; she’d been touched by nary a fish’s lip. I wept for all their stories, but moreso for the ones that carried her onto the river and to greater fortune like Elijah snatched up by flaming Angels into the fiery cart that bore him up to Paradise. And that day I saw her daughters in the windows, airing out their petticoats and drawers, I smiled and waved to them and told them all that they were beloved Brides of Christ; and those who didn’t know me or were sotten after a hard night would cuss me and yell, but there were others who’d call back proudly in great womanly shrieks and then ask for me to come up and bless them more, or they’d stand up on the rails of their balconies and thrust out their elbows, hook their thumbs in the tops of their bodices and bare their breasts like warriors. I thought if someone gave them spears and swords and they’d beat the ass off any Amazon.

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I took my leave of them and returned to Lowde’s, where some rangy boys were taking furtive picks at my horse. I had my hand in my coat for the pistol and they’d just begun to break and start off running when I put the pistol on them and they froze again. I approached and kept my barrel drifting the distance between the two of them. They were my age or younger, wormy just the same as I’d been, hatless, coatless, and with peeling shoes. They might’ve been brothers for their similarity of feature and the way both squared and held their ground even under the gun, which pleased me. Do you two have any friends in Natchez? I asked. They looked to each other in confusion and one answered, No. We got some, said the other. If you shoot us they’ll find out. At that moment Crabbe appeared in the busted window and he climbed out like a spider from under a rock onto the curb and both those boys yelped, one after the other, and were ready to skate, but I said to them, Don’t be afraid, nor terrified. This is my friend. Crabbe gave them a swoop of the claw and ignored their mumbled Christs and Jesuses. Then he asked me, Were they stealing? No, I said. Just looking, right boys? Just don’t sic that thing on us, said one. We didn’t take nothing. My friend’s no thing, I said. A child of God not unlike you or I. And besides he’ll snip your nuts off with his claws if you dare say another word like that. The thieves said they were sorry. That’s fine, I said. No harm taken. Old Crabbe’s heard worse, I know. But I’ve got to ask you now: do you know where you’re going? One sighed and said, We ain’t going anywhere while you holding that gun. No, not now, do you know where you’re going to go when you die? when some man does catch you filching through his pack and puts you down to eternity? Said one, we’d go in the ground or jail. The other laughed and I stepped closer with my pistol, trying to look stern. A crowd had gathered of drunkards and fighters and workmen, some whores flitting in and out. They were whispering, Shoot and get it done. The thieves’ eyes searched them out with fearful glances. I guess if we’re stealing we’ll go to Hell, said the one who’d laughed. Damn right, you’ll go straight to Hell. Torture, fire, the whole thing’s there just waiting for you, and from the looks of it that won’t be too far off. You gonna be the one to send us there? asked one. Maybe so, said Crabbe. I smiled at them, saying, I don’t want to be the one that does it. Though I could just as easy. No, I want to save you from it. From all the fires and torments Satan has down there waiting for you. See, I’m a sinner, you’re both sinners, stealers and robbers and who knows what else. I’ve done a mess of awful things and I’d have my own spot warming for me in the pit if it weren’t for one thing—the Love of Christ. They stared at me unbelieving, then looked to each other again. I’ve done all these things that’d make the Lord weep forever, and He should hate me. He should, but I’ve been doused in the blood of His son, I’ve been saved by the Grace of Jesus Christ and I’ll never burn for what I do. No matter what it is, he knows it’s in his name and even if it’s something He hates He’ll turn an eye from it, for I’ve done His ultimate will, I’ve taken the Baptism and pledged myself in His service in all ways and in all things.

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Hell yes, Angel! said Crabbe. Give them the scripture! What kind of scripture’s this? The Word of the Sword of the Lord, I said. And I keep it sheathed right here in my throat, and when I need to I’ll pull it out and hack off the heads of a hundred evil men. And if you let yourselves be baptized in Christ you’ll have that same weapon and that same guarantee of his love. He won’t forsake you, brothers. He’ll only help you forward, show you the houses of the fat and fill up your belly from their tables, fill your pockets with their gold and silver, raise you up so high you’ll squint and see the Gates of Heaven. I’ll throw down this gun and Baptize you right now, and if you follow me you’ll never want again. What say? The crowd was weighing in with murderous murmur and shouts to the contrary, and some among them were saying That’s one of those preacher boys. He’s just joking them before he shoots. No, I seen him save a boatload of niggers, it’s true. The thieves looked whipped. One popped back his head to catch my eye and said: You don’t look like you’re doing so great, he said. But I am, and I’ve got pistol, horse, and God’s love more than you do. We’re rich you dumb ass, said Crabbe. You just don’t know it yet. I hushed him and he skittered to the wall and sulked. The people grew louder like at a hanging. I kept my pistol on the boys but turned to the crowd and asked which one of them had a cup, wine, water, beer, whiskey, or rum, I didn’t care. Everything’s Holy, everything’s pure if you’ve got Jesus in your heart. Just give me a full cup so I can save some sinners. A grinning man appeared from out of the crowd and handed me a tin pitcher he said was full of egg and beer. I thanked him, slipped a coin in the pocket of his waistcoat, and took the cup from him. He must’ve thought some bloody joke about to be performed on the heads of the two unfortunates, who I presently turned to face again with pistol and pitcher in my hands. If you come here and get down on your knees, I’ll put away this pistol and baptize you and we’ll be friends and brothers. Go do it! came the shout from the crowd. Get dunked! All right, said one and he came forward, followed closely by the other. Once they were kneeling, looking at me still in disbelief, I made a great show of handing the pistol off to Crabbe, and asked them their names, which they said were Turpin and White— known to me later as Lem Turpin, who’d bring his brother Jack abroad, and White Alexander, fellow Cannibals. Yet they were still trembling, watching me for any move or hint of falseness as I took both handles of the cup and raised it up saying a prayer for its contents to be Holy as the river Jordan. And I asked them did they take Jesus Christ, Son of God, Lord of Hosts, King of Kings, the seed-sower, the whore-shielder, the Hell-caster, the baptizer, as their Lord and would they be Saved by Him. Yes, said Turpin. White had his hands pressed together like a child at nighttime prayer; he nodded that he did. Bow your heads and prepare yourself to take the Grace of God, I said, spilling the contents of the cup in mottled foam-mottled gold outpour over them, slicking their hair to their skulls. I shouted, Praise God! And all the people there assembled lifted up their voices in thunderous joy. I flung the cup into the air and got down in the road with the thieves and took them by the shoulders and lifted them up and whipped them round to show them to the crowd. They were laughing madly. The beery love of Christ was washed over us all there, and soon there came folks out of the crowd with cups of their own, to have me baptize them; and others

110 rushed into the taverns that were open or pounded on the doors of the ones that were closed and made frantic orders to the keepers for a cup of anything, by God, so long as it’s full! There came to be so many that the street was filled with clinking glasses wrecked by over-eager fists and mugs swung at heads to clear the way to Salvation. It got so wild that I appointed Crabbe and the two boys as baptizers, and we drowned enough sinners’ heads in drink to lift the city off the ground. The street grew muddy and both the fine liquor and the swill swirled at our heels. Through the sloshing praising tumult came the clopping of a horse’s hooves and the crowd parted for my brother to ride through. He was smiling wide, but upon seeing the state of Lowde’s place, he must’ve known and for a moment he looked to be lamenting the old chancer. Kemper had a bottle in his hand, from which he proceeded to take a deep swig, and poured the rest on the heads of the saved and soon-to-be. When the bottle was empty he pitched it at Lowde’s old house, where it shattered on a slat. Now smiling again, Kemper wheeled his horse around and whooped, slapping his hands to the packs at the beast’s sides which rang resoundingly with coin. Crabbe had scrambled over to him and was laughing and trying to knock him down. You said I’d get a God damned horse, he cried. Kemper only laughed wilder and took Johnny Crabbe by the claws and swung him round and shook him like a rag. I’ve seen the face of glory! Kemper hollered as he twirled to cackling Crabbe. I’ve seen it here in Natchez! I’ve seen it! I was not to know yet what he meant, only thinking it must surely be this great and Holy sight I’d made that had him seeing things Divine. No time to think it over, for there were glories every second to be seen in that mass of re-born Christians. We were all saved then; muddy and soaked and stinking of every kind of liquor the territory held—and some it couldn’t, bursting out in gouts of vomit from the mouths of the gutly penitent, who were only encouraged by their fellows to down more. The row went on for hours, through the day and into the night, with more and more converts coming forward. The saved themselves became baptizers and the whole place thrilled with the multiplication of the flock. Those who scoffed or refused were cold-cocked with baptismal cups and dragged away—Turpin and White, my two saddle-pickers, being among the most zealous with unbelievers. The weapons-seller trundled wares merrily through the crowd, and any man who’d throw in with us was bought a killing piece. By the end of the night, when the revels died and most were slinking off to sleep, their heads throbbing with goodness, we had nearly thirty pledged. Some were puny and bad-off, like Turpin and White, but others were grown men and fierce. Some knew we’d been with Reverend Morrel and were eager for the story of the great man’s demise—our invention, but surely the truth. This was the true beginning of the Cannibals, who’d one day not far off give up the hunt for money and go to march, ride, fight, and bushwhack; to string a thousand ropes from a thousand trees, hack a country out of nothing but graft and papism; and do it all only to fall to darkness and dissolution. God there was such beauty in it then, as the whole thing came to be in riotous inception; and we were proud fathers stomping our feet happily in afterbirth.

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CHAPTER 2 Reuben tells of God’s promises

The Glory my brother had seen hadn’t been the baptisms, but a sight glimpsed on a corner off the market, where, while he leaned against a coffee cart and sipped some steaming black—his horse back in the alley so that he could watch the bags now filled with the money from the sale he’d finished in such high blood and spirits; driving alone all the Sabines to the yard behind the auction yard; the beasts, in their great numbers pushing aside the stock of all the others as he shouted that he’d sell the whole bunch for half the price tallied on the great chalkboard that hung on a post in the auctioneer’s grounds. Sixty head, all the finest and full of so much piss and vinegar he’d gotten them down here in double time and hadn’t even had to froth them. By God, they’d rather knock me in my head quick as that than stop to take a drink or chew some grass— So my brother told me all of this, giving the voices and re-acting his sale of the horses and how he’d had the money handled in huge sacks to his own poor mount. Those same sacks were sitting with us in our old room at Lowde’s—purchased by us earlier that morning at another auction by demand. Kemper had the mouth of one sack open and played his hand absentmindedly through the coins of various denominations, and when Crabbe told him he’d had enough of the money talk and wanted to hear some Glory, Kemper snapped back to tell us what he’d seen. From that alleyway, the coffee warming his throat and setting him right against the coming heat of the day—for he was sweating and far too whipped to make it with a clear head through the town. He said his eyes never left the moneysacks resting heavy as a liar’s conscience on the haunches of the horse, until there appeared in his view this creature, whose hair—what wasn’t hidden in a lacy scarf—fell at her neck and cheek in gold and tufted in the corners of a face so sharp and bone-white he said he’d like to crack her open and suck out the marrow. There wasn’t a mark on her, from what Kemper could tell, and he’d been looking hard and hawklike at this girl’s approach; he couldn’t help himself. She neared his watching-place and while some men whooped and clapped their hearts and loins, others busied themselves with boxing the ears of errand-sent Negroes so that they might look away. She gave them all not a flicker of her fan, and this pleased my brother greatly. So when she was fast approaching, Kemper dropped his coffee in the dirt and stepped out from the alley as elegantly as he could, and when she close enough for him to hear the tiny thuddings of her heels, Kemper swept his hat from his head and bowed to her. Hearing all that awestruck mooning pour from out my brother’s mouth had me laughing—painful, as my stomach was from all the riot of the last day and night. Seeing Kemper’s eyes cut to me and his hand clench a palmful of coins, I beat the laughter down and said I’d listen. Crabbe had left, bored, and could be heard scurrying all over the house, righting broken things, trying to clean along with White and Turpin, who I knew by their shouts and yelps at Crabbe’s entrance had been sleeping instead of watching over the horses tied at the front windows like I’d told them. Kemper said there wasn’t much else to tell, and quietly resumed fingering the coins and staring out our window—the only one unbroken in the house. But there was more, and I’d draw it out of him over the course of the day spent slinging money across counters, buying up fine things. Whatever we wanted, we had made; like the livery kit with the ladderwork of riggings we’d commissioned sewn into the saddle for Crabbe, to ease his ride and let him have his own horse. He’d weep when we brought it back later in the week,

112 along with a fine Conroy horse that stood low enough for him to mount on his own. By mid-day we’d shed our old clothes like snakeskins and walked the Under-the-hill streets cutting figures like true blades in black short-coats and high boots, swinging out our walking sticks. I was choked round the neck by the highest, finest collar I could buy, set with a pearl pin. We’d waited hours that morning on this skinny man with bulbous hands to make our boots, walking barefoot cross the road to get a drink and looking like Wild Boys—dressed half in style and the rest in leather tatters because we’d pitch a piece of our old clothes away once a new one was bought. Put away your waxpaper, sir, and slip that shirt on my back. Never mind my bollocks, sew a button to that fly, so that I might go out into the street and strut. Tapping with my stick to a hatmaker’s window—the new and shining head of brass feeling weighty in my hand, a cast of a tiger’s head—I shattered the glass and the man and his wife came out screaming. So I dug some coin up from my pockets and impressed it on their sweaty palms, telling them to send the glass-setters to Lowde’s when they were done, then went inside with Kemper and bought a half dozen different toppers. By the end of the day we’d need a Negroe or two, sent trundling after us by some of the more grateful merchants, to carry our things. These too were slipped money and they broke into a foot-slapping dance that wove in circles around us, singing about the black, black boys with pockets full of gold. My brother was full of joy; he walked all graceful and would take long steps over pats in the road, whereas I didn’t mind some shit on my new boots. And why not, with a bootblack fixed at every corner to wipe and scrub the mud and filth from my heel and toe in the moments that we waited on carriages and wagons to cross. No, Kemper was smitten and went around like her eyes were everywhere. It was a thing to behold the tall, broad-backed Kemper striding along, cane tucked at the frills of his shirt, right hand in the topmost pocket of his coat, and if you looked close enough you might see his fingers wiggling up there, always at the ready to spring out and whip the hat from his head at the sight of her. He’d even linger with the shopkeepers while I was outside smoking a cigar, asking them for any hint of her. Such to say, he was disappointed, and the merchants’ stories weren’t near as tidy as the whores’ had been to me. They mistrusted us, and whether we were moneyed or not we still had the look of woodsy madmen spilling wealth from the holes in our heads. I went happily along with him in his mania and what came to be the first day of his hunt for her, smoking and having drinks sent out for me and whoever stood nearest while my brother interrogated the townsfolk. I didn’t have a touch of care, not even worrying much over whether Turpin and White, or some of the others who’d pledged to follow, might overpower Crabbe while we were gone and make off with our horse-money. We’d given my first two converts both some small cuts of shares, and they never touched nor asked for any more. I knew they would’ve hacked any robbers to pieces before they surrendered a cent. He swore up and down that he’d find her, though by the end of the day he knew outright who she was. According to the merchants and the people of the street, she was that Aliza, that same mistress of the Church where my brother had stood gaping at the red windows in our early days in Natchez; and it was told that she was a duchess out of fortune,--expelled from the house of her husband for trafficking her love elsewhere; soon banished utterly from ever returning to their castled European country,—an inheritor of bawdy houses who’d never touched a man, but whose mother had been a Grande Dame of the Whores and given her daughter an empire of ribaldry which she kept in strict control,—I’ve told already of some of the evils perpetrated in such high flung places, dangling with crystal chandeliers and in the back a pickling jar of prick snipped from those who wouldn’t pay up; she was also said to be the daughter of a planter who’d

113 let his youngest girl sometimes sneak Under-the-Hill—but always sending after her a cordon of swift and frightening Negroes to watch over her in secret—keeping her always in their view, these steely blacks, who were known, it was said, to slip up behind a man fancying to touch her hand and with a razor-flick leave him breathing out a slit in his throat; and Lord have mercy on the one who’d think of robbing her, and so the planter’s daughter had one day simply not returned home, and had taken up at the Church with her inheritance, for her father had died boyless and of shame. They said she still kept the slaves and raging nigger vengeance awaited the man fool enough to even plot it, for their ears were as sharp as their eyes and they’d suffer no messing in their master’s daughter. When Kemper told me that one I fell half in love myself, less with her than with the idea of this band of blacks; an expeditionary force of Morrel’s illusive army, his never-were squadrons of slaves that’d suddenly one night bolt up and cut their masters’ throats, then swarm to the Reverend and pour down to the sea in victory march. I was taken with the thought of it all the rest of the day and for a long time after. He wouldn’t go within the Church though—perhaps some holdover fear. My brother wanted to catch her in the open. And though Kemper sulked home with me that day dejected, we were high on the start of thrashing out our own brief foothold, there in Natchez. The vision of that girl would have him working harder with his money than anything else could’ve done. He became intent on raising our immediate environs from walls of puke-splatter and blood, to a great house set absurdly in the most awful part of town. If he could’ve paid someone to go down to the river and pour scents in it daily to make it not waft muddy stink through our door, he would’ve. All on the off-chance she might catch some word of him and his search, and come gliding one day through the door. And in those first weeks some of the men who’d pledged to us would come by Lowde’s—now restored with new windows, furniture, and wares far finer than it’d ever been when our Missus kept shop there—and sit over the coonboxes we’d taught Turpin to fix, planning out the work of the months to come; and Kemper would bring a brass pot to the table so there’d be not even a drop of spit on the floor. These men took it all in stride, feigning manners for Kemper with crystal cups as we sat in hunched and happy conspiracy beneath the portrait he’d had made Mother Lowde—the likeness being related to the painter from memory.

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CHAPTER 3 The fairest among women

For days he searched the town and in all his furious hunting—always well-dressed—there was no trace to be found of Aliza but words. And he was still too fearful to make a try at the Church. He wanted only to catch a glimpse of her again. Kemper even made trips up to the city On-the- Hill, finding even fewer willing to speak of the girl in that stiff-legged, drinkless-at-noon world. For all their haught and bother at his presence, he said that they were always kind. I cussed them and doubted. But Kemper was blinded by their manners same as he’d later be by the Feliciana planters, which he’d taken to aping so recently, and carried on this way—setting out in the morning decked in full regalia of the newly-moneyed, he’d march off like a proud tradesman to beloved work. I tried to keep my scoffing down, but found it hard each time he came back full of the wonders of the Hilltop town, spouting how he’d fix the house up more—by then the place was more draped in gaudy luxury—and one day soon would buy up all the block and turn it to pure gold. We’ll need more money, I told him. Of course we will, said Kemper. I’m just praying on it right now. But when the moneys ours, God Almighty! So I kept shut my mouth and went on planning with the boys, figuring my brother would wake soon out of his delirium. I took heart in the way our numbers swelled by word-of-mouth the last few weeks; Kaintuck men, faces cross-hatched with scars from having to shave their thick beards after suffering a few days in the Far-South heat; river boys, who went about wringing the water from their shirts and never getting dry; the farmer’s sons who’d grown tired of working behind a plow; the farmers themselves who’d snuck out one dark night from their shacks and left behind burdensome families; and all manner of others, no two alike in our Ark of righteousness bobbing on a sea of misdeed. All of them we tested by Crabbe, bringing a new man to the back room and having him sit with me and Johnny at table; and if they squirmed at first this was no bother, but they had to, by the end, look the Crabbe in the eye and be able to talk with him like he was a person. I learned this from Morrel; that if a man could ride with the horrible, he’d be obliged to do most anything when the time comes. We gave no truck with in-fighting or bull shit; we needed no man who didn’t believe in the Word. Sure there were some backsliders, but they were given every chance before being evicted from the group and told, in no short terms, by Turpin or White—my right and left hands if Crabbe was my wild feet—that they’d find themselves sunk in the river with a bellyful of sand if they breathed even a word of our plans. This served to put the fear in most, but there were some who were so set in their sinners’ ways that they gabbed once another tavern’s liquor crossed their lips. Lucky that our eyes and ears were now extended all throughout the town; as the boys were never gathered together all at once and wouldn’t know if the man across from them at cards was a Saved member, full-fledged, of the Cannibals. So some work had to be done, but most of the boys were so over-eager to please and prove their loyalty that they did the silencing themselves; coming to tell me later when we’d laugh over coonboxes at the passing of the false. Kemper was a rare visitor to any meeting besides those held at night, when he’d be just returning from his daily search. He’d sit with a cup and listen, maybe even flip through the

115 ledgerbook we’d begun to keep of all the names of our friends and their tasks in the forthcoming weeks—when we’d split into small bands and put in a month’s worth of work on the roads all the way to the Tennessee and the Texan line, reconnoitering in Natchez for a gathering of gains, ill- got and not, and the division of them amongst us. And with my brother so distracted I imagined myself like Jesus on the shore of Galilee, watching his friends the fishermen haul in nets wriggling full, their catches shining silver like coins. Sometimes we met in the cellar with the molding casks of beer and the remains of Lowde’s attempts at cannery, which was the only room in the house Kemper would leave uncleaned and ungilded, otherwise out front in the relative open. Johnny Crabbe would be manning the front door, checking through a peep hole cut for his height if any of those who knocked were unknown to us or had the look or those who bore ill will. And it would be Crabbe at his post who one day spied out front what he described as a monster nigger rapping at the door. The boys who’d come by at mid-day were all at tables, joking and sipping—they called for Crabbe to let the nigger in and let’s see how big he is without his ears. Whoops and guffaws all around, but I quieted them down and told Crabbe to see what he wanted. So Crabbe climbed his stepladder and unlatched the door, opening it only a crack. All was quiet, listening to the voice of Johnny Crabbe sounding in bursts over the low grumble of the Negroe. After a time, and some discussion between the two, a black hand jabbed through the door-crack with an envelope and Crabbe snatched it away, nodding and mumbling. We all could hear him say for the Negroe to have a good day before shutting the door and latching it back. This sent up a chorus of jeers; Good day, Mr. Nigger! Your blue-gummed highness! Good old Saint Darky! Wobbling, Crabbe dismounted his steps, letter in claw, and came sideways cross the floor, finding me at a half-hearted game of stud. I think that’s one of those murder niggers, said Crabbe, holding out the letter. Grinning at Crabbe’s fear and the boys’ continued cawing; I took the letter from him and set it on the table without so much as a glance—having forgotten all about the stories of Kemper’s girl being the spry daughter of the gentry with a herd of watchful murderous slaves at her command. There it would sit for the best part of an hour, soaking up the spillage from my drink and being covered in dog-eared cards, until I stood up to fix another whiskey and took the thing up. It read Ruben Kemper in tall, looping script and immediately I brought the thing under my nose and sniffed it for a hint of scent, but there was none. Boys, I said—disbelieving. This might be Kemper’s lady. That’s what I was trying to tell you, Crabbe said, trying to pinch the letter from my hand as the place near fell apart with all the hands slapping tabletops and bodies being tossed back in their chairs letting go peals of laughter, and before long they were shouting for me to rip the thing open and read aloud to them its saucy contents. I brandished the letter above my head, parading the room to the whaps of their clapping; still somewhere I knew that this was wrong and capped off my promenade by slipping the letter into my coat. Resounding boos and hisses, but I waved them off and called out: How can you trust me with your lives and fortunes if I do that to my brother? Some answers came, but most played dumb except Crabbe who slipped behind me trying to snatch the letter back and almost succeeded in his thievery if not for my quick left hand catching between the snips of his claw and pushing it back before he could get a grip on my coat. God damn it, said Crabbe. I just want to see it. Does it smell like a lady? No, I said.

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That may’ve been the funniest of all to the boys; half now on their sides, rolling the floors. This time Crabbe went for my legs with his claws and I was lucky not to catch one in the dangle as I scrambled back towards the gleaming new wood counter, which I mounted with a single leap. The uproar grew more furious and there was not much else to do but holler, yell, and howl along with them. Wear down these men grown antsy in the weeks of scheming and promises of gain for action. The calls to read grew louder, and even Turpin came out from the cellar and, unless he’d been down there with an ear pressed to the knotholes in the floor—which I wouldn’t put beyond his craftiness—he called for me to read he knew not what,—but Read the thing! Lord God it was a fool’s dance I did across that counter, digging my heels into the grain and slipping on occasion in the puddles of spill, but remaining afoot and away from all those grabbers after my brother’s letter. And I swear I didn’t read the thing, not even afterwards, when I’d have the chance to pluck it from the hiding place Kemper had made for it beside his bed, in a silken pouch slipped beneath his crate of guns that was so heavy from constant additions that it bowed the roof of the tavern downstairs and threatened to crash down on the heads of some unfortunate drinker, killed by a hundredweight of arms and one less-than-an-ounce letter from a that Aliza. I would go and find his letter sometimes when temptation struck; let my fingers brush the flaps of the folded paper and the wax already gone brittle, torn in half by Kemper’s quaking hands, and once opened my brother had held it so tightly that the stamp would forever be obscured. No, I would not read what she wrote him, as I would hear Kemper’s version of it once the fever of the letter had passed and he was becalmed enough to speak again. But long before that—while I was still dancing on the counter, in my pocket his ticket to the surest paradise known—my brother came shouting through the door wanting to know why in the Hell we had no one watching the God damn peep. Some men scrambled to sit back up in their chairs, others only turned and waited for what they must’ve though would be a fight. The leader-boys pitted against each other and let’s see who wins the day. But Kemper was looking more hang-dog than usual and only threw up a hand at me and was starting off for the stairs, off to sit in his room for hours with a spyglass trained on the streets he could see from his window. Johnny Crabbe might join him,—How else could I get my reports?—blue stone in his socket and the other squeezed shut, looking out for nothing much but catching occasional glances of Kemper swimming in blue, and, so he though, going mad as Hell from all his staring at the window of the Church’s tower. Now it was that I could put an end to it with one slip of paper, and, thinking we’d be rid of the scourge of invisible women if I only gave it to him, I hopped down to the boards and from the fluttering sides of my coat I took the letter out and gave it to Kemper. No words for when he took it from me; the look on his face like a dog in the doorway of a room full of bloody meat. What at first appeared like anger boiled up in him. He was shaking and I was shook, worried that he knew of my sport or thought I’d forged the missive for him in makeshift lady’s curlicues. See, by then my brother seemed so far-gone that I didn’t know what else to do but set my feet, ball my fists, and pray I got his chin. But Kemper was pressing the letter open and not a scrap fell from his hands, which were trembling like the rest of him, only moreso. He unfolded the sheet and held it so close to his face that I thought he’d ball it up and eat it. Eyes squirming cross-and-down the page, he couldn’t have devoured any more with his gullet and teeth. Read the bastard, God! cried a man to the underside of his table, and the others joined in

117 again. Read! Read! Let’s hear us some love! How the foolscap didn’t rip, I don’t know; for in his hands it wasn’t much more than a leaf. And Kemper, still zig-zagging over her words, with what looked to be great force, tore his eyes away and faced the boys, saying: The next one of you fuckers says a word to me, or about this here, I’ll cut your stinking cunt flaps open to the ears—you hear? Seeing them all stiffen, Turpin, White and Crabbe looking fearful round the room for the first man fool enough to speak, I held up my hands and calmed them like wind on the waters. A feat, I tell you. Some still cut their eyes at Kemper, who, by then, was storming upstairs with his head still bowed over the page.

118

CHAPTER 4 The daughter’s inheritance

I sought my brother out in his room, not long after he’d retreated there with his precious letter— I’d cleared the boys out with round of dark rum and promises we’d ride the highways in the coming days; telling them to ready their horses, clean out their pieces, and bring enough powder and shot. They’d departed drunk and singing the King of the Cannibal Islands; and my head might as well been cut from my body like one of that great man’s trophies, for I didn’t even know if my brother would go with us, or abandon all our hard-wrought enterprise for a dip between a Aliza’s thighs. If it were that he’d only have done that. He stood at the lamp with his letter, still poring over it, but now being wracked with belts of gasping. I’d pushed open his door and he’d not even noticed, and I stood there for some time watching him go loony with excitement. What does she say? I asked. Kemper whipped his head and held out the letter to me as though I were supposed to read the writing from across the room. His hair looked torn out in places, and his eyes were ready to quit his sockets. The stories are all true, he said. She’s everything they said she was. Kemper’s mouth bobbled and fumbled with the words, and once he’d spat them out he stood there at his spying-window and looking pleased as if he’d said the whole genealogy of Israel. What he’d said was Aliza. I puzzled there and meanwhile Kemper went back to reading and pacing, moving his lips with the words. Is she the planter’s daughter? A nigger brought her letter and Crabbe said he looked something fierce. I know, said Kemper. Crabbe told me already about the nigger. I scowled a bit probably. The little bug was far too sneaky-quick and had already been upstairs. I remonstrated to tie Crabbe’s claws together while he was sleeping, make him chew the bonds off since he liked to work his jaws so much. She’s heard of me—Aliza, my brother said. She’s heard that I’d seen her and was tearing up the whole town after her. She says she wouldn’t have paid it any mind but for the fact that I was so dogged, and she’s heard that I rode with Morrel, but it’s what I said to the lady at the house next door to hers that made her want to have me call. So you’ll go to the Church, I said. God yes:—tomorrow. Brother I knew it when I told that woman how she looked and the old gal’s eyes got all lit that she knew her. I said her hair was blonde and she looked like she was made of porcelain razor-blades, and how it was a miracle she didn’t cut her clothes when she walked—Jesus, I think I had some tears when I told her. So this old gal must’ve heard the love in it and gone to find her for me. All she had to do was get her bowlegged ass next door, I said. Kemper shut his eyes and sighed, with the letter close to his chest. You’re standing at the edge of the Lake of Fire, brother. Don’t make me kick you in. You’re not kicking a thing, I said, half-tempted to snatch the letter from his hands and tear the stinking thing to pieces. We’re riding out on Sunday night to work the roads and you don’t even know it.

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He only shook his head at me as though I were a blabbing child, and said, The Lord spoke to me the second I saw her and I was like a rat with its head nailed to the floor—all weak and spinning. You know it; you lusted months after that dirtball girl, so don’t keep spitting all this shit to me. I told him he was God damned wrong. Don’t think I won’t be on the ride, my brother said. Christ and I think I’ve got money. She’s sitting right now up in that house surrounded in it. Aliza. This last word he sounded out like one of the harder Hebrew names to say in the book, like it was all peppered with hatches and slashes denoting the tones of ancient tongues; and the ring of it befit her—this Aliza—so well, as she would, even in her youth and before she was worn down by time and trial, have the aspect of ancientness. If you go there tomorrow, let me go with you. Come along, said my brother. But not inside. I told him that I’d wait outside, but that I’d be sure to have a few of the boys nearby in case he didn’t come back out. This prospect pleased Kemper little; and I began to think he’d rather see us all cut down by her Negroes before we took him from that place. So it went the next day that Kemper, dressed like the general of an army of dandies, walked out of Lowde’s with me and started up the street. Behind us trailed my watchdog troops, Turpin, White, and others who, by the time we’d reached the brothel row, had become lost or caught up in some sports of their own and were not lurking at the alleys and the doorframes as I’d hoped when Kemper took the steps up to the Church. Later in the day I’d have a prayer meeting with them, but for now I watched my brother give the door a rap, then, noticing the long handle dangling on a chain, he pulled it and somewhere in the rooms of that house I’m sure a high bell sounded and the whores now awake thought briefly of their work. The door was set with a peephole and three feet below that the latch-trap door where the guest would be asked to invest himself and be investigated. I heard the murmurs of a voice behind the door, to which my brother spoke only his name, and then was saying, Yes, all right. They would have him be examined—not like the attic whores down our way who’d, laughing, use their long fingernails to pry the lice, ticks, and fleas from you, but with who knows what instruments; the magnifier and clamp for those too tiny, or the the dreadful syringe full of mercury, its thin brazen tip jammed straight in and with a press of a lady’s delicate thumb there’d come a cleansing wash of pain and you were clean, but would end up paying not just for the shot but for the extra time it’d take for her to get you straight again what with all the throbbing and the feeling of pitch boiling out from you. I imagined horrors I did not yet know while Kemper fussed with his waistcoat and then the buttons of his breeches, cussing tailors. Once this was accomplished and he’d freed himself—with glances to either side of the street—he stepped up to the latch door and there he stood, waiting like a Frenchman at his guillotine, or like the King old Cromwell had decapped.—Likewise Kemper did not shake or shiver, though I’ll say that I was full of fear, expecting every second his de-manning to commence. He stood stock still at the door; and they did not use pincers, or give him the jet of mercury, but he would say it felt like the hand that held him was silkily gloved, and it skillfully and gently checked him through and through. But I was not yet know this and was presently scanning street for any sign of those shitbirds, Turpin and the rest, thinking the ransom blade might come at any moment; and I saw my brother seize up for an instant and was sure that it’d fallen. But it was only his release by the hand unseen and his hurried fumblings to tuck himself away and be presentable again, and there was ample time to do so, for it was another few minutes before the door was opened and my

120 brother went inside. Wonder now whether it was Aliza’s hand that did the checking on him; making sure that she’d see him for herself before receiving him in her upstairs parlor. Those hands of hers were something you didn’t forget. But I was out in the street and as yet knew nothing of the happenings within the Church, the expanse of which bore down on me as I snatched cups from vendors, made talk with passersby, and smoked through my bundle of cigars, waiting. I damned the boys I’d sent behind to a thousand separate Hells; and when I was fed up with waiting and the sun began to dip— feeling hard pressed with the evening peaking not to go and kick down that door and bodily drag Kemper out—I left there to go and find my disappeared guard. In an alleyway up just one row from where I’d stood they were boxing dice with some scampers. The fools were casting lots for chicken change while I might be laying gutted in an ashpile, not to say what might’ve befallen Kemper while they played. Crabbe saw me first and froze up on his legs while the others turned their heads to look and their necks huffed like lizards’ necks. The scampers, a pair of old men wearing coins tied in their beards, did not know and at first tried to stop me when I came raging into the alley, clapping Turpin and White on their heads and knocking off their hats. Crabbe tried to climb the wall but could get no claw- hold, so I kicked him in the back and he fell with his legs tucked at his chest like I newspaper- smote spider. The scampers tried to pull me from them and I sent their money ringing with my elbows crashing facewards; and they slid to the ground without a whimper. In that place I gave a fast sermon on fidelity and I crushed their dice under my heel. This accomplished, I had them dig through the scamper’s pockets and cut the coins from their beards—these men woke up mid-way through the passage of Turpin’s knife through their hair but were persuaded by Crabbe’s claws to stay put. When all this was done they were all feeling better and had already forgotten the knots at their heads and my admonishments. But I knew even as I sent them, chattering happily, home that they were restless to go out—that the others would be also. I decided then that the ride would commence on the Sabbath, Kemper or no. I’d done too much digging in the dung piles of Natchez-Under-the-Hill to wash my hands of them all now. Resuming my place across from the Church I would see its windows light red and look in those glowing eyes for signs of movement. Forms passed the panes, both female and male; the shades of the other men I’d seen all day going to the door and being taken in. I’d not touched a woman since the day I’d gone after Lowde’s whereabouts with the attic girls. How different would this Aliza be than my rough girls in their cramped rooms where the ribs of the roofs caught your unwary head and sent you spinning before you’d even been touched. They lived up there like mice in piles of shredded things, gewgaws sparkling secreted in places in the mess. I thought then I’d dive forever into the hoard-piled lives of women, gather all their bits and playpretties and scraps of muslin and calico and their costume jewelry winking in tangles of old socks that smelled maybe of men but in their confluence gave up woman like a ghost.

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CHAPTER 5 She glories as does the church

Whereas we thought our eyes and ears went all throughout the town, we were but deaf boys pressing tin horns to our heads compared to Aliza. She knew my brother already through and through—and received him like Sheba did Solomon. He’d step finally out of that place late in the night looking ashen and drained. I’d waited all that time, growing drunk, and presently I searched in the lamplight for leech-marks at his neck; and they were there in deep bruises from suckers of great size. He walked like bones on a string on home with me, giving snips and flashes of what’d taken place so that I had to cobble together from these scraps of his vision of her over the sorry course of days; the same days he’d rise and leave Lowde’s house same as he’d done when he was hunting his Aliza, now making his trek daily to the Church, and return similarly sapped as he’d done the first time, and every morning and night I’d say to him, The ride’s commencing soon. And I can’t say whether it’s her story or his that I put down now in my Gospel, for she would have him on his daily visits do not much more than sit and listen to her talk. And he would, doing nothing, so he said, but sip the sweet fig wine she’d have brought up to them during his audiences with her. Kemper listened and would return bubbling over with her words those nights before our first Cannibal ride, and tell me it like I was a bug in his ear, hearing the echoes of Aliza’s voice. I wasn’t the one that was bewitched by just the sound of her calling out for him to be brought upstairs to her; and he was led by a woman he thought was lovely for only the time it took her to escort him up the stairs and down a hall of rooms that ended in Aliza’s doorway, where his guide departed him and so the beauty of all other women when he saw her. Seated in a wide chair before a window was the one he’d hunted for, her razored frame barely contained by her clothes—red, he said, and frilled with laces and filigrees, closing at her collar in heart-shaped clasp. He told the truth about this, if nothing else. For when I’d see her it was easy to tell that even sitting still there was always the threat that her angles would split a seam. I will say myself that she did not fill clothes her like other women do, nor did she struggle against them like those all brimming fleshy, but her form would fight against it and this forced upon her the finest and most delicate of movements. Not to say that she was some wilting flower that shriveled outside the shade—more like she was made of sharpest glass, for when the time came for Aliza to use her blades, she’d be up to her skinny neck in gore. When I’d finally see her, I’d find she was a butcher’s grate trapped with gobs of prettiness. But for now she was immaculate before Kemper. Beside her on a tripod stood a spyglass like his own—this alone filling him with delight; that she might’ve searched him the same way. Not to mention the rest of her trappings—the walls full of nooks and shelves all packed with trinkets, gifts; a long table crowded with bottles great and small; tobacco boxes, and, in one corner of the room, a stuffed wildcat. There were other particulars, but it is not my memory but my brother’s and I can only imagine how it was those Apostles catching snatches of Christ and jabbering his words to their fellows. Aliza was no Christ, nor even a Magdalene, but something fiercer than the late Books could contain. She’d have been at home with the old Hebrew minxes who cut the heads from the generals of opposing armies. She might’ve sent for the Baptist’s head, but she would not have asked. She told Kemper that she’d watched him, in his comings and sullen goings, and laughing, she confessed, at the slump his shoulders took on by the end of a fruitless day. She’d had the

122 town’s lips sewn shut with threads of silver, and she told him how no one would’ve given him a straight answer if he’d gone on hunting her a thousand days. To which he replied that he would’ve anyway; and she’d laughed like she must’ve all the times he’d thrashed his arms upon exiting some house or tavern without any more clue to her than when he’d entered. But, she said, I did not laugh in the mornings when you’d be back again. For three days she would have my brother visit. And in that time did she receive him unto her? It is a mystery all our long years would not serve to answer, Kemper would keep quiet. She must’ve taken him into the ramble of her bones for him to do what he soon would for her. She would know his origins, and by rights mine. Because of this I feared her before I was ever near enough for her to slice me with one of her nails—which she’d cultivated to such a length that she could scoop a snuffball from her kitty and flip it to her nose without a fiber falling, but were the least terrible thing about that woman. She would be a cruel risen spine full of love for him. Hard to the world was this Aliza, but Kemper always swore that she had sweetness. I watched her all the years that I knew her, and it was always like watching a snake coiled in a jar, caught by a boy who is in love with its skin and the fierce-quick strike of its teeth and the baleful look of its eyes both bright and dead, animal dull and alight—withholding judgment in them for the boy whose face is pressed to the glass and who keeps it. The snake is wrong for Aliza, though. She was no deceiving Serpent any more than she was a foolish Eve. She would be mother of a War as that first rib-born one was mother to the World. That first day she would ask him to tell about Morrel and laugh when Kemper told the story of the Natchitoches carnival. She called the Reverend a fool, and this made Kemper gave no reply. He told her of our days on the plains and the journey down to Natchez. She perked at the mention of Lowde and would have him tell all he knew; then there came an outpouring of that son’s love for the old whore-mother—telling her about the portrait and the house, his pride and joy; and Aliza—he was sure—stirred even deeper. Though she would not say that she’d come and see his handywork and all the finery he’d wrought in her name He asked her on the second day was she a Christian, but Aliza only smiled and made no answer. Hearing this, I swore and stormed back down the stairs to my cellar room, where, locked in and wanting to fire pistol into the walls, I made lamentations for the misfortunes of friends who strayed from God. A zealous little thrasher, boarded in and yammering curses and hate; I called Crabbe down eventually so that I could swat him on the head and send him scurrying away. Does she ever leave her house, I asked him one day. She does, he said, in disguises. He’d sit with Aliza while her girls slept off the night before; and in the afternoons, when the first stirrings of beds and mattress-creak would give way to whores padding down the hall, some came to her keyhole for a listen, which she’d hear and with Kemper clamming up only raise her voice louder and clearer so that it pierced his heart on its way to the keyhole and the waiting ear of some silently snickering whore. He heard their huffed laughter and girlish titters and whispers, and he would’ve flushed or stormed out but he only had to look to Aliza and see that she didn’t even unfurl a finger in irritation. She knew and loved her girls,—most of them older than her—and maybe she knew that what she did was bizarre enough to deserve listeners; and when my brother would take his leave of an evening as the paddings became the rustling of garter over thigh and the huffs of corsets being cinched Aliza would walk him to the door of her

123 bedroom and call them all out of their rooms with a kind of yip so that from out of those rooms there came a steady stream of women to line the balcony and stairway in their various stages of undress; lips half-painted, hair hanging in undone curls, elbows not yet smoothed, their straps and seams and frills half-fixed—but all beautiful enough to give any man fits; yet he passed them smiling by, so he said, and would go on down the stairs past more lovely swells of breast and thigh and full hip peeking out from the sides of unlaced dresses thinking only of his blade-boned love still standing in her doorway, eyeing his progress through that line of mantraps until he was at the foot, where he would bow to her again and there’d be a single smile flashed from whore to whore all the way back up the line to Aliza, who’d raise a bony hand and say, Tomorrow. I’d see that line one day myself, and damned if I know how he resisted falling to his knees at the feet of the first one he saw and begging to be taken to bed. I can’t recall ever getting up from my knees my whole time there, surrounded by beauties and hoping every second that they’d devour me whole, or find some place in their rooms to keep me locked away like a treasure. At the end of the third day Kemper returned like Jesus from his tomb, just as ghostlike as he’d been before, but now filled with awful resolve. You could see it burning in him when he came down to the cellar and found me there with some of the boys in the last stages of our preparation for the ride that Sabbath; and without a word my brother went to the shelf of Lowde’s dusty pickling jars and took one down, unscrewed the cap and reached in to pluck out a sopping rotten pig’s foot. We all watched, in silence, Kemper draw them out one after the other; tossing each one to the floor until the jar was empty. He replaced the lid and went upstairs with the jar tucked under his arm, abandoning the pile of pig’s feet to Crabbe, who, unable to contain himself, quickly skittered over and gobbled them down. Gaw! said Crabbe through his mouthful of pork, It’s rotten! Still and all he went on gnawing. Later I’d go upstairs and look for Kemper, but he was gone and the pickling jar stood at his bedside, and in the juice floated nothing but bits and scraps, and would not return until next morning when we were redding the horses out in the street just before sunrise, bidding goodbye—with instructions added for the upkeep of the place—to a woozy Johnny Crabbe. The pig’s feet had not set right with him and he was bobbing green on his legs. My brother would not notice this or much else, but continue past us into the house. He would return with the jar under his arm and his things for the ride slung on his back. While one of the boys went to the alley paddock to bring Kemper’s horse I looked close to the jar, which was now made different by the thing that’d joined the swirl of ancient knuckle meat—a wrinkled roll of flesh that gave off a cloud of red. Before I could be sure of what the thing was in the jar, Kemper’s horse was brought to him and he loaded the jar in with his packs and, with great care, lashed it to the harness and covered it in a dark cloth.

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CHAPTER 6 The vehemency of love

Where we made our roads those days was to the west of the river all down into the West Florida country for the first time, splitting into groups at the fork of the Amite; some riding north and west and others—Kemper, White, Silver, and me—to the south. It was there that my brother would show his love for his Aliza, blade out and cutting till he was elbow-deep in the blood from awful places; slicing at our enemies like David before he was a King, and was made to prove his worth for love. But I didn’t know full yet what my brother would do for his Aliza, how he’d pay her horrible bride-price; her bloody dowry. For a day I watched the jar, where my brother kept it tied and swaddled in his saddle packs, as though it would give me a sign to its purpose, or his. I noticed uneasy glances from the others to that same spot, and when we would stop to rest the horses and take marks of the crossroads or places where we might do our work, I heard White and Silver whispering, wondering what the jar contained. Riding on, they grew louder and with Kemper up ahead of us but still, I thought, in earshot, they offered guesses to its contents:—the slip of an ear to make her a purse, baby’s skin for a pair of mokkasins, lips for her collection; all manner of delights to bring back for some Witch dancing the rigadoon under a full moon. But, like I’ve said, Aliza was no Witch. She made no potions or tinctures or concoctions to catch my brother; she laid no poultice on his heart; she had no dolls or chicken feet talismans that I know of—Not that I wouldn’t hunt through her chests and crates of belongings later, looking for a hint to her, coming up empty-handed from these plundering, with no answer other than love; love to light a fire in your heart and drive you to awful acts; love like a light behind your eyes that makes it painful to shut them to your deeds, which are all you can do but to fall in Her estimation. And Aliza’s love was like the breath of Raw-head-and-Bloody-bones beckoning to children from dripping cisterns and shrouded riversides where the babes hear unguarded the thing’s pretty voice—sounding like a lovely grandmother talking through the silk of her veil, or a sister whispering from under the blanket for her brother to come and be snug, but is really the hiss of a lipless mouth moving against strands of long, soggy hair tangled with weeds and rags hiding mercifully its teeth until the child bends over the cistern or kneels at the water’s edge and peers within; then suddenly there’s a cry and a slip-splash into the water and Rawhead’s found another friend. And in the murk for an instant—if the child hasn’t squeezed its eyes shut in terror—it will see the creature’s awful jaws wide-open, revealing fangs. Love was that demon, waiting to drown my brother. # # # We came upon a plantation man riding north in a coach with his retinue of sons and footmen- slaves. But for the time being it was afternoon and we were west of the river—not far North of Delgado Swamp, where we’d bury a great chunk of our gains; White and Silver bandied theories to stave off boredom—as we’d found no one suitable to rob yet, only piddling farmers so sad in their mud-caked clothes and carts of tubers that it’d of been a sin and folly to part them from their chicken change—and in made my own, watching Kemper plod along ahead. Suffice to say, I was closer to the mark than those two, who presently interrupted my musings to edge me off side-by-side on their mounts and say, Ask him, Angel. Ask Kemper what he’s got in that jar. Considering this, I watched for Kemper’s head to turn at the sound of their voices, and White

125 leaned across the partition of slowly unwinding road. You can ask him, he said. He’ll let you, said Silver, you’re his brother. We’re all brothers, now, I said. Don’t forget that or we’ll be brothers no longer. This seemed to set them both back straight on their horses, and we went on a few miles longer with no talking; Kemper still a few rods ahead, bobbing and nodding in shadow-figure with the rhythm of the ride, as though he were pondering his tasked labors with her voice in his head asking him if he’d do it, with him nodding again and again I will, I will. So with dark coming on, White and Silver fumbling for their tars and stakes to light for the night-ride, I nudged my horse forward and was soon beside my brother for the first time since morning. The black brim of his hat was pulled down to his nose and I couldn’t tell if he saw me at all, or paid my presence and mind. We went on like this until the sun was sunk and Kemper seemed like he was slowly swallowed by the shadow of his hat. To that blackened apparition I ventured the question that’d puzzled all our foolish minds the morning and before: What’s in the jar, brother? Kemper’s shade shuddered and said, She says she’ll marry me if I only make her dowry. There’s no money in that jar, I said. Money’s not worth a thing to her, he said. I’ve got to get what she wants, so I can show her my heart, and prove it. What’s she want? I asked. And his reply would send me reeling nearly off my horse. He said, I sat with her the other day and read from the Bible—she has a copy and it’s beautiful and old. I read her out of Samuel, because she liked the story of David; Aliza sat there and smiled when the stone sunk into the Philistine’s head, then she smiled more and more every time David went in battle against them and slaughtered them all, then she started sighing every time I read the battles and that’s more than I’d ever gotten out of her. Her hands were in her lap and she played her fingers like something stirred in her. And I’d been sitting there with her talking for a few days, and nothing like this, and even when it talks about David’s army, the friends he gets together to strike at the Philistines and my heart swole up for all the ones we’d got, she weighed on me . I wanted more to read so I skipped ahead and gave her David’s marriage, how the bastard king gave him a task he thought impossible. And I knew what it was he drove at and danced around. The Philistine foreskins, I said. Yes, said Kemper. I read her how the King asked a hundred for his daughter’s hand and how David brought back two-hundred! Two-hundred what? called White from behind us. O Jesus Christ Almighty, I said. She perked and lit up at that story, how David didn’t just do it but proved what he was by doing it, and so deserved his daughter. Came the call again, Two-hundred what? And my troubled mind could only echo that hollered question but the terrible answer was already there, bobbing in a sea of pickled darkness at Kemper’s side. You can’t do it, I said. I already have, said my brother. And I’ll go on until I’ve got her. My head was bowed to my chest and over the hollow clumps of horsehoof against the dirt I thought I heard the jar a-sloshing. Who’s got two-hundred? shouted White.

