The Tilted World (17 page)

Lord, I beg of you, I’ve got no reason to live but him.

Lord, you took my mama, you took my Jacob, you spare this child.

More steam, more steam. An hour passed. Two. Was he coughing less? He was. Less of the terrible rattle to it. More like the way a giant bean pod rattles. They attended the lank limbs and above them the storm-tossed pines attended the roof and then there were fewer branches swatting the windows and fewer raindrops falling through the chimney to the hearth and the wind pinched off and they could hear the baby’s breath and there was no doubt it was better, a less harsh tearing of his throat. His eyes were closed, but they rolled beneath the lids in an uneasy, restive half sleep.

Dixie Clay and Ingersoll were sitting cross-legged now beside the crib instead of kneeling. It was three thirty in the morning, and from the woods behind the house an owl hooted. Ingersoll spoke for the first time about something other than Willy.

“Ham—he’s my partner—hates owls.”

“Why?”

“Won’t say. Or he’ll say, but he changes his story every time, and I reckon I ain’t got the real reason yet.”

“No need to be scared of an owl, ’less you’re a dormouse,” she said, and listened as the owl gave again its eight-hooted call. “That’s a swamp owl,” she said. “Swamp owl asks, ‘Who cooks for you? Who cooks for y’all?’ ”

The owl hooted a third time and Ingersoll tilted his ear and said, “Yeah, I can hear that,” looking at her through the clearing gauze of steam.

Dixie Clay looked down at Willy, who was calmer, his chest rising and falling with no tremor, as if it had never been otherwise. “Look how quiet.”

Ingersoll nodded and leaned forward to slip his index finger into the boy’s hand, which curled around it. “Got a grip to him,” he said. “And he doesn’t feel hot.”

Dixie Clay took the baby’s other hand. He felt normal.

The kettle rattled and Dixie Clay rose to turn it off and then dropped two chamomile tea bags inside to steep while Ingersoll excused himself to use the bathroom. They both returned to their spots beside the crib, and as she handed him his tea she asked, “How’d you know he was sick?”

He told her that he was on his way to find Ham and guard the levee because explosives had been stolen and they were worried about saboteurs. He was almost there when the Harper boy ran by calling had anyone seen the doctor or Jesse Holliver. Saying that Jesse’s wife had a strange baby at her house who had the diphtheria and wasn’t gonna make it. One of the levee workers yelled that Jesse was in Greenville.

“Greenville,” Dixie Clay spat. “And the doctor?”

“At the Bradford plantation, easing Mrs. Bradford’s ague.”

Bradford was about thirty miles south of Hobnob, Barry Bradford the richest landowner in the county. Dr. Devaney was a Dry, his wife, Jenny, head of the Anti-Saloon League. Dixie Clay saw it now, Dr. Devaney earning duck hunting privileges in the Bradford swamp—why would he rush to a bootlegger’s house to treat a dying baby that might snatch him into death as well?

But this man came. She studied him as he blew on his tea. His dark hair hung forward in a wedge, blocking his brown eyes. His red shirt was dirty at the cuffs. A large torso, thick shoulders, long legs crossed. A man like that would enjoy a big supper. Who cooks for you?

She asked, “How’d you know how to help?”

“The war.” He shrugged. “I was friends with a medic who taught me some, but he was killed in the Meuse-Argonne, in September 1918. Most of our battalion was. Another battalion was skeletonized and more medics were sent, but before they arrived, we all learned a bit of medicine. A bit more than we’d hoped to learn.”

He grew quiet and they sipped tea. The baby opened his eyes and gave a little whimper and turned his head, and when he saw Dixie Clay, he gazed at her. She gazed back. She thought,
You have to teach a baby most everything but how to love.
She made the
bbbbb
sound that Willy liked so well. Then she fetched him a fresh bottle and held it to his mouth and his lips closed around it and sucked a bit and swallowed and then slowly his lids drooped and closed in what was sleep, sleep not death, and his lips released the bottle, his tongue still flexing a time or two.

