The Amalgamation Polka (7 page)

The girl studied him with an amazingly adept impersonation of adult contempt. Then, after a defiant interval, she spoke. “That’s not my pa.”

Mrs. Conklin returned Potter’s inquiring gaze exactly as given.

“Why sure it is,” he said.

“No!” Zillah declared sharply, giving her head an emphatic twist.

“Then how came you to be quartered in such a close nook with an utter stranger for a father?”

Even as Potter watched, the focus went out of the girl’s eyes like an exodus of blackbirds from each dilating pupil.

Mrs. Conklin yanked the squirming baby off her nipple and nonchalantly covered her breast. “The mister trained her to do that. Too many nosy outlandishers scratching at the door and pawing around into business that weren’t no part of their business.”

Her husband shifted around on the straw, the painful ratcheting of his breath virtually pleading for lubrication.

“All right,” mumbled Potter in obvious irritation. Stooping to the bucket, he dipped out a tinful of water which he carefully conveyed to the suffering man and, raising up Conklin’s clammy head, tilted the contents into his gaping mouth. It was like pouring water down a hole in the parched earth, and presently the tremors subsided somewhat. The wife observed without comment, her lips worn down from fretful years of unconscious compression into little more than a grim crease in the sallow flesh above her chin, her expression as unreadable as the weathered face of a rock.

Hardly daring to budge from their stations, the Regulators had by now achieved a pitch of vigilance where the menacing darkness outside began to shift and stir with every blink, assuming whatever shape for whatever duration that pleased the viewer, the general uneasiness of this phenomenon alleviated slightly this particular evening by the unabated force of an astonishing full moon.

“Doggone,” blurted Harry Spelvins, “if that don’t look just like fresh snow on the ground.”

“Indeed,” Captain Gracie noted, “the moon appears considerably larger here than home in Back Bay.”

“Why is that, sir?” asked Little Johnny Phelps.

“Because we’re nearer to God,” snapped Mrs. Conklin.

The captain bowed graciously in the woman’s direction. “Beacon Hill, I might remind you, madame, sits upon an elevation rather more pronounced than this griddle pan of bloody sod.”

Before Mrs. Conklin could summon up a suitably annihilating retort, Furry Ike burst out excitedly. “I think I hear something. Yes, I think I certainly do.”

All paused, attending warily to the dissonant strains of the unsleeping land.

“The wind, “asserted Mrs. Conklin. “That’s all. Just the wind.”

The afternoon’s playful zephyrs had developed into a brutal, unremitting blast obviously escaped from some vast chamber deep underground, a roiling torrent of black air and tossed particles of a minuteness and granularity sufficient to sting the skin and easily lodge in any bodily crevice or portal, all the while accompanied by a prodigious shriek of such volume and monotony as to banish instantly any thoughts of relief.

“Never heard any wind carrying on like that back east,” said Potter.

“No, sir,” affirmed Mrs. Conklin. “You certainly have not. Nor have you sat out here in its uninterrupted path night and day around the hours of the seasons, plugs of beeswax, wads of flannel, a couple dried beans or what-have-you stuffed in your ears in hopes of muffling that bedlam scream just enough to postpone until tomorrow putting the fatal ball into your head. One month on this ground is all it takes, one month for that wind to slip inside your knowledge box, where nothing you can do will ever get you shut of it. And then, after a while, just when you think you’ve gotten used to the mindless noise, it begins talking to you in your own voice, not your speaking voice, mind you, but your thinking voice, the one you hear when you’re alone, whispering to you your own most private thoughts.” She glanced briefly at the rasping lump under the canvas. “When the mister goes, I believe I’ll load up the kids in the wagon and head on out for Oregon.”

“A long pull,” said Potter.

“I do not fear distance,” she declared, regarding Potter with an unsparing eye. “Or death,” she added.

“I’ve heard,” offered Jack Stringfellow, “they grow cherries there big as apples.”

“Beavers, too,” said Little Johnny Phelps.

“It’s always springtime,” Spelvins said. “No one ever gets sick.”

“Hell with all that trash,” Furry Ike declared. “It’s the gold you go for. Pardner of mine went out there about ten years ago when the fever was on everybody, settled in that Willamette Valley and, after about a year sent back a real nice picture of himself standing in front of a hole in the ground and holding up a nugget big as your thumb. Rest of the family left to join him the very next day.”

“What became of that fellow?” asked Spelvins.

“Don’t rightly know. Never heard a word about him ever again.”

“No slaves,” said Mrs. Conklin.