126

I tore back and shouted for them to shut the fucking Hell up, then turned again to my brother, swallowed deeper now in darkness; and in that dark could I see the whites of his teeth? Could I see him smiling? My own teeth hurt along what’d once been sharp edges, sanded down by a tooth-man in Natchez—for at the moment I was still awaiting a set of porcelains. How many does she want you to cut? I asked him. It’s nothing, he said. Fifty’s all she wants. Fifty foreskins for my Aliza-belle! White and Silver, it seemed, heard him finally and understood. They took up murmuring behind us, while I could do nothing but shake my head all hangdog and ride on with my brother. And soon I saw the road by the torches White and Silver held. We threw great long shadows ahead like knives, which we pursued on into the night, until it came to pass that from up the road a rider appeared into our light, on a fine Percheron horse, in fine outfit, and with a train of mules behind him weighted down with packs. I knew what was coming when, as the man drew near, Kemper took off his hat as a courtesy to him—for a brief moment he was unswallowed by the brim-mouth-shadows and in that illuminated instant which found our passer-by draw off his hat as well and mouthing thanks for the light Kemper’s other hand had drawn his pistol and he told the man, Get down. I saw that Silver and White held their pistols also, torches burning in their other hands and their reins in their laps. It was only me and our quarry that were unarmed, and the man, hands held up, looked to me for some balm or succor. I sighed and took my own gun out and put the bead on him. He got down for that; and I watched his hands for any grabs to his packs but he only slid from his mount to thud uneasily to the road. We all got down then and made a crescent round him, with Kemper at the center bearing down on the wretch, reduced now to tears and sniveling. Holding my pistol was like holding a snake; it felt like it writhed and bent in my hand and sought other directions to be aimed, to crawl into a cool dry hole in the ground until there was a time to swallow fatter rats than this. So I closed on it with both hands and kept aim on the heart of the unlucky traveler—no doubt thundering to escape his trembling breast and go bouncing and spurting on down the road. Strip off your clothes, said Kemper. Your boots, too. The traveler listened, and, in that spirit of slave-like willingness which inevitably overcomes all prisoners and victims of robbery, he began to disrobe piece by piece, tossing long- coat, waistcoat, shirts, and belts to the roadside. Then he was pale white as the moon, or a skinned deer hung up from a limb as he wriggled out of his trousers, drawers, and boots. He was in his sock-feet only, but Kemper told him, Them, too. And the traveler listened well and did as he was told. Clothes piled array all around him, White and Silver sniggering at his drawn-up nakedness so that I had to hush them, the traveler trembled in the damp chill and I could see sweat in beads on his hairless chest. My bill’s in my coat pocket, he said. Take it all. Take my damn clothes if you want them so bad. What’s them mules got? White said. Yall can take them too, but it’s just cloth cuts for my wife. She gonna make you a suit? Silver said. You already got some nice clothes. I don’t see how you need any more. She’s making dresses, said the man. I snarled at them all: Just get the take and let’s quit pissing around and get on. We’re in

127 the damn road and wasting time. Hush, Angel, whispered Kemper. Then my brother lowered his pistol and walked up to the traveler and bent down face-to- face with him. I want a wife, Kemper said. The traveler could not understand, and if he had there’d have been worse terror than already was welled up behind his eyeballs, which rolled in his head wildly for a moment— reminding me of poor Emilie, my never-was wife and mother of a child born into ghosthood all because of me. And the hate and anger came to me again and I was cold to this man’s suffering. But that’s not to say that when Kemper had him turn around, still on his knees, that I did not ask the man if he wanted to pray with me, and accept Christ’s baptism. All the hate and anger God or Devil can fill me with can’t break the strain of preacher in me. The traveler, back turned, the barrel of Kemper’s pistol at the back of his head, spoke these words to the dark and empty road ahead:— I won’t pray with you, you son of a bitch. Then my brother blew his head away, spattering him across the bolts of gingham cloth and silk that White and Silver were pawing from the packs of the mules, which now reared and whined joined in their terror by the traveler’s horse, so that for a while we had to be gentle and cooing to the animals; all of us but Kemper, who’d flung himself upon the ground just after he’d fired his shot, and had now withdrawn from his coat a long, thin-bladed knife, like you’d use to cut the throat of a goat or cow,—and in the right hands that operation would be a painless slip administered while the cutter’s other hand stroked the beast’s head from muzzle to fluttering eyes and ears, breath and blood and life whistling quickly out. But Kemper’s work was on the lifeless, and he’d not taken enough foreskins yet for his awful bride to know quite how to do the cutting; so he flipped the man over, and, while we watched, made a study of him, twiddling the knife between his freckled fingers. Like I’ve said, they looked already like he was pocked with gore, so maybe he was born to it. None of us could say a thing and I think those two, Silver and White, got it finally through their knotty skulls what Kemper would do and they gasped like girls when he drew up the traveler’s manhood and made his cut. I may’ve gasped myself, or groaned, or screamed even, but I cannot remember anything but turning swiftly away to look through the man’s affects while Kemper went on pruning. The man had money in his pockets all right. He was a cloth-seller carrying samples to the doors of plantations. The fool was carrying something to the tune of four hundred dollars, not including writs to be cashed from the accounts of his clients, all without even a pistol on his person—but a brand-new rifle, which we found tucked away in his gear. Not a guard or even a nigger to watch over him. The folly of man begs sometimes to be exploited. But, horror, there was still Kemper, rising with his prize clutched in gory hands; he shuffled over to his horse, eyes fixed on the bloody withered thing he carried, then he unlashed the jar, opened it, and dropped his prize into the brine; where it’d not be among a lonely pair for long. No, there’d be a whole slew skin. I wished then and still that I didn’t keep the count with him; but my brains have always been on the money and numbers. By the time we reached Honey Island, ninety miles south, where we’d bury caches of coin, Kemper had taken twelve.

128

CHAPTER 7 Fear his glorious and fearful name

At a swampy southeast corner of the country we laid in wait in roadside reeds and sawgrass thickets full of croaking toads and insects clinging to the stalks and buzzing, two of us on either side making an arrowhead outline so that we didn’t fire on each other’s backs, our faces dyed dark with berry juice to make us blend easy into the shadows—a nifty trick we learned from White Alexander; who learned it from the river-trace pirates, who learned it from the Indians. It was there we found our first Spanish caravan; a herd of carts and wagons, surrounded by a squadron of marching dragoons and a few mounted officers, from the fort on the Natalbany. I guessed by their uniforms that they were Pukes, and by their yelps this was confirmed when we drew from our positions and gave them fire. Some fell, some ran; some stood and fought but their shot was soon spent on air and by then we’d already reloaded or reached for other pieces; we aimed again and reduced the remainder of them. We flew out of the reeds like a covey of birds into the air still humming with the crack and ring of our firings; White and me ran down along the line of wagons to turn out anyone left, and found a clutch of slaves loaded in the last. They were three men and three women—no children, I remember—and it was hard to miss that they did not look on us with any fear.—And why would they? What has the Negroe to fear more from one white than another? I may tote the whip and you may tote the irons, but both of us are worth the same amount of hurt to him. So, they trembled not, nor did they shudder at the black-faced sight of us, as we made to check their chains and fasteners. They were bolted in rows of two like mules in a team. And there must’ve been near thirty mules that drew all those carts and wagons. Silver whooped and tore through one. God almighty—goods, goods, goods, he said. Silk and salt and pepper and silver, by God, like me! It was late afternoon and we would have to remove the dead men quickly if we were to have time to sink all them in the river, which lay nearby just on the other side of our ambush- brush. White had already begun to drag a few away but in the Negroes’ eyes I saw a measure of horror rise at last and I knew Kemper was going at his work. Sure enough, he was crouched over the nearest Puke—his hands having grown more expert—and had finished with him before I could make a sound. I turned back to our new charges, wondering what could I say to comfort them. They craned their necks to watch my brother and their lips curled back in disgust. He’s doing that for a woman, I said. One of the men looked at me and gave a solemn nod. He whispered something to his fellows and they let their heads fall to their chests. I don’t know what paltry succor they got from my blurted words, because I left them then to take the nearest Puke by the heels and drag him off the road. While I cleared the road Kemper starting belting out cusses and damnations; I ignored him and kept dragging. There’s a familiar pain down deep in my back that comes, I believe, from dragging round so much dead weight in my time. Number it among my time-to-time aches. Goddamn it! Kemper howled. Fucking Puke sons of bitches are already cut! Pain reaching sharp fingers to my shoulders, tripping and stumbling to the riverside I went, not without a smile creeping up for Kemper’s troubles, bearing a corpse to lay as company

129 for his friends, who now numbered eleven, laid out on the bank, half of them splayed at the belly end emptied of their entrails and lungs for White to pack full of sand so they’d sink like stones in the river. He didn’t seem to mind the work, and when we’d later move on to ropes, and draped the trees for miles and miles with our enemies, he’d be just as good a worker. White’s heaven was endless caverns of organ and offal to dig through with his ever-ready hands, and good high piles river-bank sand for him to dig through and pack his bodies to the gills, as he did that night on the Natalbany, dispensing in a quarter hour—less than a single notch-rise of the moon—with thirteen shot-down Pukes. He’d be a blessing that way for years, for my hands were always too small to make quick work of those cavities, and it seems like I was always better with my hands at pulling triggers and piling gold than any other kind of labor. A singing feeling rose in me, even with Kemper going ghoulishly from corpse to corpse; and we would sing then of the King of the Cannibals, and damn being heard or noticed—we were rich and would get richer with the later news of Turpin and the others finding similar patrols. Shipments of taxes up to New Madrid, meant for the Mexican coast. We’d be golden thorns in the side of the Puke. The bodies rounded up, White was laid out among them on the riverbank, exhausted. It was Silver’s job to wade their sand-packed shells out into the river just before the drop, where they’d be buoyed for a moment by remaining internal gasses, and, with those passing in bubbles that’d make Silver or whoever was doing the sinking giggle if the fight hadn’t been too bad, he’d let go and the shell would sink. Silver that night planted a row of them in the loam like underwater tulips; each time sloshing back up into the bank with baby snapper-turtles and hardshells hanging from his pants, clacking, and drawing snakes from a laugh from his pocket; then taking the next Puke like an over-long flour sack and toting him over his shoulder back out into the water. Silver, who kept snakes in his pockets for fun and profit; and if any man rode by and gave him a poor look, or turned his nose up at him—because he did in fact have the smell of brittle leaves that’d been cured by endless rains of animal piss, the tang of reptility—Silver’s reach into his pocket and flip a copperhead into the bastard’s lap; and maybe it’d bite the neck of his horse before he knocked it away so his beast would open up with sores and its eyes would bug and teeth fall out and depart in a day or so from beneath him, or it he was unlucky those fangs might catch the space between glove and sleeve, and the poison of Silver’s anger would stream up to his heart and stop him dead. The riverside was piled high with the uniforms of the Pukes, and I went to it and searched through the horse and wine-stinking clothes for a ring of keys, and, finding them, went back out to the road and the shivering Negroes. They hadn’t moved, and neither did any wonder show in their eyes, or excitement, or gratitude, when I produced the jangling keys. This was because, as I found, their trappings had no hole for a key, but were bolts that slipped into runners along the side of the wagon and laced through the loops of their bars and chains. I pulled the first pin on the bolt-run and the chains of the foremost pair went slack to the floorboards. Those first two were men, and they held their wrists and one kissed his a little, and I thought then of the Reverend Morrel’s painting of the Demon, and I told them to go down to the river and dig through those clothes and finds shirts and socks and boots. They blinked at me, then one gave the other an elbow and they piled out of the wagon and padded off towards the bank. It went on this way with the rest of them; the women were bowing and mumbling to me so much that their chains wouldn’t slip loose and I had to grab the closest by the arm to get her to stop. I followed the last pair to the water, where the Pukes had all been sunk and the surface showed not a ripple but for the dives of frog and insect. White was

130 still laid out, himself the last body prone on the shore; Silver was on his knees, wringing his shirt out into the river and grunting at an alligator, whose eyes shone above the water-line shining red in the light of Kemper’s torch. My brother, who’d returned the hat to his head, stared at the Negroes as they picked through the Pukes’ clothes. The jar was tucked in the crook of his arm and he’d not yet put his knife away. He watched them hard. I went to Kemper, trying to keep my eyes from the jar but unable to miss what floated in the reddened film.—With all that blood residual, the jar itself glowed like the eyes of the alligator which had presently raised itself up out of the water in an arc of ridged and armored back and was nosing with Silver. Four of them were cut already, Kemper said. I told him I’d heard. Bet you they aren’t, he said. My brother’s eyes hadn’t left the dressing Negroes. Let them be, I said. You’ll get more. I’m not even a quarter through. We’ve got time, I said, putting my hand to his shoulder. You don’t know, said Kemper. We could die tonight and I won’t ever have her. I didn’t know, nor do I now. All I thought then was to keep him from falling on one of the hapless Negroes and slicing. So I stayed with my brother until they were dressed, then I left him and led them back to the wagons and had the men sit as drivers and the women in the back, to be re-latched—for appearances sake. The Lord proves his will in many way, for there were four carts and four men to driver them. It was a laborious thing to get all the wagons turned heading southward again, but we did, Kemper, Silver, White, and I at the front, in case a patrol trailed the caravan, and on to the split with the raised road that lead through the great bayou and the wagons slogged in the morass until we had them stop where we kept a brace of pirogues hidden. We unloaded the coin and bars and kept as much as little as we could stand,—knowing, unlike my poor brother and his dowry, that there’d be more—the rest we loaded in the pirogues so that the water slipped over the sides and puddle in the belly of the boats when we pushed off and paddled out to Honey Island, where the air was indeed sweet for all the hives that hung in the trees. The bees came awake with the light and smoke of our torches, but they only hummed harmlessly around us as we dug a place for the take. It was a hard thing to put money in the earth; to know that you were wealthy, but at the moment wealthy like the dead man’s wealthy; all your lucre in the care of worm-bankers. God, said White, it’s awful to see it gone like that. I told him we’d be back, and we would; but not before we rode those wagons to New Orleans, selling the blacks off on the way at near eight-hundred dollars a-piece. The rest of the goods we half-heartedly peddled or gave away as favors, for we were much filled with the spirit of giving and goodkindness.

131

CHAPTER 8 The parable of the rich man

Those nights we spent making terror on the traces, loading our horses with coin until their knees buckled and we had to put them down, then go and find another place to bury our wealth. We always had plenty of horses extra, whose riders we’d taken sent to death. Spanish pesos, silver pounds, even American coinage we snatched with regularity. Land- deeds and writs of ownership or sale, we sold off; for it was always easy work to find a businessman willing to look the other way and make his profit. And with all the profits pouring in we ceased to be Prophets ourselves. We filled the earth with wealth, like farmers sowing for the coming season, and our seeds were good and the land we’d put them in was fertile. Up sprang trees of money, more and more, for us to pluck and fill our pockets. We spent no more than we needed, hoarded and buried the rest. Silver and White saw so much coin they became like drunks, who need more and more to be floored. I was the same; loving the gain and working for it only. I tried, Lord knows, to keep the Spirit living in our enterprise. When we came through a town I’d give some sermons in the street while Kemper went to market with our take, to talk to crooked trader; but soon my brother was so taken in his labors that he gave up going much to town. He’d wait on the outskirts, tugging his black hat lower and lower on her head, while we went to do the business. He was somewhere near forty in his count of cocknecks when a man we were robbing agreed to accept Jesus and be Saved; and for a moment the darkness that’d overtaken our ride parted from my eyes and I was happy and spirited. This was the first—as most just heard me ask the question and stared bewildered—and I did not know what to do with him once I’d prayed over him. He was a cotton merchant, young, and kept trying to shake my hands when it was done. Kemper shot him down mid-prayer. I didn’t have the heart to even cuss him as he went about his ghastly work; and his heart must’ve been then so filled with the evilest kind of love that he did not expect a word. It would be that way later, in the War for our Republic, for our Israel, when Kemper would break off from our camp and find a stump to on sit and put his nose to maps and letters from the capitol. He took no council with him and he made his plans alone. Like the way his hat swallowed him during his labors, so did the uniform he’d had made strangle him in brocades and epaulettes. I’d wait out these hours-long removes like a servant, and, when he’d reappear, awakened and happy with the prospect of advance and forward march, I only asked him, Where do we go now?—And the answer was to follow along the belly of the country where it lay against the sea, and, striking like a blade, bleed it out. In that gouge we’d swarm and hold and propagate our new-made Nation like maggots. But these were the days when it was just the smell of coastland in our noses, and we’d not yet seen the sea. Soon, our gains were so vast that the ride took on the purpose of completing Kemper’s dowry. Added to this was that we now had to work to elude law and capture.—A hard thing when you’re all loaded down with takings, and can’t bear to put much more away in the cold earth; bury it like the bodies of the friends and fellows we’d spend so many years digging holes for later—think now of the many we had no time to give graves. Yes, old Rawhead-and-Bloodybones had Kemper squarely by the throat, and the Demon held him under so long that when my brother looked at me his eyes were like he stared out from

132 one of those stagnant rivulets we slogged through in the swamps, whose surfaces were overgrown with scum of vibrant green, but beneath that brightness lurked a depth of murk things unseen. Creatures and particles that, if you put your hand in to retrieve them, would decompose to patches of sludge in your palm the instant they hit air.

133

CHAPTER 9 Kemper ascendant

I thought my brother would stand up from his fiftieth and the yoke of his burden would break across his back and he would raise his voice like Christ himself, crying, It is accomplished! Rather Kemper rose trembling from the corpse of a Puke hireling, prize in hand, and, while we three watched, his hand closed slowly over his flesh-scrap and he squelched it till the blood ran between his fingers. I feared then that he would ruin the thing in his stupor and the whole progress would go on never-ending. He kept his fist tight and gaped at the stretch of woods where we’d spirited our victims—who’d been a small patrol sent up from an island fort to stem our tide now ripping at that corner of Louisiana. I’d learned by then some of their language, after hearing so many scream, beg, and pray. I picked up their words a little. They called us filibusteros, which is Puke for freebooters or pirates—pleasing to the ear even if it isn’t the King’s. They called us other things but that was just cussing and insult, which they’d generally follow with a spit to your face if they were tied, let’s say, to a tree in some lonesome woods—ropes around their necks hanging slack for the moment—and had already, watched four or five of their fellows shot down and now were presented with the horror of Kemper’s work. Generally, they were reduced to mumbling and jabbers by the end of it; and it was a kindness to shoot them, or to pull the hanging rope tight and raise them up toward the boughs where their last glimpses of the world would be the gathering carrion birds. The closest they’d get to Heaven was when they reached the strangling-height, where the nearest things to an Angel were the black-winged birds waiting to pluck out their eyes. I let my brother stand there for a little longer before finally going to him and putting my hands on his shoulders; and it was like touching a man who’d been struck by lightning; his tremors ran up through my fingertips and I began to shake too. It’s done, I said to him. You’ve got her and it’s time to go back. Kemper swayed under my hands and the tremors grew worse, wracking me to the bone— though he barely shook— before they shuddered finally to a stop after I spoke this prayer: Sing a song unto the Lord, brother; for He hath done marvelous things: His right hand and His Holy arm have gotten you the victory. And with those words he became still; then he slipped from my hands and hurried off to drop this last one in the jar. Silver sighed as though he’d held his breath for weeks and White said, Thank God. Imagine him at the side of his horse, the beast’s ribs bowing out expectantly, and taking out the jar from all its trappings, unscrewing the cap and smelling the blood and brine for a moment; then his hand would slip reluctant that thing into the dip. Did he wait awhile before he let it part from his bloody fingers? Or did my brother fling it in and shut the whole horrible business away? While he was gone, the boys both asked if now we’d be going back, and though I told them yes, it could’ve all been made a lie with but a word from Kemper. But, praise God, he returned with no other mind that to ride back North and spend his gold and claim his bride. Alright, he said, let’s go be rich. The boys whooped weakly; Silver might’ve done some kind of dance; I may’ve welled up with tears to be done with this all for a while. Robbing—even your enemies—will draw and sap you if you give to it for too long. And I was sapped, whipped, and ready to be filled again.

134

That night we rode fast and without lights. Thereupon I dreamed wonders about a roomful of women who all were waiting for me. In my sleepy, horse-piss-smelling vision I was still filthy from the ride, but they rubbed the dirt and old sweat in beads from my skin until I was flushed all over and my skin sang from the touch of their hands.—I’d be clean enough for them then. They were closing in when Kemper hit me on the shoulder and gave back my mind to the hot world and the ride. We were at a gallop—amazing I didn’t fall when caught up in my vision—and so he had to shout: She knows you’ll marry us, he said to me. And I knew it too. I didn’t have to say a thing to my brother, who took my silence as affirmation of my Holy duty and gave me another punch to the shoulder and he was Kemper again; the black hat was gone from his head and he ran one big freckled fist through his fiery hair and laughed, gave his horse heel-to, and thundered off towards matrimony. It would be a week’s more of skulking and hiding, but we let travelers pass, and saw now Pukes to punish. It was as though the Lord had cleared a path for Kemper to his love.—Hard not to be a believer when the honeysuckle suddenly blossoms on the roadside as you pass, and flowers in their buds did open in the night if we had with lit torches and their petals were whipped in the air so that they stuck in our teeth. Poisonous vines withered and died if Kemper rode under them; and my God there may’ve been white doves in the treetops cooing; or at least the birds all changed their songs, and we saw one morning a pair of turkey-buzzards take to the air with a string of guts shared in their talons, and in the sky it looked like they held a fine fluttering ribbon, heralding him. My mouth was too full of petals to say a thing, but White and Silver hollered and awed. We arrived at Natchez spitting sweetness. The whole town knew what was coming; even the merchants on the hilltop where we cashed our coin and writs treated Kemper different. Now he put the money to work and when finally we went to the city Under-the-Hill, we passed down streets we owned outright and the people came from their stalls and shopfronts and taverns and hallooed and Hallelujahed. Kemper, for his part, kept the jar in his lap and held it close. As we rode I dipped my hand into my pockets and flung coins at them. Riot and roar all the way to Mother Lowde’s, where I heard Johnny Crabbe’s voice, begging to be held up. Finally the gathered boys—some returned from their rides north and west, some I’d find were missing— took him on their shoulders and he embraced us with his claws. Kemper huddled over his jar as the crowd and Crabbe pressed in, and with a look of fear in his eyes my brother turned to me and held out the jar for me to hold. He got down quickly from his horse and thrashed his way through the well-wishers and snatched it back; then the crowd parted for him and the last I saw of him, he was met at the door of Lowde’s by two large Negroes who nodded to him and at his jar, then they and he all disappeared. Crabbe’s claws were at my neck and Turpin appeared beneath him in a high hat and frockcoat and flung Crabbe up onto my horse and went on to Silver and White Alexander and, laughing, pulled them both down. The laughter caught me then and I was a howling fool for the night, with friends and brothers all around me and the world opened up so wide. By morning we’d become the wedding party; bleary-eyed all in a row at the counter, bending over the basins Kemper’d had set out for us among the empty cups and bottles, shaving off our beards. Himself, he’d risen long before the rest of us, and was outside in the street where a great pot simmered full of water for our baths. New suits of clothes arrived by courier; tailored and measured even to Crabbe’s odd specifics. Sometime that morning my brother must’ve bought himself a fine cut-glass urn for his foreskins, and now as we gathered in the street—

135 starched and straight-backed, this crew of vagabonds and robbers, my glorious Kings of the Cannibal Islands!—Kemper stood before us with his urn full of those horrible slivers, and when he was satisfied with our appearances,—for he went along the line of us, cinching collars and leveling brims, sending some back to the washpot to wipe flecks of vomit from their cheeks, or to leave their knives and pistols back at Lowde’s—he turned on his heel and started for The Church; and we followed him, our path strewn with musicians weaving in and out of our procession, bleating horns and rattling drumskins to the rhythm of our walk. He’d paid to have the streets we’d come to cleared of dung and layabouts, so we went like row upon row of black teeth down the street, and it seemed that the liquor washed from our minds and we were clarified, and neither did we stumble or miss a step.

136

CHAPTER 10 The Wedding of Aliza and Kemper

The moment I saw her I understood my brother’s madness. It became clear because she was so thin in her purple dress; and when she stood her body-bundle of angles unbunched and she became like a crack in stone, like a fissure in the fabric of World and Time. She was a child born from sharp things; her mother was a razor and her father was a bayonet. He hair, wound in a high tangle of blond and the feathers of a red-tailed hawk, gave her the look of a scythe that’d swung so hard through the field that it’d caught unwary birds and snatched up tufts of gold at its tip. So I knew Rawhead, so I knew the woman of bone. I’d have begged the demon to come running for me; and for an instant, when we were brought into the Church, I forgot my verses and vows for the sight of her. On a platform where there’d once been a pulpit, but now was filled with couches and tables lined with bottles, she stood, surrounded by her retinue of whores.—And they all looked so fine that you forgot there was even such a word as whores. They were fifteen, both in number gathered there around their mistress, and, it seemed, in count of years. They were young and looked nothing like Aliza, full and fresh and bursting from their bindings. We started towards them, but as we stepped off and I took my gaze away from those beautiful girls for but a moment, I saw at my side Crabbe scuttling nervously in place—a bug looking up at the shoe. I’m too ugly be at this, he whispered, as the others left us. So floored by all the beauty that my ears were at my knees, I heard Johnny Crabbe speak, sounding near to tears for his pitiful form, and so to break him of his misgivings, I squatted down and kissed him on the forehead and said, You stand straight in the sight of the Lord brother Crabbe. Fuck them all if think you’re ugly. His response was to smile up at me, then to shake out all his joints and go forward. I followed with him and we approached, now at the backs of all our party, the altar. It was a long table set with winecups and candles burning without smoke. A minor miracle, but I can only say that I saw no smoke on the air. The boys had all huddled there, dazzled by the lights, and had to reshuffle for me to pass. Crabbe joined in with them and went off to the side, so that I was left alone but for the bride and groom. What followed and passed between them seemed rehearsed, like they’d been planning it their entire lives. Again appeared Aliza like a coiled vein of blood in my eye, but presently she was joined by Kemper, urn of foreskins clutched to his chest. He held it slowly out to her across the altar, and the cuts in the glass cast a blinding light on us all.—Cheers erupted briefly from all sides, the sighs and yips of the girls and the barely-contained yawps and hollers from our Cannibals. Aliza, for her part, shuddered at the noise of celebration, but she never took her eyes from my brother—though he would not yet look on her— as he set the urn down on the altar-table, where it would give off a steady glow for the entire ceremony. When the crystal and its contents were parted from his hands, he did look up and behind her veil Aliza’s mouth sheared open in a smile. And once he’d looked, his eyes refused to part from the sight of her. I went and stood between them, close enough to see the jagged lines of Aliza’s bones threatening her wedding costume, and Kemper’s great shoulders thrown out straight, dwarfing her. They had the look of a boulder being married to the split in its side; but in that crack the crawling things would hide and die, and their mounded bodies decompose and make it fertile, so that out the vicious crack there’d spring bunches of wild flowers.Amid all this beauty I was a bastard and poor brother, for I’d planned in

137 my wicked mind to preach from Hosea, make my speech on whoredoms; taking a wife of whoredoms, and have children of whoredoms, and the whoredoms of departing from the Lord. A venomous rant I’d dreamed up sometime in the night, to chastise and spurn, to put the fear in all those gathered there. But in the light, and with the row of beauties who spent by in my vision as I turned to face the crowd, in the presence of that Aliza—who would do such evil to me later but I still can’t bring myself to hate—and seeing my brother’s aweful love of her, the venom was drained from my spirit and I had the feeling like after you’ve given yourself out into a woman, when the spines of the World that claw so constantly at your brain go dull and you can move and live within them safely for a while. Thus overcome and emptied of all evils, I was a ripe-open vessal for the True Spirit and, though I couldn’t see it, I knew the great window behind me had darkened and I was the light in the room; the Spirit then poured into me and I took in all that crowd of unknown faces; I felt for the nubs and shards of my teeth with my tongue, rolling its tip, dead-to-taste and all but the sharpest touches, from point to pain-dead point, pressing hard to know the edges and the blades of them, and in the lick of edge and jag I knew what it was to love Aliza. She was the broken corner of a tooth that, if it weren’t for years of coal and callous, would draw from your tongue deep black blood, and every time you touched her the blood would run fresh, always new. You could not let the cuts she made in you heal; like the man who worries scabs and whose shirts are always pinpricked with blood, you must have everything fresh and stinging. I felt my mouth fill not with blood but words, so I opened it and let them out. Brothers and sisters in Christ, I said. When Adam was alone at the Creation of the World, he dreamt at night and these were terrible dreams, of what, he did not know, but that they were terrible and he’d awake to the dumb eyes of the animals in the Garden and could find no succor in them. So he began to whither and dream while he was awake, but still he did not know what he dreamed for, what he wished, only that he would give anything for it.—And in those days the Lord walked in the Garden with his creatures, and foremost among them, was this one he’d fashioned in his image, which was now withering for he would eat none of the plump fruits or berries the Lord had set ablooming all around him, such was his melancholy. And when the Lord asked him what was wrong, the man could not even speak he was so hollow. So the Lord our God watched this man He’d made whither, watched His own image going pale, and, in a fit of wisdom and worry, one night He found the man asleep under an ash tree, still dreaming those terrible wanting dreams, and the Lord knelt next to His creation and He knew the dream, and He prayed on it for a moment, for knows that there are two answers to the question of need—either kill the wanting thing, or create for it. So the Lord, taking pity on this creature Adam, squinted at him lying there and knew that this thing here wanted so much to have itself remade but in such a way as to receive him unto it utterly, and that Adam would not stand for any gift that came from dust, as he, and it would put his soul in the ditch if he made no sacrifice to have what he wanted; and the Lord took a survey of Adam’s parts, and saw him down to the veins and muscles, and deep into the marrow of his bones, so God found the part he could most easily take from his creation, so that he would know that what he’d been given was of him, but not like him, and He slipped his hand to Adam’s belly and pressed his fingers till he felt the line of rib and knew it was here. In an instant the flesh parted and the Lord slipped in his fingers and the rib-bone came away like it was from a long-dead corpse, easily plucked; and with the other rib he’d do the same. Adam did not stir or notice God’s hand working in him—for the hand of the Divine may be swift and gentle as it can be like stone, when he deems it so—but he dreamed that night of blood, though he did not know blood yet, only that he was alive, for there had been no occasion

138 for him to be wounded as yet; still he tasted blood in his dream-mouth that night and he knew what it was, that it was the pulse and tang of it that would let him know another, and that it was by blood that we are alive, nothing but sacks of red waiting to be pricked and drained; when he awoke from that night’s dream,—the Lord had already departed, off to do some other work but always watching—he found that the taste was gone from his tongue and beside him slept a creature like unto himself—what he’d gleaned of his own forms in reflection by the pools and streams of Eden—but not alike entirely, and as the sleep passed from his eyes he saw that this creature was different, its face more round, lips of greater thickness, its shoulders seemed smaller, and between them were breasts, and a madness took his hands he threw them to his own body and felt, and in that groping found his sides were bowed wrong, and he felt down his ribcage, and there he found that he was sore and his guts sat different; he felt of his endowments, which were then stirred to greatness, and he saw that she had no such things; now, full-fraught with awe and a fury going in his loins, he mustered up his courage and bent to touch this creature, thinking, Is this the form of God? And Adam’s fingers felt, and his mind knew, and if there were storms in Eden, it would be like lightning shot through him and a breath escaped his awe-opened lips and the sound the breath made was her. This last sound I let come out like I was Adam, and all the wedding party, who’d stood stock still and had their feet nailed to the floor by my words, sagged and shifted and looked to one another in a daze I broke when next I spoke, saying, When man lays eyes on woman, he is back at the creation of the world; he was not there to see our God do his first work shaping the earth, but what mad did witness was the creation of his world, and the world which would become his in inception and his habitation until the day of his birth into gore and violence and death, and the world to which he will and must return, or strive through, all throughout his life; for avenues of flesh are made thus, and human fittings exist to be joined, and with the Blessings of Almighty God, I here, in the spirit of that first union, I now do join in Christian wedlock, Reuben Kemper and his Aliza. Presently I turned to her and before I could ask, Aliza said, I’ll take him. She said nothing else, for the time being, but in those words was more than any speech, for as she spoke, she extended her wiry arm to my brother and took his great hand in hers. Kemper’s eyes broke from her and he was staring at the ground. When I saw he wouldn’t speak, too wrought, I said, And any who tries to part these two any of you who plan dark destinies for Kemper and Aliza, look on this altar-table and know what will become of you, for if it’s not his hand that strikes you down, it will be hers. The knot of two cords stays unbroken, and may this knot be made of sword-steel. I turned back to them again and put my hands on the crown of their heads, then flung them off and cried, Through death and fire, lovers! All assembled erupted and tears flowed freely. I didn’t see them kiss, but they walked around me and took hands and stepped off the pulpit stage and down into the surging crowd. The eyes of her girls were upon me then, and, exhausted, I stepped back to join the Cannibals and fall into line at the front, Crabbe close behind me, nipping at my heels as we made the march after husband and wife. I can’t say whether they danced; the whole waking world was dancing in that whorehouse Church. Someone said he twirled Aliza fifty times—once for every cut he’d made for her—and that she’d twirled him fifty more. I don’t know. Everything spun and whirled. Corks shot through the air and I tasted my first champagne that night, guzzling it and whatever came by me in a glass. Life swole up with light and I danced and forgot the last dance I’d made, and my smashed

139 teeth, and the scattered head of my last dancing partner. # # # That night I had so many partners, that I knew no singles faces even when the hour had grown late and my brother and his bride made the stairs for her apartments to our uproarious yells,— and those voices were soon dying as the party was cleared out from the house by the girls, all except for me. They went about their work, pushing out the others who clambered for them even through the crack of the closing door, and left me sitting, head bobbing, on one of those long couches. I remember staring at my bare toes, which were all red and busted and the nails filled with blood, and knowing that I must’ve kicked my boots and socks off sometime earlier to dance. When I looked up to search the room I found that everyone was gone but those girls, now a bit wilted in their Sunday best, but still lovely all together in a bunch at the foot of the stairs. I heard my Cannibals still calling out to them from the street and some of the boys might’ve shouted my name, but those beauties ignored them. I must’ve been a pitiful sight, crumpled on the furniture like a cast-off coat, but one of them, a girl whose hair was cropped red, and which she’d waxed up so that it looked like licks of fire, came first to me. Her name was Red Cate and she’d have a pitiful end; but that was later; it was still a time of happiness and the world was still right. Her heels as she approached sounded like the drum-tap before the trap would fall from beneath my feet and I’d fall through the hole of that lovely gallows and be choked by a crush of women. The other stood behind her. Miss Aliza says you’re to have a wedding gift, said the fiery one. My mouth was open but I could make no sound, preached-out. The others had followed behind her, and now stood in a dazzle of eyes and shapes and hair; one picked at her leggings and I swear she tore a hole in them. A row of legs like the colonnade in a palace. You preached so pretty, said another. Can you say all that for me? And in my heart I said fifteen prayers, plus one for my poor tongue, and poorer endowments, to last the night and give them everything.

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CHAPTER 11 On the nature of whores

With scratches and swollen lips, my bone bruised so that I walked bowlegged like a long-ways rider, I was ushered gently out of the Church next day by the hands that’d been all night at me, with voices saying not to come calling for a long while—until their honeymoon had ended. And I asked when that’d be, but the fire-haired girl only smiled and shut her eyes in smaller smiles, and then closed the door on me to muffle herds of giggles. They’d whipped my manhood with a velvet crop to keep it up, and now behind that door they may’ve been squatting over pots and washing themselves out with harsh tinctures, or running ivory teeth through their hair for lice, but they were beautiful. And there were those truer to that title in Natchez at the time, and they didn’t live at the Church, nor even in the pillbox attic rooms, hiding their squirreling money from the grabbing fists of their benefactors. No, the real whores were at present going at their Sabbath dealings up on the Hill, in good turn and giving each other brotherly handshakes and asking after each other’s wives; and maybe, with an eye caught by an errant bird or a tail of smoke, one of them gave a look to the town Under-the-Hill, and what a baleful Gentleman’s glance it must’ve been that fell on us all the day after my brother’s greatest happiness was attained; when the Lord was smiling down on all us scrabblers and wayward lads for once. Sweet touches and the nibbles of teeth still on me, my head shook clear of the love of women—Hard as that may be, for in the night I’d got so drunk on them that my tongue thought it could taste again and had been healed, but in the morning with my head clearing it was gone and I was back to being tasteless—and it filled up with the need to see the hilltop. So, stumbling, I went across the road, where some of our party were still laid out from the night before, dead to the world, their pockets being picked by a bunch of children with long twigs, which the young chips used to lift the flaps of the sleepers’ coats or to poke them till they rolled over and revealed their sides to searching. I walked over to them, saw that Silver and another man were face-down and not moving, and as the children made to scatter I asked them if these men were alive. Yessir, said one, twig trembling. Then wait here with them till they wake up, I said, giving each a gold peso for his troubles. Then I headed over to the corner of the nearest building, which was set with piping for a stove, and I shinnied up the pipe till I was able to drag myself up onto the roof, where I heard the cheers of the boys and from which I could see, shielding my eyes from the sun, could see the City on the Hill. Birds came and went, circling me, and the tavern-keeper and his wife were out in the street screaming for me to get down, and that they’d not be responsible for me breaking my fool neck, and who did I think I was traipsing up people’s roofs and bending their smoke- stacks. So I called back: I’m Angel Woolsack, brother to Rueben Kemper, and I’ll bend your fucking throats for you if you don’t hush. This sent them back inside, chided by the children and grumbling about going to the constabulary. Something no resident Under-the-Hill would think of, especially not one whose place was set just across the street from Aliza’s; and I resumed my peering at the other town. By the time I’d clambered down, my head was full of sermons I would give those bastards in the other town. I’d railed and rattled for a long time at the altar the day before, but I was not through with it yet. The fitful jackleg preaching I’d done one our ride, not much more than letting hollers out like farts at the people of the towns we came to, or asking men who were

141 about to go to Hell or Heaven anyway if they wanted to attain Christ. No, things were poor on that front. I’d preached my piece of love, and now I wanted to damn a few before breakfast. The way uphill was littered with signs of the wedding. Along the roadside some of my black-suited brother Cannibals could be seen, still layed-out or just awake, giving me mumbled hails from their piles of cigar papers and muddy flower petals; there was more broken glass than usual, and whole bottles empty, and jars, and barrels splintered to their iron ribs, which I imagined men rolling out into the street and drilling holes in them to suck like piglets out the liquors. There was a boiling in my gut at the thought of drink. Maybe it was time to rail against drunkards with the champagne still sloshing in me. I wished I had one of those children’s twigs to whip my legs and straighten out my head as I made the Hill and crossed the thin scarpment of woods that wrung Natchez proper. Instead, I buttoned up my coat and made my lines all straight; I spit-shined my buttons, I felt my head for a hat—and, finding myself uncapped, I swept back my hair into a tail and plucked a vine of poison ivy from a nearby tree to tie it with. I’m immune to the irascibles of nature; I’m the one who puts the sores on you, you plant, you vegetable. # # # But I’d sweat it all out on my way up, and all I had left was a tight little knot of hate itching the back of my throat for the landed man and merchant.—Or it might’ve just been a coil of whores’ hair back there, teasing me and my sodden memory. Bathsheba, Bathsheba, won’t you come back to me? I’ll be waiting on the roof with Kemper’s spyglass trained. My mind, then as now, was wopped. You can’t be pulled through the alleys of delight and not come out bizarre.Ire was bubbling, yes, in me. Passing through the outlying tracts and homesteads, to be ignored or simply gaped at because you’re booted but unhorsed, into the town I came like a wraith, realizing that I didn’t even have a stick to twirl at the people while they went about their nabobery. That word’s sadly fallen out and been replaced with gentry or, God help us, Gentleman of the South. But these were nabobs, and though I did not know Whig from Tory—I knew the words from seeing men tarred and feathered over them as a boy in Virginia, but not what they meant—I saw a bunch of them seated at tables outside a tavern, twirling pipes and cigars and sipping wine when they could’ve been ducking good old coonboxes, the shits. They paid me no mind, and all around were vendors with breads and sweet cakes and coffee that smelled quite different from ours Under-the-Hill—probably being not so much composed of chicory and riverwater—ready to serve, where I would’ve seen outside Mrs. Lowde’s maybe a man peddling smoked fish, or the weapon-seller’s rattling cart. I walked past the nabobs and saw that on the other side of the tavern building, sitting on the curbstone, were their niggers; looking well-to-do themselves with not a hole to be seen in their breeches or shirts—so at least these men didn’t deserve all the damnation I’d decided to heap upon them. Even still, I had some Hell to pitch; so I turned back, stepping deftly out of the path of a carriage with polished brass fixtures that came jangling down the street, and went to where the nabobs were sitting and took an empty chair from them. A few looked up. They were all older, some wore wigs, but a others showed off their thinning pates, their necks bulged up from their collars and ties like toad throats, which presently filled with hot indignant air and the urge to croak as I pulled the chair to the lip of the curb and stepped up onto it.—A poor idea as I immediately took wobbly and my stomach churned enraged at my theatrics. On the precipice, with the eyes of the nabobs shining at me like coins polished shiny from over-fingering, I puffed up—sending another seize into my stomach—and said: Gentlemen, I’m Angel Woolsack, preacher, and the Lord needs your time today.

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A few were laughing already, but others kept quiet as I went on. They might’ve known me, or heard tell. But I can’t blame them if they didn’t know—we’re beset with preachers down here like moskitoes and always have been, so we always will be; endure the constant hum and flit of buzzing blood-suckers, friends, for they speak to the heart of the country. One of them, however, watched me keenly. He was smaller than the rest, meaning thinner. Not so much a man of easy living, but wealthy nonetheless. His wig and fobs and kit attested to it. This man, he watched me while I stumbled through my sermon and put his hand to the arms of the others who thought to jeer me. It must’ve been a rotten talk, all I could do was keep my feet clamped down, for it’d be a weak thing to dismount now. When I felt the earth shudder too much beneath me and I teetered nearly off the chair to meet it with my face, the watcher rose and approached me. This put me right long enough for him to ask me what was my name. Breathing like a dog, for the second time that day I announced my name. The watcher looked stunned, and there was some recognition working in him, I knew. So I had my fist upraised and ready to strike him a blow,—and God knows I should’ve smote his ass into the ground and stomped the ashes smooth—but what he said next made my fingers unfurl numb. Angel Woolsack, you say? A preacher? he said. You’re not Virginian, are you? I was born there, I said. Farquier county? I believe. Well, son, said the man, I knew your father, if his name was Aaron Woolsack and a preacher also, from the Northern Neck. Stone stunned; with that all my rage fell to my wretched stomach and then flung itself in shock back up as bile and I hunched over with a groan and vomited on his shoes.

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CHAPTER 12 The men who will divide the land

Like to say that I was cruelly hoisted and clubbed and rolled bodily back down the hill by those nabobs, but damn in the man didn’t, laughing, take me by the shoulders and help me off my chairtop perch. I was seeing fuzzy reproductions of them all, and could not pick out a face to hold to. The Lord was trying, as he did so many times, to shirk me by sending His world spinning beneath me. A Negroe was called for, and a bucket. One came with the other, and I saw a hazy four black hands set two buckets between my knees, and cluck with two tongues for pity at the sodden white man. A pitcher of cool water, Albion, said the man. And a rag for those shoes, eh Smith? said one. Who’s this one’s father, then? asked another. I tried to keep my head afloat and listen, but it was a worthless enterprise. The nabobs talked on and raised their voices whenever I puked, as though to cover the sound of me drumming the buckets with my insides. This went on until I was frothing like a mad dog, and just as pitiful. But my head was soon cleared and stomach sapped, so that I could hear them true at last and looked up to regard them all there with prodigious bellys lipping their table. The Negroe, Albion, stood beside me, and I told him to take the loathsome bucket away. And bring him back a tumbler of the cure, will you? said the man who’d brought me down. Albion went off, and I made a great effort to raise myself up and look some parts respectable; checked my boots for flecks and my shirt-front and coat, but I was clean—if not rumpled and sweat-through. The man who’d said he knew my father; his shoes were shining clean, buckles shining, and smelling sharp of polish. Evidently Albion had made a pass at them while I was heaving. My eyes were teary and I wiped them with my sleeve though there was a perfectly good napkin set at the table. The Negroe presently returned and set before me a glass of brown-black muddle, the jaundiced eye of an egg yolk floating on top. Said the man, Drink that down, sir, and you’ll be set right. Thinking then of our good sweet coonboxes, I lifted up the glass, brought it to my lips, and slurped the coction down. Now, he said. Are you fixed? Yes, I said, and, Thanks. I’m sorry for the spew. They all roared at this, but I was too wimped to get my hackles up. Not a thing, young Mr. Woolsack, said the man. You’re a Woolsack, eh? I said I was. We were in Virginia when I was a boy, but then Kentucky and Ohio and on west. Yes, yes. But your father was from Fauquier. He didn’t talk about where he’d come from. The man cocked his eye at me and tucked his chin into his neck. Didn’t he? Well, it never seemed like he had time for much more than the Lord, I figure. No, he didn’t. Ah, said the man. I might just be a fool for not telling you my name, seeing as I know yours maybe better than yourself, Mr. Woolsack. Pastor John Smith, of Ohio, and, at present,

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Feliciana. He put out his hand to me and one of his fellows said, Senator, now! What-hey! And raised his glass and they all toasted as another said, And subject to his Catholic Majesty, What! The others were laughing at this bit of fooling, which I was not yet come to understand, and I took his hand and my heart sank at the prospect of another Right Reverend, Parson, or Pastor to’ve fallen on my head, and, Dear God, one that knew Preacher-father. So boggled was I by it that I gave no thought to inferred popery. Flattery, said this Smith, but true. This day received of a letter from Cincinnati,—which, by the by was the last place I knew your father, and you, sir, too—that I’m made Senator of our new state.And, yes, I may count myself as holding a fingerling of favor and a stamp or so of land from the Spanish Crown. I doubt I even knew what a Senator was, so ignorant was I in the provenance and parlance of the Republic-in-the-making; it was all a mystery to me and I sat awakening and unaware that at that moment the country itself was swelling, like a gut too-long at drink, souring with an infestation of greedy bile, and ready to burst the bounds of stomach-wall and even flesh, and run forth to spread over the land. Have you met President Washington? I asked. Yes, said Smith, and I’m lucky enough to be a dear friend of President Jefferson. Lord, I said. Then there’s two now? —Guffaws from the gentlemen.— Son, we might have a new President each election. I thought even the back-countrymen knew something of the state of the country. I don’t know it. That may be why they elected you, ay Smith! wagged one. If I‘d been in my right mind, I would’ve had the joker’s splattered on the sidewalk by then. But I was wasted still, and wished to press this Smith for what he knew. No more politick. How do you know my father? I asked. By and by for years and years, Smith said. But, tell me, where’s that preacher now? I prayed on my answer for a moment. Dead, I said, in the Missouri. The Lord’s mercy on him! said Smith. Alby, a fresh round, we have ourselves a toast to raise. See, fellows, this was the most Godly man I ever knew. We studied together under Reverend Culpepper at Charlottesville, and I’ll tell you what, if you think I’ve got any spirit, that man had double. What a preacher! Now the Negroe came with five small glasses and a bottle, put them out before each man, and even me, and filled them. So Senator Smith stood with his and held it high, saying, To the Reverend Aaron Woolsack, of McLane’s Hill Virginia, now he shakes Christ’s right hand! Aaron Woolsack of Virginia, he shakes Christ’s right hand! said his fellows. And even I said it, said my father’s name. We drank and Albion, at the hand-wave orders of his masters, filled our glasses again, and again Smith gave up a toast: To his son, this lad, Angel Woolsack. May he inherit his father’s zeal and do the Lord’s work always—and may he hold this quaff down better than his last! Angel Woolsack, his son! I was too dumb to know not to drink and say my name the third time that sorry day. Nary the drink had passed my lips that they all traded slaps to my back, and I had to fight to keep the

145 liquor mine. Smith, seeming full of his own largess and magnitude, burped and heaved a sigh and sat. Now, said he. Tell me when it was your father passed. Two years ago, I said. And that’s when you came down thisaway? Yes, with my brother Reuben Kemper. Smith forked two fingers at the lip of his wig and scratched. I gave him no more explanation. What of your other brothers and your sister? Dead and gone, I said. Ye Gods, said Smith. But you’ve got a tragic family. To’ve lost so many in the service of the Lord. I was with him and you, in your babyhood, when your dear mother passed on. I don’t remember a thing of it. Of course you don’t. You were but a little thing, but you had that shock of hair, I’ll say, same as your mother. And even as a babe you stared at me and Aaron like a grown-up man— which, it would seem, you’ve become. Yes, I said, still tamping my stomach down. That man endured more than I can say, all in stepping with the ways of God and Goodness. I wanted to say that he was a madman, but couldn’t bring myself to do it. Know it now that I was still afraid, in my heart, of him. Or it was that I still loved him. But I couldn’t say the thing I wanted, so I endeavored to part him from his course of talk that had my insides boiling so. You say you’re in with the Pukes? Who are the Pukes? Besides what you so recently laid on my shoes. Spanish, I said. Smith’s forehead wrinkled up at this so as to give his wig a flip. That’s delicate at present, he said. Tell me what you and you’re brother do here in Natchez. Business, I said. And what kind? Trade, I said. We own a tavern and a block under the hill outright. That’s impressive indeed for one you’re age, said Smith.Well, lad, if you’ve come this far and made two years in Natchez you must know how to keep your mouth tight-shut, so I’ll tell you: I’ve recently acquired a plot of fifteen-hundred arpents in the territory of the, ah, Pukes, to the West, and I plan to make a profitable farm of it. That doesn’t sound too secret, I said. That’s because it isn’t. This is all in the daylight, lad. But there is the problem of owning a plot in another country while one sits in the government of another. Right, I said. Don’t be too loose with him, ay Smith, said one. Smith eyed me, cold as coin. You’re no blabblermouth, are you. No sir, I said. See, fellows. I know this lad down to his marrow. There’s no lie in him. And you say you’re two years in the Mississippi country?—Well, you might make yourself a friend to me as

146 good as I was to your departed father. I asked him how. First, how have you made your living? In trade, I said. Horses, niggers, and the like? Yes, with my brother and some others. Do you have a house? We’ve got a street to ourselves Under-the-Hill. Say now, Smith, this boy may be rough. I’ll be rough as you deserve, I told the gentleman. Hold tight, said Smith. I’m sure Mr. Lott meant no offense. It’s just that where you’re quartered is just this side of scandal. It might be, I said. But you think they would’ve had us boys up here, fresh off the frontier? I suppose not, said Smith. Well, ugliness aside, I’m sitting presently on a large patch of land that I can’t tenant just yet. I’m on the lookout for enterprising agents, to guard and keep the place. Are you a fighter, lad? Of course you are. So was your father. We plunked the Brits at Lincolnville together. He was a damn fine shot. And I need some shootists and men who know this part of the world, for there’s all kind of folk about that territory, stealing and sharping and reducing my hold. I haven’t put the word out yet, but it seems you might know just some fellows who’d be right for the job. I may know some, I said. I’ll bet you do, said Smith. But don’t go running off at the mouth about it to every fool with a pistol in his pocket, ay. With the promise that I wouldn’t, I felt sick already and drawn into this man’s world.— Or it might’ve been my gut still talking at me. I’ll take you on your word, as a fellow Man of God. # # # Smith said more, but it was all mostly shit. That would be his way. But that’s not to say that I wasn’t caught up in the smell of it. I thought then of land and further fortune—that this might be a way to end those nights on the road, which had grown miserable in my mind. I can’t but hurt to recall those men’s prattling on, and how Smith spoke of Preacher-father so that he was crawling round my skull again, cold dead fingers from down my nose to itch the back of my throat. The misfortunes of Angel Woolsack, to be cast out of the land of women and into the clutches of politicians, where I could only be swallowed for the greed in my heart was matched and fed by that man, who held the ghost of Preacher-father out before me like bait. Before they sent me off, re-drunkened, Smith gave me a scrap which had the name of the House where he’d keep his rooms for the next week, and told me to come and bring my brother with me, for we might have some business between the three of us. I was such a fool by then that I almost told him how my brother had been married the night before, and to who—but thought better of it. Her name cut out my tongue; and I walked off, to head back downhill, but Lord knows I should’ve skulked. The Word shriveled in me then with greed and prospects. And I believe even at that moment I deserved to beat this man, to take his money, for it’d be beating Preacher-father’s ghost; and so the worms were set a-turning again.