Ingersoll said, “Seems like other than this you two been getting on all right.”

She shrugged. “He’s perfect.” There was another pause. Then, “Amity told you I lost my firstborn.” She looked for confirmation and he nodded.

She continued, “He died. Of scarlet fever. Jacob. I was twenty.” She paused between sentences because she wasn’t used to talking this way, or talking. She laid a hand on Willy’s forehead, the hair no longer slick but dried into wisps, longer at the ears.

“Before Jacob died,” she said, stroking Willy’s head, “I’d sometimes feel a love for him so strong it almost scared me. Like I had to grit my teeth to keep from biting him. And I’d think about women who’d adopted babies. And I’d think that there was no way they could love those babies like I loved my flesh and blood. But now I know better.” She’d directed this slow speech to Willy’s face but looked up at Ingersoll now, his dimple pulling an asterisk in his scruffy cheek. She wondered how growing up in an orphanage changed a man.

After a few minutes, she went on. “My mother used to tell me a funny story. She said that when I was four, and she was pregnant with my brother, Lucius, she asked where I thought I came from. And I told her, ‘I was a little angel in the sky on a cloud with all the other angel babies and God pointed to you and said, Who wants this lady for a mommy? and I raised my hand.’ ”

He gave a chuckle, and Dixie Clay smiled and shook her head. It occurred to her that this was not only the first time she’d talked about Jacob but the longest she’d talked to anyone besides Jesse since leaving Alabama. So many words, like a net they were weaving.

The cloudy dawn brightened the room so Dixie Clay rose to turn off the electric light and when she returned to her spot, still warm, it occurred to her that Ingersoll’s spot would be cooling soon. She suffered a foretaste of loneliness.

“Ingersoll—” she began, awkwardly, her gaze trained on the baby. “I was thinking, you should take the mandolin. I can’t play it, you can play it, you should take it. I wish”—she cast her eyes toward the ceiling—“I wish I could do something to thank you. Without you I don’t know what woulda happened. I—” She paused, and drew her breath in, and the sleeping baby broke wind just then, releasing a man-loud whoosh. It startled them both and the air burst from her pressed lips, which made him laugh which made her laugh which made him laugh. Something was punctured in the night and the strain leaked out in laughter, which doubled back and rose again like musical phrases, like singing in the round, like the hoot owl’s hooting, Dixie Clay wanting to apologize for laughing but laughing too hard to do so, him laughing deep and loud, the pure musical ha-ha-ha of it—as if he’d read how to laugh in a primer—keeping her laughing. That nothing was funny made her laugh harder, until tears rained from both of them, he was pounding his thigh and she was bent over, stomach-weak, surrendered, resting her forehead at last on the baby bed, wheezy and tapering off into a giggle, then silence, then a giggle.

When she could raise her head, Ingersoll was looking at her and he reached slowly across the baby bed and she felt his fingertip brush her cheek and he lifted a tear and slowly drew his finger back.

“You would have made such a good mother,” he said.

“What?” The smile dying from her voice.

“What’s going to happen to him? Don’t you worry about that?”

“What—what are you . . .”

He was looking down into his mug, his dimple flexing behind his whiskers, like he was biting down on his thoughts. “I wouldn’t have given him to you. If I had known.”

“Known what?”

“C’mon, Dixie Clay.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re a bootlegger.” He seemed to spit the word. “I’m sorry, but it’s not fair, it’s . . . selfish, taking a baby when you’ll have to leave him—”

“Leave him?—”

“You can’t keep him in jail, Dixie Clay—”

Her lie sounded desperate, even to her: “You mean—you heard about Jesse, not me, I don’t know—”

“I saw it, Dixie Clay. I saw the still, I know what I saw, I know whose handiwork that is—”

“You—you—what business of yours, snooping—”

“I’m a revenuer”—her breath snagged—“so it
is
my business, arresting people like you.”

