The Blood of Heaven (13 page)

I considered that the house’s points reached higher in the sky 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—a vast sink in the woods northeast of town, alternately known as the Devil’s Punchbowl by citizens with clean mouths or the Pisspot or Devil’s Ass-hole by those most likely to frequent its depths. Regardless of who did the naming, the ownership of the aperture was always Lucifer’s. And this was fitting, as the Pisspot was said to have been flat land once that had been struck millennia ago by a falling star.

Sundays were spent not at preaching, hearing the bells of the churches on the hill-top and the rusty whomp of iron drums beat with pans which sounded worship down our way, but waiting for night and robbery. I, more missable, would pull down the flap from my hat and, so masked, first corner the mark with my pistol poking from my coat.

Hold tight, whiskey bibber!

Then Samuel would appear from behind some shadowy overhang, saying, Stiff as a plank now. We’ll have your money.

To some I’d slip a little evangelism. Your coin for tithings, I’d say, raising up my pistol so the barrel-mouth was square in the wretch’s face, for the eye of the Lord is upon you.

Once it happened that while we were hunting ones with full pockets and empty heads, a voice called out from behind and we turned to see a fellow pistoleer holding on us. We both had ours drawn and when our assailant looked on this and to our masks he gaped for a moment before bursting into wild peals of laughter. And it must have 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, said Samuel afterwards, but not too wicked.

And he was right. The place was full of bastards tougher yet than us.

The Iniquities of Our Elusive Brother

We’d but returned, loose-mouthed with excitement, from a night’s work to find Mother Lowde lipping the nub of her pipe and seeming glum. The pre-dawn hours we generally spent listening to Lowde talk and drinking with her a mash of coffee grounds and rum, giving her a little gospel or singing in return, as well as her small cut of the night’s take, which she often refused, saying that she loved just having us about the place. When one of us would speak, there was delight in every bed-rattled bone of her. That morning, though, she was guarded.

How many people have you told your names? she asked us, for we were both known to her as Kemper.

A few about town, said Samuel.

Just a few?

Not many, I said.

Lowde eyed us both and blew smoke from her nose while she drank her coffee. I never heard a preacher-man to talk the way y’all do, she said. And I’ve known quite a few. Some almost had it right, but you two surely do.

We were brought up for it, I said.

And did you have another brother that was raised that way? Like a preacher?

Yes, said Samuel, leaning forward in his chair.

I sat there and stared into my cup, somehow knowing what Mother Lowde would say next.

And you’ve come down here after him, she said.

Reuben Kemper. Samuel said it like it was a charm.

That’s the man, said Lowde. His brothers, eh?

You know him?

Course I do. He visits Natchez on occasion, but not to such a place as mine. I’ve never seen him, only heard tell.

Can’t put much stock in that, I said.

Your ass, my young pup, she said, angling her pipe at me. I’d think some preachers would know that tell and stories is how we come to know the world and all its people.

We heard he was in West Florida, Samuel said.

That’s gospel. He takes his barge this way sometimes. Not so much anymore. There was a while, though, when you couldn’t help but hear of him—great big man, smart, and with worthwhile money. He knows Governor Claiborne, who lives on the hill.

See, brother, said Samuel. I told you he was up there with the high and mighty.

I nodded, not answering for the look I saw on Lowde’s face.

She said, He’s told to be courting the mistress of The Church.

The cutter? Samuel said. Bloody Lizzy?

The same.

Good God, I said, suddenly fearful of the man we’d come so far to find.

Can’t be, said Samuel.

O, it can. We’re strange creatures. I didn’t tell you sooner, not because I don’t trust you boys, but I was awaiting similarities to crop up, and they did. And I figured you were seeking him. And, truthful, I don’t much want you to leave me.

It’s all right, Mother, I said.

She gave a shrug and downed more coffee-rum. Her pipe had gone out and she sucked at the dead embers, awaiting more questions.

But it could just be talk, said Samuel.

Sisters in trade, said Lowde, may often as not lie to the ones they lie with, but not to each other.

I thought you dealt no more in whores, Samuel said.

Just because I don’t run them any longer doesn’t mean I don’t talk to some.

Well, hell, he said. What’s it matter? He can have his fun. No skin off my ass.

She’s given him labors, said Lowde. Things he’s to do for her so she’ll court him fully.

Like what? I said.

Lowde twirled her pipe between her teeth and looked to the corners of the tavern room. She knitted the short and stubby fingers which had made our masks and oftentimes I’d find stroking my head while I slept of an afternoon. You boys, she said, wouldn’t happen to recall the story of King David?

So she means to have him kill a giant, said Samuel.

Don’t sass, she said. How did David win his bride?

I don’t bitching know, said Samuel, growing more bilesome with her every word.

God Almighty, I said. Not that.

See, said Lowde. He knows what I mean. He must be the real preacher in the family.

Samuel jerked in his chair. He is, he said, but I’m the thinker, so tell me.

Lowde wouldn’t speak. Only cut her eyes at me as though we shared a conspiracy.

I said, He had to bring the king fifty Philistines’ foreskins.

O, God damn it! Samuel said.

Lowde jabbed at him with her pipe. And King David brought back two hundred of them.

Samuel gave an ugly laugh. Who sold you this run of bullshit?

