The Blood of Heaven (19 page)

I did and was glad of it. I decided then that I’d do for Red Kate everything I’d been unable to do for Emily. To have her would be like—as I’d often dreamed on our way to Cincinnati, or on the flatboat’s boards, or laid out awake in the late morning in my pallet at Lowde’s—pulling Emily from Baptist Creek and having her come out of the water not blue and wrinkled and dead with a dead child inside her but alive and with breasts heavy with milk to feed our child and a bowed hard belly to press against my own when we kissed.

Samuel said he understood too but sounded shaken, remaining so until we were drinking in Lowde’s, where we’d convinced Reuben to stay that night. The old Mother would welcome our return with mixed feelings, knowing something had gone wrong with Morrel, but she decked the place to the best of her powers and Reuben received visitors until the early morning, sending notes to his betrothed by Negroe runner when he wasn’t toasting all present.

By morning we’d become the wedding party, bleary-eyed all in a row at the counter, bending over shaving basins set amongst the empty cups and bottles. New suits of clothes arrived by courier; and into his satin jacket I saw Reuben slip the small jar. He cinched our collars, leveled the brims of our hats, and, satisfied with our appearance, led us out into the street, which he’d paid to have cleared of dung and layabouts and strewn with musicians and the flowers children had culled from the trees about town. So we set off like a row of black teeth towards The Church and I was already filled with a terrible resolve. My Copperhead would be awaiting me.

The Wedding of Reuben and Aliza

The moment I saw the mistress I understood my brother’s madness. She was so thin in her purple dress and when she stood her body-bundle of angles unbunched and she became like a crack in stone. Aliza was a child born from sharp things—her mother a razor, her father a bayonet. She was veiled in red cloth and her hair, a high tangle of blond worked with the feathers of a red-tailed hawk, gave her the look of a scythe that had swung so hard through the field that it caught unwary birds along with the golden grain snatched up at its tip.

She stood at the far end of the receiving room, before a long table set with wine cups and flowers and candles, surrounded by her retinue of whores. Among them was Red Kate, off to one end, not so much in favor as to be close to the mistress. She smiled at me when we came in and I drew off my hat and bowed. And not only did I understand Reuben, but through him came to understand myself. The mistress could shatter the world, but I wanted to go through the cataclysm with the short one off to the side: Red Kate, a butcher’s grate caught with gobs of beauty.

All right, Reuben said to me, above the clapping of the gathered guests and the start of fiddle music. I wasn’t for having a preacher, but how about you say a sermon when we get up there. That work, little brother?

I was dumbstruck and still staring at Red Kate, who cocked her head to the side as though to say, Come on. Samuel put a hand to my shoulder, saying, I told you, didn’t I? and Reuben took the first step in our procession to the altar.

What followed and passed between him and his bride seemed rehearsed, like they had planned it their entire lives. Reuben stepped beside Aliza, pulling from the pocket of his new coat the jar, in which floated a single milky twist of flesh in a swirl of pickling. He held it out to her across the altar and the glass cast a blinding light on us all. Aliza, for her part, squinted at the shine but never took her eyes from my brother—though he would not yet look on her—as he set the jar down on the altar table beside a pair of rings on a sheet of black cloth, where it would give off a steady glow for the entire ceremony. When he did look up I saw behind her veil Aliza’s mouth sheer open in a smile. And once he’d looked, his eyes refused to part from the sight of her.

Talk, brother, he said.

Give a good one, said Samuel.

