Rebels of Babylon

by Parry, Owen

  Sloth is unlike me. Nor does it become a Christian. Yet, I did not make a single inquiry in the neighboring offices, where clerks and captains crowded as thick as maggots on Navy beef. I tapped my way out of the Customs House and into the lively streets and brightened air.

  A fine day had come at last, to speak of the weather. Warm enough it was to forgo an overgarment. Twas prancing April at the birth of February, with the sky blue and cloudless beyond the rigging of the vessels crowding the wharves. The city’s pulse had quickened at the sun’s debut. But there was ice in my blood.

  If I failed to force open the paymaster’s office, I should at least have returned to my hotel, to wait for Mr. Barnaby. I had much to ask of the fellow, not least about that message in the medicine pot.

  Instead, I turned into the “Quarter,” past merchants vending the bottled sins of France, by stationers and milliners, and along the walks where colored bootblacks sang. Even the beggars smiled with sunlit hopes. I wished to think, to “walk a turn or two,” as Mr. Shakespeare put it. To see if I might find my vigor renewed by the freshening air. To bring some order to my teeming mind.

  I would not be an honest man if I claimed no regrets at turning down that promotion. Although the Bible warns us of pride, over and over again, and cautions us that earthly station is naught in the eyes of Heaven, every man likes to see himself raised up. Nor do we shun the admiration of wives and the awe of children, or the gentle qualms of friends at our changed condition. Twas a wonderful thing to rise as high as I already had done, from a John Company private to an American major. Yet, I would have liked that lieutenant-colonelcy.

  Still, I was proud of my firmness. I had resolved to have none of it, to take me home, once and for all, and leave soldiering behind. When the general insinuated that I was a slacker, I barely restrained an impulse to tear off my coat, to shed my unmentionables and let him view the scars upon my person. But I would not be confounded into changing my mind like a girl of seventeen.

  I would go home.

  I hated the morass of death and sin into which my peculiar service had introduced me. At least upon the battlefield, your enemy is clear, as is your purpose. But my duties to our Union had drawn me into circumstances that showed men at their worst. I think I feared infection, as a healthy man dreads entering a plague ward. Or, perhaps, as a man whose own health is doubtful fears the sick.

  It also annoyed me that I had stolen the morning. It betrayed a certain deficiency of character. Selfishly, I had given my first attentions to letters from home, not to my Bible reading. Of late, I had been tussling with the First Epistle of Paul the Apostle to Timothy. Two bits stuck in my mind, from Chapter I. Paul, who was stern, was writing of matters of faith, but I could not help but apply his words to my own lot.

  “Neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies,” Paul tells us. Which made me ask myself if I had not been entranced by all the “fables” told in New Orleans. Paul bids us to have faith and avoid such complications and distractions. He tells us to go forward and not meander. Yet, every hour led down a doubtful path.

  Still more immediate to my task was the charge that “we know that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully … the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners … for manslayers, for whoremongers … for menstealers …”

  The Apostle meant God’s law. I understand that. But might his words not apply as well to the laws laid down by men?

  The bit that troubled me, of course, was “if a man use it lawfully.” How shall we wield the law so that it serves the cause of justice and not power? Does all the justice upon this earth lie solely in the law? I saw how easily I might slip, because of a foul mood or a misunderstanding, and turn justice on its head. Or simply fail to see that which paraded before mine eyes, to see instead what I expected to see or desired to behold, instead of the meaner truth.

  When does the pursuit of justice decline to selfishness, causing more harm than it mends? There’s the rub, as that fellow says in the play. The evil must be apprehended and punished. But how do we select their pursuers with wisdom?

  Was I fit?

  When I thought of the many who had died in the course of my inquiries—not only in New Orleans, but elsewhere and often—I wondered if I had not done more harm than good. I had obeyed the letter of the law. Scrupulously. The cloak of the law had been my constant vanity. But had I violated the law’s spirit? How many of my doings might be ascribed to pride, rather than to an honest sense of duty? Did I care more for approbation than justice?

  In the end, of course, we only have our faith. Although it is not listed among the mortal sins, I wonder if discouragement were not left out through accident or haste.

  I would not bow in the matter of promotion. But I would do my duty as assigned. This last time.

  I wished myself back home in our dear Pottsville.

  My wanderings about those streets were not entirely aimless. I tried to find the shop of Mr. Beyle, the old Frenchman who had told me his “fable” and trusted me with the sword-cane. I worried that he might ask a thing in return that I could not honorably deliver. It seemed too queer by half that such a fellow would trust a stranger without asking a security. I feared he might seek my help in avoiding customs duties, or even in passing contraband through the lines.

  I told myself I should return the cane, although I knew I would not.

  My argument with myself come up to nothing. I could not find the alley that led to his shop. Now, I have found my way with skill in the Pushtoon hills, in secretive Lahore and deep in coal mines. Twas irksome to be stymied by a Frenchman.

  I took me past the St. Louis Hotel, where French holds sway and no one liked my aspect, then rambled from the Mint back to the opera house. I marched from the old market, with its smells of decayed wares and weary fish, past the gloomy Roman church and all the way to Rampart Street, which appeared still more unwholesome. Along my way, I recognized Mr. Champlain’s house. Viewed by daylight, it wanted painting badly.

  I went up one street and down another, with perfect method and discipline. But I could not discover that bent-over Frenchman’s shop. Twas as if I had only dreamed of that room at the back, of the old fellow’s treasures and stories of wild intrigues.

