The Eden Hunter (22 page)

The river was wide here, and Kau sat beside Xavier in the hot cornfield, watching as the Americans unloaded their water barrels onto the shore. A tiny beetle was climbing one of the sleek cornstalks, and Kau flicked at it with his thumb. The beetle went careening through the rows, then landed near the edge of the river.

Soon the Americans would sail back out to the bay and be gone, and one of Garçon’s soldiers seemed to be begging the General for something. Xavier translated the man’s Spanish for Kau. The soldier wanted for them to try an across-the-river volley; he said they all felt lucky this morning.

Kau was far down the line of men but now saw Garçon creeping toward him. The General knelt with him in the dirt and then whispered in his ear. “So,” he said, “the time has come for you to prove to me just how much my Beah means to you.”

 

THE AMERICANS WERE sealing the last of their barrels when Kau hollered at them from across the sliding water. He was standing alone and unarmed on the strip of beach that ran between the river and the cornfield, Garçon and the others concealed behind him. He yelled
and then waved. The Americans were watching him now, and he began to dance from side to side. “Hey,” he shouted, “hey, hey.”

He was thinking of the bright yellow tip of a young copper-head’s tail, the way the snake could make it wiggle and writhe like a caterpillar, a lure to catch lizards and frogs. He was that tail tip, behind him was the snake.

The Americans seemed to be arguing among themselves. He danced faster, throwing his hands from the south to the north, slapping his knees to his chest as he jumped. This had become a dance not for the Americans, but for the forest. He screamed, Please, in Kesa. Please, he called out, please wake and remember me. He danced until he was exhausted and then, when he could dance no more, he sat down on the brown sand and waited. The Americans had left their water barrels by the creek and were at the oars. They were at the oars and they were coming.

He sat and watched. The bow of the skiff had been fitted with a small, wooden-handled cannon that moved on an iron swivel, and at about fifty yards one of the Americans stood and came forward to aim it at him. The man grabbed hold of the firing lanyard while four sailors kept the skiff stable in the current.

Kau raised his hands above his head. The sailors at the oars were very young—boys, really—and seemed afraid. The American at the swivel gun was older but only slightly, and this man had cupped a hand to his mouth to speak when there came a whistle from the cornfield. Kau dropped flat onto his stomach, then gunfire erupted behind him and the skiff was raked. The sailor collapsed at the swivel gun, and the firing lanyard slipped from his fingers.

Garçon and his men came pouring out of the cornfield, and the sailors took up their muskets but fired in a rush. The six Choctaws splashed into the river waving tomahawks and knives. Xavier knelt beside him in the sand. “How are you not shot?” he asked.

The sailors had thrown down their empty muskets and started rowing. The skiff was pulling away. Xavier helped him to his feet, and they watched as the swimming Choctaws overtook the skiff and began trying to slither over the sides and board. The four sailors quit their rowing and beat at the glistening warriors with the butts of their spent muskets. The skiff rocked hard and a sailor fell overboard. A Choctaw reached out but the boy dove and then resurfaced downriver.

Garçon drew his sword and gave orders to his soldiers on the bank. They reloaded and began firing at the sailor in the river. The boy was a strong swimmer and so they seemed to find sport in it. He would rise up for air, then dive back merganser-quick so that the soldiers never quite knew when or where he would reappear. Finally he made it safely to the far side of the river. Garçon laughed as he clapped for the boy. “It is impossible not to be glad for him,” he said.

Kau looked to the drifting skiff. All six Choctaws had boarded. Three sailors were now huddled in the bow with the dead man, and the smallest of them was dragged by his ankles into the mass of Indians. The warriors went at him with their glinting knives, and soon they were all glossy with his blood.

The last two sailors watched the killing from the bow, and one of them seemed to be crying. Kau realized that they could not swim.
The weeping sailor pulled a pistol from his belt, aiming the black barrel at one of the Choctaws and then at himself. The boy stood up, shot a ball into his own chest and fell overboard. He disappeared into the river, and the final sailor lifted an empty musket. He grabbed the barrel and swung it at the Choctaws like a club. From the bank Kau could hear the warriors laughing, and they sounded almost like feeding gulls.