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CHAPTER 13 Some words with Crabbe

Piss on the honor of a man of God.—At Lowde’s I gave Crabbe the whole scene in all its sorry detail, with my feet propped on the countertop, my friend atop it, curled tight and listening. You didn’t, he said. I did. On the man’s boots, cried Crabbe. Jesus Hoot! He had on buckled shoes, I said. Not boots. Then he wasn’t any gentleman. They wear boots. Maybe senators wear themselves some shoes and stockings. What’s a senator? asked Crabbe. A senator’s a government man, like the president. I hear you. Then I’ll bet his wig was high, right? High and powdered. They all wore damned wigs. It was a conspiracy of wigged souls. Crabbe reached his rightmost claw for the rum bottle and swigged. But at least they didn’t try to have you boxed or clapped off. I’d think some men like that’d have some pull. They could’ve never got me. Even whipped-ass-drunk I’m better than a roomful of them. You’re right, Crabbe said. I know it.—But think of it! Groans issued from various places in the tavern dark; some of the wedding party had found themselves corners of shadow and silence to nurse their throbbing heads and shredded guts. I’d come in to find Crabbe going among them like a field surgeon or a field-hand, with a pail of water and a spoon to dip the drink into their waiting mouths. While I’d waited, Crabbe had evidently gifted some unwitting imbibers, and there would be a gurgling gag and spasm of a sleeper nearly-drowned. Maybe it’s those gallies did you in, said Crabbe. Otherwise, I guess, you would’ve plugged them. The girls, dear God, I’d forgotten them; in all the strangeness of the morning I’d lost them and their touches, their nips and nosings, which presently came back on me and I shuddered then for the feel of their ghosts atop and all around me again. I’m whipped of night rides, Crabbe. I’ve only been on the one, he said. Thank the Lord. It’s not the shooting, or even being up to your wrists in a stab. It’s the mutilations. There’s a word, said Crabbe. But all that’s over with now. It’s that and being out there for weeks. It’s a horror and I’ve had enough. These two days have made me see the light. No more riding and robbing. Don’t seem to be long enough. You may get the itch again yet. I may. I may. But right now I’m done itching. I won’t have another month or two of watching Kemper go mad on the roads. Was it all that awful? You weren’t there, Crabbe. White’s told me about it. Said it seems like a grand old time once the cash started rolling in.

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A grand old time watching member after member flayed. It doesn’t seem worse than anything else. I feel old, I said. I feel like I’m forty. That’s how you always are. The Hell with you. Even if you’re right. Crabbe smiled and resettled himself on the countertop so that he was sitting up on his hind-claws, with the fore resting on his kneejoints. How’ll we make money? I said I was tired of the ride. The boys can raise Hell forever and ever, amen, if they want. But I’m cooked. They’ll want bigger cuts, said Crabbe. Right they should. We may soon have some money coming in from other avenues besides. This senator? Asked Crabbe, looking like he was feeling smart. Right, but keep that close to your mandibles. The sleepers may have been listening, but how much could I’ve betrayed myself to their drunken confidence.—They’d wake up each sometime in the night and those who’d heard would ask each other different versions of my words, and the plan would slip on by them in stuporous confusion until such a time as I could make it known to them in full. Meantimes, they were snoring and ripping their pants with farts, and it smelled like some had fouled themselves, which made me grin a little. It’s a mess in here, said Crabbe. I sure wouldn’t mind if we had a nigger or two to pick around the place. If you want one or two, good luck and go-ahead. Take the money from the keep-box. But I’ll tell you right now I won’t be the one running them around. Never, no. I’d do it. It’s hard enough, brother Crabbe, to get white men to do what you want. May be, but I’m tired on having to keep up after these ragged asses. My glass was empty and I had a thirst for coffee, and thought perhaps some steeping with chicory and clove might do something for the smell of the place. So Crabbe and I went to get the fire going strong and filled the Lowde’s old pot up. I showed him how to scoop the beer-barrel leavings in like the old Mother had shown us, for old times’ sake and to put the true cure to our stomachs. The nabobs’ concoction still didn’t sit right with me, but when the coffee had wallowed and boiled long enough Crabbe and I passed it back and forth and drank from the cracked spout. He hunted up cigars and soon we were smoking and happily searing our insides with black. The mind sharpens and the lungs wake up; even in a room scattered with moaning drunks like a ship’s hold, the world will grow sharper with tobacco and coffee. I suppose, Crabbe said, you’ll be next to go, the way you’re talking. Where’ll I go? You’ll go off with some woman. Kemper’s coming back. Man can’t stay abed forever. I don’t know. I’m not going, either. There’s still work to do. And I’ve got my own ideas rolling now. You’ll see. Crabbe said nothing, but twiddled his cigar in a flourish and motioned for me to pass the pot again.

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Crabbe, I said. What do you think of land? I never seen the sea, but I hear that’s where I ought to be. No, brother—land. A real meeting place, a scouting grounds. Not in the town where we might have a constable rapping on the door. We haven’t had trouble yet, said Crabbe. But we might. And you think if there’s a Senator, a President, humming around the big town that there won’t be some law falling on our heads soon? What’s a senator do, again? He makes the laws, I said. I thought that was Governors. Bigger laws. That might not be a bad friend, then. Plans and plans were loping through my head, like fools on their errands.—Envisioning a place where we could not be touched, away from encroaching America and it’s Law, right under the noses of the Pukes, but with woods all around that we could set with traps and snags, away from the America it seemed was on our doorstep again.—We’d fail in this, as in so much else; find America unstoppable. The spangled banner whips and waves, the long shadow it casts, which soon would fall on us while we sat thinking this was Frontier, not knowing that soon we’d all be swallowed whole.

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CHAPTER 14 The Creation of the world

It happened that a little man, a diplomat, dashed from his desk and ran through town and hedge and forest down to dip his inkpen in the bloody fields of Europe; and, cupping his hand beneath the dripping tip he scampered across the Atlantic to the shores of America before the blood had even dried; there he waded to a beach and touched his pen-tip to the sand: and everything was changed. There were more just like him, though; whole flocks of little men with pens poised that instant to sign papers. And these men were so pleased and filled with the glory of their success that at the first balls and banquets held to celebrate their great feats of policy they leaned out of their chairs, toasting, and each and every one felt a tightness in their backs—something like a rash, or boils; and their shoulders festered and swole up with sores and they hid them in their fine clothes, and when the sores began weeping they stuffed their shirts with documents to sop the pus. When at last the boils burst, out of them poured clouds of moskitoes which went in circling swarms about the men’s heads like crowns until they were chased away by candles waved by wives and consorts. The moskitoes escaped through nearby windows, through cracks in doors, through knotholes in the floorboards.— And in this way they passed into the world and made for South and West, where they sucked deep at everyone they found and contagion spread and spread.

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CHAPTER 15 The husband returns

In time for him to have to wade through the town gone mad with nationhood revelations, Kemper left his honeymoon bed after seven days. It was crazing in the streets, even up On-the- Hill, and for us Unders it was bedlam. I think of what my brother seen in the faces of the people as he made his was down Front Street,— a few gouging fights between whole-hearted Americans and those who’d set their stakes set on Louisiana land, converging hordes of whores in wait for what’d surely be wave after wave of men come to govern the new territory birthed at our doorstep like an enormous foundling, fat and wailing to be taken in—and how it must’ve been much like what I could see from out the window at Lowde’s. I wouldn’t go outside for all the bullshit and scrapping that’d even found its way inside as the boys filtered in and out as the mood took them to dart through the door for another fight, but kept myself occupied at my table with map Smith had sent me,—using a short shotgun as a paperweight, and in case the riot grew worse—his arpents gridded off and the thrill rising in me for the great blank patch, unsquared, unhatched, that rested against it to the East another eight- hundred. This, according to the Senator, would be mine, or Kempers, of both of ours, depending on how we worked our partnership, and give his land a buffer should there be any trouble with the Pukes.—For their strip of country was all that remained of Continental holdings in Louisiana, and the Senator had sensed that those dons were growing nervous and would want to stock their land with Americans aplenty—there not being enough Frenchmen or even Pukes in the territory to settle her. I kept my hand on the stock and rubbed at the grain, thinking of plowruts in the land. According to him there were pockets of Torys down there who still gave prayers for their King, along with Kentuckymen and strappers like myself. But why, I asked, would anyone want to put themselves there? Why? Taxes, my boy. Commerce there flows freely and uninhibited. It’s the same reason I’d wager you and your fellows stalked their roads, but not the American byways across the river. I had nothing to say to that. I hadn’t said a word about our thievings and dealings, but Senators have long ears and I was probably stupid. Albion poured my glass of sherry back full and Smith went on giving me snippets of Apocalypse. And why do you think they’ve let you-all run rampant down there Under the Hill?— French and Spanish shipping rolls through to Orleans and St. Louis northward. You fellows are better tariff-takers than the best customsmen. But now, our Governor Claiborne, the pissant, will have everything from here to the Red River but that Spanish strip that wriggles all the way to Floriday, and what’ll you do—? All that fortune you-all have hoarded in that thieves’ nest will be played out soon on nothing but drink and doxies, and what’ll you have to show for it but a block of buildings on a street that smells like piss and river water? He waited a moment then said, It’s fine enough that you don’t answer. But I put the same question to Vice-President Burr and he made his mind known immediately clear—Ay? But such is the way a great man’s mind works, he jumps immediately at opportunities. He won’t let the hand of Chance roll his bones for him. All I could say was, How many damn presidents are there? Smith harrumphed and, shaking his head, fired up his pipe and tossed his sherry back. So I was still mulling what my answer should’ve been while I pressed my nose to the

152 maps, half-wondering what a farmer’s life was like, and wishing to be out of the riotous town and in the quiet of the woods when Kemper entered, still in his wedding outfit, only now topped with a high hat, which he withdrew, striding through what of the boys that weren’t outside fighting, and sat upon my map before he flung himself into the chair beside me. I expected somebody to get thrown through the window before you’d be coming through the door, I said. My brother clapped me on the shoulder, smiling broad and strong. Don’t fool with me, you prick, he laughed. It’s wild out there. I pushed his hat off my acreage and resumed surveying the sheet. What’s all this? Kemper said, bending close. Crabbe came by and gave the table a rattle; seeing Kemper, he gave him a pinch to the leg that made my brother yelp and jump back from the map. By then he’d been noticed by the rest, but Silver, Turpin, White, and the like were too busy staggering in and out to give much more than a haloo or shoddy wave with one hand, while the other held a fistful of hair, or was jabbing out the door at oncoming attackers—that is if they could see him out their blacked eyes.—Are we Purchasers or what? called one.—Hell if I know, but back to it! came the answer. And both tore outside and were immediately boxing. Is it this bad up On the Hill? Kemper said. I can’t say. Don’t lie, he said. I know for a fact that you’ve made two trips up there since I’ve been gone. Damn your spys and spyglass, I said. And anyway it’s the same but with less fist- throwing. They’re dueling up there, or throwing wine on each other’s wives.—How was your seven days of wedding-nights? A sly smile from Kemper. How was your night just below us? Grabbing Kemper by the arm, unable to fight down my smile, I said: It’s the most fun I’ve had almost dying. My brother laughed, then, and shook me off. This is the way of brothers, blood or not, that the hate is ever at the surface, but so’s the love. Aliza planned it all for you.—As a token, you might say. I’ll say I did my best,—but to tell the truth I couldn’t keep up. I think for most of the night they were just playing with me lifeless. Didn’t stop them from trying, though. Let me tell you, brother, she puts them all to shame. Bedwise? More than that, you shit. She’s the end and the beginning. Well, praise the Lord you’re back, and not mad. You had us all terrored for a long time. When I was cutting? It was like a peep-hole into Hell, I said. But damn if I can’t see why you did it. Kemper’s face grew shriveled up in thought and he spun his hat a few revolutions, as if to approximate his mind turning over what I’d said. I said, I know it’s better now— No, said my brother. It was like I was another person, like I could watch myself.—But, God, what else could I do? Not a thing. I’m just glad it’s through. It’s through, he said.

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We sat beneath the great portrait of Mother Lowde, and Kemper turned round in his chair and regarded it for a moment. I thought he might weep, which wasn’t unusual for him in the presence of the painting, but he kept his stare unbroken. Aliza’s mother was the greatest whore that ever worked, he said. She never knew her; born by accident, even though her mother drank potions to flush her out. This only made her a sickly thing when she was born—that’s why she’s so thin. She was born too soon, but survived. Her father’s a hilltop man, and he knew her whereabouts and staked her till he died. She was raised in the Church by a gaggle of women, and she owned it by the time she was twelve. You don’t think it was Lowde? I’d like to imagine it. They don’t look similar, but the Hell with it. It’s all God’s will, and besides, she’s magic enough to be anything you want. A crash of glass and our window was shattered by the weapons-seller’s cart, upended and shoved through by the crowd, grown angry, it would appear, by the fact that he was sold out. Fucking Hell! Kemper cried, and the fighters poured in through the crumbling glass. He drew a pistol from his coat and, without standing, aimed into the crowd. Some noticed and ducked, and Kemper called out: Out!—You cock-sucking runny shits!—Out! A wormy-looking man who was one leg through the window in pursuit of maybe White Alexander—or whatever body was on the ground and covering its head—gave out a cuss and began to step through. I tried to cup my ears, but I had one hand on the shotgun and Kemper’s shot still knocked my hearing out, and the cusser down to slump over with the broken pane in his belly.—A heartstopper, evidently. Shit! White yipped. Then Crabbe came scrambling over the corpse and through the window, as to not cut himself on the shards. Kemper snatched the shotgun from my hand and aimed it out, but by then a general retreat had commenced out in the street.—The rioters were hauling towards the riverfront. Crabbe was tugging the corpse inside. There’s militia coming down the road, he called. Help me damn it White! White Alexander and Crabbe tried to unsnag the dead man from our window, only to rake his belly split on the glass. I left Kemper there, cussing now himself, to go and help them shove his guts back inside, and, finally succeeding, assaulted by the smell of bowel, our hands slick with blood and fat, we got him to the back and did the slippery work of dragging the dead man down into the cellar. They’re on horses, said Crabbe of the militiamen. A whole row of sons of bitches with swords. I never even knew there was one, White added. And all I could do was spit and try to think what could be done, if Smith was right and the bootheel was fixing to grind us like he said. Was there any way to seem respectable when you look like you’ve just slaughtered a hog?—Offer them drinks? Up the stairs we went; White first, then me, Crabbe close behind, and sure enough there was the line of horses, legs and ribbage visible out the broken window. Kemper was standing with the shotgun now, and I rushed to take his shoulder and say not to shoot. Don’t be stupid, he said. I know better than that. I gave quick thanks to God that he wasn’t all-mad, and watched the riders swat some straggling rioters with the broad sides of their swords, smote them with the butts of rifles. All

154 you could see was their boots or their weapons. Once these were dispatched, the foremost rider in a rattle of livery swung himself down off his horse and stuck his head through the window. Ho in there! he said. All’s well? We all called back different shaky affirmations, but the man came on through—just as the deadster had done—saying, Ay, Woolsack?—You in there, lad? Life had been so wild for so long that I can’t say I was floored to find it was Smith himself who stepped through the puddle of blood, squinching beneath his boot a piece of entrail, and, squeaking, came forward with his arms spread. Smith! I cried, trying my best to sound nabob, like we’d met at the tobacconist’s rather than at the tail-end of a riot. I stepped from my brother and the others, wiping my hands on my pantlegs, and endured a savage handshake from Smith. These must be your fellows, he said, peering round my shoulders at the surely dumbfounded Kemper, Crabbe, and White.—And Smith’s good-natured bull did break, if only for a second, when he caught sight of Crabbe—a shudder jumping through him from his toes to his head. But he was a good politician and pressed palms with all, repeating his name each time like a charm—and when it came time for him to take Crabbe’s claw he would’ve done it without blinking, if not for Crabbe whipping his arms in flourish, saying, Your highness.—We all shared a shaky laugh, though Crabbe could be seen reddening and went on for a while mumbling to the floorboards about shitty Presidents. Smith, admiring the shotgun he was forced to reach around to get to Kemper’s hand, said to my brother, I’ve heard great things about you, sir. Great things.—And without letting go my brother’s hand he called back to his militiamen, Alright fellows! Press on, finish the job, and we’ll reconvene in a quarter! The horsemen whooped and started off, leaving Smith’s beast the only thing standing out in the street. I wouldn’t have believed that the Senator had enough to lead a troop of ducks to pondwater, but I should’ve know.—He’d been raised with Preacher-father, and even if he was frilled and fopped with political nicities, he had some of that fire in him too. I can’t say the prospect sat well with me, standing there when the introductions had ceased, wondering how he could ignore the trail of gore that led to the back door. Rather, he gathered us all up at the table, righted the chairs, and we sat down. My regrets for your window, lads, said Smith. But, like I told Woolsack here, things are too rough down here for good business.—The governor asked for a militia to be raised for the rioting, so I obliged him with a few youngsters. Not a bad job, ay? We’ll have the place cleared and calmed in no time! It’s a spot of blasted fun to be a civic leader here, before I’m due back in a week in Washington. We all nodded. Silence between the four of us until Smith’s eyes, which had been rolling round magnanimously just below the low-line of his wig while he spoke, caught on the map still laid-out on the table. Ah, now, that’s advantageous. Who says the Lord’s providence doesn’t walk in the works of the world. Not you lads, I’d say.—Raised on Baptist faith and martyr’s fire. You know when He’s talking to you. Smith reached his hands out across the table, one finger extended, as though he’d jab Kemper in the nose, and in downward swoop he stabbed it on the map and held it while he talked—as if by virtue of fingertip strength he would hold down the land itself and keep our conversation squarely on it.

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Angel here’s told you about Feliciana, ay? Who’s she? said White. Smith didn’t laugh, and neither did my brother, who stared him down and said I hadn’t told him a thing, but that’d he’d been off honeymooning. Ah, said Smith. There’s nothing better. I envy you, young man. Kemper cut his eyes at me and the Senator continued, made his pitch and sale. All the while I was set beside him, and being in that place, felt like I was his sorry accomplice, his footman. Feliciana! Smith said, triumphant. Off the Bayou Sarah, what the French call the Bayou of the Jewish Virgin.—What a prospect, ay? Sorry to say it’s not full of kinky-headed Jewesses with maintained maidenheads, but there are a few remaining packs of Tupeloes about if you like that sort of thing. But it’s a foothold in the last un-American stretch this side of the continent. See, boys, Jefferson and the master-midget back in France have sold the Spanish out. Their Florida is surrounded by America, now. And they haven’t enough bodies to keep her, but if they can get enough Americans in, they think they’ll be safe for the time being. See how easy we rode through here?—That’s the new governance, of the territory, the state. Chances for large scale thieving dry up—sure there’ll be pickpockets and highwaymen, but small-time only.—Times grow leaner and the force of the Law grows stronger, and they’ll turn to cut-throats for pennies. Why would you want to associate with that?—Not when you can set yourself up on the land, taxless, and lay in crops and negroes—maybe even poach a little from the, ah, Pukes, while you’re there. Have a foothold and build while we can, for it’ll be America too quite soon. Kemper folded him arms over the map. You just chased a bunch of willing partners for you down the street. Any of them’d squat in the woods for you. What makes us right? First, there’s no squatting to be done. In a months my boys’ll have raised up a fine store and house on the plot, in another months I’ll ship the goods for you to sell. Second, consider yourself lucky in your friend’s ancestry. I watched his father stand in the stock and get pilloried for twenty days in Young’s Run, Virginia, all for being a good Baptist in hornets’ nest of Anglicans. There never was a better Christian. I knew him, said Kemper, shakily and fighting off disbelief. Then you can see why I’d be loyal to his son, and give him opportunity for severely quick advancement. Sure enough, said Kemper. Listening, it was all I could do not to fire off the shotgun so I’d be deafened again. And, dear God, it dawned on me that we’d sat just like this with the Reverend Morrel, only then it was in the splintery furniture of Mother Lowde. Somehow that made it seem more honest, and it may be my full-grown brain that thinks it now, but the Senator seemed more devious,—and did I have the sense then to realize whose hands we were giving over into? Damn me to Hell, I didn’t. Meanwhile, oblivious to my self-thrashing, they went on. And I was so caught up, like I’d been the first time he’d put the offer to me and slipped that map—like a writ of infinite fortune—in my hand, that I didn’t notice his riders return. Sir! called one, who was already got down and making his way through the window. He approached saying more sirs and Misters and Smiths until the Sneator shut him up, finally withdrawing his finger from the map and putting it squarely in this young man’s face. The militiaman went rigid. His uniform looked to be the homemade approximation of military cut. A mother, sister, or sweetheart had sewn it for the occasion.

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I’m sorry, sir, he said. But they’re begging for hangings down the docks? Who? Smith demanded. Everyone, sir. Boaters, babies, old women. It’s getting worse now that we’ve stopped the riot. No, you pup, who do they want hanged, and how many? Oh—Four, eh, roughneck men they say are new in town. We’ve got them corralled off for the moment, but we’re at the whim of it, sir. How do the four of them stand on citizenship, ay? Against, sir, but they’re Americans. Kentucky mostly. Well,—Marston, is it?—I know these Kentucky people, Ohio’s on its doorstep, and I represent their interests. We’ve done a good job running the bad ones out, but sure they’ve shown up downstream. See, my boy, in politics one learns to give the people what they want, providing it’s within reason. Do you want to have to do this again, quell riots day in and day out until Claiborne garrisons you down here? Instead of being able to sleep in your father’s fine country house or a cozy hilltop tavern, you’ll be stuck in a lice-ridden pallet—no offense, gentlemen—unable to catch a half a wink for all the itching you’ll be doing while you’re stuck here trying to keep the peace this country demands! Colonel Burr will be down here pistolling the lot of us in no time.—Do you want that? The young militiaman was trembling in his brocades. Adventure’s always rough on rich fellows. They like to play at it for an hour’s time, but can’t stomach it when it may put them off their dinner, or their dip in their best nigger girl.—I’d see fools like this try and bring their bitches on campaign for God’s sake. General Jackson himself shot one such girl, before the eyes of her horrified master; a boy he’d been forced to tote as some kind of appointment by the wealthy father, and who was so satiated each night by his slave-girl that he was even more useless during the day than could’ve been expected of a planter’s son. No sir, said the militiaman—not without some trepidation, for he must’ve thought we’d be insulted. But, much as we might hate to admit it, us boys who come from the ground up and make our money stealing and even selling those same planter’s their black pincushions, we fold just the same, but at the sound of a deal, at the prospect of gain; ever-reaching, ever-clawing at the carapace of Fortune, of course we grab at everything we see, not matter how much hurt it’ll bring down eventually. Well, son, said the Senator. If it’s down the docks, then I’d assume there’s plenty of hemp to be had.—Hang them promptly, no ceremony. Then return here. Making his exit, the militiaboy almost took a spill getting out the window, then again when he tried to saddle himself. He rode off to his duty, like a good servant. And aren’t we all such fools. Smith resumed his place over the map. The streets are touchy tonight, he said. But it’s no trouble for us to escort you back to your wife Mr. Kemper. I’d appreciate it, said my brother. But, Smitty, I’ll have you know I’m good on my own just as much as with an army of your boys. I can strut these streets bare-assed and not be touched. I watched him smile wide at the Senator, expecting that at any moment he might snap and swing at me across the table, or maybe that he was keen on the idea of becoming gentry. I don’t doubt it, said Smith. But this way we’ll have a chance to talk the matter over a bit further. See, I know where our Mr. Woolsack stands but, if you don’t mind me saying, I can see that you’ve got some misgivings yet.

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I nudged the stupefied Crabbe, aware even in his scuttler’s brain that momentous things were at hand, and whispered for him to bring us a bottle of rum. And while Crabbe hunted drink, Smith went back to directing us to the map, and there he made crops grow and possibilities ripe. He waved his hands over the expanse as if he held it all in sway. Crabbe returned, surprising Smith with the bottle and clatter of cups as he reached to set them on the table. A drink, said Smith, to wait out a hanging.—But, now, gentlemen, to business.

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CHAPTER 16 Their negotiations

That night would see Kemper ride off with Smith and his crew of planter-boys to be brought safely back to his Aliza, and, soon after, the first battle of their marriage—the initial squeal trumpeting their long Apocalypse. Imagine how the fight goes with a woman you’re willing to cut fifty foreskins for. No plate-throwing or pan-brandishing, but the kind of wailing hair-tearing row that can only be produced by black, black love. Husband and wife become vicious apparitions, haunting every second with hate. I knew something was wrong when next day Crabbe came and woke me with a message he said had been delivered by one of those terror-niggers. I couldn’t even muster my usual laughter at his fear, I was so whipped. Late in the night, so that I might not have to sleep down in the cellar with the corpse, I’d had him and White wrap up the things and drag it to the river— which they’d grumbled over like so much Israelite to my Moses—and once they’d returned the two of them commenced to giving me Hell for several hours, asking after the plans for the plot of land, for Feliciana, which they said like it a charm. Fay-lee-see-annah, like a spell an old woman whispers picking words out from a chicken’s gizzard and spelling them with the stones. I tried my best to seem like I wasn’t sold, but in my greedy little heart I’d been signed over already, and was itching just as much as that fool twosome for the land and its prospects. Even bleary-eyed, I could see Crabbe wore a look of perverse glee when he shook me awake and handed me the folded sheet. I sat up, scowled him off, and proceeded to read it. Brother, it said, I’m laid up. Come and see.—K Going alone to the Church, I found that the town had been shut up by the riot of the day before; one smashed window after another, stalls and carts overturned and a restless few picking among the remains of wares and muddy bread. There were no bawdy goings-on as I’d expect of a Saturday, only urchins and a few just-landed boatmen, who, having come up from the docks— where undoubtedly they passed the four bodies the militia had hung—thinking they’d have a grand old Underhill Natchez time, only to wander bemused and disappointed at the deadness of the town. One barger approached me, tensed up at the shoulders for lack of drink and walking like he had a bell-toll between his legs, and asked what’d happened to good old Natchez town. It’s the Purchase news, I said. Damn, said the boatman. They know it from St. Louis to Frog’s ass. Resigned to his drinkless fate and having missed the brawl, off he strolled and so did I, turning from Front onto Call Street, finding happily that the houses here hadn’t suffered as much as the others.—Respect for Ladies of Pleasure runs a knife’s edge; either hard-legs are beating girls about the mouth, or they’re treating them like Mother Mary. I made the steps of the Church and, feeling a sudden rush from brain to nethers for the memory of the downstairs wedding night, had to hold myself up by the lip of the knocker, and gave a not unsteady rap; which was answered within moments by the flip of the trap-latch and a raspy morning-voice asking who was there, and what business I had. I bent down to the trap, saying, Angel Woolsack, Kemper’s brother. I won’t need to be fondled for this visit, thanks. Her lips were visible but nothing else. She pursed them so that in a bulb of painted fat they stuck from out the open trap—and I was forced not to be mischievous and give them a pinch.

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O, Angel, she said. Do you remember me? I can’t tell from just your lips, I said. Pursing again, she said, And I’d have thought that’s all you’d need, for all the work I put in with them on that limp little fellow of yours. I prayed to be saved from the barbs of women, and said, How about you let me in to see my brother, dearheart. Sure, sweet, sure, she said and shut back the latch; then with a rattle of bolts and chains undone she opened up the door and I slipped in. I had to blink for sun-blindness before I could see that it was the fiery-headed one greeting me, putting a face to the scornful lips, which presently parted in a smile. She made her nightdress lovely as the frills and laces she’d worn the wedding night. Hair a-tangle, she tucked twin wayward curls behind her ears and had me follow her; round the stairs and to place that’d been an altar, but now held only well-stuffed velvets and, so I saw when I jerked my eyes from the hitch and jump of her hind, upon one of them, Kemper. He was, like he’d scrawled, laid up. Some kind whore had swaddled him in a sheet and he stretched out nearly swallowed by a couch. Thanks Kate, he croaked.—And he must’ve known from the sound of her voice for he had one eye swollen shut, and the other so red that all he could’ve seen was shadows and bloody motion. Before she left us, Red Kate pulled me aside and whispered He’ll be alright. But boy was it a blister last night. Did he kill her? I said. What? God no, he’s such a lamb. He didn’t touch Aliza much at all. She departed after giving me a pinch to the thigh, and I was left with the half-mummified form of my brother, craning his neck to see me with his ruby eye. The whole scene had the aspect of a deathbed vigil, with my brother wheezing and waving me closer. I squatted down beside him and saw his ears were fat and purple as his eyelids, and his chest, where it showed, was starry with bruises and crescent naildugs.—But, God, he was grinning like he was brimming with news. It was all too much and I was ready to spin him out his sheet and finish the job his devil- wife had started. If you haven’t killed her yet, I said. I’ll do it for you. Steady, brother, Kemper said. You make a move and I’ll be on you quick as Hell. You can’t even see me, you ass. Call me here to watch you die, will you?—Get fuckered. I won’t do it. I won’t be the one to hear you gasp your last because this— God damn it, Kemper hissed. If you’d only shut your mouth for a second I could tell you.—She’s for it. Aliza’s for the land. I said, If this’s what for it looks like, I don’t want to see against. Ah, he said, sinking further into the cushions, We had to go at it for a while, but she let up. It’s Israel out there and she knows it now. I just had to take it for a while to let her know the Hand of God’s behind all of this. How’d you read her verses with your eyes like that? It was my own hands that did it, brother. Christ, I said. The wife’s supposed to bend, not the fucking husband.—Solomon had a hundred of them, and he said their contentions were a like as to a continual drumming. Sputters and scoff from Kemper, adjusting himself on the couch so that he sat upright. I wanted to beat myself down, he said, when I found I’d made her feel wrong. I wept, I

160 gnashed—the whole thing. The second I saw her eyes well up I had to put my own ones out. Don’t go much more mad, I said. I may just have to walk and take my cash and the boys. Don’t tell me that, said my brother. If you’re tired of the ride, it’s through, I’m a believer and so’s Aliza.—You think she wants to run these girls the rest of her life? No, we’ll put the money down for Smith and set ourselves up on the land. And join the ranks of the horsed and booted, I said. What’s that? asked Kemper, overtaken by a pang, turning an eggplant ear towards me. That’s what we’ll be. Horsed and booted, with niggers and fields. Two plots with two houses, you’ll find yourself a wife, and we’ll run the place from the porch with pipes and coonboxes all day.—Do they have a church there? We could build a Church that’d make the Catholics jealous. You can preach, and we can put Crabbe or some of the others there to oversee, and still, by God, have some running the roads. Just not us. We’ll be old men on the porch, laughing all day. Kemper collapsed back when he was through, and lay there goggling the ceiling while I took his vision in. Couldn’t help but see the Glory in it. We’d been talking Canaan for years, and it seemed the wait was over. I thought I’d done my time in towns, and wandering the roads. It’s hard to put this old man’s mind back in the money-shook skull of a boy, but I think that’s how it was. I was hungry for station, I admit it. And not the way we lived Under-the-Hill, but like the ones atop it. And we’d be able to raise up all our boys along with us, a whole crew of snipes made good.—Wouldn’t that be spit in the eye of every planter! More than stealing from them, or even shooting them, this was it and had the feel of righteous promise. So, I said, she wants to go. Don’t call my wife a she. Aliza then, I said. And you believe her? She might’ve folded just to keep you from killing your damn self. Kemper shook his battered head. Angel, he said. You flat don’t understand. Have some faith in us and you’ll see. When I’m healed up we’ll all three go see Smith and lash the whole thing out. Why does she have to be there? Because she’ll put her money in too, you shit. We’ve got enough, let her keep her place. She’ll do that anyway. I’m standing fast on it, brother, She’ll be there. You’re not standing on a thing, I said.—Then, versifying: Wives, submit yourselves unto your husbands as unto the Lord. Favor is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised. You don’t have to preach on me, said my brother. Give me two days resting. Fine, I said. But don’t be sending her niggers with messages.—It’s scaring the Hell out of Crabbe. When you’re ready to seal it up with Smith, you come and get me. Bring Herod’s daughter if you want. But I won’t be squalling when she has your head on a platter. We’ll get you, said my brother. I left him there to gasp and heal in the plush. If I’d turned back to look I might’ve seen my brother smiling, or staring me down, one. But I was glancing for that red-head on my way to the door when Aliza unsheathed herself from behind the stairs. Kemper hadn’t lied, she was untouched. No bruises peeking out her bodice, no claw-marks on her arms, which jutted out in angles of elbow when she stepped between me and the door with her hands on her hips. Arrowhead Aliza wasn’t glaring, but her look still cut me to the quick. She said to me:--

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And the heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall have no need for spoils. And she considereth a field and buyeth it: with the fruit of her hands she planteth a vineyard. Even the Devil quotes scripture, I said.—But I felt a fool for even saying it, the last resort of every preacher ever beaten with the Word. Well, Angel, said Aliza, I’m not the Devil and you’re not Jesus. That’s my husband and I’ll go with him wherever he goes. Besides, this was your idea. It is, I said. But not for him to get wrecked like that. He did it all himself, she said. He told me that. But I’ll die and go to Hell before I let you make my brother crazy. Aliza bobbed her neck, the bones whip-cracking down to her knees, and said, Listen to me, boy. If I’m going to give up everything I have for him and go off to this promised land of yours,—what does that tell you? I’m no witch, and when he gives me a baby it won’t be cold milk coming from my tit. You want to talk fire, I’m it. I’m his promised land and he’s mine. I’ve waited a whole life, twice as long as yours, to find him. So don’t you tell me you’ll be damned and go to Hell for him. I’m the Hell they’ll send you to if you don’t stand by him.—And you’re supposed to be a preacher. Have some faith. You put this in his head, and I’ll go through with it. But don’t you ever try and drive a wedge between us or so help me I’ll bury you in your promised land. If rage could choke back down your throat and slide into your bowels— that was what mine did. She’d told the truth, I knew it even then, and all coiled in me with my worms and anger was the knowledge she’d have my head on her platter. When Aliza did exact her price, it wouldn’t be that part. My arm stump itches with the memory, and the ghost of my left hand balls into a fist. I might’ve grabbed a candlestick and struck her down right then and there.—I could’ve changed the course of things. But from the stairs came the red-hair’s voice. Come back, Angel, she said, when you can. Aliza gave her a twiddle-flick of the hand. Of course he will, she said. I would storm past her and fumble at the locks and latches of the door, slapping at them with my hands when they wouldn’t turn loose; and so it went that when I was far past boiling, hearing the red-hair giggling up above, Aliza leaned in close enough that her shoulder might’ve sliced my jaw, and without taking her eyes from me, in a flurry of fingerwork, had all the bolts and chains and latches undone, the door creaking slowly open, so that I only had to shoulder my way out. I stomped on their porch for a while, then, shameful, squatted down beside the cock-trap and pressed my ear against it. There wasn’t anything to hear, but I held there till half my head went numb and was filled with roaring. Maybe the clatter of her heels upon the stairs or floorboards, or it could’ve been the sound of those terrible bones being loosed and slipping from her woman-suit of skin to reveal the skeleton black and brittle. My mind filled with the horrorful dance of Rawhead and this black-boned beauty, I had no time to move when the latch was lifted up and in a rush of hot breath a tongue was stuck in my ear, given a wriggle, then removed and shut back behind the trap. So I was left to fume and pestule on the porch, and did not have to press my ear to hear the giggling. Like a madness, while I swabbed my finger in the bespitted ear, that laughter overtook me and I was a cackling fool on my way back.—Such times, when you’re being clawed at by the hands of each and every Demon, it may seem you’re being tickled.

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You will vomit bleak laughter at every sulfur-smelling one of them.

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CHAPTER 17 Water of separation

With Smith and Kemper on a fast flat to Baton Rouge, there to the ink our contractual obligations and make the oath to be Floridans. I mostly stayed beneath the tarp with the boatmen and the other passengers while my brother and the senator leered at the railing. These others all were women unaccompanied, who built themselves fortresses out of luggage and hid vicious rat- dogs in their purses, or on strings tied about the creatures’ necks. I’d watched them board with hopes for a turn or two, or at least a brush of leg or kind lilt of voice,—for Aliza’s words still burned in my ear like that lick had been a gob of pitch instead of spit, and was set afire—but these ladies were the dusty English kind, and kept to their barricades and nippers. So delicate were they, that when one had to go over the side to piss it would only be when we were floating between thickets and overgrown woods—as though there were men who daily skulked in the trees and with their lenses trained upon the river praying that some white-assed maiden might be baring her cleft for relief—and, once the dainty pisser was seated, held secure by a length of rope slipped over her middle and tied to a cleat, she would call out for us to sing and drown out her noise. At first, only the other women gave a song, but the harpy cried from her perch for us to join. And we did, so that whenever one of us saw a pissing situation was at hand, he would start up at once and all would follow. The trick was to be first and set the song, for the ladies’ were stiff and whispery, Smith’s were charmers meant to show his color, and the boatmen were no volunteers. So Kemper and I were always at the ready with a ballad in our heads or a bloody hymn if they wanted some religion. Of course this fun was hollered down each time by a chorus of female voices; and even Smith, that skink, would say for us to watch our mouths and be mindful of the ladies present. Damn it, son, he’d say. Don’t sport on them like that. The word had the burn to it. Just to hear a man say it, not that it recalled Preacher-father, but that Smith carried in his pocket some old cast-off vestige of my father that the man himself had shed and left behind like snakeskin, and at opportune moments would withdraw the crinkled shape and wear it over his own, though it was worn and thin, so withered from his poor keeping that I could barely tell what it’d once been. These kind of women favor soft preachers, so Smith put on all his delicacies and Episcopal afterthoughts. He uplifted them with sermons, those who wouldn’t uplift the hem of their skirts even from their Torie husbands. Kemper gave them less notice than I. He was mercury to be without Aliza; and could be found either listening to Smith with great attention, same as he’d done with Morrel, or stalking up and down the deck of the barge with his ham-knuckles locked behind his back. If they were vision out there, I wasn’t party to them. Sure he’d catch a laughing jag and was still quick to make a song, but that was the extent of his mirth. With the end of the sound and the senator’s admonitions, he’d be back to sulking. I’d be a liar to say that I hadn’t caught the same river- melancholy. So that I wondered, did he worry on the same things as me? There was no asking Kemper if he saw old Finch’s face in all the boatmen, or if the water in a certain cast of moon gave off the glow of rotten bone, souring my mind to think that below us floated Preacher- father’s ashes, and somewhere in the depths we passed slowly over floated the corpse of Mother Lowde. October cool came on one night through the canvas, and we were all awake and so

164 filtered one-by-one out onto the deck. Even the ladies, with their mutts held close, came out to take the air-change. From the left bank came twin flashes of fire and, following, roars. Asked one lady, what was that horrid sound? Murder madam, I said. Done in trade. A shudder overtook the whole lot. The boatmen had a chuckle and Smith made assurances as to their safety. Well, said one. There’s one less roughneck at least. Or Georgia Cracker, said another. Or Kaintuck, added one. They went on giving names, which tickled them like they were cussing, until their shudders turned to hen-cluck conversation on the faults of whites who weren’t born Virginians. Our Mr. Woolsack comes out of Fauquier County, said Smith. Really? Then it must be this awful country that’s made him so. So, by God, what? I said. It’s no offense to you, sir, but to this awful place for having swamped out your cavalier nature. I didn’t even know I was from the fucking place, I said. Later, once my gowned offender had strutted off along with her gaggle, and Smith had made his show of tongue-lashing me until I was about ready to pitch him off the side, Kemper came and handed me a smoke. We lit them by the fore-lamp’s flame, and once we had our cigars going, my brother said to me: Step light for just a little while. You’re the king of madmen and you’re telling me to watch my step. Damned if I will with those biddies and—hissing—that son of a bitch. To my cuss responded Kemper, You put us with him, Angel. Keep your head until the deal’s done.—Then, whispering, he said, Smith thinks he’ll have us like niggers on his land, waiting for him to come and claim it. He thinks the price will double when America sweeps down—a matter of months, he says. Well, those Spanish grants won’t mean a thing when the land gets took, and if you’ve got the land across the Mississippi line, we’ll take the whole thing out from under him while he’s still signing papers in Washington. God damn if we’re not brothers still, I said. That’s a fact, he said. I’ve just got keep my eyes open for whatever this Smith’s pulling, and if you can keep yourself toned, by God, we’ll have him. I told my brother my mouth would be shut, now that I knew he was right and working with his brains. Kemper always was the one who saw far ahead, but that night on the groaning barge-boards we both stood watch on the dark, and the growing chill did not bite our bones, but killed the soak and sulk that heat had bred in them. There’s another thing, he said. What’s that? I want you to be a Kemper when you sign both papers. By God, I said. Brothers. # # # The ladies and their dogs endured, except for one—snatched by an alligator from out a canebrake where we’d banked. The owner had him on a string, and even when the beast had lunged and spun to take the doggie in his jaws she’d held the line, thrash of tail in the water being not

165 enough to drown the squeals of hound and lady. The others held their pups to their paps and tossed hints for one of us to save the thing or shoot the gator. The boatmen had begun to pole us off and still the lady was tethered by her string, the knot unbroken round her wrist until the monster gave a final thrash and snapped the string and she was left there weeping as we floated back to the current. It was the fourth morning on the water, and we’d rounded Dog Island at the bend before Tunica. Above the din of yipping and the muffled curses of the crew, I heard Smith saying that was where our land was.—And I turned from that room of tiny vicious teeth and mounded baggage to lift just a strip of the tarp and see what they did. It was rise of sharp and loamy hills with bites taken out of their edges, spits of waterfalls, tangles of root. I was no man for landscape, and neither is the Book. It says there’s milk and honey in Israel, but I never read a Hebrew have it. Blasted desert’s all it was, and this was bitten hills. But the Lord’s hand was upon me and I had a new name, and I saw through the trees and the tangles of their roots, into a place where the woods were thick and there were caves and sinks, Indian traces and places to hide, places to ride down the Devil. It struck me like I imagine the head-shot of a suicide, to blow through strong and pass between the writhing knots of promise.

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CHAPTER 18 Baton Rouge

The trash heaps of Natchez made better buildings than most of what stood in Baton Rouge when we landed at the riverbank; debarking after parking with the coins for our faire, then to slog our way up to town on planks sinking in mud. The ladies were bound for New Orleans, and I can’t say too sad to see us go. Smith had made a show of leaving, handing each cards inscribed with his name and office, offers to write him in Washington. I carried my bag slung over my shoulder and had to peek around its buckles for sight of the Fort, which grew in sharp edges when we’d made the top of the bluff. The red flag flew, but I had no thoughts for flags just yet, so this was only whipping paper in the wind. But the guns and batteries and barracks, where presently the daily scurry and tend accompanying fort life. The Spanish soldiery seemed happy enough—a sign of that strange kindness the dons had, that no other army, British or American, would ever suffer. They lived in colonial flux, with various people passing in and out their ranks, having a good time of defending not much at all, wine at lunch and naps at noon. Recalling them now, and in the way I always found the Pukes in camp, it’s more than this brain can do to figure how I spent a lifetime driving them off this Continent. It’s like if I could taste and there was a dob of black grease in my mouth to think that the job was done by bureaucrats. Watching one Puke pull a cart of barrels while his fellows loudly laughed and waved their smoking pipes at him, I wondered did they know the death of so many of their friends walked just yards away.—It’d been days since the urge to plug or cut had been in me, and it seemed these rollicking Pukes had no worth for murder. Yes, my mind was going wet and weak for land and holdings. I was fool enough to think my killing days were done, that I wouldn’t ride on this very fort and cut these same boys down, that I wouldn’t have their commander at the end of a length of hemp, that I wouldn’t We made the descent being drawn in muck up to our knees while wild dogs, well-fed off the soldier’s mess of pork-broth rice and tomatoes, made circles of us, looking happy and grinning as their masters. Smith talked the whole way, repeating the cautions he’d given us—and mainly me—as to the process yet to come. Don’t get choked when you’re to make the oath, he said. Remember, lad, it’s only words. This country changes in fits and starts, like the flood of its banks that makes soil that once took indigo and perique hold only cotton, this place will change.—Alliegances are only what you say when the water runs a certain way. The left bank’s now flooded, but next month, it may be the right. And it’ll be a star-spangled flood, then? I said, feeling spry enough to be off the boat and at the mouth of this new town. We hope, ay? said Smith, casting looks for anyone to overhear us. The politician’s head must ever be on a swivel, and God it’s got to be a chore to always watch your words so close, for they change with every listener. But there were no listeners besides us two among the busy troops and the beginnings of the townsfolk, who seemed not too many. Past the barracks we continued into the outers, Smith illustrating points of interest: the governor’s house, the stockade—a holdover from British dominion, the cemetery. Now we came into the grid of the town, boundaries of logic that our Under-Hill Natchez couldn’t stand, curving, as it did, in ellipses of street. In Baton Rouge, as in

167 my swatch of New Orleans, you walked a straight line to your destination; no matter how crooked were your means or ends. Farmers’ carts were turned out on the street and Kemper plunked the sides of gourds as we went, and I flipped some change to the sellers. There were blacks moving freely amongst them with their own lugs of produce, a different sight than Natchez town. One Negroe tossed me a palm-sized pumpkin, and I paid him on the fly and produced my knife and split it, carving out the seed and meat, still walking. It’s only one of you that has to take the oath, said Smith. So which will it be that can stand it without much trouble? My mouth was full of pumpkin-flesh, and I so the senator took this as reluctance. It’s no thing for me, said Kemper. Fine, fine, said Smith. I smacked and sucked the rind, agreeing. The matter settled, and as we’d been stuck on boatman’s fare for almost a week, when the cooking stalls appeared we payed close attention to their steaming contents, and were, each to his own taste, on the hunt for a meal. Smith found himself something proper, a bread-loaf stuffed so his hands wouldn’t be greased; Kemper huddled under an awning, quickly scupping up spoonfuls of rice and beans, and I took the time to search by smell—learn to live without taste and you’ll find you follow your nose—until I was caught by the flicker of fire and the popping seethe of potted fat, where a man was bent over a wide pan with a long spoon, turning and scooping out brown crescent pies, then dusting them with red pepper at the finish. The air tinged enough to get you sneezing for the clouds of spice he sent drifting down way, like bloodspray on the wind. The man was Puke, and he seemed troubled that I’d not be right for the food, much less asking him for more cayenne to be dusted on it. But I paid the eyeroller and he handed one to me. First bite and whiff took the spice-dust deep into my nose and round the throatward bend. And while the pie-man looked on, bewildered at this Anglo, I downed the thing with relish. My useless tongue lapped at the corners of my mouth and there appeared Kemper and Smith alongside. Damn, lad. How can you stand it?—The infernal peppering! Move upwind, said Kemper. And they did, while I wiped the red from my nose and felt some snotty run begin, the fire-trickle set right back to my brain pan. It’s because his tongue’s ruined, Kemper said. But even still! I’m crying just because we passed it. Grinning, my soul peppered, and feeling like I’d just eaten at the Devil’s dinner table, I waved off their worries, saying, It’s like rubbing dabs of deer piss on your hand when you’re out hunting. You’ve got to smell right for the prey. That’s statesmanly thinking, said Smith. You won’t be the one to have to prey on them, Kemper said. But you’ll be good in there, ay? I snuffed and gave a peppery promise that I wouldn’t show my ass to the Pukes. Let’s avoid that kind of language, Smith said, when we’re with the Surveyor General. Another turn onto a broad street where stood the brickwork and porticoes of the offshoot offices of government; having already passed the governor’s place and whatever syrupy intrigues within, we followed Smith up the steps used the edges to scrape the mud from our boots. There was no guard at the door, and my brother or I could’ve walked inside and blown the head off the Puke we found seated at his desk, secretary at his side, going over an unfurled map resembling the ones I’d pored over myself. This was Pintado, chief Surveyor of the territory, militiaman, and assistant to the Governor as stood Feliciana. He was built like the bend in a dog’s hind leg when

168 it’s lifted for a piss—a scientist, a map-maker, pressing with his instruments to philosophize the world, hair clawed far back on his head, revealing on over-sized dome and in pock-marks of ink all across it where he’d itch his scalp with the tip of his pen. Smith gave a rap to the doorframe and the secretary looked up, but not Pintado. The secretary bent to whisper in his master’s ear while Smith stood smiling wide like he was about to be received by a fine friend. I didn’t join him in his grin, but looked back to the Surveyor, who presently put down his instruments and map, receiving Smith with a nod and smirk before he stood and put out his hand. My friend, said the Surveyor, it’s good to see you.—You’ve come about the Thompson’s Creek plot, yes? Yes, yes, said Smith. Happy chance that you’re still in Baton Rouge, as your letter said. I’d hate to make it here and find you were back in St. Francisville. That would be unpleasant, the Surveyor said. But I am here until the end of the month. Then back to Feliciana.—Around the same time as your agents here, I’d say. That’s right, Smith said. Now, about the papers— Of course, said the surveyor. Then he snapped at his man in Puke and the secretary went to get his documents, which he laid out on the desk before us. They read? asked the Surveyor. Certainly! Smith said. You’d think I’d have some mean fools on my land and adjoining? Without a doubt. But there has been trouble with that kind lately in the territory. Ruffians? Smith said. It would seem that some Americans are crossing over the border and raiding the farms and mills. Bands of banditti, yes?—They think the country’s theirs already. We’ll leave that to the lads in Washington and Madrid, ay? said Smith. Just so, said the Surveyor. But you know what goes on in Washington better than I know the whims of Madrid. It’s been ten years since I left there, and you sit on your country’s parliament.—Or, half your country, rather. My loyalties to the State and to the Crown are undivided. They travel separate tracks— like the Pearl and the Mississippi, they meet occasionally but one won’t interfere with the other. I don’t doubt it, said the Surveyor. Our West Florida is the tributary.—But let’s have this business out, yes? Read her over, lads. So with Kemper I approached the table and we each held a slip of paper up. I had to look over on his, for mine was in Puke. Deed for a stretch of 400 arpents all the way to the border, and an agent’s grant and contract on Smith’s tract. Seems fine, said Kemper. Excellent, the Surveyor said. Now, you will repeat after me:—I swear before Almighty God, to be a loyal subject of his Catholic Majesty, Ferdinand the Second, and to his governors, to be here resigned as a member of the Holy Church, and follow her in all your ways, to renounce all other allegiances—with a sly wink to Smith—domestic and ecumenical, and to be wholly a subject of West Florida. Blasphemy and lie compounded and confounded all whatever morals in me when I said those words along with Kemper, said my newfound name. Shocking Kemper when I said not Angel but Samuel. He near to wept. I fear I tripped over it and all the running snot back in my nose and throat made me hack out catholic—hateful down to the whirling graves of my fathers. Would that Preacher-father could’ve seen me and Kemper then, finishing our blasted oath and

169 scribbling down our names on the sheets, then being given small glasses of wine to toast with Smith and Pintado our new nationality. I gulped the drink to loosen up my throat what’d puckered from the foulness of the words.—Now my pain came from no love for America, it’s never held me dear, nor from the bow to Popery—but the act of oaths has always lit the hate in me. And to do it for this scribbling surveyor, this schoolboy clerk who knew well enough it was a lie, but would go through with it anyway. Hateful stuff.—Kemper must’ve seen that I was turning, for his hand was at my arm and leading me out the offices once my glass was empty. The door was shut behind us and Smith’s voice carried on with his Puke friend. Ah, said my brother. What’s it like for you, being a papist? Get me a cross and a picture of Mary, I said. We’ll need beads, he said. God, there’s too many trinkets to pack. No wonder they all kneel. Their backs are bent from toting all their icons. Well, said Kemper. We’ll have them all in a sling soon enough. I hope so, I said. I hope I set us on the right path. Don’t worry yourself. This is the grand way, not scratching at the roadsides like we’ve been doing. We’ll leave that to the Turpins and the Whites. So, I said. We’re Pukes now. Damn right, said Kemper, his hand at my back, leading me down the steps. But once we’re at Fort Adams you’ll be half-American again. How’s that for a country?—You to the north, me to the south, and the fat heifers will wander through the valley between us— And we’ll cut their throats, I said.