“People like me.” She gave a bitter snort. “You don’t know a goddamn thing about me.”

“I know enough. Know enough to know you shouldn’t have taken a baby when you won’t be able to keep him.”

“What’s this about—are you threatening me? Let me guess: Jesse bribed you, but you want even more money?”

He winced.

“You revenue agents are all the same. Trifling, and corrupt.”

“I’m leaving.”

“Good, get out!”

He tucked his legs, climbed a little stiffly to his feet.

“Get out of my house!”

He moved to the door, bent to pick up his saddlebag where he’d dropped it when he’d first come in those hours, that lifetime ago. She followed, screaming, not caring if she woke Willy: “Get out! Get out! Get out!”

She yanked the door open and he whirled around to exit and instead drew his shoulders up. She wondered if he saw someone—Jesse, home at last?—but behind him she saw not a thing that could make him start so, except for fog swirling over the landscape, draping the hedge like a pall on a casket.

What he did next she didn’t understand or expect. Like a bear the big man raised his fists and gave a cry, something wordless and anguished that reverberated in the crystallized air. He turned to face her and his darting eyes were also a wild animal’s, trapped, and he reached—she flinched, thinking he was going to grab her wrist, but instead he grabbed the wrist of the mandolin, leaning against the doorjamb, and held it overhead like a woodchopper’s axe and crashed it down onto the floor, where it smashed with a great throaty moan. Twice more he smashed it, and fangs of mahogany flew by Dixie Clay’s face until he held nothing more than the curled neck with a few limp strings attached to the tailpiece. This he flung against the wall.

Then he crossed the gallery, picking up his hat and his slicker, and ran down the steps toward his horse, lying on its forelegs under the ash tree, wearing its saddle from the night before, nickering in the fog.

Chapter 11

W
here the hell were you?” Ham asked. He was sitting on his bed facing the window overlooking the square.

Ingersoll stepped into the room and lowered his pack to the floor and shut the door. Ham still hadn’t turned around. His shoulders were rigid, stretching horizontal lines in his undershirt.

Ingersoll tried to think how to answer. “I was . . .” Hopeless. All the interrogations he’d seen Ham conduct, all the men squirming and eventually confessing. Ingersoll just needed to tell it now.

His dread had started the moment he stepped outside Dixie Clay’s house. Stepped outside into the drowned cloud, the fog the saboteurs had been waiting for. The hairs on his forearms raised and not just from the chill.

He’d leaped onto Horace and kicked his ribs, the saddle soaked through, water gushing down the horse’s ribs as Ingersoll leaned forward to help the horse uphill. They nearly fell more than once as Ingersoll pushed the horse harder and harder on the muddy road, the fog clearing a bit as the sun climbed, but his dread not clearing. He arrived at Hobnob around seven and though the shops should be closed, the square was clustered with black raincoats, like a murder of crows, flapping and gesturing, exclamations, ejaculations: “The sheriff said—” “House shock troops on the barges with the prisoners from Parchman—” “But if we billet the National Guard in boxcars, we—” “Blow a hole clear to China.” Ingersoll knew enough to know.

“I was—” he said again.

“You was what?” Ham said.

“I was coming to the levee, coming to find you,” said Ingersoll, “when somebody told me the baby was sick.”

“What baby?”

Ingersoll didn’t say anything. Out Ham’s window, the courthouse flag was snapping. The halyard had come loose and the clip was clanging against the pole.

“Oh, Jesus, Ingersoll. That orphan baby? But you dumped it in Greenville.”

“No, I tried to, but I couldn’t. I gave him to someone in Hobnob, and . . . look, Ham, I sent a boy to the levee to tell you I wasn’t coming.”

“What boy? There was no boy.”

“The Harper boy. Ham, look, the baby was sick, what was I supposed to do?”

“So you’re a doctor, Ing?”

“The doctor wouldn’t go.”

“What business of that is yours?”