“Excuse me, ma’am?” asked Spelvins.

“No slaves,” she repeated. “In Oregon. No slaves.”

“I believe I heard something now,” announced Furry Ike, cocking his misshapen hat toward the outer wall.

“Kinder like a drumroll?” asked Stringfellow.

It was Potter’s sharp blue eyes, long renowned throughout the Mohawk Valley as possessed of an uncommon avian acuity, that first descried the column of phantom riders, black figures mounted on black steeds, moving in stern orthodox procession against the moon-chastened sky. Then, with an almost diabolic celerity, the horsemen were swinging in off the road and clattering up into the yard.

“Douse the glim!” hissed Captain Gracie, and someone did. Lost in darkness, the baby began to howl. “Ma’am?” asked Gracie. A quick rustle, and the infant stopped.

Outside, the dark shapes were hurriedly dismounting, several loping around toward the rear of the cabin.

“I count twelve,” Potter said.

“Steady, boys,” cautioned Captain Gracie. “On my signal.”

Coolly, without a word, Mrs. Conklin handed the baby to her daughter and, as if she’d been rehearsing for this moment over the span of a life, stepped adroitly atop a biscuit box, and, with practiced ease, slotted her carbine into a loophole and prepared to defend her property and her family from a pack of unholy, pilfering border bullies.

“Come on out of there now,” demanded a voice from beyond the walls.

“Who says?” answered Captain Gracie.

“Friends of the white man. We’re here for Conklin. Send the skunk out and we’ll be on our way.”

“The man’s ailing. He’s barely sensible.”

“Who are you?”

“Stand a mite closer and I’ll tell you.”

There was a lengthy pause, then a different voice. “Are ye sound on the goose?”

“Can’t hear you, friend. Step on up to the door.”

“Sounds like there’s a damned abolitionist in there just a-hankering to be hemped.”

“More than one!” returned Potter.

“Happy to oblige all comers.”

“They’re fixing to rush the house,” squeaked Little Johnny Phelps, his voice given to abrupt scale-runs even under the most ordinary circumstances and now losing its moorings completely.

“If I get any bead at all,” Potter vowed softly, “I’m gonna blow one of them chawbacks clean through.”

“Steady, boys,” advised Captain Gracie. “Aim for the buttons on their breeches. Give a man time to prepare to meet his Maker.”

Then, with a sudden whoosh, the night simply broke apart upon a rock of delirious flame that seemed to have plunged through this paper-thin partition of darkness from an alien realm beyond and, hovering mystically in midair, was now trundling full tilt on a wobbly course straight for the door. “My wagon!” shrieked Mrs. Conklin as every gun in the place discharged at once in a great flaring and cracking that set the baby off into a wail its tiny lungs couldn’t possibly be producing, instantly filled the cramped room with choking clouds of sulfurous smoke and did absolutely nothing to deter the raging fire-ball from lumbering unsteadily onward as if drawn by a windlass, spitting and spewing a veritable Roman candle of sparks, ash and stems of burning hay until coming to a stop at last with a gentle bump against the Conklin cabin door. Foreheads dripping, eyes smarting, mouths cursing, the Regulators continued with undiminished vigor to pour forth their lesson in lead through an entire arsenal of exotic weaponry—Hawkin rifles and Western rifles and Sharps carbines, Hall’s muskets and alligator guns—and, when ammunition ran out on the larger bores, shifting readily to Colt revolvers and Austin pistols as the baby screeched, gunsmoke suffocated their throats and enemy balls went plunk-plunk into the log walls.

“Blast ye demons!” cried Furry Ike and Captain Gracie: “Cut away at them, boys, cut away!” “I’m blind!” shrieked Little Johnny Phelps, stumbling backward in the dark and snatching at his face as he fell unattended into the dirt. Orange and yellow flame was now ominously visible, clawing frantically at the door, seeking entrance through the narrow cracks in the planking.

Potter hardly noticed the incessant clanging in his ears, so determined was he to plant some hard seed into one furrowed slavocrat carcass, firing with ruthless abandon at whatever appeared to move in all the surrounding confusion. He figured he had tallied maybe five, six hits, give or take a few when, with muffled shouts and a flurry of parting shots, the night riders sprang onto their mounts and abruptly galloped off into the western gloom.