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CHAPTER 19 The next oath and purchase

In a few days we were again on the river, Smith for the northern reaches, leaving us contract- bound and to our own devices otherwise, Kemper for Natchez, to ready our remove, and myself being deposited on the west bank of the river at Point Coupee, the American fort on the Puke border, where I was to obtain the grant for the plot at Pinckneyville, and from there go on to supervise the transformation of the land on both side of the line. Ready to shirk off even my joking Catholicism and Pukeness, I waved them on and proceeded past toiling slaves and soldiers to the earthwork mound which rose up at the foot of the river, set with logs like when a child builds playhouses out of mud and sticks. The guns gaped despairingly from out holes carved in the strawy earth and I had to be careful not to stomp the piglets scooting by in herds, or their mother bedded down in the great wide waller that was this whole place. But mud and stink were a comfort compared to the archways and stone of Baton Rouge. Here the fires were kept burning in the redoubt, tended by young boys with bellies like the pots they stirred, and meat hung on spits in various places. It was like the turned-out insides of one of the holediggers’ houses from back in the old days, only not so fetid or sad; instead full of movement and campside enterprise. I entered in the gate, which was held open by twin stacks of boats piled there as doorstops, and toiok ahold of a boy passing by rattling his drum, and asked him where the land office was. See the Lieutenant, was his answer, with a tap-tap-tap and off he went. So it went that I was given over from Lieutenant to Lieutenant, Puke to American. This one’s name was Wilson and his rooms were a rare dry patch among the dripping mud and timbers, so dry that it was here they had to store their powder magazines, which I noticed upon entering and for the fact that as I made to light my smoke the Lieutenant leapt up from his table and snatched the cigar from out my mouth. Sorry, sir! he said. It’s a bomber’s dream in here and we can’t risk disarming the whole sector because of an errant spark. It’s no worry, I said. I’d rather be boxed and smokeless than blown sky high. A good notion, indeed.—But where’s that accent from, if you don’t mind? No accent, Mr. Wilson. I’ve got a burnt-up tongue. My father made me chew coals when I was a boy. There’s a tough fellow. But I’d wager you know your way around fire now! Yes indeed, I said. A drink for your tongue, then? As long as it’s not wine. I’ve just come up from Baton Rouge and the pukes there only truck with grapes. That’s why they whither, said Wilson. No, here we’ve got the benefit of the river and what we can take off it.—Sap rum? That’s fine. If you don’t mind straight out the bottle— Pass her here, I said. Lieutenant Wilson pulled the cork with his teeth and dropped it in his lap, then took a swig, sighed, and handed the bottle over.

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Damn fine rum, I said. It’s Bahama syrup that’s made its way up from New Orleans, taken off a Red merchant’s ship. Are we still fighting the Brits? God, we’ll be fighting them till the end of time. Or else—and keep this close—we send, let’s say, a dozen or so ships, disguised as East-Indiamen, pack their hulls with powder, and park them in the harbor at London. Then it’s a spark away from sinking the ass of that island—where its brains, like those of any fool, are kept—down into the Atlantic! Yes! I cried, unable to not be caught up in his excitement. That’s the way you finish off a war! Wilson, taking on a melancholy look, had himself another pull of rum. Don’t mention it, he said. That brainstorm’s the reason I was shipped down here for this detail. There’s no room for innovation in this Army. That’s a damn shame. Alas! That our Republic wants no geniuses. But what about you—Woolsack, is it? I’m here to put a claim on some land, I said, the rum returning to my hand and plugging up my mouth for further explanations. Hell, then. Let me get the map and you just put a finger where you see it’s blank and that spot’ll be yours! And sure enough the Lieutenant dug out a map, the plots marked off in different colors, spread it wide across the table, and waved me close, saying for me to weight down a corner with the bottle. Paper goes to Hell down here, he said.—Now take your pick. I scanned from the bend in the river, across the area of West Florida, colored red, and at the borderline followed the hairline wriggle of Thompson’s creek, and put my finger there. That’s the place, I said. Two hundred acres wide. Seeing the spot I’d marked, Wilson raised his eyes up from the map. You must like being close-by to them, he said. To who? Spaniards, he said. You must can’t get enough of them. I don’t roll with the pukes, sir. I only assumed, as you’re just back from their capital— That’s another tangle of snakes altogether, I assured him. Is it now.—Are you doublesided?—You their agent? Jesus no, I said. Could you keep quiet on something as I’ll be on your bomb-plans? Sure enough, said Wilson. No offense, by the way, about agenting for them. Our own General up in Washington’s in debt to his Royal Catholic Majesty. I’ve got the letters to prove it, but no one believes me. Damnation, I said. But we’re—my brother and me—going to run a scheme on the Pukes. He’s bought this land here just below the line, with the help of an American investor, and I’m to buy the top. So when the Pukes are driven out we’ll have double the tract at half the cost. Lieutenant Wilson considered this, and peered into his bottle as though the answer lay somewhere in its neck. That sounds like a plan that wouldn’t be harmful to American interests, he said. It won’t. And when’ll yall make a run at the Pukes anyway? When the time comes you can bring your men right down through our pass along the creek, and all the way down into

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Feliciana and then Baton Rouge. Thanks, said Wilson. With fifty more men I could take Baton Rouge right now. I’d say less. They’re pitiful down there. I don’t doubt it. But it’s orders that I need. Because of bastards like our fine General Wilkinson, I’m stuck waiting and undermanned. They seem to think they can talk the Dons out when all I’d need is four days’ shooting. It’s so they can draw their pensions from the Pukes, I said. Exactly! cried Wilson, slamming the bottle on the table so that sops of rum were flung across the map, claiming new tracts as they darkened the paper. Damn, Kemper, but you’re a fine one. I’ll be glad to have you on the border.—And would you be needing passage back across, and up to Mississippi? I told him that I did indeed. But first, the papers! Ah yes! I’ve got some standards here. I’ll let the surveyor up in Pinckneyville deal with the plotting, you just take him this writ, right? Right, I said. And so I spattered another sheet with my new name, which I was growing to like, and dropped a load of dollars on his desk—the rest to be paid to the office in Mississippi. American again, hallelujah. Hail the striped banner and the ever-watchful carrion bird. Who needs the star of Christ to follow when you’ve got dozens.—God damn the whole thing. Later, I would sit with the Lieutenant and his officers at mess, chewing boiled rind and listening to them tell each other stories they thought frightening. The cold had returned and hardened up the mud so that presently a chill was all about the fort, and with fire crackling and their boots before it, they were like a clutch of children topping stories. One told of how the Indians of the region made their old-time sacrifices, while another spun a haunted castle yarn. Still another told the story of an enormous legendary catfish, whose barbs would snatch you from the banks—but he was laughed off as ridiculous. Lieutenant Wilson, looking grave with command, quieted the chiding and leaned in over the fire with his hands upon his knees. He asked if any of them knew the werewolf of the region they’d been assigned. No, came the answers. Well, he said. It’s here, but not like your German werewolf, or your British werewolf, or even your French werewolf—though he’s his closest relate. Les Loup, see? He’s not so much man or wolf as shaggy swampgrass and claws.—Wolf being the closest approximation to any living creature that the bayou French can give as to his appearance. He stalks their little shacks and towns by night and steals their children to sell.—To who?—The Indians who still cling to the swamps, herds of escaped blacks, gipsies, the like. Anyway, the Loup was never a man, no. He was always fur and weed and swampwater, and most times he only floats on his back so that you’d think he was just a patch of grass bobbing in the way of your pirogue, and you might jab this floating patch with your oar, and come to find the patch has an arm and seizes up your own, and with cold and clammy dripping claws squeezes the oar from your grip, and pulls you down to drown you—for he likes his meat soaked. The Lieutenant sat back, to catch his breath, while his juniors shook their heads and suffered under shivers. That’s my monster, he said. And what about you, Kemper?—Have you any demons to put to the tell? I sucked long at my teeth and thought, then I told them the story of the Rawhead-and- bloody-bones. So we traded, creature for creature, and the Lieutenant seemed pleased, though his

173 recruits began unsettling themselves with whispers among them, conspiratory glances cut between the sparks, growing to stories within stories being told off-chance and behind cupped hands. What is it then? Lieutenant Wilson said. The ghoul, sir, said one. Oh God, said the Lieutenant. That’s a monster for you, sir. The cock-ghoul of the roads. Wilson groaned and bent himself almost over into the fire. Why, he said, would Mr. Woolsack want to hear something like that? If it’s about, and he’s travelling that way— For safety’s sake, another said. Wilson said to the ground, Then tell him about the cock-ghoul, corporal Poe. Well, said this corporal,—who’d been the one to start it off, and was not much more than fourteen, fever-blistered at the mouth, which presently he opened to reveal teeth worse off than mine, and this story: Before we were transferred down here, I was with the Seventh company under Wilkinson, billeted out of the Pointe. We were on an, eh, excursion, on the east bank of the pearl, just below Dog Island, doing some scouting of the Spanish incursions into the Mississippi. The general was there himself, and we were led by a pair of guides who styled themselves as half-Indian, and even had themselves some Indian –sounding names: Hawker Collins and Joel Pipesmoke. But I think now they were just swarthy whites. Either way, we were in a right column, not skulking like rangers, but proceeding through the woods directly, looking out for signs of camp or habitation by the enemy. We searched a great patch of woods our fake-Indian intelligence had informed was home to a Spanish detachment, of raiders who’d been shooting some cows for sport on our side, but found no sign of them. The General had even given us carte blanche to snatch up any Spanish customaries who might be bringing up shipments from Pascagoula, but there were none. Our right formation just wandered through that stand of piney woods until with no sight of kit or quarry, and the General’s passion was such that he kept us hunting on until we’d missed the afternoon and any chance to cross back over the line and found ourselves miles-deep in the woods at twilight. The sundown made the whole place gray and eerie, to where you might’ve fired your rifle at a possum dangling from a limb for his red eyes glaring at you in the dark, which was soon full-upon us. I won’t say we were lost, but our guides had slipped off and left us there, taking with them two of our lanterns. The General, being a sensible man, had us fall to setting up camp but-quick and before our remaining torches ran out, he even had us dig a trench in case we would have to defend our position. In the interest of morale and supper, he had a fire built, and soon enough we were all snug sitting by it—not unlike tonight, you might say.We were all sure that if anyone came at us, by God we were soldiers of the Republic and we’d have his ass. Well, sleep took some, even the General succumbed, but not before he’d assigned four of us to a watch. Because I’ve never been much of a sleeper, and he could tell that I was wide awake even when I held my eyes shut, I was assigned along with Prvts. Berton, George, and Patterson to the four corners of our clearing. It was a fool’s watch, for the fire-light shone behind us and made the woods more shadowy than they’d have been beneath the naked moon. I’d have to turn and look back at the fire just to put some shape back to my eyes, and I saw the others do the same. We’d know our times by the progress of the moon, and for a few hours we made our watch-calls to each other with regularity: Good here, Berton—Good here, Poe—Good here, Pat—Good here, George. And repeat the cycle until we’d said all each other’s names, and the last man would have to repeat them all in order. By

174 midnight it’d taken on the tenor of a memory game, and we were speaking for the sleepers too, anything to keep the mind awake when staring at all that black nothing. But somewhere between Cleave and Hurryup, our Prvt. Patterson let called for us to hush. Did ye hear that? he asked.— No, we answered.—Shut up and listen, Pat said. And we did, and what we heard was a rustling through the bushes coming towards us from was it east or was it west, who knew? But that it came and it was joined by a great shrieking. I was the one standing on Pat’s side, so my rifle was at my shoulder and I called for him to have his just so. But there he stood, stock-still, a shadowy figure peering into deeper shadows, when from out of the bushes burst the form of a man, shrieking out his lungs and collapsing to the ground before I could put out a shot. By then the rest of the company was awake, and we dragged the man to the fire, where we saw that he was naked below the waist, and horribly bloodied in that same place. Eyes were averted, curses spoken. Then one bent over him and saw that he still breathed and was mumbling. The General, in his drawers, appeared and put his ear to the man’s mouth, saying, He’s Spanish. We sat him up and gave him water, which he only vomited out, his throat was clenched in awful fear and there was a terrible burn just below his jaw, like a man cut down from the gib. General Wilkinson, being educated in the language, sat with the man as his senses somewhat returned and asked him what’d happened. What followed we got in snatches from the General, translating the man’s jabbering for our benefit. It was a giant, a giant man had caught him and his fellows on the road. He’d shot them all, and the jabberer had been struck at the shoulder and had passed out, only to awake and find himself being hoisted up a tree by a rope around his neck, and being raised up he was afforded a view of this fiend hunched over his fellows, stripping them of their breeches and cutting off their manhoods with a knife. And at such a time as his feet were dangling in the air and his breath and life would seem to leave him, the giant again appeared, with his gore-stained knife held out, and the giant cut the pants off the man and was prepared to do his slicing when suddenly he threw down his blade and howled with rage. See, the hanging had sent all the man’s blood down to his nethers, and as he choked he saw the object of the ghoul’s frustration, standing rigid out before him. It was then that he fainted, only to awaken some time later, in the dark, finding that the limb had snapped from his weight and he’d been freed from hanging. Still tethered by his tender neck to the limb, our Spaniard had dragged himself over to examine his fellows, all of whom were mutilated horribly. Examining himself, he’d found that the fiend had made attempts at hacking but’d given up and left him to hang. Somehow, for he never said, he’d unslipped himself from the rope and wandered through the woods, still believing the ghoul was lurking somewhere nearby, ever after him. Gasping out his story in that strange tongue, from the exhaustion brought on by the labors of his trial and escape, and from his wounds, which had begun to bleed anew with the telling, the man expired at our fire. Damned chilling! said one. That’s not the worst part at all, said another. Midway through the Corporal’s story, I’d know what it was. How’s it feel to be party to a legendary monster?—I’ll tell you, there was no comfort in it. And to see the fear, the horror, on their faces was as hard a damnation as I could bear. I searched for something to say, but was cut off even in my thoughts. You mean what happened after? said Corporal Poe.—Well, there was no more sleeping that night or for a few thereafter, I assure you! Next morning our guides returned and we were able to take our bearings enough to find the place of the slaughter. It was just as the Spaniard had said. We buried them all, as we’d done for the first, then removed ourselves from that awful

175 place and back to our fort. From there, and for the next months, we’d hear the stories of the bodies found cut up just the same, all along the roads on both sides of the border. We made patrols, but never caught the fiend—though we did see the signs of his handywork. He’s got to have some partners, said Lieutenant Wilson. He must, to do so much. But who’d ally themselves with a thing like that? It takes their money though, right? said one. What’s a demon need with purses? What’s it need with guns? That may be just opportunists, the Lieutenant said. Like grave robbers. But the guns do trouble me to think that it’s a man. In some cases, a monster’s preferable. Speculation went on for a while, with Poe setting himself back in his place, contented with his tale and that, judging by his looks to me during the telling, it’d made a mark. I knew there was nothing else to do but speak, and like the preaching fool I am I gave them something of a sermon on the nature of such fiends, and seeing their fear and feeling my own guilt, I told them that I had in fact met this creature, riding down from Natchez on the Trace; had seen it rise up from a corpse, stared into its glowing eyes, and with my Bible held out in one hand, and my pistol in the other, I’d shouted verses at the thing until it became powerless, at which time I shot it through the head. I told them that I’d found, on its, person, a string of hundreds of dried foreskins. It was a man, I said, but misshaped all out of form or reckoning. I said I dragged the thing off into the bushes and burnt it in a pyre along with its prizes. They were laughing before I’d even finished. None of them believed me. They thought it was a good try at ending the story, but they knew for a fact that the thing still stalked to woods and roads. Damn if the thing can be killed!—No offense, sir. I would ask Wilson afterwards, when the others had retired and we were all that remained by the fire, whether he believed me. Of course, Woolsack, he said. It’s hard to doubt a preacher. I believe you like I believe in the thing itself. Like I believe in Almighty God. The Lieutenant was indeed a believer, in the rankest sense. Now, I see demons in this words, and I’ve felt their hands upon me. And in those days at the fort, awaiting a boat to take me north and east, I mulled over what was true; and each night were the same fireside stories told, and each night I gave my version. None of them would believe, but Wilson. It got so that I believed myself that the demon stalked the path ahead of me, that I would find him one night in my time out at Bayou Sara while I oversaw the building of our houses and he would come to claim more than my foreskin. I was bothered, sure. Guilty?—I can’t say. Enough that when, after three days at the fort, as the flat poled off from the shore into the swell of the river, there was Wilson on the bank shouting: You watch out for your demon, Kemper! And I’ll watch out for mine!

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CHAPTER 20 Angel on the land

The demon was still so strong with me—a loping presence in the back of my brain, hiding in the roots and in the gulches and caverns of the hill land—that even a month into my time in the Feliciana country, I would go to spend Hallows Eve in St.Francisville, beside the stove at Nathan Bradford’s store. I was better company there than at the camp of workman that’d grown around the riggings of the houses, which stood both like skeletons of timber with hollowed-out eyes— one in Feliciana, the other up the border at Pinckneyville, where my house was being wrought. I’d taken to sleeping outside, even after the roofs had been raised. I bathed in Thompson’s creek and my beard had grown prophetical. So I must’ve seemed a cast-off sojourner at the red- glowing belly of the stove, amid the tack and harness, the bolts of nibbled cloth, and sat with Bradford, who I’d come to know by virtue of his being a dissenter against the Pukes, though in secret, and that he was one of the few in the country that didn’t eye me mistrustful. He was a planter’s son, and kept the store in town to stay busy. So you’d rather be in here than out there with your boys? said Nathan Bradford, stretching out to his full length so that his sock-feet touched the stove and the wool was singed. I’d rather be in here, I said, than out there while they’re goblining. Mid-october I’d had most of them baptized, in that same water where I took my baths, and while they worked I’d give them sermons on the Christliness of carpenters.—Then why aren’t you helping? called one wag.—Because, I said, even our Lord Christ himself put down the saw and hammer sometime. And when you’re as close to Christ as me you won’t have to work. Mumbles of blasphemy followed, but my converts shut them up. Truly I’d left them for the comfort of the store because I couldn’t stand to have a flock that night. Bradford said, I hear the planter-boys are out tonight in paper masks, terrifying their niggers. My own, I’ve got locked up safe. –Might you could use a few, yourself? We’re getting on well enough. When the whole thing’s done about November, my brother’ll buy a few. It is a damn fine place you’ve got out there, I’ll say that. The best house in the country that’s not plantation. I thanked him; and it was a good house I built in the wilderness, with money carried down by Crabbe and White and Turpin to pay the hewers and the woodsmen. They’d only stay a day or two, and in that time we’d get drunk and fuss but they’d soon be gone and I’d be lonesome on the land again, watching the workmen slatterning up the place. The plans Kemper’d had drawn up in Natchez called originally for three stories, but the third collapsed upon the bottom two and this idea was scrapped. So it stood solid on the ground at two, with a porch that wrapped around its length and wide windows that caught the sun in its course over the valley, and yet when it was built, the house had an unfinished look. And this was because Kemper had convinced his Aliza with even grander plans, but that she’d have to wait until the profits of the venture came rolling for him to add on to her house. So it stood, upon completion, looking like my body does now, in the shape of a whole thing, but seeming like it needs some added parts to be complete. My place across the line was a shambles. The land there’d been more costly, and so much of my time was spent down at Bayou Sara overseeing Kemper’s dream that I’d let the work fall into poor hands. I had no plans, no draughtsman’s inklings, so the house there was thrown up at

177 my own direction, the work itself done drunken farmers on their Sundays. I’d preach to them from a fresh-cut stump and they would groan about their carpentry. The people of the town were suspicious, and they’d prove to be wretches soon. Outside Bradford’s store, the town was quiet. No Witches’ calls or cackles like you’ll hear that same night in New Orleans, no streets filled with masked people. But this is a place where no one can resist the call to costume. It’s a shame, said Bradford. You’ll put in all that for an absentee? Our deal with Smith goes about as far as he will from Washington. It’s for us. He’ll have his cut and be paid off when the time comes. Maybe so, but old Pintado’s been sniffing up about it. May invalid your claim. His alcades were all about it the other night, whether you’re trusty or not. What with you going up across the border and all. The Surveyor had lately been stationed back upon the territory, and had made some treks out to the house. I’d know him by his uniform and instruments gleaming a half a mile away. With him there were always a clutch of his Alcades, Shepherd Born, Leeman, Steel, and the others—whose backs I’d flay and eyes I’d have pickled soon enough. They watched me even then, their hearts trickling with hate like piss down a pipe. One day the Surveyor invited me to ride out with him and see the boundaries of our plot, but I’d declined. I told him I’d know where the land wasn’t mine by who was staying off it. There’s nothing they can do about it, I said. Good enough. I’d hate to see Smith swoop in on it all.—I’ve seen smaller men take bigger passels out here. But something tells me you fellow’s would be for fighting? I’d sure hate for it to come to that. But the Lord will swing his sword if need be. No doubt, said Bradford, filling up his pipe from his pocket. November, you say? That’s a fine month down here. The winter’s not yet on you and the air’s cool and crisp.—Those little yellow apples start falling and they’re snappy and tart.—Have you had a persimmon before? I haven’t, I said. O, they grow like wild out where you’re at. By November they’ll be nice and rotten. That’s when you eat them. Otherwise they’ll pucker you up worse than a crone. I laughed and said I’d look for them. Right, it’s a paradise for it. Your brother can pick all kinds of things and bring them to that wife of his in a basket for housewarming, as—and I don’t mean a thing by it—it don’t seem she’s much for bedwarming. It’s no skin to me whatever you say about her. She may go old-times and have a bundle with him—but damned it she wouldn’t cut the sheets! Aliza’s trip down was a week past, and all the St. Franscisville gawkers and talkers were still on her story. The bladey woman, some called her. The Red Queen, the Knife, the Thistle- Bitch—if they thought I wasn’t listening, the She-Hawk. The workmen were scared enough of Kemper on first sight to call her Miss Aliza and nothing else. She came to the sight when sheets of window glass were being scraped to plug the house’s eyes, staying mostly behind the curtain of the makeshift sedan Kemper’d had rigged up for her—wasting half a day for several of my boys. I imagined her in there dreaming of prophet’s heads on silver platters, peeling the thick skins off muskydines with cruel flips of her thumbnail. But it was her ride through town that’d stirred the lot to gossiping. It’d seem that I was poor entertainment, and Crabbe had been a curiosity and bane to the dryness of children’s

178 drawers, but when it was Aliza’s turn to make the town, the people shuffled out their storefronts and stood there like apes. Kemper’d hired her a fine boat for the float down, and on the disembarkment there were two fine horses waiting for them both—my own gift. She had no boots, she had no crop, but there are those gals who can ride in high heels and hitch their dresses up around the cock, and go on imperious as any planter’s daughter who’s born to the back and trot. And trot she did, through the only street of the town, with my brother at her side, him smiling broad and wide, without a hint of demon,—for I’d half-expected him to show up there with horns, so rotten was my mind out there alone on the country, becoming like Preacher-father in his wilderness, but without the help of even a boy to lash my fears and visions at—and he was a giant on the horse, his boot-toes dragging in the dirt. He’d given her the taller one so that her hems wouldn’t be wetted in the dew or muddied. They were like a royal procession going through a pitiful country, and who’d be king on this land but a demon preacher and his queen a mistress of whores. The townsfolk showed their breeding, the plantermen in town on errands, the alcaldes like Shepherd Brown and Akers and Sterling would greet her with bows and curtsies and haloos until the pair of them stopped at the steps of Bradford’s store , where I’d boarded them a room and the planter’s son had decked it out as nicely as he could—much to the consternation of his wife, who was just as fierce as he who stood beside me in his Sunday suit and hat, to receive the pair now got down off their beasts and made the steps to greet me. It is a small place, said Aliza to her husband on the sly. Small places are where we make the great things happen, love, said my brother in reply. Maybe so, she said, stomping her heels on the porch. Maybe so. Bradford, ever-ready, tossed off his hat and tried for pomp and circumstance. Madam! Sir! Neighbors! It’s a damn pleasure to have you here, what Angel’s told me all about you, and we’ve got a fine pair of rooms set upstairs with all the comforts you could need. Kemper took him by the arm and it was two giants embracing. I stood by, feeling small enough to slip between the spaces in the floorboards that were thin as old Aliza, who I remember that day wore red lace gloves without fingertips; she let her hands go play in her hair while we sat at the knock-legged table in the store, draped with a cloth for the occasion, and for a the rest of the day received curious visitors. How many of them would come to fight for or against us, I can’t say. And for the days they were on the land with me I stopped seeing the demon out in the woods. One night at Bradford’s, when that man had gone off to bed, I sat with Kemper and Aliza and told them how the Lieutenant and his troops told stories of the cock-cutting fiend. Aliza shrieked out laughter and my brother did the same, only in his eyes I saw some pangs as he looked from her, whose eyes were hard-shut setting crow’s-feet scrunched in their corners, to me and back. There you go, love, said Aliza. You’re a legend here as well. Kemper nodded, in thought. Those boys were terrified, I said. And when I told them I’d killed the fiend myself they didn’t believe a word. I wouldn’t have, said Aliza. I’d guess not, my brother said. Well, if I’m to make a country wife, then it’s better to be the country wife of a legendary fiend. When I asked them after Natchez they enjoyed another laugh, and it was a one-throated thing. The town survives you, said Aliza.

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Maybe not that Kate, my brother added. Aliza looked dead-on at me, saying, She’ll be occupied enough to not bother on Angel when she’s running the place. Still, I’ll say, she does have a taste for you. Damn them both if that wasn’t another thing to haunt my nights. There were homegirls about the country, but these were sack-cloth broads with muddy legs that spread and smelled like riverwater. I wouldn’t lay down with any for a time. So when I left them for the night, I would be troubled all the ride back to the skeleton house with the phantom flickering of tongues in both my ears, and the need for a woman with a head like fire. The sorry sadness of it is that I would see Red Kate never again, and that she lived in my head out there in the woods far past her time on earth. She was stabbed in the throat by one of the new girls at the Church not six weeks into her proprietorship. Kate’d been harder on them than Aliza, so I’d hear, whipping a girl across the back for some infraction fifteen times.—And that vision of her, anger-stoked and flaying, was enough to make me want to ride up to Natchez and dig up her bones. My wife of a life that passed me by like fog, or like the ever-rushing waters of the creek I slept beside those lonesome dreaming nights. I wouldn’t know until past Christmas that she’d been killed. Kate was still alive to me, and on that Hallows might’ve even been wandering the woods and river looking for me, lost. She’s a lovely thing, said Bradford. Though a touch frightening. Who? I asked. The Mrs. Kemper.—She’s too thin for my marks, but man alive she’s pretty. More like a spider, I said. The question then’s will she carry any eggs, he laughed. I sniffered at my whisky, and said, I’m sure he’ll have her loaded down in no time. And my mind had spun off to such wild places that I toured inside Aliza’s womb on the hunt for suitable purchase. No, I did not covet my brother’s wife. Only I was lost and needing something besides bossing workmen and building houses. And if you knew her she’d haunt you just the same, and you’d wonder after all her parts to find if they were human; where she’s like a clutch of swampy summer in the knothole of a bare tree. I envisioned myself there and what I found was full of possibility. And I loved her for my brother but I did not covet her. We passed the hours of witch, wolf, and devil in our own time. I drank myself low, and in the morning left a pile of vomit steaming at the steps. One of Bradford’s blacks brought out my horse, kept his distance from the wobbling dripping white man in the street. I had a mind for a ride and so when, at mid-day, I came to the Feliciana house, I rode on past it. I didn’t hear the workmen calling and I followed up the creek through the evening on towards Pinckneyville and my own pitiful house. And somewhere on the way I started looking in the woods for where the line was; where the countries stopped and met. But there weren’t any marks or line, and I rode in circles growing wider and wider and searched to find the demarcation even into the night.

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CHAPTER 21 Christmas in Canaan

The night of the birth of Christ that year came with maggots in our cakes. For me, or Crabbe, or White, or even Kemper, this was no awful thing,—we weren’t regular celebrators, and the only Christmas I remember ever seeing in a proper house was in Virginia as a boy; fire up, singing, cinnamon on the air and everyone’s fingers slickened with goose-fat—just to pick the wigglers out from your teeth or chew them down without noticing, for they were small. We’d all had worse for grubs, and knew the good sustainment of mealy-worms. But Aliza’d been the one to make the cakes, and when she unwrapped them from their soaking-cloth and found the squirming white-tips there among the potted apple and persimmon—which Kemper did, true to old Philemon’s prediction, carry to her every day by the shirtful—she let out a true wife’s yowl of frustration at her world now foreshortened to the creaking confines of her new house. It was those lovingly-brought persimmons that did it, for Kemper had carried her so many day by day that she could only do so much with them and their house was soon aswarming with black tiny flies; and it was these boys who’d done the deed. And though we had a laugh at Aliza’s storm and stamp, it seems now to’ve been a poor sign for the future, with the only birth that Holy Night being the writhe to life of baby flies. My brother, though, did not laugh. When Aliza dropped her cakes upon the floor and backed away with long thin arms whipping in disgust, he tried to put his arm around her, but she slipped it off. Don’t touch me, I’m crawling!—And God damn it if I’ll touch that! Flies everywhere in this place! It’s those fucking rotten fruit you keep dragging in that brought them here! I’ll get them out, my brother said. Put it all in the fire, dear God! Throw everything in—what’s it matter? There were beetles all over Natchez, said my brother. And I’ll take every black-bellied one of them compared to Christing maggots in my food! Crabbe and White had meanwhile snuck over to the cast-down cakes and begun to pick out bits of candied fruit. It wasn’t that they were so wild for sweets, or that they were so doggish, but they both wanted to show Aliza their appreciation for her toils, and I know this because when she turned back and saw them picking there she screamed for them to stop and Crabbe and White looked up at her with stuffed cheeks and such sadness that they’d done wrong, mumbling apologies over their mouthfuls. Yet in Aliza, even screaming, I could see a coil of satisfaction that she’d done the thing alright. Quit, I said. Let’s put it to the fire like she says. There was mulled wine bubbling in the kettle, so much so had Aliza given herself over to the spirit and wanted to do her Christmas proper for a bunch who’d never know it much at all, and when we pitched the cakes in by handfuls they struck the belly of the kettle and exploded in rainfalls of maggots dropping popping into the embers. Next we went to the table and each took as many of the persimmons as we could carry and tossed them in as well. Kemper, in his great hands that might’ve taken four at a time would only carry one in each and he’d be last to flip the fruit into the flames. Now smoke came with the bursting rot and flesh of the fruit and the house was soon filled with swirling gray that gagged us all with sweetness until, following Aliza, we headed out the door and left it open to let the smoke escape. If there’d been anyone to see us all, the tail-drag of a viciously angry woman, come

181 pouring out onto the porch, they might’ve said that we were like the damned being led out the Pit.—Aliza still had a mind for cussing, and once she’d got through coughing let out one stream after another. Crabbe, scuttling over to her with kindness, said, It’s alright Miss Aliza, we did enjoy the cakes. And the wine’s still good, said White. It’s fine, said Kemper. The last act of the workers at Kemper’s place had been to thatch together a barn for the stock he brought in.—What started as around forty head of cattle, driven inexpertly overland by White and Crabbe so that there remained but twenty, and only half those could be found in the barn. We’d ridden through the woods to try and round them up before the cold, but were no good at tending beasts. His fine brahm breed-cow was out somewhere in a gully, freezing to death, we thought. Out there on the porch, my brother watched the dark like a poor shepherd for his herd, but the light from within was dimmed by all the smoke now drifting out to catch perhaps a flaring bovine nostril surely snuffing its last breath. Since we’re waiting I can go in, I said, and fill my cup back up myself.—Who else wants a dram? All said yes except Aliza. So I went in through the smoke, which was no trouble for one like me who’s born to fire and its afterthoughts.—You wouldn’t have seen a tear in my eye for I can see through anything.—Finding four cups, I brought them to the hearth-mouth which still spilled out smoke and the smell of burning fruit, took the kettle by the handle and filled up the cups. The smoke was growing fainter when I went back outside and passed the cups around. Crabbe took his in a claw and was slurping happily while White blew the steam from his cup and waited. Aliza took hers quick, and her throat must’ve been burning or she was so angry that the boiling wine would cool her. My brother didn’t drink, but let his hand swallow the cup. We were quiet until the smoke cleared from the house and by then the drink had done some work. Are there songs? asked Crabbe. Sure, said my brother. Aliza looked us all up and down. None of you can play a thing, she said. I can play the saw, said White, triumphant for a second. But it’s back at our place. That was no lie. White could take a long leaf of toothy palm, of the kind that grew in our bottomlands at the foot of the pines, string it to a whittled pine branch, and he’d take one of the saws abandoned mid-stroke in some log since I’d run the workers off from the house—leaving it half-finished but what did I care now with friends at my side—and stand the saw up straight and then begin to wobble it and run his palm-bow cross its back. The issuing sound was from without the bounds of this World, and it was like a hum caught on the very fibers of the air. He’d make you shake with it. His saw would hue and cry unearthly with clouds of sawdust floating off. God I do hate the winter, said Aliza. I’m shivered at my bones. I’ll have those bones covered soon enough, said my brother, winking. I won’t get fat, she said. Take me to New Orleans and I might there, but not out here. Even the cows are skinny. Damn those cows, I said. They hide like foxes. They’d rather die in the woods than stay here, she said. You should’ve seen us running them down here, said Crabbe. We looked like worse fools than the time with the horses. Tell that one again, said White.

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We weren’t fools then, I said, looking to my brother, who was sidled up close to his Aliza and rubbing her under one arm and pressing her to him like he’d have his rib back inside. He glanced over his shoulder at the door, and, seeing that the smoke was whisping, said, Let’s go on back in. The damned cold’s killing me. Worthless woodsmen, like our fathers before us, we filed back into the house and soon were seated at stations of the fire. The flames had dwindled back beneath the blackened mounds of fruit-pulp, and so we pitched on fresh logs and Crabbe, from his low vantage, blew through claw-encircled lips to liven up the embers while White fanned. Fire going and cups refilled we sat in silence while the warmth gained a foothold on the boards which, despite Aliza’s vicious sweeping, still raised sawdust when you stepped. If you saw her going at it with her broom there was no doubting that she’d never pushed a stick in all her life. A slave sweeps slowly, knowing dust to be reluctant and that work will never truly end, but a lady unused to such things will swipe and swat with all her might. Aliza was too lit on wine to care, though. She sank in her great wingback, seemingly dozing. And even when I brought out my Book and read a little Luke,—as might fit the Holy night—she kept her eyes shut, and whenever I said the word child she’d let out a sigh; and I would’ve thought she was asleep dreaming if not for the fact that when I finished with my reading and Kemper made to wake her and go off to bed, the instant his hand was on her leg Aliza’s eyes snapped open and were clear and sharp as day, leaving White and Crabbe and me with a freezing stare as she led him to her four-post cage. Kemper returned with a small coal-catch and without a word squatted beside a woozy Crabbe to fill it from the fire. You gonna give her a baby yet? Crabbe said, giggling. Keep your mouth shut, I told him. Crabbe huffed and scuttled away. Kemper only drew out more embers until he had the catch full. He tossed the scoop aside, stood, and went back to his wife. In this way we passed the night: having at the wine till White and Crabbe were aced enough that their shouted whispers slipped into gurgling silence, and, taking places round the room, we flopped on our backs and let the ceiling jerk in half-spins. Crabbe curled into the boards and covered all his claws with his body, and White stretched out across the couch with his boots still on. Shutting my eyes to not see the world in motion, I would roll onto my side and watch the fire flicker for a while through my lids. I inched closer by the minute to the guttering flames, and in my dreams I smelled the smoke from smaller fires burning in my hair and in my nose as I breathed in the sparks.

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CHAPTER 22 The idle shepherd

So I was left in idleness at the foot of Mississippi, sulking among my unsold stores and wares, which had been provided at a cost of some eight-thousand pesos by Smith and barged down from Cincinatti for me to push on whatever settlers passed through on their way into Puke country, with goods of the same amount given to Kemper, for him to sell to them once they’d been landed. There were still a spack of Torys moving south and away from the awful Upper Thirteen, and it was Smith’s figuring that they’d be moving back to where they thought one could at least still take one knee to a King. Most of it I left packed for weeks, but day-by-day I’d pry open a crate or two, and after a time they were all undone and you might find something as stupid as a packet of flags the size of handkerchiefs—English, Spanish, French, and American. I wish I could say I used them all to wipe my ass when I made my journeys cross the yard to our slattern outhouse those frigid mornings, but that’d be a lie. I’m not as good yet as the old Hebrews and Apostles at slipping such touches into my Gospel. Crabbe and White were more eager pickers than me, and they did most of the prying and opening, busting the ribs of barrels, looking for something worth fiddling with or stealing. Nothing much besides some old guns, powder and shot, a keg of beads and marbles meant to sell to unwary travelers who still thought this was Indian country.—A sack of beads to pacify the Savages, some string for your wife to run them on, and, of course, sir, a hair-thin needle for the job. The sharp eyes of the Red Man will be upon you, and if you don’t have a thing to trade— well, you may want to put that blanket-money towards this here rifle. I’d sell a bit like that, sure. But it was always a sorry feeling in me when I had to play merchantman. Mostly I’d press White into the job while I sat in the back with Crabbe—him being no sight for weary travelers. At first I kept Crabbe hid from the rare local who’d shuffle in looking for something he couldn’t get in Pinckneyville proper, but soon it was discovered that the country folk liked a good freak show as good as a bolt of muslin. Fool Smith had even sent books; copies of Bunyan, Bibles by the pound, and rat-paper pamphlets about our Glorious Revolution, or some dusty Puritan twat’s recollections of her run- ins with the Natives. Of course I read it all. Bunyan I knew already, but it still stirred me well— especially when old Christian fights the great Demon Apollyon in the Valley of Humiliation. I’d dwell on that passage and think of the Lieutenant and his Corporal’s story, the same way when I read it now I’m taken back to the Valley of my own Humiliation in the Sondras Dips of Mexico, where my Demon at last showed himself and we had our final wrangle. The books were some comfort, sure, and they were never long upon the wobbling shelves we put it, cut ourselves from quartered sapppers, which could hold no more weight than a sheet of Bible paper. The bottles of clear liquor and the small dark flasks of tincturs and cure-alls we kept for ourselves in the back. Why assault the populace with the evils of drink and dope when you’ve got yourself to work on. So the goods were laid out on haphazard tables or piled still in their crates and barrels, hard to peruse for passers-by—but these were few and far between. We were well outfitted, to be sure, but with few to sell to and not much inclination to help the ones who did want to buy. I’d there with my feet propped at a table, jangling boxes of canning jars with my bootheels, a volume of history in my lap, and sipping on some Stevens’ Special Formulation. I knew well

184 enough that half the time both Crabbe and White would ride off out of boredom to stir some minor troubles cross the border or the backcountry. I’d learn this from the trinkets they kept stashed beneath their pallets. Sorry remembrances of victims whose fate I’d never ask after. No doubt Crabbe and White didn’t kill for them, which was a shame; if they’d plugged a few and had no witnesses we might’ve been held in higher esteem by our neighbors. But that’s bullshit. We were hated from the start. My streak is so apparent that even the ones who keep their heads forever down can see it, and they are infuriated by me. Damn the world of the terrified, the nodders, scholars, merchants, the rich. I’m a rich man now, and for that time was a melancholy merchant. No worse fate that to have goods to sell for a man many miles removed from you. The more I thought on it, the more the whole thing took on a hateful aspect. The store was in the foreroom of the half-finished house where the wind would whip you through the wide crack in the walls, and our pallets were laid in an even creakier room in the back. There was no fireplace or even stove, so we dug a pit out back to sit by at nights, warming up enough and with a kettle full of coals to drag ourselves back in for sleep. The pit would wider and deeper with each night’s burn and my nervous stirring of the coals with one of our salable shovels. White soon enough fell in with me at fire-tending, with his own shovel proffered for the purpose, and we’d spend hours heaping on more logs and jabbing at the embers with our blades until they’d melted at their edges. Fire-madness is a good thing to keep you sane when boredom’s heavy and all you’ve got is drink and sorry few friends for comfort. We’d stoke and stir and toss on burnables while Crabbe did his best to regale us. Have I told the one, he’d say, about the toothless lady?—Or Morrel and the Indians?— The Queen of Bugs?—The time with the crawfish?—The death of Indigo Wright? God yes, we’d say, but go on.

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CHAPTER 23 Of murder, motherhood, and Red Kate

I never passed a year more poorly. A runny snow fell in late January and lit for but a morning on the ground before it melted, drowning out our constant fire. I was in one of those tending moods, getting her stoked back while White and Crabbe were off at some sport, and had the flames licking well, blackening knots and hissing the water from the limbs and consuming dried leaves and pinestraw when Kemper appeared from round the side of the house. I’d been so consumed myself in the fire that I hadn’t heard him ride up. Brother, he said. Kemper wore a long coat with furred collar and cuffs. His face wasn’t busted, so I knew the final blow went yet unfallen. The damned snow put out our fire, I said. Looks fine now, said my brother. Not yet, I said, unsatisfied with the burn. I heaped pinestraw on it and put the toes of my boots into the lip to stir and unfreeze my toes from their socks and leathers. Kemper all that time just sat atop his circling horse. When I had a blaze going, my brother got down and clapped a hand to my shoulder. We’ve got a letter from Natchez, he said. How is it? I was shuffling in the coals like a Hindew. They took on some new girls at the Church, and one of them cut Red Kate’s throat. I stomped hard and went knee deep in smolder. Cussing and withdrawing my leg while Kemper went on. She’d whipped this girl, evidently, said my brother. She’d done something to catch Red Kate a case and so she’d made two other hold her and she gave her the lash. How many? I don’t recall the number, he said. But this girl swore bitchly revenge afterwards and not a week later they found Kate in her bedroom—neck split. Rotten whore, I said. When do we go? We won’t be, he said. I stepped out of the fire and strode towards him. Why the Hell not? I said. My brother, buried in furs, said, Because I need you here. And this is going to be a tough thing. The girl’s already run off, fearing Aliza. There won’t be any revenger’s party. And how’s Herod’s daughter taking this, then? I asked. About as you would if some shit cut my throat. I doubt it. Aw Hell, said Kemper. Why don’t you just get back in your coals—and chew a few while you’re at it. And there was a moment when I was ready to strike him down, take the shovel and swing it at his head, then stuff his busted mouth with textiles and gewgaws from our sorry store. It was all my brother’s fault and I was deep in sorrow for my bride of fantasy. Both my ears were burning, for I can’t remember which one took her tongue. But Kemper defused me with what he said next. Lucky she’s gone, anyway. Aliza’s been in a killing mood for months. That doesn’t seem much different, I said.

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Quit, said Kemper. I can’t put a baby to her. I held my tongue. My brother had that cutting look, the demon swelling up in him. And I could see the thing long-limbed slinking through the woods even as he shuddered and turned from me. We keep at it, but every month there’s the blood. She burns the dresses she bleeds in. She’s running out of clothes, so I figure we’ll get some up in Natchez. A trip up may do right for you both, I said. Don’t tell White or Crabbe, he said. Not about that. Tell them whatever you want about the whores and why we’re gone. When’ll you be back? I don’t know—April, maybe. When it’s warmer and things look better here. Can you keep the house until then? I told Kemper I would. I haven’t sold a damn thing in weeks, he said. Me neither, I said. He turned round then and faced me, laughing bitter. We’re no salesmen, said he. Smith’s been sending letters and I get them already read. The pukes have their hands in everything. Pieces of shit, I said. But he’s their buddy, sure enough. They won’t be here for long. All the talk is that they’ll be sold out by summertime. Even Pintado came by the other day, and he’s looking gray as a ghost with worry. He’s a spider someone’s trapped in a jar. He’ll be gone, too. Fine, but what’ll we do when they’re gone and we’ve got houses full of trinkets and these bills from all around. What’ll we do when it’s America. Kemper picked at the fluff of his cuffs. Pray till then, he said. I felt like laying down in the fire. Every move was hateful; to go back in my shack and order the jars and bolts; to ride down to Kemper’s and do the same except all under the eye of Pintado. That Ohio bastard and his writs and ledgers hung about my neck and had me slumping. I’d known it all along, but maybe most of all then, that I can be no dog for another man’s drag hunt. These men, they rub the scent of cash on a wrag and tie it to a string, then ride off with it flopping behind them in the wind so as a whiff of it will catch inside the nostrils of ones such as me and Kemper, and we’ll run ourselves to death just hustling and howling down that false trail. If you find the bitch that did it, I said, kill her for me. I’d have to pry Aliza off her first. Once again I was overcome with my brother’s wife. I did not covet her body or her life, but I did want her violence badly. Elise is gentleness and wears light colors; she covers me with softness like the balm she rubs on my arm-nub. But if I’d had Aliza I may’ve been king of Golgotha, sitting in a throne on a pile of skulls. And this may all be my mind’s lies, for back then I was probably torn up with Red Kate, who might’ve been my own Aliza—lash in hand, tearing the backs off bitches and bastards. She wore her colors on the outside, not like Aliza or me with our gold and tawn—though a Chinaman will tell you blonde’s the color of death and devilry. Kate wanted red spraying in her face and cross her clothes, and she was made to look the part, freckled and hair like the veins plucked out your arm and wound around her head. I could’ve had a Queen of Death, either one. And there would be a day I went to Aliza, but that was still years off and wars away.

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For the time, I’d see my brother off and her along with him; leave the Pinckneyville house in the dubious care of Crabbe and White; and sink myself on further into nights of drinking and days of holing up in the dark. My first act, though, was to take down the signs we’d nailed to trees up the road, advertising wares. Prying free the nails, I snapped the head off one of Smith’s hammers and the thing fell pitifully at my feet. I left it there, useless as myself, smashed the rest from their moorings—so that only shards of words and board hung from the trees— and went on back to Kemper’s house, where, not a day later, the Surveyor would appear on the doorstep, hefting the thing in his hand and smiling at me. He was, so he’d say, concerned. I’d appeared at the door barefoot and shirtless, my hair in my eyes and my eyes cloudy with drink. I understand, Pintado said, that your brother’s gone with his wife to Natchez. I hope there’s nothing wrong. There isn’t, I told him. It’s business. I can’t help but hear them talking in town.—Debts and the like. I don’t know about any of that, I said. Which was the truth, but I imagined Aliza burning through her dresses by the week and sending off for spares. It would seem that only Mr. Thomas will vouch for you, he said. Good old Philemon, who kept me in illegal whiskey and a good line of never-ending credit so long as I drank some with him. He kept a twine-tied bundle of letters from Smith, and when one weekly came his joke was to ask me if I wanted to read it, even as he fastened it down to the rest. Truth was, we had money to spare. But why give cash to fools when they’ll give you what you want for free. Kemper was the one who let the letters pile first, and who was I to loose them? And I might’ve been like the sorry servant in Christ’s parable, who let his master’s land go to unsown, his profits unmet. But I am a prophet and in good company; with other listless sowers who’d rather have fuses plugged into their ears and lit than hear the yammers of work, work, work. Well, I said. We’ll take care of it. Pintado smiled fatherly and I thought for a moment he would reach out his hand to me. Instead he slipped them between the shining buttons of his coat. He wore a sword at his side, along with his surveyor’s glass, and I wanted to draw one out and cut his eye, then jam the hole with the other. He was agreeable enough, bowing his bald head, which was sunburnt from wandering the hills with instruments for mapping out a shriveling empire, as he left. Pintado would return from January to April, and see me grow more withered with the seasons; how even as the sun came back and air was warmed, I slipped into wretchedness. I let the oil run out, and when I bothered lighting candles I held them in my hand while the wax trapped my knuckles and rifled through my brother and his wife’s things. I read again their first letters, and spent an unintentional night in their bed, gasping into the mattress, face- down drunk and weeping into sheets that smelled awfully of marriage. Crabbe and White would find me like that, enbundled in the linens, and they brought me out into the yard and fetched bucketfuls of water from the creek to pitch at me. Even in the muggy spring air I was a shivering mess. I wouldn’t answer either when they asked me what was wrong, and when they tried to take my sheet from me I fought until I crumpled wheezing on the ground. Jesus, said White. Is he dying? I’ve seen old Angel worse, said Crabbe. It’s Sam, now, damn it.

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Crabbe’s words I remember clear, for I knew they were a lie and the truth made me sit up, my sheet dripping down. The world was all gone green and steaming that morning, same as it would be some days later when Kemper and Aliza would return. By then I’d be shaved and crisp, shaking with sanity. See, I saw nothing those whiskey-drowned days; no sight of God, no peek of apostles. The bushes there stayed stubbornly unburnt, and Canaan was a barren place, even as it swelled with life again. In the meantime, I’d still not spoke and I saw some of the cows had come out of the woods and were wandering the field. Crabbe and White were talking nervous to each other, and, squinting, I regarded the roll of untilled earth and one of the beasts came up behind me and began to suck at the back of my head. Did you see the way he flew back? asked White. Yeah, said Crabbe. I saw it. I didn’t want to do it. Shut up about it in front of Angel, said Crabbe. He don’t care if I shot somebody. Christ, said Crabbe, would you look at that. Cow’s got his head in her mouth. Crabbe was about to speak again when I stopped him with my lifted hand and brushed the beast away. It grunted low and waddled off. They’re gonna try and run us out, I said. The Pukes and the Smiths and the whole lot of them. While you two been out popping off at travelers I’ve been over here sick with money shit. You been drunk a month, said Crabbe. It’s no different, I said. They can’t get us out, said White. They won’t be able to. We can call the boys down from Natchez, said Crabbe. When do we start? White said. Alright, I said. Take me to the creek. I need a baptism.

