“Why chaos, sir?”
“Her growth is uncontrolled, Mister Canby.”
“Then how, sir, would you control it?”
Billingsley’s eyes seemed to be seeking the horizon’s limit as they walked across the field. He stopped and looked at Canby, his eyes lit with a kind of quicksilver appraisal.
“The old system held everything in its proper place.”
“Checks and measures.”
“Correct.”
Canby walked several paces before he spoke again. “Such as Thomas Malthus postulated?” he asked, careful to keep the tone of his voice conversational. “Do you know his essay on population? My father had me read it when I asked about the Irish famine.”
As they walked, Canby stepped over one of the mounded rows away from Billingsley. With every other forward step, he crossed another furrow, drawing out the distance. He stepped up his pace toward the dogs’ tails bobbing ahead of him, as they worked the field out front.
“I have read Malthus,” Billingsley said.
After a moment he heard the sound of Billingsley’s boots resume walking, rasping in the cut stalks. Then they stopped.
“Bird,” Billingsley cried. Canby raised his shotgun, though the dogs were still trotting ahead of them. His eyes darted for a gray silhouette against the sky. It was empty.
“I suppose I regret this,” Billingsley said.
Canby began to sprint, to put more distance between himself and the shotgun’s barrels, but he heard the shotgun boom and felt the ripping of birdshot across his back, a rash of puckering burns, each of them a hot pinprick of pain. The second blast knocked him down on his face. Then he heard the sound of Billingsley’s boots coming toward him.
Canby tried to turn onto his back, but the searing pain, against the jagged rubbing of the stalks, stopped him. He lay on his side, trying to get his shotgun out from beneath him as Billingsley advanced, reaching into his vest for more shells. And then, like a shadow, the dog man was coming up behind Billingsley with the snake stick in his hand. He raised it and brought it down on Billingsley’s head so swiftly it was a blur in Canby’s vision.
Then Canby’s sight was fading as he felt the blood leaking out of him from what felt like hundreds of holes in his back. There was only the hearing, then, for what seemed to be minutes, of the sound of the stick falling as methodically as a scythe in wheat, a machete chopping sugarcane.
With a heave, Canby turned himself over, his back on fire and singed by the dry stalks that scraped his wounds. He opened his eyes.
The dog man stood with the stick hanging by his side. Its knotty end was clotted and dripping with blood. Billingsley lay at his feet, his head a pulp of tissue through which Canby could see patches of skull. At intervals his legs moved, writhing like a snake that has been struck.
The dog man picked up Billingsley’s shotgun, broke the action open. He pulled a fresh shell from his pants pocket and fitted it into the top barrel, snapped the action shut again.
“Tell me, Mister Canby,” the dog man said, “you take that bribe from Mamie O’Donnell?”
“No.”
The black man nodded. “Didn’t think so. You a good man, Mister Canby. You gone heal up all right. Yes, you’ll be all right.”
Canby seemed to have to fight his way through the pain to speak again. “I know you. You’re Tunis Campbell, aren’t you? How many years gone now?”
“Three years on the chain gang and two down here on the Billingsley place. Yessir, Tunis Campbell, that’s me. And Fortus is my boy,” he said. He fitted the double barrels into his mouth.
“God!” Canby shouted, trying again to rise. “Don’t!”
Campbell pulled the barrels out of his mouth far enough to speak again. “Ain’t no use, sir. I’m dead and gone and long ago bound to hell.”
He put the barrels back into his mouth and, reaching down with his right hand, worked the trigger with his thumb. Canby thought he saw the damage before he heard the shotgun’s blast, watching the red mist flying upward into the perfect cobalt of the autumn sky before the finality of the gun’s report confirmed it. He lay back against the rustling stalks then and watched the sky diffract to a blue pinprick. He felt the darkness coming to take him and allowed himself to go.
