The Scribe (26 page)

“No boy could have done this,” Canby said.

“He ain't a boy no more.”

“‘In time, everything will be made vile.' That's what Billingsley said, isn't it?”

“Looks like he's working on it.” Underwood scraped his heel across the floor, smearing an image of two black children conjoined. “You take a good look at that door? Wasn't no lock on it. The bolt's on the inside. Someone's been coming and going as he pleased.”

“I thought he'd have been held captive here.” Canby saw among the figures a phrase scribed in bold letters,
Vexilla regis prodeunt inferni
.

“That's Latin, isn't it?” Underwood asked.

“It is.” Canby studied it a moment. “‘The banner of the king of hell advance.'”

Underwood snorted. “Sounds about right.”

“I can't conceive of a boy being capable of this.”

“You'd better start conceiving,” Underwood said. He looked again at the pickaninny doll on the bed. “If you don't kill this thing, I will,” he said. He bent and swatted the doll to the floor.

Canby did not reply. His eyes were fixed on what lay on the bed where the doll had been. Lying on the sheet was the severed hand of a man. The skin of it was a shade lighter than Underwood's. It was withered, nearly mummified.

“Sweet Jesus,” Underwood said.

Canby drew his knife and poked at the hand with the blade. The palm was bloodless and dried, leathery. The knife's tip did not penetrate it. “Vernon,” Canby called, “Dempsey and Lewis—you told me all that was done to those bodies?”

“Of course.”

“None of them missing a hand?”

“You know whose hand that is, Mister Canby,” Underwood said.

Canby looked up at him sharply. “Now, how would I know whose hand it is?”

“Because he told us. In Spot Twelve. That's a Hand of Glory. The left hand of a hanged man.”

“And?”

“That old Saul they hung on the Billingsley plantation. Think that ain't his hand?”

Canby looked down at the hand, its lined palm, trying to gauge how old it might be.

“Hand of Glory has got all kinds of power, any hand does. How much power you think is in a conjure-man's hand?”

Canby shook his head. But he was thinking about what he'd read in Billingsley's feverish memoir, what Billingsley wrote about the slave he claimed had started him in this business of voodoo, then black magic. About Billingsley watching the slave hanged. How he, still a boy, had looked to him as a teacher.

“And now he's got Johnny Drew wrapped up in this shite.” Canby started toward the stairs. “Vernon,” he said as he began to climb, “Johnny Drew isn't one of Billingsley's victims. He's an apprentice.”

“We could wait here,” Underwood said. “Ambush him.”

“No time,” Vernon said from the doorway above them. Vernon's bearded profile was dark in the chiseled-out doorway, silhouetted by the morning sun. He was looking north. When Canby reached the top of the stairs he followed his gaze. Saw the plume of steam trailing into the depot, heard the keening whistle of the morning's first train.

S
HERMAN HAD NEVER
been one for small talk, Grady reminded them as the general stepped down from his train and made his way quickly through the crowd gathered at the depot to greet him. Grady was at the general's heels as he moved toward the waiting carriage, nodding curtly at men in the crowd and exchanging quick handshakes while Grady did all the talking, apologizing to Sherman for the morning's unseasonable cold that had come in with the storm clouds from the west.

“Fine Ohio weather,” was all Sherman said in reply as he signed an autograph for one of the boys who rushed in and out of the crowds of grown men, scuttled under the ladies' parasols. Canby and Underwood searched each of the boys' faces as they neared, looking for some resemblance to the ferrotype of John Drew they had seen, Canby hoping Vernon was keeping good vigil as well. He knew Underwood was at his keenest, given this chance to guard the man the Negroes called the Great Liberator. He could not blame him. Still, the boys darted out of the crowds and back into them boisterously, waving their autographed scraps of paper like trophies. “The nonchalance
of boys is the proper attitude of life,” Canby remembered from one of Emerson's essays. This morning, he thought ruefully, that nonchalance could be covering something more sinister than anything the Sage of Concord ever accounted for.

“A speech, a speech!” someone yelled from the crowd. Sherman turned as he mounted the steps to his carriage and looked out over the men, his face as fierce as though an insult had been called out.