Some girls from her house, she said, who listen at her keyhole. The mistress Aliza doesn’t deign to walk the streets much.

It’s nonsense!

I don’t believe it’s near that many, said Lowde.

Christ, said Samuel, just one would be madness.

She went on to say that she couldn’t recall the exact figure, but Samuel flung back his chair before she finished and stormed out the tavern, where his shape could be seen in the window with the growing light of day, pacing and waving his arms as though in argument with Reuben’s shade.

Bloody Madam Aliza

Whether or not he let on to Lowde that he believed her story, Samuel gave it enough credence to spend some days working the town and asking about his brother. The first day he avoided The Church and came away with little more than Mother Lowde had given him; the second day he fixed on going there and talking to the mistress himself.

There must have been some hold-over fear of the razor-whores in him, for he was loud and boisterous that afternoon on our walk to The Church, laughing, shouting that maybe he would drop a few dollars there, not with the mistress, of course, who we knew by then lay with no man except, it seemed, Reuben, but with one of the other fillies in her stable. And I could come along—and why not; if Reuben was as rich as they say, we could afford to treat ourselves now and again.

I saw myself entangled with some girl, her turning chill as creek-water, her tongue swelling within my mouth until I choked; I declined him.

Suit yourself, said Samuel, and he mounted the steps of The Church.

The door was set with a peep-hole and three feet below that the latch-trap door where the guest would be asked to invest himself and be investigated. He gave the door a rap and, noticing a bell-handle hanging from a chain, he pulled the cord and sounded the bell and I imagined that the whores, now awake, thought briefly of their work. He looked back to reassure me at the foot of the steps, and there were murmurs of a voice behind the door, to which my brother spoke his name, and then was saying, Yes, all right.

They would have him examined—not like the attic-whores who used their long fingernails to pry the lice, ticks, and fleas from you, but with who knew what instruments: the magnifier and clamp for those too tiny, or the dreadful syringe full of mercury, its brazen tip jammed straight in and a press of a lady’s delicate thumb creating a cleansing wash of pain so that you were clear of clap and buboes, but would end up paying not just for the shot but also for the extra time it would take for her to get you straight again. I imagined worse horrors than these while Samuel fussed with his waistcoat and then the buttons on his britches. Once this was accomplished and he’d freed himself, he stepped up to the latch-trap and there he stood, waiting like a Frenchman at his guillotine, or like the king old Cromwell had decapped. And likewise Samuel 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 later say that it was just a hand that held him, one silkily gloved, and that it skillfully checked him through and through. My brother seized up for an instant and I was sure the blade had fallen. But it was only his release by the hand unseen, followed by 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 bolts were broken and the door was opened and my brother went inside without a word.

I wonder now whether it was Aliza’s hand that did the checking on him; making comparisons between the Kempers before she received him in her upstairs parlor. I spent my waiting time musing on the mistress. She was alternately the last duchess of a failed European line, the long-escaped daughter of an upcountry planter—having years before absconded with her father’s gold and set herself up a bawdy house. And she would always be a mystery, and prey all her life to the madness which kept her shuttered in her Church.

Other men went in and out the door. By evening its windows were lit red with lamps and I looked into their glow for signs of movement. At full dark, the door to The Church opened as it had many times that day, only it was Samuel leaning out. He called my name and waved me over as a slender arm reached round him and slammed the door shut.

I would have to be inspected. And being the faithful brother, I slipped my pants and pressed against the cold metal of the trap, and let myself be fingered for disease, my examiner sharing jokes with Samuel as she worked, traipsing and unfolding until she was satisfied and I was received therein.

Not so bad, eh? said Samuel.

Righting my pants, I looked to the dark-haired girl who’d been holding me and said, There’s plenty who’d pay for just that.

Aliza’s upstairs, said Samuel, leading me into the grand receiving room of the place, which encompassed the entire first floor of the house and was filled with plush furniture, a long bar running across one side, and cords of golden rope hung from the corners, pulled by Negroe women to make billow a sheet-bellows at the ceiling—and everywhere such girls as to make you forget that there was even such a word as
whores
. They weren’t languishing on couches in their stockings, but in short stays over loose white dresses which each had embellished with jewelry or ribbon-work, and they bustled about the room, humming and fixing drinks from the bar.

She watches for him, said Samuel, with a spyglass from her room.

So it’s all true, I said.

She’s an amazing creature.

I said, There’s more than her, it seems.

She’s no great beauty, but there is something—

Will she come down?

I doubt it, he said. She has a letter from Reuben that says he’ll be coming up from New Orleans in July.

I thought he was in West Florida.

Of course he is, said Samuel. But he’s got business in the city as well.

Presently a short girl with hair the color of fresh-spilt blood came by and handed me a cup of rum punch. Her features were broad and rough-hewn, her skin dark. She regarded me with a fierceness that sent a shudder in me as I hadn’t felt in many months. The cup she handed me was cold, and in it floated chips of ice which burned in my hand and made my teeth ache such that I had to set it down on a nearby table, finding that she’d drifted away.

Who was that one? I asked, reaching again for the cup, which I could still only hold long enough to tip back a quick sip of sweet rum mashed with watermelon meat.

Which?

The girl who brought the drink.

That’s your own task, brother. The mistress says we’re to have a night on the house.