“I felt like I had to, Ham.”

“So to save one mutt of an orphan you risk a whole town?” Ham rose now and turned, his face red as his sideburns. He roared, “A whole goddamn town?”

Ingersoll was silent. He could not explain the choice he’d made.

A muffled click came from Ham’s giant fist and he opened it and looked. There was the bone grooming comb snapped in two, a sad skeleton on Ham’s pink palm. He threw it against the wall where it bounced onto the floor.

“What happened on the levee?”

Ham considered him.

“Ham? Please.”

Ham looked to be struggling, but Ingersoll could see he wanted to tell. So Ham began, describing how he’d ridden to the levee as dark fell. The dirt road at the top was about twelve feet wide, a guard stationed every three hundred yards, which seemed plenty close enough in the day but now the aureoles of lantern light seemed distant stars, the men’s coughs or calls paltry things compared to the river’s roar. Ham rode along the line of volunteers, most from the Elks or the American Legion, some he knew already from Club 23. Each man hunched over his cigarette, collar raised against the spray, nipping occasionally from his flask, stamping his boots. So sharp, the wind. So cold, the foam flicked from the fingertips of waves.

Fog sheeted in about 3
A.M.
Ham stayed put, knowing Ingersoll would be on his way, knowing trusty sharpshooter Ingersoll would be on his way all right. So the fog got thicker, and Ham kept riding, wishing he weren’t posing as an engineer but was a lieutenant again with soldiers to follow his commands. He was approaching the station guarded by Roberto Guccione, the town’s favorite dago, like a pet he was, barely spoke English but let the levee workers eat free spaghetti at his restaurant. Through a portal in the fog, Ham saw the hazy shadows of three forms; three men where there should have been one. As he kicked his horse and reached for his Winchester, he heard a terrible muffled scream, and the smaller form, Roberto, dropped. Thud of his body hitting the ground.

Ham pulled his horse to a stop and lifted his leg over the horse’s neck and slid off, edged away so the horse wouldn’t kick him. He crouched and aimed at the two fat charcoal profiles.

Even then, said Ham, even then he hesitated, knowing Ingersoll would appear at his elbow and want to get the first shot. But Ingersoll hadn’t appeared. So Ham trained his Winchester at the closer of the two profiles and shot and levered and shot again and levered again and shot a third time, and this bullet sent one man lifting onto his toes, and with a strange high gurgle, he crumpled sideways into the shadow. The other man had jumped into the river at the first shot, and as Ham ran forward he heard an outboard motor, spookily close in the magnifying fog, revving and spluttering, and from either side of him and from the Arkansas bank too came the pandemonium of men unloading their rifles in fear and fury, having no target but not stopping until their guns were empty.

Ham lifted Roberto’s lantern from its pole and crossed to the man he’d shot, bottom half of his face torn away, revolver still in the straining belt hemisphering his enormous belly. He yanked the gun out and slid it beneath his own belt, the metal warmed from the dead man’s flesh. Then he examined Roberto. There was a slit in his neck like a wide red grin, and blood bubbling with a snoring sound that, even as Ham watched, wound down and stopped.

And that’s how they found Ham, the men who came running, guns drawn, who might have shot, who might have killed him right then, but didn’t because someone yelled, “Don’t shoot, he’s one of ours.”

Beside Ham’s size 11 right boot, illuminated by the lantern, four bundles, thirty-two sticks in all, of dynamite. And blasting caps and a spool of wire.

Ingersoll closed his eyes. It was a blow as much as if from Ham’s palm. “Wait—four bundles—that means—”

“Let me help you with the subtraction, Ing. Thirty pounds of explosives from the case unaccounted for. So they can try again.”

“Oh, Jesus.”

“And then Captain Trudo comes huffing up,” continued Ham. “ ‘Who the hell are you?’ he’s wanting to know.”

