Purchase

by Christopher K. Doyle

  Now I was hot, warmed up by the telling of my tale, and shook the jacket from my shoulders as I thought on those lost years. I turned to A.D., who now kept watch on the night and maybe imagined a small piece of my life for once, and saw me in a different way.

  Annie was beautiful, I said. My wife. She was of free stock but had moved south even though her own kind told her not to. But she had a head of ideas and her own notion of renewal and truth, and so it was I met her in Bristol on a hot summer’s day, at the open market. Her with her brown wicker basket full of potatoes and pigs feet wrapped in butchers’ paper; me standing stock-still and dumbfounded to see such a beauty as that with her white kerchief about her head and her face so brown and smooth. I couldn’t of guessed where she was headed, even though I just started following her anyways until I recognized the church that had been mine and my peoples since before emancipation. We were wed the next summer. After considerable courting, for sure, but I don’t want to go into all that, as it’s still mine, those memories, all of them.

  A.D. had been quiet till then and immobile, but he moved as I said this last part, which I hadn’t felt coming up in me until I spoke. I hadn’t realized I still needed something for myself, even though I’d never told anyone this before. But A.D. seemed to understand and shifted toward me slightly as a gust of air billowed in. Traces of sugar swirled up then in little white puffs coating everything anew, till the sweetness gleamed on our teeth and skin, and it was all delicious again for a moment—the world—and we sat together as the land rolled by, dangling our legs. Did he touch her? A.D. finally said, as outside a steel trestle towered up and the moonlight shined down, sending a woven pattern that thatched us like a weave until we passed over and there were just fields again, and water far out and endless.

  He did. I’d been called away for some reprimand but knew this was his pattern by then, speaking as I had to the other sharecroppers who’d all sworn vengeance on the humpbacked man. A form we’d sometimes see silhouetted at night, creeping through the fields, when we thought him the incarnation of the devil himself. Sneaking between the lives of man. Taking what was not his to take. Touching what was not his to touch.

  Just like old John Hill Carter, A.D. said and perked up considerable to hear the parallel I’d drawn between the two.

  Sure, just like your John Hill Carter, I echoed. For this Hackett stood much as the one that torments you, with a bluster and fulsomeness that all was his, ever last possession. When I realized what he’d done to conspire against me, and then seen them smiling faces of the men who knew, I hurried out of the barn as fast as I could and come up on that old humpback as he had Annie down on the kitchen floor. Her dress pulled up over her waist. With him trying to force his way inside her with his rank little pizzle athrob and gorged as it was, that it was easy to stomp down on it after I turned him over. Annie was fierce and clawed him considerable and didn’t cry out none. But instead took the occasion to stuff her kitchen rag in his mouth so that the others weren’t alerted to the pain I laid in on him then. And I swear, A.D., I swear to this day, I was other than myself in that moment. I don’t know from where that man came, nor where he went, but it was as a fog descending upon me. I seen him only in his littleness, as if looking upon an animal left discarded in the chaff. He peered up at me out of his red narrow eyes and pleaded forgiveness from his suffocated mouth. But I didn’t hear him and neither did Annie as she herself stepped down on his eye with her heel and blinded it as the blood spurted over his cheeks and I knew then it was over for him and reached down with my hands to squeeze the life from him entire.

  A.D. looked at me and breathed. He didn’t speak a full minute. She did that for you?

  She did. And I had to protect her for it too, and didn’t say a word as I hauled his body on a mule to Holston Mountain not too far off where I found a tree and hung him from it. From the very same one I’d seen the white devils hang so many of my kind all those years hence, and where I knew they’d find it, a hunter or some such picking through the berries. I didn’t have time to think on what I should a done, in hiding him proper. But I was fulsome then myself, too, I guess, fulsome and proud. Proud to have righted some wrong in the world, proud to have thwarted some evil, for I thought it a power in myself then to have done it. When really, it weren’t no power at all. It only ever made me have to run from then on and to shrink from my own life and to fail, son. For surely, I failed my Annie. I had to leave her that same night, and Lucy just a blackberry flower at that. Never to know my smell nor sound nor touch of hand no more. Never to know my touch. My Lucy. My girl.

