The Blood of Heaven (21 page)

She’s a miracle, said Samuel. Just for her height. And she’s a smart woman, always thinking.

I haven’t seen much indication of that, I said.

You wouldn’t. She keeps it to herself and tells her mind just to me.

You’re happy?

Like a damn glory, brother.

Marry her then, I said.

Samuel looked down the road, which up ahead descended from the higher ground into the swamp and there was cane which grew thirty feet high. Not until this business of mourning is settled, he said. I don’t want to make her seem—

Like she doesn’t honor the memory of her husband? I said.

Don’t play with me, said Samuel. But, yes, that’s the gist.

You’ll need to tell Arthur.

We’ll see when I tell anybody. Let me just have this for a time. I watched Reuben and you latch on with women—now I laid with plenty, don’t get me wrong, but you two have more than an ache in your loins for your women. I believe I’ve got that same thing for Ezmina.

Amen, brother, I said.

We rode to where the cane swallowed up the sun and the sounds of creatures rustling in it was loud. Our horses nipped each other’s necks, nervous, as a rat scuttled out from a break in the cane onto our path.

Mark him, I said.

He’s yours, said Samuel. If you can hit him.

I drew my pistol, fired, and made the rat jump five feet in the air. And there would be a day when we’d make it our mission to clear the land of all its vermin. The Pukes and their alcaldes were as yet nuisance only. The culling time was later to come. I didn’t know this was a sign.

We rode over the hole in the path left by my shot, and the rat had been flung back into the cane where we couldn’t see. Samuel’s horse had been startled by the shot and he rubbed its neck to calm it. Then he turned to me and said, She won’t take off her veil, nor any of her black laces.

Ezmina? I said.

The same, replied my brother. She works her garden in her funeral clothes. She cooks in them and there’s places where salt from her sweat is in white smudges, like at the small of her back and the pits of her arms. And the way the black looks on her skin is God-damned wonderful. It troubled me at first, but now some way I wish she’d never take them off.

The Dead

The blacks came one day pouring down from St. Francisville, ghastly and with dark skin dyed darker from working vats of indigo, past our house and to the Bayou Sara landing. I went outside and saw the tail of them heading to where the others were huddled at the bank, emptying their bowels where they stood and shivering though it was early summer and the heat was on. They were herded by a man on horseback who stopped at my porch and said he was one of Alexander Stirling’s overseers. He asked had I got the contract for shipping them down to New Orleans.

I said I had, but couldn’t take my eyes from them, counting twenty or more of the wretches, men and women and children dressed in clothes that had once been other colors but were now an awful shade of blue. The slaves were silent and some had fallen to the ground, unmindful or too weak to care what was expelled upon them by their brothers and sisters. Women holding bony children opened their mouths as if to speak, but only streams of purple vomit fell from between their lips and the held children didn’t struggle. I thought of the Reverend Morrel, whose memory was not often absent, his injustices and also the wicked justice in him. And the urge was upon me to go inside, load every weapon I owned, and kill them all. Instead I went for the overseer.

God damn it, man, I said. You’re bringing a plague down here!

Sir, said the overseer. It’s only the niggers get it. From working the indigo.

I don’t give a piss, I said. This wasn’t in the blasted contract.

Your brother, Mister Reuben, knows well enough it is.

He’s not even here yet. Are they supposed to stay here, fouling, until he comes?

I was told he’d be here today. And besides this is delicate.

The door opened behind me and I saw Samuel on the porch and my wife leaning out. My brother’s face was hard and Kate was gaping down the bank, her hand over her mouth.

Get inside! I called to her.

But my Kate, my Copperhead, seemed to fall out the doorway and stumble onto the porch, still staring and now with both hands held over her mouth as if muffling a scream or the rising of her stomach.

It’s a five-year cycle, said the overseer. Like planting the crop itself. They only last that long before—

I didn’t want to hear him any longer, whipped back to face the porch, and howled, Get fucking back inside, you hear me!

Samuel was coming down the steps and my wife did as I said, her hands now covering her eyes.

Jesus Christ Almighty, said Samuel as he approached. This is what Reuben agreed to take?

Yes sir, it is, the overseer said.

What if he doesn’t get the barge here until tomorrow? I said.

Then they’ll stay there, said the overseer. You’ve got no other responsibility than to ship them down to New Orleans for sale.

Who’ll buy such niggers? Samuel said.

That’s not my concern or purview, sir. Once they’re in New Orleans the pen-owners’ll feed them cod-oil, fatten them back well enough to last another few months.

More of the blacks had lost their footing in the mess and were splayed out on the ground, heaving. It was darkness upon darkness and the hand of God saw fit for a wind to blow in from the bayou and carry the smell of their rot internal up to us. The overseer, Samuel, and I all batted our heads and huffed out breaths to try and expel the stench. I shut my eyes, held up my head, and faced the sky; and when I opened them I saw the breaking of a clear summer day and I damned the color of the horizon, which was such a sharp blue that it mocked the dread horror at the landing now suffering for the human need to approximate the work of the Lord.

Again I heard the door open and Red Kate came out with a bucket and ladle; and when I stormed over and met her on the steps I saw it was water.

They don’t have any, she said. It’s fifteen miles from—

I told you to go back inside, I said.

She glared at me, and the fire of her hair was put to shame by the fierceness of her look.

Go, I said. They’re dead anyway. I hope they die on the way to New Orleans and the bastard doesn’t make a penny.

Ma’am, called the overseer. Don’t fret now. They can’t hold much water anyway. It’s got to be mixed in with the oil and feed and—

My wife moved to step around me but I stopped her. She stood there, knuckles paling at the ladle’s handle.

