The Blood of Heaven (32 page)

You bastard fools, said Stirling before he was hushed by a jab to the ribs and the laughter of the men as we proceeded on our way.

When we’d crossed the line, earlier in the day, the new recruits had drawn out hunting horns and blown a signal for others to appear, which they soon did. We were forty and expecting more from the St. Helena squatters who said they’d meet us at Buller’s Plains, below the houses of the men we were to take.

This time we had enough torches and Pintado’s house was consumed and so too his cotton-gin; and when we had him, rope about his neck, held by Samuel on that tether out in the yard, the fire spread even to the surrounding fields.

The dog owes me fifty dollars, said Basil Abrams, who’d gone with us into the house to drag Pintado out, and taken for his payment a pair of fine pistols emblazoned with the seal of the Spanish king.

Pintado’s words slipped into Puke when he saw his wife and daughters running out from the conflagration.

Your world’s falling, said Samuel with a jerk of the rope. And you’ll bear witness to it. If your commandant in Baton Rouge is kind, he’ll let us trade you for the prisoners. If he isn’t, he’ll watch you die.

Pintado jabbered in hateful Spanish and shouted to his women, who were by then heading for the slaves’ quarters, which were unburnt, their black dresses fluttering against the air, bright with fire. His face was black with soot from crawling through his house, trying to save his maps and instruments. It had been me who pulled him from his office, braved the flames, drug him out the burning house and into the yard, where Samuel awaited him with the rope.

Now my brother and I were again exhorting the niggers to come with us and to take their shovels and trowels and forks as weapons. But they only ran from us as though we were devils. I was up on my horse again and Samuel whipped the rope tight about his wrist, gave a look to Stirling and then Pintado, and said, You don’t ride. You run.

On we went, Crabbe fighting against the banner which blew over Ransom’s shoulder, more red-faced than usual and filled with glee.

You think you’ll gain from this madness? called Stirling. Nothing but a bunch of bloody brigands.

The boys hurrahed and fired off shots.

What in hell’s a brigand? asked one.

Nothing but a common robber, spit Stirling.

Big talk from a man who sits back while eighty men are about to get hung, called another.

Who’s hung? said Stirling.

At that, Samuel raised up his voice and said, Then let’s show him what brigands can do, right, boys?

Amen, I hollered.

Pintado ran, struggling for breath against the rope, and now and then his slack would get too much and he’d trip over it and fall to the ground. This went on until it became clear we had to horse him, hauling him up still bound and sitting him behind one of the Bradfords.

Many of the boys now rode with silver coffee-urns the size of children in their laps, china-ware dishes that tottered, fell, and shattered in the road, and even some captured slave women and children, who by midnight were pitched off for their weight and tumbled down into the road, where the lucky ones hit their feet but many were ridden down. So we left behind us a wake of busted bodies and finery on our way to Baton Rouge.

There were no St. Helena squatters to be found at Buller’s Plains. We were forty men and twenty miles from the capital, spelling our horses and waiting for reinforcements.

My brother cursed their cowardice.

We don’t need the weak, I said. The Lord provides according. This just shows His faith in us.

Dawn came as we rounded the bluffs along the Mississippi River heading for the fort on the western side of the town, where we’d planned to split, with one bunch hitting the barricades while the other went east to take the commandant in his house. But the Lord saw fit to spread his indignation upon us that night, and we rode straight into a picket of Puke soldiers, who rose up from behind a hasty battlement of cotton bales and sugar sacks and fired.

I can’t say how many fell, but the flash of their muskets was like Christ snapped his fingers and said, Now prove yourselves to me.

And so Samuel shouted for a volley and we let our irons bark and the Pukes fell back from their picket, scrambling through the piked palisades for the fort. The one I’d shot with my buss was near halved, and I trod my horse through him as we came to the pikes and the earthworks, and a rain of shots came down from overhead. I saw a Pinckneyville man fall and we beat back to the safety of some scrub oak near the river.

The sun was fully risen now and the river flooded gold behind us. Samuel shook with rage and barked plans and orders to the white-faced men.

