David Liss - The Whiskey Rebel

The servant had not admitted Reynolds with us, and we were alone with this old man, who bore himself with the silent dignity of a savage chief. He opened his mouth to show us two rows of dark teeth, which he clamped together in something like a grin.

“I am Colonel Holt Tindall of Empire Hall, and I am Duer’s partner on this side of the Alleghenies.” As he spoke, I felt the heat of his gaze as it settled upon my body. He looked at me as no man should look at a woman not his wife. “Reynolds said I’d want to meet you, and he knows my business, I’ll say as much as that.” He spoke with the heavy accent of a Virginian, but it had an additional drawl, a kind of laziness I had already begun to associate with Westerners.

“Care to sit?” he asked.

“Thank you,” said Andrew.

Tindall banged the butt of his fowling piece upon the wooden floor. “Not you. A man stands in the presence of his betters. I address the lady.”

I could not endure that Andrew should be again debased for the sake of something so trivial as my appearance. I gazed upon this Colonel Tindall with hatred and contempt, lest he think I mistook his rudeness for authority, and remained standing.

“You must suit yourself,” he said, in response to my silence. “Stand, sit, don’t matter.”

He might have been a Virginian once, but evidently he had forgotten the culture of extreme politeness cultivated in those climes. All at once I knew precisely what he was-a hybrid creature composed of a Southerner’s sense of privilege and a Westerner’s brutality. There is a name for a creature that is part one thing and part another: monster.

My pulse quickened and my breathing deepened. I was afraid. I had been living for weeks in perpetual fear-fear for what would become of us, fear for our safety-but this was something much more urgent, something sharper. I looked at Andrew, and his lips curled in a reassuring smile. If he too was afraid, he would not show it.

Andrew stepped forward, inclining just enough toward a bow to be polite without actually offering obeisance. “I am Andrew Maycott, and this is my wife, Joan. We are anxious to see our land, so please state your business.”

The colonel’s old face darkened at Andrew’s words. He sneered, again revealing his tobacco-stained teeth. As if to demonstrate the origins of this discoloration, he pulled from inside his coat a twist of tobacco and bit off a considerable piece.

Just then the doors to the chamber opened and a Negro woman of great girth and indeterminate age-but surely neither young nor very old-entered the chamber. “I see you got company, Colonel. You want tea, or maybe that cake I done baked this morning?”

The colonel banged his fowling piece upon the floor. “Did I call for you?” he demanded. “Do not come unless I call. Now get you gone, Lactilla.”

I was later to learn, as a point of gossip, that this Negress had been the colonel’s property for near twenty years. When first making her way into Tindall’s household, her breasts had been large with milk, for she had been separated from a child not yet two years old, owing to the death of her previous owner. The colonel found this condition amusing and had taken to calling her Lactilla.

Now the woman stared brazenly at this beast of a man. “Don’t you use that tone with me when I ain’t done nothing wrong but only my duty, which is to serve tea and cake.”

Tindall raised his fowling piece. “You’ll go back to your damned kitchen, nigger. The only question is if you do it whole or filled with shot.”

She waved a hand and let out a guffaw. “Look at him. Old man with a gun.” She turned to me. “You come by the kitchen when you done, honey. I give you some cake, you and that handsome husband of yours.” She shrugged her massive shoulders and heaved herself from the room.

Tindall set the gun back down with a thud, but he kept his hand upon it still. “Damn that old bitch.” He looked at Andrew. “As for you, don’t hope I’ve forgotten your impertinence. You don’t much care to mind your place, but you’ll come to understand your error. You ask around, Maycott, and you’ll hear the same thing from everyone. I am generous to the town and its poor. I am free with my money, and I believe those with means ought to help those who have none. I do not, however, suffer insolence gladly.”

“And how is it not insolence on your part when you ask us to stand while you remain seated?” Andrew asked.

“Because this is my house and my town, and the land you are to settle upon is my own.”

“I believe,” said Andrew, “it is mine. I bought it.”

“There’ll be time for you to examine that belief. For now, it would be well for you to listen to what I say and to think no more of the sort of leveling foolishness that comes from misunderstanding the late war. I am familiar with the principles of the Revolution, for I fought in it.”

“As did I,” said Andrew.

“What of it? One cannot empty a workhouse, a jail, or a brothel without uncovering a passel of veterans. You would do better to attend to more immediate concerns. Such as your land, for example.” He held up two scrolls of foolscap, both clutched in his left hand, clearly unwilling to let go of the fowling piece. “One of these is the deed to your land, the contract that you signed, cleverly written by our friend Duer, who is quite adept at these things. It is, I am afraid, not a favorable piece of property.”

I took a step forward. “Mr. Duer assured us that it was very fertile.”

“Duer lied, pretty thing. The land might be fertile to corn for all I know, but you will have to clear it of trees and rocks and then see what it yields. If you had a team of mules and a pack of niggers, you might do it in as little as two years.”

“You wait a moment,” Andrew said.

Tindall showed us his teeth again. “I ain’t got to wait. Duer deceived you. You know that by now. He spoke to you of the glories of Libertytown, but you’ve seen Pittsburgh, and you wonder how the settlement can be a paradise if Pittsburgh is so wretched. Your allotment is not farmland but wild forest, and taming it will likely be your death.”

Neither of us spoke because, terrible though these revelations might be, they were not shocking. As Tindall had suggested, we had long since understood Duer’s deception, though we were not yet aware of its extent. We did not speak because of our of pure, sharp, numbing surprise. It was one thing to trick a person but quite another to glory in being a cheat.

“Now,” he continued, “the other deed I hold in my hand is more like the sort of thing Duer suggested. Not quite, you understand. It won’t be what you were told, but this one is very much nearer. ’Tis cleared land, already a cabin on it, such as it is, and the land’s been farmed somewhat in the haphazard ways of western rabble. It is a better piece of land-much more workable. Perhaps you would like to consider trading what you have now for something more agreeable. ’Tis equal acreage, so you need not concern yourself on that score.”

Andrew said nothing. What was there to say? We were hundreds of miles from our home, abused and deceived, in the hands now of a deranged border despot whose greatest pleasure seemed to be abusing those in his power. Tindall had every advantage over us, and the only power we had came from withholding our acknowledgment of that power.

“I have come to these terms with other settlers, who have always found them advantageous,” Tindall said. “Would you care to come to terms with me, Mr. Maycott?”

“That would depend upon the terms, would it not?” His voice remained steady. I knew he was frightened, for me and for our future, but he would not show it.

“It is not what I asked you.” Tindall’s voice shifted from syrupy to hard. “I did not ask about the terms, I only asked if you would like advantageous terms. Answer me yes or no.”