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CHAPTER 24 Aliza on the Land

She woke one morning, not long after they’d returned, and left my brother drowsing in their bed, then proceeded to the door and drew the shotgun down from where it hung above the frame, unbarred the door and stepped outside into the yard where the breed-cow was nosing in the weeds; and Aliza put the mouth of the gun between the wide wet eyes of the breed-cow, drew back both hammers, and shot it. Kemper in his drawers was running with pistols through the house before the beast even fell. He came stumbling out onto the porch and found his wife, her nightclothes sprayed with a great gob of blood and brain, standing with her barrels smoking before the gun-shot cow. Its head was reduced to mostly lower jar and its tongue lolled unharmed between its broken teeth, but it still stood. Aliza gave a glance to him, not unlike the one she’d tossed in passing on the streets of Natchez that’d set my brother down this road with her, or at least that’s what he said. Then she gave the faceless mess a nudge with the barrel and the cow tipped over, thudding to the ground. Its belly had been full and when the cow fell it emptied its bowels, and, while my bewildered brother looked on, calved. The calf was kicking in its sack, and this, he’d tell me, was what caught him most. So my brother went down to his wife, who said: We aren’t farmers. And she held the shotgun out for him to take without ever looking away from the thing writhing just behind the dead mound of its mother. He took the shotgun by the barrel and his wife by the arm and brought them both back inside, setting her in a chair and it back above the door. He was so shook that he didn’t even lock up the rounds or powder, nor realize that he hadn’t until he was halfway to my house. So she may be waiting for us there with it loaded up again? I said, straining to lash my horse ready. I was still pitiful and sweating mash, but things like that—someone else’s madness—will clear your head a bit. I don’t think, said Kemper. She never got up from the chair. Just sat there, staring. Was she smiling? I asked. What kind of fucking question is that? I said I didn’t know, but that it made sense somehow. I knew Aliza’s smile and how it would creep across her face, softening her sharper features only in the way that the grooves in the bore of a gun make it soft when you peer down into the barrel, or the way the edge of a bowie knife is round. White was getting Crabbe up and horsed; neither said a thing that bright morning.— Horrors and madness are rare such days when the sun’s lit everything and makes the world promising. When it comes, though, those times when the bees are humming and the dew dries up before noon, you know that it’s real, revealed by the daylight and the order of the rest of the world. Discord goes generally by night and evening, where its demons can slip by without being seen, from one poor soul to the next. We’d need them both if we were to gather up all Kemper’s wandering cattle and drive them into town. This was what my brother had decided on his ride, and I didn’t much try to dissuade him from it. I pulled myself up and we were soon off, crossing into West Florida before

190 full noon, over the line as invisible as whatever gnawed Aliza’s brains. There’d been fifty head of cattle in the fall. What survived of them was no more than twenty, maybe less. They were loners in the woods, with peeling hides and undomesticated. We made a circle of the property, finding them in sinks and drop-offs, where you’d have to get down and run them up the side of a dripping ravine to get them on flat land. We picked sticks and whacked the beasts along their sides to drive them through the trees and even over the green- grown bones of their fellows who’d died in the winter. To get onto the road we had to pass through the yard and by my brother’s house. It was late afternoon by then and we were all sweating and whipped. Whishing she’d have shot them all to bovine damnation, I tapped listless at the nearest haunch and we drove our herd around to the front. The breed-cow lay there in a haze of flies, its calf no longer kicking. We all looked towards the porch, but there was no Aliza. White, said Kemper, can you dress that cow? It might be putrid, White said. I don’t care. Cut off its God damn head. White said, I don’t correctly know how. Fine, said my brother. Sam, will you do this for me? I might’ve snapped the stick in my hand. The herd was petering off in all directions and they’d soon need their ranks closed back again. Some of them had gathered round the breed cow’s corpse and were nosing near her headless mouth in the grass. Kemper’s words were like Christ’s at the table, and even though I had the vision on me then that I’d not be drinking from the Cup of Life but Death and Sorrow, I said I’d stay. I may just burn it, I told him. Whatever, said my brother. Just drag it off a ways if you do. And if we’re not back tonight, stay here with Aliza. I was looking from the dead she-cow to the empty porch even as I promised numbly to my brother that I’d stay with her, Our Lady of Shotguns. At least you know she can handle a gun, said Crabbe. White shushed him and they all spread out after the strays. Once I’d gotten down and was standing over the dead cow, swatting off her gawking sisters and batting flies away with my hat, revealing only that they’d clustered on its jaw to make a swarming shining head of themselves, I turned away and saw my brother back of Crabbe and White, all of them trailing the beasts down towards the road. I couldn’t tell if he was looking back. They would be in St.Francisville before nightfall, but the auctioneer wasn’t in and no buyers were about. They penned the cows and waited for a morning sale.—Pintado would preside over it, dressed haughty with a tie furled at his neck, and they’d go for next to nothing; not that my brother cared. That night Kemper would go to Philemon’s and ask at last for the bundle of Smith’s letters. And Philemon might’ve been reluctant to give them up, knowing— even if he couldn’t read them—that they’d hold only misery in all that nothing-weight of paper and scribbling demands. But he would give them up, and so my brother spent that night in the room above the store, burning oil to read by even as his eyes burnt from what the pages said. I wouldn’t see him until the next evening. That’s not to say I didn’t pray all into the night for him to return. I went back to my horse and found I had no knife in my pack. So I led the horse to the porch, lashed him to the railing, and, balefully examining the windows for any sign of my brother’s wife, went up. The door was partway open and inside was Aliza, at her chair just like

191 he’d said. I don’t think she’d sat still though. Aliza could move across a room while you were busy blinking.—And might’ve then, for all I knew. She did give a glance when I walked past her and back out with the knife. You’re going to cut it? asked Aliza. Just so I can move it. I can’t drag that cow on my own. Use your horse, she said. She was damn clear-headed for having gone off the edge. I remember as much. Aliza sat up in her chair and made a show of folding her legs and arms into angles, of knives unclasped but not full sprung. Kemper wants the meat, I said. Aliza smiled. Between us, I said. I think you did the right thing. She’d bring me out a sheet to lay my slabs on, and while I was busy sawing out the hip- joints from its haunch she’d stay on the porch and watch. I’d already done the gutting, dug a trough beside the cow’s belly for it all to slip into, which they did, with a little help from my hands. Like a fool, when I approached the cow, I’d looked on that swarming glistening black- and-yellow head and given it a kick. The flies exploded up into my face and I was dancing that way for a while. I’d dug the gut trough deep enough to nudge the calf in, but when I came near the thing and pressed it with my toe, the sunken puddle of veins and almost-form gave a twitch that turned to furious movement as it dug hoofs to membranous trappings and suddenly was free, standing on jelly bones and bleating at me for a moment before it took off, round the gut trough and the carcass of its mother, round me yelping in horror, and up the steps of the porch where Aliza shot to her feet screaming. I snatched up the shovel and wielded it by the end of the handle while the calf, its eyes cataracted with half-life never meant to see the sun with made it so that you could see the beating heart in its chest,—like those blind white lizards I’d find in the Kentucky caves and hold in my hands as a boy—kept making circles on her, leaving smears of afterbirth on the boards with the clattering of its hoofs, sending Aliza into a gibbering frenzy, and when it turned from her finally and ran back into the yard, making a dead line towards me, I swung the shovel and caught the creature full in the face with the blade. The calf dropped and Aliza was still screaming on the porch. No words but maybe God and Jesus, presiding over the rest of her jabbered madness.—What more common things to scream than the names of our final judgment and deliverance?—The flies were lost and knew not where to land with all these still-warm places of wound and gore to light on—like I’d be myself in later years, in my War Years, supplicant to the God of death and the bullet. I shoveled the calf atop the offal of its mother and hurriedly tried to cover it over with a weight of dirt, that it might not rise again. Aliza had stopped screaming and she was a pile of broken glass on the porch steps; I looked up amid my furious work to see her this way, and with each glance I gave she moved one rung lower—that unseeable quickness of hers—until she made the bottom step and then filled up my vision there at the foot of the mound I made over the trough. I flung dirt into her face from my shoveling, but I didn’t see her blink. I kept on until there was no more pile of dirt and the trough was covered over, then I began to slap it down with the flat side of the blade. The thump, thump, thump, of blade against dirt made like an enormous heartbeat, like I was sending life back into the calf bedded in those coils of gut and spleen and kidney. Aliza watched with every fall and felt it in her shoulders—I could tell by how they shook whenever I looked.

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I stopped and threw the shovel down. I haven’t mentioned the smell, which was not so horrible but ever-present, even with the trough sealed, a butcher’s bath. There was still the matter of the cow, cut up, and its meat sunning and fly-swarmed on the sheet she’d brought me. But it was Aliza who took the whole thing over and made me forget the work left undone and quickly putrefying when she, from her spot on the ground, said:— I’m cursed with babies. Even the fucking cow, the stupid thing, can be dead and shit one out alive. I wish you hadn’t seen it, I said. It’s all right, she said. There’s a reason for everything, right?—That’s what preachers say isn’t it? We do, I said, and that was the first time in some months I’d thought of myself as one. Aliza hunched so far over that her elbows rested on the ground, her hair a mess of gold dangling over hands that clawed the nearmost ground. It’s my fault anyway, she said. I shot the cow, so I should see the calf. Christ and it kicked. That’s what a baby does when it’s in you. I’ve felt it in my girls’ bellies and made them drink arrowroot tonics to make it stop, sat with them nights until they’d passed their babies out, then bundled the things up in sheets and pitched them in the river. And this past month I had one in me didn’t even get a chance to kick. It was in there since late November and I think I knew it was dead all along. I sat with my dead child in me for two months, and I never told Rueben till out it came and he was weeping. Damn him. I didn’t ruin my womb by whoring; I only laid with a few before him. I never much desired it until he came along. He woke me up, but he can’t put one in me that’ll stick. Just like I knew that one was dead all along I know I can grow a child if it’s done right. The way she was sitting served to cover up the patch of backblown blood and brains that’d spattered the front of her dress; but when Aliza stood, pausing in her speech, unfurling folds of cloths and shadow, the stain was revealed—her chest and stomach ringstraked with browning red, black at the edges, center-shot with a knot of brain and chips of bone. But you know how, she said, stepping over the mound. You’ve done it before. You’ve put a baby in and it’s stuck. I backed away from grisled Aliza and what now a great eye of dried blood bearing down on me as she approached. You can do it for me, said Aliza. You can do it for him. I don’t care. I just want one. Closer she came and I backed until my heels caught the open belly of the cow and I tripped over it, ending up on my ass with my heels in the air and this fury of a woman like a shadow cast over me. My hands were dug into the dirt and it was as though they were bound behind me, for I couldn’t move nor rise even when she was closest and knelt between my knees upon the ribs of the cow which rose and fell with her weight like springs, and, balancing herself on hideless haunch, she leaned across the corpse and peered at me through frenzied flies. They burrowed buzzing in my ears and I felt flies pouring down my throat when I opened my mouth and spoke. I said I couldn’t. She said, Of course you can. She’d climbed almost all the way over the cow and all I could see was the horror of her dried-blood eye staring down on me. I backed away a little, like Crabbe on my hands and heels, mouthing denials to her needs. And this whipped her to a froth. Crouching atop me, Aliza had her arms and legs fixed for pouncing, and her face was full of anger.

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Bastard! What do I have to do?—Pour some oil on you?—Say it through a burning bush?—Hold your hand and pray until God tells you it’s all right?—Jesus, Angel, I’ll do whatever every Jewess in the books do, just like me have it. You don’t want me, I begged her. I know I don’t, Aliza said. But I want a miracle. Her eye again swallowed up my vision, and it was lashed by the ends of her hair as she shook—the eye of the God of the Bullet, fixed solely on me. No, I said.—Yet her eye was so close that I also saw no more shape to the smears but how they’d soaked so deep that they’d dried onto her chest, giving grisly shape to her breasts so that they stood out, now just above my face, in shining darkness. Give it, said Aliza, and she sloughed us off the cow and nailed me down by the loins. And my head was like the cow’s, gone, made out of flies all droning, drowning out whatever Christly thoughts I might’ve ever had. I brought my hands up from the dirt and they were as red as the breasts they reached for—a glistening place that looked hard as stone, but when touched became instantly brittle; and my hands closed over them and held them till their blood-shell slaked away and I beheld softness there I never thought she had. It went on and was like returning to the breast of your murdered mother while Aliza lashed and worked and I held her in amazement and we carried it out like an event foretold, inevitable and sure as the Day of Judgment. And I did not betray my brother. No, I didn’t betray Kemper. Not when I entered into that house of shardy womb. Not when the tips of her breasts slipped between my missing teeth. Not when she had me flip her under so the seed would take and not run out and we were jointed so tight together, holding fast to one another, that we pulled all the world into the place we crushed between us and crumpled it like Bible-paper. I wouldn’t betray him. The whole night afterwards the light from the burning cow in the yard came through the windows and wall cracks—the reddish glow of coming storms—and cast us, as we went numbly about the tasks of living, as uncertain likenesses of husband and wife. I moved about the rooms, unable to find a place to sit that didn’t make me think it wasn’t mine, and Aliza left me alone. Blessedly she didn’t try to brush against me, or offer even a touch. She kept both her hands clasped around her stomach and thank God she never let me see her smile, though later, while I slept in the store-room, thin rattling door between me and her, I imagined that she did, propped with pillows beneath her hips, waiting for my sorry seed to take.

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CHAPTER 25 Sam’s Vision

Now came the weeks of trial and accusation. We’d stand before the Surveyor’s grinning judgment, the judgment of his alcalde, Akers, then the judgment of their master in Baton Rouge. And their acts would light the fuse that’d burn so hot, so many years, until the shattering explosion of the white star shot through the sky and lit the path to Pensacola and righteous nationhood. Meanwhile, I was too caught up in my own guilt to care, much less dream of what we were to do. The only revolutions I knew then was the earth beneath my feet and how it skimmered fast enough to make me want to crumple on the ground. I was a wretched thing, with worms returned to my innards, and their coiling and uncoiling was constant. I think now they might’ve been snakes they were so fat and strong, seizing at my guts—a perfect place for them, like how the cotton mouth hides under moldy logs and leaves, I was so filled with rottenness. Too early to know if it’d taken in her, but I let that I’d be always be cursedly blessed with fertility, and that Aliza was soon to swell. The eternal bastard’s father, I sought the counsel of my own. Preacher-father came when I asked, at the tail-end of my worthless prayers; appearing from behind a knotted tree out in the Feliciana woods where I made my meditations those days, bathing myself in the creek until my flesh was raw, laying down in a patch of briar that’d grown into a bower with an opening just big enough to allow me in, and enough space within for me to sit upright and have the thorn-tips just at my face; and the briar hut was in a clearing where the ground was filled with hornet’s nests, so that when I crawled inside it wasn’t long before they rose from their holes and stung me. This was my penance, and because I couldn’t abide a taste of liquor at the time, I got drunk off their poison. I found that if I sat still enough, there in my theatre of pain, and prayed hard as I could, by the time my mind was swimming in poison and my lips were too fat to speak his name Preacher-father would appear. Somehow a gaunter version of his living self; he was no shrouded ghost or foggy vision, but reduced to whipcord animation. The first time, I saw my father coming through the woods and knew from the sound of his footsteps that it was him—I’d known the sounds of that tread beside mine even blind in the night when he’d make circles of our camp, comforting me on the watch. And so he appeared there in the woods to me, came to the very edge of my bower of briar and stopped. He admiringly fingered the point of a thorn, not unlike those we’d use to make our crowns for going into towns and preaching. I could see him, but not his face or the eyes in it; and when he opened his mouth it was black unto further blackness and his voice was like roiling gravel. You’re still the fool for women, Preacher-father said. I know, I said. Lay your hand upon your mouth. You’re too foolish to speak. You’ve let the fruit of your preaching rot on the vine, and the fruit of your manhood stew in the vats of wickedness. And now you sit in the bushes and moan that you know not what to do.—Fight and fire, son. And fear. You don’t fear the Lord anymore, and if you’re going to make them fear Him, first that fear must come to you.—Do you know how glorious Heaven is? I know it and I am there in shining light because of what I did on earth. You’re a farmer sitting in the ripest field in Creation, and squalling for no place to plant a seed. Take up a handful of dirt and put it in your mouth and taste it. That’s the Promised Land. Wherever you stand make that your Promised Land. And what

195 does the farmer do to clear the chaff and weed, and red the soil for planting?—He puts fire to it. Damn your dipping into other men’s wives, damn your weeping and drinking. Take the fire, build it up, then let it eat. The way to grace is piled high with ashes and the blackened bodies of your enemies. Get out from these woods and stoke the fire, by God, the fire. I asked him, Will she have the child? The vision of my father groaned, Will the hanging rope hold? Will the waters rise and will the weak be drowned in them? Will the flint spark the powder and send the shot? Will a woman bear the child of a man?—None of it matters if you hold their heads under; if you cut the hanged man down and strangle him with your own hands; if you take your gun and strike him down with the butt of it. The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. That was all he said. Preacher-father didn’t take me to see the Lake of Fire, or to a hill that overlooked the Cities of the Plain. No, he finished and left me in my bower, to nurse a kernel of fire in me like a speck of his coals had nested in me and would now flare and be stoked and burn out all the worms.

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CHAPTER 26 The First Judgment

Senator Smith came flapping into Feliciana on the buzzard-wings of his coattails not long after the vision of my father. The senator thought to make his presence known to us by sending more writs to Kemper’s door, but would not reveal himself—except what we could glean from White and Crabbe, who we sent to spy on him in town—until our meeting before Pintado and his alcalde. My brother sent White to fetch me down from Pinckneyville and I met him at his house of a morning. Aliza was inside, and, he said, she’d been happier these past few weeks than he’d seen her since the start. I fought against the horrors and stayed up on my horse, refusing his invitation to come inside and have a drink before we set out for St. Francisville. My brother shrugged and we were soon off. He thinks, Kemper said on the ride, that we’ve pocketed all the money. His little letters went from all that Lordly sweet talk to some bilious shit by the last one. And now he’s got runners from some planter nailing notices to my God damn door. I said: Stinking America didn’t come quick enough, the liar. We’ve been in worse than having to talk down one old man in a neck-tie. Damn right, I said. He’s been pushing papers too long if he thinks we’ll slink out of here and leave it all for him. By God you’re the one who put the house up, off our money. Expects us to have a plantation going in a year? A store out where there’s nobody to buy his shitty trinkets? The son of a bitching rat snake Ohio bastard. He can go to Hell. But will Pintado listen? He can listen or not. But we’ll scare the shit out of him so he can barely hold his glass. He’s a worm. He’s a spider in a jar. Man, I’ve killed more men than he’s counted yards out there with his instruments. We’ll have him quaking, I said. You’re right. Piss on these high hats and all their mothers. I felt like something of a high hat myself, buttoned up and in my suit clothes, same as Kemper, looking like we’d skinned a pair of nabobs and wore them as disguises on our sneak into town. The only difference being that we worse our pistols tucked beneath our coats; and it was like the old days again—before they were even old—with us armed and lying to the world with outward appearances, as I am to this day when go to the rotunda and watch the niggers shiver as the bubbles rise in my champagne. God, business is an awful thing. It reduces men to skeletons, the way skeletons do always smile, like Pintado did when we came into his house that afternoon. The place was on the outskirts of St. Francisville and we had to pass through his garden—laid out in symmetries of rock-lined beds of flowers and brittle bowers of country grape and beanstalks—to come onto the porch and be met by his alcalde, Akers, a stubby man—shorter than me—who wore the planter’s uniform of embroidered waistcoat and whites. The alcalde led us inside, where instruments lay nested in the corners of the rooms and maps and drafts of maps were pinned to all the walls, quills and pots of ink and paint were scattered about and the place had no smell of food or fire or anything but work and planning—to make everything ordered and bordered, to know the outlines of the world and hem the people in with them. Kemper went before me, shouldering the alcalde politely into doorjambs and the corners of the tables we

197 passed. Little alcalde Akers didn’t seem to mind being nudged by this lumbering giant, but I know for a fact that he did. He’d snicker a little or huff when he was bumped, but inside he was boiling over. He slipped ahead of Kemper at the surveyor’s door and announced us. My brother filled the jamb and I could only listen to their voices—first Pintado’s, in a flourish of politeness, inviting him to sit, then Smith’s, sounding like the father of small boy who’s misplaced his pocket watch and knows that he must be gentle in order to get it back. It was all money matters, and money’s all that matters to the men who build their countries the way the Pukes and Smith did. Money and titles. I remember Smith saying this very thing: The responsibility of stewardship. I’d like the think that I was thinking then of how I’d build my own country and do it differently, but that may be just me impugning on History. Either way, the things I’d make a country from, fight, fire, and the Holy Gospel, were tearing at the walls of my skull—anything to dull the chatter and the helpless feeling of being dragged before some gathering of bean-counting fools who can only see you in terms of your price and payment. Forgiveness, I remember, was another word that figured prominently in Smith’s speech. I can see him, how I saw him when I peered between the crack in the door, sitting back in one of Pintado’s folding chairs, belly laid out magnanimously before him, spreading out his arms as if to take my brother in them and embrace him like the prodigal returned, all the while between those arms beat a heart full of numerations, fact, figures, and strictures immutable and more important than any human soul. It’s the man who beholds himself to no law or rules, yet nails others down with writ and document whenever it’s convenient that I despise most. And these were the chieftains of that tribe. Pintado dreamed of ordering the world and Smith of using that order like a vice, to crush the ones like us who couldn’t live within it. God damn them all. Their words aren’t fit to reproduce. I’ve done this gospel for the memory of my life and of my friends, not the Smiths of the world. What they say has always been the same honey- coated bullshit. What we’d say back with our guns and riders and seven years of fighting, though, was new to the world and deserves to be remembered. But I’ll try, for to make it real again does renew the fire in me, and takes my mind off Aliza and what she, at that very moment, carried. It’s a matter of the contract, mister Kemper, Pintado said. You and your brother signed an agreement with Senator Smith. And you’ve failed to fulfill it, said Smith. But see, I’m not holding you down to the letter of the thing. All I want is viability. It might be too late to turn a profit here, but this venture of ours can still be viable in the future, with what events may lay ahead. You mean if the Americans take the country, Kemper said. Pintado ruffled and went to fiddling with his sextant. I dipped back from the door and Akers was smiling at me, and while Smith went tripping over his words to try and assuage the Puke, he gave me some talk. The senator says you’re both Virginians, he said. Myself, I cannot see it. That’s your own fault and his. I don’t claim the place. Fine enough. You seem more like Georgia crackers or Kentucky mountaineers to me. We’re West Floridians, like you. Aren’t we? Akers, frowning, took his lapels in his hands. It wouldn’t seem for long, he said. Maybe you won’t be either before long. Not West Floridian or British, which I suspect is what you are, or Puke servant or walking the earth. Pintado’s voice rang clear above the mumbling between Kemper and the Senator. This is not pertinent! I have no interest the dealings or conceptions of any government other than my

198 own. Now, please, let’s move on with the matter. Of course, said Smith. Fine, said Kemper. Akers, now slipping a long clay pipe from his pocket, whet the tip with his mouth and packed the bowl with tobacco from an embroidered pouch. He didn’t take his eyes from this petty work, saying, Is it true your brother’s wife is a Natchez whore? Even if I’d had my pistol, I wouldn’t have shot him. I’d have strangled that shit right then and there. But something held me back, and it damn sure wasn’t tolerance or mercy. If anything it was a vision of revenges yet to come. What horrors I’d visit on him and his kind and all the Pukes of the world. I’d wonder if your wife’s one, I said. But I’d have to ask you niggers, eh? # # # It wasn’t Kemper who came trudging out of the surveyor’s office first, but Smith, who looked to Akers and waved him off, then to me. Do you think your father would be proud to find you in this state? I don’t give a shit for his pride. That, mister Woolsack, is made abundantly clear to me. Pushing off from the wall where I’d been leaning, I strode towards him. Be thankful, he said, that this is a kind and understanding government. You both still have your chance to do right by me. Do well with it. I’ll tell you about chances, I said, but before I could finish Kemper had me by the arm and was leading me out the house. I was raging and jabbering a stream fool’s cusses, through the rooms and past tittering Akers, and I continued on with them even out into the yard as Kemper unlashed the horses and we mounted and started back. I kept up my cusses the whole way, and the closer we came to Aliza and the house of my shame the worse I got. It didn’t help that Kemper was silent, so it was that I had to double my ranting for him. Bootlicking bastards! Rotten shit-stinking thieves! God damn it, we should burn every house of theirs down! And we could! To hell with this place and everybody in it! Above my din and from a few paces ahead, Kemper called back, How many guns do we have? Shit if I know. Twenty? A dozen? We’ll need more than that, he said. That’s what I want to by God hear! We’ll have to rouse the boys up in Natchez. Amen! Jesus, Yes! But it’s got to wait, brother. We may can win this yet without throwing down full stroke. Piss on that, I cried. Let’s have it! If we’re God’s men, like you think, He’ll make our course clear to us. We send White to Natchez and wait it out with the boys as a contingency. Wait for what? Wait for the damned country to fall, he said. But once it’s America, then won’t Smith have the upper on us for sure? Then we’ll drag him through the American mud easier than through the Puke magistrates’ courts. We’ll wait, brother. Let them come to us. And we’ll be waiting for them, right? Ready to snuff the bastards all out!

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True, my brother said. And for a while on that ride I forgot my misdeeds and was wrapped up in dreaming war fantastic. I troubled him for further plans and did my best to spit fire at him, to stoke him up for what was sure to come. I can’t say why he was so calm then, maybe that I was raving made him feel sane in his anger. But he trotted steady on ahead and every time I called out had an answer to soothe. I believe now his was a deep-set anger, wrath at a boil in veins beneath the surface, not stupid shouts or threats but the same well of vicious purpose which he’d tapped to take all those foreskins for his bride price. And had I forgotten those days? Did I think he’d softened, gone weak? I must’ve, for I went on harrying him like that the rest of the way and on into evening as we passed the planter’s houses and their cottonfields, which were then only brittle stalks, their cornrows being traversed by a few sullen Negroes who wouldn’t acknowledge us, as if they knew we were on the outs. I would’ve had that ride last forever if it meant not having to return to that house, but Kemper wanted home and wife, to ready her for what was to come so that she might gather herself unto him and they would be strong. He said she’d hearken to the call, that she’d be his rock and the waves of these fools would break on them. He even included me in this, that I was the third chord in their strong knot, which made me cringe and had me praying the whole way back, wondering if there were some way I could convince Crabbe or White or anyone to take down the whip from his wall and lash me till the sin bled out.

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CHAPTER 27 The hold-out months

For a long time it went this way: I’d stay at Kemper’s and together we’d wait for whatever Puke lackey would come to try and talk us out. These footmen we dispatched in turns: Shepherd Brown came calling first, once a week for most of March, trying to say he was our friend, and outlining a plan of payment for our debts. I told him he was no damn friend of mine, and to go play soldier with his militia boys. Next came Stirling, in the ass-end of the month, saying how our eviction was imminent and why not high ourselves back to Natchez, where we were better fits. He gave a God damn treatise on the rights of property and ownership in high British style, quoting cash philosophers as though that’d move us. Kemper told him to ram his economics up his ass. Akers came in April, his visits more regular than the rest as we neared nut-cutting time, grinningly delivering ultimatums. I wouldn’t even let him on the porch. By his next visit, me and Kemper wouldn’t let him get down off his horse. After while it was him shouting to us from the road. He’d ride by and holler however many weeks, then days, we had left until eviction. We’d holler back, Come and try! That’s how many days until you’re dead! Kemper, meanwhile, had taken political, and occupied himself with writing letters to the Commandant in Baton Rouge, the Governor General in Pensacola, even to the goddamn King himself in Madrid. It’s their own law, he’d say. You can go right to the top with your grievances. Bradford brought him the responses, all of which were courtly and poor. Kemper read them to me while I cleaned our guns in the foreroom. My brother kept them all and I don’t know what he ever thought to get out of them, but there they were, strewn all over the house and storefront so that Aliza was stooping to pick the leafs up from the floor for weeks until she had to prop a hand on her spreading hips to bend around her belly, which had also grown. April she couldn’t even stoop. We should send her up to Natchez to lay in, or Pinckneyville, I said. If things go the way it looks, it won’t do to have her pregnant around. Kemper looked up from his papers. I won’t have her out there on the roads, and we can’t spare to accompany her. Crabbe or White could. They’ve got their own work to do. # # # One morning Bradford brought the news that there’d been a raid on one of the farms on the western side of the bayou. It was just a little thing, no real raid—a fire had been set in the slave huts, and while the master and his men were fighting the blaze, someone had stolen into the house and made off with his guns and strong-box. The miss had been evidently menaced by the thieves, who she described as a gangly man, probably Irish, and a crippled thing that went on all fours. She’d fainted at the sight of him, and Crabbe would tell me later that he’d done her no harm besides a clawcrack to send her upstairs. Bradford said the house niggers claimed they’d been terrorized by the thing, and that it’d cursed them with crippledness. Their story was it’d been a devil snapping its claws after their missy and the thing had hounded them into a corner where they spent the remainder of the robbery praying and squalling. These are your boys, aren’t they? Bradford said. Can’t say, I told him.

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Does anyone believe the devil part? asked Kemper. No, said Bradford. The man’s saying it’s hysteria and nigger jibberish. Good, I said. We’ll have them seeing ghosts before it’s through. Our planter’s scion brought more such reports, of minor snatchings and harassments, and these did good to bolster us. For my part, I was ready to join in with the boys, but Kemper kept us housebound and I sulked for action. # # # Watching Aliza grow was different than what’d happened in those early days on the plains. Unlike poor Emily, I saw Aliza daily; saw her swelling progress and how my brother grew in the sight of it; saw my transgression being showered with love; and it was that this thing I’d so evilly put in her became the seat of both their hopes. God forgive me he was happy. Nights he’d sit with Aliza at the fire and lay hands upon her belly. Then they’d sing to it together. And when he’d invite me to join in with them I gave out in such a pitiful weak voice, but they wouldn’t ever notice, so caught up were they in this new life; even Aliza, when I’d catch the chance to glance questioningly at her, would answer with smiles and a look of absolute contentment. I slept uneasy in the store room, surrounded by the piled goods—a womb-like atmosphere itself. And in the mornings Kemper would wake me with whatever news the enwombed child had given them that night; how kicks and churnings told it was a boy; how when he shut his eyes and pressed his mouth to her belly and hummed he learned the shape of him. One day in mid-May, after pitching nails at Akers till he ran off, Kemper said to me: Brother, Aliza and me have been talking. I hope it’s that she’s going off, or that were bringing the boys down here for when they come and get us. No, he said, holding a nails between two fingers and examining it. We’ve come upon a name. What is it? He twirled his nail, smiling, like I’d imagine some Roman at the foot of the Cross. We’re thinking it’d be right to name him for you, he said. We’ve been through so damn much together that I owe you the honor. I was choking when I said, We’ll be through more yet soon. I know, he said. And that’s a reason too. I tried to shake myself right, to harden him against it, saying, Which one of my names do you want? Christ, said Kemper. All this laying up and waiting’s fuckered your brain. He flicked the nails off into the yard. I’m not ungrateful. What’s the name? Sam-Angel Woolsack Kemper. I broke and wept, turned from my brother and clung to one of the porch rails. And while I was wracked, the glorious son of a bitch embraced me. It’s a gift to you for all your gifts to me and in remembrance of my long gone brother, who had to die so that I’d have another. Once I was wept out, he let me go. # # # The month grew short and Aliza was forced to lay-in, thankfully ridding me of at least having to

202 look on my guilt made flesh. Bradford stopped arriving with his messages, the supposed date of our eviction passed, and I was growing hopeless. Those days I took the chance to press Kemper more, and I asked him again and again to send for Crabbe and what others he’d gathered down from Natchez, told him how we couldn’t hold a fight there just the two of us, and that they weren’t doing any good for us just grabbing guns and piling them in Pinckneyville. That’s all part of it, he said. It’s a plan. Don’t you think if we had all those guns here it’d be even worse if we got hit and had to leave them? Maybe so. But can’t we have a few of the boys down here? We need them on the roads, he said. Christ, but if we’re surrounded. Then we’ll need the roads, he said. There’s still things that can happen. Have faith in me. I’ve got my child coming strong and I’m filled with the knowledge that we’re protected and the path being laid out before us is the one to take. Let it come. There was nothing I could say. Though I was maddened by it then, by just waiting, I’ve come to understand that Kemper wanted it to end; he wanted to be run off, let them sow the seeds of wrath in us, so that we might have full reign and right in his mind to ride down on them bring upon their heads the full force of the fury of the Lord’s chosen children, which was what we were. And what could I do but keep watches of the road and woods, riding out day and night to scout for our oppressors. Nothing was revealed to me but my own wretchedness, which never left me for a second. My real name became a tortured thing. Now I began to think of myself truly as Samuel Kemper and of the child in Aliza as me. It had my name and it would be a boy. I thought long on her hair and how our colors were the same, and that the boy’s would be as well. I invented him a life, a pathetic prophecy, wherein I’d play the guiltful doting uncle. Would he see himself not in his father but in me? Would I spend my days giving him the same glances as I’d lately given Aliza before she shut herself away to await the birth, and would I still hope for some recognition from the child as never came from the mother? I grew him in me far longer than Aliza would; I carried him as just as much a burden. But the bitch joyed in hers. And it might be that so did I. He was me; I loved him selfishly as I loved myself, and hated and damned him as I did hate myself and sought damnation. It was to come, but only as an end to a long road.

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BOOK FOUR

CHAPTER 1 Eviction

None of the alcaldes had their guns out; they were gentlemen through and through, spread out in the yard on horseback—Stirling foremost, flanked left by Shepherd Brown, looking pious in his layman frock, and Akers rightward with his beast toeing nervous at the sides of the cow’s burial mound. They had attending them Negroes on foot, who stroked the necks of their horses and carried cudgels and sticks, for these were law abiding Puke militia leaders and they wouldn’t permit their blacks a firearm. The twenty rest of the militiamen were no different from the slaves, having been gathered from the fields of their small purchases and plots for the trouble, only they did have guns and theirs were out and brandished. Kempers! called Stirling, who held out a sheaf of papers like they were a pistol. We’re here to hereby proclaim the final notice of your judgment and eviction from this property. King George eats shit sausages, said Kemper. Stirling laughed and went on, reading from his paper. We’d taken to the habit of lighting lamps on the porch, the way I did in Pinckneyville for to see any traveler approaching the tavern, and the light from the lamps laid a blaze above the heads of the gathered oppressors like they were the ones who were Holy and not us. They were all sweating—the early summer heat had come on brutal—and it glowed on them, the alcaldes whipping streams of it from their faces with haughty flips of the chin and the others having to use arms and shoulders to wipe their eyes so as to keep their weapons raised. Me and Kemper had either side of the porch, and were like pillars standing fast, but useless, also sweating. My rides and scouts hadn’t been enough. I wasn’t drunk nor lazy, but it wouldn’t have mattered if I’d been there with Kemper’s spyglass on the roof. It was just as I knew it’d be: I saw them coming down the road, and there was a moment when I thought of laying down across my horse’s back and picking them off on their approach. But I presently saw how they began to fan and that if I hit one, by the time I was tamped and loaded again I’d be surrounded and there’d be a massacre coming down on my brother’s house. I don’t know if they had the stomachs for massacre, the alcaldes didn’t but there were all these men and niggers who’d be green and afraid. While Stirling read I was fearing in the dark that one of these militiamen would pop off a shot on accident, and so I kept behind the nearest pole and hoped. When I’d come running in from the back of the house, I found my brother already suiting up his kit, and I went to hurriedly do the same. He’d lashed himself with leather belts for bandoliers and strung little bags of shot and a pair of powderflasks through the eyelets; he was slipping his long knife in its greased sheath beneath the strap at his chest, then he put his pistols at his hip and a thin dagger. I scrambled to the table where the weapons had been laid and waiting for some days, mostly loaded, and strapped myself similarly; three pistols, a short shotgun, a Puke officer’s sword we’d stolen long ago I fixed behind my back. By then my brother had taken up his rifle and so I took up mine. I through I could hear Aliza groaning in their bedroom as strode down the house and out the door. Stirling continued, You’ve had the recourse of adjudication by your peers and neighbors, the proceedings of which body you didn’t find fit to attend. They were against you, and their

204 ruling was just. Where’s Senator Smith? Kemper said. He didn’t come to watch? You were given a notice of five days to remove yourself and your family from the property, you ignored this. You were given and extension on that notice of a further five days, you ignored this. Kemper shouted back: Damn, fellows, not even Puke Pintado’s here to lead you! What’ll you do without him? In a way I was blessing the whole thing, the standoff, for it did take my mind from the dark places it’d lately been. I counted their force, judged men dead in the eyes for their readiness to fire and how they looked on us. The militiamen were mostly singly armed and along with the Alcaldes’ niggers they gawked at us for our armaments. In light of all these developments, said Stirling, you are hereby ordered by the standing militias of Bayou Sara and Feliciana to quit the place tonight. I’d like to add, however, and this is from Senor Pintado himself, that you are still citizens of West Florida, and subject to the rights afforded citizens of our great country. You are not being asked to leave the country. You may remove yourselves to the house of a friend, if you have any friends. If you have nowhere to remove to, I have on good authority that one can be provided for you from the generosity of my fellows here. Akers was grinning at that. God how I wanted to smite him right off his horse. My wife’s with child, said Kemper. Are you telling me to move her in that condition? You’ve known about all this long enough. And if you had a mind to care for your wife’s well-being, you’d have listened earlier and complied, and saved her the risk and trial, which, unfortunately, now your idleness and enmity have made necessary. You high-minded son of a bitch, I said. Way, Sam, said Kemper. Stirling here’s a good man. And all these other men are good ones too. Right boys? You’ll tote guns for your landlords so they can throw you out later? Your ass! cried one militiaman. We aren’t no scoundrels! Right, said Kemper. You’re good men. Good men who’re fuckstuck dogs running after their masters. That’s enough, said Stirling. If you don’t make the effort now to remove yourself, your brother, and your wife, we’ll be forced to remove you bodily. Or else maybe you’ll just let your little army open fire, eh? We would not imagine such a thing, Stirling said. Hell, we would! another militiaman said, and there was some laughter among them, a half-hearted whoop. And I was ready then to draw and fire, with the situation seeming leant towards that direction. I thought Kemper was building to it, and that this would be the end. I held no illusions. We might take a few, but we’d be finished. And what a sorry end it’d be. For us to die at hirelings’ hands and in a hail of their shots, all while the alcaldes lit cigars and pipes and shared sips from flasks of brandy. No, we couldn’t have that for a death. But I thought I saw my brother’s hand turning round the handle of his left-side pistol, felt my own do the same. It was imperceptible slow, the movement, and I was wondering was this how we inch towards death when the door creaked open and Aliza tottered out onto the porch, led by her bowed belly, and went to her husband. I looked from them to the men in the yard, for this seemed the time when a fool’s shot might happen. They kept still. Some shit gave a whistle but Stirling shut him up. Aliza took no notice of them, going to her husband as though the yard were empty. Not even I

205 was there. Kemper only took his eyes from the yard for but a moment, to look at her. He’d turned back and was glaring them down when she put her hand to his shoulder, the other holding her belly at its slope, and whispered something to him. I strained to hear it, and saw that the ones out in the yard were doing the same. I heard nothing and Kemper was smiling and nodding gently over his shoulder to her. I was already planning to, he told her. And with that, Aliza drew herself away and back into the house. Well? Stirling said. Sam, said Kemper. Will you go round back and start strapping them up at the wagon? I said I would, and my heart was whapping at my ribs as I made the steps, walked past the legs of Stirling’s horse and the row of militiamen. Two or three of you go and help him, Stirling ordered. Get fucked, I called back. I don’t need any of your help. And on that side of the house I could see the light from Aliza’s room and the shadow of her in the window, thin twist of darkness except for the great stomach, itself somehow a deeper dark. I hustled to the back and went to work. Mid-toil, reins wrapped round my arms for four horses, I heard the commencing of a great commotion issuing from the house. It was the sound of metal ringing clangs on metal, and I knew that it was Kemper hammering the brass bed apart, so we might bring it. The peals and pangs sounded off and my head rang with it, only imagine Aliza holding her hands over her ears to shut the piercing sound out. # # # Kemper gave in and let them help us load. He only allowed for the niggers, though, not the rest. Said they were all you could trust because they had no choice. He put on a show for them as we tossed in whatever was deemed worthwhile and ours, patting them on their backs and asking after their souls. In the flurry of work and my head gone wrong with sweat so that my brains seemed dried out he reminded me of Reverend Morrell. It was the first sort of preaching I’d seen him do in years. You gonna make a nest back there for your wife, no? said one. Good thinking, brother, Kemper said. We hauled the mattress off its side, where it flopped over the wagon’s lip, and stuffed it in a space we cleared between some crates, leaving a crawlspace to the front. Aliza watched our progress from the back window and wandered out a few times to get a better look. Go back inside, love, said my brother. We’ll get you till you have to go. An alcalde or two would ride back on occasion, making a circle of our wagon giving words to his Negroes, then riding off again to the front and their fellows. Say, brothers, Kemper went on. How’d you like to be free? And those black faces looked at him like he was a madman. They kept loading and so did I, the straps of my weapons digging deep into my chest and they tightened up an ache. It’d be a long while sure before I took them off. Think about it, brothers. You know who I am, now. I can make you free if you’re willing. I think I heard one call him a crazy man to another, but Kemper never heard. # # # I sat with my brother on the bench of the wagon as we drove the way east. We’d lied and said we’d head to Bradford’s place in St. Helena, which we rode past and found him already out on his horse, being tended with a jacket by a Negroe.

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I figured yall would be coming, he said, riding up. I just hoped it wasn’t going to be on the run. You been out here on your horse all night? Kemper said. Well, said Bradford. I rode down the way towards your place, but turned back. There’s a few patrols of constables out and I didn’t want trouble. That’s about right, I said. Come inside, he said. Let’s get your wife down and we’ll set yall up. We’re going to Pinckneyville, said Kemper. No use to have her making the ride twice. Might as well get it done while she’s already troubled. I am awake, Aliza called. I don’t mind riding again. We’re doing it tonight, said Kemper. Aliza kicked a crate. Bradford looked puzzled, then straightened himself up with his chin high, proud. If you won’t stay, then I’ll ride with you a ways north, for protection. Thank you, brother, Kemper said. That’s noble of you. Bradford liked that, and so he rode out his gate and came up alongside Kemper and we set out again. Between us on the seat lay the long whip, and Kemper was giving fluttering pops to the reins while I kept watch with my rifle out. Rising up behind us in a tower, our belongings were a rattling quaking tower ten feet high, too tall for any tarp we had, and within the tower mound Aliza lay ensconced. My brother tried to steer the ruts and mudholes, but the wagon still shook. Bradford talked a good bit about the rights of man, high talk of a night. We listened and none of it made much sense or matter. It’s like I told my father, Bradford said. We’re living in an untenable situation in this country. Spain has its crown still and no revolutions, the enlightenment hasn’t touched her, and we’re her subjects. We can make more money here, sure, but what’s it worth when our minds are brought so low without the touch of modern democratic institutions. There’s got to be a change, look to France, look to the States. The system of democratic republicanism is the highest form of government, and dare I say human endeavor. Neither of us said a thing, we let him talk. My thoughts were again on the contents of the wagon, and I knew somewhere among its crates and mounded dresses was the pickling jar, contents now stirred to cloudiness the same way must’ve been within Aliza’s womb. At the cross with the Tunica road, which led north up into the Mississippi, we were come upon by two men, the foretold constables. They were riding fast and at a trot, and must’ve seen our light and made for it. I called out that we were by God armed, and they said they were constables. They rode close, one on either side of the wagon, and Bradford appeared to know them. Bates, he said. I’m riding the Kempers here to the line. The man Bates, who was on Kemper’s side said, We’re on patrol for these ruffians who’ve been at the farms these last few months. We’ll have the bastards, said the other, who cantered on my side. Well, said Bradford, we’ve got no truck with ruffians. Just passing on. You’re leaving the country then, Mr. Kemper? Bates said. That’s my business, said my brother. No, sir. I’m afraid it’s ours by law. Piss on you, said Kemper.

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Sir, said Bates. That’s undignified, but not unexpected coming from the man who’s sent these roving bands of banditti on us. And in that case, I’d say we need to search you wagon for if there’s any goods maybe stolen. You won’t touch a damn thing. I say we will, said the other man. My wife’s back there asleep, Kemper said. You wouldn’t want to distress her. I don’t give a damn, you rascal, said the second man. Aliza, I called. You feeling alright back there? I’m fine, came the drowsy muffled answer. Can you stand a shock? I’m fine God damn it, she said. Good, I said, and shot the second man. The horses were spooked but Kemper had them reined and he was staring down Bates, who’d fired his pistol and shot nothing. I’d only shot one barrel, and wit the other still full- packed with large-bore, I held it on him. I’d never heard his shot but he was holding it out and you could tell by his face how wide he’d missed. Now Kemper had his rifle out and had it aimed also. I heard Bates’ bowels empty into his pants and saddle. He was looked past me to where his friend was somehow still ahorse and had a great hole smoking in his chest. Soon the man I’d shot tottered and fell to the roadside. Dear Christ! Bradford cried. Dear Christ! Heavens! Get off your horse you fucking Puke dog, Kemper said. The man moreover fell onto the ground and was immediately begging. Kemper got down and so did I, seeing as I did that Aliza was peeking out through her partition, watching us. My brother had taken the whip with him and when Bates saw this he said, O thank God. Just don’t kill me. Whip me, don’t kill me. I will if you move, I said. Strip to the waist, said Kemper. Bates was saying all right all right, and Bradford had begun imploring us to stop. When his bare back shone in the lamplight and the light of the moon, Kemper told Bates to grab himself the running board. The man went over on his knees and did. Damn it, men! said Bradford We can’t stay here and do this! My brother didn’t listen. Bates, clinging now to the board, had turned his head with a look of expectation like he was hoping Kemper had been moved to mercy by Bradford’s words. But that hope was snuffed out of him with the first lash across his back. By the fourth lash Bates was weeping. By the tenth he’d begun to vomit and Bradford joined him, puking across the neck of his horse. By the twentieth he’d run a babbling litany of who he wanted: wife, mother, God. Want a turn, Sam? Kemper asked. I waved my shotgun at him and he understood. Bates’ skin was clammy where I grabbed him by the arm, as though he were dead already. I had him by the roadside and he was calling me a liar and I had my shotgun leveled at his head when that fool Bradford galloped over and knocked the gun from my hand with his crop. It fired off into the air and fell into the ditch and I would’ve ripped Bradford from his horse and beat him to death if it weren’t for that Bates had taken off into the woods like it’d been the shot to start a horserace. You worthless fancy bastard! I said. Look what you’ve done! You’re murderous! he said. You’re wicked!

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I was pounding at his legs with my fists but Kemper pulled me away. It doesn’t make a shit, he said. Let him go. Let him tell them what’s coming. What’s coming? Bradford cried. They’ll be at my father’s farm next! I’ll be wanted for murder! No you won’t, said Kemper. You’re the God damn merciful one. Best thing for you to do is come with us. Bradford wailed. Then there was a rattling in the wagon and Aliza stood up above the grates and goods and said, hissing, I don’t care what you sons of bitches do, but get me out of here. I won’t be out on this Godforesaken road all night. We left the dead man where he’d fallen, got back up in the wagon. Kemper tossed the whip back in the seat and it fell there wetly. Aliza was still peering out, furious, and so he turned back to her and kissed her on the cheek, flipped the reins, and started on. Bradford rode alongside going, Is this what’s to happen? Is this what’s become of me? # # # What did we care for the conscience of a planter’s son? If he wanted to be a friend to the Kempers, he’d need to learn sooner or later how the Lord’s work went. It was daybreak when we came to Pinckneyville and the tavern-house. Kemper’s eyes were bloodshot as his shirt was blood-flecked. When Crabbe and White and Silver came out to meet us, they thought we’d had to fight our way out. No brothers, said Kemper. It’s just the first step. All that got unloaded from the wagon that morning was the rails and bars of the bed, which the boys took and brought around to the house side. There were some there that’d been brought down from Natchez and we hadn’t seen in a year, some Cannibals of our first compact out in the streets, first flock of the liquor baptism. Aliza followed after the bed, which was quickly knocked together and set with its mattress. I watched her lay down in it, Kemper piling her with blankets. He laid hands once again on her belly and prayed with her while we watched. The tavern meanwhile was full and the drinkers were hard pressed to quit. They all either knew of or had heard Crabbe and the rest tell. They wanted us to talk, and when we did it was mostly Kemper, and soon the listeners’ whoops and cheers had grown so loud that we were forced take the entire party out the back, where we’d stand beside the fire pit. Bradford had fallen to drinking hard and could barely make his way there. He shuddered and shrugged off Crabbe’s claw when he tried to help and ended up splayed out mumbling off to the side of us. Kemper was giving his speech, voice rolling with the flames. Crabbe and I stood back a ways, tossing chords onto the fire. It’s good to have you back, said Crabbe. I took his claw in my hand and shook it hard. Big things are on the way, I said. Look at Kemper there. It’s about to be righteousness like no one’s ever seen. I can see it, said Crabbe. We didn’t need the fire the weather was so hot, but we walked and soaked it up besides and we built the fire up enormous until its flames threatened the roof of the house. And I wonder could they see our fire burning high above the treetops and the smoke it sent even higher, even across the line in that other country?

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CHAPTER 2 My worst prayers answered

Thank God it came out early and dead. It happened the week after our eviction, on an afternoon when we were both, Kemper and me, in the house and the others were out on rides. The heat that day was horrible, and minutes into her labors Aliza was soaked with sweat even as she soaked her sheets and the netting we’d strung around her for moskitoes with blood and beat the walls with screams. She was a shrouded shrieking creature, him halfway underneath her bower, trembling the sheets of it. And I thanked the Lord the first time that day when Kemper sent me to ride off for the doctor’s house, some miles up the road. When I came back, doctor in tow, it was then I gave my bitter second thanks. Doctor Towles saved her from the blood. So I must’ve thanked God three times that day. She would not follow her child; she remained, and my guilt would live on with her even after we buried the dead child in a hole far off from the house. I began to read some scripture once we laid it in, but Kemper, hands covered in dirt and mud, told me to be quiet and I did.

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CHAPTER 3 Israel proclaims

On that night we rode down into Feliciana and to the house of Akers, where we found a party of sorts going on; niggers bringing drinks and food to people all gathered on the front porch and the yard; and there was music in that house and planters’ joy and happiness; and we looked upon the youngsters running and the girls in their dresses and tossing curls. One such child happened near us at the fence and screamed. We were strapped as we’d been the night of the eviction, and our weapons were a righteous weight. When the child’s scream began, so did my brother’s. And my brother didn’t holler any man’s name, not one of the oppressors’; nor did her scream any known human sound; it was a wail, a babel keen, something of the sound a nigger woman makes when she’s been sold off from her child, a howl like a call to dinner at a banquet table in Hell; and it went on. The lip- blubbering fools who say they speak in tongues know nothing. This was it. The little girl had long since run up to the porch and gathered in the skirts of her mother, who was soon sent inside along with the other women and children. What remained were Akers and the men, more slipped out from the house. And Akers at the front of them came down the porch and Kemper was still screaming. He approached us right to the gate like we were late guests to the party. He sauntered. And beside him Smith appeared in his frock coat and none of them were armed. My brother’s voice had gathered now and it cracked and gurgled back down into his throat. The planter men waited for the silence to take before one spoke. What in God’s name do you think you’re doing here? said Akers. You got it, I said. We’re her in God’s name. What do you mean coming here armed like this? Smith said. If you mean to shoot somebody, you’ll have to shoot all of us. There’s witnesses. I didn’t come to murder, said Kemper. Open thy doors, O Florida, that the fire may devour thy pines. Howl, dog tree; for the pine is fallen; because the mighty are spoiled; howl, o ye oaks of Feliciana, for the forest of is come down. For I will no more pity the inhabitants of the land, saith the Lord, and out of your hands I will not deliver them. Did you preach to the constables, you evil bastard? said alcalde Sterling. So you know that, Kemper said. And your man Pintado knows it too. But tell him this: to put away his maps and pens and give up trying to make walls for the land. For I will be unto her a wall of fire round about, and will be the glory in the midst of her. I will have your asses before it’s through. I’ll poison your niggers against you so they sneak up to your beds at night where you’re sleeping and cut your damn throats. I’ll free every black devil in the country and we’ll make war on you and your Pukes. I’ll burn your houses and your stores and every field I pass. And all that will remain unburnt will be my house and my land you’ve stolen from me. Damn it, it’s not your land, Smith said. Be glad you’ve got your witnesses tonight, senator. But there’ll come a night when all each one of your worthless fuckswill spits have to witness you will be your screaming wives and children. Bring on your militias. We’ll have it out soon enough. But remember this when you’re under my hand. With that Kemper reined his horse and we took off down the road, leaving the hapless men to think on what he’d said. I had to beat hard to keep up with my brother and when I was alongside him I said, Why’d you tell them all that?