So I went and stood between them, close enough to see the jagged lines of Aliza’s bones threatening her wedding costume, and Reuben’s great shoulders thrown out straight, dwarfing her. They had the look of a boulder being married to a wicked split in its side. I looked down the row of whores to Red Kate, and hoped she’d know what I said was meant for her, but all she gave me was a bustle and shift in her dress, strained by a frame about the size of mine. I faced the guests and tongued a broken tooth, worrying it until the skin split; and I felt my mouth fill not with blood but words, so I opened it and let them out.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, I said, all you here who live on the down-hill side and are sneered at by the booted and horsed, listen close. When Adam was alone at the creation of the world, he dreamt at night, and these were terrible dreams—of what he did not know, only that they were terrible, and he’d awake to the dumb eyes of the animals in the garden and could find no succor in them. So he began to wither and dream even while he was awake, but still he did not know what he dreamed for, what he wished, only that he needed and would give anything for it. And in those days the Lord walked in the Garden with his creatures, and foremost among them was this one He’d fashioned in His image, which was now withering for he would eat none of the plump fruits or berries the Lord had set a-blooming all around him, such was his melancholy. And when the Lord our God watched this man He’d made wither, watched His own image going pale, in a fit of wisdom and worry one night He found the man asleep under an ash tree; and the Lord knelt next to His creation and He knew the dream, and He prayed on it for a moment, for He knew that there are two answers to the question of need—either kill the wanting thing, or create for it. So the Lord, taking pity on this creature Adam, squinted at him lying there and knew that this thing wanted so much to have itself remade but in such a way as to receive himself into it utterly, and that Adam would not stand for any gift that came from dust, as he had, and it would put his soul in the ditch if he made no sacrifice to have what he wanted; and the Lord took a survey of Adam’s parts, and saw him down to the veins and muscles, and deep into the marrow of his bones, so God found the part He could most easily take from His creation, so that he would know that what he’d been given was of him, but unlike him; and He slipped His hand to Adam’s belly and pressed his fingers till he felt the line of rib and knew it was here. In an instant the flesh parted and the Lord slipped in his fingers and the rib-bone came away like it was from a long-dead corpse, easily plucked; and with the other rib He’d do the same. Adam dreamt that night of blood, though he did not know blood yet, never having spilled a drop of his own; still he tasted blood in his dream-mouth and he knew what it was, that the pulse and tang of it would let him know another; and when he awoke from the night’s dream—the Lord had already departed, off to do some other work but always watching—Adam found that the taste was gone from his tongue and beside him slept a creature like unto himself—what he’d gleaned of his own form in reflection by the pools and gentle streams of Eden—but not alike entirely, and as the sleep passed from his eyes he saw that this creature was different, its face more round, lips of greater thickness; its shoulders, rising and falling with breath, seemed smaller, and between them were breasts; and a madness took his hands and he threw them to his own body and felt, and in that groping found that his sides were bowed wrong, and he felt down his ribbage, finding there that he was sore and his guts sat different; he felt of his endowments, which were then stirred to greatness, and he saw that she had no such things; now, full-fraught with awe and a fury going in his loins, he mustered up his courage and bent to touch this creature, thinking, Is this the truer form of God? And Adam’s fingers felt and his mind knew; and if there were storms in Eden it would be like lightning shot through him, and a breath escaped his awe-opened lips and the sound the breath made was
her
.

This last sound came out like I was Adam, and all the wedding party, whose feet had been nailed to the floor by my words, sagged and shifted and looked to one another in a daze broken when next I spoke, saying, When man lays eyes on woman, he is back at the creation of the world; he was not there to see our God do His first work shaping the earth, but what man did witness was the creation of
his
world, and the world which would become his in inception and his habitation until the day of his birth into gore and violence and death, and the world to which he will and must return all the days of his life; for avenues of flesh are made thus, and human fittings exist to be joined, and with the Blessings of Almighty God, I here, in the spirit of that first union, do now join in Christian wedlock Reuben Kemper and his Aliza.

Presently I turned to her and before I could ask she said, I’ll take him.

She said nothing else, but in those words was more than any speech, for as she spoke, Aliza extended her wiry arm to my brother and took his hand in hers. Reuben’s eyes broke from her and he was staring at the ground.

When I saw he wouldn’t speak, I took up the rings and they slipped them on each other’s fingers. Then I put one hand on the crown of Aliza’s head and, reaching with the other till Reuben bent, laid my hand upon him, saying, Through death and fire, lovers!

All assembled erupted and tears flowed freely. I didn’t see them kiss, but they walked around me and took hands and stepped off the platform down into the surging crowd. Samuel had me by the arms and was shaking me, howling about glory; and it was that the eyes of Aliza’s girls were upon me, and I struggled to pick my Copperhead out.

Someone later said that Reuben twirled Aliza two hundred times that night, one for every foreskin he would have brought if she’d asked. I couldn’t see; the whole waking world was dancing in that whorehouse Church. Everything spun and whirled, corks shot through the air, and I tasted my first champagne from a bottle shared with Red Kate. We traded sips and capered and she said to me, O, I know now what your gift is.

