Almost Complete Short Fiction, page 36
He went on Sunday morning. It was an off-duty day and he drove his own car; that, plus the nondescript civilian clothes he wore, ought to cut down the chances of his being recognized. He stopped at an all-hours one-stop in Maggie Valley and bought a pair of cheap sunglasses and a butt-ugly blue mesh-back cap with an emblem of a jumping fish on the front. Pulling the cap down low, checking himself out in the old Dodge’s mirror, he decided he looked like a damn fool, but as camouflage it ought to help.
But when he got to the refugee camp he found it had all been for nothing. The truck was gone and so was Eva May’s family; an elderly couple in a Buick were already setting up camp in the spot. No, they said, they didn’t know anything; the place had been empty when they got here, just a little while ago.
Davis made a few cautious inquiries, without finding out much more. The woman in the school bus across the lane said she’d heard them leaving a little before daylight. She had no idea where they’d gone and doubted if anyone else did.
“People come and go,” she said. “There’s no keeping track. And they weren’t what you’d call friendly neighbors.”
Well, Davis thought as he drove back to the reservation, so much for that. He felt sad and empty inside, and disgusted with himself for feeling that way. Good thing the bars and liquor stores weren’t open on Sunday; he could easily go on a serious drunk right now.
He was coming over the mountains east of Cherokee when he saw the smoke.
It was the worst fire of the decade. And could have been much worse; if the wind had shifted just right, it might have taken out the whole reservation. As it was, it was three days before the fire front crossed the reservation border and became somebody else’s problem.
For Davis Blackbear it was a very long three days. Afterward, he estimated that he might have gotten three or four hours of sleep the whole time. None of the tribal police got any real time off, the whole time; it was one job after another, evacuating people from the fire’s path, setting up roadblocks, keeping traffic unsnarled, and, in the rare times there was nothing else to do, joining the brutally overworked firefighting crews. By now almost every able-bodied man in the tribe was helping fight the blaze; or else already out of action, being treated for burns or smoke inhalation or heat stroke.
At last the fire ate its way over the reservation boundary and into the national parkland beyond; and a few hours later, as Wednesday’s sun slid down over the mountains, Davis Blackbear returned to his trailer and fell across the bed, without bothering to remove his sweaty uniform or even to kick off his ruined shoes. And lay like a dead man through the rest of the day and all through the night, until the next morning’s light came in the trailer’s windows; and then he got up and undressed and went back to bed and slept some more.
A little before noon he woke again, and knew before he opened his eyes what he was going to do.
Captain Ridge had told him to take the day off and rest up; but Ridge wasn’t around when Davis came by the station, and nobody paid any attention when Davis left his car and drove off in one of the jeeps. Or stopped him when he drove past the roadblocks that were still in place around the fire zone; everybody was too exhausted to ask unnecessary questions.
It was a little disorienting, driving across the still-smoking land; the destruction had been so complete that nothing was recognizable. He almost missed a couple of turns before he found the place he was looking for.
A big green pickup truck was parked beside the road, bearing the insignia of the U.S. Forest Service. A big stocky white man in a green uniform stood beside it, watching as Davis drove up and parked the jeep and got out. “Afternoon,” he said.
He stuck out a hand as Davis walked across the road. “Bob Lindblad,” he said as Davis shook his hand. “Fire inspector. They sent me down to have a look, seeing as it’s on federal land now.”
He looked around and shook his head. “Hell of a thing,” he said, and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.
It certainly was a strange-looking scene. On the northeast side of the road, there was nothing but ruin, an ash-covered desolation studded with charred tree stumps, stretching up the hillside and over the ridge and out of sight. The other side of the road, however, appeared untouched; except for a thin coating of powdery ash on the bushes and the kudzu vines, it looked exactly as it had when Davis had come this way a couple of weeks ago.
The Forest Service man said, “Anybody live around here?”
“Not close, no. Used to be a family named Birdshooter, lived up that way, but they moved out a long time ago.”
Lindblad nodded. “I saw some house foundations.”
Davis said, “This was where it started?”
“Where it was started,” Lindblad said. “Yes.”
“Somebody set it?”
“No question about it.” Lindblad waved a big hand. “Signs all over the place. They set it at half a dozen points along this road. The wind was at their backs, out of the southwest—that’s why the other side of the road didn’t take—so they weren’t in any danger. Bastards,” he added.
Davis said, “Find anything to show who did it?”
Lindblad shook his head. “Been too much traffic up and down this road, last few days, to make any sense of the tracks. I’m still looking, though.”
“All right if I look around too?” Davis asked.
“Sure. Just holler,” Lindblad said, “if you find anything. I’ll be somewhere close by.”
He walked off up the hill, his shoes kicking up little white puffs of ash. Davis watched him a minute and then started to walk along the road, looking at the chewed-up surface. The Forest Service guy was right, he thought, no way in hell could anybody sort out all these tracks and ruts. Over on the unburned downhill side, somebody had almost gone into the ditch—
Davis almost missed it. A single step left or right, or the sun at a different angle, and he’d never have seen the tiny shininess at the bottom of the brush-choked ditch. He bent down and groped, pushing aside a clod of roadway dirt, and felt something tangle around his fingers. He tugged gently and it came free. He straightened up and held up his hand in front of his face.
