The Blood of Heaven (22 page)

Sure as can be, said my wife. I’ve been a long time off the tinctures, and I believe the poison left and a child took.

Now I’d begun to weep, tried again to take the ladder but still my hands were wasted, and so I rose and scrabbled up the slope, my brother harrying behind so that I wouldn’t fall as I capered at the peak and bayed in joy to the marshlands and waters all about. Twenty feet down, Red Kate had taken up my dance, slow twirls kicking dirt clouds at her feet. In all my wretched life I was never so unhitched from the world as on that day, when I swung from the chimney and swore for how I’d made myself a life. There would be no one to drown her, no father to make me dig her grave, no tribulation and no shame. I’d make sure of that.

The Time of Waiting

Our talk was often names and eyes and hair and sexes, making a child with our words even as it quickened in her. Reuben, when he came to Bayou Sara for one of his brief and angry exchanges with the alcaldes, congratulated me and seemed happy for the prospect of a child about the place.

It’s a glory I won’t ever know, he said. Aliza has it plotted out like a Papist woman’s calendar.

We were sitting out on the porch steps, sipping gin from the store. Fall had come, the leaves gone brittle, and they blew in drifts across the bayou and were snatched up on occasion by great catfish whose backs broke the water in swells and slipped beneath in one mysterious motion.

I’m talking years, said Reuben. I’ve known her for more than five and there’s been no sign of it in her.

There’s always room for the miraculous.

It wouldn’t be a virgin conception, I assure you.

I didn’t mean that, I said.

I know, said Reuben. I think of miracles. I pray on their likelihood. Like for Smith to stay in Ohio a bit longer, and the Pukes to keep out of our business. For America to take the territory, double the price of our land.

Have you heard anything more from New Orleans?

I’ve heard in Natchez, I’ve heard in New Orleans. The country will be American soon.

But why not appoint our own men to the tribune? That way we’ll have a hope of fairness.

Don’t trouble yourself with that mess, he said. The Pukes are slow in law and I’m making money from hauling, enough to pay whatever they ask if they judge in his favor. And besides, it won’t be for years. By that time I may be able to buy Smith out. Sue his ass.

I do worry on it, I said.

Don’t. I took that old Reverend by the scruff, now didn’t I? You doubt that I can do that with a bunch of frilled surveyors and politicians?

I don’t.

Then let me worry. Reuben finished his cup of gin and after hissing out a breath asked me was his brother off with the widow in the woods.

I said he was.

Good. He seems happy enough.

He needs to tell Arthur, I said.

Give him time. That’s what you should learn here. Give everything its time. Reuben stood and stretched, looked up to the house. Well done with the cornices, he said. The Pukes can tell Smith we aren’t slothful. He drew a fattened billfold from his coat, saying, This is near a thousand dollars, and I want you to go to Pintado and buy as much land as you can with it, and the second you have it, lease it out, sell the timber. That way we’ll be earning from it.

I took the billfold and told him we would. Will you go to Natchez next?

Most likely, he said. I haven’t seen Aliza in two months. I’ll bring her the good news.

Reuben held his arms out wide so that they stretched across the rails of the porch and breathed deep of the cooling air. Then he said, I wonder if she is to be the miracle of my life.

From that same lady, gifts were sent and arrived in November, not long after we bought the land and leased it off: a fine crib and swaddling clothes and toys of various kinds. We set them out on the billiard table in the fore-room and they were added to by our friends all the following months. Abrams and Cobb passed frequently, as did the Bradfords, the Silvers, and even Edward Randolph down from Pinckneyville, who spoke philosophically on the raising of children, himself desiring fatherhood, though he’d yet to be so blessed. Samuel rode the widow Cobb down to cook for Kate till the end of her term. Christmas came and we celebrated the birth of the Savior, with all songs and readings of the Book seeming like they pertained not to Christ but to the coming of our own child.

Widow Cobb in her mourning clothes brought us cups of hot spiced punch, first to Kate, then Samuel, then me, and finally to her brother-in-law, who was there that day. Arthur eyed Samuel a bit from over the lip of his cup. We drank and Ezmina, a fur of coon-tails about her shoulders for the cold, knelt beside my wife and spoke.

