FSF, March 2008

by Spilogale Authors

  But the old man was persistent, and knew how to offer Hennessy a bribe without actually using the word. So he learned that what the captain called “your pet nigger” was the talk of Storyville, where—it now appeared—he'd been a familiar figure for years, known for dispensing money (whose money?) with a free hand, and for his rough way with the women in the cribs and colored brothels. A piano player called Professor Jelly Roll had already produced a “jass” composition in his honor, called Mr. Morse's Blues.

  Lerner knew nothing of so-called jass music, except that it was said to be noisy. But as the story unfolded, he began to feel that Morse from his very conception had been headed for this reckoning. Apparently he began his evening with a few pipes of opium at some den near the docks that he'd discovered while procuring the drug for Lerner. Heading home, he entered a street-car while still befuddled and, finding it crowded, sat down on a bench meant for whites. The conductor and motorman ordered him to vacate it and stand behind a yellow sign that courteously stated This Section Is Reserved for Our Colored Patrons Only. Morse refused, and courtesy perished as the two men hustled him off the car and flung him into a mud puddle.

  Considerably disheveled, Morse repaired to a saloon that served Negroes whiskey through a back window. He swallowed a few quick shots of courage and proceeded to a bawdy-house to seek further comfort. His choice of establishment was either deliberate arrogance or a grave mistake. The Madame, a fearsome mulattress who called herself Countess Willie V. Piazza, had built a fine business by providing handsome colored women to a clientele of white men only. She took one look at Morse—mahogany-hued, smelling of drink and much the worse for wear—and refused him admittance. When he forced his way inside anyway, she summoned the police, and Morse topped off a busy night by assaulting not one but two brawny Irishmen.

  With Hennessy's assistance, Lerner's lawyer found Morse in a cell of Parish Prison, where the police had been amusing themselves by playing drum-rolls on his ribs with their billyclubs. Bribes were necessary merely to preserve his life; when he was dragged before a magistrate, the lawyer had to guarantee his bail. Prison remained a distinct possibility, only (the lawyer warned) to be averted by still more bribes. When Morse at length was returned home by cab, Lerner not only had to pay the hackman, he had to hire a doctor to tend Morse at two dollars a visit. By evening of a day of upheaval, Morse was lying in his room upstairs, the doctor had cleaned his wounds and strapped his ribs, and Lerner was in a greater rage than was safe for an elderly man.

  Damn him! he thought. Were he not a kinsman, I would let him sink or swim! Doesn't he know what can happen to a man of color in the grip of our police?

  Well, of course he knew. It was just that Morse, Lerner's pet from his birth, protected by the walls of this house, hadn't thought it could happen to him.

  Next morning—sleepless, ill-shaven, nerves ragged for lack of his drug, back pains lancing him like sparks of pure white fire—the old man returned ashen-tongued and red-eyed to his task, under a compulsion made somehow worse by the events of yesterday.

  * * * *

  CHAPTER THE FIFTH

  Wherein the Demon Proves the Real Winner

  As a burning sun rose over the Father of Waters, I boarded a steam packet on the levee at Felicity Street. I had already visited a telegraph-office, and sent two local wires, one to Royal and one to Brigadier Hobbs.

  Whilst the shore fell away, I stood gazing upon the broad churning wake of the stern-wheel, and the wide, ever-busy river beyond. I watched the crowded riverboats; the sleek steamers from overseas trailing plumes of ash from their smoke-stacks; the sailboats with little patched sails, and the scows with men hauling at the sweeps; the green banks and the low, irregular levees; a party of church-goers clad in white gowns, being baptized in the shallows; and the floating and diving gulls that screamed in harsh voices.

  Amidst all this busy life, I felt a strange loneliness, as if for all my wealth and influence I was but a gypsy and a wanderer upon the earth. My earlier homicides had been easy enough, for I had slain men who meant nothing to me. Perhaps I was not yet entirely what my master had designed me to be, for the thought that I must now play the role of Cain lay upon my heart like a stone. Somehow, through many years of dark deeds I had preserved the memory of my time of innocence, in which Royal played so large a part. Even if the tale told in the Bible be true,which I doubt, a vengeful God merely cast Adam out of Eden: he did not demand that he go back and befoul the very fountains of his former Paradise with blood.

