John Wray - Canaan's Tongue

I wonder whose death he’s chewing over presently. I wonder if it’s mine.

Something’s eating at his brain, some puzzle—: his lips are working as they do. Puzzling out his next one. His face is turned away from me but I can guess his look. I saw him digging with Dodds in back of the tobacco-house.

Would Virgil do me under? He would if he was clever. I want him up here suddenly—: up beside me on the bed. I’d call him up here, but. I turn and go back to the pallet.

“He still out there?” the boy says, lolling on his belly. His backside is as perfect laid across the quilt-work as a rooster’s tail-feathers laid across a puddle of shit. He sighs. “Why won’t that wall-eyed jack-ass look up?”

I press a finger to his shoulder. “I don’t think it was Virgil sent Kennedy out to shoot you, Oliver.”

The boy gives a laugh. “You’ve sure got a power of opinions.”

“I know him, that’s all. He’s never messed with Kennedy before.”

The boy is at the window now. Buck-naked, black against the light, waiting for Virgil to look up.

“Why won’t he look up?” he says.

The spite he nurses in his heart for Virgil waxes by the hour. He can’t think of Kennedy without thinking of Virgil giving him the order. And he thinks of Kennedy with every breath he pulls.

“Come away from the window, Oliver,” I say.

He grins. “But you just got yourself presentable.”

“Come on over here.”

But he doesn’t come. He wants Virgil to see him bare-arsed in the window. He fancies that would give him satisfaction.

“You don’t know Virgil Ball,” I say. “You think you do.”

“He’s proud,” the boy says.

“Not the way you are, Oliver. Not the kind to look my lover in the face. Not the kind to come up here, kick the door open, and spit in your pretty eye.” I smile at him. “Which is just what you deserve.”

“And what do you deserve, Miss Gilchrist?” says the boy. He gathers up his clothes. “What, all things considered, should your own penance be?”

“Go play Indian with your Yankees,” I say.

He buttons up his shirt. “You’re a fine woman yet,” he says. He says it grudgingly.

“And what are you, Mr. Delamare?” I say. “Are you half what you pretend? Can you get me out of this smoke-house?”

He laughs — he laughs at this! — and shakes his head. “There’s men at every cross-roads, ma’am. We’d not make it half a mile.”

“I’ll get eaten if I stay,” I say.

“You might,” the boy agrees.

“I can’t recollect why we came to this place,” I whisper. “Do you remember why?”

“He told us to,” the boy says. Referring to the R—.

“He must have wanted us to get to know each other better,” I say, and give a laugh.

The boy steps into his boots. “He wanted us to get together in a skillet and fry in it.”

“Wouldn’t he be pleased,” I say.

“At least we’ve got each other,” the boy says. “You and I.”

My face is turned into the blanket. The look on it wouldn’t suit the boy’s notion of himself half a grain.

“You’ve got a fine back-side,” he says.

The boy has no idea what I keep him for, and that’s what pleases me. What comfort I scratch together each day comes from that one thing. Pennies scavenged in a field. It’s a comfort, God knows, that ignorance of his. And only a young man can give to you.

“Well—,” he says after a time.

I roll onto my back. He has on his derby now, and his ivory smoking-jacket. He sighs and ruffles out his feathers.

“I’ve a hard time thinking—,” he says. “I’ve a hard time thinking that the R— planned for me to end up like your friend Goodie Harvey, packed under the clay. Or like Virgil Ball, either.”

“Oh! You’ll end up differently from those two, Oliver.”

He squints down at me. “Different how?”

“Go play Indian,” I say. “Go on!”

He says nothing, does nothing. I feel his dark eyes picking into me.

“You know what I call you to myself?” I say, for no other reason but to get him gone.

“What?”

“I call you ‘the boy.’ ”

That stops him quick. “Not your boy,” he spits out. “Not yours, you three-penny flop! Not yet.”

The door bangs shut behind him then, and I can take a breath.

NOW THIS ERROR is tucked in with the rest—: all the wide yellow rest of them, so many that the room is bloated up, hard and shiny and tight, like the stomach of a cow. And yet each mistake, taken in the hand, is no greater than a pea.

When I’m sure the boy is gone I go quietly to the window. Virgil is nowhere to be seen. I take a breath. The window has two loose panes, diamond-cut and beveled, the size of my palm exactly. I tip them out with my thumb and the air comes hissing in like nothing. I press my face against the glass. The air gets shriller in my ears. Shriller fiercer colder.

This is how I talk with the R—.

The air comes all in a single sucking. There is no relief from it. When every other sound is swallowed I can begin to ask my questions.

“Is it you, my love?” I ask.

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS, the sucking answers.

“Who will it be?” I ask. “Who will it be next?”

It answers quick and spiteful and I know it won’t be me.

“What’s Virgil’s scheme?” I ask. “What’s Parson’s?” But the sucking has stopped already. A noise from the hall has frightened it. The R— is gone as quickly as he came.

The noise from the hall reels clumsily about the landing. It comes up in bursts and crashes from the entry-way downstairs. I figure it out in pieces—: scuffling, curses, the voices of three men. One of the voices, high-pitched and coarse, is a new one to this house. I walk to the landing bare-footed and numb.

I’m just at the banister when Virgil appears below me. “Where’d you catch him?” he says to somebody—: Kennedy or the Colonel. His face is red and fretful.

An answer comes. He bobs his head. “There’ll be others,” he says. “Others behind him—: a whole company, most likely.”

Then he’s gone under the landing.

I pinch my cheeks to redden them, arrange my hair, and tip-toe lightly down. To the parlor, as usual. Always the parlor. But this time the door has been left open wide.

Let there be others, I think. Let them come and catch us, Virgil. We’ll be gone from here then, gone away from this house, and there’ll be an end to things. I have no fear of that. The R— will find me wheresoever I get sent. If the soldiers come I’ll bring each of them a cup of cold well-water and kiss them on the lips. Let them come all at once, a power of them, a flood—; let their fury be swift and holy.

Virgil is afraid, of course. But Virgil is an empty bottle.

The first of them I see is Oliver, hanging back inside the door the way men do when they’re not needed. He doesn’t look at me. In the room are the Colonel and Virgil and Kennedy. And a man in a gravel-colored coat.

“Now!” says the Colonel.

The man in the coat is sitting on the settee the Colonel usually favors. The Colonel is sitting on a busted stool.

“Now, sir! I trust that you are comfortable—”

“Who in Sam Hell are you people?” the man yells. “What you fooling with me for?”

Kennedy scratches at his face. “You was puh! — puh! — poaching on this land.”

“Poaching hell,” the man says. “Ain’t nobody cautioned you there’s a war on?”

“Yes, young man. We have all of us been cautioned,” the Colonel says. “I served in the army myself. We appreciate about the war.”

The man looks down at nothing. “Which army you serve in?” he mutters. “Ours or theirn?”