The Prophets(84)

“You would almost think that nigger was a white man, but just out in the sun a little too long,” one said to the others.

Paul smiled and hopped up onto the boardwalk leading to the saloon.

He pushed through the saloon doors, and they creaked back and forth several times before they were still. Inside, it was cooler than he had expected it to be and a shiver shook him before dissipating at the back of his neck. Something sweet scented the air and mixed with the blunt aroma of cigars. People passed in front of him, not recognizing him at first, too caught up in the mood, which, if it could be given a color, would be crimson because it was almost as if the lanterns had been covered in some careless woman’s frock and the caress between the two would dim the whole world, recast it in the light of a fast-pumping heart, or even the blood that shot through veins with such force that one could hear the rush. This, of course, before the heat was too much and everything caught fire, but people were too rapt to notice the world burning around them, ashes mistaken for confetti.

Paul carried that crimson inside him against his will. He promised himself not to let it escape or taint his thoughts. Looking at the women in dresses buttoned to their necks, some with smiles that he didn’t recognize as strained, and the men with jugs in their hands, raising them, occasionally, in the air, awkwardly spilling some of their contents onto giggling bodies as a prelude to what will happen when they leave and step behind the saloon, behind water barrels, hidden by the starlight that couldn’t reach them. Dresses raised up and pants pulled down, and then the gyrations that don’t last very long at all before both parties feel a bit of shame as they don’t look at each other when they part. This was Vicksburg, yes, but it was also the whole world. James didn’t share much about England, Paul thought, but there was so much revealed in his silence and eyes that refused to be looked into. Paul was sure that not even an ocean between them could eliminate the ways and means that connected them.

He found his way to a back corner of the saloon and sat at a small table closest to the wall. Since he had chosen to come without James, who was often the buffer between him and the nosy Vicksburg denizens, he wanted to be as tucked into a corner as he possibly could. He preferred that James remain at Elizabeth this time, ensuring safety because he would be out late as he needed to be. He wanted to contemplate his next move without interference and arrive at his decision without James’s judgments or simplifications. That was his right as a man.

The barmaid made her way through the crowd toward him. He barely acknowledged her beyond a quick dissection that attempted to see, foolishly, what she didn’t uncover, even when she asked what he wanted to drink and even when she returned with a bottle of whiskey and a glass whose cleanliness was suspect.

“I know you,” Paul heard someone say at a distance too close for anyone with the proper manners. “You own that cotton farm over yonder. Halifax, ain’t it?”

Paul turned only slightly to see the skinny man in a hat with a jug of ale in his hand. “Elizabeth Plantation.” He nodded, simply to acknowledge him, hoping he would leave.

“We never see you ’round here without your cousin. Where’s James, too drunk to drink?”

Paul snickered and poured himself a little bit of whiskey and took a gulp.

“Jake. Jake Davis,” the man said, extending his hand to Paul, which Paul sized up and took a moment too long to finally shake. “Can I join you?”

Paul grunted and poured more whiskey into the glass. He shrugged his shoulders. Jake raised a finger and mouthed words for the bartender to send over a bottle of gin.

“Your cousin tells me that you’re looking to sell a couple of studs,” Jake said. “As it turns out, I know a buyer ready to pay you top dollar. Much more than you would get at auction.”

Paul looked at Jake with narrowed eyes. “Hm. And if that’s the case, I wonder why this buyer can’t just attend the auction like anyone else.” He took a swig of whiskey. “And I also wonder what you might want in exchange for introducing me to this buyer.”

Someone had sat down behind the piano, a man with large eyes and a mustache that grew over his mouth. His grin was too big for his face, Paul thought, and made him seem more like a painting of a man that an artist had gotten wrong. The man banged his fingers down on the keys and the first couple of notes had missed their mark. He was drunk, surely, but soon the melody made sense and the pitch was pleasurable. The man sat as upright as he could and barely looked down. Instead, he looked out at the people who had begun to clap and dance.

Paul tapped his foot because the rhythm reminded him of something his mother’s attendants used to sing to lull her and make her forget about the pain that came with wasting away. In one of the moments when she was lucid, she had described it to him, the pain. She said it was like someone was trying to pull her out of the world by folding her lengthwise until there was nothing left. And each fold, she said, felt like a red-hot poker being laid upon her soul.

“It burns,” she said.

Paul gave her water, but it didn’t matter, she said. It would just cloud everything in steam and she needed him to see what happened to her so it wouldn’t happen to him. He didn’t understand what she meant then and he still didn’t understand. The piano notes brought him back and his foot tapped a little faster now. He took another gulp and he started to feel the numbing, the buzzing, the light-headedness that he was looking for to help him forget—no, to help him remember that it was a not a loss that brought him here and there was no use in grieving. James had made it plain and only Paul’s pride had prevented him from seeing that this was merely the price of doing business. And what was a win if it wasn’t a strategy that ended in profit?