FSF, March 2008

by Spilogale Authors

  After a week of useless tramping about, I turned the mirror in my garret around, for desperation had conquered fear, and I was ready to receive counsel from whatever source. Alas, the shattered glass shewed only fragments of my own gaunt and yellowed image, which I thought grimly appropriate. Gazing at that shattered countenance, I brought to mind a verse or incantation that Royal and I used to chant in the graveyard at midnight: Come ye, take me, lead me on/ Shew me gold, and then begone! Very deliberately, I said it seven times, which was the magic number: but answer there was none.

  Yet that very afternoon, I saw—upon Levee Street, about half a square distant, amid waves of heat rising from the cobblestones—a thin, black-dressed figure loping with unmistakable gait through the trembling mirages. And as the strings of an harp will pick up and faintly repeat distant sounds, although no fingers have touched them, my heart-strings thrilled to a sense of hope and fear.

  I hastened after him; he turned the corner of Gallatin Street, as did I a moment later: he had vanished, but in his place an amazing sight met my eyes. A file of colored men wearing blue uniforms were practicing the manual of arms. Royal was drilling them, and his strong nature had already asserted itself, for he wore upon each sleeve three broad gold stripes in the shape of spear-heads pointing down.

  When the “Stand at ease” was given, I approached and spoke to him. He threw back his head, and laughed so loud that his men stared. We shook hands and spoke briefly of old times; he queried me about my missing arm, and briefly told me how he had enlisted in one of the new colored regiments. I admitted to needing food, whilst he revealed an ambition to sign the name he had chosen for himself—Royal Sargent—to the muster-roll, in place of an X. We struck a bargain: he promised to get me army rations, if in return I would make him literate.

  That same evening he came to the house on Goodchildren Street, but was not invited in. The cousins pointed out that teaching him to read and write was forbidden under the state's Code Noir; the fact that the black code was already dead they ignored, having no patience with mere reality. So Royal and I sat down on an iron bench in the patio, and for the first of many times bent our heads over a reading-book that some charitable society at the North had sent his regiment. When he went, he left behind army bacon and coffee and hardtack and cornmeal, which the cousins did not disdain to share that night at supper-time.

  When not working, he and I chatted about the past. I asked him how he felt after killing Monsieur Felix, and he answered solemnly, “I took my first breath when he took his last."

  Hesitantly I asked if he thought the Overseer's spirit might walk, as those who die by violence are said to do. Royal laughed his loud laugh and said, “So many have died in the war, he'd be lost in the crowd!"

  He inquired after Rose, and began to bring her small gifts, oranges and fruit pies and ices that he bought from the sutlers out of his pay of ten dollars a month. She received his gifts in the kitchen, the only room the cousins permitted him to enter. They stood by and glowered as she thanked him, saying how she rejoiced to see him a free man—at which they glowered more.

  In this manner we all lived for a time, but had barely grown accustomed to regular eating, when without warning Royal's unit was sent down-river to garrison the forts at the Head of Passes. Then in quick succession fell two more blows: Papa died from a lethal mixture of whiskey and despair; and our cousins, in an excess of Confederate feeling, refused to take the oath of allegiance as ordered by the commanding general. Straightway they were branded Enemies of the United States and expelled from the city; soldiers seized their house as rebel property, and sold it at auction with all its contents.

  Rose and I swore allegiance to the old flag, but it did us no good; we were driven into the street anyway, and a most difficult time began.

  * * * *

  Ah, how fortunate are those who have never learned the awful truth taught by hunger: that a man will do anything, to live one single day more!

  I tried hauling rubbish, but ‘twas a two-handed job; I did poorly at it, and was laid off. I was for a time doorman of a brothel frequented by Union officers. One of them, a Major Wharton, was sufficiently moved by the plight of a Yale man to recommend me to a sutler, who sold food openly and bad whiskey secretly to the troops. I began keeping his account books, whilst Rose plied a needle twelve hours a day, repairing blue uniforms in a sweat-shop run by the Quartermaster.