  Hoping to shake off my melancholy, I started to take a brisk turn about the deck, but stopped when I saw a well-known figure sitting at the bow, still as a carven figurehead. So the Overseer was coming along to see his revenge accomplished. I was not surprised—after all, the patient devil had waited nine years for it.

  At Red River Landing, a tolerable inn survived, and I engaged a room. The town was muddy and straggling as in times gone by, but it boasted two or three steamboats tied up and unloading, with black laborers not unlike the slaves of yesteryear—indeed, they were the slaves of yesteryear—chanting work songs as they trotted up and down the gangplanks, with heavy loads miraculously balanced on their heads.

  In my room, I laid my pistol upon the usual marble-top table, beside the usual chipped wash basin and flowered pitcher. Then I lay down to rest upon an ill-smelling featherbed, drawing a dusty musketo-net about me. My thoughts were sombre, but I did not have long to indulge them. Came a knock on the door, and the innkeeper—a huge man with smaller eyes in a larger face than I ever saw before—handed me two telegrams, and stood waiting whilst I read. I put the telegrams under my stump and began to fish in my waistcoat pocket for a coin.

  "I'm not wanting a tip,” he said in a low drawling grumble of a voice. “General Hobbs has contacted me. Where'd you lose the wing?"

  "Shiloh. Better come into the room.” He nodded and followed me.

  "I was there too,” he said. “I saw General Johnston killed. The minny-ball broke an artery in his leg; he turned white as cotton and bled to death in half a minute. Is this a matter of honor, or politics?"

  "Both. You'll find that I know how to be grateful."

  "I'm sure.” Despite omitting the r, he made two syllables out of sure. “You want the nigger to go slow, or fast?"

  "Fast."

  "Night or day?"

  "He's no fool. He won't go out at night. And you don't want him killed here."

  "So it's daytime, then, which means masks and an ambush."

  In whispers we completed our arrangements. After engaging his horse and buggy for the morrow, I explained that I had grown up nearby.

  "I'm from Arkansaw, myself,” he said. “You owned the nigger in the old days?"

  "Yes."

  "Ah,” said he, sadly shaking his massive head. “They was happier then.” He left the room with a surprisingly silent tread, for so big a man.

  Everything was in readiness. I dined without appetite, slept poorly, but was waiting at the dock with the landlord's buggy when Royal strode ashore from the morning packet. As if impersonating himself, he was all strut and boldness, jaunty and dressed in flash attire—a claw-hammer coat and top hat—at which blacks and whites alike turned and stared. I hailed him, and he leaped into the buggy, which swayed under his weight, and gripped my hand.

  "Nick,” he exclaimed, “Never did I think we would meet here again, and for such a reason!"

  I said, “Since you're a bird with two wings, perhaps you'll drive?"

  He took the reins and snapped them with the casual ease of a country-bred man. The horse shook its mane and the buggy rolled with a jingle of little bells along the old familiar road that led to the ruins of Mon Repos. The day was fine, the ground dry and the spring weather cool and bright, with fair-weather clouds above, and great shadows flitting soundlessly over woods and meadows.

  As we drove, I plunged into recollection, chattering nervously in a manner most unusual for me. Royal (a great talker) responded in ki
nd, and soon we were pointing and exclaiming as if we were boys again. My school had been reduced to a few scattered bricks, and ‘midst the ruins of the church I saw—fallen and rusting—the iron bell that once had tolled for the death of a world. We turned into a dim track, where tall grass brushed the underside of the carriage with the sound of rubbed velvet. Near the stark chimney that alone had survived the fall of Mon Repos, Royal tugged at the reins and we halted.

  For a minute or so we sat silent. Then he said, “I was amazed at your telegram, Nick."

  "I designed it to be amazing."

  "Frankly, Rose and I were prepared to defy you, if need be. But how fine it is that you consent to our marriage—and that you intend this land to be Rose's marriage portion!"

  "I could imagine nothing that would please either of you more than to own Mon Repos,” I replied. “It's the logical dowry."

