Canaan's Tongue (26 page)

Just then, however, Kennedy appear’d out of the dark & took hold of me
by my wrists.

“Have yourself a wash,” he said, dragging me to the nearest of the barrels
& plunging my hands into a cool, astringent liquid.

“What is it?” I gasp’d. It stung my palms & knuckles fiercely.

“Briarberry wine,” Kennedy said, letting go of my arms. “If you’ve sport
to wash off you, Joseph, buh! buh! briarberry wine’s your trick.”

“Briarberry! But it stains worse than anything,” I protested. “& it stinks.”

“Clever hen!” Kennedy sing-song’d, still in high humor. I soon heard him
splashing it on himself as if it were rose-water. “If the Nick gets ahold of you,
all they smell or see’s the souse. That’s what it’s for, Joseph. See?” I fancied I
could hear his lips pull back into a grin. “Come along, now! Let’s return us to
the temple of our familiars.”

We made our way back without incident. The Child was asleep in the
room’s only bed, breathing in soft, melodious whistles. Parson didn’t look to
have moved an inch.

“
Stulti sunt hic,
”
Parson said as we came in.

“Get pissed, blood-sucker,” Kennedy retorted.

“A question,” Parson said, unperturb’d. “I wonder, Mr. Kennedy, if you
know what a ‘priapy’ might be?”

“Go to hell.”

“A priapy, Mr. Kennedy, is a high ecclesiastic official of the Roman
Catholic Church, whose important function is to brand the pricks of the Pope’s
bulls with the words ‘Priapus Romae.’ He enjoys a princely revenue & the
friendship of God.”

Kennedy said nothing for a brief while, during which he appear’d to be
asleep. Then, drawing a weary breath, he lower’d himself onto a chair &
said—“& a cunt, you clot of puh! puh! pig-shite, is a Baptist of the feminine
variety led out to same said pasture by her fancy minister and made to squat
down, present arms, &—”

“I don’t doubt it, Mr. Kennedy!” Parson said happily. He hummed to
himself a moment. “Did you come across our creditor?”

“I did.” Kennedy lean’d forward on the stool, dug a finger into his nose,
withdrew it, inspected it, then gestured toward the Child. “Rouse him, would
you, Joseph?”

I look’d toward the bed. Asleep the tiny creature was so immaculately
childlike, so otherworldly in his calm, that it seem’d a shame he didn’t go to
bed in front of his audience as the finále of his speeches. In spite of this grace
about him, however—or perhaps because of it—the thought of laying hands
on him fill’d me with unease. Awful as the others seemed, as much as I fear’d
them, their significance paled in the presence of the Child—I felt no kinship
toward them, no devotedness, no love.

“Go on, Joseph,” Kennedy mutter’d, fidgeting with the collar of his coat.
It was a filthy, ragged a fair, its buttons fashion’d from all manner of odds &
ends—bottle-caps, bits of tea-cup, the gnaw’d end of a pipe. A life as one of the
Child’s retainers clearly didn’t bring much in the way of worldly privilege.

Trying to undo one of the buttons, Kennedy put a gouge into his finger &
cursed. “Wake him up already, Joseph, for the love of Sam! Up & give him a
puh! puh! poke!”

“Mill him vigorously with thy palm, Mormon,” Parson intoned.

I took a few steps toward the bed. The Child’s breathing had a restless
sound to it now, as if he were already half-awake; the notion came to me that
he might be shamming sleep, to test me. For some reason this made me bolder.
Bending over him, I saw the balls of his eyes flitting back & forth under their
glossy lids, his thin lips quivering with each breath. An odd thing happen’d
then—suddenly it was I who was powerful, knowledgeable & sly; the Child, by
contrast, was as helpless as his name implied. I’d reinvented myself once
already that night—the eager sniveler from Nauvoo, Illinois had been quietly
put to death. I was free of my old life, burnt clean by violence, like a coal-scuttlepulled clear of the fire. Was any role not mine for the taking, if I chose?

I laid my hand on the Child’s shoulder. As soon as I did so Parson darted
back into his corner like a mouse into its hole.

