A Bloodsmoor Romance (33 page)

For the father, John Jay Zinn, was not, as John Quincy suggested, a farmer; but instead a pedlar—one of that problematic itinerant tribe commonly known as
Yankee pedlars,
about whom so many tales have circulated, by no means of a generally flavorsome nature.

 

JOHN JAY ZINN,
the infamous pedlar: whose trade took him as far north as Bangor, Maine, and as far south as Raleigh, North Carolina. But it was only villages he dared visit—only isolated country settlements, or farms, or shanties up in the hills, stuck on the edge of nowhere.

On foot, or riding a swaybacked mare acquired in trade, or leading a donkey laden with goods. Alone, or with his son. Or with his mulatto mistress from Carolina; or was it Baltimore; or had she been found on a New York street . . . ? Carrying his heavy leather backpack, in the cold slanting rain, in the spring mud, through Maine and New Hampshire and Massachusetts, carrying a staff, limping badly, through Connecticut, his whiskers sprouting gunmetal-gray,
That damned Yankee crook,
through Rhode Island leading a sickly mule, head bowed against the sun, eyes narrowed in a permanent crafty squint, New York and Pennsylvania and New Jersey and Maryland, so many wives for so ugly a man, tall, gangling, sallow-faced, his expression carved out of hickory, his black eyes so sharp they could pick up the gleam of a coin at one hundred yards—in the dark; Shaheen behind him, and the Catskills, and the wintry Poconos, and the Delaware village where a man stabbed him high in the chest for cheating at cards, and no one intervened,
You won't dare show your ugly face here again,
bawling his trade, through marshlands where mosquitoes wouldn't touch him because his blood tasted of brass, along logging roads where screech owls hid from him, else he'd cheat them of their cash, Virginia and Carolina, Cape Hatteras where he had a woman, the outskirts of Lynchburg where he sold his services as a water diviner and walked off with $200 cash in his deep secret pockets,
Look at that blood!—is that real blood of his?
—but the well dried up the next morning, being only a witch-well, and nothing real.

John Jay Zinn, the pedlar. Tho' he went by other names. Alone, or with a fat wall-eyed slackly grinning girl staggering beneath a backpack filled with kitchen utensils and home remedies and outlaw (untaxed) rum, or with the little boy who must have been his son: blond and sunburnt and husky for his age, but crafty-silent. Marshlands, farmland, lanes oozing in black mud, where vultures rose slowly from the carcasses of horses fallen by the roadside, Prince George County, Blackstone, Hungry Mother Mountain, East Stone Gap, Manassas, a black preacher's coat flapping about his knees, loose in the sleeves so that his bony wrists showed,
He won't dare come back here again, he knows what will happen to him,
hawking false teeth for both male & female, young & old, wax-cleaners for ears, his trousers baggy in the seat and knees as if belonging to another, larger man, solitary, singing and laughing to himself, counting his money in the dark, long-fingered, selling Bibles and wire-framed eyeglasses, the rattlers wouldn't come near for fear he'd cheat them of their rattles, the blue racer snakes flew away in the trees, a tall white bell-shaped hat stuck on his head, dented in the crown, heavy with gold coins sewn up inside, the dripping pine forests of Carolina, the red-clay foothills of Virginia, no flicker of expression in his nut-brown face, no alarm, no apprehension, no fear, no terror, never a smile except that wide lipless crafty grin, Ma'am, may I show you, Mister, may I demonstrate to you, the wooden face, the glass eyes,
What was his name, Zinn?—or was that the other one?
Alone and on foot and pretending to be penniless. A hacking cough. Phlegm laced with blood in the palm of his hand, leaking through the fingers. Alone or with an Indian woman. Or with his son.
The damned Yankee crook—how did he get away so fast?
—disappearing around the bend in the road, evaporating like mist, half the village's gold coins in his pockets and the other half in the crown of his hat.
Yankee!

