At the top was a third body, much slighter than the others.
“Ah! Jesus,” I said weakly.
The body was that of a rail-thin boy, perhaps eleven years of age. For some private reason of Parson’s he was arranged exactly as Parson was himself, with his legs crossed loosely under him and his back supported by the hold. His mud-colored eyes hung indifferently open. In the center of his forehead was a small red hole, a clean and perfect circle, its edge lightly speckled with powder-marks.
“Who shot that child?” I whispered.
Trist gave a guffaw. “You did, Captain!”
“Neat shooting, that, for a hand-puppet in the dark,” Parson said silkily.
It was then I decided to murder the Redeemer.
III
The rising People, hot and out of breath, Roared around the palace: “Liberty or Death!” “If death will do,” the King said, “let me reign; You’ll have, I’m sure, no reason to complain.”
The Yellowjack
WE PULLED INTO MEMPHIS AT NOON, Virgil says. A day and a night had passed since Ziba’s killing.
I’d never delivered contrabands in daylight before, but Parson promised me not a soul would care—: the Yellowjack had the keys to the city now. The look on his face put me in mind of the mayor of Sodom returned home after a holiday. He clapped me on the back— which caused me to gasp aloud with pain — and breathed deeply of the air. “Look yonder, Captain,” he said sweetly, pointing up the bluff. At the top of it the customs-house was burning.
I brought us in slowly, easing up to the pier so that Trist wouldn’t strangle himself in the hitching-rope. Since my vow of murder two nights before, I was resolved to become a model citizen in my associates’ eyes. My chance with Morelle would come quickly enough, and I was not impatient. I could no longer quite conceive of the world without him, I discovered—; and I was in no great hurry for apocalypse.
Apocalypse, however, chose not to wait on my convenience.
Having tied and weighted the line, we pulled out the gang-planks and laid them flat, as with any other delivery. The niggers had been quiet as deer since the uprising, taking the water Trist brought them but refusing all food. I knew Parson well enough to expect no great help from him, but I reckoned the lingering effects of his hoo-doo might yet be strong enough for us to finish the run, provided he accompanied us to Stacey’s. Even this small hope, however, proved a vain one. As I stepped onto the pier I caught sight of him, already well up the road to town, moving with swift, bobbing strides, like a silk-skirted daddy-long-legs.
Trist and I watched him steal away. “Sure you wouldn’t rather follow Parson, Asa?” I asked. “He’d show you a livelier time than I ever could. Just look at how he prances.”
“Not a bit of it, Captain!” Trist sang out, clicking his heels together. I was once again, apparently, the apple of his eye. My scalp prickled at the merest thought of it.
“I’m sure you could teach me more than he ever could, about the business-end of things,” he said, raising his skittish eyes to mine.
“I’ve seen the business-end of things, all right.”
He gave a squeal of delight at this. “You mean — you mean it would be acceptable to you — if I—”
“Get that mid-hatch open,” I muttered. “Go on!”
The truth of it was that I needed him direly. With Ziba dead, my collar-bone broken, and Parson off God knows where, I stood as much chance as a one-legged man in an arse-kicking match.
The twenty-three head stowed amidships came up readily enough. Two hung back below deck, cramped and exhausted from close quarters, but Trist coaxed them up the ladder smartly. A few minutes later they were coffled together and ready to march, and the same held true for the stern hold. There was no delaying it any longer.
Slowly, ruefully, I walked with Trist up to the bow. I stood by the front hatch a moment, then gave him a stiff-lipped nod.
“Look lively now, Asa,” I whispered, gripping the butt of my one-shot. “Christ knows what they’ll do when they see it’s just the two of us.”
“Oh! They won’t be any bother,” Trist said breezily.
“Won’t they?”
He smiled down at the hatch. “You saw as well as I did. Parson put the fear of God into them.”
I looked past him at the river. “That wasn’t the fear of God, Asa.”
“They’ll be gentle as lambs, Captain. You’ll see.” He threw the cross-bolt open and stepped aside. “Call the all-hands down to them, sir. They’ll come to heel!”
Trist’s faith in Parson’s good works proved to be well founded. All twenty-two head came up orderly as you please, with their heads bent low and their wrists held out in front of them, as though positively eager for the chain. In a matter of moments the queues were coffled-up and ready. The faces of the niggers from the aft two holds looked sleepy and bewildered—; those from the bow looked as dead as cobblestones. They moved like dead men, too, once we got them moving. It took us the better part of an hour to reach the top of the bluff, but I can’t say I objected. If the Yellowjack was all it was rumored to be, most of them would breathe their last in old Pop Stacey’s pens. Who could fault them for regretting it a little?
The nearer we came to the top of the bluff, the more wooden their movements grew—: man followed man so mechanically you might have taken them for soldiers at a drill. “Quiet bunch,” Trist said as we rounded the last bend. I said nothing at all. The customs-house was close enough now that we could hear the flames lapping at its timbers and smell the sharp cloy of the boiling sap. I’d passed the house often on my visits, and had fallen into the habit of peering in — not a little enviously — at the clean, square parlor, and watching the customsmaster’s wife setting the table for breakfast, or for supper. I’d taken a fancy to that woman, and to the family I’d assigned her. Now they were dead, either in their rooms or on the street—: it was the custom during the worst bouts of Yellowjack to set afflicted homes on fire. As the coffles passed the house, its high slate roof commenced to shudder and bow, sending great hissing embers down onto the street. I began, with a calm born of my exhaustion and my pain, to weigh my odds of surviving the afternoon.
I was a different man than I was used to being. Nothing struck me as familiar, my own behavior least of all—; but that was only fitting. That day was to be the levering-point, the very pivot of my existence, and I knew it even then. This day must not be wasted, I said to myself. This day must be played out. I was both patient and resolute. I was, in a word, decided. I’d been brought back from the dead for a reason, after all—; and I intended to make good use of my reprieve.
If the fire in the customs-house had been set as a warning to passing boats — an illustration, however crude, of the disaster up in town— it might as well have been a match-flame. The sight that met our eyes as we came out onto Shelby Street could easily have been wrought by Moses. Hundreds of houses were in flames, and countless more had burnt down to their cellars—; the smoke from the combined conflagrations turned the mid-day sky the color of sodden brimstone. The citizens went about in perfect indifference to the smoke, to the fires, even to one another. Mountains of pulverized window-glass, roofingtile, dry-goods, offal, evening-gowns, gunny-sacks, and every other conceivable article of trade smoldered in the streets, festooned with the carbonized remains of shop-ledgers, mastiffs, bed-linens, saddles, daguerreotypes, and various other objects I did my solemn best not to recognize.