The Child’s eyes clapped open like two shutter’d windows. “Is it you,
Brother?” he said tenderly, his eyes wet with wonder.

“It’s Harvey,” I answer’d. “Or Smith, if you prefer. Mr. Kennedy and
myself—”

Before I could finish the Child gave me a kick that sent me tumbling
backwards. He was fully clothed under the blankets, boots & all; the print of
his heel burn’d as fiercely against my ribs as if it had been etch’d there.

“Suh—suh—suh—!” I gasp’d, struggling for breath.

“Shut your mouth, boy,” the Child said sedately, hopping down from the
bed. “Leave the stuttering to Stuts. It suits him better.”

I shut my eyes tight, expecting another kick; but instead I heard his voice
saying a fectionately to Kennedy—“Judging from the reek of briarberry, I
would say you found our man.”

“I did, the motte-licker.”

“Did you come to terms?”

A pause. “Weren’t nothing on him. Not a cent.”

“And in his rooms?”

“His rooms was in the Puh! Puh! Palace Hotel alley.”

Cautiously—simperingly—I open’d my eyes. The Child was directly
above me. He was looking past Kennedy now, perhaps at Parson in the corner.
“You mean to say that you brought nothing back? Not a blessed thing?”

For an instant Kennedy look’d cow’d; then he broke into a grin. “There’s
this,” he said, opening his hand over the table. A dozen glinting kernels—like
gilded pepper-corns—fell softly to the cloth. I stood up to see them better.

“I thought as much,” the Child said, bringing one of them to the candle.
In the weak light, even the enamel shone like gold—the Child made
appreciative little coos as he turned it this way & that, chipping at the dried blood with
his nails.

“I knew his family had money back in Baltimore,” he murmur’d. “You
could tell it by the way he lisp’d.” He glanced sideways at me. “No o fense,
Harvey.”

“None taken, sir!” I said brightly. “My own family, back in Nauvoo,
Illinois—”

“Shut your gob, Joseph,” said Kennedy. I shut it.

Parson reach’d across the table, took the tooth out of the Child’s hand &
sniff’d at it.

“What the hell are you about?” Kennedy snarl’d, snatching it back from
him. “It’s your regular flavor, aren’t it?”

“He was a chewer of plug tobacco,” Parson said smugly, retiring to his
corner.

The Child turn’d back to Kennedy and granted him a smile. “You managedit very neatly, Stuts.”

Kennedy cough’d into his sleeve. “Joseph were a help to me, of sorts.”

For the second time that night the Child looked at me with genuine surprise. “Perhaps you’re right, Mr. Harvey,” he said, taking my hand in his.
“Perhaps you are our Mormon.”

An hour later we were well out of town on a cart liberated from Costello’s
rooming-house, making for Wallace’s depot with all practicable speed. The
expedition was in the highest of spirits—Parson was whistling under his
breath, Kennedy was muttering to himself, & I was standing straight up in
the cart, reveling in as perfect a feeling of freedom as I have ever known. The
moon was up now, just a sliver short of full, & its light threw quicksilver
shadows across the plains. I felt both luminous & invisible. If the image of the
man in the Palace Hotel alley return’d now & again, so too did a rush of
disbelief that we’d escaped Onadee unpunish’d. With every mile my sense of
deliverance grew.

It was getting on light when we came to Wallace’s crossroads. Kennedy
stopped the horses & we sat silently for a time. I began to grow restless, & not
a little confused, but I managed to keep reasonably still.

“Your team’s in the barn?” the Child said finally, keeping his eyes on the
depot.

“Beg pardon, sir; not a team. One stippled mare.”

Now he look’d at me. “I thought you had a team, Harvey.”

“No, sir.”

“He said just the mare,” Parson put in, gazing indifferently eastwards.

“Huh!” said the Child. “We’ll need Wallace’s two old bleaters, then.”

Kennedy spat. “Might as well ride on the Mormon’s buh! buh! back.”