You thought they wouldn’t find out? said Stirling. You fools, you rode through like a pack of Indians! How couldn’t they know?

Let’s draw them out, I said. Send a prisoner to talk over the exchange.

They’re probably hanging them all right now, said a West Florida boy.

No one is to be hanged, Pintado said, too quickly for one of us to shut him up. Turn yourselves in! We know you’ve been deceived by these
bribónes
!

I swung my empty buss and struck the Puke over the head and he fell to the ground, but now Stirling had taken up his call and was yelling to whoever listened that there would be amnesty for any West Floridian who’d quit the present madness.

It’s not a damned madness, I said. It’s how nations are made.

Stirling heaved a breath and said, You are the sorriest bunch of idiots afoot in the land. And led by even bigger fools to attack the blasted fort, undermanned and outgunned, and for what? The promise of the Kempers?

Somebody hit that bastard! Samuel shouted, unable to stand another word; and Arthur Cobb did, putting Stirling in the dirt with Pintado.

A volley sounded from the walls of the fort and tore a hunk from the scrub oak, where now the faces of the men betrayed their growing doubts.

You turn your backs on us and you turn them against God, I said. And my voice rang weak, belching old coal-dust, and the alcalde’s words became my father’s in my head.

But if they aren’t hanging anybody—

And there’s no troops from Pointe Coupee—

They’ll come when we take the son of a bitching fort! Samuel howled. We’ve already sent the messenger! He had his pistol drawn and was waving it about the doubt-wracked faces of the men.

I said to the doubters, You’d rather listen to the Pukes’ dogs here than to men you know?

Listen to him, said Ransom. We’re here to take the thing one way or another.

Damn straight, said Basil Abrams.

And as for you, said Samuel to Stirling. You’re going to the fort and you’re putting our proposition to Grand Pré—release the prisoners and we’ll turn the rest over. Go and tell him.

The indigo man was cut loose and driven to his feet and off towards the battlements, where he had to step lightly over the slain Puke soldiers, and among them I saw the body of Arthur Cobb, dangling from his stirrups, his love at an end. I pointed him out to Samuel, who had no time for pity.

We’ll see what the old Puke says, said my brother.

Meanwhile we poured powder and reloaded, prepared ourselves for a reckoning. I loaded Deacon Kemper’s old dueling pistol and set it in my lap while I made sure the rifle strapped to the saddle was ready; and its weight was like the weight of my son, pitiful and hopeless.

Stirling returned and said the commandant refused to negotiate with pirates whose only object was plunder and riot.

Then you tell him to get ready to watch you die, said Samuel.

And His Honor the Commandant wishes me to tell you that he will execute a prisoner for every man you shoot. All others, besides the Kempers, may turn themselves in and depart in safety. I’ve let the commandant know that you were misled, gentlemen. Consider your conduct well. Stirling smiled with busted lips as Samuel doubled over in rage.

Myself, I was quiet, thoughts of my wife and child upon me—not that I missed them or wished to live on for them, but that I wanted to die and be rid of them—wicked thoughts as the day wore on, the sun glaring bright upon us and the boys beginning to bitch for water while the Mississippi made its enormous pull against the land, ongoing and unstoppable.

I say we ride around and go into the town, I said. Draw the bastards out.

The Americans from Pointe Coupee should be coming any minute, said Samuel, sounding miles away.

The Bradfords tossed down their guns and rode for the fort without a word, followed soon by the other West Floridians, leaving us with Abrams, Ransom, Crabbe, and the paltry ten Pinckneyville men, who soon quit us, to the spitting shouts of Samuel and me.

Cowards! Samuel called after them. Fools!

But Stirling also was shouting to the fort, that there were men departing home and not to shoot.

O, that’s just damned honorable, Samuel said to him.

Stirling said nothing and went to where Pintado was standing, just apart from us, at the foot of the scrub. They talked amongst themselves for a moment.

Just as honorable as shit, I said.

Pintado shook the rope about his neck and said, That is the difference between us, Mister Kemper.

