The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch, Volume 1 (10 page)

X.

D
IG DEEPLY ENOUGH INTO YOUR
microfiche, your archive of yellowed newsprint, and you shall find it. Historical record shows that on November 11, 1901, the Astonishing Mr. Stick was arrested in Xenion, Georgia, for Ungodly Acts.

It was not quite night when I heard the ruckus. I was sitting on the edge of my cot picking the lint from the suit of which I was so proud. Shouting in and of itself was nothing unusual at the Pageant—some folks were feverish with sickness, others were discovering Gød, still others were nettled about being sold a product yesterday that evidenced no results today. But the shouts grew nearer and I began to make out specific oaths. My stage name was among them.
My fans,
sighed I,
how rabid they are.

Next came the scuffling of feet and the meaty sound of fists to flesh. Moments later the tent flap shot open and wild-eyed men with sleeves rolled to the biceps came at me and placed their rough hands upon my person, three to an arm. Without the aid of my walking stick I was dragged across the dirt on my knees straight out of the tent.

There were torches all about even though it was but dusk. There were also pitchforks and shovels, enough to make a man nervous. On the main stage Professor Bach was faking a rather heroic Georgian twang in hopes of keeping the eyes of the locals fixed in his direction,
but that battle was lost; those curious about liver pads were already drifting to the superior distraction of a brewing fight.

Grabbing for me was an assortment of Pageant bigwigs, which I appreciated, though they were no match for these burly Georgians, who were in no mood for negotiation. I caught only glimpses of telling detail: Mr. Hobby's spectacles askew; one of the Soothing Foursome doubled over and bloody of lip; and the Barker, screeching vitriol at a slender man in a cleric's collar and a fat man wearing a copper star.

As I was dragged in the direction of town, I realized that my last hope was Pullman Larry. With but a few quick shots from his fine-tuned firearm, he could blast the garden tools right from the abductors' hands. But he did not interfere. Either he was off yanking a tooth (there were twenty or thirty still left in Georgia, from what I could tell), or was enjoying the degradation of his unworthy successor, flashing his big white choppers in the troubled torchlight.

By the time we reached the local jail, the knees of my beloved new suit were ruined and the dead flesh below embedded with gravel. I was lifted across a threshold and shoved into a counter, behind which appeared Sheriff Nelson (I had gleaned his name as assorted bumpkins offered their congratulations on a varmint well trapped). He was in affable spirits, grinning as he took up a pen and ledger and asked for my name.

“Mr. Stick.”

“Full name, please.”

I thought for a moment.

“The Astonishing?”

Sheriff Nelson winked at a man to my left and a fist drove into my kidney. On instinct I reacted as does a living man, curling into the
impact and crying out. There was, after all, no gauging the sturdiness of my dead body. Enough blows like that and I might get to see that kidney of mine when it plopped onto the floor.

Still, I managed a fib.

“Aaron. Aaron Stick.”

The sheriff raised an eyebrow.

“Not ‘The Astonishing Amazing Dingdonged Aaron Stick'?”

Plenty of laughter from that gibe! All at once I felt quite dejected. I shook my head to concede that, no, I was not quite astonishing. Sheriff Nelson began talking far too rapidly for me to follow. It was legal pap he had regurgitated countless times in the past and when it was through, my coachmen picked me up by the armpits and transported me to the jail's only cell, a six-by-six-foot box where I was dumped onto a wooden bench. My first thought upon landing was a dismal one.
My hat,
thought I.
I've lost it, and it so well matched my suit.

The door slammed loud enough to vibrate the wood beneath me. How many wrongful deeds had I performed under the Black Hand? Yet never had I fielded a warning from a lawman, much less an arrest. Now I let
others
hurt
me
by trade—and into the pokey I went? The irony was cold.

Presently I became aware that I was not alone. Sitting on the opposite bench was a bearded old man with wild hair and a magenta complexion, clad in tattered military regalia. I nodded acknowledgement before detecting his snore. The man's naked feet were swollen and muddy and somehow obscene; they twitched within a rectangle of segmented moonlight. I followed the beam to a small, barred window near the low ceiling. Captured in the light was my second cellmate, a colored man. He was a few years my senior and stood with
his forehead against the wall as if trying to follow a faraway song.

I found myself tied of tongue. My experience with Negroes was limited. Abigail Finch had barred their kind far from home and grounds, so afeared was she of their coarse looks and thieving hands. They had been a rare sight in Little Italy as well, though when I ventured farther into the city I saw them plenty, ambling along the side of the road, mouths moving with a confounding tempo, having devised a method of speech that prevented white men from reading lips.