  I watched covertly as Royal's natural wariness dissolved in the grip of irresistible emotion. “To own the land where I was once a slave!” he exclaimed, his voice choking midway in the sentence.

  He gazed like one transfixed down the long alley of noble oaks, where gray streamers of moss floated on the breeze with the silent grace of shadows. I began to talk about the taxes, the difficulty of getting tenants to work the fields, and the need for a new survey, since most of the old landmarks had disappeared.

  "Those were to have been my problems,” I said. “Now I fear they will be yours. And you must be on your guard, my friend. The Klan's active hereabouts—you're safe enough in daytime, but a prominent colored man with a white wife should beware the night."

  He grinned and raised the tail of his fawn-colored coat to shew a handsome silver-mounted pistol in a holster of tooled leather hanging from a wide cartridge-belt.

  "I am prepared for anything,” he said.

  I shook my head at his fatal arrogance. How can a man be prepared for anything?

  "Ah, look,” I said, pointing, “do you remember that path? It led to our swimming-hole, did it not?"

  He turned and craned, and as he did so a figure in robe and hood stepped from behind the chimney and raised a rifle. A shot exploded, and the round buzzed past me.

  Frightened, the horse reared and whinnied. The buggy tilted; I grabbed at the reins and struggled one-handed to get the animal under control. Meantime, like a good soldier Royal leaped to the ground and rolled and fired.

  His shot killed the idiot in spook attire, and the Klansman's hand, contracting in death, squeezed off a round that struck the horse in the brain. The animal crashed in the traces, the buggy overturned, and I was flung out and landed with a thump.

  Well, the whole thing was a hopeless mess. I scrambled past a wildly spinning wheel, jumped to my feet, and found that I was alone amid the ruins of Mon Repos.

  The assassin lay like a heap of soiled bedclothes on the ground. Royal had vanished into a nearby stand of trees, and I heard shouts and shots and the crashing of men plunging through the dense second-growth of pine and sweetgum saplings.

  A shotgun boomed. Silence for six or seven heartbeats, then two revolver shots, Blam! Blam!

  Desperate to learn what was happening, I drew my pistol and followed the sounds into the trees. The wind seemed to hold its breath; invisible birds were screaming, but the noise of the fire-fight had slain all movement save mine.

  I paused and stood listening. The shotgun boomed again close by, followed by a revolver shot and a strangled outcry. I hastened through the blinding tangle, panting, inhaling the reek of sulphur mingled with the wine-cork smell of spring growth.

  In a little glen I found a figure weltering in the grass—another hooded man, a big one. I lifted the hood and saw the landlord's broad face and tiny eyes. He had been shot through the throat, and his sharp little eyes turned to dull pebbles as I watched.

  A new fury of shots broke out. A deathly pale young man broke from the thicket and ran past me, his breath rattling like a consumptive's. He ran like a hare, this way and that, either to make aiming difficult or simply in the madness of fear. Then he was gone, and I was alone with Royal.

  I whispered bitterly, “You might have spared me this."

  I had not forgotten all woodcraft, and slipped without a sound past slender pale trunks and rough pine branches, over thorny mats of wild grape and thick dying undergrowth. In the treetops strong sunlight vibrated, but down in the tangle evening colors—blue and bronze—enveloped me. Then I stumbled on a heap of dry wood, something cracked under my feet, and behind me Royal's voice said, “Hello, Nick."

  I turned and faced him. He leveled his revolver and said, “Your weapon."

  A smile of relief began to cross my lips, and he said more sharply, “Come, come—your weapon! And let me tell you, brother, you have but little to smile about."

  In that he was wrong, for I was watching Monsieur Felix emerge from the ruins of his house. Then that unforgettable voice ground out, Aha, tu p'tit diable!

  Royal turned his head, and looked into the one glinting eye and the one oozing pit. That was when I shot him down, and shot him again where he lay.

  For a long moment the Overseer and I stood gazing at each other over the body. He smiled, that thin smile I remembered so well, like an arroyo between his blade of a nose and blue hillock of a chin. I hated him then, yet not half so much as I hated myself, for having sold my destiny forever to such an one as he.

