When at last the man came, and the cold flush of certainty broke over her, the disappointment was almost more than she could bear. He was narrow-eyed and dull, little better than a dwarf, and the drawl of the shanty-towns oozed from his mouth like molasses from a bucket. His companion, though similar enough to him to be his twin, was better dressed and cleverer-looking. She’d have much preferred this other—; but he was not the one she’d been waiting for, the one she’d been banished to that god-forsaken marshland to receive. That man stood slouching in the shadow of the porch, leering up at her out of close-set, callow eyes.
She worked her face into a smile and beckoned him inside. His companion made to follow but she turned him away, stifling her regret.
“He been follering me since Natchitoches,” the man said as soon as the door was closed. He was already rifling through her books.
“Who is he?” she asked. If anyone else had gone near that trunk she’d have driven them bodily from the house.
He made a face. “My frère. Morris Barker.”
“Barker.” She said the name slowly, getting the sound of it. “Is that your name?”
He laughed. “No, marm. You might say our fathers was unacquainted.”
“And your mother?”
“A lady-in-waiting. Nobody had to wait too long, though, that I seen.”
He said this flatly, without changing his look, and it took her some time to understand it as a joke. He went on rummaging through her belongings, glancing up now and again to measure her disquiet. She looked on helplessly. His every action was the stuff of her dreams made flesh, but mocked in the fulfillment—; made light of.
With a pick-pocket’s sense for hidden things he made straight for the sugar-tin. The breath stuck sideways in her throat.
“What’s this?” he said. He prized the lid open with his thumb.
“You couldn’t read it.” She managed to say this firmly, even defiantly.
“But you could, couldn’t you, marm.” The binding crackled under his fingers.
“What did you come for?” she asked, if only to ask him something.
He regarded her coldly. “Read this book to me,” he said.
That he should have sought it out, out of everything, was the last proof she needed—; but in truth she needed none. She was at his mercy. It was not a bodily desire — she was too old to care anymore for that — nor a desire of the spirit, but rather a fierce voluptuousness of mind. Her attention was held not by his face or his body or his miraculous presence before her in the room, but only by the book he held. He was proof of the book, after all. Proof of all she’d come over the past decade to believe. Proof, in his sly, remorseless way, of the hidden God within her.
“I can’t read it to you,” she said. “You’d not understand the words.” As she said this she tried to gauge the violence in him—; but he was a cipher to her still, unaccountable and unknown. She hadn’t even learned his name.
He grinned at her, showing her his teeth. They were blunt and white. “I’ll read it my own self,” he said.
She understood then that he was an illiterate.
“It’s in Hebrew,” she said. “I don’t fancy that you speak it.”
“He-brew,” he repeated, working his tongue around the word. “That’s a Jewy language.”
He guided his improbably slight body to the window and looked out at the bayou. His every act was both naïve and staged expressly for her benefit. “Have you read many Jewy books?” he said at last. The idea seemed to amuse him.
“Only that one,” she said. “I learned the language just to read it.”
He nodded at this matter-of-factly, as though it were the most natural of things. “A witching book, is it?”
She smiled down at him. “And a great deal else, besides.”
“Did you make a proper study of it, marm?” He scratched his nose. “Did you learn it through?”
“I did,” she said. She was wooing him now. “I could recite that entire book for you. In Hebrew first, then a second time in English, so that you could understand it. And you’d do well to listen.” She took a slow breath, steadying herself. “I could make you king of all this country, if I chose.”
“You could do that?” he murmured. There was wonder in his voice.
He held the book at arm’s-length, offering it to her.
“I could recite it for you this hour and this minute,” she said comfortably. “I carry that book inside me like a babe.”
“That must be quite a burden,” he said, and tossed the book into the bayou.
She let out a gasp, as the book hit the water, that held the next twenty years suspended within it like a row of wasps in amber. She saw the years arrayed before her, and guessed clear enough what they would bring, but still she couldn’t stop them coming. She took a quick step toward him, trembling as though she’d been struck. She knew that she must either kill him at once or give herself to him utterly.
He looked up at her, arms crossed, waiting patiently for her answer.
“It was,” she said finally, letting her body and mind go slack.
She would often think, in the years that followed, of that first flawless gesture of his, the act that both crowned him her Redeemer and set the machinery of his death in motion. He was always to treat her knowledge with distrust, learning only what he needed to learn, scorning all the rest. Had he studied that book himself, rather than throwing it into the bayou, he’d have become a sovereign among men—; he’d have pressed an entire nation to the floor.
As it was, he died.
But oh! how she’d adored him then. Her exhilaration was far greater than her pain. He was close beside her now, hands in his pockets, a mock-penitent smile on his flat school-boy’s face.
“Those things you done, in Natchitoches,” he said. “What they say you done.” He was quiet a moment. “You do those things?”
The pain was gone as swiftly as it had come. “Some of them,” she said.
The smile widened further still. “My name is Thaddeus Hejekuma Morelle,” he said, holding out a hand.
She took the hand in both of hers. “Mary Parson,” she replied.
Ascent to Heaven
NOW THERE ARE THREE OF US, Virgil says. A trinity.
There is no Clementine in the room, no Redeemer. I’m still in the room, but barely. The spirit is leaking out of my belly like rose-water. A smell of roses is in the air, as when a saint is to be buried. Morelle smelled of tallow and stale piss when we dug him under. The memory is a sweet one, even now.
“No,” I say aloud, mustering my last breath. I’ll hold on to my body yet a while. Passing queer things are happening in this room, and I want to make mention of them in my memoirs.
Delamare sits propped against the head-board, his shooting arm buttressed by his knee. The Peacemaker rests prayer-book-like in his right palm. It’s pointed straight at Parson. Parson has gone rigid as a cat. There is no concern anymore for the body at the base of the wainscoting. The Redeemer, such as the Redeemer was, is gone.
“Confess,” Delamare says. The Peacemaker is steady as a rail.
“Fool half-caste nigger!” Parson answers through clenched teeth. But fear is writ large across his face. If he speaks through clenched teeth it’s on account of not wanting them shot out of his mouth.
“To bring Morelle down the ladder?” Delamare says. “Was that why?”
“There never was any damn-fool ladder!” Parson spits. He jerks his chin at me. “That was just a bit of Jewy pocus for Virgil Ball to suck on.”