November 3
HIS EXISTENCE WAVERED BETWEEN SHEETS OF flame and leaden weight. His face still pressed earthward, gravity upon him like a burden nearly too great to bear, but at some point the dry earth of the Billingsley plantation had been replaced with a cotton sheet, smooth and cool against his cheek. His back, however, glowed like a bright plain of burning pain. At times when it flared brightest he went away, into the darkness again. He dreamed that he lay in a gulch and that his back writhed and undulated with the glistening black of the feathers of vultures that had roosted on it. He felt their scarlet beaks, dripping with offal, pecking at his flesh. They fought over the choicest perch upon him and he woke screaming to bursts of white light, hospital smells, the sweet wisp of ether that took him away again.
And, once, he dreamed of Robert Billingsley. Standing over the buzzards with his arms raised as though to conduct their feasting. Grown taller, thinner, clad in a suit of sheening black himself, lips moving, forming words Canby could not understand, whether chanting or cheering the buzzards, the dreamer could not determine. Only the last word came clear above the singsong chant and the rustling of the buzzards’ shuffling wings: Canby.
“Easy there, boy. Thomas, you’re safe.”
Canby felt the dream withdraw from him like a foul tide receding. The hospital smells returned. “Vernon?” he said.
“Yes. Open your eyes, for Christ’s sake. I’m here.”
Through a cracked eyelid, he saw that Vernon sat on a chair beside the bed, his hat set on his lap. Vernon smiled.
“Goddamn. Will I ever get out of Atlanta?”
“Glad to see you’ve still got some of the old salt left in you. I don’t know if you’ll ever get out of Atlanta, but I’m surely glad you made it out of Mableton.”
“It was him.”
Vernon nodded.
“The whole time. Right in front of us.”
Vernon nodded again and pulled a cigar from his vest. He kept nodding as he lit it and puffed the ember to life. “I’d not have believed it,” he said.
Canby rested his face against the cool sheet. “How bad is my back?”
“You’ll need another little while to heal up. We’re all just glad you didn’t bleed out. You know, it was Underwood found you. He’s a sight better policeman than I’d have predicted. He took himself off to Vinings and then to Mableton after he’d talked with Julia. It was him who put you facedown in a wagon bed and damned near ran the horses to death to get you here.”
“Last thing I remember is the sky.”
“Yesterday I sat here and watched Doctor Johnston pick all those pieces of shot out of you. Pick with the tweezers; plink into the pan, over a hundred times. That’s one patient man. He weighed the shot, after. Right at two ounces of lead. I’m proud of you.”
Canby flexed his shoulder muscles tentatively. They worked. The burn was still there, bright on the surface, then fading to a dull ache beneath the skin.
“I’d advise you to keep your shirt on next time you go courting Miss Julia, but she’s already seen it. Came down from Vinings. She’s lucky she missed that first part of it, though.”
“Where is she now?”
“Either at the grocer’s or at my house, I imagine. She’ll be glad to hear you’ve come around. I’m hopeful she’s cooking something at my place.”
Canby nodded, felt a wave of fatigue come over him. He willed his eyes to stay open and lay in silence for a few moments watching Vernon smoke.
“Billingsley,” he said at last. “Goddamned Billingsley.”
“I did not believe it. Till I heard it from the man himself.”
“What?”
“He told me so.”
“That can’t be. I watched him die.�
��
“Oh, no, Thomas, he did not die. Underwood left him in the field. But he didn’t die. When they brought him in, his head looked nearly as bad as his bird dogger’s, I’m told. They stitched it back together as best they could. I told them to make a quick job of it and I don’t think Doctor Johnston liked that. I told them, ‘Just fix him up good enough for us to hang him.’”
“They brought him here?”
“Yes.”
The hospital room’s door opened behind Canby and he worked his hands underneath him as quickly as he could, trying to rise. Vernon reached out a hand toward him but seemed unsure of where to touch his peppered back, his shoulders.