John Jay Zinn, the pedlar from Maine. Or was it New York. Zinn who spread typhoid one wet spring, along the shore of Delaware Bay. Zinn who had left a wife behind in Shaheen Falls. And another wife in Front Royal, in the Blue Ridge Mountains. He was six feet ten inches tall—a loose-limbed gangling giant. Walked hunched forward, using his staff as if he hated the ground and wanted to cause it pain. One winter, dressed in beaver skins, short and plumped-out, ruddy cheeks, spectacles with plain glass in them, to hide his squinting winking mocking eyes; the next winter, skinny again, in knee-high leather boots stiff with mud, the old broadcloth preacher's coat that wouldn't have been warm enough for a normal man, the old soiled white hat dented in the crown:
Is that Zinn again?—or that other Yankee crook?
Alone and coughing into his hand. Alone and bawling songs, drunk, at the tavern on the creek in Fayette. He was a spy for Jackson in the Carolinas, a spy for Calhoun in New England, he had the power to arrest anyone fool enough to buy his untaxed rum, he sold Dr. Bolton's Purgative Pills in the little green box with the legend on the side
Caution: Not To Be Used By Females in the Pregnant State As Miscarriage Might Occur,
the villagers flocked to him, attracted by a magnet in the crown of his hat which drew their gold and silver coins and even the fillings in their teeth. Quadrants for sale, seashells from the depths of the ocean that foretold the future if you pressed your ear up close enough, wigs for all sizes of heads made from human hair stiff as horsehair, Professor Dobson's Portuguese Laudanum, a secret oily potion “for men only,” firecrackers and sparklers and gunpowder, even the laziest woodchucks and possums could not resist, the white-tailed buck traded his antlers, the squirrel traded his bushy plume of a tail,
Is that boy of his touched in the head?—what a pity,
the Maryland flatlands, the New Jersey pine barrens, December days when the sun never rose and the sky was a black lurid soup.
Damn Yankee spy.

Bawling his wares. Alone or with one of his wives or with his little boy John Quincy. Like father, like son. Five years old, he was. A dwarf, twenty years old. Obedient, quick to duck from his father's fist, staggering beneath the weight of the backpack like a sickly little mule. Leather belts, earrings, wedding rings, “French perfume.” Wax candles, candlestick holders, darning eggs, sleigh bells, tin crickets, magnifying glasses, pocket knives and paring knives and quill pens and India ink. Jacob's Antikink Medicine, Curtis's Manhood. Gold fillings
did
work their way out of your teeth, soon as you heard John Jay's bawling out in the road. He fed a sweet orange-tasting medicine to the blacksmith's thirteen-year-old daughter, out behind the cemetery, and walked away scot-free, disappeared around the bend in the road. He read aloud, laughing and wheezing, from
The Rip Snorter,
for customers who couldn't read. A face carved out of hickory, a breath dank and musty as a cellar, unblinking squinting eyes, grizzled eyebrows,
the damned cheating lying Yankee,
spreading influenza from Quakertown to Penns Grove on the Delaware to Cape May on the Atlantic. White hairs stiff as wires sprouting in his ears. Playing the mouth organ. The backpack swung to the ground with a groan, the black preacher's coat pale with dust,
God damn if it isn't him again! Lock your doors and bolt your shutters and plug up the chimney!
The foothills of the Blue Mountains, the steep red-clay roads of the Catskills, twilight in the Poconos, the smell of snow, the smell of winter, a blood blister on the child's left heel, John Jay Zinn treating all the men at the gunpowder mill, John Jay Zinn dragging the child (asleep on his feet) into a corner of the tavern, John Jay Zinn slapping the hysterical woman across each cheek, matching blow for blow as she slapped
him: You got to admire Zinn, playing the game like he was in it to save his life.

Fancy pocket knives with five blades, bolts of calico, ladies' hats pretty as the ones worn in Boston, pots and pans guaranteed never to tarnish, Dr. Elton's Never-Fail Kidney Pills, paper collars, leather shoes, hairbrushes, tortoise-shell combs. Aquashicola on the Appalachian Trail, Geneva on Seneca Lake, Chazy Landing on Lake Champlain, that cold crafty unmistakable smile, tobacco-stained and gat-toothed, his own false teeth, dentures made of wood. Sometimes with the unprotesting child whose mouth was slack with fatigue, sometimes alone, in his thigh-high fisherman's boots, striding over the hill whistling a tuneless song, or sleeping in a ditch motionless as a dead man. (Nearby were three buzzards on a fence—not
watching
Zinn but
watching over
him.)
But is he dead? Is that real blood?—the damned Yankee.

Spring mist, a pitiless August sun, cracks in the red soil,
The Old Farmer's
for sale cheap, Rhode Island and Connecticut, pewter mugs with grinning teeth and ears for handles, the five-year-old boy, six years old, husky in the shoulders, shy, a curious birthmark on his temple, the sign of the Devil, New Hampshire and sleet and dogs tearing at their legs, Maine and fever, gloves missing fingers, shoes with paper-thin soles, razors that cut your face so you find yourself bleeding from a dozen little wounds—
John Jay Zinn the pedlar, the Yankee crook.
Cheating at cards but no one saw how. Walking away with so many gold and silver coins, his heels dragged. And around the bend—nothing! Disappeared into the air. Into a raven squawking and jeering overhead. And the little boy—turned into a starling. Flying away, flying overhead, jeering and squawking. Buckshot can't touch them.

