John Wray - Canaan's Tongue

“You’ll open the stable, then?” I said.

“I might,” said Wallace, reaching a hand under his pillow & bringing out a key. He did this so promptly, so obligingly, that I didn’t think to stop him. If that were a gun, I thought, I’d be blown to Kingdom Come by now. Then I saw the Colt Dragoon revolver in his other fist.

“I’d never have brought the Child somebody I couldn’t put to bed myself,” Wallace said, rising spryly from the pallet. “You should have known that much. But then, you’re new to the Territories. Still in short pants, as it were.” He jerk’d his head toward the window. “Out there, is he? With the others?”

I held my peace. Wallace gloated for a time, shifting from one foot to the other; I stared dully back at him, the pistol slack against my leg. He must have expected me to fire, or else to commence pleading for my life; the longer I did nothing, the unsteadier he became. Through my numbness I managed to apprehend that he was deathly scared.

“Don’t worry, Harvey,” he said after a time, coiling the sheet about his midri f like a Caesar. “You wanted to try on a di ferent suit of clothes, & you got stuck in them; that’s all it was. I did much the same thing at your age.”

I remember’d vaguely, watching Wallace fidget, that he was said to have ridden with Hall’s High Valley Raiders. Now he fears for his life, I thought. He fears for his life — a former outlaw — because of me. The thought did little to encourage me, however.

“What’s the Child promised you?” Wallace said, taking a step towards me. “To teach you Canaan’s tongue? Is that it?”

“He might have done,” I heard myself reply. He’d promised no such thing, of course. But I’d have said anything, just then, to keep the conversationlively.

Wallace roll’d his eyes & groan’d. “You’re a bigger idiot than I supposed. You think I wasn’t made that self-same o fer?” He came closer still — our faces were all but touching. “You don’t learn something like that, Harvey, without forgetting something else.”

“Forgetting what?” I said. I felt unafraid now, almost bold.

“Everything,” Wallace murmur’d, bringing his free hand to his temple, as if checking himself for fever. “Everything, Harvey. Your entire self.”

I closed my eyes & tried to make sense of Wallace’s ravings. Could the Child actually help me to forget myself completely? Was he bless’d with such prodigious gifts?

“How wonderful that would be — to forget myself!” I sigh’d.

This cost Wallace his last composure. “You muck-brain’d ass!” he yell’d. “Have you not listen’d to a word I’ve told you?”

I smiled at him benignly.

“Your entire self, Harvey,” Wallace said again, panting quietly. His eyes grew vague & abstracted & he look’d up toward the ceiling. As he did so he let the Colt dangle & I suddenly recollected where I was. I brought the nose of my pistol up against his ribs, silently & smoothly, with no more e fort than it takes to point a finger.

“My name is Joseph Smith,” I said, & fired.

For a fleeting instant Wallace remain’d unchanged. Then he tilted his face toward the ceiling, press’d both hands to his belly & began to shriek. I threw him back onto the bed & had his Dragoon in my hands & cock’d by the time Tempie came stumbling through the door.

“Get on the floor,” I said. I’d done my best to disguise my voice, to harshen it & slur it over, but Tempie recognized it straight-away. “That you, Mr. Harvey?” he said, squinting into the dark. “This here old Tempie.”

“Get-on-that-floor, nigger!” I hiss’d, ramming the Colt into his guts. Tempie bent sideways, his eyes gone liquid & enormous. I brought a second hand up to steady the gun, wondering whether the Child and the others might come to my aid, or whether they’d abandoned me long since. No matter, Goodman,I told myself, struggling to keep calm — there are three horses stable’d in the barn. The key is in Wallace’s hand, or beside him on the pallet, or somewhereon the floor—

When the hammer of the Colt slipped I heard no report; my first thought was to curse its light action. Then Tempie let out a high, mournful gasp, like the cooing of a dove, & took a gentle hold of my left leg. I can still feel the slight, determined pressure of his grip.

At that very same instant, as if in answer to a bell, the Child came in from the parlor, took the key out of Wallace’s hand, & made to take the revolver out of mine. But I wouldn’t let him have it.

“It’s mine,” I said. I held the barrel to my chest. “Keep the hell away from me!”

“Mind your language, Joseph,” the Child said, stepping past me with a wink.

“I—”

“Yes, Joseph? What is it?”

“I’m sorry, sir,” I stammer’d.

“Apology accepted, Joseph. Now let’s have that revolver.”

“It’s mine,” I said again, recoiling.

He studied me a little, click’d his tongue against his teeth, then spun about & left without a word.

If a saint’s life is judged by his most wanton moments, might the whole world be saved by the “nay” of one coward?

THAT SAME DAY I GO TO SEE ABOUT DELAMARE, Virgil says.

The front parlor, until recently the site of the Colonel’s interrogations, has been converted into a make-shift infirmary. Delamare lies on a stiff-looking pallet in the middle of the room, staring up at the plaster-work as though the Fate of Man were writ across it. Clementine is with him but she stands to leave at once. She’ll be out in the hall in a moment, listening.

Delamare’s eyes follow me carefully from the door to the stool beside him. He says nothing as I sit. He says nothing because his lips and tongue are swollen so badly that he can barely take in air. He breathes through his nose in timid, parakeet-like peeps.

“I’m taking over the inquiry, Oliver,” I whisper. “I’m putting the Colonel out to pasture. What do you say to that?”

A poor choice of phrase. He gives me a flash-eyed look that I’m reluctant to interpret. Christ knows what nonsense Clem’s been feeding him.

“You think they won’t let me,” I say. “I agree. That’s why no-one need know of it, for the present, except you and I.”

Delamare lifts his shoulders and lets them fall.

I watch him for a spell. “Bob your head once, Oliver, if you consider me a coward.”

Nothing for a time but sullenness. Then a grudging nod.

“I have a reason for asking. Do you care to hear it?”

He closes his eyes for an instant, then opens them.

“I left Harvey’s letter in Clem’s care,” I say. “I suppose she’s read it to you.”

He nods.

“The last page of it interests me. Do you recollect the post-script?”

Another spell of quiet. Then he nods again.

“ ‘Might the whole world be saved by the “nay” of one coward?’ it reads. ‘One coward.’ That tickles the brain, somehow.”

Now his eyes are fixed on mine. The sharp-eyed look remains—; a vengeful look, it seems to me. I’d best be quick.

“I don’t think that line refers to Harvey,” I say. “At no point does he describe himself as cowardly. Desperate, yes—; even foolish—; but never as a coward. Quite the opposite, in fact.”

I’ve caught his fancy now, I’m sure of it. His eyes are watering.

“I believe that last line, and in fact the entire letter, is a bulletin to us—; to one of us especially. Harvey had no interest in the outside world, and still less in posterity. The letter is a reckoning with the Angel of Death, he says. A ‘reckoning.’ ” I scratch my nose. “What does he mean by that, do you suppose?”