  Then, like a shadow struck by light, he vanished without a sound.

  * * * *

  Strange, very strange, he thought, rereading what he'd written. After all, his tale was a confession. But who was he confessing to? God had long ago departed from his universe, and Royal and Rose already knew his guilt, assuming they knew anything at all.

  The slow approach of shuffling footsteps in the hall interrupted his brooding. Hastily he locked up his manuscript and assumed the demeanor of a hanging judge. The door opened, and Cleo and Euphrosyne together helped Morse limp in to face the music.

  His face was swollen, one eye was a purple plum, and he winced at every movement from the pain of his ribs, though the doctor had told Lerner that the bones were only cracked, not broken.

  The old man greeted him with silence, then waved the women away. For several long minutes Morse stood before him, his one good eye fixed in contemplation of his toes. Finally Lerner spoke in what he hoped were the tones of Fate.

  "I suppose you know that you might have been beaten to death."

  Morse nodded.

  "I can't prevent you from embarking on such adventures again. But I can withdraw my protection. Once more, and you're on your own. Then you'll either die at the hands of the police or else go to prison where, I promise you, you'll learn many things, but nothing to make you grateful to your teachers."

  Morse nodded again. He already knew that he would be forgiven one more time. How else to explain the fact that he was here, rather than lying on the oozing brick floor of the prison, watching enormous cockroaches feast on spatters of his own blood? He also knew without being told that he'd reached the end of his rope, that he'd have no more chances, and that his hopes of inheriting a portion of the old man's wealth were probably over.

  What he couldn't know were the thoughts passing through Lerner's mind. The old man was looking at Morse but, still full of the story he'd been writing, thinking not of him but of himself and Royal.

  Well, we all come to it in time—we are broken down to ground-level, and must construct ourselves anew. If we survive, we become stronger: with few exceptions we do not become better. For most of us, when all else has failed, turn to the demon.

  He drew a deep breath, said, “Sit down,” and watched Morse relapse, wincing, into the same chair—now battered and dusty—where Rose had sat so long ago.

  Opening the safe, Lerner took out a fist-sized parcel of rice paper. He unwrapped it, revealing a sticky dark mass of opium. The doctor had obtained it for him at a handsome markup; he used the drug in his practice, and made sure that it was legally
bought.

  From the tantalus, Lerner lifted a crystal flask of bourbon and two shot glasses. By now Morse had raised his one good eye and was watching as if mesmerized. Lerner prepared two shots of laudanum and offered one to Morse.

  After they had both swallowed their medicine, and the mixture was spreading a slow fiery comfort through their veins, Lerner delivered his verdict: “Hereafter, Morse, you will use the drug with me in these rooms, and nowhere else."

  "Yes,” he mumbled. “Yes, Father."

  "I take that as your word of honor,” said the old man, noting wryly how odd the word honor tasted on his tongue. “If you break it, I will have no mercy on you. Now help me to bed. Tomorrow you'll do only what is most necessary, and otherwise rest."

  The bedtime ritual that night was even slower than usual, with Morse wincing—sometimes gasping—with pain, and pausing again and again to recover. Lerner had plenty of time to think, and what he thought about was how, in one way or another, he'd lost everyone who had ever been close to him: Elmira, his and Elmira's children, Papa, Rose, and Royal.

  All of them gone. Soon he would be gone too. But it was still within his power to save something from the wreckage, through a man of his blood who would live on after him. He is, after all, the last of our family and, even if adopted, the only son I shall ever have. But if he continues the way he's going, he will die too, and nobody will be left at all.

  Old people have to decide things quickly, having no time for the long thoughts of youth. He resolved to act tomorrow—summon his lawyer and settle everything while Morse lay resting upstairs in bed. Lerner's old habits of deep suspicion didn't quite leave him, for he also thought: Better not tell the boy. I know what I might do, if one old man stood between me and a great inheritance.

  He smiled craftily, thinking what a surprise ending he could now give his confession. Then leave it to be read once he was safely gone. Confession might be good for the soul, but if incautiously made public might be death to the body. After all, he reflected, his veins and Morse's held much the same blood.