A bigamist many times over. Wives in Portland and Concord and Hartford and Shaheen and Wilmington and New Hope and Shenandoah, Dr. Petersham's Home Remedy for Ailments of the Digestive System, Heart Pains, Shredded Nerves, Female Complaints, a sure-fire cure for carbuncles warts inflamed moles cancers of the skin. A spy of King Andrew's. Chest hollow as a drum, nothing behind the eyeglasses, ears baked and cracked like crockery, spreading syphilis, spreading consumption, toes amputated for frostbite, cuckoo clocks that fall apart in a week, razors that cut your fingers as soon as you pick them up, cotton nightcaps stained with blood, the wide slow mocking grin, the tobacco-stained teeth, Yes, ma'am, no, ma'am, I have here, ma'am, let me show you, ma'am, bolts of raw silk from China direct off the ship, buttons of all sizes and kinds—mother-of-pearl and bone and tortoise-shell and jade—he peddled false teeth to the fools in Christiana that never needed them, he peddled tin crosses to the fools in Portsmouth to cure them of influenza, he betook himself ten miles up the road to sell henna rinse to three old baldheaded spinsters, he got married to the old dragon-widow who ran the Three Bells, and she up and died and he inherited, the same thing happened at West Almond Creek, and in Laurel, Delaware, but her sons got wind of it and chased him hell to leather, would have rode him on a pike if they'd caught him, that was only last year. Forty years old, forty-seven years old, fifty, bastards up and down the coast, nigger brats, the rich Carolina valleys, rain in the Adirondacks, outlaw rum, tobacco chews, spools of thread, beads and sequins and pearls and rhinestones for the ladies, Dr. Roley's Brazilian Hair Curling Liquid, bawling at the top of his lungs, coughing, wheezing, spitting bloody phlegm onto the sawdust floor, Guerlain's Lustral Water, Rowland's Essence of Tyre, Jones's Oil of Coral Circassia, Balm of Columbia, Cream of Lilies, Dr. Kiely's Pomatum, Ring's Verbena, Henry's Chinese Cream, Brown's Windsor Soap, Esprit de Cédrat for the Complexion, Sirop de Boubie, Blanc de Neige, Micheaux's Freckle Wash. Measuring spoons that wouldn't measure, matches that wouldn't light, doorknobs that wouldn't turn, needles that wouldn't pierce the flimsiest cloth, bedbug poison the bedbugs lapped up like gruel. He never blinked when a steel fishing knife slammed into the wall beside his head, he never did more than cough and sputter when his nose was broke, and gushed blood, he eased himself up all six feet ten inches weighing maybe one hundred twenty pounds and walked to the door and stepped outside into the moonlight and disappeared: just disappeared into the air: and only the blood-splashes left behind.

Taking orders for portable prebuilt houses (Louisiana French style), $10 deposit, reading from
Mrs. Unger's Manual of Social and Business Forms
for the ladies who couldn't read, playing the harmonica, playing the fiddle, tapping his foot, the dancers whipping past him, his eyeglasses winking. Arrested for selling untaxed rum and beaten to death on the road and left in the ditch and the next year there he was again!—big as life striding over the hill, raising dust, leaning on his staff,
Lock your doors and bolt your windows, it's the Yankee pedlar again,
hat racks for sale, satin cravats only a little soiled, floral-printed oilcloth, last year's calendar,
The Frugal Housewife's Almanack,
slop jars, children's boots, glass bells, tincture of benzoin, ginger cough lozenges, heavy carbonate magnesia, oil of aniseed, Cascara Sagrada Pills, Paregoric Elixir, ammoniated quinine, oxalic acid powder, essence of pennyroyal, essence of cloves, eucalyptus oil, belladonna, sugar of lead, liquorice, Buckthorn's Syrup, flower of sulphur. Bedwarmers, wool-flock, ambergris for fertility, Florentine orris-root for toothache, gentlemen's embroidered waistcoats, aigrettes for the ladies, of tinted feathers, shawls of Spanish rabbit skin, black plush purses, lace collars and cuffs, Yes, ma'am, no, ma'am, I have here, ma'am, let me shut the door, ma'am, no pupils in his eyes, no heartbeat in his chest, the boy isn't his son, they don't look alike, he must be kidnapped, taken somewhere along the road, buckshot can't touch them.

In Shinnecock, Virginia, the sheriff arrested him and locked him in jail and by morning the pedlar had beat him at cards so bad, the inside of the jail was stripped, even the corn-shuck mattress, even the sheriff's glass eye, and in Oriskany on the Hudson they thought to play a practical joke on him, put a noose around his neck and dragged him out of the tavern, and halfway to where they were going he talked them out of all the coins in their pockets
and
the noose, and ain't been back since.