  Yet for all our efforts, we existed rather than lived in three poor rooms near the levee, beset with bugs of many species, but all equally blood-thirsty. I sought everywhere for my private Spectre, but found him not; at times my bizarre longing to behold again such an one as he made me wonder whether madness might soon compound my other troubles. And then, one night in January, 1863—I remember the rapid, mushy impacts of sleet against the shutters—I heard a shot in the street outside, and feet scampering away.

  I tumbled out of bed, lit a stump of candle and hastened to the room's one window. A fat civilian in flash attire (probably a gambler) lay on the paving-stones amongst glistening pebbles of ice. Superimposed upon this image, I saw my own reflection in the dirty window-pane, and something else besides—a tall, thin, black-dressed man standing just behind me.

  I whirled around, almost dropping the candle, and of course no one was there. But as I stood trembling, suddenly my confusion vanished and I knew what I must do. I blew out the candle, ran outside in my nightshirt, bent over the dying man and began rifling his pockets. My fingers slipped into something that felt like warm wet liver—'twas his wound—then closed upon his fat leather purse. Back inside, I hid the money (good greenbacks, near an hundred dollars!) in a knot-hole in the floor, and moved my bedstead to cover the hiding place.

  I washed my bloody hand and went back to bed. Sounds came and went outside—a mounted patrol clip-clopping past halted, there was talk, and later a wagon clattered up to remove the body. Meantime I lay in bed, scratching my bug-bites, and resolved that henceforth I should take what I needed from the world by force. And though I had been law-abiding all my life, I knew exactly how to go about it.

  Next day I used twenty dollars of the gambler's money to acquire an army Colt revolver (the famous model 1860) in the thieves’ market that flourished in the alleyways near the Hospital Street wharf. I taught myself to load the weapon one-handed, clamping the grip under my stump, and using my right hand to tamp in powder and balls and affix copper caps to the nibs. That same night I ventured into the narrow fog-bound streets to try my luck. Guided by the glow of wide-spaced lanterns, listening always for the tramp of the provost marshal's guard and the clatter and jingle of the mounted patrols, I robbed two drunks. Though neither yielded as rich a haul as the gambler, I garnered enough to hand Rose money that would see us through a few more days.

  "Where did this come from, Nick?” she asked, and I answered, “I prayed to Saint Dismas,” meaning the patron saint of thieves.

  Night after night I worked to perfect my technique. My method was to come up behind my victims and strike them down, using the heavy pistol as a club; then clamp it under my stump and search their pockets. ‘Twas not an easy life, for others of my own kind were in the streets; we snarled at each other like dogs eyeing the same scrap, and twice I had to drive off my fellow jackals with bullets.

  Yet these scavengers also became my new acquaintances. I met them in the cheap brothels I began to patronize, and the wretched saloons called doggeries, where I warmed my belly against the night air with dime shots of bad whiskey. From the garish crowd of whores, pimps and rogues who shared my perils and my pleasures, I learned that I was a knuck or a sandbagger when I struck my victims down; that when I searched their pockets I was overhauling them; that my pistol was a barking iron; that when I tracked my prey in silence I was padding my hooves. Yale had taught me none of these things.

  There was also a Creole argot, of which I understood a few words: the women called me bras-coupé, after a famous one-armed bandit of an hundred years before, or bê
te-marron, meaning a tame beast gone wild. I was struck by that term, because it reminded me that the Overseer's half-forgotten surname had also been Marron—as if we had been brothers.

  And brothers we might have been, brothers in crime. I saw his shadow often in the streets, slipping past a lantern, or sliding along a wall half lit by a red-shaded coal-oil lamp in the window of a bagnio. I recognized him easily by his strange walk; I envied him his silence of movement, and soon learned to take him as my guide. He was clever at finding the staggering sots who remained my favorite prey, and the shadow of his long arm pointed them out to me. He also led me out of danger. One night, when the cavalry were so close behind me that I saw the sparks their horseshoes struck from the cobblestones, I spotted that angular dark form vanishing into an alleyway, followed it and found safety there.

