Mason & Dixon (46 page)

"Ever a merry Quip," cries Jabez, nimbly stepping behind the Surveyors and propelling them in ahead.

They are examin'd skeptickally. "Not from the Press, are you?"

" 'Pon my Word," cry both Surveyors at once.

"Drummers of some kind's my guess," puts in a Countryman, his Rifle at his Side, "am I right, Gents?"

"What'll we say?" mutters Mason urgently to Dixon.

"Oh, do allow me," says Dixon to Mason. Adverting to the Room, "Why aye, Right as a Right Angle, we're out here to ruffle up some business with any who may be in need of Surveying, London-Style,— Astro-nomickally precise, optickally up-to-the-Minute, surprisingly cheap. The Behavior of the Stars is the most perfect Motion there is, and we know how to read it all, just as you'd read a Clock-Face. We have Lenses that never lie, and Micrometers fine enough to subtend the Width of a Hair upon a Martian's Eye-ball. This looks like a bustling Town, plenty

 
of activity in the Land-Trades, where think yese'd be a good place to start?" with an amiability that Mason recognizes as peculiarly Quaker,— Friendly Business.

"Then why are yese askin' Jabez 'bout th' Massacree?" inquires a toothless old Coot with an empty Can, which Dixon makes sure is promptly fill'd.

"Aye! How do we know ye're not just two more Philadelphia Fops, out skipping thro' the Brush-wood?"

"He approach'd us," Mason protests.

"We're men of Science," Dixon explains, " - this being a neoclas-sickal Instance of the Catastrophick Resolution of Inter-Populational Cross-Purposes, of course we're curious to see where it all happen'd.—

"You can't just come minuetting in from London and expect to understand what's going on here," advises Mr, Slough.

"This is about Family, sure as the History of England. Inside any one Tribe of Indians, they're all related, see? Kill you one Delaware, you affront the Family at large. Out here, if it's Blood of mine, of course I must go out and seek redress,— tho' I'll have far less company."

"Each alone lacking the Numbers, our sole Recourse is to band together."

"These were said to be harmless, helpless people," Dixon points out in some miraculous way that does not draw challenge or insult in return. Apprehensive among these Folk, Mason, who would have perhaps us'd one Adjective fewer, regards his Geordie Partner with a strange Gaze, bordering upon Respect.

"They were blood relations of men who slew blood relations of ours," Jabez explains.

"Then if You know who did it, for the Lord's sake why did You not go after them?"

"This hurt them more," smiles a certain Oily Leon, fingering his Frizzen and Flint.

"Aye, they go on living, but without dear old Grandam,— puts a big Hole in the Blanket, don't it?"

"You must hate them exceedingly," Mason pretending to a philosoph-ickal interest actually far more faint than his interest in getting out of here alive.

"No," looking about as if puzzl'd, "not any more. That Debt is paid. I'll live in peace with them,— happy to."

"Mayn't they now feel oblig'd to come after you?" asks Jere Disingenuous. He notices Mason just visibly creeping toward the Door.

"Not this side of the River, nor this side of York and Baltimore Road. 'Tis all ours now. They answer to us here."

"What's the complaint?" demands Oily Leon. "We're out here as a Picket for Philadelphia,— we've clear'd them a fine safe patch, from Delaware to Susquehanna. Now may they prance about foolish as they may."

"Aye, Penns, handing us and our children about like Chattel,—

"Damme,— like Field Slaves!"

- dared they ever leave England and come here, they should find harsher welcome than any King."

"Here's a Riddle,— if a cat may look at a King, may a Pennsylvanian take aim at a King's enforcer?"

"Sir!" The murmuring is about equally divided, as to whether this is going too far, or not far enough.

"Their Cities allow them Folly," a German of Mystickal Toilette advises the Astronomers, "that daily Living upon the Frontier will not forgive. They feed one another's Pretenses, live upon borrow'd Money as borrow'd Time, their lives as their deaths put, with all appearance of Willingness, under the control of others mortal as they, rather than subject, as must Country People's lives and deaths be, to the One Eternal Ruler. That is why we speak plainly, whilst Cits learn to be roundabout as Snakes. Our Time is much more precious to us."

"What. Our Time not precious!" guffaws a traveling sales Representative. "Why, you're welcome, Cousin, to try and get thro' twenty-four Hours of Philadelphia Time, which if it don't kill you, will cure you, at least, of your Illusions about us."

"Excuse me," says Dixon, "I meant to ask...? Whah's thah' smoahkin' Object in thy Mouth, thah' tha keep puffin' on?"