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So they’ll be afraid, he said. They’ll be sleeping with their guns now. I’d rather have them armed and terrorized, he said, than dead and unafraid. # # # The doctor hadn’t left when we arrived back at the house, though it was on into the night. He was a good man, I suppose, and he wouldn’t leave even when Kemper pulled him away from the bed where he’d been daubing Aliza’s head with a rag. It’s delicate right now, sir, said the doctor, approaching again the bedside. But Kemper flung him back and got down on his knees like he’d pray over his wife. Instead he took her hands, which both held at her crotch bunched with sheets. I brought the doctor by the arm out of the bedroom, sat him on the couch told him to wait. I think I’ll wash my hands, he said, dazed seeming. He was regarding them and they were gloved in blood to his rolled-up shirtsleeves. Some men had come to drink and we’d seen them wandering outside the barred door of the tavern when we rode up. I went through the door which kept the tavern from the house, then into the tavern where Bradford lay in his own dried sick, snoring on the floor. I passed him by and at the door I lifted the bar and the ones who wanted drinks poured in. No drinks tonight, I said. We’re mourning over here. What for? said one. Then why’d you open up the blasted door? said the other. You’ll have to come back, I said and slipped my thumbs under my weapon-straps. They took notice. Lordy, said the first. Jesus, said the second. What’re you, having a war? Yes, I said. Now go. # # # I hushed the boys when they returned, but they were full of talk and so I took them outside. White and Silver stood stone-faced when I told them what’d happened, and poor Crabbe was weeping and I had to stomp him down with my foot when he tried to go inside and comfort Kemper. He doesn’t need any of that right now, I said. Crabbe was dusting himself off. He might, he said. God it’s awful. Let’s go get the pieces of shit, said White. I don’t need no sleep. Hell yes, Silver said. Let’s go now and start it up. We don’t go until Kemper says. Where’s the others? Bayou Sara, Crabbe said. They’re out there riding. Stirring it up. Shit, said White. Shit. Silver put his hand to White’s shoulder. We’ll have them for Kemper, he said. Right, Angel? I’m Sam now, I said. Sam Kemper, remember. So tell me what you saw that’s so important. And they did. Fifteen men, militia, on the march, with two officers on horses and leading a pair of men bound in rope down the east-west road from St. Helena. They’d watched the patrol go by from a hill in the woods, deciding there were too many to fire on. I prayed on it for while, then I went to tell Kemper. Why’s he get to go? said White.

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It’s his brother, Silver said. I thought we were all, Crabbe said. I could hear them going on like that until I was inside. They didn’t know, poor things, that I was pained as much as Kemper. It’d been my dead son laid in the ground that day. My name. But it was my sin too that went to dust, and I was thankful for the mercy of it. Hate to say there was less guilt, but it’s true. Bradford was sitting up on the tavern floor with his legs straight out and his hands in his lap, twiddling his thumbs and probably mooning over the inheritance he’d lost by falling in with us. I had no time or inclination to ask if he was all right. The doctor hadn’t washed his hands but sat expectantly upon the couch wringing them, rubbing off the blood in twists with his fingers. Sir, he said. I do need to be back in there with the lady. It’s a delicate time this first night after a thing like that. Come on then, I said. He bounced up on his heels and followed me to their door. I listened for any sound but heard none. I expected weeping, I was near to it myself now that I was back in the thick of the horrors. I gave a knock to the door and soon my brother appeared, sunk-eyed and sullen, glancing over my shoulder at the doctor. He says he needs to be in there, I told him. And I need to talk to you. Kemper thought on it. Then he said, But first you go in and see her. I didn’t have the heart to struggle, didn’t know what she might’ve told him in their sad time together, what might’ve slipped out in her grief. I went past him into the bedroom. He’d parted the moskitoe sheets from her and so Aliza would receive me. She’d shifted to her side and was facing me, arms folded round her middle. I checked behind for if Kemper was near, but he’d gone out and was talking with the doctor, then bent to her face. She couldn’t talk more than a breath. Aliza, I said. Don’t sorry me, she said. I didn’t say I was. You should be. She hitched her arms tighter, gauging emptiness. It’s God’s will, I said. The blade lines at Aliza’s face went sharp and she had no eyes to look on me. Get out, she said. I’m through with you. Then she was gasping and the hacks shuddered through her. Kemper and the doctor hurried in and I was pressed away by her attendants. I flew the room, coming into the next to find Bradford teetering on his feet, one hand against the wall. What awful thing’s today brung? he said. With full light on she fell asleep and Kemper came to talk with me. Bradford had gone and fallen back to drinking in the tavern, and you could hear him knocking over bottles as he did. With him were the boys, trying whispers. I think it’s a chance, I said. Pull two more men to it. You’re right, said my brother. But not now. Not right now. I can go. I’ll take the boys. I said not now, god damn it. His eyes were so far back in their hollows and I swear the red of his hair had faded out. Ashen, he was, and desolate. I need to rest, he said. I need to tell her what will happen. But first she’s got to rest, like the man said.

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It’s fine, I told him. We’ll wait till you’re ready. I just need to rest, he said, easing himself down by the arm of a chair onto the floor. When he was sprawled full-out he went on about resting, talked of sleep with his eyes wide open. I told him again we’d wait. We wouldn’t long.

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CHAPTER 4 The militiamen

We caught them the following evening at a corner of the Bayou Sara where the waters reached out into the woods and they’d stopped to camp on the dry side. We didn’t heed any direction or come with any plan, but rode down on them one after another, and one after another we gave shot and chase and harried them into the spill of the bayou where they fell among the cypress knees. Kemper rode on them first, screaming, emptying his rifle and then both pistols. When they were empty he used them as war clubs, for we’d mostly stayed on our horses and while the militiamen were drowning chest-deep in the muck we were set up high above them. White and Silver took down one a-piece with their shots, then two more with their knives, including the captain of the patrol, backed him up against a treetrunk and cut him off at the neck. Silver was the only one of us got down from his horse for fighting, and he was drowning a boy in the water. Bradford, I believe, had closed his eyes when he fired and it may’ve been him who hit the prisoner. He’d not followed us into the bayou lip but had swung drunken off his horse at the camp and was tending to the other prisoner, who was still tied with his dead fellow to a tree, when we came some sloshing and some dry out of the water—but all of us murderously happy. Twelve lay behind us dead, only three escaped, though we couldn’t later come to agree on whether there’d been another three at all. We got down all sort of wandered, grinning at each other, surely looking wild enough for the man tied to the tree. The live prisoner had his hands out for Bradford to cut the bonds, and kept giving looks to his partner, whose head was strewn across the treetrunk and in pieces on the ground, like a busted rotten gourd, then to each of us. Thank you, he said, nodding his head and with eyes wide open. Thank you boys like crazy. It’s no trouble, brother, said Kemper. He brushed Bradford aside and cut the ropes himself. When the man was free he said his name was Felix St. Antoine Laporte. He rubbed at his wrists where they’d been bound, saying, They made me run for three whole days behind them, the bastards. Laporte whipped his head and spit for their memory. They’d been singing Yankee Doodle at their camp and there was one man kept it up even while we were fighting and he was running to the trees. I got him with the shot from my second pistol in the throat and he’d been the last to die, wheezing through his blown-out pipe at the edge of the water. What’d they have you for? asked Kemper. You know, he said. The regular thing. Find yourself a horse, find yourself a negress, yeah? What the Frenchman had said brought the fact hard down on me that this was the first time we’d ridden not for robbing but war. For casualty and terror. It was something to be hashed out later amongst the boys, except Bradford who was mute on the subject. The rest of us picked through the camp for what we could take, flints, powder, livery, while Kemper went on with Laporte. You don’t want their skins do you, Kemper? said White. Skins? said the Frenchman.

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But Kemper ignored him. So Laporte, he said, gesturing to the dead man. What about your partner there, what’d he get caught for? What do I know about him? said Laporte. That son of a bitch, he never says a word to me, just run fast when they tell him to, fast so I had to keep up and so he could take my bread from me when I was too tired to care. Him I don’t know for nothing. Think he’d say the same thing about you? White said. He don’t say nothing now, the Frenchman said. # # # We’d hastily loaded ourselves with provisions for a month in the country, and done it light, figuring what we didn’t have we’d come by. That day we added to our stores what we’d gathered up from the militia camp, along with the two horses of the officers, upon one of which now rode Laporte. When Kemper had asked him would he join, the Frenchman said he didn’t see no other choice. My brother had assured him there was nothing keeping him if he wasn’t for fighting. He outlined to Laporte the main swing of our plans, which weren’t much but did have some scope and ring to them, and the Frenchman had laughed from his new mount. He said, Damn! You gonna fight the whole Spanish, eh? You boys are crazy. Not much Anglo boys crazy like that, no. We’re no God damn Anglos, I said. We’re Americans, by God. Americains? Anglos? What’s the difference? You think I’m dark either way, right? You think I look like a Spanish? Now that you mention it, I said. Or a maybe a negre? said Laporte. You do look a touch Puke, said White, laughing. What’s Puke? the Frenchman asked, looking to us each. What is it, a cuss? Puke’s nothing, said Kemper. Puke’s dead. # # # That night we rode back eastward from Bayou Sara and up deep into the Tunicas, into the woods where creeks ran and the ground became sloped and rocky. These were the only such stones in the country, unless you crossed up into the Mississippi, whittled down as low as a sad man’s soul and pocked through with holes where nested birds and creatures. And like these were the only rocks in the country they only made one cave among them, a grotto behind a dried-up waterfall. We went into it and there we’d stay and make our base of operations. We held up lamps and torches at the mouth, which opened in a wide-mouthed awn that tapered at its corners like a strangled man’s tortured mouth, just high enough for me to go in without stooping. Kemper had to bend, and the others followed after him. We found it dry and going back some twenty feet, where it ended in the roof sloping down to the cave floor. We’d sleep in the curve of back wall, the smoke from our lamps gathering up above our heads, and that first night Kemper was talking to us all, a kind of sermon on our future deeds. He’d send word back next day to Aliza that we’d be staying there awhile. Soon Kemper would demand paper and things to write with, and more fuel for the lamp so he had light to do it by. These things were stolen from Stirling’s house, which was the nearest we wanted to hit. White said he’d gone right in through the agent-door and taken it off his desk. And it was with these materials that Kemper began his proclamations, drafting them out on the alcalde’s foolscap in the light wavering on the stone walls that made his shadow huge so that we were always passing in or out of it to move about the cave. He drafted them for days, and when my brother grew too tired of writing I’d take dictation. I’d hear his words, which were great and

216 raging firestorms of a new Holy path for us, and I felt nearer to him than I had in years. Even so, I was feeling poorly. I did the scribbling as a sneaking penance for what I’d done. It was all I could do, he wouldn’t have us all go out and fight again until he had the country papered. One such read: People of Feliciana, West Florideans, shake off the chains of tyranny and rise up and claim your righteous place. Look around you at your land, and is it not America? Ask yourself then, is not America a Holy Land, even like unto Jerusalem? If it is not the Lord’s most blessed country, then that’s a lie. And if it is a Holy Land we live in, ask yourself how you can permit for Godless Heathens to tred upon it and you? We, who love freedom and this Land and hold it Holy, are even now engaged against your oppressors. So rise up in your farms and stores and defend your property from the Heathen Puke! Join in with us and together we shall drive him from this Holy Land; and not an inch of its soil shall he hold in wicked dominion when we’re through with him! Christians! Gentlemen! Strike out and be saved! We’d send them off with the boys, who’d in turn nail them up in St. Francisville or on crossroad trees of the fenceposts of houses, until the country was covered in his bills and the people knew the name of their saviors. Word came back from Crabbe that Aliza was up and walking, but what didn’t come was recruits. These we’d sorely need before the end, but for a time it was only me and my brother, writing out what from those days forward would be the thrust of our lives.

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CHAPTER 5 Against Pintado

Dead or alive, come July. The month rolled in with the news of the order being given down by Grand Pre himself in Baton Rouge. The only one of us who didn’t joy in it was Bradford, who said he was dead already. And what did we care when all we had to do was high across the Mississippi line. So we celebrated by riding out and getting two of us wounded and taken prisoner. We’d gone with the idea that we would strike down into Feliciana, toward the bend in the river, and on that way take three of the alcaldes’ farms and maybe St. Francisville. We expected new recruits to be awaiting us. Or at least my brother thought they’d be waiting for us in the town, just not knowing where we were, ready for fighting. But Pintado, that surveyor, had plotted careful out where we’d been striking from, and though he wasn’t fool enough to come in after us directly, he’d lain in wait at the road he knew we’d use. His company were about half regulars and half militia. The regulars were the first uniformed Pukes we’d seen, and little did we know that along with his dead or alive proclamation Grand Pre had called up a battalion from Pensacola. And it was that Pintado had his regulars in a picket already, tucked up in a blind turn in the road, and we were riding strong and strung out for a mile so that Silver and Laporte were far out ahead from the next bunch, which was White and Me, then Bradford and Kemper a ways behind us. We heard the firing and screaming when Silver and the Frenchman rounded the blind, and so we kicked hard into it without thinking. Silver was already on the ground, being dragged off, and Laporte was fighting them from his horse and the regulars were all screaming at him in Puke and the militiamen in English. We rode through the picket and continued on up the road thinking we’d turn back around and make another charge. I’d only fired one of my pistols, and that was into a man reloading his musket. White came galloping up and his jaw was slack. Sons of bitches had a trap! he said. We’ll wheel back, I said, and was turning my horse when Kemper rode up. He’d been shot through the right shoulder and another had grazed his forehead. His rifle was gone. There still came much clatter and screaming from the way we’d come. Bradford was untouched, but he might’ve been wounded all the same for what you could tell. His face was gray and he had a pistol out, not minding where he aimed it. Are they alive? I said. Looked like it, he said. Well, shit, said White. Let’s go back. Wait, Kemper told him. Wait? White said, gaping. Wait for what? They got Silver! Don’t forget Laporte, said Bradford. Fuck that croaking frog, he said. I want my friend back. We can’t now, said Kemper. We got to move. He kicked into his horse and headed up the road away from us. I followed him. But what about Silver! cried White. From that first defeat Kemper formed a plan on the fly. We were riding from the ambush to it before he’d even told us. See, we thought we were in retreat, but really we were on towards win. Nothing ever beat my brother. There were always more victories. Nothing ever would.

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He’s not there, said Kemper. We know that. So we burn his God damn house down. It’s perfect. What about Silver? White called. We were between Pintado and his house. And he’d carry the prisoners to the capital, so the place was left there for us like a prize. If he took ours, we’d make him pay. # # # The niggers were slowly filing out of the fields when we got there, riding between their lines on the roads in evening. Some shrieked and ran for the house but others kept walking with their hands hanging at their sides or just looked at us. We rode with torches and the four of us passed up the running niggers and I believe White caught one across the back of the head with his torch. Sparks flew and we jumped the fence and rode down Pintado’s garden and were up in the yard, making wild circles of the place and seeing where we’d lay the blaze. Kemper and White took the big house and I rode to the cotton-house with Bradford. There we set our torches one at the back and the other frontwards, everywhere went niggers running and screaming about fire. Kemper and White were at the big house, beating back a horde of them and shouting how they didn’t want to shoot the fools. White had thrown his torch through a downstairs window and inside some house slave had already put it out. You could tell by the color of the smoke now pouring out the busted window. Kemper had tossed his up on the roof and it’d taken in a corner. Niggers were fighting to work the pump and draw the bucket from the well. Damn it! shouted Kemper. Come on and be free! Let the bastard’s house burn! But the niggers were slinging buckets of water at the roof, and every time you knocked one down another took his place and pitched a stream. Mostly their tries dashed against the side of the house, but the fire wasn’t taking and one got the idea to make his throws from the window just below the lip of the roof. O for Christ’s sake, said Kemper when the black appeared and tossed his water up. He called out, Don’t any of you want to be free? Beside me Bradford looked the scene over. Silliness, he said. It’s plain silliness. Won’t be silly long you son of a bitch, said White. Not when that fire takes. But it didn’t. And we’d either stay there and wait for one of the niggers, who’d surely gone for help, to return with militia or we’d cut out. So we beat down the eastward cotton field and took to the woods and hacked our way through the wilderness so as to avoid any further strikes against us, even passing through the bramble patch where I’d talked with Preacher-father. I thought we should’ve burned it. White cussed and pouted for his friend the whole way back to the cave. I couldn’t blame him for it, but did grow tired of his voice. I still had my brother, who now rode up ahead and silent, never giving that his arm must’ve been throbbing or that he was even touched with pain. Bradford doctored him at the cave, dug out the hunk of shot with the end of White’s knife, which we’d let sit blade-first in the fire we built. When the red hot point touched his arm Kemper groaned and shuddered, curled his great size into itself. This is how it starts, Bradford said when he was through. Kemper was laying on the floor of the cave, right arm bandaged with the sleeve torn from the left. Don’t you curse us, I said to Bradford. It’s not me who’s cursed you, he said. From the floor Kemper said, Wish we had mad sister Magee to make us poultices, eh, Sam?

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I told him I didn’t wish for anything from back then and my brother laughed. What’s he talking about? White said. That scripture? He quoting scripture? # # # We sent White up to Mississippi for to bring more boys, and similarly Bradford into the country to hunt some among his own. Kemper was sure there were just droves of them awaiting us and our word, to come and help. I didn’t trust Bradford to come back again, or that White wouldn’t ride himself after Silver, and for days I sat with Kemper drafting more proclamations nobody but us would read, for there was no one there to run them. Like our fathers before us we talked over the makings of our religion and the walls of the cave sang with our invocations, what we’d do when the time was right and the miracle from Heaven came. And damned if it didn’t—finding me awake and crouching at the mouth of the cave with my rifle, having heard their noises coming through the brush and thinking them Pukes instead of our deliverance. They were too many for the cave, about twenty of them White brought and seven others Bradford had gathered from the farms—tenants and planter’s sons, and our camp was strewn out around the mouth and in the dry pool. Kemper would step out of the cave mouth on occasion like a prophet and give them talk. Crabbe was with them, his special saddle fitted and ready and his claws itching for triggers. He said Aliza had told him she was fine on her own, gave him her blessing to go, that we needed as many as we could get. She’d even sent him down with a gift, which did raise up our spirits, particularly Kemper’s. Some, like the Turpins, had come down from Natchez, and others like Haslit and Dyer were out of Pinckneyville and had only lately become Cannibals. They sat and listened to the prophet speak, and he told them what riches awaited them in Heaven, and what a paradise on earth they’d make when we won. Then he’d retreat back into the cave where now hung across the back wall Aliza’s gift. It was a flag for us and she’d stitched it herself, of seven stripes red and white, and on a blue field were two stars, one for each of us. Kemper would sit with our flag behind him, and if I was with him, go on talking and expecting me to put it all down. Holy Land, heathens, victory in Heaven and Earth. When he grew too tired to talk, I’d go outside and walk the camp. Soon the boys who knew each other were fighting with the ones who didn’t, and it was everything I could do to keep them from dueling. I’d put it to Kemper that this was how we knew we were ready and rearing for the fight to come. It was time to set out.

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CHAPTER 6 Take the capitol

You’ll shoot me if I do, said Bradford. I shook my head and said we wouldn’t do anything like that. In the past week it’d come down from Baton Rouge that there’d been a general amnesty ordained by Grand Pre for all our followers who owned property in the country. They could hang it in and go home, no questions asked. One of Bradford’s fellows had brought the news, shouting it when he came into camp, thinking bravado would make a good show. If you trust it, I said. Go home. What will Rueben say? I’ll tell him when he’s up. Bradford looked hollow, there in the same clothes he’d been wearing for more than a month. The finery had sweated out of the cloth and he was yellow at the collar. Honest, it was no kindness on my part to let him go. I was sick of seeing him. I am sorry to miss the big push, he said. If you were you’d be staying. And don’t go telling everybody at dinner what we’re doing. I won’t tell anyone a thing. I’m ashamed of it. Can I say that? You can say whatever you want. You’re no worry of mine anymore. He would convince two other planter boys to go with him, back to their homes and families. These I didn’t mind losing either. What would come next was ordained, was providence. We didn’t need anyone who wasn’t true Cannibal and Holy Warrior in spirit. And those who were jeered the ones that were leaving, called them traitors, impugned their mothers, told them when we ran the country come tomorrow we wouldn’t hold it against them that they were wimpers. Not long had they departed when one of the Turpins rode in, fresh from Mississippi, saying how we all had pardons from Governor Claibourne of the territory if we’d only cross the line. A cheer went up among the Cannibals and Kemper appeared at the mouth of cave with our flag in his hands. Things got uproarious and I was caught up in it. We had nothing now to lose. One boy had scrambled up and broke off the limb of a young pine and presently set down to whittling the bark from it. The limb was as tall as him and when he had it smooth the boy brought it to Kemper for a flagpole. More cheers, cries of Hurrah for the Kempers! Hurrah for the Holy Land! The rest took this as a signal to get ready and those who were knapping their flints boxed them, everywhere was powder being poured and shot fingered in shaking hands; some broke into pairs and took turns slapping each other cross the face and hollering as they did; some drank deep from bottles and casks; some jumped through the fire. One had a mandolin out and was playing, but no one could keep up the tune. I was with my brother and we strung the flag up and when this was accomplished Kemper raised it aloft. Beautiful, I said, looking up at the flag, which didn’t flutter but drooped. Even then it was a lovely thing. We’re emblemized, now, he said. We’re going on to glory, brother. Kemper waved the flag so that it’d spread and the whoops and whooshes of its flutter was like the sound of flames. We gathered up the boys, who were primed as all their pieces, and Kemper drove the flagstaff into the ground and we knelt at the foot of it and joined together in

221 prayer. Dear Father in Heaven, said Kemper. We are come before you today with a great purpose, your purpose. It’s in our hearts and minds and souls, that we will follow the path you’ve set before us. The path of righteousness and we will protract your Holy War. Deliver our enemies unto us, that they may fear thee all the days that they live in the land which thou gavest unto our fathers. Your people go out to battle now against their enemies, and we pray unto the Lord towards the city thou hast chosen. Lord, let our slings find the Philistines’ heads, and though we walk in the midst of trouble, thou wilt revive us, thou wilt stretch forth thy hand against the wrath of our enemies, and thy right hand will smote them. And the Lord said, In the world you have tribulation and violence; but take courage; I have overcome the world, and through me so shall you. And before they all could spring up I rose and placed my hands to the foreheads of the nearest two, and I said, And so it is that if their purpose be of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to defeat these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God! # # # This time we had enough torches and Pintado’s house took and so his cotton house; and when we had him, rope about his neck, held by Kemper on that tether out in the yard, the fire had spread even to the surrounding fields. We’d shot three of the house niggers and there was no one to fight the flames, which devoured and flew and filled the air all around us with sparks and smoke so that we were all choking and had tears in our eyes. You bastards, said Pintado, hands at the rope. Bastards, he called us again before his words slipped into Puke. Your world’s about to fall, said Kemper with a jerk to the rope. And you’ll bear witness to it. If your governor in Baton Rouge is kind, he’ll let you be traded for our prisoners. If he isn’t, he’ll watch you die. Got to Hell, Pintado said. His face was black with soot from crawling through his house, trying to save his maps and instruments. It’d been me who pulled him from his office, braved the flames, drug him out the burning house and over the bodies of his slain slaves and into the yard where Kemper awaited him with the rope. Kemper now was again exhorting the niggers to come with us and take their shovels and trowels and forks as weapons, to carry torches and burn the houses of our enemies. They only either ran from him or the conflagration to their own homes, which some of the boys had put to the torch also. I was up on my horse again and Kemper whipped the rope tight about his wrist, gave a look to Pintado, and said, Let’s go. Crabbe rode up, foreclaws clutching reins and a pistol he now fought to fill with powder and shot. He tamped it and was grinning and more red-faced than usual. We got the shit! he said. Don’t we, brothers? We’re gonna win! Win what? said Pintado. You think you’ll gain something for this madness? You bet your ass we will, my brother said. Sam, go and round the boys up. So I went and rode a circuit of the plantation, calling the ones still caught up in their sport to me, and they fell in behind me and we reformed our line before the house, from which now Kemper rode out the gate with Pintado in tow. You’ll all hang! cried the Puke. The Cannibals all laughed and hooted.

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He must’ve known he wouldn’t be hung himself, for he kept on yelling at us until Kemper hauled him off and had him jogging beside his horse. Up ahead for a ways every tree we could’ve hung him by was on fire. # # # We turned and followed down the river. I was wishing we’d cross up overland and take Stirling’s house, but we were for Baton Rouge that night and Kemper said we had no time and should preserve surprise. We could’ve gone far faster but it was our prisoner who set the pace. Pintado ran, struggling for breath against the rope around his neck, and now and then the slack would get too much and he’d trip over it and fall to the ground, and whoever was closest would have to pull quick to avoid trampling him. I think he caught a few hoofs though. Maybe even I didn’t pull back quick enough and let my horse give him a few pops. By now he spoke, when he could, solely in Puke. And it was whores this and bastards that. That’s the way their language works, everything’s a whore or bastard. We had to stop and spell the horses often and Pintado for his part. We rode past houses and plantations of those we hated and those we had no grudges with. Some would peel off and ride towards a house and I’d have to go back and corral them before they had the door beat in or the place set afire. And our progress slowed and halted this way on through the night. We grew restless on the stops and the boys took to passing bottles. By dawn some were too drunk to stay in their saddles and others were roaring, firing their guns into the air. I feared that even if we made Baton Rouge the horses would be spent and all our Cannibals useless with drink and carrying empty pieces. I even took some myself, nip of whiskey handed me by Crabbe as the sun rose and showed the gold bubbling in the bottle. But all I had to do was look over at my brother and I was satisfied. He carried in one hand the flag and his rein, and in the other Pintado’s leash. It was a glorious sight and a spiritual moment each time I looked. This was what we’d been waiting for, what we deserved after all that time suffering their slings and arrows. This is the greatest night of my life, said Crabbe. We were crawling now and Pintado was dragging his heels in the dust of the road, for no one would have him up in the saddle. So he would stay on his feet and take the times we stopped to throw himself to the ground and lay there till Kemper prodded him with the end of the flagpole and he’d stand wobbling. The Puke would wave away any offer of water, and I wondered if he might die before we had him to Baton Rouge. The ride ahead still seemed so long and the fool was so damn stubborn. I wished he’d been in his officer’s uniform when we caught him, rather than the housecoat and drawers he wore. His clothes were shredded and covered in dirt, and once when he’d been flopped out on the ground, one of the Cannibals had taken the opportunity to stand over Pintado and piss on him. Everyone had laughed but Kemper and me. I think now Kemper may’ve been worrying the same. But he didn’t show it other than his silence, and the way he’d holler for all to keep up and stay moving. Mid-day my brother decided we’d get the boys awake at Akers’ house. We were passing near it on the east-west road and all of us by then were dragging. The fear was on me now that the whole enterprise would fall, with a bunch of drowsing Cannibals instead of ready fighters. Thank God when we neared the place Kemper said, Sam, you and me go in there first. The rest of you wait for me to holler and form up. The other thirty began to edge their horses into a bunch behind us and we rode off, still with Pintado in tow, turning down the oak-lined avenue which led to Akers’ house. His fields were off behind the big house, so there were no niggers to scream or wail when we approached under the bowers of the oaks, gallop growing and Pintado, I could see, scrambling and tripping

223 through the dust of our way. Kemper hauled him in with a twist of the rope and Pintado ran dead ahead like he was going to make the attack with us. We leapt the gate and Pintado had to pull himself over through azalea bushes, so that when we came before Akers’ house, where a few workmen were moving about the yard, the surveyor stood with his hands on his knees and covered in smears of flowers. I thought my brother would take up his scream of the other night, but he held fast to his charge and told me to go in and get the bastards. I’d no sooner got down from my horse than he tossed down the whip to me. Tie that to him, he said. I knew he meant Smith and so I smiled, hefted the leather, and headed for the house. Akers appeared in the doorway and stepped out onto the porch with a long shotgun in his hands. He’d raised and fired before I could draw a piece and the shot scattered in the dirt at my feet. A shriek came from inside the house and there’d be more to follow, for the Cannibals took this as their signal and now poured into the yard, firing and hooting. And I’d run up the porch steps and had Akers by his collar and he tried to beat at me with the butt of the shotgun but I struck it from his hands with the whip; and when I had him collared I brought his quaking face close and shouted in his ear, Where’s Smith? Where’s that mother? He isn’t here! Akers said. He’s gone! I struck him about the face with the bunched-up whip. Where? Where? The Cannibals now were some dismounted and they ran around us and into the house, from which more shrieks issued. There was terror on Akers’ face and I was so damned happy I couldn’t stand myself. It was one of those spiritual moments, of revenge pure and simple. Akers looked to Pintado on his leash and despaired a moan. And he might’ve also seen stretching down his avenue of oaks some Cannibals who’d lit fresh torches tossing them into the boughs overhanging the way. The sun was high above the treetops and its light did drown the blaze of the flames, and all you could rightly see was the smoke. I hauled Akers down off the porch and into the yard, thinking I’d let the lash tell what he knew. Where’s young Bradford, then? he said. You kill him, did you? Sure we did, I said. Akers from the ground not far from where the surveyor sat cross-legged, resting and not giving a care it seemed for the whole scene, said, That’s what he gets for falling in with ones like you! It’s no more than the poor boy deserved! For Christ’s sakes he’s not dead, said Kemper. He’s at his daddy’s house right now eating quail. Liars! cried Akers. I struck him with the whip, unfurled this time. That quelled him. Where’s the senator? I said, raising up the whip again. His coat had been torn to the shirt by my first strike and blood welled through the cloth. He left yesterday for St. Francisville, God. He said he’d leave there today. Damn it, said Kemper, yanking Pintado’s rope for his anger. The Puke did nothing but try and right himself, holding with both hands to the cord. Then tie him, my brother said. He’ll do as well. Akers tried to scramble away from me but I had him down and hit him at the knape of his head, then sat on him while I tied the end of the whip about his neck. This accomplished, I lifted weeping Akers up and led him to my horse. Mounted, I saw on Kemper’s face as he surveyed the

224 scene, grown wild, that we’d have to work to gather the boys all back for the last leg of the ride. The house was smoking out its open windows and the sounds of screaming had now quit. Or else I couldn’t hear them anymore. We tried to keep them off the take, saying how spoils would slow us, but this did little good and many Cannibals rode with silver coffee urns the size of children sitting in their laps, and even nigger children or women riding in front of their saddles; also piled chinaware dishes that tottered, fell, and shattered in the road or by the hoofs of horses as we left the ruined place; and even soon in afternoon the captured niggers were pitched off for their weight or that their new owners couldn’t see around them or stand to hold them down any longer, and they tumbled down into the road where the lucky ones hit their feet and made it to the roadside, but many were ridden down. We left behind us a wake of bodies and busted finery on our way to Baton Rouge. Akers kept up, trying as he would to talk with Pintado. But the Puke was out of breath. Myself, I didn’t have any breath to cuss the alcalde like I’d imagined I would in such a glorious moment as leading him by the end of a whip down towards our victory over the Pukes and all their works. No, we all were whipped even as we neared the river, and when we stopped to spell again in sight of the bend Akers stretched the whip to go to Pintado and ask him what would happen, wasn’t the Governor General ready? It couldn’t be this way, could it? The Puke Pintado, visions of his burning instruments in his head, at last looked up at Akers and regarded him. Shut up you little fool, he said.

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CHAPTER 7 Baton Rouge

The whole God damn country knew about us. We were laying low in a copse, having just crossed the river, all of us, in groups of five on a ferry barge pulled by a reluctant bargeman, who each load of Cannibals had to hold their guns on to make him tow, even though Kemper had paid him ten pesos gold. The sun had gone down hours before and we’d doused our torches, but lamps and fires burned all along the fort. It glowed like that City on the Hill. Kemper and me had our charges so tightly wound about their necks they couldn’t scream a warning to the soldiers. But it didn’t make a shit. They knew we were coming. The Pukes had set up an arc of bales and sugar sacks between the foremost points of the fort and there were firing lines behind them, I could see their musket-barrels sticking up from behind their battlements; above them the timbers along the wall were also manned and the two cannons were manned, though I know now they couldn’t have fired, they were set too high. But what did it matter? What did it count when there showed no fear on the faces of our Cannibals? What matters when God is on your side? Nothing. All this and more I prayed on crouching in the scrub-oak brush, holding to my horse and to Akers, who was on his knees. And though there was no fear on our boys’ faces, they looked ragged. The ride had been too long, two days now, and it’d hit them. The Turpins leaned against each other’s shoulders with their eyes shut. White Alexander squatted with his head between his legs. Who knows what all others took the chance to catch some sleep. My brother watched the fort from deep in the dark. He’d passed the flag to Crabbe and the scuttler looked wide awake and hadn’t got down from his horse for the difficulty of undoing his trappings and fits. Crabbe clutched the banner-pole and he would be our standard bearer, seemed he treasured it. And I did feel proud at that moment, to’ve given something horrible as him a flag to fight under, something that was his. Johnny Crabbe held the flag and said, When do we start? The whip-leather squealed in my hand I was holding it so tight. We’ll go, said Kemper. You and me, Sam, we’ll go and see about the terms and trade. I nodded, but my brother couldn’t have seen me for the dark. He started off, dragging Pintado, who by now could barely walk and hobbled his way up the hillside after Kemper, and I followed. Akers danced and high-stepped for his worn-out feet and I had him reined not three feet from me. Walk right in front, I said to him. If they fire it’s in you. Akers wouldn’t stay before me, so I had to keep slowing and ducking behind him. If they fired he’d have been a poor shield. I hoped the boys were eating and had some water. I worried on our fate as we made our way up to the fort. We come in peace! Shouted Kemper from ahead. We’re here with two prisoners and we want to trade them for our own! He’d approached one the battlements to about twenty yards and he gave a nudge to his Puke and bade him speak. And it was like he’d saved it all up. This is Vincinte Pintado, he said in Puke. Surveyor general and captain of the Feliciana militia, and I’ve been taken against my will. And William Akers, alcalde! said mine. There were some murmurings in Puke and a few rose up with their muskets and looked us over. From among these a man was dispatched into the fort, and he brought out with him the

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Commandant himself, young Grandpre. I knew it was him by his brocades and uniform, by the sheen of his hair and his moustaches, and the way the lesser Pukes made room for him and huddled round him behind their sugar sacks. This is a grave crime, spoke the great Puke. You understand how your actions will be punished? Kemper called back, We come under the protection of Governor Claibourne of the Mississippi and Louisiana territories and the full-stroke support of the American government! To make thing right before we get down to it, I’d like to trade these prisoners for two of yours— misters Jim Silver and Antoine Laporte. Vincente, said Grand Pre in Puke, are you unharmed? I am fine General, he answered. And Senor Akers? I’m not dead, Akers said. Very well. You are both the Kempers, then? We answered that we were. Very well, said Grand Pre again. If I give you your men, will you leave here and not return to this country? Hell no! cried Kemper, voice cracking. There came cheers from the Cannibals, who could hear and were listening to our treaty. No! We’re here to whip your asses to the last! We’ve got the saction of the United Sates to claim this territory outright! But out of honor we’ll give you your men back and you give us ours! What you say is impossible, you know. Grand Pre cut a figure in the lamp light, holding to the hilt of his saber with both hands, tall above his ducking troops. Then you’ll see your men die before your eyes, said Kemper. I was standing there behind Akers and it welled up in me that I had to say something. And it won’t be pretty when we do! I cried. Grand Pre bent to talk to one of his boys, had to brush aside the tip of his bayonet to do so. They whispered to each other for a moment, then the great Puke turned to us. We will trade with you for the prisoners, he said. But I must say again that if you attack us you will be killed. If you are captured you will be hung. You are nothing more than common criminals, regardless of what your countrymen say. Fine, said Kemper. Send them out and we’ll turn these two loose. Grand Pre dispatched a man to go around to the main gate and Pintado and Akers, straining at their bonds, both watched him disappear and then return with Silver and Laporte. Brothers! Silver shouted. Thank the Lord you’ve come for me! Laporte said nothing but shrugged off the hand of the Puke that’d been at his shoulder and climbed over the sugar sacks and came towards us, followed soon by Silver, who was skipping he was so happy. When they’d made it half way Kemper let go the rope and Pintado started for his people, straightening his back and striding. He gave one imperious glance back to us, then whipped his head and held it high as he marched to the fort. Akers was tugging the whip like a dog, but I pulled him back close to me and unfastened the chord from his neck, seeing that it was welted red and wide. We’ll see you soon, I said, and shoved him after Pintado, who’d made the sacks and was being embraced by the other Pukes there. When Akers arrived they took him also, and both were brought away. Silver had me by the arms and was shaking me while I

227 wound the whip and slipped it over my shoulder. He was showing me his missing teeth and cussing the Pukes to Heaven. Laporte, more canny, was looking back at them again and again, expecting them, I’d imagine, to fire. We go? he said. But before any could answer, my brother shouted to the Pukes, We’re going to our army a hundred strong! And when we come back it’ll be war! The cannibals were cheering again, mustering all they could, yet I heard their voices waver and break, some coughing and hacking. Spits and rustlings. I prayed one of them wouldn’t fire off a shot to celebrate. None did. Last I looked, Pintado was trying to pull a musket from a Puke soldier, who fought against him to keep it, and he was saying in their tongue that he’d kill us himself. Akers was nowhere to be seen, and neither was the great Puke Grand Pre, who’d wait the whole thing out with guards at the cabildo, though I’d like to think he stayed inside the fort and suffered all the fight in fear with his troops. And so we turned, the four of us, and started back to the copse. Silver was giggling and the Frenchman kept quiet—he may’ve known what was to come. We took this chance, my brother and me, to talk over the plan, which was that I’d take half the boys and ride around the fort in circles, our sweeps to covers Kemper’s bunch who’d come straight at them from here. I jabbered what I’d do and Kemper jabbered back, and we were like madmen in a cell who talk at each other to keep what minds they’ve got. If anything it took your mind off being shot in the back. In the copse the boys were either struggling awake or in a fury of work. White ran forth and took Silver in his arms, bringing the Turpins also and Crabbe, who in his excitement for Silver let the flag drop to the ground and was hugging his legs when Kemper boxed him and said, Pick that flag up, Crabbe. Yes sir, said Crabbe, quickly picking up the pole and shaking the dirt from the flag. Of a sudden we were soldiers, and there were sirs and generals being bandied about and everyone apparently was ranked. It must’ve been what they’d done while we were treating with the Pukes, other than sleeping or vomiting up their whiskey. Someone said, Should’ve made a fire. Cooked some fucking coffee, said another. Aw well, still another said. It don’t matter now a damn. Have a smoke? Laporte went among them asking for a gun and he was given one. We’re gonna fight it now? asked Silver. I said we were and clapped him on the back. Find yourself a gun. There’s plenty. So Silver went and was weaponized, but now both him and Laporte were asking after horses. Was there extras? Could they ride behind somebody? White would take Silver with him, but there was no one for Laporte. You expect me to fight on the ground? said the Frenchman. I do, said Kemper. For twice your freedom you’ll fight on your feet. Shit, said Laporte. I’m supposed to be the infantry, eh? But Kemper had no more time for his bitching and so proceeded to whip the boys into a frenzy. He hollered prayers, he gnashed his teeth. He yelled about his wife and dead son; and though most of the Cannibals had no wives with which to give them sons dead or alive, they were moved, drew their stolen swords or stolen guns, and some even lit fuses their weapons were so old, and went sparking into their saddles; and we all were horsed and someone started up the song:

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O have you heard the news of late, About a mighty king so great? And if you’ve haven’t, then by my pate— The King of the Cannibal Islands! He was so tall, near six-feet-six He has a head like Mister Nick He’s know to’ve cut off fifty dicks— The King of the Cannibal Islands! Then the jabbering name-chorus of the song, and I think the boys were spouting out their fear, for it went on a long time, and the Pukes could’ve shot us down we were such high stupid targets, but they were honorable and waited for us to charge. And a lot of Pukes they swore they’d hang The King of the Cannibal Islands! Together with Kemper riding towards them and the first volley of their muskets popping off as I swept around, leaving my brother, and I lost him for the circle. Sugar dust exploded out and tufts of cotton floated on the air, which had been made sweet above the gun-smoke tang, as we made our lap of the fort. I can’t say how many fell on our first sweep but Crabbe was still alongside me—flag full-blown. I was on my fourth pistol when we passed Kemper and his men again, I threw them down as they were spent, let them fall to the ground where laid Silver and others and a few dead horses. They’d made the battlements and were fighting hand-to-hand in the cloud of smoke and sugar-dust and cotton. I fired now with rifle on the second lap and for rest of the way swung it as a club. Thunking Puke heads as I went, and still Crabbe roade with the flag in his claw, only he was out of shots and the poor sucker made the next lap unarmed. He howled for winning and his horribleness was his only weapon. Dizzying round the point of a turn, seeing Kemper still on his horse, slashing with his knife at the struggling mound of pukes, I saw random fire from ours or Puke I couldn’t tell, and there Laporte was jabbing with a bayonet he must’ve snatched into the sides of whoever came near him. More dead on the ground and some retreating downhill. We rounded the points again and I fired into a clutch of them with my buss. Crabbe yipped. What’d been fourteen of us was maybe eight as we tore back for the third time to Kemper’s side and found charging at us from the outbuildings horsemen with pistols and sabers out. They came between us and Kemper, and when they were close enough they fired and the flag was thrown into my face and the pole whipped me in the teeth. I had to fight to sling it off and threw it to the ground so I could draw my last pistol and bring one horseman down while the blades of other hacked at me and split the leather of my straps. I highed for Kemper, now among but five ahorse. Looking back I saw Crabbe twisted over the side of his saddle, still held tight by those special trappings we’d had made for him in Natchez long ago. His head was mostly gone and his horse rode over our flag. The rest of mine were tangling with the horsemen and I rode to the battlements where Kemper was rearing up and shouting, legs aswarmed with Pukes. And if he hadn’t had the last of his boys around him to take the shots now raining down from the walls of the fort he should’ve been dead. I burned in my hip and waved my arms at him like a dumb thing. Whatever I said, it did him. And he whirled and called retreat with more hate in his voice than I can say. A riderless horse had happened near the sacks and Laporte threw himself atop it and gave it heel, sped out ahead of us back towards the river. I saw White hit from one of the fort shots, thrown down by its force, and then turned to see the horsemen chasing after what was left of mine. I wouldn’t look again, but kept my eyes to my brother’s back as we beat down the hill and ball and all manner of shot flew past my head, and I believe I may’ve passed

229 up some bullets I was going so fast. I thought my horse would die, thought I heard its heart explode, felt it in my calves as we rode along the river with the cheers of the Pukes chasing after us. But cheers was all they sent and we found we had no pursuers, saw the bargeman on the other side of the river, and we knew it’d be too risky to be towed besides. What was left of us, a Turpin, Laporte, some others—no more than seven, and Kemper, rode north along the river until we’d passed out of sight of the town. The horses quit and we had to get down, pulled ourselves into some bushes and lay there awhile wide awake. We weren’t tired anymore, the exhaustion from before the fight had passed, and it was like the new-dead were whispering in all our ears we were so sensitive to any sound. We reloaded what pieces we had and rested. # # # We followed the river fifteen miles until it bent with the Amite, and then we turned with it as our guide. We were on foot, leading the horses. My feet didn’t start to hurt until Port Hudson. At the sound of what we thought were patrols we’d shoot off into the cane-breaks and be hip-deep in swamp, waiting with wet guns to be attacked. Nothing came of it and we’d have to chase down the horses, which were thankfully too whipped to stray far. # # # We hustled to beat daylight, tried to make the line even knowing that we wouldn’t. It was forty miles to Pinckneyville on the Mississippi side, and I knew it. Some of the boys knew as well and were grumbling like Israelites. Kemper didn’t have the heart to play their Moses. He just led. # # # Deep in the Manchac spill and full dawn upon us, revealing our sorry bunch to the world, Laporte took one look around, pulled himself on his horse and said, I said you were crazy. Then he turned and rode east, away from us. Thus began the desertions. Couldn’t blame them and neither I nor Kemper had the gall to make them stop. They peeled off as the sun rose, some going east for New Orleans, the way Laporte had gone, others heading west; and there were even some who kept on northwards but wouldn’t ride with us, going off some distance where for a while we could still see them heading in our same direction. Turpin was among the last and said how he was sorry, something about the soul of his dead brother. How he was too spent for revenge. He was one who rode parallel to us, and it was a sorry comment on us brothers that they couldn’t stand to be close. # # # Back atop our horses, we outrode one patrol and were driven into another that’d garrisoned the road at Barbette. And it was like those days with Preacher-father, wandering to find the river, another pair of awful pilgrims. I felt myself tethered to another man of crazed religion, and mine drifted away like our Cannibals had done. Thompson’s creek brought us to near to our old store and house. And had Kemper intended all along for us to go this way? We approached and found that there was no one living there and so we sat, watching it. When Kemper moved I followed him around the house and we passed the grave of my son, and my brother got down and knelt there and asked forgiveness of the Lord and the child both. Overcome, I joined him on the ground. Kemper rose and I brought my prayers to an end and we mounted again. But before we’d left the place I asked him if he wanted us to burn it. With what? he said. There’s thing in there, I said. My brother looked back at the house, which seemed nothing more than buildings, suddenly not worth even kindling.

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No, he said. Leave it. So we left his house behind and rode one without even the strength to burn. # # # Another nightfall, still no sleep. We’d covered near a hundred miles in the three days of the ride. I thought of the miles, for I couldn’t bear the rest. But my mind did turn to darker things, and I became cruel in my heart. That old worm was back in me and turned, and its heads was the head of all our Cannibals who’d ridden off without another look, and of those who’d looked back at us, and of the ones who were dead. It had claws so maybe wasn’t a worm but something else, and they were like Johnny Crabbe’s and they pinched my insides and held them fast like to wring out my sorry soul. We neared the line and I was a mean thing inside. I wished to tell him then. Tell him what I’d done. Tell my brother it was my dead son. Lord, he was so low. He begged for it with his slumped shoulders and his beaten aspect. Something evil, Satanish, had me wanting to tell him. It struggled at my ruined throat and was like coals upon my mouth. He was so low I felt like I could drive him down into the ground with what I’d say, then step lightly over him on my way to better things. Whether it was cowardice or love, I wouldn’t tell him. I followed my brother, who’d shrunk from his great size into a sagging ball in his saddle, and somewhere in the woods we crossed the line, though we didn’t know it yet. The knowledge only came sure at Pinckneyville, where we fell from our horses and both like wretched Catholics crawled on our hands and knees across the yard and up the steps onto the porch. There were drinkers in the tavern and Aliza came from out the place with some following and found us lying on the boards. She knelt with her husband and searched him for dire wounds, and finding none, she searched me. When she was satisfied we weren’t dying, she had the drinkers gather us up, drag Kemper off to their bedroom. She went after him, cooing and kissing, calling back for the men to set my pallet up in the house, which they did. Some stayed with me awhile and wanted me to tell the story. They’d heard snatches of what we’d been doing and some had even come to join. They waited with their rums and whiskeys and beer, taking sips, offering me some, until I cussed them and rolled over on my stomach on the pallet. They’d leave slowly repairing to the tavern where they’d swill till dawn. Aliza reappeared and as I was too tired to sleep I saw her come from out their room towards me. She was crying over me and she put her hands to her face and got down close, then Aliza rubbed her tears on me, on my eyes, through my hair, with those needlish fingers. She whispered to me that she knew it’d all been out of love. That she loved us both and always would for what we’d done. I couldn’t move nor speak. I was full of rage and full of pity and full of an encroaching need. She said she prayed for me that I’d have a wife soon. She said she knew I needed woman desperately. By the time she finished and got up to leave, her tears had dried on my face and I couldn’t look at her as she went back to their room to hold my brother in her arms. Like meanness the need was awful in me. I lay there on my pallet and watched sunrise burn the windows, heard the drinkers leaving for their homes and wives and children. Lord was I cruel and heaped cruelties upon myself. I shuddered with weeping, never thinking of my poor dead Cannibals but of Red Cate and Thorny Rose and Emily atop me with the sound of grunting pigs. I wanted a woman more than ever in my life. I hurt for them and what they’d bring to me. I asked God why was I cursed so. He didn’t answer, so I dreamed. If I’d not been so battered, I might’ve gone out to find one that same day, some muddy homegirl with the smell of the piney woods on her. Was I not wretched enough? Hadn’t I repaid by now the debts for my misdeeds, given up the name I’d sinned with—hadn’t I been born again?

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There weren’t many times in my life that the Lord didn’t answer me. He’s heeded me in times of trouble and given unto me the Blessed Word. That night and morning dawn was one. Rotten with my thoughts of women, and in my cruelty thought I heard the creaking squeal of their marriage bed to taunt me as I sorrowed for the womb. If Christ said be like a little child, I was; crying for woman, sister, mother, any slip of softness to touch and comfort me. And if God did breathe an answer, I hated to hear it or couldn’t over my squalling. But I would heed him whether I knew it or not. There’d be no true woman or wife for me until I was decrepit. Had I known, maybe it was knowing that gave me the fury for his answer. War, said the Lord, in a great breath like the wind. I didn’t hear it then, I know, but I heard it all the same. And I’d follow it for years. Thank Christ I didn’t know what He meant for me then. I couldn’t have stood what lay ahead. No, I’d think of the women and at last let their ghosts draw me to troubled sleep.