The sun glinted off the little silver dog as it swung from side to side at the end of the broken chain.
Up on the hillside, Lindblad called, “Find anything?”
Davis turned and looked. Lindblad was poking around near the ruins of the old house, nearly hidden by a couple of black tree stubs. His back was to the road.
“No,” Davis yelled back, walking across the road. “Not a thing.”
He drew back his arm and hurled the pendant high out over the black-and-gray waste. It flashed for an instant against the sky before vanishing, falling somewhere on the burned earth.
2002
Empire
“History,” the Emperor often said, “is a lie agreed upon.”
“And who’d know better?” Captain Houston said, when I quoted the line to him. “About history, and about lies. Having been responsible for such a hell of a lot of both, in his day.”
He did not say it loudly, though; his usual alligator-bellow voice was for once a discreet murmur, though no one was nearby. Houston was a bold young man, even by the standards of his kind; but mocking the Emperor was a dangerous business, especially during that final year.
In any case I did not reply, and after a moment he chuckled and glanced at me. We were walking down the swept gravel walk toward the front drive-way of the palace, the Emperor having told me to see Captain Houston to his carriage. Captain Houston had just returned from a secret mission deep in Spanish territory, and had found his way back from Florida to New Orleans through hundreds of miles of wilderness known only to his Indian friends, so presumably he was capable of finding his own way out; but the Emperor was always one for the courtesies.
“You ought to write a history book yourself,” Houston said, grinning. “The things you’ve seen and heard, it’d be worth reading.”
“Slaves do not write histories,” I pointed out.
“I heard somewhere that there were slaves who wrote books,” Houston said. “Back in Roman times.”
“This is not the Roman Empire,” I answered, and bit off the irreverent addendum, “However much His Majesty likes to think so.” I had no wish to match him for riskiness of wit; for myself I have always found bravery a vulgar quality, and those who possess it generally tiresome—though I did like Sam Houston, who had a keen sense of irony, no doubt acquired from living with the Cherokees.
“Well,” he said, “there’s my carriage, Albert,” giving my name the English pronunciation rather than the proper one. “Good night.”
Three days later the British arrived.
I was there when the Emperor got the word; in fact I was the one who brought it to him, though only in the sense of taking the sealed message from the dispatch rider—who was sweating, even though it was a December day and quite cool for New Orleans—and carrying it on a silver tray into the Emperor’s private study. I did not, of course, know the contents, but I had my suspicions.
The Emperor read the message, smiled slightly, and tossed it onto his desk. “Well, Albert,” he said, “the ball would seem about to begin. His Britannic Majesty’s forces have put in their long-awaited appearance off our shores.”
It was not, you understand, any great surprise. It was common knowledge, even in the streets of the city, that a large Royal Navy squadron, with a convoy of troop transports, had been working its ponderous way across the Gulf, shadowed at a discreet distance by Lafitte’s people.
The Emperor got to his feet, slowly and clumsily, breathing loudly with the effort. I made no move to assist him; His Majesty’s increasing corpulence and deteriorating health were among the many things one was required not to notice.
He walked over to the great windows that overlooked the palace grounds. “Ah, Albert,” he said, his back to me. “Do you know, at times I wish myself back in France.”
I said nothing, merely stood in respectful silence. I knew what was coming, having heard it so many times before.
“I have not seen France since the year 1793,” he mused, his back to me. “Yet in some sense it will always be my second home. Strange; I have no such feelings, now, for Corsica.”
He turned slightly, placing his face in profile. The morning light sharply silhouetted the famous features; the body might have grown corrupted, but that incredible head was still as beautiful as ever.
“Perhaps,” he said wistfully, “I should have stayed. That was my intention, after all, when the traitor Paoli drove the Buonapartes from Corsica. I had no thought but to return to France and resume my military career. It was sheer chance that that American ship happened to be in the harbor, while I was seeking passage to Marseilles to rejoin the family, and that I fell to talking with the captain—and made a sudden impulsive decision, and the rest, as they say, is history.”
He turned and smiled at me. “Who knows? Had I followed my original plan, surely I would by now be an officer of rank in the forces of the Republic. Not that that would be such an enviable fate, now,” he added, “after the drubbing the British and their allies have given the Republic’s armies. But perhaps I could have changed all that, eh? That fellow Wellington might have found General Buonaparte a harder adversary.”
“As indeed he soon shall, sire,” I murmured.
“What? Oh, yes, of course. Excellent, Albert!” He laughed. “Yes, it would seem the Duke and I are destined to do battle, in one possible world or another.”
His mouth twisted. “If, if. If not for Paoli’s treachery, I could have been the liberator of my homeland, and spent the rest of my days as ruler of Corsica. Treachery is a terrible thing, Albert, to be execrated above all other human sins.”
I kept my mouth shut and my face blank, and tried to suppress the picture in my mind—of the late Colonel Burr, or rather his ghost, listening to that last little homily. The exquisite treachery by which the Emperor had disposed of his old partner would for sheer seamless detail have impressed a Borgia.