  The train had stopped. The brakes had sung out. We could hear water lapping away as of an echo of something—our arrival or incidence—and the strung lines of the boats and sails creaked far off in the wind carrying sounds and voices, and also the last light of the lanterns still blazed as it was just past midnight on a Saturday and the quiet of the world seemed ours alone. As if shaking A.D. from his stupor, from the dumbstruck sense that had since scrawled its sign across his face, a sense of relief finally arrived. For we’d found our way to Bladen Street easy enough, and A.D. had to breathe then real soft and calm to find himself standing before Jessico’s door.

  VI

  A siren blaring ~ Disciples and prophets for the truth ~ Glass pipettes and such ~ Old Jessico Ayles ~ The unmasking of the spirit ~ In among the moneychangers ~ Mr. Mavis Mathey and his obvious bootlegging ~ You My Calvary ~ The boats far off in their offing

  WE KNEW IT WAS JESSICO’S DOOR because of the continuous singing we heard that was muffled and low. But the closer we leaned, the clearer we heard him, like a siren blaring out his gospel for all to hear from his high up window. A.D. rapped lightly on the door, and I thought I’d have to ask him to rap harder or try myself, but lo, old Jessico was in the doorway in a moment with a smile on his deep black face as wide and clear as a looking glass, and there was nothing we knew to say to begin with or entreat him for our appearance. We just stared, for there were very few teeth on display in that face and his great pink tongue lolled about as he spoke with a faint slur for us to enter. To come in. To speak. Why didn’t we speak? Didn’t we know he was almost with the lord already? That it was his time?

  Time? A.D. finally managed.

  Why, yessir, Jessico said. It ain’t but time that brings you here neither, I suppose. Because only He brings me those who know it’s time enough for me to go.

  To bring you who?

  Why, disciples, of course, Jessico said and shook his broad, teetering head. He was almost as tall as A.D. and to look on him was to look at A.D.’s shadow for sure, and I had to blink to send the notion away before accepting it entire. What else is there, man, Jessico said, but disciples? And his great deep voice rattled against the smudged up windows, before echoing into the basement. Disciples through and through, he said, thundering aloud again. Disciples stretched out across the whole Earth.

  A.D. shook his head then and looked down shuffling his boots before looking back at him. You mean disciples like as in prophets? he finally said.

  Well, sure, Jessico said, but in the true way. Prophets for the truth, that is, and he stood near his sink looking on A.D. and smiled. Then as if to prove something to the boy, or to prove his own righteousness, Jessico picked up a full whiskey bottle, cracked it on the sink, and poured it all out on the floor. Pouring its brown liquid out smiling all the while as if it was something he’d been planning on doing since before we arrived, since before maybe even kingdom come was ordained and ordered in its mysteriousness. Just to do it, I guess. To change himself.

  A.D. looked on Jessico and then me as if he’d never seen such a thing his whole life. I looked back blank-faced and still because I knew this was hardly the beginning for a man in a state such as Jessico, and Jessico had to laugh to see us so quelled.

  Shoot, he said, I’ve been pouring them out for days, boys. For days. He pointed to a pile on a pallet in a corner with innumerable bottles of all shapes and sizes, and
which A.D. had to shake his head on and whistle to calculate all the drunkenness he could a got into with all that. I ain’t sellin’ it no more and I ain’t makin’ it neither. So sayeth the lord.

