“I quite agree, Mr. Bixby,” the dwarf interrupted. “No penalty could be too severe in such cases.”
“Certainly not,” said Bixby. His face was the color of a pomegranate.
“I don’t believe I’ve met your young associate. .?”
Bixby took a breath. “That’s Clemens, sir. One of my old cubs.”
The dwarf winked at me. “What’s your opinion, Mr. Clemens?”
As I was incapable of rational speech by then, I simply shrugged my shoulders.He nodded and set his cup back on its saucer.
“I apologize, gentlemen, if I’ve led us into muddied waters. Theology is an inexact science, I’m afraid.” He sighed. “Perhaps a dose of chemistry might help us in our quandary.”
“I see no quandary,” Bixby murmured, staring off into the distance. “A gallows is quickly made.”
“An acquaintance of mine — Asa Trist, of Cane River — you know him, perhaps, Mr. Clemens? He is about your age.”
“By name, sir,” I managed to reply. In fact Trist is well known on the river as an epileptic and a fool.
“As I was saying: this young man, since his earliest boyhood of a scientific bent, has made an exhaustive study of the human dermis, taking samples of about so—” (he held his thumb and forefinger perhaps a half an inch apart) “—from financiers and flatboatmen, priests and prostitutes alike. Some of his samples were taken in the grandest houses of New Orleans; a sizable number come from his own slaves. Immediately on taking a ‘cutting,’ as he terms it, he places it in a solution of one part saltpeter to two parts extract of albumen.” He paused to examine his glovetips. “A preservative solution, he informs me. I wonder if either of you can guess what happens next.”
Bixby and I remained speechless. The cub made a great show of interest in the river.
“No guesses?” said the visitor, in a voice that made it clear that he’d expected none. “Permit me to enlighten you!” His round cheeks puckered with excitement. “Mr. Trist has found, in every case, that the sample sheds a fine— one might almost say, a negligible — layer of particles into the astringent mixture,exposing a fundamental pigment that is blacker than the night your mothers, gentlemen, were so fortunate as to conceive you.”
This was too much for Bixby at last. “Nay, sir—; nay. I will not tolerate—”
“Tut, tut!” the little man said, holding up a finger. “We are each of us a darky, gentlemen; science has spoken. Au revoir!”
He hopped nimbly from the bench, snatched up his cane and disappeared down the ladder. Bixby immediately turned the whole of his attention to the e forts of his cub, not so much as twirling his whiskers at me for the remainder of the run.
Picture my surprise when I discovered, that same afternoon, that I’d been exchanging pleasantries with the notorious slave bandit Thaddeus Murel, and furthermore that he owned the boat, from the boiler to the watch on Bixby’s fob!
The Punch-Line
ISLAND 37 WAS THE CRADLE OF THE TRADE, Virgil says. But the Trade had no need of a cradle any longer.
The island was a much-fabled port of call—; not every steam-boat would put in there. When the state of Louisiana was chartered, it laid claim “to the mid-point of the river,” and the state of Mississippi “to the channel”—; a simple enough division, on the face of it. Six years later, however, a rogue thumb of current carved a long, flat sliver out of the Mississippi mainland, well out into the river but short of the mid-point by half a mile. The new-born island belonged as much to one state as to the other, and owed allegiance, by law, to neither. It was a country to itself.
Decades passed, and the residents of the thirty-seventh island upstream from New Orleans — an overnight passage by steam-ship— grew down-right cozy in their solitude. The absence of law, not to mention tax-collectors, made it a haven for fugitives of every stripe. For the Redeemer, of course, it was paradise itself. In no time at all 37 had become his play-pen, and he — as a matter of course — had become its Lord Regent. He had no further need to scour the country-side for suckers, he was fond of declaring—; on 37 the suckers came to him, and they came politely.
The sailing-bell rang behind me and the Vesuvius hove off. The pilot’s name was Henderson — a Scotchman — and he’d been a share-holder from the beginning. The Redeemer had got ahold of him the same way he’d gotten all of us—: partly by blind chance, partly by design, feeling his way like a crawdad toward his present empire.
No-one was waiting to meet me on the freshly white-washed pier, which didn’t surprise me much—: it was going on six, and the fleshpots at the top of the bluff would be packed to overflowing. The neat white shacks along the water glowed prettily against the bank, their shuttered porches flickering like paper lamps—; here and there a sullen-faced boy or an old woman would nod to me as I passed. For all one could see or hear from the landing itself, 37 was a sweet-water hamlet like any other.
The sleepiness of the water-front never failed to charm me. As always, I felt a quiet temptation to find some ragged pallet in an empty room, hang up my coat, and delay my interview as long as possible. Had I examined this desire, my reluctance to keep my appointment might have struck me as curious—; but I did not examine it. After a few instants’ hesitation I went on up the slope to meet with my Redeemer.
I found him in his usual warren in the basement of the “Panama House” saloon, holding court before six or seven flat-boat roughs of the sort you’d be more likely to stumble over in some piss-soaked alley than meet with on the river. The week before, it had been a clutch of Presbyterian clergy-men—; the week before that, Mandarin Chinese. The clambering vines of our “corporation”—as the Redeemer had come to call it — left no patch of light uncourted. Rumors had even begun to circulate that some of the finest houses in the South — and above the Mason-Dixon Line, as well — were serving as its trellises.
You’d never have guessed it, however, from the gathering in the Panama House that night. The boat-men were sitting in a clump on the straw-battened floor, passing a pail of rotten-smelling shine between them—; a riper bunch of gallows-apples could not have been got together. The Redeemer sat cross-legged on a padded stool he’d had specially made in Baton Rouge, presiding over the goings-on like a wax saint in a crèche. Smoke from Chinese incense and skunk-weed cigars closed the room in like a tent—; whatever compulsion I’d felt to present myself vanished completely. I was about to turn to go when the Redeemer caught sight of me.
“Virgil!” he sang out, granting me that particular smile — at once conspiratorial and shy — that never failed to convince me that my most private thoughts were known to him. “Come sit down with our friends from the Butternut Society.”
“Beg pardon, sir—; I’d rather not.”
He’d developed an acute sensitivity to my moods over the years, and an even stronger indifference to them—; tonight, however, proved a rare exception. Leaning to one side, as if to get his head around the smoke, he studied my face for a moment, then slid down off his stool, bowed to his guests, and led me wordlessly upstairs. We passed through the bar like spirits, side-stepping the first bowie-fight of the evening, and continued up to the second floor, where a small suite of rooms had been set aside for Trade affairs. The Redeemer lit a candle, motioned to me to shut the door, then guided me by the wrist — as one might lead a debutante in a quadrille — to a table flanked by two low chairs.