“Come hear it at the exposition!” Sherman shouted. Then he smiled through the red beard now flecked with gray and ducked into the carriage, Grady and the mayor just behind him. Vernon climbed in last and looked at Canby before he pulled the door shut.

“I'd intended him to ride in the hansom with Maddox yonder,” he said.

“Closed carriage is safer anyway.”

Vernon nodded. “But it won't be a closed carriage he's in at the exposition. Follow us close, and when we get there I want the two of you on him like ticks on a dog.” He shut the carriage door with a click of its handle. “Ticks on a dog, Thomas.”

The carriage pulled away and Canby and Underwood waited as Maddox brought the police hansom around. As they climbed in, Maddox leaned down, grinning, his elbows on his knees and the reins loose in his grip. He said, lowly, “You still aim to kill him, Thomas? Today'll likely be your best chance.”

Canby glared at him a moment, then turned to face forward in his seat.

“Lighten up, Thomas, I'm only kidding you,” Maddox said as he cracked the reins. “You never were any fun.”

T
HE PROCESSION TRUNDLED
under the towering iron gate at the entrance of the I.C.E. and rolled to a stop beside the fountain that shot a column of water nearly as high as the gate into the November air. Beside it, Director General Hannibal Kimball stood, hat in hand, shivering in the fountain's spray and the steadily dropping temperature of the morning.

His greeting, however, was warm as he shook hands with General Sherman and the other dignitaries, lastly with Vernon. With Canby and Underwood flanking Sherman, Kimball commenced immediately to lead the group on a walking tour of the exposition.

“I cannot hope to show you all nineteen acres, General,” Kimball said, “but I can give you a taste of what has been accomplished here in less than one hundred and fifty days.”

“The extent of the building is remarkable.”

“We have a knack for building and for rebuilding, General,” Grady said. “We attribute that in part to your being kind of careless with fire.”

Sherman turned to look at Grady and there was some nervous laughter among the men.

Grady grinned at him. “Our city is a phoenix risen from those ashes, General.”

A trace of a smile played across Sherman's face. “A New South indeed, Mister Grady. Glad to contribute my portion.”

Sherman walked on and Kimball resumed his talk of the I.C.E. facilities, pointing out the two-story restaurant constructed for the fairgoers, the Judges' Hall, the Exhibition Halls and the Arts and Industrial Pavilion, and the model
cotton factory at the center of it all, noting that each building had been fitted for steam and water lines and wired for electric light. The smell of boiled peanuts and popping corn had already begun to fill the morning air.

“You'll note the foreign exhibitors, General,” Kimball said, gesturing down the long row of booths and tents that stretched to the west. “They have come, as have men from across the country, to display their wares. We intend for this exhibition to banish the last traces of sectionalism from our great nation. And thus are doubly honored by your presence.”

As the group wended its way through the crowds they came to a cotton patch, perhaps an eighth of an acre, that had been set up alongside the factory. In the rows, two black women bent under the weight of nearly full burlap sacks slung over their shoulders, pulling the white tufts from the stems of the plants and stuffing them into the sacks.

“Planted expressly for the exhibition,” Kimball said. “What you see there, General, is the beginnings of your new suit.”

Sherman arched an eyebrow and Kimball fairly beamed.

“We aim to demonstrate for you just how far southern industry has progressed. That cotton being picked will make its way this morning to the gin. It will be carded and spun and—if you'll permit our tailor to measure you—woven into fabric that will be cut for a suit we invite you to wear to this evening's banquet.”

“All in a day?”

“A single working day, General. Picked, carded, spun, woven, dyed, dried, cut, and sewn.”

“From the plant that, as you see, General, dangles dewgemmed
from the stalks this morning,” Grady added. Canby rolled his eyes.

“Capital,” Sherman said, nodding. “I have no desire to slow the progress. We should hasten to your tailor.”

The Rich brothers had set up a small shop in a corner of the cotton factory and Canby saw that Morris Rich himself stood in the doorway, a yellow measuring tape draped over his shoulders. He shook his head as the party approached. “Gentlemen,” he said, “will you all be crowding into the fitting booth? Please, General Sherman only.”

“Let me send one man in with him, Morris,” Vernon said.