  Later—in that deceptive hour just before dawn, when the eyes cannot tell a cloud from a mountain—I saw him again, dimly through a bank of silver mist. With the mad aim of thanking him for my salvation, I shouted, “Monsieur Felix!” and sprang after him. The shadow turned, and like a razor seen edge-on, instantly disappeared. And later that day I started up in bed, awakened by my own screaming.

  * * * *

  Those who never have been haunted can scarcely believe the power of a Phantasm. Soon even the full blaze of noon could not drive him off. Upon a crowded street my eye would fall upon my shadow against a wall, yet ‘twas not my shadow but his; and if the shadow raised its arm, I would find my own rising too, as if he mocked me, saying by a gesture: You see which of us is real, after all!

  In my dreams he appeared in many forms: as himself, stalking about in his old black suit, the whip over his arm; as the host of a costume ball, where at midnight the dancers all dropped their masks, revealing the faces of wolves, foxes and rats; as an idol carven of wood, to which dim crowds were bowing, myself among them. Awaking sweat-soaked from such visions, I began to comprehend that the Overseer was no mere ghost—no mere echo or reflected image of one who had lived. By giving himself up wholly to the insatiable passion of revenge, Monsieur Felix had become something stranger than that, more powerful and more utterly lost. And it was to this demonic power that I bowed down, for I needed to draw upon it to save myself.

  One night in such a dream the idol's stiff jaw moved, and the well-known voice whispered, Tu, mon p'tit, serais le roi du coton! At which, upon waking, I could not but laugh. For how should a one-armed knuck become King of Cotton? And yet that very day upon the street a Yankee officer with eagles on his shoulder-straps and a great clanking saber banging at his knees, called out to me, “Old Eli!"

  'Twas my benefactor Wharton, now promoted to colonel. He asked if, as a onetime planter, I knew quality in cotton, and when I said yes, he intimated that a friend of his wanted to deal in Confederate cotton smuggled across the lines.

  So I acquired a new profession, more rewarding than the old, though not less dangerous. Using my knowledge and my weapon and the wood-craft I had learned as a boy, I guided the dealer—a gross creature named Klegg, with especially foul breath—into the rebel-held regions beyond Lake Pontchartrain. There he bought cotton very cheap, intending (as he told me) to transport it to the city, ship it out and sell it very dear at the North, where the factories were starving for the stuff.

  My spectral ally guided us well. Twice I saw him standing stiff as a scare-crow in an overgrown field, pointing a long finger in the direction we must take. Returning from our jaunt, I was poling our heavily laden bateau along the sedgy margins of Lake Maurepas, when I saw him again, this time a deeper shadow in the blue dusk, pointing directly at Klegg, who was seated in the bow with his fat back turned to me. Taking the hint, I silently laid down the pole, drew the Colt from the waist-band of my trowsers, and shot the dealer between the shoulder-blades.

  This was my first murder, and as the reeking powder-smoke dispersed I was all a-tremble, gazing at the deep round oozing hole in the man's spine, scarce able to believe what I had done. But then I felt a great surge of power, as if now I could do anything. With some effort, I heaved the carcass into a slough, watched a drowsy alligator wake long enough to play sexton, and then, taking up the pole again, went my silent way.

  After selling the cotton, I sought out Colonel Wharton, reported the dealer killed by bandits, and bribed him to select me as manager of a west-bank plantation the government had seized from its rebel owner. With free Negroes as workers and government mules to pull the plows, I was soon making cotton for thirty cents a pound and selling it in New York for a dollar-twenty—all without incurring any danger whatsoever!

  Thus I attained the dignity of a war-profiteer, and the golden sun of prosperity began to shine upon me and mine. I freed Rose from her wage-slavery; I freed myself forever from the life of a scavenger. I cut Colonel Wharton a share of my profits, and was rewarded when he brought me—now that I had money to invest—into many a profitable venture. I invited him to the plantation, and visited his home; I came to know his dull wren of a wife, with her deplorable hats and her nasal midwestern twang. For the first time I laid eyes upon his daughter Elmira—then little more than an auburn-haired girl, but already giving promise of voluptuous beauty to come.