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CHAPTER 8 Israel assaulted

I thought the sound of them was more drinkers come late of a night, but before I could raise up they’d broken down the door and poured into the empty tavern. They were beating me with cudgels and I heard Aliza shriek, out of anger more than fear, a gunshot fired but might’ve been the strikes falling on my head. I tried to hold my arms up and struggle against them, but was beaten down. One held a lamp and I half-saw their faces, four white men and a pair of niggers. They hauled me up and tied a rope around my neck. Gag him, Phesus, said one. A nigger grabbed me and I jerked from him, but the second had me now and they bound my mouth in sassafras root. I smelled it and spit welled in the sides of my mouth as they dragged me from the tavern to the house, wherein Kemper was on his knees, head split open in a gash from their cudgels. A flap of skin drooped over his eye and he was gagging at his own root, surrounded by another clutch of white men and what looked like ten more niggers milling around. My brother tried to look at me from around the shifting legs of the bunch, flung his head back and forth to whip the flesh from his eye. He screamed at me but it was all just groans. Looks like you knocked the bark from the tree, Bomer, said the man with the lantern. Bomer held Kemper’s rope and smiled. He was a short man, and fat. It’s easy, he said. These boys wasn’t so tough. Aliza shrieked again, called them pieces of shit. Shut that bitch up before I shoot her, said the man with the lantern. Kemper struggled to his feet and threw himself at whoever was closest, but was thrashed back down. They all laughed as they beat him, and even the niggers joined in, leaving me with the man with the lantern. The niggers carried lengths of cane and when my brother rose again they whipped his legs until he fell for the last time. My breath was roaring in my ears and I was drooling bloody spit onto the floor. Kemper lay motionless. Aliza made no more noise. The man with the lantern saw me spit and said, Hellfire, they’re helpless as babes. He bent to look at me, then Kemper. You’ve ruined the Spanish country! And now we’re bringing you back! On my knees, the world spun about me and I was bereft of God at that moment. But I didn’t curse Him. We’d been two weeks since the fight and only just recovered. I hadn’t said much to Kemper since the night we’d returned, but I screamed now against my gag for him to hear a word. He just lay there and the root-smell burned my eyes and I vomited on my knees. I choked on some and the man with the lantern whapped his hand against my back, saying, Get it out, now. Get it out. You got a long way back to Feliciana. His name was Horton, and it might’ve been that I sold him some bad seed or whiskey, or plow-line that broke. Whatever it was, kneeling and heaving to breathe with ribs reaching tines for my lungs, and this bastard slapping then in harder so they stabbed, his face was bent close to mine and I knew him. I had no time to plot or pray, for we were then both hauled up and brought from out the house, into the yard where two horses stood waiting hitched. Horton, never letting go my rope, climbed atop one. The one called Bomer took the other. My brother somehow kept his feet while the nigger dragged him to Bomer and handed off his leash. You boys like running folks, I hear, said Bomer. So let’s see how you like it. Hup! The horses reeled and the four other and their pair of niggers took off with us. I

233 remember that in those first steps I saw Kemper look back at the house, and I did also, but there was no one in the window looking back at us, and soon we’d passed into the road and there was only the jigging lantern and the whoops and calls of our oppressors. I don’t know how Kemper stood, much less ran. But my brother was damn strong and I drew strength from him early in our trials. His skin-flap bobbed and I ran alongside him, seeing in his face more hurt than hate, twitching pain. He blew gouts of blood from his nose and I tried to breathe through mine, but it was badly busted. My mouth still held vomit. My brother hitched in his run and now and again screamed through his gag. I did better to dwell on his pain than my own, and there was the thought of our boyhood and the first great fight that forged our friendship. One of the men on foot came jogging by me, cudgel pumping in his hand, and he skirted towards Kemper and struck his cross the back. Kemper fell and was dragged so far in the road I thought they’d let him die that way, before Horton slowed his horse. Damn it Minor! Wait till we get them there! Minor was a big one, almost Kemper’s height, and he guffawed and huffed in the road over my brother’s tortured form. Then we were running again, and not soon after came a nigger with his length of cane, thinking he’d do the same as the white man. He went to pass me and I could see his grinning teeth. I never hated a nigger so much in all my life. I kicked him in the knee and he fell in the road and all the men, even the other niggers, laughed. We had to stop again to wait for the one I’d kicked to get back up, and while we waited Horton caught me on the neck with his cudgel and I fell. Even our Lord Jesus Christ in his agony did break. He screamed to His Father, asking why he’d been forsaken. So did I on our run, harried before those rotten Mississippi shits. I howled to the Lord and choked on the root. And when I could howl no more for want of breath I chewed the bonds at my mouth. I know I left some teeth in it before the end. I faded over to Kemper and gave him my shoulder to lean on as we ran. And it was that my kindness was jeered by the riders and the running men. Our feet were bare and the stones in the road cut them and took the nails from our toes. # # # They ran us that way for some miles, and even in my delirium I knew we were still in the Mississippi, for we passed the house of Dr. Towle, who was at that moment riding through his gate, likely fresh back from a late-night errand. The doctor who’d birthed my dead shame looked at us and our attendants and though I tried to slow for him to see my face, gave him a look of pleading as we passed, the cane at my back hurried me on and we left the doctor in his gateway. We were driven through cotton fields and to the very steps of a plantation on the Tunica trace. This was Horton’s, and there we halted and all were treated for an hour or so to his hospitality. Horton lorded and they drank wine from stemmed cups. Some of the runners were as tired as us and were spitting streams of wine even as they poured it down their throats. We lay on our backs in the dirt and the niggers danced around us, kicking up clouds and singing. Horton had to persuade them with drink to stay when we were hauled again to our feet and set out down the trace again, they so wanted to follow us and keep up their sport. The one I’d tripped spit at me as I was led past him and his fellows. I didn’t care anymore. Nigger spit was nothing, for ahead lay the trace and the line of demarcation. # # # It was just before sunlight when we crossed the line, and the bastards knew exactly where it was, must’ve scouted it before, as they spoke of it and cheered when they supposed we’d passed into Puke territory. And not fifty yards in we were received by a man in the uniform of Puke militia,

234 who only upon approaching close and in the light of Horton’s lantern did I see was Akers. Horton got down off his horse and made a formal handover of me to the man, saying, Captain Akers, I have your Kempers. Akers looked like he’d been waiting on them awhile, cricked his neck and took my rope, staring me gravely down. Bromer brought Kemper forward but kept ahold to his line. He’d ride on with us to the river, though Horton departed then, saying he had to fetch back after his niggers and make sure they hadn’t wrecked the place. It’s been a night, eh, Abe! Bromer said. Yes indeed, said Horton, riding off. I’ll see you all tomorrow night! But not you Kempers, you’ll be halfway to Cuba by then! He kept hollering goodnight and insults till he was out of earshot. I was burning and Akers was holding the rope at arm’s-length like he couldn’t stand me close. Like my wickedness would rub off on him. My brother was on the ground again and suddenly Akers strode over to him and swifted him a kick to his back. But my brother didn’t fall this time and I saw his blood- filled eyes burning at the alcalde. Akers sniffed and flourished both our ropes, and prancing in a circle of us he talked. Look at this, he said. The great Kempers who thought they could start an uprising. Thought they could burn my house and assault my wife, attack my friends and neighbors. Look at you now. And do you know where you’re going? To the mines! To Cuba and the mines, my friends! God, I wish I could see you all the way, but there’s only so much pleasure, I suppose, on night can bring. Now get up and let’s see you run, eh? I’m going to run you just the way you did me. And with that he tossed my rope to Bomer, keeping Kemper for himself, and we were off again. The hills and rolls of the trace wore my legs to stumps, and my bloody feet were loose sacks of bone. I watched my brother totter and regain his feet again and again, wondering if there was much more we could take. I cursed God for giving this man his revenge before we’d got ours. I bit and ground my teeth into the sassafras root and I felt its bonds split. But I held it fast and kept on gagging with it all the way to the Tunica landing. A man called Kneeland met us there with four pirogues, and the runners piled tired into the boats and shoved off into the swell, and us after them, loaded into the bottom of the boat and thrown over with a tarp. Akers climbed in at the head of it, and Bomer waded out into the water and nearly toppled us pulling himself aboard. He sat in the center and jammed his feet between us. The cold water of the Mississippi had poured over the pirgoue’s lip and wet our faces. I sucked at it some and heard my brother do the same, then the sound of the last boat taking to the river, and we drifted waiting for it to take the lead. Sweltering under the tarp, muddy water at my lips, and now that I could talk I wanted badly to say something to my brother. But I kept quiet and bit down on the root. All that followed was the sound of paddles dip and slapping, and when we hit the current at the river’s heart, the low roar of the water through the belly of the boat and in my aching head. Kemper gasped around his root and I hurt for him, thinking of our time on the river with Finch and how far we’d come only to end up like this. Akers was still talking of the mines and Bromer, for his part, with every stroke of paddle kicked Kemper with the toes of his boots and me with the heel. He kept his jabs up all down the twisting river, and so we were on our way as captives bound for Babylon.

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CHAPTER 9 Israel delivered

Our boat rocked and leaned and was caught now and again in currents that spun us round in circles till Bromer beat the water enough to right the thing. Mostly we drifted, let the river pull us down. I don’t know if my brother slept, but he’d stopped groaning and I could feel his breath against my face there in the dark beneath the flag his wife had stitched for us. My life wound out before me as the river, and I felt it rushing under my cheek, and its taste was blood and muddy water and the spice of the root now pulped from all my grinding. I sucked what was left of the root like the coals of old, knowing this too was punishment. Preacher-father didn’t come to me, nor Morrel, not anyone I’d known. There were no visions, only the river and the heels of that bastard Bromer digging into my gut. For a while I thought to lay there still and silent, gathering strength, then I’d nudged my brother awake and whisper something to him that they wouldn’t hear, and we’d fling the flag and tarping off us and have them by the throats. Strangle them in the moonlight and send their corpses floating down to Baton Rouge. But I knew they’d hear me even over the river, and I knew Kemper had no strength to gather and neither did I. We were hopeless whipped. The weeks since the ride had passed shadowy, we seldom spoke and Aliza tended us both. We said nothing of the ride or the Cannibals. I tried not to let on that I was still beat, but I know I cut a haggard figure slouching through the house and tavern. My dreams of women faded and I was beginning to feel I couldn’t stand the sight of the pair of them anymore. Husband and wife went about their day-to-days and I was a lonesome thing suffering their love, which only seemed to’ve grown since our defeat. Aliza brought liquor and steaming plates of food, brought him paper and ink for the letters and proclamations he still composed; she’d go out into the yard and wait for a hawk to light upon a fencepost and she’d shoot it, then pluck its feathers for his quills; she talked of Natchez and returning and my brother would say nothing against it. Just scribbled away You should go, I told him one day. There’s nothing left here. He said that wasn’t true. We tried, I said. We tried, brother, and we lost. They’ll come back, he said. If we just wait pretty soon all the boys will be back. They’re dead, God damn it. Everybody’s dead and we’ve got nothing to show for it. We were alone in the tavern, afternoon, both of us hunched over coonboxes we cradled delicately in our hands. Kemper’s were cut up from the sword-blades and bayonets of the pukes, and mine were busted all over from the snapping locks of my guns. We’d only just begun to scar. And all those scars were opened and bled fresh in the bottom of the boat, soaked through our flag. I imagined our blood pooling, mixing with the riverwater. And we had new ones now that wept fresh, our scored and battered feet, our faces lumped and aching. Akers told our story in his way to Bromer, and the fat man laughed when he finished the siege of the fort. God are you boys stupid, he said, kicking. I knew it and mister Horton knew you were trash, but damn if we thought yall were stupid to boot. They’re evil is what they are, said Akers. Did you see his wife? O the bitch wouldn’t quit yowling, said Bromer. I had to go in there and shut her up myself. Did she have a child with her?

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No child that I saw. You boys got children? He kicked us both and Kemper gasped and gagged some cusses. No, said Bromer. I don’t imagine they do. It’s what you deserve, Akers said. And there’s more coming. I tried to tell the Colonel to hang you, but he says the mines are best. Pity. You think it’s hot down here, Bromer said, just wait till you’re in Cuba. I hear it’s wretched. O an awful, awful place for sure. Bromer and Akers went on that way for a time, and I tried to drown their voices out by biting down hard as I could and singing hymns in my mind. Lay by the river Jordan and wept. Weep Israel weep. The pirogue swun in the current and we’d rounded another bend. Damn shoals, said Bromer. We’re not far, said Akers. I have been wanting to see Baton Rouge and the Spanish girls. Will they have a fiesta for us? I don’t believe, said Akers. There’s not that many Spanish to speak of. These two attacked Anglo-Saxons. What’s that? That’s what you are, mister Bromer. You are Anglo-Saxon, I am Anglo-Saxon, and even these Kempers here may be Anglo-Saxon. Though I’d wager they’re more than a touch Scotch, maybe even German. Lord, said Bromer, it’s a lot of people in the world. You did say there wasn’t a child there? No child, captain sir. At least we didn’t see any. And there was enough of us to’ve found one if it was hid. Akers was quiet for a moment. He sighed like a rich man does when he’s thinking. Yes, he said. It’s what you deserve. What’s it they deserved? # # # The two of them went quiet after Akers explained to him just what we scoundrels did deserve. The men in the other boats were chatting and throwing dice against the sides of their pirogues and I imagined them fighting over things of ours. We sloped and jigged in the water and there came the voice of Kneeland far afront calling them to hush. From the other boats came shits and damns all whispered. What is it, said Bromer, that light? Put your feet on them and shut up, Akers said. Hold them down and paddle. I was sucking at my root and by then I’d nursed it of all taste. It was but mush in my mouth. Kemper stirred a little under Bromer’s boot, one of which was in my side and pressing to my busted ribbage. The river rushed against my cheek and I was Christ with the spear in me. Who goes? cried a voice from the bank. And I wasn’t Jesus anymore, unless He tore the spikes from His hands and feet and stepped down raging off the cross. I put my palms to the belly of the boat and flung myself up from under Bromer’s boot, sent him toppling backwards, and I threw off the flag and tarp and suddenly I was in the clean air, spit the sassafras root out into it and past Akers with his shotgun trained on me I saw the light on the western bank of the river and hollered, It’s Sam Kemper they’re taking to the mines! Americans! Come get us!

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But Bromer had regained and had me by the arms and Akers popped the gun-barrel into my belly. Kemper was on his heels, squatting to raise up. I saw the soldiers on the bank by their campfire. There were boats lined up below them in the grass. Akers hit me again and I didn’t see the soldiers for I fell again to the boat. Paddle, damn it! Paddle! Shit! Hellfire! These were the shouts of the other men and they beat hard at the water, cussing, and it was that I heard the Americans’ boats taking to the water and their own paddles slapping fast. The river swole and whorled and I only gasped in the fresh air for a moment before I buried what teeth I had left in Bromer’s leg. I had him just above the boot and I chewed at his knee and felt the cap slip and he was beating me with his oar when I heard the first shot fired. I couldn’t tell whether it’d come from captors or pursuers, but it was followed by another and a voice I knew. This is Lieutenant James Wilson, U.S.A.! Throw your lines or we’ll fire again! I tore the fat man’s knee and he’d given up beating me and was stretched back howling. Kemper behind me was laughing through his gag. I’ll shoot you, said Akers. I’ll shoot you. I brought my face up from the howling Bromer and saw Wilson’s boats coming nearer. The Lieutenant stood at the stern of one with his boot propped and a rifle pointed. I turned back to my brother who was sitting up, our flag wrapped around his shoulders, choking he was laughing so hard, and behind him Akers held his shotgun trembling. Shoot us then you son of a bitch. Now I’m more than glad to die. Akers’ face was pure terror. I begged him to pull the trigger. Said I’d haunt his ass for the rest of his life. Tears were streaming down my brother’s face and he stretched a smile around his gag. # # # I was still spitting root and knee-meat alike when Lieutenant Wilson’s boat pulled alongside. His paddlers were Creeks, and they could’ve caught rest going upriver. I saw their dark faces and their leathers going by as they swung to other boats around and steered the rest of our captors toward the bank. Wilson had Akers toss him the line, which he did, still holding his shotgun. And put that damn gun down, said Wilson, catching hold to the rope. And if you aim it again on an officer of the United States of America I’ll have you hung tonight. Devils, said Akers. Bromer had set up and was bemoaning his knee while Wilson towed us to the bank. It was just above Pointe Coupee and we landed in spill of honeysuckle. I recall the sweetness growing on the air as we banked and one of Wilson’s boys got down into the water and hauled both boats in. I took my brother by the arm and we went over the side and were struggling in the water, sinking and bobbing, and we splashed like it was Baptism until another soldier dragged us onto land. This same soldier had a knife and cut the bonds from my brother’s mouth. All around us other boats were emptied of their riders into the drink and brought ashore. There were maybe ten soldiers and four Creek paddlers, and they wrangled our captors into a huddled soaking group sitting with their hands over their heads. Kemper took my hand and worked his jaw loose. Fuck all, he said. Shit in Heaven. The blood in his eyes had dried and he opened and shut them, looking all about. I held tight to his hand and smiled bloody myself.

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Lieutenant Wilson stood at the river’s edge, where Akers and Bromer apparently were refusing to leave their boat. Wilson whistled and two of the Creeks came running, dove into the water, and dragged them both down. They slung our captors on the bank and the Lieutenant himself took them by their collars and led them over to their fellows. Privates, said Wilson, build us up a fire. I don’t want these men to’ve survived all that and die of chill. Some soldiers scattered off into the woods and came back with kindling and pinestraw, and they piled it behind us and one knelt before it and was lighting matches while another brought his musket over and clicked the flint so that it sparked. And soon the fire took and we sat before it, the Lieutenant having left us to go and interrogate his prisoners, watching the creeks draw the stems from the honeysuckle flowers and suck them. A soldier brought us water in a cask and corncakes. I broke mine and ate half and nipped the water. Kemper drank deep but wouldn’t eat. You know a Doctor Towles? Asked one soldier. Yes, said Kemper. Well he’s the one who must’ve seen you. This little fellow rode thirty damn miles to find the Lieutenant. We’ve been hunting you all night. Thank God, I said. I’d imagine, said the soldier. Hell, these silly asses even went and grabbed some other man and his wife, and when they realized it wasn’t you they left them just at the line without even a horse. I looked up the bank at Akers and the rest. The Lieutenant had let them take their hands down from their heads and they were sitting and, I hoped, shivering. I soaked in the fire. We’ll probably have to move soon, said the soldier. The Lieutenenat doesn’t want us out where just any Spanish can see us. But don’t worry, we won’t move you far. We know you’re tired after all that. That’s fine, said Kemper. Maybe get you a doctor here soon, the soldier went on. You two look pretty busted. I know I need one, I said. Think my ribs are broken. I want to kiss that doctor, Kemper said. Well, said the soldier, take a rest till he says we got to leave. It’s all over now. My brother was looking at the Lieutenant and his prisoners. Wilson was going about establishing who was citizens of what country. Kemper worked his jaw again and it hung slack as he licked his teeth, never taking his eyes from the group. Yes it is, he said. It’s finished.

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CHAPTER 10 Vengeance

The judge sat behind a wide table piled with papers, flat-knife as a paperweight; scrivener at his side scribbling down his words, spilling ink in splotches the size of human eyes as he took down the verdicts. And I looked to my brother whose eyes had lately become just as dark and shining. They weren’t fixed on anything in particular, not the judge, whose name was Willard Rodney, not alcalde Akers, not fat Bromer, nor even Kneeland and the others of the bunch now gathered in the courtroom in the town of Washington, where we’d been brought by the Wilson’s troop after days of travelling up the river. Indeed my brother’s eyes flicked and flitted to each and all, passing his own judgments down in silence. If we’d have known that telling the truth meant the ones who hadn’t crossed the line would be released, we would’ve lied. Akers and Kneeland, as citizens of the Spanish country, and not having crossed into American territory, were to be released and remanded under military guard back to where they’d come from. I banged my fist on the judge’s table, shook his papers, spilled more ink, and Lieutenant Wilson had to grab ahold of me to calm me down. Come now, Sam, he said, gripping tighter when I struggled. They’re no more trouble to you. Then he whispered in my ear, We’ll have their country soon enough. It’s not the God damn country! I hollered. Kemper meanwhile stayed quiet, and his eyes kept on flickering. I slacked and quit my struggling when I saw Akers was smiling. So Judge Rodney went on reading his verdicts. As for Bromer and the others, who were Americans and had crossed the line, they were to be kept in custody pending jury trial. There you are, said Wilson. The judge lifted his face from his papers and looked once to the charged, then to me and Kemper. Let me add, he said. For both misters Kemper, you tell me you’re preachers so I’ll give you this verse from the apostle Paul to the Romans: Do not be hasty to revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. The accused were led out of the courtroom by Wilson’s soldiers, and I followed with my brother after them. Wilson remained behind with the judge, discussing the matter of transporting Akers and Kneeland. Those two were being loaded into a wagon when we came from out the courthouse. The others, with Bromer at the head, sat on the steps, watching us. None said a word and it was a damnable silence in the street, a gathering of the finer people of the town in their suits and dresses. Our own clothes were gifted from among them, for we’d been received there as heroes. A few of the men came to greet us and asked after the verdict; behind them their wives waved handkerchiefs and smiled. Kemper shook the men’s hands and waved to their wives. Misses Chaw, Misses Ransom, he said, waving. Yes, it’s a fine day. Yes indeed mister Chaw. Judge Rodney’s a good man, said Chaw. Like I told you, he’d be fair and firm. He even gave us a Bible verse, I said, looking to Bromer and the others. It was on the quality of vengeance. O, Judge Rodney’s deacon of the church, didn’t you know. Fine man. Very fine, said Kemper.

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We’d spent the past week being received in the finest houses of the town. Each family had a father in a frilled shirt and a mother, prim and proper, and not a house we passed into didn’t have a doctor waiting to mull over our wounds and second-guess the stich-work of the one who’d come before him. The nabobs must’ve cleared the territory of physicians. So we were always taking off our shirts and the boots we’d been given, holding out our hands and hearing ladies gasp over our wounds while we were dabbed over and again from head to foot with chemicals and our bandages rewound fresh before a day’s-worth of blood or pus had even soaked them. Children were bade to cover their eyes, and the good people of the houses would pick lightly at their food when we’d come to table after. No doubt the sight of our nail-less feet and welted sides or gashed heads sank their appetites. Ours, though, were healthy. And we ate whatever their niggers laid before us, stabbing hunks of bleeding steak and sawing with our knives. So concerned were the good people for us that one lady even tried to snatch a knife from my brother’s hand that she thought was cutting dull. No worries, ma’m, my brother had said, and went back to hewing at his beef, tearing it with the blade more than cutting. Later that same night, once we’d retired upstairs, bellies full of beef and brandy, my brother had taken off his coat and when he tossed it to the floor I heard it thud. He laid himself down in the bed and I went over to search his coat, finding in the front pocket the very same knife. I’d tested my thumb on the blade and found it was quite dull. Asked him why he took it, for we’d been given God knows how many fine knives as presents. My brother wouldn’t say a thing. I wore one of those gifted knives in my gifted belt, and a Bible bound in silver plates, given me by the Chaws set at my breast. Standing in the street, watching Akers and Kneeland waiting for their guards to lash the horses, I thought of climbing up the wagon and stabbing them to death. Or that I’d turn on Bomer and cut out his tongue. I held my hand to the silver-plated Bible and asked for guidance. Kemper was still pressing palms and smiling. It’s so good to hear that you wife’s well, Rueben, said Chaw. Especially after a terrible ordeal like that, said the misses, who’d come closer. I know, said Kemper. But I’m missing her. Well, said misses Chaw, you’ll see her soon. Then the nabobs were n a flurry, for Judge Rodney had stepped out his courthouse and was coming down the steps towards us. He’d taken off his wig but still wore the robe, and it fluttered behind him and trailed in a black puddle on the steps. Judge Rodney passed the American prisoners and right past us he turned and went to the front of the wagon, regarding it. The soldiers had the horses bit and the enterprise seemed about to get underway, they hailed the judge and went about their remaining work. And I thought the judge might head off down the street to his house, but instead he reached out his hand and fingered the whip which hung from the sideboard at the front of the wagon. He ran his fingers over the leather, traced the circle of its loop. He cast his head over his shoulder and looked to us. His hand was on the whip. I thought all preachers knew the Bible back and forth, he said and, drawing the whip from its nail, tossed it to Kemper. My brother nearly knocked the lady down for grabbing. And when he had the whip he held it close, awaiting the next words of the judge. Not these two, he said, pointing to the pair in the wagon. I can’t have harm come to foreign nationals in a situation like this. But these here are yours.

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Praise the Lord, said Kemper. Thank you judge, I said. Now, said Judge Rodney, I’ll only tolerate this if I preside over it here and now. The way I see it, it’s better you punish them now rather than have their murder on your hands later. Yes sir, I said. You’re right. I had Kemper by the sleeve and was shaking him. He nodded in deference to the judge and turned towards Bromer and the rest, who were now shifting and shaking on the steps, Lieutenant Wilson leaning over them, saying, See now, men. Buck up. It won’t take long. But it would. Kemper took Bromer by his shirt and brought him to the back of the wagon, there he tore the shirt from him, then he called for rope and had the man’s hands bound to the axel. God almighty I’m sorry, said Bromer, blubbering. I’ll go to prison. I’m sorry we did it. It’s that mother Horton who bribed us into it. That’s right! one shouted fearful from the steps. It’s Horton’s fault what happened! Christ, he paid us! I was chewing my lip I was so happy. I moved the ladies and the gentlemen nabobs back a ways so that they wouldn’t catch any whip or blood. Kemper had put his free hand to Bromer’s back and leaned in close to say, What follows is for me. Then he stepped back and raised him arm and Bromer whimpered before the first stroke even fell. Bromer shrieked and howled and his flesh welted and split wide, grew netted with lash- marks. Akers and Kneeland in the wagon pulled their coats up over their faces for the slung blood. Above the screams Kemper counted off the strokes, I’d imagine for the benefit of the judge and others. By the fortieth he had to rest, but when I went to take the whip from him he shrugged away, panting. You’ll get your turn, my brother said. I had to duck for the next whip-fall. Bromer passed out before the first hundred. He lay with his arms tugged straight and his back shredded abred to the darkening sky. The Chaws had left for dinner, and presently one of the soldiers brought water and poured in over Bromer’s head. When Kemper was finished he gave me the whip. Now these are for my brother, he said. The Bible whammed like a second heartbeat in my coat-pocket as I swung. Somewhere after fifty I lost count. By then a soldier was standing by to check Bromer’s pulse and make sure he was alive. I stood there with the sopping whip and watched him till he nodded, yet I still waited for the number to come right in my mind. You’re on sixty-six, said Judge Rodney. I had to switch arms to swing, and soon both were sore and tired and my last strokes fell with sundown and were weak. I was just slapping him with it. My brother took the rope from me, waited the soldier, who said, He’s barely breathing. Kemper shooed him with the end of the whip. Next is for my wife, he said. The hair had been taken mid-way up Bromer’s scalp, tufts of it were stuck to the end of the whip, and his neck below was tattered and even his shoulders and arms and down to his ass. You could see his muscle and the white of his fat, all of it rising and sagging with faint breaths. Akers and Kneeland had pulled their coats back down and were watching, horrified. The soldiers untied him when Aliza’s strokes were through, Bromer yelping when they tried to take him by the shoulders. And it was that they had to pull him by his hands, over to the feet of the others,

242 where they laid him out. The judge said we’d better have a doctor present, and one was sent for. Before the doctor could come I had the next man brought to the wagon and bound his hands with the same rope. He recoiled from the blood and it was hard to make a knot it was so slickened and soaked. What’s your name? I said, tying. Henry, said the man. Not so many on this one, Samuel, said the judge. Yes sir, I said, and then to the new-bound man, Well, Henry, here it comes. I could only give him twenty-five, and this was decided upon as the number for the lesser. My arm hurt but I was filled with the strength of the Lord and kept on when it was my turn. Kemper and I would trade off with the remaining four, but the last three we had to tie to the courthouse fence for Wilson had the soldiers readied and they’d set out for the line, leaving us the whip. Wiping sweat and blood from our faces with bloody sweaty hands, we watched the wagon churn into motion and rattle off down the street. We’d drenched our new clothes and the houses roundabout had lit lamps and candles in their windows and the people within were watching. Lieutenant Wilson had remained, saying he’d go to meet them with a detachment later in the week. He put a hand to Kemper’s shoulder, looked to the row of men on their bellies, the shredded backs. Why don’t we go on to dinner, he said. The Murdocks gave me an invitation and I hear it’s a fine house. My brother had the whip in both hands and was only ten strokes into the current man. He wrung it out, dripping dark droplets between his feet. No, he said. We’ll go when we’re through. It’s late and I do miss my wife. # # # We met the wagon not far from town. Our horses were fresh and all our tack was new. The soldiers knew us and our bloody clothes bespoke our purpose. Riding alongside, my horse spitting froth in the face of a soldier on foot, we asked them to stop and they did. Akers protested, shouted names and places, as the wagon came to a rest. The one called Kneeland wouldn’t speak, but held his head in his hands. The soldiers lit pipes and stood in a group, those who marched sat down and none lifted a finger or said a word for what followed. We did the same to Akers as we’d done to fat Bromer, except that we both screamed at him and taunted him while we whipped and he wept, and that after Aliza’s hundred Kemper got down on his knees beside the alcalde, reached into his coat pocket, and withdrew the knife. It was the dull one, and suddenly I understood. My brother moved mysterious in the paths of God, but with purpose. He shook the blade in Akers’ face and took him by the hair with him screaming, No! No! No! No! but my brother only sang it back to him as he wrenched Akers’ hair tight in his fist and sawed his right ear off with the dull knife. Akers’ voice sounded like he was underwater after the first ear fell. I gathered it up and showed it to him while Kemper cut the other off. And he was only mouthing words now, lips stretched and gumming the air like a crying child We cast him aside and Akers curled into a shivering ball in the road. Kemper held both his ears in the palm of his hand, weighing them, for a moment. Then he pocketed them along with the knife. God damn, said one soldier. Kemper patted his pocket and said, This is good. This is right. Kneeland had already scrambled from the wagon and running down the road toward the

243 laughing soldiers, who spread out their arms and caught him. I had Kneeland by the arm and he fought against me so hard I had to hit him. You don’t even know me, he said, trying to dig his heels into the road. You don’t even know me! You didn’t know us either, I said, and brought him kicking and screaming to Kemper and the whip. # # # Over the course of our return to Pinckneyville the story had spread so that when we came to Horton’s house we found the man gone, only his wife and children and their slaves. The wife quaked in her nightclothes and cried and Kemper took his rifle by the barrel and swung the stock across her face. She collapsed with her teeth tinkling to the floorboards before the eyes of her screaming children. We’d come quiet to the house and despite the children’s noise when we slipped out the back we found the outbuildings silent also. The slave huts stood in a row of four and the sleepers within never heard us come with the oil and the torches we’d fashioned from chair legs. There was only one door to each hut and no windows. We found barrels and boards and we’d barred the first two doors and poured oil round the huts, but some of the niggers had awakened and were shouting to their fellows down the way, who came running out. And we pitched our torches to the first two huts and they erupted in a blaze of thatch and scrapwood. We came from the flames two devils in the firelight and Kemper caught a nigger man and shot him through the head, I went to a knee and fired my rifle at another far afield. He dropped and all around us now were the wives and welps and we’d been given enough guns to dispatch them also, even if I had to throw my knife into the back of the last child. When this was finished, we turned from the scene and walked towards the blaze and the sound of the roasted mid the roaring of the flames was so glorious I threw my arm around my brother’s shoulders and we strode past the scene singing. A boy of maybe fourteen rushed at us from round the front of the house with a rifle in his hands, hollering about his mum and daddy. Kemper lunged for him and the gun misfired. He struck the gun from boy’s hands with his own rifle and beat him to death with the butt of it. This last act seemed to shake my brother some, though I can say I didn’t mind. And when we arrived at the tavern and his wife came running out to meet him, pressing her bruised face to his, crying that we were home, he said not a word but only held her tight with the rifle as a pinion at her back. She slipped loose of him and flung her arms about my neck and hugged me also, then pulled us all together and was snorting and snot-blown, making us promise not to ever leave her again. My brother said he’d never leave and he’d give her more children and he bragged on them yet unconceived. He fished Akers’ ears from out his pocket, now wrinkled and black, and gave them to her. I don’t believe I spoke, but held her thin, sharp back and my brother’s broad and wide, thinking Aliza must’ve known his answer was a lie. # # # It was a shame we’d killed the boy, for with him dead we’d never get our chance. We’d later hear it’d been him who’d carried food and water to his father in hiding, and he was the only one who knew his true location. Horton had rowed himself out to the middle of the Donegal Swamp, dropped anchor there, and stayed in fear in the murk and vines so long he died of dropsy, never leaving the boat. A year or so afterwards, a pair of hunters found the body and towed it back. They told us as much one night at the tavern, which had grown to overtake the rest of the old house and was nightly full of drinkers, never letting on whether they knew we knew the man.

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The law, whatever existed, let us alone. We were hailed as great Americans. No law would touch such patriots. Smith was rebuked on the floor of the senate, retired to Ohio in disgrace, and John Randolph, Speaker of the House, set out a bill calling us heroes of the Republic. We were sent gifts of weapons and Kemper was answering letters from the capitol, where Randolph had raised an army for to drive the Pukes into the sea. But Jefferson refused him and his army was dispersed before it’d ever marched. A new house had sprung up behind the old for Kemper and Aliza, and down the property I’d built my own. I sat at the table with Kemper and the hunters, my silver Bible out and my fingers drumming upon its face. The hunters eyes admired it, and I felt admirable. Recently I’d fallen in with a woman of the town, a high-voiced Mississippi gal with pitch-tar hair. Sally Fuller was her name and she drank tinctures prepared by the local conjure nigger so she’d never take my seed. She was older than me, but I’d aged some and didn’t mind that her paps hung lowsome. She’d been cursed before with children like I had, said she hated them and her husband every day of her life. That was until the Creeks came and killed them all one night. She’d carried on with them for some years, bore children by a few, which she hated more, and when she’d returned to proper towns she found herself outcast. Her story followed with her and the townsfolk wherever she passed knew that before she made her escape, bloody Sally Fuller had hacked apart her Choctaw husband and their children with a hatchet. And so Sally Fuller fell in with me, for what did I care of anybody’s sins. And it was also that she liked to hear me read the Bible. She’d lay on her back in our bed, breasts pooling at her chest, and listen. Sam, she’d say, you’re voice. Give it. And I believe I was content and would’ve lived my life out with her till she turned harridan and old. I was even happy when Kemper told me Aliza was with child for the second time. Sally had frowned when I told her and uncorked a bottle of tincture. My mind was on the rot of her insides and what verses I’d read her that night even as the hunters spoke. Kemper was enraptured by their story, egging them on, and I was soon drawn away from my poisoned woman and to the fitting glory of Horton’s death. Those were happy days—Aliza and Sally sometime barmaids, tending liquor with the jar of foreskins behind them on the mantelpiece, Akers’ ears floating out of place among them, the rides with Kemper once or twice a month to terrorize Puke garrisons, and the occasional trip up to Natchez with our women, where the whores at the Church would eye me strange, wondering no doubt why one as lovely as me had fallen in with such a hard-bit woman. We made the hunters’ drinks free and they carried on to say that the Choctaws and the escaped niggers who lived on the shore of the swamp had known about the crazed, dying white man for weeks, and for months after he’d died they’d avoided the anchored boat which held his corpse, worshipped it as a sign of sorts. The hunters said they prayed to the dead white man in the boat, but also to whatever thing had driven him out there, which Indian and nigger alike thought must be a great and terrible spirit.

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CHAPTER 11 The end of five years’ waiting

I had the rope around the bawling Puke soldier’s neck, the tail already slung over the limb of an oak and Kemper holding to that end. Three others were already dangling on either side of the remaining Puke, and he joined them when Kemper hoisted. The toes of his boots struck me in the face and I batted them away with the hard shell of my Bible, which I’d taken out to read some verses over the night’s work. Kemper cinched the end to the trunk of the oak and came to where I was standing, watching with me the Puke’s struggles and kicks. He was in a fine mood and his letter-writing had lately resumed with a vengeance. My brother corresponded now with half of Feliciana and the district of Baton Rouge. New people had moved into the country before the Pukes closed off all immigration in early ’10. And the fresh West Florideans were planters same as the ones who’d betrayed us, but their stripe, said Kemper, was more similar to ours. He’d grown a beard, kept trimmed by Aliza, redder even than the hair on his head. He stroked it while we watched the dying Puke. They say they’ve even drafted up a constitution, said my brother. Tell them to send you a copy, I said. They’ve got a whole government planned. A president and congress and everything. They’ll legislate the Pukes out, then. Come on, Sam, said my brother. You know better than that. He was right, though the revolutionaries had gone through proper channels first, sending missive after missive to Grandpre in Baton Rouge outlining their grievances. The great Puke’s answer had the planters all enraged, and the new-blood was fiery enough to convince some of the old they’d need to fight. A week had passed since the revolutionaries sent emissaries to talk with us at the tavern. You think they’ll really fight? I said to Kemper. Like they said, they got that man Thomas up there who’s primed, he said. I heard them, I said. Between us and him, he said, we’ll have them ready. I just don’t know. What’s the matter with you? my brother said. You quitting on me? The Puke’s legs had stopped kicking and he twitched for a few seconds and then swung pendulum-like from the tree and knocked against his dead friends like chimes. You could smell that he’d filled his pants and we turned to survey the Cannibals at the take. I said, How the Hell could you say a thing like that? Then how the Hell can you doubt me? said my brother. We’d surprised the Pukes in camp at the ford of Thompson’s Creek, a few miles below the line. Their forces were thinning and had been for years. No more garrisons or troops sent up from Pensacola and Mobile and we had free reign of the military road they’d carved out. The fortunes of the Pukes had waned and we were like the gnats and flies at the corpse of them. These few had been guarding a shipment of provisions, which presently our boys were pawing at and cussing for its a lack of guns or money. Of our original Cannibals all that remained was Lem Turpin, who’d come crawling back to us two years to the day after the anniversary of our ride, saying how he was sorry he hadn’t been there on the night we were taken and he wished we could forgive him and he needed a way to make money. We obliged him, took him each into our

246 arms, and gave him whiskey till he stopped saying he was sorry. It was Turpin who’d tell the others the story of the ride on Baton Rouge and before. When new ones joined he’d sit them down and they’d listen, but by then there were enough veterans of his stories to tell it fifteen ways and add their own accounts of recent doings. These were mostly men come fresh to Mississippi or they’d been tossed out of New Orleans and were hiding out, looking for a way to support their wicked habits. This second bunch of Cannibals suffered our prayers with reluctance, though a few were devout. On occasion one or two would kneel with me and Kemper before or after our attacks, but none had the spirit of the crew who’d been with us at the cave and dreamed of Israel. Now our raids were infrequent and for nothing; we’d catch a hair once or twice a month or the boys would show up at the tavern telling us they wanted to ride. We went like rich men hunting foxes, we became sporting. We ate well and drank with our Cannibals, greased our hanging ropes with the fat from our frying pans. Any talk of Holy Land had long died, but lately you could see the idea creeping in him again; his words had started carrying their old weight, he stormed about the tavern huffing for the future with the revolutionaries letters in his hands, reading lines aloud. Sally told me one night she thought he’d gone mad. I said she hadn’t seen him mad, told her the story of their courtship. There’s not shit to be had, said Brenner Morgan. Four guns and swords. I won’t be toting no cloth and tack, said Reg Arnold. Damn straight, said Turpin. I looked to my brother and he was deep in thought, like he couldn’t hear any of the pissing and moaning going on. Yes, the Holy Land was on his mind and had a talon-hold of him. I acted like I didn’t care or was suspicious, and part of me was, but there was also that part that burned to win, to have something more than piddling raids and bitching men. Then pick their fucking pockets, I said. There’s a thought, said Arnold. Well, said Morgan, we might as well take the cart. Just unhitch the horses, Turpin said. They’ll sell easier that way. # # # The emissaries had come to the tavern in what they thought was disguise. You could tell by their looks and voices that they thought the clothes they wore were mean, beneath them. They sat unseasy at a table with their back to the door until Kemper and I went over to sit and they fell immediately into their proposition. They were itching for a country and before the month was out, they said, they’d march on Baton Rouge. Kemper was beside himself for the chance, he called behind him for Sally to bring brandy and we toasted their every word. I was eager myself, but I think he would’ve sold his soul to them when they said they had a hundred men. He agreed to everything and we got drunk with them. They’d stay the night at Kemper’s house, no doubt talking with him till he was too drunk on brandy and their words to do much more than nod. But while we sat with them in the tavern I tried to stay sharp. When do you say we head to meet you, I asked them. Leave here the night before the twentieth, said one, swirling his drink. And you’ll come to mister Williams’ house, east of St. Francisville. And mind you don’t raise a bunch of noise on the way, said the other. We want surprise. We’ll be quiet as we can, I said. But it’s hard with twenty men. That’s all you have? The emissary sounded worried. We can get more, Kemper said.

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What about a guide? said one to the other. Will you need someone to bring you to the house? You can meet us on the Tunica, said Kemper, and lead us down from there. Smiling, he raised his glass and they raised theirs. I had mine up and from around it saw Kemper’s daughter standing in the doorway, two years old, wobbling on little feet and watching us. # # # I believe my brother did things out of goodness, thinking them kind, though they hurt me. That daughter who’d been watching us in the tavern, he’d named Emily. And all throughout the house there’d been cries of Emily! Emily! Emily! so that I was constantly reminded of the shame of my youth. And was the new war not unlike the daughter’s name? Did he rush to join the planters’ revolution and take me with him thinking I’d glory in it as he did? Whatever were his reasons, I followed. I’d for years forgot my true name and was Kemper just as much as he. When they made him a general he called me his right hand; and I was, like a part of him engendered of its own life and motion but still somehow connected. But I can’t lay full blame on my brother. It was me. I prayed and listened for the Lord to tell me not to go, from August into September, through our last hanging ride and into the days of waiting. But even if He’d said to stay, I wouldn’t have listened. And His voice was my brother’s and it was full of prospect, saying, Follow me. I was no slave, I wasn’t forced. Happily I rode to their war, eager to escape the home I’d made, Sally’s pale loving and Aliza and her creeping daughter. I owed my brother, and what better way to repay the debt than to strike again our enemies and help him finish what we’d started. # # # Riding back from the hanging, Kemper told them all to stick close to Pinckneyville until he gave the word to move. And I saw worry in their faces, how the stories of our last ride working in them. We rode a ways through the woods, nearing the line, and they were grumbling fear and misgivings. Listen boys, said Turpin finally, as though on cue. They barely beat us when we had just twenty-five, and that was after three days of riding. Damn if they’ll whip us with two-hundred! This bolstered them some and they were bragging as we cut through the brambles and close-grown woods. My brother rode close to me at the head of them, itching at his beard, worrying the hair as if to count the years by it. He pondered. There won’t be two-hundred, I said, quietly. My brother’s eyes flashed and he snatched the leaves from low-hanging limbs, then hissed to me, Don’t you see it’s different? Don’t you see this time we’ll win?

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CHAPTER 12 Departures

Aliza said she’d kill herself, kill the baby in her, if we went. I’ll help, said Sally. I’ll give it to her. Shut up, Sally, I said. We were in the tavern of a morning, and the women had been picking up glasses, wiping them out with rags. Sally was known to drink whatever drops were left in the bottoms of cups as she cleaned, and by the time the trouble started she was lit. I thought my brother was going to strike his wife, for he went striding over to her and raised up his hands above her head but only brought them down around her shoulders, holding her to him. Aliza wriggled and swung her belly till he turned her loose. She put her hands on her hips and menaced him with her bump, aimed it at us both like a gun. You think I’m gonna stand by and watch you go through Hell again? Kemper had his hands out and he looked near to weeping for frustration. God damn it, he said, won’t anybody hear me when I say we’ll win? There’s a hundred men waiting for us down there and the Pukes don’t got shit! In three days I’ll be sending you a letter from Baton Rouge! Shit on your letters, said Aliza. They’re all you care about. You knew it was coming, said my brother. I’ve been telling you. But I’ll bet he knew more, she said, swinging her belly to me. O he knew, said Sally. He told me. Aliza turned on her and whipped her rag. Then why didn’t you tell me you silly bitch! I won’t hear that, Sally said, holding to her cup. I won’t hear that from you. I would’ve slapped them both, knowing for a fact that Kemper had told Aliza everything and she’d known the day was coming. I was more ready than ever to be rid of the pair of them and for the first time, seeing sally frown and swing her breasts around, I hurt for the ride. The whole scene did the job of making me love the war to come. There had to be something better than this, than being guilted by a pair of women till you were ready to tear out your hair. I’d wanted home and now that I had it, I despised it from bed to sagging tit to morning coffee. Kemper’s hands closed into fists and he struck himself a blow to the face. Sally yipped, for she’d never seen him do it, and for that matter neither had I. Aliza glimmered and kept her hands on her hips as he swung twice more, looking at my brother like this was all expected. He’d split his lip and blood began to well there and was welcomed with another fist. I looked around for their daughter, if she’d woken with the commotion and ventured across the yard to see her father and mother like this, ghoulish like they were in the early days of their love. It was a dance they both knew, and both played their parts in it, with Kemper stomping with his punches so that the jar of foreskins shook upon the mantelpiece, rattled against the other glassware, and the blackened ears swirled into view just beside Sally’s cheek. Jesus, Sam, go and stop him! she cried. But I wouldn’t. I let it play out until Aliza finally broke and wedged her belly in between them and had her husband’s knuckles woven with her fingers. She was saying, I won’t keep you. You’re my love and I won’t keep you. Kemper said a prayer, blessed her and pressed his palms to her belly, blessed what was there. Said his son would have his own country.

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Aliza held his hands, said, I want it. They both were rocking back and forth. I’d pulled a chair up and was slouched in it. It was all providence, and there’s not much you can do but ride it out. Sally eyed me expectantly, her face twitching, her long front teeth bared and pressed together. She bobbed her head at me, tossed it at them, never taking her eyes from me. I threw up my hands. The Kempers were singing. Crazy people, said Sally, then she stormed off to the door and let it swing behind her. I could hear her kicking her way back to our house and some of the Cannibals camped out in the yard, who’d been gathering there the past few days, were asking her what was the matter. She snapped at them as she went, left them loudly pondering the woes of women. I was laughing and my brother swung his Aliza round and both’s eyes were upon me. Bloody, loving faces, hers now smeared in places, her dress-front marked with the outline of his hands, my brother’s lips skinned back revealing reddened teeth. His eyes jigged in their sockets, took the whole room in. God, he said, I am blessed. # # # The planters took one look at Kemper and thought we’d been attacked. The ones that met us at the gate of Williams’ plantation, Troy, asked how many had come at us, saying how Shepherd Brown and Stirling had rounded up what militia would go with them as loyalists and were as we speak riding down from Bayou Sara to reinforce the fort. The pair wore matching blue jackets and blue ribbons tied about their hats. Jacket and ribbon were both dusty light, the color of clear sky. My brother told them we hadn’t been attacked and the planters looked bemused. He gave no further explanation, and the planters, whose they said names were Wilkerson and Ruffin, asked no more, but led our horses through the gate, Cannibals following. When the boys had all come in, many dismounting to stare at the great house and its row of high pink columns, the planters exchanged words briefly, quiet, and they must’ve been talking about Kemper’s wounds and placed us as common brawlers. So we might’ve been, but the planters still helped us me and Kemper down from our horses. Wilkerson ran to fetch a nigger to fetch the horses to water and feed, and Ruffin, frail- looking man no more than a whisp, led us to the house, saying how our party was already going and the general did so want to meet the Kempers. The Cannibals followed, led by Turpin, and their voices grew excited when we began to hear the music coming from around the back of the house. Our boys were riled, for the ride had been uneventful and quick. We hadn’t even had to sneak, but came on in a column and there’d appeared no opposition to our progress into Feliciana and down into the region north of Baton Rouge. They kicked their boot-heels and whooped as we were led around the ivy-dripping walls of Troy and into the celebration. Men and women were dancing circles of each other, holding hands at times to spin then letting go. Around the dance in a square long tables had been laid out and niggers stood the length of them, fanning away flies from the heaps of food and the punchbowls, wiping the brows of the eaters who lined the benches. Three men played fiddles and all we saw were similarly clothed in blue. We neared the people and Wilkerson shouted here were the Kempers, and so the people looked up from their plates and cups and hallooed and hurrahed us. The dancers wouldn’t stop but all waved when the call went up from table to table that we’d arrived—those great fighters, those patriots, those men of God, the Kempers. The people stood and some came and shook our hands and the hands of our Cannibals, a

250 blur of fine-shaven faces like I hadn’t seen since those days in Washington. The crowd now aswarm us, handing out cups and spooning punch into them, the rum and watermelon juice spilling over our hands, and in this manner we were brought to one of the tables and made to look at their flag, which hung tacked up to the back of the house fifteen feet wide, more, I thought, than any man could carry on a pole. And if the three kings had waited their lifetimes for the star to show that’d lead them to Christ, there now appeared before us in a field of brightest blue cloth the star we’d so long been waiting to find and follow. That was their flag, the blue sky shot through with a white five-pointed star. What do you think? asked one, slapping my back. I gazed up at the star and said, Glorious. And I wouldn’t have turned from the banner if the planters hadn’t plopped us all down at the benches they’d been sitting in, snapping for the attendant niggers to bring more plates. The Cannibals ate from the ones before them, picked clean the bones of chickens and speared half- eaten potatoes with their knives. I shook the glory off best I could, and clapped my brother on the leg, shaking my head and smiling. But Kemper was looking across the table, where sat a man taller than he, in a military coat, and with an old tri-corner at one great elbow. The deep lines in his face told his age, and the build and aspect of him told you this was their general. Philemon Thomas knitted his fingers and cracked his knuckles before extending both enormous hands out to us, introducing himself. Standing halfway up, he seemed to meet Kemper size for size, and I was dwarfed by him. Men, he said, still gripping our hands in his mitts. He shook out, released us, and lowered his bulk back onto the bench. I admired him already, this colossal man come late to the Floridean country, bringing with him a steel and meanness that matched ours, but also the talent of trucking with planters. How many did you manage to bring? Thomas asked. Fifteen, said Kemper, a little sheepish. But if we go up to Bayou Sara we can round more up. Not necessary, said Philemon Thomas. Why, with fifteen I could take that fort right now. The planters around us were all hurrahing, but the Cannibals kept quiet for they’d yet to figure what to make of the man, who as we watched drew a cold iron from his hip and pointed with it at the flag. There’s the country, he said, then brandishing the iron at those seated nearabouts, saying, And these are her people, sick and tired of the Spanish treachery. Philemon flipped his iron and caught it at the tip. And you’ll fight for her, he said. By the grace of God. You a preacher? I asked. Somewhat, said Philemon, returning his iron to his side. I marched with General Hamilton in Virginia and at York, and now I’ve come here to retire. I know you men are preachers, though. And do you know what that tells me? Tells me you live serious, no shillying or silliness. That’s right we do! said Turpin. The other Cannibals clanked their cups and whooped. We’re serious, said Kemper, leaning forward to the man. I know it, he continued. And what can serious men do when the little man in France unseats a king and puts his brother on the throne, and them not having any more right to the

251 country than Adam? Serious man fights. Serious man sees where they are weak and strikes it. A crowd had gathered behind Philemon, some dancers slowed their whirls and petered out to stand and watch over his back, and out from among them came a familiar face, older but still fresh-seeming, arm slung around the shoulders of one unfamiliar. Nathan Bradford parted the crowd and stood at Thomas’ shoulder and the man took notice of him with one great hand waving him to take the corner of the bench beside him, which wasn’t much. Ah, said Thomas, I believe you know young mister Bradford, who’s drafted our constitution, our Jefferson. Rueben, Sam, said Bradford with nods to both of us. He was decked in blue and had an air of comfort that I’d never seen in my time with him. Is that Jack Turpin? he asked, looking downtable. It’s Lem, said Turpin. Jack passed. O, said Bradford. I’m sorry. No sorries tonight, mister Jefferson, Thomas said, bringing him close. Well, mister Skipwith here’s the real Jefferson. By blood, said the man Bradford had his arm around. This is our president, said Bradford, shaking the man, who was lank and thin, ashy hair powdered and pulled back in a tail. The front of his coat was pinned with blue ribbons which were themselves sewn with tiny stars. He seemed weighted down with them and his chest slumped to the table when he spoke, lisping a bit—familial tic. Ah, said Skipwith, but this young man here may make the next president! Bradford shied, the table was applauding. I clapped my cup and spilled my punch for this one who’d quit us and now found himself another war. He was with his people, and we were roughnecks brought in from the woods just to help them along. But I didn’t pray on things like that, I was awed still yet. Mister Bradford recommends you highly, said Philemon, and politicians present and future were quiet. We’ll do whatever it takes, said Kemper. We’ve got to beat them. Philemon squinted, saying, I know it. Now the plan. He’d measured their weaknesses, paid spies, tested the Pukes, and it was that in his estimation they were weak, the fort was manned now by old men and the wounded. The Pukes had remanded the rest to Pensacola. He said we could take them easy. That’s what we thought before, I said. Ah, said Thomas, but there was a whole battalion there when you ran at them. And with proper technique and, say, leadership, we’ll have them on the run before Sunday breakfast. I didn’t talk again, let Kemper hash it out. I didn’t want to hear about whipping them, though I was still stirred by the celebration and the rifles leaning all about, the sabers in their hilts. One of the boys had gone back to his horse and brought back a keg of whiskey which we’d steeped in chicory root, for quickness, and a fighting cock, for meanness, and he set the keg upon the table, busting crockery, tapped it with his knife and filled his cup, then the cups of others. President Skipwith winced with Bradford when they sipped it, the Cannibals judged it good, and Philemon Thomas quaffed his down in a single gulp. Some of the dancers had faded back to their dance and talk resumed at the table, carrying on into the night. Wobbly in my seat, I took to counting men, and even drunk I could tell they weren’t near a hundred. Maybe there were forty of them. Planter Williams would invite Kemper and me in to sleep, but I didn’t go with him, preferring to walk the place, stepping over sleeping Cannibals

252 and the others who’d laid out on the dance floor just before morning. I paced the boards of the great front porch and scuffed the columns with my boots till dawn, when I found the sleepers wakened, the Cannibals shuffling glumly, shielding their eyes from the sun, picking at the food left on the tables, and the planters drilling a passel of their men on the dance floor.