Well, I had to distract myself somehow, didn't I?

“What did you do, boy?” asked I.

His eyes flicked toward the moon.

“Stole.”

A-ha! So Abigail Finch had been right.

“And what did you steal?”

“Corn.”

“A cob of it?”

His lips thinned.

“A bag.”

“Why did you go and do that?”

He shrugged.

“You don't have any idea?” pressed I.

A dream-snort ripped through the body of the wild-haired man. I flinched and I thought I saw the ghost of a smirk grace the Negro's lips. That angered me! I manicured for him a pointed glare.

“Tell me, boy. What's the punishment for stealing a bag of corn?”

“A fine.”

“That's it?”

He shrugged.

“What else?” I pressed.

He frowned out the window. “Got to pay for the corn.”

“Very reasonable. You have the money?”

“Already paid.”

“Then why are you here?”

The Negro pushed the sweat of his forehead into the stiff crinkles of his hair. Moonlight made the pinks of his palms glow white. This time he did not respond, which I attributed to either his disbelief that I would understand or to general antipathy. This did not help mollify my growing affront. I had not risen from caged aberration to premiere attraction to be given the cold shoulder by a mulish colored!

“Then allow me to guess. You are here because you are pigheaded. Your mood is churlish. You refuse to apologize. Come now, grade my guesswork. Am I correct?”

He stared out of the window for a time before responding.

“I guess so.”

“I guess so, what?”

“I guess so,
sir
.”

That final word hissed like a blade across flint. I leaned back to take full measure. He was broader than I and could doubtlessly pluck my limbs from my torso as a child does a fly. But the night's battery had inured me to such fears and instead I found myself intrigued by this monosyllabic brute, the middling interest he showed in his own fate, his pensive study of the autumn eve.

“Ever loquacious, aren't you?”

“Sir?”

“You do not talk much.”

“No, sir.”

“Four coloreds travel with my company. Voices clear as crystal water. Mannerly. Obliging. Agreeable. They are a credit to your race. Too much, I think.”

“What are their names?”

The question came with confrontational fleetness. My mouth opened with retaliatory speed—the fighting instinct, I guarantee you, had not vacated Zebulon Finch along with his physical vitalities! But I could not strike. Indeed, what
were
the names of the Soothing Foursome? One of them had taken a punch for me that very night. My cellmate blinked his thick eyelids with the insouciant patience of a boxer.

I did not like this Negro.

Thus I played the childhood game of Name the Presidents.

“Their names are George, John, Thomas, and James.”

My cellmate weighed that for a moment.

“Fine names, sir.”

“And you,” asked I, “have you a name?”

The boy loved long pauses.

“John,” said he. “John Quincy.”

Have you ever witnessed such impertinence? Detecting my lie, the boy chose for himself the name of the president next in line! I became hotheaded, all right, but what could I do in quarters so confined? Lifting myself above this childish squabble would be advisable (the snoring wild man maintained more dignity than I!), but I could not disengage myself from this so-called John Quincy, the President of Thieves.

“Will you not ask what
I
did? Is your mind so incurious?”

“Already know, sir.”

“And how is that?”

He managed a shrug.

“All day folks been on about catching the Devil.”

“I see.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you've no fear of the Devil?”

Moonlight made his lips gray against purple skin. There, a smile.

“Met the Devil already. You ain't him, sir.”

The hooligans who'd torn me from my beloved cot had been convinced that I was profanity itself, so while it might be simple recalcitrance fueling John Quincy's opposite assessment, I was nonetheless grateful. I searched about the cell to find a topic less stressful for us both.

“You know this man?” I gestured at the sleeper.

“That's the General, sir.”

“A true general?”

“Yes, sir.”

“A secessionist? One of Lee's?”

“Fought at Fort Wagner, sir. Gettysburg, too. Folks hereabouts mighty proud.”

“Yet he is caged with a Negro and the Devil.”

John Quincy shrugged.

“He in here each week. He gone battle-headed, sir.”

“Battle-headed?”

“Just wait, sir. You'll see.”

XI.

C
ONCURRENT WITH THE COCK'S CROW
came the foul noise of the General choking upon the bile of the habitual drunkard. With arms a-flail to dispel a horde of invisible bats, he leapt to his feet and expectorated onto the stone floor a wad of caramel mucus. Groaning, he stumbled toward the window, shoved aside John Quincy, and clung to the bars with both hands. The tips of his toes made him just tall enough to lodge his chin over the sill so that he could gasp at the fresh dawn.