"Not much Tobacco where you Boys are from? Down Chesapeake, why they've nothing but.—
 
Endless Acres, Glasgow shipping fender-to-fender in the Bays, why Tob'o, Hell, they use it for money! Smoke your Week's Pay! This form of it, Sir, 's what we call a 'Cigar.' They come in all

 
sorts, this particular one being from Conestoga, the Waggon-Bullies there style it a 'Stogie.' The Secret's in the Twist they put into the handful of Leaves whilst they're squeezin' it into Shape. Sort of like putting rifling inside a Barrel, only different? Gives the Smoke a Spin, as ye'd say? Watch this." He sets his Lips as for a conventional, or Toroidal, Smoke-Ring, but out instead comes a Ring like a Length of Ribbon clos'd in a Circle, with a single Twist in it, possessing thereby but one Side and one Edge....

("Uncle?"

"Hum? Pray ye,— 'tis true, I was not there. Yet, such was the pure original Stogie in its Day....")

Tho' nothing much has been said, the Surveyors are surpriz'd to discover that ev'ryone's been saying it for several Hours. The only thing that has grown clearer is Jabez's motive in offering to be their Guide. Soon Lamps are lit, and the Supper-Crowd has come in, and Mason and Dixon, no closer to having seen the site of the Massacre, Heads a-reel with smoke, return to their Rooms.

Does Britannia, when she sleeps, dream? Is America her dream?— in which all that cannot pass in the metropolitan Wakefulness is allow'd Expression away in the restless Slumber of these Provinces, and on West-ward, wherever 'tis not yet mapp'd, nor written down, nor ever, by the majority of Mankind, seen,— serving as a very Rubbish-Tip for subjunctive Hopes, for all that may yet be true,— Earthly Paradise, Fountain of Youth, Realms of Prester John, Christ's Kingdom, ever behind the sunset, safe till the next Territory to the West be seen and recorded, mea-sur'd and tied in, back into the Net-Work of Points already known, that slowly triangulates its Way into the Continent, changing all from subjunctive to declarative, reducing Possibilities to Simplicities that serve the ends of Governments,— winning away from the realm of the Sacred, its Borderlands one by one, and assuming them unto the bare mortal World that is our home, and our Despair.

"Yet must the Sensorium be nourish'd," Mason, insomniack, addresses himself in a sort of Gastrick Speech he has devis'd for Hours like these, "...as the Body, with its own transcendent Desires, the foremost being Eternal Youth,— for which, alas, one seeks in vain thro' the Enthusiasts' Fair, that defines the Philadelphia Sabbath,— the best

 
Offer heard, being of Bodily Resurrection, which unhappily yet requires
Death as a pre-condition
   
"

He finds himself pretending Rebekah is there, somewhere, and listening. She has not "visited" since St. Helena. Mason cycles back to the Island, a Memory-Pilgrim with a well-mark'd Itinerary Map, to recapitulate Exchanges in the Ebony Clearing, the empty Wall'd Patch, the Lines at Dawn before the Atlantick Horizon....

The next Day, he creeps out before Dixon is awake, and goes to the Site of last Year's Massacre by himself. He is not as a rule sensitive to the metaphysickal Remnants of Evil,— none but the grosser, that is, the Gothickal, are apt to claim his Attention,— yet here in the soil'd and strewn Courtyard where it happen'd, roofless to His Surveillance,— and to His Judgment, prays Mason,— he feels "like a Nun before a Shrine," as he later relates it to Dixon, who has in fact slept till well past noon, as Shifts and Back-shifts of Bugs pass to and fro, inspecting his Mortal Envelope. "Almost a smell," Mason quizzickally, his face, it seems to Dixon, unusually white, " - not the Drains, nor the Night's Residency,— I cannot explain,— it quite Torpedo'd me."

"Eeh! Sounds worth a Visit...?"

"Acts have consequences, Dixon, they must. These Louts believe all's right now,— that they are free to get on with Lives that to them are no doubt important,— with no Glimmer at all of the Debt they have taken on. That is what I smell'd,— Lethe-Water. One of the things the newly-born forget, is how terrible its Taste, and Smell. In Time, these People are able to forget ev'rything. Be willing but to wait a little, and ye may gull them again and again, however ye wish,— even unto their own Dissolution. In America, as I apprehend, Time is the true River that runs 'round Hell."

"They can't all be like thah'...?"

"Go and see,— and d——'d if I'll share any more Moments like that

with you."

"Eeh! As it suits thee. 'Tis how to suit myself, that's the Puzzle. Quaker Garb will send them into a war-like Frenzy, whilst the Red Coat will strike them sullen and creeping, unable to be trusted at any Scale...?"

"You might go as Harlequin," Mason replies, unsooth'd, "or Punch.”