  We could smell the beech wood smoke from the basement. The fire was dying but the scent remained and as Jessico saw us look he took us down to see the complexity of it all, with the pot and wash stills and cisterns and glass beakers and charred white oak casks. There were wooden mixing spoons and glass pipettes and mortars and pestles, with the peeled potatoes and corn and molasses and other fermenting crops that must have been slopped in there for months but which he stepped over now and shoveled into a corner. All the brown and clear bottles stood with labels too, with brand names I recognized, while others appeared beneath a canvas blanket that I hadn’t ever heard of before as he spread it all out bare in its unveiling. Some even had Old Jessico Ayles scrawled across the top, as I seen now a small printing press and pots of ink and a copper plate with moveable type that he must of surely poured over with his considerable talents counterfeiting ever last label he saw fit to emulate. The basement went on considerable and sacks of barley and yeast heaved up and the sweet smell of mash in the tuns and grist competed with the dying smoke and had A.D. and I, and most assuredly old Jessico himself, lightheaded and otherworldly as if galloping upon the fumes. (And I submit as well that old Jessico must have been long gone before this time, working and distilling and mixing his wares. So that I could see why he thought his time was up, as he had no earthly idea what time it was anymore, not with his own wits since drifted as a wind between the aroma and unmasking of the spirit.)

  You ain’t making what no more? A.D. said and smiled as he dipped his fingers into a bucket of malted barley. As he brought them up, he let the fine grains drift down so that another sweetened wave wafted up. Jessico had to grin to know his talents were so esteemed.

  I ain’t making myself false, he said. This—and he pointed at the whole get-up, at the casks and stills and crops and bottles, waving even to the upstairs that was outlandish and heaped with hordes of fabrics and materials that he’d procured with his ill-gotten gains—this, he said, is all false. All of it. It’s a delusion and an unbecoming, and the lord will come in upon the moneychangers again and again as He has throughout time to show them what is what. Because I’m the moneychangers now, I say. And ye are the moneychangers, too, he said. And even that one there is the moneychangers too, he said, pointing his long finger at me. And any man who has not come into the lord in his own weakness and time after sloughing off his delusion is a moneychanger for sure. A moneychanger just sifting through time again and again for them to use. For them to reap and abuse. For them to bend civilization between the dark and alighted souls in the sweetness of the air. To take and spend everyone as they see fit.

  He was quiet then, and so were we. It had taken considerable effort to enumerate his charge and yet I felt another round of it in him and almost out of my own lament for hearing him continue in this nonsensical way, I came to rest my hand on the polished stock of a long barrel rifle. It was beautiful and clean and leaned against the basement wall, and in touching it, I hoped it might refocus A.D. in his desires of enacting his vengeance on that John Hill Carter. Now I didn’t want to redirect him in this pursuit, I assure you. I was just worried that A.D., as pitiful and impressionable as he was, and with such sorrowful words emanating from that strange and forceful Jessico—with his wild green eyes and slick lurid wealth—that his fever might spread if left unchecked to my youthful charge. That it might flourish.

  So you know Montague? A.D. said as he’d seen my hand lay casual and obvious on the smooth birch stock, stroking it back and forth as I could, before touching the walnut handgrip. A.D. stepped over and before Jessico had time to respond, he touched it too. Is this here then going away too? A.D. said and nodded to the rifle, before raising the stock to his eye and blinking as he attempted to sight in on some imaginary John Hill Carter striding across the world. A John Hill tall and innumerable and who shook his great silver lighter at him and blinked his cold tobacco eyes for all the world to see what he’d done. Though I suppose A.D. in his rage couldn’t quite shake clear of this image for he aimed all weak and wobbly against the wall, and I wondered if he’d ever in his life held a gun or fired a single bullet?

  Of course, Jessico said, as he watched us look over all his earthy materials, at everything that had brought him to such heights. It goes too. It all does. Ever last thing has got to go back out into damnation before being consumed by the all and all. Truly, he said and then hummed something cheerful and shook his head smiling as if we strolled about a summer’s day, the three of us, wading knee high through the daisies. I’m giving it all away and have already handed some considerable tracts to Mr. Mavis Mathey, my good friend and confidante gone to Roanoke just this morning. Jessico smiled and tilted his head as if listening to some otherworldly choir or emanation from afar, something only he could hear. For his voice gave up a sudden and most dolorous call, the lyrics of which I’d not occasion to follow nor remember for the sweetened singing of it was such that I had to lean against the wall to compose myself.