The musket-swinging sailor was soon exhausted and sat slumped at the bow. The Choctaws started to move forward, but Garçon yelled out and they stopped. Four of them crouched down at the oars and began rowing the skiff back upriver. Kau watched as the General slowly turned to him. “And you,” he said. “My, my.”

When the skiff reached the shore the sailor tried to run but was quickly caught. Kau saw that the boy was indeed young, but he was also big and angry. He had long, powerful arms and a thick neck, a block of a shaved head that bristled with tiny black hairs. The Choctaws threatened him, and he spit in their faces but did not speak. Garçon ordered the sailor’s hands tied, then pinched his red cheeks when he struggled.

The skiff was dragged ashore, and Kau looked on as the two dead sailors inside were scalped by the Choctaws and then stripped of their uniforms. The sailor was watching from across the river. He alternated between cursing them and shouting to his caught friend. “We’ll be coming for you, Edward,” he yelled. “Don’t you worry none.”

Garçon ordered a volley to quiet him, but when the hollering sailor saw the men level their muskets he retreated into the forest
before they could take aim and fire. “Fly away,” said Garçon, and then as an amusement the soldiers aimed the swivel gun out over the river. Garçon tugged at the firing lanyard, and the little cannon boomed. Kau flinched as grapeshot sprayed out across the water like some great handful of cast gravel.

He kept quiet as the soldiers hauled the skiff up into the cornfield to hide it. The six Choctaws were left to watch the river, and the bloody Indians sat themselves in the cool water. Garçon began walking to the north, and Kau followed with the others. They soon reached the cabin of the soldier who worked that stretch of the land, and they emptied his smokehouse, feasting on ham hocks and oxtail that had been cured to the color of cinnamon.

Kau was the dancing hero of the fight. Garçon presented him with one of the American scalps, and he saw that it had already been scraped and salted for him. Later, he threw the scalp behind a woodpile but Xavier retrieved it. “Now listen to me again,” said Xavier. “You need to learn to stop refusing his gifts.”

“I don want it.”

Xavier shook his head, then tucked the sailor’s scalp into his own haversack as they prepared to set off. The captured American was glaring at them both from atop a braying mule. Kau looked away and saw Garçon mount his copper gelding. The General raised his sword three times, then began marching his men to their fort.

T
HEY MARCHED NORTH along the dry road that connected the negro farms. The sun had long ago cleared the tree line and the soldiers were sweating like horses. The bayonets of their muskets shimmered and flashed.

Kau sipped warm water from the canteen that hung from his neck. The countryside was empty, and the farms lining the bank of the river had been deserted. He heard Garçon consider aloud whether he should raze the crops before the siege came, then decide against it.

“No,” said Garçon. “We will not cut ourselves to injure them.” The General said this in English and then again in Spanish. The men broke into halloos and hurrahs. These were their farms, their crops.

Kau held Israel’s longrifle propped against his shoulder, same as the marching soldiers with their muskets. Xavier walked beside him. They passed abandoned farm cabin after abandoned farm cabin. He turned to Xavier and asked where all of the women and children had gone. “The fort,” Xavier told him. “Everyone waits for us there.”

 

IT WAS EARLY in the afternoon when they at last reached the fort. The gate was opened and the prisoner Edward pulled from the tired mule, his nose bloodied before Garçon could protect him. The soldiers were greeted by their comrades from the northern farms, and then the men with families went off to find their wives.

Kau surveyed the dusty fort. In his absence it had become crowded with the camp tents of Garçon’s farmers. A blinding sea of white. And he saw that the renegade Choctaws had finally been forced from the forest. Thirty or so warriors had laid claim to a grassy area along the south wall. Four of them sat hunched on their heels nearby, gambling with musket balls on some Indian game of chance.

In a river corner of the fort stood the barked-pine slats of new livestock pens that had been filled with hogs and horses and cattle. Two tall girls moved among the nervous animals, steadily shoveling shit into a crooked wooden cart. Marcela and Ramona. The twin girls caught him watching and disappeared among steaming cattle.

