VIRGIL (QUIETLY) — You’ll have — you’ll have Parson— (ENTER KENNEDY)
COLONEL—There you are, Mr. Kennedy! Please accompany Virgil to his room.
VIRGIL (REACHING INTO COAT) — Just you try it, Stuts.
COLONEL—There’s no call for that, Virgil. Put the pistol by!
VIRGIL—Back away from me! (SOFTLY) — You’ve made an error, Colonel. A right grievous one.
(EXIT VIRGIL)
COLONEL (PAUSE) — Well, Mr. Kennedy. (SIGHS) — I’m glad I had you by.
KENNEDY—It do seem propitious.
COLONEL—What do you make of this whole circus — Virgil and the rest?
KENNEDY—Wouldn’t cuh! — cuh! — care to hazard, Colonel. (PAUSE) — I could of warned him off that attic, though.
COLONEL—You — you’ve been there? To the attic?
KENNEDY—Aye.
COLONEL (QUIETLY) — When?
KENNEDY (SHRUGS SHOULDERS) — Some while back.
COLONEL—You saw—all of it, did you? You saw the bottles?
KENNEDY—That’s why I gone up, grand-dad. To liberate my own. (SMILES) — To Abolitionize ’em.
COLONEL—You believe in Parson’s pocus, then.
KENNEDY (COUGHS) — Superstitious, aren’t I.
(SILENCE)
KENNEDY—Colonel? Hey?
COLONEL (PAUSE) — It’s so hard to follow, Kennedy — it’s so hard to determinewho’s — dependable—
KENNEDY—You can always depend on old Stuts Kennedy, guh! — guh! — grand-paps. You know that much.
COLONEL—Thank you, Kennedy. (PAUSE) — I feel worn through, just at present. (PAUSE) — Would you like to sit beside me for a spell?
KENNEDY—Be pleased to, Colonel. (SITS)
COLONEL (FAINTLY) — Asa. I’d — I’d like Asa to come and sit with me. I don’t feel well at all. (PAUSE) — Could you fetch him?
KENNEDY—Not bloody likely.
COLONEL—Mr. Kennedy! I beg of you—
KENNEDY—I’d do it straight-away, Colonel, and warmest regards. But it’s puh! — puh! — placed beyond my powers, I’m afraid.
COLONEL (PAUSE) — How do you mean—?
KENNEDY—Young Asa’s dead as a Christmas goose. I saw him swinging in the orchard not ten minutes gone.
COLONEL (RISING) — Asa! Asa!
KENNEDY—Sit down, grandfather. You’ll break your arse.
Glory
I AM SINGING IN A CHORUS, Asa says.
Golden and rosy is the castrato’s chain that hangs from the masters of this world. If I had never dared to climb onto the stage I would not be singing in this choir of white-gold niggers to either side, this stage-set made of sun, this fire, this glow of flames, this house, this baking-oven. What I have not yet told—: the nigger’s skin is brown because he came too close to G*d.
Bristly, bistly, silver-and-mossy hairs, glistening and wet, wet eyes, blinking eyes, sack-cloth dresses down about the ankles. Barefoot I stand and without shoes. G*d is passing out the water. It is hot in the oven. All of us waiting in a stinking line making religion. Their religion, religion of cabins and swamp-water and gibbering whispers. Worship of babies and the ovenly future, crossing the Jordan to the heavenly cities, babies sh*tting and weeping and fattening themselves on babies in the cities and my own Dolly who went down too soon under the great nigger-colored river. The brown tumbling-over river, the feeding river, the keel-boats, the working, the Trading, the gray and blue gun-boats tumbling up the river. The War.
G*d moves under it.
Barefoot I stand among them and without shoes. At last I have finished singing, mocked behind my coat, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three times I sing—: Glory to my f*ther in the highest.
Good-will toward niggers, then pardoned.
V
GEBURAH (5th of the sephiroth; female) Which is the sphere of Mars, and the force appealed to in operations of hatred and destruction. It is the strict and severe authority of the mother, who disciplines and punishes the child. It lies behind all destructive energy, hate, rage, cruelty, war, havoc, retribution; Nature red in tooth and claw.
“We Are Building a Revolver.”
HELL IS A WORD, says Clementine.
Imagine a place where your life’s errors hold fast. Hold fast for you to fondle and examine them, then be examined in your turn. Hell is a word that all of us were raised on—; fed and fattened on, then fed back to as we grew. But Geburah Plantation is a place.
The R— himself has shown me this. It is.
There’s to be a marriage, Parson said. He told me on the settee, with the prisoner between us—: Someone is to be married, Clementine. Married to the R—.
There will be an end to things that way, he said. The wedding itself will end things. He laughed. A wedding always does.
Today is the day after. Virgil calls on me at last. He finds me at the window as he did on that first day in Madame Lafargue’s, with my arms stretched out toward the glass. The R— is there too but Virgil doesn’t see.
“Asa Trist is dead,” he says.
“How?” I say. I turn away from the window. Back of my neck I can feel the R— escaping.
“By hanging,” he says. “We’ve just cut him down. And D’Ancourt’s gone missing. Kennedy’s searching the grounds.”
He looks around him now and blinks.
“Clem,” he says to me. “My life—”
Damn you, Virgil! I say. But not so loud that he can hear me. Damn you clear to hell.
It’s then that I think—: Hell is a word. Geburah is a place.
“I know what’s happening to us,” Virgil says. He steps past me as if I were a coat-stand or a potted fern and sets himself down on the bed. He pulls a scrap of paper from his pocket. “Look here at this,” he says.
I take the paper and look. “I see.”
“You see it?” he says, disbelieving.
“I see the grounds—”
His voice goes sharp. “And the ladder of the spirit? The sephiroth, with the paths run between them?”
“Yes,” I say. Virgil gapes and gawks at me. The R— has explained it all but of course he cannot know this.
“D’Ancourt thought I’d gone crackers,” he says, passing a hand over his eyes. “So did Kennedy.” He lets out a breath. “So did I.”
“What can it mean?” I ask.
He coughs. “Look here. Where we buried the R—. The old privy. I’ve marked it with an X. You see? And Harvey here.” He snatches back the paper and runs his finger over it. “Asa will get put here, in Dodds’ newest hole. That makes three.” He nods to himself. “Someone’s following the path. It’s all in order.”
“The path?” I say.
His head bobs like a pigeon’s. “The path from the grave up to heaven,” he says. “The ladder of the spirit.” He bites his lip. “Only he’s traveling the path in reverse.”
“Who is?” I say, cursing him.