“I’m an old cunt, blacks, it’s true.” He chews thoughtfully on his lower lip. “An old Irish.” He squints at me, then opens his mouth wide. “Half my tuh! — tuh! — teeth’s dropped out. Right? But look at yourself, now. You’ve still got juice between your legs.” He shuts his mouth and gives a little groan.
“I didn’t do Harvey,” I say quietly. “You know I didn’t.”
His eyes go narrower still, then shut for half an instant. I could have drawn on him just then.
“I’d kill you any-road, blacks,” he says. “But we’re all good and satisfied you did. I’m acting under orders, as it happens.”
I take a step. “Whose orders? D’Ancourt’s?”
His eyes fly open and his left arm jerks—: not his shooting arm but the other. If killing me were a drink he’d be wiping his mouth already. “’Tweren’t him I got my orders fuh! — fuh! — from.”
“Who, then? Parson?” I laugh in his face. “Taking orders from Parson, are you, Irish? What would Saints Patrick and Ebenezer say?”
“It were Virgil Ball,” he coos.
In spite of myself I flinch. “You’re lying. Virgil has no truck with you, Kennedy. Virgil would sooner—”
“Precious young yet, aren’t we, blacks. Not yet at the ripeness of our years.” He sniggers. “Too much white meat. Not enough porridge.”
The hinges of my nature begin to creak. I was born unable to hold my temper and God knows it and Kennedy knows it better. It’s for this that he’s kept me alive, worrying me, goading me, with his hands out in the open where I can’t help but watch them—; when finally I drop he wants it to be with foam at the corners of my mouth. And I know that I will drop, that I will give him that satisfaction, and still I can’t keep my temper in its britches. Could Virgil truly have sent Kennedy after me? Is he so cankered-through with bitterness? Kennedy is the lowest of God’s creatures but I’ve never yet heard him lie. What does Virgil think he knows? He saw me yesterday arguing with Harvey about the debt and the Redeemer and Christ knows what all else. Everything but that whore Virgil trails after in her calico shift. Might that be why—? Her smell’s run through my linens even now. I’ve never sought out her company, God knows, but perhaps Virgil doesn’t. Might that be why? It might. But Kennedy—
“I was thinking, blacks,” Kennedy says, digging a thumb into his eye. “About the day I come across you.” He grins. “Should’ve known then that it would come to this.” He coughs. “Perhaps I did.”
This, the old topic—: tried and proved. The old item. The house and the fat copper still and the curtain behind it and that filthy soot-stained room. The smell of boiling mash. My fists begin to open.
“I’ll not quickly forget that day, little man. Christ! Coming down the steps into that stinking kuh! — kuh! — kennel, saying my hellos to your mother, yanking the curtain back—”
Mother Annie Bradford. Mother Anne. She is coming toward me now in the half-dark of the hall and I try my best with her smell still on my clothes but the smell of the mash is stronger and my fine clothes are off, away, as if they’ve never been—
“Oliver,” says Kennedy. “Oliver De — la — mare.” Drawing it out, letting the pieces of it break off and fall steaming and abominable to the ground.
By God that woman was not my mother.
“—and here’s little buh! — buh! — blacks with his drawers about his ankles, scarf tied back around his arms. A lady’s rag. Why was that, now, blacks? Feared of falling in?”
Dearest madam, you who took my life—
“That were the cunt you come out of. Weren’t it, blacks?”
The forest lifts before me like a petticoat and I fall sideways into running. My jacket and waist-coat and repeater are nothing but burdens to me now and I cast them aside. The smell of the mash keeps me on my feet and I reel drunkenly forward and all the while I hear him hollering to stand where I am and let him. Blank air opens ahead of me, parts as fast as I can run, a peep-hole waiting to be plugged. My mouth opens and six years tumble out of it and still I smell the mash.
Past the trees is the great house, Virgil and the rest inside of it like mice inside a shoe. Kennedy comes after. The scarf was blue crêpe and it was a reward. Fine things, she said. Which she? She of the fat white belly, the sweet-meats, the sweating copper pipes? She of the sour mash? The Redeemer’s she, or Virgil’s? She who made me white, or she who made me black? A branch breaks just behind.
I have ever been a poppet for the ladies.
As if reflected in a puddle I see Kennedy’s form. More than that—: the cold against my chest tells me. Here he comes. Did I stop running? Did I sink to my knees? I did. I kneel slumped against a tree, the very last before the lawn, letting the mash pour out of my open mouth. I wait on Kennedy’s convenience. His shadow crosses against the light and there’s no house suddenly, no still, no boiler, no Mother Anne, no Delamare, no Trade.
I’m grateful for that much.
He stands still for a moment, potato-faced and breathless, wheezing and sputtering and cursing me to heaven. And yet pleased to see me—: to see me kneeling in the mud, the bright mess in front of me and down my clothes.
“You called my name,” Kennedy says, chambering his gun. He must have fired at least once. “You called it, Oliver, as you run.”
The cold climbs up my body like a reward. “I haven’t forgotten your name, Irish. You drove it into me. Remember?”
His potato-face pivots. “You shut your muh! — muh! — mouth.”
Three steps past him the forest ends. It’s raining on the naked ground and I can smell the clay. A pale blue blot, the figure of a man, moves toward us through the grass. Is it my end approaching?
“You dipped into a well meant for niggers, Kennedy,” I say. “You dipped into it and drank. What does that make you?”
“Nobody heared of it,” he says, thumbing back the hammer. “If nobody heared of it, it never was.”
“An honorary nigger, Stuts,” I say. “And something else besides.”
I look up at him against the trees, branches twitching in the rain, bullets dropping sweetly from the pines. A shout comes from the house. “You surely want to die,” he says.
I wait to see his features before I answer.
“Parson knows what you did to me, Kennedy. I told him. So does Dodds.”
He strikes me across the forehead with the barrel. My left eye shuts and gushes. “You,” says Kennedy. “You little nuh! — nuh! — niggra boy.”
I half-believe that he is weeping.
“Kennedy!” Virgil shouts, crashing through the brush. “Leave off it, Kennedy! Harvey left a letter!”
So Virgil was behind it, after all.
“Little boy,” Kennedy says, bringing down his boot.
Goodman Harvey’s Narrative
On this the night of 11 May 1863 I make my peace with the Lord my Creator & leave this record of my many errors, trusting in His power to see the causes that are hid to all but prophets. I am no Papist & write these lines not to serve as a confession, for I do not believe in redemption at the eleven’th hour; but rather to reckon with the Angel of Death, pale & luminous as a pearl, who stands attentively at my left shoulder.
I do so easefully, recollecting my forty-two years with the calm of one about to forget them for all time. I have, in fact, been waiting on this night for many months; I find myself embracing the prospect eagerly, almost coquettishly, like a virgin bride. Had I not known my Friend was coming I’d have done away with myself weeks ago; but this end, I believe, is better. My lot has ever been to defer to those greater than myself.