“Don’t get excited,” he said. “They treated him here, but he’s in the tower now. Spot Twelve, as a matter of fact.” Vernon’s eyes rose as Canby heard the door shut. “Good evening, Doctor,” he said.
Canby heard the man’s measured footsteps on the floorboards before he stepped around and into his vision. The doctor had kindly eyes, bespectacled, and he wore a neatly trimmed beard flecked with gray. He waved at the thick smoke in the air as though it aggrieved him before extending the hand to Canby.
“Frederick Augustus Johnston,” he said. “I’m pleased you’ve made it. For a time there a positive outcome was not at all assured.”
Johnston bent close to Canby’s back, touched him lightly on his shoulder, the small of his back. His hands were cool.
“I would have liked to have cupped you, Mister Canby, as a safeguard against infection, but your wounds were too extensive. How is the pain now?”
“Tolerable.”
“We’ll continue the morphine a day or two longer, then.”
“How soon until he’s discharged, Doctor?”
“Two or three days at the earliest.”
“We have pressing police business. There’s a hanging he’s needed for.”
“Of that I wash my hands, gentlemen,” the doctor said, and patted Canby, gently, above his spotted shoulder. “Good evening.”
Vernon watched until the doctor had shut the door behind himself. “He’s a good doctor, whatever the gossips say.”
“What do the gossips say?”
“Some ugly business about bad debts in Carolina. That’s the way of it, isn’t it? A man gets ruined in the East and heads west to start fresh with a new slate.”
“Grady should write him up in a story. What happened back East?”
“Negro trouble,” Vernon said, and stared at the cigar in his hand for a moment. “Anyway, Billingsley came around enough yesterday to make a confession.”
“What did he say?”
“No details. He said he did it, that’s all.”
“That’s not much of a confession, is it?”
“It was enough to haul a judge in for him to plead.”
“Did you get a sentence?”
“Right then and there. He’s to be hanged by the neck until dead as soon as he’s able to stand up on his own. Meantime, Billingsley’s said he’ll make a full confession when he’s ready.”
Canby snorted. “When will that be?”
“When you come to take it.”
Vernon fingered his hat and looked around the room as though seeking a place to douse his cigar. Canby breathed deeply for a moment, trying to quiet his thoughts.
“All right,” he said at length.
“Good,” Vernon said. He set his hat on his head and began to rise from the chair.
“Just a minute, Vernon.”
Vernon settled back into the chair but did not remove his hat.
“I need for you to get a book to me. They may have it at the Young Men’s Library Association. I’m sure there’s a copy in Billingsley’s library if you have men there.”
“Oh, rest assured I have men there.” Vernon reached into his jacket and pulled out his pocket notebook, fished a pencil from another pocket. “What’s the title?”
“Essay on the Principle of Population,” Canby said. “Author is T. R. Malthus.”
“Malthus, huh?” Vernon said, his pencil pausing. “Malthus. I should have no trouble remembering that, goddamn me.” He folded the notebook and tucked it and the pencil away. “I’ll send Underwood and have him bring it around.”
“And Vernon? You might as well tell Underwood to bring his Bible with him.”
“All right, then. I will. Good night, Thomas.”
Malthus, Canby thought as he heard the door shut again. The very book had sat on Angus’s shelves throughout his childhood. When he closed his eyes he could even remember the printing Angus had owned, the slim leather-bound volume in its place among the other works. Red binding, it was.
He kept his eyes shut for a long time. The weight on his back had returned, heavier now by a measure of bitter remorse.
November 4
SHE LOOKED NEITHER RIGHT NOR LEFT AS SHE walked toward the heavy-looking door at the center of Fulton Tower, only kept her eyes straight out front of her, her package held in two trembling hands before her at her waist. Off to either side of the walkway, men in stripes were bent hoeing and weeding in the prison garden, and though they worked steadily under the watch of a mounted guard with what she thought was a shotgun laid across his saddle, their eyes had fixed on her the moment she stepped down from the carriage and had not yet left. She heard a murmured word once, and as she neared the great door a low whistle sang out over the garden. The guard spoke harshly and the whistle cut off and as she knocked on the big door she could hear only the sound of the hoes working, blades hacking the earth.