Dixon has a fair idea of how little Mason cares for this Continent. He himself has been trying to keep an open Mind. Having been a Quaker all his Life, his Conscience early brought awake and not yet entirely fallen back to sleep, he now rides over to the Jail as to his Duty-Station, wearing a Hat and Coat borrow'd of Mason. He is going as Mason.

He sees where blows with Rifle-Butts miss'd their Marks, and chipp'd the Walls. He sees blood in Corners never cleans'd. Thankful he is no longer a Child, else might he curse and weep, scattering his Anger to no Effect, Dixon now must be his own stern Uncle, and smack himelf upon the Pate at any sign of unfocusing. What in the Holy Names are these people about? Not even the Dutchmen at the Cape behav'd this way. Is it something in this Wilderness, something ancient, that waited for them, and infected their Souls when they came?

Nothing he had brought to it of his nearest comparison, Raby with its thatch'd and benevolent romance of serfdom, had at all prepar'd him for the iron Criminality of the Cape,— the publick Executions and Whippings, the open'd flesh, the welling blood, the beefy contented faces of

those whites
        
Yet is Dixon certain, as certain as the lightness he feels

now, lightness premonitory of Flying, that far worse happen'd here, to these poor People, as the blood flew and the Children cried,— that at the end no one understood what they said as they died. "I don't pray enough," Dixon subvocalizes, "and I can't get upon my Knees just now because too many are watching,— yet could I kneel, and would I pray, 'twould be to ask, respectfully, that this be made right, that the Murderers meet appropriate Fates, that I be spar'd the awkwardness of seeking them out myself and slaying as many as I may, before they overwhelm me. Much better if that be handl'd some other way, by someone a bit more credible...." He feels no better for this Out-pouring.

Returning to their Rooms, he finds Mason reclin'd and smoking, looking up guiltily from a ragged Installment of The Ghastly Fop.

"When were tha thinking of leaving this miserable Place?"

"My Saddle-Bags are pack'd, I merely take the time waiting you to satisfy myself that the shockingly underag'd Protasia Wofte has not yet succumb'd, before the wicked Chymickal Assaults of the Ghastly F."

"Whom are we working for, Mason?"

"I rather thought, one day, you would be the one to tell me.”

"My Bags are never unpack'd. May we do this without Haste, avoiding all appearance of Anxiety?"

"I am cool," Mason replies.

In the Instant, both feel strongly drawn by the Forks of Brandywine, Mrs. Harland's Bean Pies and Rhubarb Tarts, the Goose-Down Bedding, the friendliness of the Milk-maids, the clement Routine of Observation. Gently they disengage from Lancaster. Each Milestone passes like another Rung of a Ladder ascended. Behind,— below,— diminishing, they hear, and presently lose, a Voicing disconsolate, of Regret at their Flight.

35

"Facts are but the Play-things of lawyers,— Tops and Hoops, forever a-spin— Alas, the Historian may indulge no such idle Rotating. History is not Chronology, for that is left to Lawyers,— nor is it Remembrance, for Remembrance belongs to the People. History can as little pretend to the Veracity of the one, as claim the Power of the other,— her Practitioners, to survive, must soon learn the arts of the quidnunc, spy, and Taproom Wit,— that there may ever continue more than one life-line back into a Past we risk, each day, losing our forebears in forever,— not a Chain of single Links, for one broken Link could lose us All,— rather, a great disorderly Tangle of Lines, long and short, weak and strong, vanishing into the Mnemonick Deep, with only their Destination in common."

- The Revd Wicks Cherrycoke, Christ and History

"Why," Uncle Ives insists, "you look at the evidence. The testimony. The whole Truth."

"On the contrary! It may be the Historian's duty to seek the Truth, yet must he do ev'rything he can, not to tell it."

"Oh, pish!"

"Tush as well."

' 'Twasn't Mr. Gibbon's sort of History, in ev'ry way excellent, that I meant,— rather, Jack Mandeville, Captain John Smith, even to Baron Munchausen of our own day,— Herodotus being the God-Father of all, in his refusal to utter the name of a certain Egyptian Deity,—

"Don't say it!"

"What,— seek the Truth and not tell it! Shameful."

"Extraordinary. Things that may not be told? Hadn't we enough of that from the old George?"

"Just so. Who claims Truth, Truth abandons. History is hir'd, or coerc'd, only in Interests that must ever prove base. She is too innocent, to be left within the reach of anyone in Power,— who need but touch her, and all her Credit is in the instant vanish'd, as if it had never been. She needs rather to be tended lovingly and honorably by fabulists and counterfeiters, Ballad-Mongers and Cranks of ev'ry Radius, Masters of Disguise to provide her the Costume, Toilette, and Bearing, and Speech nimble enough to keep her beyond the Desires, or even the Curiosity, of Government. As Æsop was oblig'd to tell Fables,