Rich shrugged. Canby looked to Sherman and saw that the general's bright eyes were fixed on him. “This man,” Sherman said.

Inside the shop, Sherman shucked off his overcoat and handed it to Rich, then removed his field coat and held it out to Canby. Canby could not look Rich in the eye, he so reminded him of Greenberg and his failure there. Canby took the coat, looking down at its epaulettes embroidered with a gold eagle flanked on either side by a silver star. “I did not catch your name, sir,” Sherman said.

“Thomas Canby.”

“Well, Mister Canby, tell me what grievance you bear toward me. I am a soldier. I know that look in your eye.”

Canby's mouth opened but he seemed unable to find the right words to speak.

“If it's about the Negroes you lost in the war, or your property or the crops you lost, I have no apology,” Sherman said. “None. The South brought destruction upon itself. I gave
Atlanta every chance to evacuate and be spared, but she would not do it.”

“I lost more than that,” Canby said, anger nearly choking him. “Innocents were killed.”

Sherman stepped up onto the tailor's stool. He glowered at his own reflection in the triptych of mirrors that framed him as Rich wrapped the tape around his chest.

“War is all cruelty, Mister Canby. I've said so many times.”

“And so you resolved to make Georgia howl. Was that not the phrase you used yourself, to make her howl?”

“It is all cruelty and you cannot refine it.”

Rich pulled a pencil from his pocket and made a notation on his cuff. Gently, he stretched Sherman's right arm out and ran the tape down the length of it. Canby looked down at the gold braid of the field coat to hide the watering of his eyes. He wanted to throw the coat to the floor and trample it.

“Women and children, General. Men too old to fight.”

“A shame, then, that they died for a war begun in error and perpetuated in pride.”

“I'll grant you part of that, General. Error and pride. No one fought more nobly for an ignoble cause than the Confederates. But no one fought for a just cause more ignobly than you did, sir.”

Sherman fixed his eyes, burning brightly, on Canby. You could never tell, Canby thought, if that fire burned from anger or a touch of madness. “History will be my judge,” he said levelly. “And when you look to the welcome I enjoyed here this morning from my former enemies, perhaps it already has been.”

“Atlanta has too short a memory,” Canby said. He stepped closer to Sherman and caught his own reflection in the mirrors, dozens of Canbys refracted in the glass. He saw that his face was pale, the scar on his cheek livid.

Rich, kneeling beside the stool with his tape pressed against the general's leg, rose. As he noted the last measurement on his cuff, he said, “You may help the general with his coat, please, Mister Canby. We are finished here.”

Canby looked down at the coat in his hands and saw that he had twisted it upon itself, wrung it like a washerwoman. He twisted it tighter for a moment. Then he shook it out and held it for the general.

“You strike me as a fighter, Canby,” Sherman said as Canby's hands trembled and the general stuffed his arms into the coat's sleeves. “I admire that. You speak frankly, and that's a rare thing in a southern man. Always talking around what they mean, parrying and sugarcoating.”

Sherman squared his shoulders in the field coat, buttoned it. Rich, his eyes cast down as if in embarrassment, handed the general his overcoat. Sherman turned away from the mirrors and saw that Canby stood blocking his exit from the booth. “You'll excuse me, sir,” he said.

Later, Canby would wonder whether it was the practiced command in Sherman's voice, or the habits ingrained by his own brief service in the general's army, or his years on the police force, that prompted his next action. Or whether he was moved by some innate sense of the war's being—finally—so nearly over for him. Perhaps even Angus's hand, reaching across death and time. Canby stood aside.

He watched Sherman's back as he made his way to the tailor shop's front door, then followed. But that exit was blocked. The crowds from the fairgrounds outside had made their way into the factory, their growing numbers pushing the factory workers away from their stations at the gin and the looms, stalling the operation of the machinery. Kimball and the other dignitaries had been pressed up to the door of the shop and Grady, pointing out the idleness of the factory's works, suggested that the general accede to the crowd's demands for a speech, now nearly a chant. Morris Rich was sent for the tailor's stool to give Sherman at least some semblance of an elevation, and it was from this little perch, a head taller than those in the crowd, that Sherman made his speech.