The face that greeted her when the door swung open had no welcome in it. She started to speak her introduction but the man behind the door shook his head and began to shut it. She shifted her package into one hand and unsnapped her purse and brought forth the badge she had slipped out of Thomas’s coat. The man studied it quizzically for a moment, then swung the door fully open and stood beside it for her to pass. All without a word spoken on his part.
She had read about Spot 12 in the papers and knew to expect a place of squalor and despair. Still, she was nearly overwhelmed by the oppressive air of the place, the silent gloom that had descended when the jailer shut the door behind her. He leaned against it now, watching her with the same suspicious glare with which he’d greeted her.
The man lay on a cot bolted to a wall of brick, on which had been written all manner of names and dates and foul language to accompany them. The man on the cot was in a state just as motley, resembling a scarecrow more than a man. He lay on his stomach with his face toward the brick, and she was grateful for this because the back of his head was a horror the likes of which she’d never seen, a mess of sutures and scabs from which patches of white hair sporadically sprang. They had not even bothered to bandage the wounds. It put her in mind of Mary Shelley’s monster, or the damned in Dante or one of Poe’s revenants. She steeled herself before she spoke.
“I am a friend of Thomas Canby’s,” she said. “I’ve come to bring you something.”
She watched for a sign of movement in the man but did not see any. The scabbed head was still.
“Thomas will live, Doctor Johnston is sure of it. He will live to see you hang. Can you hear me? You did not murder him. He is on the mend. He will see you into the ground for what you’ve done.”
She thought of poor Mary Flanagan and shivered. She resolved to conclude this visit.
“I’ve brought something to you. Or back to you.”
She held out the Mason jar she had brought with her, then lifted it. “Can you hear this?” She shook the jar and the lead pellets inside it rattled against the glass. “This is what you tried to kill him with.
“I’ve brought this back for you to study. You can think about the meanness and futility of your life. A handful of lead that did not stop a good man. You see, it all comes back, the good and the bad.”
She moved to set the Mason jar on the stone floor, just past the point where he might have reached through the bars to it. The pellets shi
fted in the jar as she leaned over, making a tinkling sound against the glass.
She stopped midway, took another glance at the unmoving wraith on the bed, at the rude jailer. Stood upright again.
“Perhaps you haven’t heard me,” she said, and turned the Mason jar upside down. The pellets hit the floor and scattered, the misshapen pieces of lead bouncing and rolling erratically, each pellet that had impacted Thomas’s back charting its own course across the floor.
Then she turned and walked out. The mute jailer looked outraged, but he held the door open for her exit.
She would tell Thomas about this visit after all, she resolved. Even though she had taken the badge without asking and had not been able to summon the temerity to tell him about her plans beforehand. She would tell him how insensate was the man who had shot him, how wrecked and ruined. How the pellets that had been in Thomas’s back sounded as she shook them in the Mason jar, how they sounded scattering across the floor, so that they would echo through the murderer’s conscience.
What she would not tell him, because she did not know—had turned her back and could not see—was that in the silence after the last of the pellets had fallen, the scarred and scabbed head had begun to tremble.
November 5
“THOSE WERE GRAND DAYS, LONG BEFORE THE WAR and everything that led up to it,” Billingsley said. “I came and went as I pleased, not only in the house and outbuildings but in the slave quarters as well. I was left alone to become.
“I took a special pleasure in watching Banks, our overseer, discipline the hands. Banks was not a cruel man but in those days the whip was as much a part of a plantation as was the plow. He was efficient with it when it had to be put to use. The whipping post was out behind the barn, where Mother would not have to see it, and I prevailed upon Banks against his better judgment to allow me the privilege of watching. At first I kept a distance, but every lashing drew me closer. In time I was tying their hands to the iron ring myself.
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