By noon we were in a daze, and it seemed we’d live out our years in that copse of scrub oak beneath the looming fort. The day was windless and I saw in Ransom’s hands our banner drooping and wilted. Stirling said something in Puke to Pintado, and they, in a slow strange dance, went to the foot of the scrub oaks and lowered themselves flat to the ground. Samuel laughed as he watched them, before the daze of heat and sunlight was broken and the banner ripped to shreds by gunfire from the riverside. We had no time to talk, to plan, but rode against the firing and it harried us as we tried to circle our attackers, who were so shrouded in a cloud of powder-smoke that we couldn’t sight them. So we fired wildly into the cloud, whirled our horses, and rode at where we thought they were, only to end up slopping in the river, having to haul back up a hillside now strafed with shot; we turned to ride northwards up the river, fools, outcasts, and failures, and I was at the back of them and saw Crabbe crumple and fall from Ransom’s back. Then Ransom, feeling the weight of his friend gone, threw down our shredded banner and went for him. I pulled up and fired my last shot into the oncoming militia, seeing Ransom O’Neil jump down from his horse and crouch on the ground beside Crabbe, who was alive enough to put a claw to his shoulder and be half-hoisted before both were finally brought down by the next volley. A fire lit in my ribs and I knew I was hit. Hearing up ahead Samuel and Abrams screaming for me to come on, I hunched to my burning rib and spurred on after them, leaving behind Ransom and Crabbe and my hopes for fulfilling God’s Will, all equally dead.

We followed the Mississippi fifteen miles until it bent with Thompson’s Creek, thinking the patrols would be heavy near Bayou Sara and Feliciana. We met no resistance, and even this was galling, as though we were so insignificant and foolish that the world no longer paid us any mind. Hunger-bitten, we were swallowed in the giant cane and the sun was so merciless that it shone even there and further up in the woodlands and the northward limestone seeps. When we slowed to give the horses rest, Samuel said we were not finished.

God’s overthrown us, I said, and set darkness in our paths.

Lot of good your damned preaching did, said my brother.

And what did your damned brother do for us?

It’s not over, said Samuel.

After that we didn’t speak, save for Basil Abrams mumbling about his wife. And there was nothing which spoke of being finished like the land we passed through on our way to the line: a miles-long stretch of sugarcane fields which had been burnt for fallowing. The furrows still smoked and we rode through the ashes of our failures; and it could have been made no clearer in that black and shriveled land that the love of the Lord was gone from us, that we meant nothing to His plans. I didn’t have the strength to beg Him, didn’t have the spit to ask Him for a sign. I bore His mighty hatred and resolved to give it back to Him in kind. And if Satan himself had rose up from the ashy land and asked me to join him in his fight, I might’ve thrown in right there with him, I was so sorrowful tired of God’s love, if this was what it was. But there came no Devil and there came no answer from on high, just a sullen breeze of wind-blown ashes drawn up to the burning August sky. Samuel was at the head as we neared the end of the burnt country, and he didn’t see that I took his father’s pistol from my bandolier and dropped it to the dust. I’d tell him that I lost it in the fray.

VI

Dregs and Wretched Remainders

Pinckneyville, Fall–Winter 1804

A Cure for a Felon

News came shuffling into Pinckneyville for weeks and fell on ears too dead to care. At least my own were; still ringing with the gunfire that sent us in retreat, and the shameful sound of it was deafening. And it was better to be deaf those days, when what came from the mouths of all I knew were either the whispers of new conspiracies or the wild yowls of my son which served to punctuate his frequent silences. There was indeed an amnesty, and all our captured followers were released on bond; the Pukes were kind in their pardons, as though to mock us further, and the country subsided back to peace. Arthur Cobb, so we heard, was alive, but Ransom O’Neil and Johnny Crabbe went unmentioned, as though they had never existed. Perhaps it was that the good people of West Florida couldn’t suffer to think that such a horrible thing as Crabbe had shared the world with them, and worse that it had a friend who’d died by its side. So they were erased from all memory but our desolate recollections in that rotten Mississippi town, and even these grew fewer and fewer as the time passed after our raid.