“ ‘I’m an engineer,’ I say. ‘An engineer, sent to evaluate the levee.’ And this tall, skinny guy I’d won a poker hand from at Club 23 steps forward and says, ‘That’s true. He’s an engineer, him and his partner both.’ And all the fellows are nodding. And you want to know what happens then, you want to know who shows up right about then? My partner of eight-plus years? No, not my partner of eight-plus years. Coming along the road from town and angling up to the levee is a Ford, and Jesse damn Holliver steps out.”

Ingersoll’s face was bowed into his hands, his fingers grasping the sides of his cheeks.

Ham continued, “Jesse Swan Holliver, that little . . .”—Ham was actually searching for a word, that was how angry he was—“dandy, that fop, that daffodil, in his frock, and Jesse says, ‘I’m just now back from Greenville. What’s happened here?’ and the poker guy tells him how I’m an engineer who’d shot the saboteur. And Jesse says, ‘How you know that, Tucker? How you know he’s only an engineer? He seems to know a lot about munitions.’ And all the men grow quiet and look at me. Jesse asks Tucker, ‘How long he been around?’ and Tucker gets thoughtful and says, ‘Only a few weeks, I reckon.’ And Jesse says, ‘How well you know him?’ and ‘I guess I don’t,’ reckons Tucker. Then Jesse turns to the captain. ‘I wonder where this partner of his could be,’ says Jesse, and leans over the levee to scan the water, peer off in the direction of the boat.”

Ingersoll was shaking his head, still grasped in his hands.

“So the captain turns to me, ‘Where is this partner of yours?’ Which is a hell of a good question.”

From somewhere below them, the kitchen, came a clattering from a dropped tray, something smashing, a sound Ingersoll couldn’t help but interpret as angry. Had he left dirt clods? Eaten an accidental banana? Fallen in love?

“And so Captain Trudo says, ‘I’m taking you in.’ ”

Ingersoll looked up from the net of his fingers.

“And he gets out his fucking bracelets.”

“No.”

“Oh, yes. Oh, yes he does. He cuffs me and shoves me down the levee toward the station when Jesse yells, ‘Stop.’ ”

Ham paused and even as Ingersoll endured the pause, both desperate and dreading to learn what came next, he admired Ham’s ability to pace a story.

Ham continued, “So the captain yanks my cuffs to stop me. And Jesse says, ‘While you got him so accommodating, I’ve a hankering to know this fella’s real name. Thinks it’s cute not to say what Ham stands for.’ And the captain says, ‘That’s easy enough to ascertain,’ and reaches into my back pocket and starts pulling out my wallet.”

“Oh, Jesus, Ham.”

“So I say, ‘Okay, Jesse, I’ll ’fess, no need to go snooping around a man’s wallet, Ham stands for—’ ”

Ingersoll found himself leaning forward.

“And at that moment, the captain flips open my wallet and says, ‘Well, I’ll be damned. This fellow’s a federal revenue agent.’ ”

“Oh, Jesus.”

“And all the men kinda rear back from me. That guy Tucker is taking a swig of a half-pint and midswallow just drops it to the grass and the whiskey burbles out. And I’m looking around and it’s like somebody pulled the curtains over each face. Except Jesse’s, of course. That face is always curtained off. And Captain Trudo isn’t quite sure what to do, but he knows he can’t arrest me now. So he gets out his keys and takes the bracelets off and says, ‘You find any stills around these parts? ’Cause we ain’t got any. If we did, I’d know about it.’ And I say, ‘No, ain’t found shit and don’t expect to.’ By now the men are all drifting away, whispering. The captain says, ‘I didn’t know we had an undercover agent among us. You might have alerted me, I wouldn’t have had to blow your cover.’ And because there’s nothing else I can say, I say, ‘You’re right about that, sir, and I’m sorry.’ And Trudo nods and says, ‘I still want to talk to your partner, the other agent. Tell him to come by the station. First thing. I’m sure he has a good alibi.’ ”

Ham’s gray eyes were like ball bearings under his bushy orange eyebrows. “Well, do you?”