  A.D. was even more taken aback by the harmonious sound emanating from the man. Jessico hadn’t as much turned and ascended the steps to his living room, that A.D. wasn’t already hard on his heels. What was it you just sang? A.D. blurted out. We were all three gathered again upstairs and I started to eye the material abundance upon display.

  I hadn’t noticed it before as Jessico’s demeanor and dramatic posturing had captured my attention. But now that his obvious bootlegging had been set aside, there was nothing to mistake for the stunning opulence surrounding us. There was a mahogany Queen Ann table near the door, and a few Wilton rugs stretched below everything. One with the design of some long lost kingdom or insignia upon it, the other with a most somber and oriental elaboration, as of a mountain pagoda etched in stitches. Several wrought iron lamps wavered their gloomy luminescence above everything and outlined a beautiful powder green sofa that rested against the back wall near the staircase. It was the perch Jessico himself lounged on as the smell of the poured liquor sopped and squished about the floor.

  What did I say? Jessico said and smiled beatifically before running his gnarled fingers across the silk cushion he rearranged at his hip. You mean concerning my articles of document? Because I’ve given Mavis everything: my last will and testament, my certificates and deeds of material, everything about the distillation of the spirit and my other apothecary pursuits. My entire song catalog and journal, alphabetized, of course, with all the recipes of my most favored concoctions written out—my whole legacy—as it were. A sinful list I did not want to see no more and that Mavis took and promised not to publish in part nor in its entirety until twenty-four years hence my demise.

  Your demise? I said and tilted my head. What the hell are you talking about? But A.D. waved away my impatience. He had crept across the room toward Jessico and I could tell by the red flush rising along his neck that his mind had succumbed to a brighter burning fever. His skin glistened with a blood color and glowed so that I stayed back and kept quiet in the shadows as he spoke.

  That song. A.D. said. What was the song you just sang? Just now. In the basement. Stepping closer, he hovered above Jessico, who looked up at him confused. I’d not seen such an intense concentration on the boy’s face since he’d perched on his cot in the boiler room working on his song for Ms. Clara May, and I was as stunned as Jessico to see the turn in the boy’s demeanor, in his temper. I had not seen his hands clench into fists even when old John Hill Carter had knelt below him in Ms. Clara May’s room and lit the rug beneath his boots. But as he stood there as resolute as a statue, and swung his knotted fists at his side, I didn’t know what he meant to do, but leaned in just the same to watch. Even as old Jessico, in his hallucinatory state, seemed to pause and appraise the boy before sliding out from his comfortable perch.

  Why? he finally said.

/>   Because I need it, A.D. said. I need it as sure as the sun, and he shook his fists and swayed there as Jessico made his way across the room, all the while watching the boy.

  Jessico was at the sink in a moment and pulled a full whiskey bottle from a crate as if to redirect his mind from the force of A.D.’s internal fire. He appraised the broad-labeled bottle, raised it to a lantern, and stared for a long moment at the brown liquor. It was a motion I imagined he must have often delighted in before his turn again to religion, admiring his own craftsmanship and yearning for the spirit. But now I could see him reconsider this decision beneath the considerable strain of A.D.’s gaze. He pulled the cork out with a soft plop and sniffed the vaporous aroma as he tilted the bottle to his nose and looked at A.D. with vacant eyes. A euphoria graced Jessico’s face then, as if he’d forgotten there were any other human beings left in the world to watch his behavior, for he seemed taken aback by the muscle memory of uncorking, of tipping up and imbibing. Yet he paused amidst his single pursuit—paused before drinking from his past wares and numerous faults.

  Boy, why you vex me like this? he said, and his hands shook as the liquor trembled at his lips. Who sent you?

  I don’t vex you at all, A.D. said. And no one sent me. A.D. hadn’t moved. Hadn’t blinked an eye as Jessico seemed to shrink now in the lamplight, sweating something profuse as the beads drew glistening lines like a spider’s web along his cheeks before dripping to the floor.