If only my Will had had time to give me one, she said.

There’s hope yet, said Kate, cutting her eyes with a smile to Samuel.

He stiffened and Arthur stood, cursing.

It’s nothing wrong here, said my brother, himself rising.

Cobb was at his chest and they glared at each other for a moment. Arthur cocked his head as though shaking water from his ear. I don’t give a damn, he said, and turning to the widow Cobb with strains of broken hope aching in his voice: It ain’t like she’s my wife.

Samuel put his hand out and Arthur took it, sat back down, and resumed drinking, and the matter was left at that for a time; though later, when Arthur Cobb came to know the full extent of Ezmina’s sins, he’d gnash his teeth and cuss and tear out most of his hair, going about for weeks in the tatters of the same clothes he wore the day he heard, and it was clear that he also loved her. But by that time we all had other things at hand; and Arthur Cobb, ragged and profane, joined in with Samuel and me without complaint.

As winter wore on and the child became apparent in my wife, I took to keeping all my pieces loaded and near me in our bedroom, where I didn’t so much sleep as lay there with my eyes held shut. I thought again of Morrel, that he was still prowling the countryside, of his vengeance. And the firesides of the country held stranger rumors than him; there was talk of an enormous spider, the size of a man, seen roving the roads and at the edges of yards. Even such fantasies gave me pause. I’d never had anything to protect other than my sorry self, and I was happy that we were constantly beset by visitors those days.

It happened that one night I heard a rustling outside and put my hand to Kate’s arm and told her to stay and listen hard. Then I took up my pistol and shotgun and went through the house, awakening the widow Cobb on her pallet, Samuel rising beside her to join me at the front window, seeing there in the moonlight a boy unlashing my horse from its post. I gave Samuel the shotgun and we took the bar from the door and the boy must have heard us, for he was skittering off into the dark when we came out onto the porch and I aimed my guns on him. He stopped, holding some livery in his hand.

Hold, now, boy! Samuel called out.

The boy was wormy, hatless, coatless, and with peeling moccasins; but he squared and held his ground under our guns, which pleased me despite my anger.

What’s your name? I said.

The boy didn’t answer and by then the horse was loose and wandering the yard, picking at the dry grass. I came down, took the lashings from him, and went to tie my horse back.

Do you have any friends in Feliciana? I asked.

He looked at me in confusion, as if to say, If I had friends I wouldn’t be stealing your horse.

There’s no man who’ll hunt me down if I kill you?

No, he said.

You’re trying to steal a damned horse? said Samuel.

I cinched the last knot in the tie and left the horse, moving out of Samuel’s line of fire but still close enough to see the stony expression of this boy faced with double-death.

He’s just looking, I said. Right?

No, he said. I meant to steal your damned horse.

Tell me your name, I said.

The boy chucked the livery down and said, Ransom O’Neil.

Samuel said, That’s a thief’s name if I ever heard one!

All right, brother Ransom, I said. Now I’m going to ask you one hell of an important question. Do you know where you’re going?

Ain’t going anywhere while you’re holding that gun.

No, not now. Do you know where you’re going to go when you die? When some man catches you filching his things and puts you down to eternity?

I’d go in the ground or in jail, he said.

I’m for the first suggestion, Samuel said.

I stepped closer with my pistol, trying to look stern.

Shoot and get it done, Samuel called.

Ransom O’Neil’s eyes searched us out with fearful glances. I guess if I’m stealing then I’ll go to Hell, he said.

Damn right, you’ll go straight to Hell.

Are you to be the one who sends me?

Maybe so, said Samuel.

I smiled at him, 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.

He stared at me unbelieving.

The Lord should hate me, but 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 I work for Him—

Jesus Christ, Angel, said my brother, are you evangelizing this turd-swill?

I said I was, never taking my eyes nor the barrel of my pistol from the boy.

What kind of scripture’s that? asked Ransom O’Neil.

The Word of the Sword of the Lord, I said. And if you let yourself be baptized you’ll have that same weapon, that same love. I’ll throw down this gun and baptize you right now, and if you follow me you’ll never want again. What say?

Shit, said Samuel, get it over with. I’ve heard you preach enough.