  At first my mutilation frightened her—she thought me some sort of monster, in which she was more than half right—but in time my ready wit, and the small presents I brought her, made me a great favorite, the more so as she came to pity me. I smiled at her and listened to her chatter, and told her closely cropped versions of my sufferings, for which she pitied me the more.

  Elmira, of course, was a project for the future; ‘twas pleasant to think that again I had a future. By the winter of 1864 I was back in town for good, and living in fair comfort with Rose in a pleasant cottage in the Third District. And the following spring, peace returned at last.

  * * * *

  It had been a fine and busy day—wearying, but the kind of weariness that felt good. A whole new chapter completed, the household running like clockwork, everything normal again, just as it ought to be.

  When evening shadows gathered, the old man lay at rest, lapped in clean linen, inhaling the smells of rubbing alcohol, bourbon, and the sour saplike odor of raw opium that lingered in the air. Before sleep took him, he again invited Morse to sit on the foot of the bed, and for a few minutes the two men spoke frankly—or at any rate, one of them did.

  "I have no one to be my child save only you, Morse,” Lerner told him, feeling a curious finicky unwillingness to call himself Morse's father in so many words.

  Morse missed the distinction. “Yes. But because of my skin, you use me as a servant, not a son."

  "When I die,” said Lerner, “you will learn how much I view you as a son."

  Morse gazed at him searchingly, as if to read his true thoughts. “Do you encourage me to have hopes, Father?” asked he, almost in a whisper.

  "No,” said Lerner. “I encourage you to have expectations."

  Morse turned away, and a dry sob seemed to rack his chest. “I am sorry, Father, for the trouble I give you,” he said humbly, then turned off the lights and left, closing the door to the den noiselessly behind him.

  In the dark, Lerner lay back smiling, and played for a time with the thought of actually leaving Morse some substantial sum. How that would outrage the respectable white society of New Orleans! How it would kill them to see a Negro made richer than they could ever hope to be!

  But was that really necessary? Lerner's will, after providing somewhat meagerly for his servants—Morse was down for a hundred dollars and his second-best suit—left most of his millions to found a library. A strange bequest for a man who'd seldom read a book since leaving Yale, but the point (as with the vaster gift made for the same purpose by Andrew Carnegie) was the fact that his name would be chiseled over the building's door.

  Anyway, merely by giving Morse hope, which cost nothing, he'd safeguarded his own comfort. Truly, he thought, in walking with a demon one learns many things, including
the fact that faith, hope, and love—those supposed virtues—may become chains with which to bind a spirit.

  Still smiling, he fell asleep, and all the dark hours his next chapter wrote itself, ready to be transcribed in the morning by his hand.

  * * * *

  CHAPTER THE FOURTH

  Wherein I Triumph During the Reconstruction

  One April evening, as I sat in the little courtyard behind our house, sipping a glass of tolerable whiskey and watching sunset streamers unfurl across the sky, the gate hinges creaked and a well-attired colored man entered and extended his hand. So quietly did Royal reenter my life.

  Smiling at the stranger who once had been my playmate in Eden, I invited him to sit down and called Rose to bring a clean glass. When she saw Royal, she fairly ran from the kitchen, blushing and smiling in her pleasure. Then she recovered her customary demure ways, and asked him how he did. He said well, and she placed her small hand for an instant in his large one, before returning with a light step to making supper. I poured Royal a whiskey, he offered me a segar, and for a time we sipped and smoked, whilst covertly observing each other to see what changes the years had made.

  "Nick, I hear you've become a Union man,” he said at length, his voice strong and firm with the habit of command.

  "Yes,” I replied dryly. “'Twas conversion by the sword."

  He laughed. “You were smart to make the change. Now me—I've been discharged from the army, and mean to enter politics as soon as my people get the vote. They'll need leadership, and I can supply that."

  I said quietly, “Watch your back."

  He leaned forward and peered at my face. “Nick, I hope you ain't like the Bourbons, who learned nothing and forgot nothing."

  "You've been reading history, I see."

  "Yes. And mean to make some."

  "Royal,” said I, “this city is full of people who have learned nothing and forgotten nothing. And most of them know how to shoot."