Ingersoll took a breath and started at the beginning, telling Ham about giving the baby to Dixie Clay and not knowing she was a bootlegger. Learning that Jesse was her husband. Seeing her by the stream. Finding the still. Figuring out she was operating it.

Ham shook his head. “I’ll be damned. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I don’t know. I’m sorry. It’s just—I hate to think what’s gonna happen to that baby when we break this case.”

Ham turned back toward the window and pressed his fingertips to the glass. “Jesus, Ing.”

Ingersoll picked at the pompoms on the bedspread and thought about meeting Ham nine years ago. When Ingersoll’s battalion had been crushed early in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, and the remnants of another battalion joined his, he had a new lieutenant, and that was Ham Johnson. Ingersoll had made corporal by then, probably could have risen higher, but the fact that he hadn’t gone to school past the age of sixteen was sometimes apparent, not because he didn’t know troop movement or bullet triangulation or code breaking but because he didn’t know the prep schools the officers threw about.

When the new lieutenant arrived, he sent a message to Ingersoll hunkered in the trench, scratching his body lice, demanding he report at Lieutenant Johnson’s tent at 0600 hours. Ingersoll did, wondering why he was in trouble, standing at attention while the lieutenant sat in a field chair on a rectangle of Oriental rug, peeling an apple with a knife. When he was done, he dropped the peel to the rug and stuck the knife between two of his brass buttons and scratched a little, appraising Ingersoll. Ingersoll gazed straight, over Johnson’s head. Behind the lieutenant, in his tent, a grunt was rolling up mosquito netting.

The lieutenant removed the knife from between his buttons, examined it, then wiped the blade against his trousers and set it down. Finally he spoke. “So, you’re ole Dead-Eye Orphan.”

“Yes, sir.” Sooner or later everyone heard the story. When Ingersoll had arrived for basic at Camp Grant in Illinois along with the other enlisted men, they were introduced to the sergeant-instructor on the parade ground who yelled at them about the working components of their rifles, the bolt, the breech, the upper and lower sling swivels, demonstrated how before resting they’d stack their rifles into a teepee to keep them clean and ready to grab. Then they practiced shooting. When it was Ingersoll’s turn, shooting from sandbags at a hundred yards, each of his ten bullets (as well as the three warmers) hit the target, and Sergeant Karkos halted the exercise to yell, “Most of you apes can’t even hit the target! This soldier has a six-inch cluster. That’s how it’s done, boys!”

“Show-off,” said his bunk mate, a dairy farmer from Wisconsin, as they walked to the latrines. “Just ’cause you spent your youth hunting coons don’t mean you’ll have the courage to do it when it’s Fritz.” He apologized the next day, and later they became friends, and Ingersoll never told him that he’d never been hunting, never held a gun until the government thrust one into his hands. But it felt right there, that bolt-action ten-inch twist star-gauged Springfield, that was what the sergeant had said when handing them out, and Ingersoll liked the description and remembered it. The gun was like his guitar: a thing that had power because of the hole in the middle. Maybe like Ingersoll, too, for that matter.

Basic had lasted six weeks, and in Ingersoll’s fifth week he was in the mess tent filling his canteen with weak coffee when he heard the air-raid siren, though there was no drill planned. He ran out of the tent and looked to the sky: no bombers, no shrieking shells, though the officers were huddled, gesticulating, the camp commander at the center.

“What’s going on?” a private behind Ingersoll hissed to another who was running from the officers’ tent with a spool of telegraph wire. “There!” the private yelled, thrusting his chin at the water tower, which loomed like a giant mushroom. “Someone’s climbing it, he’s going to poison the water supply!” Ingersoll could see a dark shape, pack on his back, scrambling up the metal rungs, silhouetted against the dusk, and thought of “Itsy Bitsy Spider,” which Sister Mary Eunice used to sing to the wee ones, twisting her fingers up an imaginary web.