John Wray - Canaan's Tongue

“The world might dispute it, sir.”

“Never mind the world, then,” he said, taking me by the shoulder. “Let’s confine ourselves to this stinking crick of ours. There’s not much call for an educated man round these parts, as you well know. A worldly man, on the other hand. .” His eyes twinkled into mine. “Can you read chicken-scratch, prelate’s boy?”

“I’ve been schooled in it,” I said, unsure of him again. I sensed another question hidden behind the first.

“You can cipher?”

I nodded.

“And you’re a Jew by birth?”

This confounded me anew. “What on earth makes you think so?”

He jerked his chin at Tull. “You saw a Jewy symbol on the man’s shin-bone. I saw nothing but a doodle.”

I cleared my throat. “With due respect, sir, my recognition of that figure—”

“You are a Jew by birth?” he said again, narrowing his eyes.

I kept still a moment longer. “My mother was born Jewish, sir—; so I suppose I am, by the scriptures’ definition.”

“Excellent!” the Redeemer crowed. Why this was excellent to him I never understood. He extended a finger in the direction of the body stretched out at our feet and gave me a solemn wink. “Tull, here, was the scholar of our little company. Gracious knows you’re a hard man to look at, Mr. Ball, and as handy with cadavers as a box of smoke—; but you evidently know your letters, and we’re in dire need of a scribbler. You’ll fill old Tull’s boots, given time.” He reached up, grinning like a possum, and took hold of me by both ears, squeezing them till my eyes watered—:

“If you behave yourself, Kansas, I might even let you wear them.”

Jesse] James’s modest genius dreamed of no loftier flight than the planning of raids upon cars, coaches, and country banks. The R— projected negro insurrections and the capture of New Orleans; and furthermore, on occasion, this R— could go into a pulpit and edify the congregation. What are James and his half-dozen vulgar rascals compared with this stately old-time criminal, with his sermons, his meditated insurrections and city-captures, and his majestic following of ten hundred men, sworn to do his evil will!

LOVE CAME TO ME LATE AND HATEFUL, Clementine says. I was standing at the bed with my arms held toward the door when he came in. A cart had tipped over on Chartres Street making a fearful racket and I’d raised my arms to close the shutters, so when he walked in it was as if I’d put them out to receive him—: as if I’d been schooled in the service of that moment and no other. He stopped and mumbled some odd thing and colored. He was passable to look at, comely in his way, but for that eye of his—; that eye made a fright of him. The R— was just behind him in the hall.

He stood bolted to the floor turning his hat in his fingers, like so many of them do on their first come-round. After a piece he stepped to one side so the R— could come in. But the R— stayed where he was.

“Clem,” said the R— in his sham-lofty tone of voice. “This here is Virgil Ball, from Kansas. You two get familiar.”

“I’m half-dead, Your Holiness,” I said. “I petition you for clemency.”

“And I petition you for Clemen tine, ” the R— said. He laughed.

I shrugged my shoulders.

“I’ll be needing the whist room tonight,” he said. Then he turned with a squeak of his high leather heels.

“The whist room?” I said. I’d just got up from bed and was barely loused and powdered. It was always that way with the R—: he had a way with the darkies downstairs and liked to come up unannounced.

“You’d best ask Madame!” I said. But the R— was already down the hall and gone.

That left the two of us to look each other over. There was plenty to look at, Jesus knows, with his dead eye knocked backwards in his face and his queer way of shuffling about. There’d been a time, when I was yet a girl, that I’d have sent him off with nary but a laugh. But that was once.

“Sit down off your feet, Mr. Ball,” I said.

“I’m beholden, miss,” he answered, putting down his hat. That voice of his gave me a turn. Like the voice of an attorney-at-law, or a gentleman poet, but given over to a fool. I’d made a game of finding a thing to hate in each man who came to Madame Lafargue’s quimhouse but that voice of his, like the rustling-together of fancy parchments, got inside of me and settled. I hated that voice straightaway.

“Sit where you like,” I said, going to the shutters though the racket had largely stopped.

“Thank you kindly, miss.”

I looked at him sharply. “My name, sir, is Clementine.”

“I know,” he said. He pointed back over his shoulder. “He’s told me most of what there is to tell about you, I reckon.”

I gave him a smile that would have frighted away any but a firsttimer. “Mr. Myrell is a great visitor to this house, Mr. Ball—; but he rarely visits me. I can’t see what he could have told you.” I went to the vanity, keeping my front toward him so he’d not see me from behind without my stays. “Why don’t you sit?”

“Beholden,” he said in his fuddled way. He sat down on the day-bed and began taking off his boots. Now here’s a man, I thought. Already pulling his gear off like a share-holder. The boots were spattered with muck from the street, but I saw that they were new and of a fine, creamy leather.

“Will you be needing help with your britches buttons?” I asked, thinking to see him turn colors again. But no such thing happened.

“He told me I’d find you lovely,” he said, kicking his boots under the bed. “He told me that.”

“Don’t go trifling, Mr. Ball.”

“I think you are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever laid eye on.” He covered his blighted eye, then, and grinned at me with the other.

With the leer on his face he looked like a Red Indian. I thought—: If your talk was as ugly as your face, Mr. Ball, or your face as pretty as your talk, we might pass an easy hour. I suddenly found him pleasing to look at, save for that eye of his. “And that’s why you’re in such a hurry to get out of your pants, Mr. Ball—; is that it?”

“It is,” he answered. “You do a brisk business here, don’t you, miss?”

I looked at his face. It was grave as a deacon’s. “Brisk enough,” I answered.

“Then I should get out of my britches briskly,” he said. “Before you might be called away.”

I had my back to him just then, touching perfume to my neck and bubbies. Turning round I saw him looking at me as I knew he would—: squintish but keenly, out of his good blue eye.

“There’d be another girl in here before you could say Jackson,” I said quietly. “If I was called away.”

“Other sins for other sinners,” he said, giving me the leer. It was then I could see he’d passed time with the R—.

The R— came less than some, but from the day he’d first climbed the filigreed steps he’d carried on as if the house was his own green acre. He paid in coin always, never in paper. And he was free-thinking with his money. Some girls were amused on account of his smallishness but it never discouraged him and they forgot it quick enough. He’d come to me but once, and then only to watch me get fixed. He must have been thinking of me for his darling Virgil even then.

“Did you bring your French letters, Mr. Ball?” I asked.

His eyes went wide and starting. “I don’t speak French.”

“French letters. Envelopes. For your—” I made a gesture.

His eyes went wider yet. “What would that need an envelope for?”