Just go inside, ma’am, said the overseer.

I turned to him. You, I said. Say another word to my wife and I’ll cut your bastard lips off.

Watch that tongue, sir, said the overseer, stiffening in his saddle.

Shut your mouth and go tend your niggers, said Samuel from close enough to have dragged the overseer from his horse and beat him into the ground.

The overseer shook his head, mumbling that he’d tell this whole event to Mister Stirling.

Tell that Tory whatever you want, said Samuel, but he damned sure better pay.

The overseer rode away and I took Red Kate by her arm, which was burning hot with anger, and led her back into the house. Before I shut the door I heard her begin to weep. It was a true Irish keen, high enough for some of the dazed black heads to turn and regard the house for the source of their lone-sung funeral wail, and I could hear her even in the yard with Samuel, who tried his best to ignore it. We could do nothing but survey the sorry scene.

If I were a true man of God, I said, I’d go and bless all the heads of the sick.

Or kill them, said Samuel.

I told him how I’d thought of that as well.

We both fell silent and went to sit on the steps; and the hours wore on and the afternoon came and the sun began to fall and its fires were merciful and bled the sky of the horrible blue and there was the comfort of the enveloping redness.

And is this what you want? I asked my brother. To be a planter and have that on your head?

I wouldn’t grow indigo, Samuel said.

I said I wished Kate hadn’t seen.

She’s seen worse than this, said Samuel.

That doesn’t mean I don’t want to shield her eyes. Will you tell Ezmina?

O, said Samuel, I tell her everything.

And it was when the sky had turned the color of my wife’s hair that Reuben’s boat was sighted down the bayou and the overseer called to us that he was coming. When the Cotton-Picker neared, I saw that Reuben and his Ferdinand already had masks tied about their faces. Those slaves who could stand did, wobbling to see what would carry them down the river. I’d grown used to the sounds of their corruption, and when Ferdinand jumped from the boat into the water, to take the hogs-head and bank the boat while Reuben poled, the noise he made all splash and slosh was but a part of the horrible chorus of fluids and groans.

Reuben debarked while sopping Ferdinand lashed the boat to the foot of a small tree. Our brother, in his mask, made a wide circle of the slaves and went to talk with the overseer, who handed him a writ and packet before he remounted and hied away, passing by our house and giving us a pissy flip of the arm. Reuben and Ferdinand were calling for the slaves to board and, though I didn’t wish to, I accompanied my brother down to see.

The last time he’d come to Bayou Sara, and the time before that, in March, we’d told Reuben of the Pukes’ orders to appoint arbiters in his case against Smith. Both times he’d waved the thought of it off and said how we must only wait, for the country would be America soon and he’d have a proper judgment.

Reuben’s towering stature and sun-browned features were as mocking as the daytime sky had been to the awful bunch now lurching for the boat and clambering aboard, dragging those that couldn’t walk and leaving trails of filth as marks of their passage. When he came close to us, his mask, a paisley cloth, smelled strongly of oil of mint.

It’s horrible, brother, said Samuel.

I know, but there’s too many debts to be paid.

Swamp the boat, spill them into the river, I said. Say there was a storm.

I can’t do such a thing, said Reuben. I’m paid on delivery.

God, I said.

You can be no judge, he said. This is life.

Will you stay a while when you’re back from New Orleans? asked Samuel.

I believe, he said. I’m sure there’s more business to discuss.

The arbiters? I said.

I told you both and I will tell you again—we wait. No matter who we appoint, the judgment will be Smith’s. He has the dons all in his pocket. The damned commandant. Let him come down from Ohio and claim what he thinks his.

Ferdinand hollered that all were aboard; and we all looked down to the landing where before had been the blacks and now all that remained was a wide pool of sickness.

We’ll discuss the matter further when I’m back, he said. This will be a quick trip.

I guess it will, I said. They can’t last too damn long.

Long enough, Reuben said, then wiped his brow of sweat and started for his boat, where the cargo presently was dropping, wasting already. He called back that things would be better when he returned.

But my mind was on pagan lines and the figure of the boatman of the dead. And before me went the very image of the ferrier, great and broad, hoary and strong, to lead the damned to their place in Hell. I tried to fill my mind with the true God and His blessed scriptures rather than the earlier evils of the gentile peoples; but Reuben, now aboard, took up his pole and Ferdinand unlashed and shoved them off into the current and the boat spun, a dazzle of corpses gyring out on the water. The boat was righted and drifting towards the first bend in the bayou, where after they rounded it the horror would be gone. But only from our eyes, for by its nature, I knew, the trade must move throughout the arteries of the country, the scene so many times played out, so that even utmost horror becomes a common sight.

II

The Creation of Louisiana

Summer 1802–Spring 1803

Tidings of Joy

In the early days of our second August in West Florida, when the heat was monstrous and I was up on the roof with Samuel putting raking-boards on the house, my Copperhead came outside and watched us work—a small figure down below, taking the weather like a gift rather than a blasting sun and its swelter, which wilted lesser ladies and kept them indoors. From my perch on the low-slope of the roof, I waved to her with the wood-plane I’d been using to curve the boards. She didn’t wave back, but cupped her hands at her mouth and called up that her blood was two months late. I leaned against the gable, the sun beating hell upon me, and I gaped down at her—stomach hidden in calico aproning, cloth hiding flesh, flesh hiding womb, womb hiding a pinprick of promise pulsing with life. Making for the ladder, I found I couldn’t grip, and wobbled there on the edge of the roof before Samuel hauled me back. And with all the awe of Revelation, I asked if she was sure.