“UNROLL THE MORNING MAPS! LICK THE WICKS! COLD MEAL FOR FEAR OF STEAM! BEST FOOD GOES TO THE HORSES, FOR NERVOUS MEN WILL ONLY SICKEN!”

The energy with which he ejected this rot was astounding. The man was over sixty but had been one to be reckoned with in his prime. You could tell by how the iron bars shook within their sockets; the way his wide back stretched his sundered blouse; and, of course, that voice—that crackling, full-throated blast that would carry quite well across a field of cannon booms and musket fire.

He severed his tirade and I heard a woman calling to him from the street. The General hooked one of his arms through the bars and, sure enough, withdrew with a block of cornbread, which he began smashing into his mouth even as we heard the parting blessings
of the woman on the street. Sixty seconds later the cornbread was demolished, with equal amounts residing in the man's stomach and beard. Then he was back at the window blabbering and it was not long before another passerby gave him a package, this time a pyre of warm bacon swaddled within a monogrammed handkerchief.

It was midmorning when a visitor at the window began speaking to the General in a distinctive manner. No comforting tones were adopted, no foodstuffs gifted. Instead the tone was low and urgent, and I watched as the General's eyes grew ever wider. At last the message was complete and the General scurried away and planted his back to the far wall. For the first time he looked at me.

“GET THEE BEHIND ME, SATAN! THOU ART AN OFFENSE UNTO ME, FOR THOU SAVOR NOT THE THINGS THAT BE OF GØD!”

The fervor was curdling. Even John Quincy edged away. I held up what I hoped was a becalming hand. Of course I had expected to suffer superstitious oaths before my adventure in the slammer was complete, but not from inside my own cell.

“HE WAS THERE IN THE WILDERNESS FORTY DAYS, TEMPTED OF SATAN! AND WAS WITH THE WILD BEASTS AND THE ANGELS MINISTERED TO HIM!” His shaggy face twitched as if beaned by a pebble. “NO, NO, I AM NOT READY! NOT PREPARED FOR THIS LONG JOURNEY OF ISCARIOT!” He flung his body against the cell door and reached through the bars with claws extended. “LET ME OUT! OH, SWEET SERVANTS OF JUSTICE, LET ME OUT! I AM NOT READY FOR THE IRON CHAIR UPON WHICH MY NAME IS BRANDED! LET ME OUT OF HERE, I BEG YOU!”

John Quincy gave me a concerned look. I could not tell if he was sharing in my discomfort or if his belief in my status as non-Devil was beginning to founder. The old man wagged an accusatory finger.

“I REMEMBER YOU!”

Every person in Xenion, Georgia, seemed to have formed an opinion of Mr. Stick before taking in a single performance. It struck me as unfair.

“We have not met, General. My name is—”

“GIVE ME NO FALSE NAMES! I KNOW YOU, DEMON! FIRST YOU CAME FOR ME IN THE GRASS! THEN YOU CAME FOR ME IN THE MUD! THEN YOU CAME FOR ME IN THE SOOT—THE SOOT THAT DRIED THE BLOOD! BUT YOUR HOOVEN CLUTCH SHALL NOT TAKE ME! I BELONG WITH HIS LORD ON HIGH!”

Suffice it to say that this ranting continued along the same lines for hours, though I admit exaggerating time is easily done when one is being assailed as a diabolical reaper. Around noon, a deputy slid beneath the cell's lowermost bar a tray holding three bowls of stew and as many hunks of stale bread. The General yielded his filibuster, snatched up his share, and retreated to his corner to pour the stew down his gullet. John Quincy took his bowl and bread and dipped the latter in the former, eliminating the food at a pace that betrayed neither hunger nor relish.

I, of course, had no interest in my portion and instead looked up to find the deputy still standing there, giving me injurious consideration. After a time he plucked a folded newspaper from his back pocket and tossed it through the bars.

“You made the papers, Stick.”

The
Atlanta Constitution
included on its front page an item about the sellers of patent medicines. The author treated these bottlemongers harshly, but so too were the denizens of Xenion, called out by the journalist as “shameful” in their unjust jailing of an apparent innocent. Even more notable was a full-page advertisement on the following spread taken out by none other than the Barker, who must have scrambled all night long and spent stupefying amounts of cash to turn this nightmare scenario into a publicity coup. I managed to pocket the relevant page and would you believe it has survived with me all these many years? Here I insert the yellow, crackled evidence for your pleasure.