Potter unbolted the latch and, with the aid of Captain Gracie and Furry Ike, pushed the flaming wagon away from the door. Too far gone into the world of fire to be saved, it was allowed to burn on, the remaining water buckets being used to quench the embers on the roof. Little Johnny Phelps, after rolling about on the ground in sightless panic, discovered that whatever particles had flown into his eyes during the course of the contest had flown back out on the stream of his tears and thankfully he could see again. Mrs. Conklin wiped her sooty cheeks on the hem of her dress, then bent down to attend to her husband’s mumblings. “Yes,” she was heard to say, “they’re a-gone now.” The baby was strangely silent, as if acknowledging that his own best protest had been humbled by the cry of gunpowder.

Henry Spelvins, wandering out to relieve himself, past the trampled flower beds, beyond the fitful glow cast by the still smoldering wagon, found the body, face blackened, sprawled whiskers up in the bugle brush north of the cabin, fancy hunting shirt with an eagle braided on the chest dark with blood from the nipples down, nearby a crumpled slouch hat, its band dressed with goose feathers and, a few yards off a fallen standard bearing the legend in ornate capitals,
THE SUPREMACY OF THE WHITE RACE
.

“Well, well,” declared Captain Gracie, nudging the corpse with the sharp toe of his boot. “Let the Devil toast me on a spit if this isn’t old S. G. Q. Jones himself. Doesn’t look quite so puffed-up now. Whose is he?”

“Potter was firing from this side,” offered Furry Ike, fairly dancing with glee over the very evidence that the night’s work had not gone unrequited.

“Well, Potter, it appears you have sent one of the indisputable grandees of the Blue Lodge to his winter quarters. Scalp’s yours if you want it.”

“Thank you, sir. Don’t mind if I do.”

With beaming admiration, Furry Ike handed over his prized gold-plated Bowie knife. “Sharpened fresh this morning.”

Weathered knees audibly complaining, Potter grunted down beside the tumbled body, seized a hank of greasy locks in his fist and began sawing clumsily away at the roots. In a moment the woman was at his elbow. “You’re making a mess of that,” she muttered, impatiently reaching for the slippery blade. “Let me.” Potter eased himself aside as she bent deftly to her task as if peeling the leather from a human skull were little more than a common household chore simple as paring a potato. She worked with fierce concentration in the dying firelight, her awed onlookers straining to catch a glimpse of the technique until, with a sickening adhesive sound, the scalp was lifted away in one unbroken piece.

“Ma’am,” Furry Ike said approvingly, “if you had a mind to, I believe you could butcher this gent clean by the board.”

Framed in the low, now lighted, doorway of the cabin, scrawny arms still tightly wrapped about her baby brother, stood the Conklin daughter, Zillah, not a solitary dripping detail of this educational scene passing unregistered upon a gaze bland, defenseless, unfathomable as the night.

“So, where is it?” Liberty inquired eagerly, the baser facts of life on this planet where he happened to find himself holding a near insatiable fascination. Father, son and prodigal storyteller were gathered now in the front parlor a year later, all talk of the hemorrhaging of the body politic, whether in the airy abstract or the actual mortal flesh, having been banished permanently from the dining room.

“Danged if I know,” answered Potter, scratching unconsciously at the dirt on his neck. “Pelt must’ve got lost or stolen somewhere between here and Springfield. I recall a bunch of boys in Lawrence wanted to swap for a barrel of choice corn, forty-jackass strength. And a funny old bushwhacker with a longhorn mustache in an emigrant-aid party east of Shawnee Mission took to admiring it so much he wanted to run that hair up a pole he’d fixed to his wagon, jettison the damned Jolly Roger he had flapping there. In Westport a bald-headed barber with a black eye showed me how to hitch my trophy to the bridle where it’d impress friend and foe alike and wouldn’t nobody give me any trouble. So I just don’t know. Maybe it fell off, maybe some rascal filched it, but either way it’s gone now, gone for good, for sure.”

“Is this the gun?”

“Aye, lad, the very one.”

“Can I see?”

The rifle was heavier than any Liberty had ever handled. He hefted the scarred walnut stock to his shoulder and took deliberate aim toward the darkened window, sighting down the long, wavering barrel, in his mind, in the fullness of a pure unclouded day, a tangible image of the wild unadulterated item itself—a full-blooded puke at large in its preferred state of nature, barefoot, long-shanked, montrously gangly, more bone than meat—scampering through the brush on the far ridge like a flushed rodent, long black beard bisected by the wind streaming backward in separate scraggly halves over each shoulder, spindle legs pumping, rum-blossom nostrils flaring, beady black eyes converging on the appreciable cover of a colossal oak tree mere steps away as Liberty, expertly leading his prey, coolly squeezed the trigger and in an instant, the simple twitch of a finger, something was translated into nothing.