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CHAPTER 13 Our resurrection

. We rode with twenty cavalry, counting Cannibals, and maybe twenty more on foot, leaving Troy at mid-day to the cheers of women. Bradford and Skipwith were to follow when we sent word, meet us in the city once we’d taken the prize. They called it that, the prize. And my brother followed suit, saying it over and again all along the way. The number of us was heavy on my mind, the great labor of my life at hand and I was doubting. We stopped twice at plantations in Feliciana and traded in our tiring horses for fresh ones provided by the planters. This was the gift of Philemon, who wore his sword on the left and his iron on the right. That he could make the planters believe in us and throw support. Fathers and sons fell in with their birding guns and so we gathered recruits. The feel of a strong horse under you after thirty miles of riding did something for the worry, though I did still linger on the marchers. But Philemon exhorted them and they followed. The sun was setting and I’d fallen back among the Cannibals, asking after their weapons, then to the planters’ marching men, prodding them for their knowledge of powder and shot and whether their swords were sticking in their sheaths. Jesus Christ! said one, blue ribbon dangling from his hatbrim so that it dribbled at his cheek. We’re good! I don’t want to hear blaspheming on my march! Thomas called back. I’d turned from the blasphemer and highed up through the marchers to where Kemper trotted beside the general. My brother sat tall while the sun burnt out and fell to our left and stretched our shadows cattycorner, soon he was in darkness and our shadows hemmed on the Bayou Sarah road. Night we came to a bluff overlooking the river, and I jumped down from my horse and praised the Lord when the second group of Thomas’s fellows arrived from the east, a clatter of hoof-beats and clanging tack. See, said Philemon, bending from his horse to lower over me, I said we’d have that hundred. Their leader was a man named Johnson and he rode at the head of them, crying, Hurrah for Washington! They hadn’t traded their horses and the beasts were wild-eyed and dogged. Johnson’s horse’s head was lolling, and I stood to stroke its neck while he talked. He said they’d driven Pintado out from Bayou Sarah, flushed him as far as they could eastward, and they would’ve had him if it weren’t for coming to meet us. And in the name of God there was another band of fighters coming from St. Helena, forty on horseback, according to Johnson. I was slapping at the horse’s neck and at my brother’s knees until both he and Johnson caught me up, saying the time was coming, save my strength. But they were all just as happy and Philemon got down from his horse, popping his knuckles, and rightly lifted the man Johnson down from his own mount, and set him on the ground to rest awhile and better tell the news. Pintado’s sick, feverish, said Johnson. He went running at first sight of us, left these behind. He took a sheaf of papers from his coat and held them out to the general, who waved them away. Well read the things, man, said Thomas. The letters were from Grandpre and the governor, the first to Shepherd Brown, giving

254 him order to attack us on sight, and the second meant for Pensacola. Johnson said the name of the place gravely and read it out. Governor de Lassus was crying for help, for troops to be sent up from the garrison at Mobile, he knew an attack was coming. Philemon fumed and raged for a moment over treachery, praised God that Johnson had intercepted the letters. The general huddled with him and they were mending their plans. They’ll be ready for us again, I said to Kemper. My brother had got down and was fiddling with his rifle. He looked up from the barrel. It doesn’t matter now, he said. We’ve got a real army. We can’t go at them like last time, I said. It’ll be murder. Did you tell the general more about it? You tell him how it went? Kemper rimmed the barrel with his thumb and looked on me with disappointment. Sam, he said. I don’t want to hear another word from you about last time, about losing, about a thing. I bit my tongue. I was stretched between worry and glory, and saw both paths forking forth in my head, saw death and destruction, our own and that of our enemies. But mostly I visioned Pintado in a fever, chased across the country, hounded till his heels burned. We’d wait there for the next troop to arrive, and so I laid out with my arms behind my head and stretched beneath the stars. The rest had dismounted and our flag went whipping by; Cannibals mixed with marchers and shared from flasks. It went that my brother sat down beside me, elbows on his knees. I smelled the grass and held down the blades before my face so I could see him better. He said nothing, staring southward. I sat up to look, but there was nothing except more hill lipping scrub-woods. We were no more than five miles from Baton Rouge. # # # You could hear the sentry Pukes calling out their hours and Ave Marias from their pickets. We’d moved down to within half a mile of the fort, burning no torches, lighting no lamps, we moved through the dark like blind men but for star and moon, careful and slow along the steep bluffs until we were situated in the lee of one, down below which spread the ramparts of the fort, though you couldn’t see them for the fog that’d rolled in off the river. Moore’s force of St. Helena boys put us at a hundred. They’d Skirmished with Stirling’s bunch and sent them running into the swamp. We had to hush them for their story stirred Cannibal and footsoldier alike to whoops. And the sound of our approach was like unto a great herd. Kemper and I climbed the hill overlooking the fort and, lying on our bellies with pistols and knives pressing our chests, we saw through the roof of the fog the spike-points of the cypress pickets. The damned places where’d fallen all our boys stuck out and the fog hung about the banks of red clay. We searched for Pukes to peek from out the fog, but could find none. A cow lowed. A voice called out in Puke. He’s to the south, said Kemper. I don’t think there’s any down there. I can’t see any cannon, I said. The riverward wall of the fort stood stark above the fogbanks, and at the battlements could be seen the hat of a drowsing man, his leaning musket. They’re facing town above the gates, like it was before. So we’ll come at them again this way? What did I tell you? said my brother. And so we turned from the place of spikes and slid back downhill to the gathered army. General Thomas huffed when we told him, closed a hand around his iron and drew it, beating at the brush. He’d hoped to swing wide and ride straight through town, with the footsoldiers attacking from the river. But if the Pukes were ready and those cannons were aimed

255 and loaded, there’d be nothing of his cavalry but smoke-blown meat. There’s other ways to skin her, said Moore, chewing an unlit cigar. I know, said the general, but damn it the plan. It’s a tunnel underneath, Moore said. For milk-cows to come in and out and goats and the like. Do you suppose we’ll dig our damn way under there? It’s low, said Kemper. I’ve seen it. We thought to go through it but never made it past the bales. What bales? Thomas said. You said it was just the picket walls and clay. They had bales back then, I said. They hadn’t dug that clay. We can slip right under their noses, said Moore. Don’t have to be no outright attack. Right, said Kemper. A hand at my shoulder and I turned from the leaders to find Tupin standing with his shoulders back and chin stuck out. When we going, sir? Hell if I know, I said. Just go on back and keep them quiet. The leaders had closed together and there was no spot now for me, but I rejoined them, wedging between Kemper and Johnson. Lord, general Thomas was saying. It’s a sneaking thing to do. Mine won’t ride head on at no cannons, Moore said. Better a few die sneaking than the bunch die standing, said Johnson. I just don’t like it, Thomas said. He thrashed again with his iron and we had to step back for the sweep of it. The grass was leveled at his feet and his iron cut nothing but fog. We can’t ride in there, I said. It’s too low from what I remember. Then we’ll walk them in, said Moore. And what the Hell do you know anyway? Whoa, Larry, said the general. Remember these are the Kempers you’re cussing at. I know who they are, he said. I been here a long time. We’ll walk the horses down, said my brother. It’ll be quieter that way. There we go, said Moore. How many should go? asked Johnson. We were all squinting at each other in the dark. I wished Moore would light his damn cigar, for at least then I could see his face. Me and my brother, I said, then pointing to Moore, and this one here It’s a pleasure, said Moore. General Thomas held his iron in both hands now, and I thought I saw him bend it like a crop. He whapped his boot with it. All right, he said. You’ll have to the count of twenty minutes, then we’ll be at the gates. My brother’s hand was at my arm and even in past-midnight pitch I could see that he was happy. # # # No Aveys sounded as we crested the hill, leading our horses. Johnson had joined in with us, and he and Moore walked on the left, hunching below the shoulders of their horses, which they led facing the fort so as to catch any fire. Me and Kemper took the left, ducking just the same, and we walked downhill and into the fog and pickets. Turpin and the Cannibals were sorry they couldn’t come with us, but we told them too many would make it worse. We told them to Listen to General Thomas and to do what he said like it was our own words and the Word of God. So we left the Cannibals to pick their teeth and wait it out.

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Moore’s horse started at the cow, which stood humpbacked out the fog among the clay embankments, but he quieted it. And soon we were passing through the small herd of them and they regarded us with dumb, dew-wet eyes, giving grunts like we were but passing husbandmen. The fog had grown thin and morning light was upon us, burning it to wisps as we wove the cypress pickets. Because they pointed outward at the river, and because there was still some fog about our heads, we passed beneath their points unseen. And it was Kemper found the cow-path between them, leading through the fading fog clear to the tunnel. We followed it, footfalls light, and praying for the stillness of horses, and we dipped down into the ditch and so into the opening of the tunnel. The beasts did have to bend their knees and necks to enter it, and we’d all hunched to pass within fort, coming through what was also a drainage port, for our feet swilled in the stink of piss and shit—human or animal I couldn’t tell—and we were standing all grouped with our horses steaming in the shadow of the fort walls, now broken over with the rising sun, when the Puke shout came. Who’s there? called a voice from above us, answered only by a long silence. Is anyone awake? We waited there before the back wall of the blockhouse, heads turned for the source of the voice, and it didn’t come again for a time. I looked to the battlements above and saw in the dying fog a Puke soldier peering down, who at that moment yelped alarm and went running down the battlements away from us. I swung into the saddle, nearly toppling for fright and only righting myself for the heel I’d hooked in the stirrup, and was kicking in my clamber, and Kemper’s hand reaching down from him already horsed to pull me up. The shouts were everywhere now and Johnson and Moore had their rifles twined in rein as we rode around the blockhouse and into the presidio, jumping rusty cannons left in disrepair and mounds of grapeshot that’d been welded together by weather. Shots were popping and we charged for the gate, above which the cannoneers were grabbing for each other’s muskets. Moore had raised his rifle but the Puke never did, only looked over our heads, which we soon whipped, to see Grandpre come striding out the blockhouse, brass buttons glittering and his boots freshly polished, towards us. Six soldiers had followed him out and now formed a firing line at the blockhouse. The wall behind them was pocked with holes for muskets, but none appeared. The fort was still as Grandpre approached us, and I was wondering why weren’t we firing, but would’ve had to’ve asked myself, for though I held my rifle out and had it trained on Puke, I didn’t pull the trigger. Grandpre stopped a few paces from us and held his hands up by his face, Friends, he said, we number more than you. I don’t want to kill you, so throw your arms down. It was the ring of the same speech he’d given us five years ago, and looking at him now I could see he hadn’t aged much; he was still young. I don’t want to kill you, he’d said. Well, I never wanted to kill somebody more in my life. That’s Gospel. Out the corner of his mouth Kemper said, Moore, Johnson, yall go to the gate and we’ll handle this here. Friends! said Grandpre again, but by then the other two were turned and beating for the gate and Kemper shot the commandant through the leg. He spun on it and shouted, Fire! Fire! Fire! And he was running for the line and I spurred forward, firing into them with my rifle and Kemper now with pistols took down two. My horse’s nose flew in bits into my face and it neighed in pain as shots struck its chest, but we came on. There were two Pukes still standing and we struck both down with our empty guns and they fell to join Grandpre where he lay at their feet, gasping out a woman’s name. The name was French

257 though I can’t remember what. Shots were pocking the blockhouse wall when we turned at the sound of an enormous scream to find the army pouring through the gates. Pukes came from out the buildings lining the presidio, but they were immediately by Cannibals and planters. Another shot struck the wall between us and I could hear groaning from the ground. Kemper fired his last pistol to the left battlements and the shooter fell. The air filled with powdersmoke from the intermittent firings; the fighting was now mostly hand. We rode and met Philemon, who’d rallied his cavalry at the flagpole. A shot struck his horse and I saw that it came from the leftward battlements and I charged through the melee, past the hospital where faces were pressed to the windows, and finding the ladder leading up, I swung down from my horse and climbed. He jagged at my hands with his bayonet when I made the top, then stumbled back jabbering in Puke and stabbing at the air, backing down the wall from me. Cheers rose to meet me from below and in the corner out my eye I saw Pukes being rounded up at gunpoint against the far wall. The Puke soldier with the bayonet kept back up until he reached the corner, almost spilling over the side. He gripped his musket by the butt and swung. With my hand in my coat pocket, I side-stepped his blade and swung out with my silver Bible, cracking his across the head with its plate. The holdout toppled and fell. The cries of the army shuddered the place to its beams, and I saw my bleeding hand soak the pages of the Bible as I carried it to the ladder and down into the house of victory. The planters were dancing, except Thomas, and the remaining Pukes were huddled in bunch, their guns piled above them. Sullenly, they watched their wounded being tended, the dead sorted from the living. Grandpre lived, with two balls in him, and a pair of planters carried him past me to the hospital. He was still saying that name I’ve forgotten. Amid the cheers for General Thomas and Washington and the Republic, my brother came running from out the joyous crowd. And we were screaming in each other’s faces, beating each other about the chest. I tried to pull him down to pray but he wouldn’t take a knee. So we stood and hugged and shouted, not like madmen but the shouts of those who’d waited long to win. We may’ve seemed mad but the whole place was, with tears even on Philemon’s face and Moore and Johnson embraced and singing. Turpin sprinted roundabout, calling all the Cannibals to sing their tune. And they did, drowning out the planters’ Hail Colombia’s with the ballad of the good old King. The Governor had entered the fort unbeknownst, and we saw him wandering dazed through the celebrating troops. His uniform coat was half-buttoned and his moustaches were cock-eyed, but he still wore his sword, which General Thomas, upon sighting him, went to claim. We hustled after him, following him to where deLassus was leaning with one hand against the flagpole, contemplating the dust at his feet. Philemon towered over him, and all around him stood us watchers close enough to touch him, and it was only after a while staring at the ground that the Puke met his gaze. Hand over your sword, said General Thomas. You’re beat today. Governor deLassus squinted past us at his huddled soldiers, stripped of their weapons and being sported over by jeering Cannibals. I refuse, he said. Larry Moore, growling rage, struck deLassus in the head with the butt of his rifle. The Puke fell to his knees and was still shaking his head, mumbling no, no, no, scowling at all present. Before Moore could hit him again, I snatched the unfired pistol from the belt of the nearest man and walked up to the Puke. For an instant I was amazed that he kept scowling, now at me only, and I pressed the pistol to his right eye. A hand came out and struck the gun aside when I fired; the shot rang out and I heard some shouting in Puke and I was being pulled away

258 from deLassus, who was rocking on the ground, hands at his ear. It’d been Kemper who’d knocked my gun away, and he had me off to the side, trying to calm me, while the others bent over deLassus but couldn’t check his head he was thrashing at his belt so hard to get that sword off. My shot had fired next to his ear, which besides deafness and powder-burn was unwounded. The victors closed around him and suddenly the saber shot upraised above their heads in Philemon’s fist. The cheers grew louder, the choruses resumed. Kemper led me away and we came to the wall of the fort. My brother threw his back against it and slid to the ground. I dropped beside him. We watched awhile the dismantling of their forces, as the remaining Pukes were rousted from their hiding places in the fort to sit with their fellows in the dirt and gape disbelieving and bemused as General Thomas brought their crowned flag down, tossed it in the dirt to be fought over by our boys, and raised the lone star banner. Governor deLassus stumbled by holding up his pants. Didn’t I tell you, Kemper said. I never been more glad you were right, you son of a bitch. My brother rose of a sudden and I had to run to keep up with him. He was going for the dog-pile over the Puke flag, and he pitched them aside one by one until he had the flag for himself. He clutched it in his hands and said, Come on, Sam! Some work for his purposes, hitching rope and grabbing horses that weren’t ours. All hailed and huzzahed, even by the men he’d cast off. Kemper spurred-to, yawping, and I rode after him through the gate; and we raced across the commons towards the townsfolk who’d come out their shops and houses at the other end. They scattered to the sides of us and we rode through them, the Puke flag dragging at the heels of my brother’s horse. Laughing, standing in our stirrups, we rode to the end of the street past frightened onlookers and turned to make the block. And when we were back at the commons Kemper slowed to the Wend of the square and the gathered people shuddered for his voice, which presently called out. We’ve taken your son of a bitching fort you slimy cockswills! Americans! Pukes! We’ve by God won and you shall surrender yourselves to us now! Kemper rode them a circle, corralled them. This day! This fuck-almighty day! Surrender yourselves to the new country! The Republic! Jesus shit! He raged more cusses than I can recall, and I did pitiful imitations, cowed by his voice and the fire in it. My head still swam with the victory, and we rode ourselves dizzy around the townspeople. Emptied now of cusses, my brother rode back to the fort and I followed him. Riders had been sent to bring Bradford and the others, and our troops were being mustered to go out into the houses around the fort and gather up the people’s arms. Moore took the horses from us, saying they were a friend’s and he’d been looking. We didn’t care, came tumbling down out of the saddles, slapping cracker Moore on the back, and then heading over to the dug-stomped shreds of the Puke flag. We examined it and both spit on it, and others followed our example. This accomplished, Kemper left the flag in the dirt and headed for the hospital. I followed, as I would, and inside we went right past the doctor attending the rows of sick and wounded—Grandpre babbling beside feverish Pintado, who watched with widening eyes as my brother commandeered the doctor’s desk and, taking up the quill and stabbing it into the well, wrote his letter to Aliza. I saw his happiness grow beyond imagining in the light of the candle he used to melt wax onto the folded finished letter, stamping it with the royal seal.

259

CHAPTER 14 To the coastland

We carried with us flags and copies of the Declaration written by Bradford in the days following our taking of the capitol, and we carried also loads of irons to bind the men who wouldn’t sign it. We’d been given a mandate by Congress assembled to drive the Pukes and loyalists to the sea and from there cut east along the coast to the Atlantic. I knew one day the Holy Land would come, Kemper said to me one day. We were at the wall of the fort, looking down on the captured city with our flag whipping behind us. The sky was as clear as the color of the cloth, and the streets were filling with new- joined Cannibals. You could pick them out for their dress and weapons, and I gloried with my brother in their petty rages, their toppling of vendors’ carts. I never believed it’d happen, I said. I know you did, said Kemper. Recruits came flocking to Baton Rouge, and within a week our army numbered more than four hundred head. There wasn’t enough blue in the whole dawn country to bedeck them. The town was glad to be rid of us when we left to meet the Shepherd and Silver and what Pukes hadn’t ran for Pensacola, but we’d only been given two hundred and the rest remained to raise Hell. Our number was fifty cavalry and the rest on foot. I thought for a while that my brother would return to Aliza for a night, but he remained in town until the proclamation letters and broadsides from the Congress had been sent on ahead of us, informing the people of the coastal towns of the intentions of the Convention, and we followed after the leaflets, spreading a different gospel than before; the Gospel of Democracy, the Word of Freedom. It might’ve been an outgrowth of the old, for glimmers of it showed whenever Kemper spoke. Down the Mississippi, then along the Iberville to where it forked with the Amite, we happened on enough naysayers on our way to exhaust the supply of irons before we hit Lake Maurepas. One morning in a little riverside town my brother looked upon a man chained to a hitching post, said, Now will you put you pen to the Declaration of Independence, and your hand upon this Bible here—or will it be another night in shackles? The chained man was speckled with bird shit. We’d left the body of a slain Puke soldier to keep him company for the night, and I believe the smell must’ve gotten to him. I held my Bible out to the reluctant convert and he raised a clanking hand, swearing to love the Republic. Good man, said Kemper. Fetch him a pen and someone drag the deadster off. # # # In the swamps at the mouth of the Amite we caught up with Sterling’s troop, sent them into the lake. We’d divided on the march into four columns of fifty, Moore leading one, Turpin another, and us brothers with our each our own. The line stretched for a mile or more, and when we heard Stirling was hiding in the reeds and mudflats, it only took the first wave of Kemper’s cavalry to roast them out that morning. The sun shone on the water and Stirling’s men broke their already haphazard rank and went splashing into the swamp. I rode in with my horsemen to form the pinch that trapped them on a mud island, where, after pulling the cavalry back, we let the boys on foot crowd along the opposite back and pick off Sterling and his men with their muskets. It’s a damn duck blind, said Turpin. He’d taken to shaving, and like the rest of us officers he wore the blue jacket of the Republican army, though he’d pinned his with little treasures,

260 squirrel skulls and the like. The firing went on in waves and Kemper rode behind the shouldering line of shooters, whipping their backs with his hat and hollering. Some of them’s playing dead! I see that one ducking yonder! He’s mine, damn it. Your ass. So the voices of the men, punctuated with their popping rounds and the wails of wounded across the water. We pulled back and camped on dry ground, and in the night I rode with Kemper and Moore and a few cavalry to scout the island for survivors. Bodies were bobbing at our horses’ bellies as we crossed. Our lanterns shone on them and they were already bloated and yellowing. I found Sterling sitting between the roots of a tree. He’d been hit in the side, and for a moment I thought he was still alive, the way he stared. But when I got down and held my hand over his mouth there was no breath and a cloud of flies flew out his lips. I called to my brother that I’d found him, and soon he was appeared with Moore. They didn’t look long. The whole island hummed with flies. # # # We had a new marching song, contrived by Turpin and Kemper. And it went in part: West Floriday was once invaded. General Thomas set it free. With powder and ball he skeered them all When he planted the flag of liberty.

West Floriday is on the march now. General Kemper made it be. With sword and shot he’ll skewer the lot Upon the tree of liberty.

O, we can drink and not get drunk. We can fight and not be slain. We can go to Pensacola And be welcomed back again. # # # At the fort on the Natalbany, the Puke defenders rushed out into our line, throwing down their guns and abandoning within the last of Shepherd Brown’s force. We’d surrounded the fort and called them to surrender, but it seemed most had minds for escape. Some made it through to the landing, shoved off their boats, and were subject to potshots as they floated for the mouth of the river. But most ran right into the fire. I had to ride and slap the backs of the heads of my entire line to make them stop reloading. We were great enough now to be merciful, so Kemper had said before we marched against the fort. Once they’d stopped, a few Pukes were visible tottering in the field. A handful of men from what’d been an entire garrison cast glances left and right and gazed in amazement at the quality of our mercy. While Turpin led volunteers and survivors in digging the burial ditch, I rode with Kemper and Moore to the gates of the fort. It’d all become so easy I was going over in my head the sermon I’d give that evening when we pitched the dead Pukes in. The fleeing soldiers had left the

261 gates flung open, and we approached them but didn’t enter. They’re waiting for us in there, said Moore. You’d think they’d be on the walls if they were going to pick us off, I said. My brother looked around, running his fingers through his beard. He hadn’t cut his hair since we’d taken Baton Rouge, and he had the look of Christ enormous. Outsized Jesus bringing fire and shot. I still loved him, maybe more. They won’t shoot, he said loud enough for those within the fort to hear. They knew they’re beat and the hand of God is upon them. Shepherd Brown knows about the will of God, don’t you Shepherd? No answer but Moore, who said, I just don’t want some crazy sucker in there taking a shot at me. Then don’t come, I said. Thought you had faith. Well, said Moore. He waited at the gates and we rode in. I felt powerful, like any shot would bounce off me, moreover I’d collected some in the binding of my Bible. I was protected and so was my brother; and we passed within the fort and at the center of it found the last of Brown’s men. Flea-bit and sick from all those days and nights on the run, they leaned on what guns they had and sat in attitudes of supplication. The Shepherd was not among them. Where is he? Kemper said. Who? answered one with open sores on his face. Brown, I said. Where’s the Shepherd? He knows damn well who I mean, said my brother. Lay your guns down and tell us, I said. I know, said the sore-face, hugging to an old musket. I just don’t want to get hung. The others there agreed, nodding live-ridden heads and eyeing us from low. You won’t be hung, said Kemper. Now tell. You swear? said the spokesman. Kemper swore they wouldn’t be hung. Meanwhile, I considered shooting the man with the sores, but judged it too pitiful. Mercy again. He’s running for New Orleans, the spokesman said. He left us here last night, added another. Did he leave by land or river? asked Kemper. He took a boat. So the Shepherd led his flock astray. And we’d ride right out the fort, sending in after us a detachment to take them prisoner, and gathering some cavalry speed off to follow the lake shore, seeing if we could spy Brown out on the water. I grinned at my brother as we went, good to be alone with him once again. He’s the last one, I said. We’ll have finished them all off if we can get him. But my brother didn’t share my happiness, rode grimly scanning the bracken. Nothing’s finished, he said. No matter what. His whoops and cheers had faded somewhat. My brother had grown cold of the Spirit, and it was up to me to stoke it in him, which I’d manage on occasion. But only briefly would he catch the Spirit, you’d see it rise and die in him in instants. It was because God had spoken and said no more to my brother, so that he heard Holy Land or nothing. And the Holy had slowly slipped off, leaving only Land and the movements of troops upon it. Yet can I say I didn’t love it when the war was fresh and we were mighty and still winning? No, I adored it while my brother

262 accepted it as fact and providence. The Shepherd himself was as sick as his troops. He’d overturned his boat and was laying underneath it for shade on at Manchac Pass, where Maurepas met Pontchartrain and you could cross to the Hood point and into the Island of Orleans. We saw his boots sticking out and called to him, heard the Shepherd sit up and smack his head against the bottom of the boat. He cussed and laid back down and didn’t move from underneath the boat even when we approached and our horses were toeing at the sides of it. I’m dying, said Shepherd Brown, voice ringing in the hollow. Get up and we’ll take you to a doctor, Kemper said. Brown rose again and again the boat shook. God’s name, is that Rueben Kemper? It is, said my brother. And Sam, I said. So you remember? They’ve got you leading that bunch? God in Heaven. It was a strange thing, conversing with a man under a boat, and we let it drag out until neither of us could stand it and Shepherd Brown was hacking. We got down and I flipped the boat, held my pistol on the awful figure of a man. His clothes were sweat-through and he was unarmed. We stayed like that for a minute. You don’t want me riding with you on your horse, sick as I am. Fine, said Kemper. You’ll march. Brown kicked the grass with his heels, shuddering and twitching as he spoke. And I won’t walk. I won’t. My brother’s eyes were glinting. He shut them but a moment, then said, Shoot him, Sam. I obliged him. We rolled the boat back over Shepherd Brown, who we’d hounded so far from the home he thought he loved. Brown didn’t know we were the people who the land was for. He’d been a fool who turned his back on God. And it didn’t seem like vengeance anymore, or even war, when you looked out from under the branches and bore witness to the lake, stretching out on either side for miles. It’d just turned October and I think we felt the year’s first chill that night. My brother watched the capping waves which beat against the roots of the trees where the land was hacked by water. And I knew before he spoke that he was considering New Orleans. We could take her, he said. It’s American, brother. It’s whatever we want, said Kemper Not now, I said, still seeing the puddle of teeth and throat I’d left of Shepherd Brown’s face. It’s not in the plan. Whose? grinned Kemper. Whosever plan we’re following. God’s, planters’. Don’t you lose faith now, he said, his words slowed into a growl. Not when we’re so strong. I answered him I wouldn’t. And I can’t call it a lie. When we returned to camp next morning we heard Moore’s report that the dead had been buried pending sermon, and that sometime in the course of the night one of Shepherd Brown’s men had tried to escape, a man who was all covered in sores. They’d thought the man too sick to run, so he hadn’t been guarded heavy as the others. He’d made it far afield before someone finally shot him. I listened and behind my eyes I saw the muzzle-flash.

263

# # # We smashed the garrison at Tanchipaho. The survivors fled east and we trapped them against the Chefunta in the rain. It was a spiritual day. The river swole. Moore was talking with Turpin beside a mound of Puke bodies we’d had the men pile at the riverside and which they were now trying to burn. The earth there was too soft to dig a proper pit, so they tried fire but the rain fell harder and this too was abandoned. The army was arrayed for acres, pitching their coats above their heads, other bartering for entrance into one of the few tents. The rain had been going for days and there was a bite upon the air, shortening my breath as I read the verses for the dead. We’d lost maybe ten, and I didn’t bother counting the Pukes. Eight feet high of them. I shut my Bible, fearing tarnish, slipped it to my pocket and turned to go find Kemper, but Moore was waiting for me. I thought I ought to tell you, he said. Me and my boys are heading home. We’re not even to the Pearl yet. You’re commissioned. I already told Rueben, Moore said. The weather’s turned sour. It’ll break, I said. For Christ’s sake we’re not even at the Pearl. The only reason you won’t come is you’re afraid. Hell, Moore said. Ain’t even any Pukes left in the country. This mess here’s about the last of them. If there’s any more dumb enough to stay, I’d say you could handle them with a hundred. I thought you said it was only your boys going home. Between yours and Turpin’s and the General’s there’s a few more ready to leave. They’re commissioned. There’s twenty-five dead, too. And some sick. So I’m just ciphering the numbers for you. God damn you, they’re commissioned to go the whole way. You’re wrong there, Sam. You and your brother’s commissioned. We’re just volunteers and we want to go home awhile. And you told him this shit? Can’t say he’s happy about it, but I’ve got permission from the government. Hell, you can pick more volunteers up on the coast. All those eagers at Mobile. I settled myself with the smell of rain-beat smoke, but wouldn’t look back at the bodies. Instead, I searched the field for Kemper. He was standing by himself, off a ways from a huddle of Cannibals who were trying to start their own fire. My brother stood so that you’d think he scarcely knew the rain was there. But it was, and it drummed the ground. So the river rose in the night and carried off the bodies of the Pukes from where we’d laid them, depositing their corpses far and wide. And when we came down from the higher ground we’d run to from the flood and crossed, a hundred fewer, into St. Ferdinand, we’d happen on them by and by.

264

CHAPTER 15 The bottom of the world

The alcalde of the Bay of St. Louis sat wringing his hands upon the steps of the government house, which were all that remained of the building since it’d burnt along with half the town. A priest stood with him and bumbled over his blackened beads, making crosses out of ash all over the alcalde’s face. This was across the Pearl and we were on the coast at last. We’d come after nightfall into the town and taken it without a shot. One of our Cannibals had raised the flag from the steeple of the church, but some others were careless with their torches or lamps and it had gone up with the rest of the town, fire by accident. The salt air blew devils of soot down the town’s single street and the alcalde kept pushing the priest to the side. He was pleading with us not to harm his children; his wife had died of cholera the previous year and they were all he had. I listened to the accent of his English and looked around for Kemper to come and mister his fears, for I was lost. Turpin strutted by, burnt about the face, though smiling, he passed before the vision of my brother, who was across the street with papers laid across his saddle and one of the Cannibals holding his inkwell while he dipped and scribbled another letter to the capitol. The alcalde pleaded and I couldn’t have picked his children out from any of the rest that presently wandered with the townsfolk through the street, the small ones ducking between the legs of Cannibals and horses. There’s no reason to kill us all, the alcalde said. The priest was nodding, jangling his beads at me. Damn it, man, I said. What kind of people do you think we are? # # # We’d lost more than Moore foretold, but picked some up as went down the the coast that November, skirting the bottom of the country and gathering to us men with strange coupled accents who wore necklaces of fishbone like breastplates. With them we took Biloxi. The people there had read the broadsides and handbills sent down from Feliciana and they cheered us when we came. The fort there was already abandoned, and after a spell in town with Cannibals fighting amongst each other and some slipping off, we moved out. Kemper never cared about desertion, more the glory for the faithful. Mississippi was already an afterthought; my brother’s mind was always forward. # # # Pascagoula fell and we fired our artillery for fun. There was no one left to shoot at; the last Puke garrisons had fallen back to Mobile or across the Perdido to Pensacola. Reports were conflicting and I was mostly too drunk to care. We managed not to burn this town down or hassle much the populace. None of it was any fault or deed of mine. I gave no orders anymore, read no sermons, said no prayers. I was a ghost haunting Kemper to the houses where he was received with all courtesy, and myself alongside, a white-haired shade which never spoke. He took my silence as a sign for action. Said I needed to be woken up for the last battle was at hand. He was hearing the seven trumpets sounding, and the seals he opened were stamped to letters from the Congress. So we headed up and swung above the city of Mobile. Kemper had received an invitation for us to stay at planter’s house in Blakely. The planter’s name was Caller, a fat man with a dewlap neck I woud’ve strangled if I wasn’t so drunk or the thought of my hands being swallowed in all that puffed billowing white didn’t sicken me to the point past caring. Like all the people around Mobile, it seemed, he was loyal to our cause. When Kemper said those same words to me, I

265 bubbled my whiskey and wondered aloud about the cause. His response was to walk te leave me in the planters yard and go in to dinner alone. The coast boys and Cannibals were laid out at Caller’s place, consorting with his niggers, while we were supposd to dine with him. I came in late and found a place at the table, prodded my six-ways potatoes and didn’t hear a word spoken. I must’ve noticed the Doctor Holmes who sat with Caller at the far end of the table, at his right hand and across from his wife, who was even fatter than her husband, spilling white out the front of her dress. Her laugh was awful and she gave it all night, particularly to Doctor Holmes. Three weeks later, at Sawmill Creek, where we’d camped in preparation of the invasion of Mobile, Doctor Holmes and Caller fought a duel over her. Caller fell with a ball above his heart and the Doctor refused to treat him. The men were all overjoyed at the duel, sorry when it was through and so took up their own. But before that time, the citizens did intrigue with us and plot against their fellows. My brother talked with them and was enwebbed. They sent some volunteers, fiddle-players and fifers for the march. A keel-boat loaded with corn, cured bacon, flour, whiskey, but no tents, was floated down the Tensaw for us courtesy of Congress, and we carried the goods down to Minnette Bay, where upon the banks of that offshoot dribbling little creek our planter patron and his doctor friend fought their duel for the fat wife’s honor. Caller’s body was hauled off in the first drizzle of rain, which then fell hard for a week or more. The whiskey kept me warm some, but I drowned in it as I drowned in the rain. I remember mostly I was drunk. So were the rest, the Cannibals, the coast boys, and the fiddlers. And only Kemper never showed it, though I know for a fact he nipped. We celebrated the news of the birth of his second child, a boy. He read the letter from Aliza to the men. Moreover he was drunk on ink, drunk on the shouts of his men, which he mistook for readiness. Soon everything was so soaked their pistols wouldn’t fire and the duels were fought with knives. We were without coverings and Kemper refused to even huddle underneath the artillery carts except to rattle off his letters, the last of which I saw fall apart in the messenger’s hand when Kemper gave them to him. He’d sent orders to the Governor at Mobile for immediate surrender, read outloud the proclamation to the boys. They whooped, then returned to dancing and fighting in the mud. The fiddlers were down to two strings between them, their music grown strange. Kemper seemed satisfied to wait and freeze to death in the rain. I didn’t argue with him, my mind was too addled. I spoke no misgivings as the party raged on. I may’ve been two weeks drunk. I seethed in the freezing rain and one night in late November, my head clearing for a moment and I dug out the Bible from my coat. But when I tried to crack the Book I found the hinges rusted shut. I went to tell Kemper about it, but when I did he only looked at me awash with rain and ringing it from his beard. We were tucked up in the woods, for what protection from the rain trees could offer, sitting in the soaking pinestraw and watching the dances and deaths playing out below us. Why are you telling me this? said my brother. Because it seems a sign, I said. You don’t know signs anymore, he said. That’s right, I said, pocketing the Bible. And neither do you. Downfield two Cannibals were waving knives at each other, circling. One slipped and fell in the mud and when the other came to rush him Turpin interceded, hauling the man to his feet, setting him right, then pushing him towards his enemy. The little crowd that watched them cheered. Another word, said my brother. Another word and— His threat went on but I’d gotten up and left him for a higher place in the woods and,

266 tucked there with my whiskey, I swilled until I couldn’t see. # # # No one saw them coming. They were in boats paddling up the creek and others had marched for the town along the bay. But I didn’t know they were there until the first shots rang out, and even then, when I raised my dripping heads groggily to peer through the trees, I only thought it was more dueling. Only the shots continued and there were shouts and cries and the sounds of running. It was full dark and not a sliver of moon. Only their lamps and torches and the flashes of their firings shone between the trees as I ran through the woods to find my brother. I kept to the trees, wouldn’t go down to the place of slaughter. Kemper wasn’t where he’d been, and I stopped and leaned and watched for a moment, watched the Cannibals go to death. Turpin had rallied a few to fight; I could hear his voice in screams, but his firing line was cut down by the volley from the creek. I ran on to where the woods met the water and we’d tied our horses. Some of the men had made it there, jangling fishbone and fear as they pulled themselves up and rode off in all directions but the battle. Kemper was on his horse, sword out, trying to stop them. He must’ve thought they’d ride down with him to it. I was too drunk to know my own horse, and it’d probably been taken already. All were taken and so, seeing Kemper beat for the field, with the riders turning disordered around me I grabbed the one by the pants and threw him down, climbed atop the horse and rode after him into the gunfire. There were no troops now, nor had there been for some time, but this was pure scrabbling and slaughter. A ball caught my horse in the flank and he slowed. I reeled atop the beast and thought of falling, let me sink into the mud and be rid of it. But I stayed and pursued him past the scene and he was heading for a line of regulars that’d formed to close us in. They fired but he didn’t fall, rode through them and on ahead. I lowered me head and made for the Pukes, who cut my legs with pikes at bayonets but I was through. # # # With no light he was hard to find, and by then my horse was wandering and weaving for its wound. I didn’t spur, just let it amble along the tree-line, which I only knew by reaching clawing limbs at my face, and it went that way until I could no longer hear firing or the voices of men. The rain had slackened, but it would only be a momentary blessing. I marked him by the shot he fired at me. The muzzle-flash revealed him to the left, about fifty yards off. The shut rung out and it its echoing I called out who I was. Hollered the name he’d given me. I rode to where I thought my brother was. Saw his outline and that of his horse by the raindrops falling on his great shoulders and studding at his hatbrim. When he spoke I found he was facing me, imagine he was staring back east. We can cut through the woods and be in Blakely by morning, said my brother. My horse is shot, I said. So’s mine, but it doesn’t make a damn. We’ve ridden on shot horses before. I said I didn’t want to anymore. You ragged bastard. You quit? I don’t quit, I said. I just say we go back. They’re finished back there. What did I tell you? said my brother. What have I told you since the beginning? Silence followed. I was tired of answering and my legs hurt. I felt the first shiver and burn of the fever in me, which would soon take and not break for a week. You go on home if you want, he said. But just remember it was you who broke, not me. We’ll go back and you can bring down the others from the capitol and then we’ll beat

267 them. My God, Sam, said my brother. Have you got so pitiful that you’ve forgotten everything? Have you forgotten why the Hell we’re fighting? It was my dead boy, I said. Kemper’s horse was gagging; mine chewed at its neck. You don’t know anything, he said and his mind turned. We can beat them right now, he said. We had them, God damn it. We don’t have shit, I said. I felt him reach out to strike me, but it was too dark and I was too far away. My brother’s swing had nearly toppled him from his horse, but he righted himself and rode past me, going back the way he came. I started east and kept that way into the next day when the rain stopped, and I’d come to a reedy strip of coast, a thin demarcation between land and boiling sea. The water had always seemed calm, but that day it boiled in the sun. I was shivering and boiling myself. Small crabs picked at my horse’s hoofs. I turned and followed after him.

268

CHAPTER 16 Her vengeance

I didn’t find Kemper in Blakely and the people there regarded me suspicious, sent me on my way with shreds of hint. Our army had been destroyed and the remnant either fled of was captured and bound for Cuba. I’d hear Turpin would be in Moro for five years. I’d pass sometimes on the coast road a man I thought might be a Cannibal, but none of them would answer me. The fever grew worse and I was stricken with shakes and chill. My horse had died before I crossed into Mississippi, so I sold my Bible off for its silver and got another one. My brother had passed through Pascagoula, so the people said. But I couldn’t be sure of much anymore, so warped and wracked was my head. My new horse’s mane was fleck with what I’d spit up, and I fell from it a few miles outside of town. Lying in the road for hours before the yellow woman found me I suffered visions of my brother. And even after she’d nursed me back for weeks in her fishing shack on the Pascagoula, I still suffered them. In St. Ferdinand I saw the stars and stripes flying above the courthouse. I’d arrived in Louisiana to find it all America. I heard tell of the Republic’s fall on my way up to Pinckneyville. People said President Skipwith had pledged to die in defense of the lone star flag, and some thought he might’ve. Either way it was gone. I pondered my gauntness, which even the lengths of dried mullet the yellow woman had sent me with didn’t staunch. I heard that a man in Baton Rouge had taken down the stars and stripes in anger over some taxation and driven the lone star back up the post. The flag hadn’t even made it midway up the post before a mob stopped him. # # # I went first to Kemper’s house, left my horse untethered in the yard and stumbled up the steps onto the porch. A baby was wailing inside. When I knocked, Aliza appeared, aged some, and stared at me with the door partway open. The child’s wails were louder now. She looked at me and I thought she was falling faint, for she bent to the side behind the doorframe for an instant, then she came out onto the porch holding the axe above her head. And I don’t know why I threw my left arm up to stop her, as I’ve always favored right. But I did and she brought the axe-blade down. # # # I awoke from visions of my brother to find myself in bed, hovered over by Doctor Towles. It was my old house but there was no Sally in it. Aliza would tell me later that she’d gone. Docotr Towles told me it was luck that he’d been there, tending the colicky infant, and wouldn’t it be a shame to involve the law in a matter like this. I’d sat up, listing to the side where there was no arm any longer but a stump at the shoulder he’d soldered and wound in an array or bandages, below which I’d later marvel at the stitches he’d woven in loops through my puckered skin. I expelled them in the following weeks. Doctor Towles paid me visits, but I was mostly tended by Aliza or her daughter. Little Emily would dab my stump with alcohol and sit for hours fanning flies, slip me the medicines the doctor had left. Her mother would come into the house in afternoon and shoo the child off, and there she’d sit with me and her torments were worse than I’d imagine Hell. She rarely touched me, only talked; sitting on the side of the bed so that she could look upon my armless half. Aliza took apart my life and my religion with her singsong speeches, poking my stump with the tip of a knitting needle whenever I’d shut my eyes or try and turn away to bury my ears in the pillow. At the appointed times she’d pour my medicine,

269 bend close over me, revealing that her thinness hadn’t changed even with motherhood, and tipple it between my lips. She cursed me in a cooing voice, promised that she wouldn’t kill me. When the mood struck her she’d bring the jar over from the tavern and hold it in her lap while she rocked and spoke. Other times it was the infant child she held to her unbuttoned dress-front, nursing it. I’d see the thin tufts of reddish hair, the infant’s mouth drawing more mother. She’d tell me awful things while it went at her, pausing briefly for the child to gasp. One night Aliza came into my house and crawled atop me in the bed, bidding me to suck. I tried to sit myself up on one elbow but failed, fell back with the bone woman astride me, shuffling at me with hefted breasts now grow with hairs around their rings. She said she’d tell me where he’d gone and I felt the arm I didn’t have twitching, grabbing phantom for the sheets. She told me things that night more horrible than ever. She sat on my chest when it was finished and stayed that way till dawn.

270

CHAPTER 17 The wanderings of Israel

I hunted him for years. Aliza had done her work well and I was healed enough to search and driven wild enough to keep it up. Her promised answer was that he’d gone north to join in with an army that was marching against the Pukes in Texas. I followed up to Natchitoches, riding through the field where the Reverend Morrel had fallen, and from there clear on through the Neutral Ground and on to San Antonio I’d hear the stories and endure the people asking me was I any relation to the great Rueben Kemper, General of the now-departed army. I told them we were brothers. There were different versions of how he came to lead them, for at first the American detachment had been led by a man named Magee. Some said Magee shot himself while they were holding out in Bexar; others said he’d died of fever in the months they were besieged in the fort. What mattered now was that Kemper led the force, numbering some three thousand Americans and Mexican Republicans against the loyalists and Pukes. I traveled in the dust of their victories, looked on Puke dead who’d been carrying ancient lances and shields, the conscripts with bare feet, and could only imagine my brother’s glory. A year through bone-dry Texas; I was a wandering bearded prophet when I finally caught the army at the Medina, finding not Kemper but a man named Long in charge of the American forces. He’d brought his wife and children with him, and the two girls played among the gathered restless men. The Pukes were just across the river and the Americans were eager to cross after them. Colonel Long would say nothing of Kemper other than he’d left. He went on about the cruelties of Royalist Spain and the sorryness of the constitution the Mexican’s had drawn up. I’d heard this speech before, so I walked. I don’t know how much I hated the Pukes anymore. Perhaps enough to stay with the army for a week spent going to the men and finding their versions of Kemper’s story. He left when some Mex lied to him, said one. It’s a shame, said another. We had the Royals whipped, said the first. Had the Alamo. Two thousand and five hundred prisoners we took that day. And this greaser colonel said to the General he’d take the prisonered officers down to the coast and put them on a boat for New Orleans, where they’d be pardoned. Pardoned. Well, general Kemper he was suspicious of this greaser already, and come to find two weeks later that that greaser Colonel’s daddy had been killed by one of them officers he’d run off with. So he’d marched them down about fifteen miles from town and cut their throats slow. And when the General heard, Lord he was pissed. And by then the Mexes had written that damn constitution of theirs and he’d about had enough. So he left and took whoever would come with him. I thanked the man whe he’d finished, then listened to more tell their versions into the night. The colonel hadn’t just cut their throats, he’d cut the off their pricks. The news had done something to Kemper, they said. The Americans all thought it was that their General was too noble for such barbarism. But I knew what’d stirred in him. I listened to the men and talked with them until Long rode through the camp saying they’d attack at dawn. I watched the massacre from a ridge above the Medina. They’d crossed the river and Long led his Americans into the Pukes lines. The Pukes broke and fell back and the Americans went tearing after them; and I asked God was this how it’d always be, but his answer came when the Pukes who’d just scattered reformed into a great V and trapped them. When their V was

271 covered up in smoke after the first volley of shots, I left the place and gathered my horse and things in the panic-stricken camp, then headed east for the coast. I took my time, even preached some on the way. One night I was harried out of a mud- flat town by a flock of priests like crows fluttering after me. I’d bought a new Bible and in the spaces between the verses wrote the versions of my brother’s story. # # # I hired a boat out to Galveston after hearing that what remained of the Republican government had retreated to the island. All I found was a stretch of beach strewn with their leavings, some Indians clawing oysters, and at the ruins of the fort a crazed white woman who shot at me with a small cannon.

272

CHAPTER 18 The death of Kemper

The last time I saw my brother was also the last time I saw anything through my right eye. This was in ’15 and General Jackson was screaming orders down our picket and we’d been firing at the Reds for an hour. Between orders the General would holler how unbearable this country was without a whiskey drink. I’d been in New Orleans for a year, having given up the hunt for a time and gone to slaving. But when the call came I’d fallen in with the volunteers, and even one- armed could still shoot. I wasn’t old yet and that was all that mattered. I believe I expected Kemper to see Kemper there on the Chalmette plain. And it was that he came riding toward us out of the Red lines at full gallop, wearing the colors of one of their officers, and shouting his name and not to shoot. Behind him came a platoon of bewildered British soldiers, which he’d led to us after cutting their captain’s throat in the swamp. He’d slipped on the officer’s habit and they’d followed him like ducks just by the color on his back, never firing for he never gave the order. I’d hear this all later, when I was in the hospital with my eye blown out by a misfire. What I saw was the British being dragged through the pickets, some turning to try and run, Jackson grabbing at Kemper on his horse; and I didn’t mean to shoot but I did, turning to stare in awe, realizing who this was; and I’d had my pistol drawn for the advance, but now had it sighted on him. He and Jackson were smiling and laughing and I remember that my brother looked at me and then the hammer snapped and I thought hang-fire and the lock exploded in my face. # # # I quit the wars after that; had to for my wounds. Retired to selling nigger flesh and laying with whores until I was too old to sport and was given my Alise. My brother lived out his years in the parish of St. Ferdinand, which was by then St. Tammany, with Aliza and their children. We heard tell of each other from old acquaintances who’d survived the West Floridean army. Larry Moore now sat in the state congress and saw Kemper some on his way down to New Orleans for the sessions. When he was in town he’d tell me of my brother, and he’d write me later concerning Kemper’s death. The funeral, he assured me, had been conducted with full military honors as befitting a true patriot, the service held at the tavern they owned where, I imagined, upon a mantelpiece above the bar sat a dusty jar whose contents had become so cloudy with age that the curious could only make guesses as to what it contained.

273

EPILOGUE Without revelations

Apr. 24, 1862

Pray for the children of the city; our forts and navy are burning at the mouth of the river and we know their ships will be here any day. They are long and low and dark and they trail smoke in their wake. I see the day coming when the sky is turned black and the river is black, black the engine, black the fuel that feeds it, black the faces that will endure it, for who will survive the world to come but niggers, who’ve survived so much. Pray for them. The sales at the rotunda have grown less gaudy; I’ve abandoned it for my family and Gospel, which is finished. The pages have grown fat, but my words are worn thin, all the people dead therein; and when I search them I can’t find my friends or brother; try to breathe life back into the corpses and discover that I’ve done them no justice and left them decomposing on the page, like the Resurrectionist who digs up a corpse only to find that it’s putrefied beyond use and abandons it in the churchyard, my poor pen blowing air into the rotten bellows of their lungs. Lord grant them back to me in this world and the next. None of us deserve to be forgotten any more than we deserve such puny and insulting snippets in the annals of this fallen country. Our Republic goes unmentioned and our Holy Land fights for life beneath the greed-fed fatness of a continent. There was a time when we were great, and we knew ourselves to all be Kings of a violent country, Israel by the sea; of Cannibal country, where good men ate the Souls of the wicked and grew strong. My wife prays fifteen times a day now for the Lord to turn her skin lighter and for the boy’s eyes to go back blue, the way they’d been when he was born. What will I do when they arrive? Go to meet them like Christ and beg them to crucify me with sabers and bullets so that I might save this city’s soul and the ragged soul of the South? This evening when I couldn’t stand her praying anymore I took my son down to the docks, where ships were being scuttled, cotton and sugar overturned into the river, and there we practiced shooting. I’ve taught him more and more since he’s grown big enough to hold a pistol steady. I should’ve taught him to fire from the mount. But we sold our horses over the summer and all I have for him is guns and the rotten piles and dockworks where my son stood this day with the pistol trembling in his hands for what seemed like damnable forever until I filled up with rage that he wouldn’t shoot, screaming at him, Fire! In the name of God! Fire!

274

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Kent Wascom was born in New Orleans and raised along the Gulf Coast. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree from Louisiana State University. He has recently completed an MFA in creative writing at Florida State University.

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