John Wray - Canaan's Tongue

He took a long sip from his glass, cocked his head to one side, and spat the whiskey out onto the carpet. “A case, to put it coarsely, of Ammon collecting from his most hallowed Debtor. But I ask you this, Mr. Ball — and reflect a while before you answer — if that city existed in the current age, where, in your opinion, might it be?”

“Here, of course,” I answered blandly. But my heart beat furiously against my ribs.

Barker sat back with a gasp, as though I’d poked him in the belly with a stick. “You are a wonder, Mr. Ball! A natural wonder.”

“It is Memphis you’re dithering on about?”

“In a sense,” Barker said. “In a sense.” He held his glass to the light and peered into it intently, as if it were the oracle’s pool at Delphi. “Can you guess what I saw this morning, waiting for your steam-skiff to arrive?”

“Something portentous?”

He nodded. “A family of four, Mr. Ball, splayed out dead in the middle of the street. Rats had fed on their remains—: the softest, fattiest morsels only, leaving the rest to rot.” Here he paused a moment, pinched his features together, and sniffed at the palm of his right hand. He couldn’t have seemed more rat-like if he’d tried. “Even rats can be choosy, when Providence permits.”

“What of it?”

“Those self-same rats lay clustered in a puddle of black filth, not twenty yards away.” He tapped the side of his nose. “Dead as casket-nails themselves.”

“Must you speak in parables, Mr. Barker?” I said, making as if to rise. “I have very little patience for proselytizing—”

But Barker was already flushed with victory. “Touché, sirrah!” he squealed. “Touché!” He gave a peal of boyish laughter and brought his boots together with a bang—:

“How does the poet say—?

The flabby wine-skin of his brain

Yields to some pathologic strain,

And voids from its unstored abysm

The driblet of an aphorism.

“You’ll have no such driblets from me, Mr. Ball, I promise you! My meaning is simply this—: those who fatten themselves on the rotten, ulcerated matter of society—”

“I thought you wanted to talk about the Redeemer.”

Barker’s eyes narrowed. “That’s right, sir. I do. You appreciate straight dealing, I see.” He studied me for a time, then set his whiskey down. “I know you are disaffected with our friend Morelle. With your role in this back-water melodrama of his.”

I kept my face composed. “And how did you come by this knowledge, Mr. Barker?”

“From testimonies to that effect,” Barker said unctuously. “Acquired in the field.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Tut tut !” Barker said, waggling a finger. “Morelle isn’t the only one to take an interest in you, Virgil. I’ve looked into that eye of yours. Both of them, in fact.”

There was no hiding my anxiety any longer. “Who are you, Mr. Barker? A Pinkerton? A customs-agent? A missionary? A goblin? What in God’s name are you after?”

“Your cooperation, Virgil—; nothing more. Half an hour of your time.” He drained his glass with relish — a wax-cheeked, jubilant little gnome — and began to pace back and forth in front of me.

“I have no desire to dismantle the machine your Redeemer has set in motion—; never fear. Quite the opposite, in fact.”

“He did more than set it in motion, as I recall,” I said.

Barker spun suddenly about and caught hold of my chair, rocking it from side to side as he spoke—: “Have you not listened to a word I’ve told you? Not a single blessed word? The Trade existed long before Thaddeus Morelle stumbled onto it, sirrah. Ages before. It existed before you or I or that misbegotten dwarf — or even the Mississippi itself —had wormed its way out of the ether. The Trade, Virgil Ball, is an element—; a humor—; a pre-condition. ” He swallowed once, then took a breath — as if to give himself courage — and continued—: “The Trade is as basic to life as carbon. It’s as ancient as the yellow fever, and easily twice as popular. Even you, with your great gift, are less than a peanut in the Trade’s design.”

“A peanut?” I said. “Then what use, Mr. Barker, could I possibly be to you?”

At this he crouched beside my chair and took me by the hand. “You have more and better talents, Virgil, than you know. You or Thaddeus either, blast his eyes.”

“Do you know the Redeemer well?”

“ Must you call him that?” Barker’s right eye-corner began to twitch. “I know him, all right. I know old Taddy well enough.”

Taddy?

“Tell me about him,” I said. “Something I haven’t heard before.”

Barker gave a pinched little smile.

“As a youngish man, sixteen or so, Taddy overheard some soap-boxer — a disciple of phrenology, I suppose — say that the measure of a man’s genius could be read from the height of his brow. That same day he shaved a good two inches from his hair-line, thinking nobody would catch on.” He made a face. “That’s your ‘Redeemer’ for you, Mr. Ball.”

“That’s hardly the revelation I’d hoped for,” I said. “You have secrets, Mr. Barker, or you pretend you do. Sweeten the pot a little.”

Barker’s look darkened. “I need your help, Virgil—; I admit it. But I’ll have it from you whether you find the ‘pot,’ as you call it, sweet or bitter. I’ve made something of a study of you, you see. And I know even without consulting that magic lantern of yours that you’ll set my plan in motion.” He turned to face the window. “You’ll put down Thaddeus Morelle, for starters.”

“I’ll put down your granny.”

He held up a hand without turning. “You’ll kill Thaddeus Morelle—; you’ll put your eye at my disposal—; you’ll do as I say in all particulars. Firstly, because you’re a follower, born and bred. It comes easier to you to obey than to resist. Secondly, because I have the power to destroy the Trade, and you along with it, if I must. I have the knowledge and the willingness to do so.” He shook his head gently as he spoke, like a world-weary judge. “You have no say in your future, Virgil. Best accept that straight-away.”

I stuck my tongue out at his back-side. “Thanks for the whiskey, Mr. Barker. Best of luck.”

Barker only nodded. “Come to the window now.”

I rose from the chair at once, as if directed by wires, and joined him at the window-bench. He had said that I would obey him, and I did. Together we looked down into the alley. The woman lay just as before—: her companion was nowhere to be seen. Her legs were spread in a wide, awkward-looking V, as though she were passing water. But it was clear from her face that she had quit this life.

Barker took me solicitously by the hand.

“Life is fleeting, Mr. Ball, as any fool or Methodist can tell you. The things a man has wrought in his lifetime can, however — in the rarest of instances — bear the stamp of the ever-lasting. You and I could set a great many stones a-rolling, if we chose.” He let my hand drop and pressed his face against the window. In that instant he might easily have passed for the Redeemer’s twin.

“You’ll show me many things,” he murmured. His breath made little fleur-de-lys patterns on the glass. “We’ll journey side by side, my friend, into the vast and luminous Unknown.”

“You first,” I said, bringing Ziba’s pistol against his temple.

Barker’s body went limp at once. “Virgil!” he gasped. “ Listen to me, Virgil—”

“You’ll not look into my eye, you dumpling-faced bastard.”