History, by the way, still seems silent on the question of just when and how the former Captain Buonaparte, now a newly commissioned lieutenant in the tiny United States army, chanced to meet then-Senator Burr. I have an impression it was at some sort of social function in New York, but I may be mistaken; at the time, after all, I was still a half-grown servant boy in a wealthy New Orleans household, being educated above my station by a capricious and indulgent owner. (Interestingly, it is possible that the Emperor and I were learning English at the same time.)
Whenever and wherever it happened, it was certainly one of the most fateful encounters of all time. I wonder if they recognized each other, in that first moment, as two of the same breed? Much as two sharks in the lightless depths of the ocean must apprehend their common species. . .
“But then,” the Emperor said with sudden joviality, “in that case who would now reign over the interior of North America? Perhaps your famous and talented relative Tecumseh, eh?”
“Tecumseh is Shawnee, sire,” I said very diffidently. “My father’s people were Choctaw.” Not that it mattered; my mother having been quadroon, I was unequivocally “black” under the laws of the Empire.
“Albert, Albert.” He laughed softly and gave me a fond look. “I tease you, but you know how highly I esteem you. See here.” He adopted the manner of one who has just made an important decision. “You have been a good and faithful servant for many years. When this business with the English is concluded, I intend to free you.”
I bowed my head, as if overcome. “Sire,” I said most humbly.
He did this, on the average, two or three times a year. It meant nothing. As many men—and women—had learned, the Emperor was too great a man to be bound by a trivial thing like a promise. But one had to pretend.
The next day they had a big council in the palace war-room. Standing beside the door, awaiting requests for drinks or whatever else the military leaders of the Empire might require, I witnessed the whole thing.
“So,” the Emperor said, looking down at the map that covered most of the great conference table, “our guests have arrived, and we must make ready to welcome them. The question is, where?”
“No sign of any landings yet,” Colonel Crockett observed. “They’re just sort of hanging around offshore. Last message I got from Sam, he said he could just make out their sails, out in Chandeleur Sound.”
He scratched absently beneath his fringed buckskin jacket; a gross discourtesy in the royal presence, but the Emperor tolerated much from the eccentric and extremely able chief of scouting operations. Half the alligators in the swamps were in Crockett’s pay and the other half his blood relatives—or so it was said.
General Jackson snorted loudly. “By the Eternal, I don’t suppose your ‘boys’ could trouble themselves to give us a more detailed report?” He and Crockett hated each other; it was one of those deadly personal enmities at which the Tennesseeans excel. “At least an estimate of the enemy’s numbers?”
“No need,” the Emperor said mildly. “We have, after all, a full roster of the enemy’s forces, and have had for some time.”
This was true. The Emperor’s secret agents were everywhere, on both sides of the Atlantic, and very good at their work. If he had wanted to look it up, he could probably have learned the name of the trooper who watered Wellington’s horse.
The Emperor was studying the map. “I confess,” he said, “I am having trouble envisioning how they plan to do this.”
Even with my own utter lack of military knowledge, I could see the problem. New Orleans is an oddly situated port; below the city, the river runs a hundred miles or so before reaching the sea—but it does not flow through solid land, but down the middle of a strange narrow alluvial peninsula that sticks out far into the Gulf, a kind of penis of the continent. The whole shoreline is a perfect mess of lakes, bays, bayous, and cypress swamps, with hardly any firm ground. How the Duke of Wellington proposed to get past all that was more than I could understand.
“Can he come straight up the river, do you think?” the Emperor suggested dubiously.
“It would be difficult.” General Latour, the chief of engineers, gestured at the map. “The passage is not an easy one, after all. They would need local pilots—”
“Not impossible to get,” Captain Lafitte put in. “Many of the people along the river and the coast are Spanish, and none too loyal to the Empire.”
“But they would still have to get past our shore batteries,” Latour went on. “Especially here, at Fort St. Philippe.”
“Yes.” The Emperor nodded. “But how else? Land on the shores of Lake Borgne, or the Ponchartrain?”
Lafitte stepped forward. “Not so simple as that, my Emperor. Lake Borgne is not deep enough for big ships. They could cross it in shallow-draft boats, if they have them, and work their way up the bayous, but it would be a difficult and risky business.” He tapped the map with a fingertip. “And the Ponchartrain would be even harder.”
He grinned. “Now me, I know half a dozen ways to get at this city through the bayous above Barataria Bay. But Wellington could never do it, not without my people to guide him.”
Neatly done, I had to admit; a diplomatic reminder of the service the Barataria pirates had done the Emperor, by refusing British attempts to buy their aid, and later by doing sterling work in keeping track of the movements of Lord Nelson’s ships.
Of course it could have been pointed out that Lafitte and his brigands were at least partly to blame for the whole situation, since the official casus belli, according to the British, lay in their constant and heavy depredations against British and Spanish shipping—under perfectly legal letters of marque from the government of Republican France—but that would have been specious; the British had long had designs on the Mississippi, control of which would make them once again masters in North America. Lafitte had merely supplied a handy pretext.