A treble blast from a trumpet announced Garçon’s review of his troops, and all gathered on the last square piece of open space in the fort. The soldiers were divided into four lines of twenty to twenty-five men, and Kau sat down against a tent and looked on
from the shade. A crowd formed, some two hundred negro women and children. Their men had put on their uniforms—apple-red jackets, polished black boots and crisp white breeches. “My Lord,” said a woman with green eyes. “Now ain’t that the handsomest bunch.”

Garçon walked back and forth in front of the soldiers, and in two languages he spoke of the ships in the bay, the death of Israel, the skirmish in the river. “Make no mistake,” he told them. “There will be a reckoning.” He ended his speech by invoking God. He told them that for every giant there was a David awaiting, that victory always went to the righteous. Kau shook his head. He was thinking that no one could possibly believe that.

The soldiers were dismissed and the crowd dispersed save one—Beah, watching him. Her coarse hair was brushed back in a stiff wave, and her osnaburg dress was a riot of wrinkles and folds. He went to her and she pushed at the longrifle in his hands. “You think you a soldier now?” she asked.

He looked around and felt his knees give a quick buckle of exhaustion. Most of the men had retired to their tents, others to the barracks, and soon they would be sleeping through the worst heat of the day. But not Garçon. The General was kneeling in the shadow of a wagon with Xavier, interrogating the sailor. The American sat with his head bowed, and Garçon slapped gently at the underside of the boy’s chin as he spoke to him.

Beah snapped her fingers in front of Kau’s face. He flinched and then answered her. “No,” he said. “I’m no soldier.”

She shook her head. “That general has him a silver tongue.”

“It weren’t him.”

“Thas a trick of his, makin you believe that. Thas a famous trick of his.”

“No,” he said again. “It jus seemed to be right. Comin back.”

“Why? You was gone.”

“I know.”

“So then what you gonna do?” she asked. “Fore you die here with me.”

“I need to go and rest a bit.”

“That why you come here? To rest?”

“I’m here cause I need to talk to you about somethin.”

She folded her big arms. “So talk.”

“Later,” he said. “Please. We’ll talk jus a little later.”

 

HIS FORMER TENT was now occupied by a farmer and his family, and so Beah had insisted that he follow her through the maze of bright canvas to her own. Once inside, he stashed his saddlebags and Israel’s longrifle in a corner, then spread his horse blanket out on the swept dirt.

That same morning a man had been kicked in the head by a mule, and Beah went to tend to him in the infirmary. She was still gone when he awoke to the sunset squeals of a dying hog and the lowing of frightened cattle. He stepped outside and began walking toward the river and the livestock pens. In places the tents were spaced so close that he had to turn sideways to pass between them. He dragged the corner of his foot in the dirt, leaving a scuff trail that would lead him back to Beah.

At the edge of a freshly dug sewage ditch he stopped and covered his mouth and nose with his hand. Black flies swarmed around him but then settled back into the sludge. Across the way were the livestock pens, and he saw that Pelayo’s daughters had taken knives to a big chocolate barrow. They had the fat hog hanging from an iron gambrel with its throat slit. Blood was collecting in a washtub, and the twins were smiling.

 

HE SAT ALONE by the cook-fire in front of Beah’s tent, roasting a ration of the butchered hog on a forked green stick. He had just pulled the meat from the flame when Xavier came and joined him.

Xavier had spent all day with Garçon and the caught sailor. He explained that at first the young American had told them nothing, but then had told them everything. The General knew well that every man has that which he fears above all—snakes or knives or God, for example—and for the boy prisoner apparently it was fire that came in his nightmares.

His name was Edward Daniels and he was sixteen years old, an ordinary seaman from some small place in Louisiana called Madisonville. According to the terrified boy, one month ago a pair of merchant schooners had set sail from New Orleans. The two ships were accompanied by a naval gunboat and were soon joined by another in Pass Christian.

Daniels served on this second gunboat under a man named Loomis, commander of the entire expedition. It took the convoy over two weeks to reach the mouth of the Apalachicola, and from there they were to transport supplies to the American soldiers
garrisoned upriver. “Do you see now,” asked Xavier, “how all of this is a trap?”