Life swole up with light and I danced with her. When the hour grew late the bride and bridegroom made the stairs for her chambers to our uproarious yells; and the whores went about sending home the guests, who clambered for them even through the crack of the closing door, hollered love through the trap-latch. And it was that Samuel and I were the only men left in the place. And I watched Red Kate grow nervous when one whore, hands on her hips, addressed us, saying, Miss Aliza says you’re both to have a wedding gift.

The others had followed behind her and now stood in a dazzle of eyes and shapes and hair.

You preached so pretty, said one. Can you say all that for me?

And you, said another to Samuel. Are you as good as your brother?

We stood there in our sockfeet, having kicked off our boots for dancing. I gave Samuel a nudge and told the gathered whores that they were lovely, but there was only one among them that I’d preach to. Then I went and held my arm out for my Copperhead to take; and she did, viciously, with the sharp glance, as we went upstairs, of a lesser sister in triumph.

It’s all yours! I called to my brother, buoyed by the tightness of her grip.

Fucking hell, Samuel said, almost breathless. And I know that in his heart he said fourteen prayers that he might last the night.

My Copperhead had fangs and they were at me even before we’d found her door. Inside, we passed our own wedding night; and in the moments when we were unjoined, she’d have me tell her all I’d seen and done. All I meant to do. And so I told: I would go into another country, maybe for a time I’d deal with Reuben’s store, do that work until I had foothold enough to take my place and stride into the world, ballasted with coin, and do the true work of the righteous, dispel my father’s prophecies of fire and damnation, and in their place erect a throne of glory, though I didn’t yet know for what cause, only that the Lord would show me.

And did you know, I said to her—could you tell that what I preached was meant for only you?

Yes, she said, jerking up, fists clenched in confirmation, so that her heat flooded out from wafted sheets. Hell yes I knew.

Late next morning, with my share of the money taken from Morrel, I bought her outright. And, unlike Aliza, who sat in her chaise and tried to refuse my money, Red Kate would come with me into the other country, West Florida, to bear the times ahead, to suffer me and suffer woman’s fate, which is to hold in brood the savage hopes and dreams of men, to nurture husbands’ desires until, like children, they burst forth to screaming bloody life and both parents believe they’re shared; and then comes the bitter awful day when those hopes and dreams turn back upon their mother with a sneer and say, I was never yours at all.

Book Three

AND
HE
CALLED

I

Ferrying the Dead

West Florida, 1802

Happiness

As it would often be, we lived at the feet of planters. Our house and store were at the Bayou Sara landing, a small village some miles below St. Francisville, which sat on the hilltop and was home to the finer people of the country. The Spanish Pukes called it the District of Feliciana, and its name was claimed to mean the Land of Happiness. Meanwhile we lived between the swamp, named for a French whore, and a smaller offshoot called Bayou Gonorrhea, the name of which came from the sorry fate of the Indians who had lived there in the early days of the country, when a French explorer going upriver marooned the whore Sara among them, and she proceeded to lay down with every man from lowest warrior to chief, who then laid with their wives, so that when the explorer returned the next year there were no Indians left, only the whore, who lived out her days in those swampy places which bore both her name and the name of her curse. The place remained so-called even once the settlement was founded by John Mills, when the colony was briefly British; much aged by the time we arrived, Mills lived in St. Francisville, his presence serving as a doddering reminder of past days and of how the Pukes liked for all their beloved Anglo settlers to feel welcome. And this amicable farce needed to be maintained, for as it stood there were so few Spanish in our corner of West Florida—the majority of their government and forces, the decadent remains of their back-dealing and treacherous Catholic empire, were housed three hundred miles to the east in Pensacola—that the dons sold off much of their land to the Anglos, who they then set in places of minor office as alcaldes, though the true power in the Louisiana districts was still held by the Puke commandant in Baton Rouge. All such things we learned in time; and it was that when Mills told the story of the names to us one winter day at Reuben’s store, he finished by stamping his cane and with eyes bright from having seen so much wonder and wilderness in his days said, And why shouldn’t we call our town after happiness? If you live here you already are.