Ransom O’Neil brushed scraggly black hair grown overlong from his forehead and said, It sounds mad, but I’ll go.

Samuel followed behind us with his shotgun trained, and I believe it wasn’t the first gunpoint baptism in Christendom, but it was my first. I brought the boy to the edge of the water and, taking him by the collar, followed him in. Before I dunked him, he said, If you drown me, I swear I’ll haunt you.

Amen, I said. And he went under easy and the water bubbled for a few moments while I said my prayers and invocations. Then I withdrew him from the murk and brought the new convert, gasping and sanctified, to the bank. He was cackling in bewilderment, though I’d like to think he was dumbstruck at the glory of God.

Before we put him in the store for the night, Ransom told of how he’d come up from New Orleans, where his people were indentures, and that his father and mother had been buried alive in the canals and he’d been left to tend to four brothers and sisters, who he’d abandoned when the fever came upon the city. He would be one for odd work, often hired out to the Bradfords or Cobb as the new year dawned and winter lagged to an end. That night he said he liked any work that wasn’t knee-deep in mud and clay where sometimes digging you’d turn a shovel and find the pale corpse of another worker, perhaps the curled white hand of your own mother, like a mushroom disinterred.

When I came again into the bedroom, I found Red Kate sitting up with her lamp lit and belly piling the sheets.

I worried you were dead, she said.

I sat beside her and put a hand to her belly, wherefrom issued a kick of a tiny foot, and I was filled even more with grace and glory.

If I died, I said, you’d know because the very ground would split and there’d be a sound of thunder.

You’re wild, she said.

The world will know when I pass out of it, I said. And the mark I leave will be great.

Red Kate pressed a finger to herself, where she thought was our child, and said, This is your mark. Nothing more. And don’t forget it.

Creation

The widow Cobb’s face was ashen when she drove me out of the house that night as the birth began. I didn’t want to leave, for the last I’d seen of Red Kate was her face twisted in pain before the widow blew the lamp out, saying that there must be darkness or she might go into a fever for the oppressiveness of light. This was the last day of April, and Reuben happened to be there, and he along with Samuel hauled me outside to the store, waking Ransom, and put a cup of gin in my hand. It was before midnight, and I’d been awakened to a wet bed and shuddering wife; and her hair, darkened and matted down with sweat, looked so much like streams of blood that I was terrified.

My Copperhead would tell me next day, when she was rested, how it went; but in those hours amid my gin-soaked prayers and with the consoling words of the brothers rattling like a babble in my ears, I envisioned her suffering in the time of bringing forth. The widow would have her propped and legs bound apart with sheets in the darkness; how she worked without light I’ll never know. There would be the pulse of Kate’s body urging out the life she’d held these past months; and was it small or twisted and warped? Was it a breech? I saw the widow hunched above her in the bed, her hands down at Red Kate’s lap, and the widow was shook for the force of the world was wracking the bed. I went outside to listen for screams and stare at the black window of the bedroom, but I heard none and was soon brought back in by my brothers. The widow’s hands would feel the curve of a head without her and those hands were like the hands that held Emily under the water, for that was what I thought of when I felt the chill of Red Kate’s flooding in the bed. I stared at the candle Ransom had set burning in the store once he was up, and that pinprick of light was in the bedroom now as the widow felt the small slope of shoulders and the light swelled to eat the darkness to the corners and beneath the trembling, creaking bed as in a final slip of flesh and blood the wrinkled form of the child came into her hands. And I rushed outside again and swear I saw the house explode with a light which burned for an instant like the sun, so that I had to hold my hand up to my eyes and shield them. A cry, a tiny shriek of infant life, issued out from the house and I ran to put my face to the bedroom pane. I pressed there and listened, and I heard the crying of the child but not his mother. Hands were upon me and my brothers dragged me fighting back to the store and had to hold me down for the time it took, an hour or more, for the widow to appear at the door and tell me that they were both alive, but I mustn’t go inside until the dawn. I cursed her and my brothers tried to hand me more gin, which I knocked away, rising up with a furious strength and bowling the widow Cobb aside. I ran through the yard, busting my lip when I hit the steps, but still I clambered up and was inside the house, dripping blood I couldn’t see.