“True,” the Child admitted, laying a grass-blade between his lips. “But
Wallace’s pair would give us two teams, with that stipple of Harvey’s. Two
teams is preferable to one.”

“Damned if I think so,” Kennedy said, scratching his nose.

“Mind your parlance, Stuts,” the Child caution’d.

“Is Wallace not coming?” I said, feeling foolish without rightly knowingwhy.

The Child beckon’d me to him, took the grass-blade from his mouth &
brought it reverently down to touch my shoulders—first the left, then the
right—as though he were knighting me. “Up & after those horses, Goodie,”
he said, slipping a hand inside Kennedy’s top-coat. Still looking at me fondly,
he pulled out a little bosom-pistol—an ancient, graceless thing, such as you
might find on a doxie’s night-table—& toss’d it into my lap.

“Just a tap on the head & a thank-ye, Joseph!” Kennedy said as I climb’d
down. “Just a regular puh! puh! poke in the eye!”

So wholly was my lot cast in with them now—so little was left of the self-servingmisanthrope I’d been—that I never once question’d the wisdom of
entering that depot with nothing but a single-shot pistol from the preceding
century. The others hung back in the shadow of the cart, comfortably out of
harm’s way, while I put one foot ahead of the other down the muddy slope.
Twice I lost a shoe & had to hop back on one foot to collect it. A last vain
hope—that Wallace’s horses would be out in the open, hobbled between the
depot & the barn—expired as I came up to the house. The horses & wagons
were responsibly lock’d away. I stood on the porch for a time, harkening. There
was nothing but the buzzing of flatbugs in the weeds. I coax’d the door open,
press’d the pistol to my cheek—for courage, I suppose—and eased myself
inside.

The first thing I saw was Tempie lying on a heap of broad-sheets, his sack-clothover-alls loose around his hips. He snored so emphatically that I could
have ridden a mule through the house unnoticed. I stepped over his legs &
look’d hurriedly about the parlor for the keys to the stable, but I knew better
than to expect to find them there. Wallace was the kind of man who took his
keys to bed. I went to his bedroom door & push’d it open.

The bedroom was airless as a tomb & very near as dark. I stood on the
threshold for as long as I dared, giving my eyes time to acquaint themselves,
keeping my brain & body still. There was a pallet not three feet from where I
stood, and a tin night-pot beside it. I’d just noticed a loose heap of clothes on the
floor when I heard a soft, melodious sigh & saw a body on the pallet stretch &
roll onto its back. The body was long & dark & its skin had the buttery gloss of
fresh-tanned leather. It was a woman’s body, or a girl’s. She open’d her eyes as
I watch’d her, saw me above her in the doorway, & sat up without so much as
taking in a breath.

If she’d had any feeling for Wallace at all, she’d have lain back down, or
made a rush at me, or scream’d; instead she took a deliberate breath, gather’d
up her clothes & slipped past me as stealthily as she could. I waited for the
sound of the house-door, then bent down & drew the bed-sheet off the pallet. I
wasn’t thinking about the keys to the stable any longer. The feeling I’d had at
the Child’s bedside had return’d, & I stood over Wallace’s bare, unwitting
body in a rapture. Here was freedom of another kind, a kind I’d not yet
savored—the freedom to do whatever I liked to the man lying at my feet.

Wallace’s eye-lids twitch’d, then flutter’d open. “Goodman Harvey,” he
said serenely. Then he turn’d and blew his nose into the bed-sheet.

My name had an ugly sound to me now, particularly on Wallace’s tongue.
I went to cock the hammer of my pistol & found to my surprise that it was
cock’d already.

Had I done that?

“About your horses,” I said. “Your two mares.”

He sat up carefully. “I know how many mares I’ve got, Harvey.” He
craned his neck to look past me. “Are the others with you? Parson? Kennedy?”

I shook my head.

“I thought not,” he said, & flash’d his teeth. “They would send you to do
it! Quite poetic.” There was a note of satisfaction—perhaps even of
approval—in his voice. “They must think me a sorry old shit-pile indeed, Mr.
Harvey.” He sat quietly a moment. “They’re right, of course.”