  Giving up, I traipsed back to Canal Street. When I reached that broad expanse, I felt I had re-entered my own country. The shabbiness and languor of the Quarter gave way to well-kept shops. All the famous commercial names the world has come to know crowded together: Hyde & Goodrich, Mallard’s, Levois’s, Clark’s and Laroussini’s. Of course, men of high business did their trade on Tchoupitoulas, on the American side, but Canal Street was the artery in which the old blood mingled with the new, where civilizations tipped their hats to each other. I cannot say why, but the bustle lifted my spirits.

  I arrived back at the St. Charles Hotel to find Mr. Barnaby shackled.

  THIRTEEN

  “CAUGHT HIM TRYING TO BREAK INTO YOUR ROOM,” Captain Bolt announced to me and to every other person in the lobby. “Bold as brass. Trying to jiggle the lock. But we were watching, yes, sir. Just like you said.” His eyes roamed the grand geography of Mr. Barnaby’s person. “Now we know who’s been sneaking around here killing folks.”

  Bolt wore the expression of a dog who has done his trick. Half-witted he was, and that is putting it kindly. I recalled the general’s mention of a powerful, wealthy father, doubtless one of our self-made men of the West. What a sorrow it must have been for such a man to produce so feeble a son. Twas a caution to us all, a tale of generations risen and fallen. It made me think of my son John, about whom I worried helplessly. I prayed my boy would be stalwart, healthy and Christian.

  “Take those irons off him,” I said. I did not say it gently, but spoke in heat. Captain Bolt’s nonsense had drawn a score of spectators in uniform—men who should have been laboring at their posts, instead of loafing about in a hotel. Each had his own opinion, but the pack of them
quieted when they heard my tone. “Do it now!”

  “But … this man’s a … a criminal! We caught him in the act.”

  I looked at Mr. Barnaby, whose face was wild and tear-stained.

  “I only thought you was taking your rest,” he told me, “and didn’t want to be troubled. But I ’ad to trouble you, begging your pardon, sir. Things is topsy-turvy and worse, but the lass is still alive.”

  As he muttered that last phrase, his eyes ripened with another harvest of tears.

  “I told you to take those blasted irons off him,” I said to Bolt, employing language stronger than is my habit.

  The captain nodded at one of his soldiers, a fellow I had not marked before. The lad produced a collection of keys that might have been the pride of the Tower of London.

  “She’s alive, I does believe it,” Mr. Barnaby continued. “I’m certain and sure of it.”

  The soldier fussed about with the chains and manacles. I had never seen a convict so encumbered, not even in India.

  “In good time, Mr. Barnaby, in good time. As for you, Captain Bolt, I countermand my order regarding my room. You and your men will keep your distance from it. In fact, you will not enter this hotel. Nor will you spy on me from the outside of it.”

  “But General Banks—”

  “Raise the matter with the general yourself. Or with your father, boy. It does not signify. But you will not annoy me any longer.” I might have added, “you bloody fool,” but for the presence of those of subordinate rank.

  “That man’s a criminal,” Bolt said, weakly but obstinately.

  “So are we all sinners in the eyes of the Lord. Now get you gone, Captain Bolt. And take great pains that I do not find you near me.”

  Muttering as an officer should not do, he took himself off. Leaving Mr. Barnaby unembarrassed by irons, his soldiers dragged along behind the captain, jostling and unruly.

  A fool placed in authority is a hazard to us all. Yet, men whose rank exceeds their powers of judgement are as common as mules in a stable.

  I led Mr. Barnaby upstairs to my room, which I found in good order. But our purposes were contrary. He wished to babble, while I hoped to calm him. I needed to ask his advice about the message in the medicine jar, about “Queen Manweler” and her purported knowledge. But the good man was excited to incoherence.

  “She’s alive, I swears it.” That was the most intelligible of his remarks. “She’s alive and waiting for us to find ’er.”

  “Sit down, Mr. Barnaby. Sit yourself down and calm yourself. Please sit down.”

  The afternoon was ill favored. The poor fellow obeyed me all too anxiously and plumped down upon the nearest chair, which was too delicately framed for his physique.

  Looking up from the floor amid the splinters, he appeared as shocked as a preacher in a music hall.

  “That ’asn’t ’appened in years,” he said, without attempting to rise.

  I extended my hand to help the fellow up. Whether it was the shock of finding himself seated on the floor, or the subsequent contact of my flesh with his own, he seemed much sobered. Still, I thought it best to talk him round by changing the subject to something much removed. Indeed, I had been preparing my speech for some time.

  I steered him to the bed, which seemed more likely to bear his manly frame, and settled myself upon a chair by the window.

  “Mr. Barnaby,” I began, hoping to distract him from his alarms, “there is a matter which I have longed to discuss with you. I fear I was unjust when we spoke in the spring. I condemned the reading of novels and was uncharitable. Even, I fear, contemptuous.” I cleared my throat and disciplined my posture. “Since that time I have found reason to amend my prejudices. In fact, I have come to view the novel as a beneficial instrument, whose purposes may be salutary, if not misused. I speak, of course, of authors of firm morality. I wish to apologize to you, see. Indeed, I wish to recommend that you expand your reading. Instead of reading about Mr. Pickwick over and over as you have done, I believe you should read a more recent work by Mr. Dickens, Great Expectations. I think you would find it sound.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t do that, begging your pardon. I really couldn’t, sir.”

  “I know you are very fond of Mr. Pickwick. But there is a host of instructive characters, all waiting to introduce themselves. Really, Mr. Barnaby … Pip … Mr. Gargery—who is the very model of a Christian—the spurned old woman, the vain beauty … and Magwitch, who is wonderfully reformed …”

  Mr. Barnaby shook his head, slowly but with decision. “I couldn’t do it, sir. Really, I couldn’t. It’s all too awful and ’orrible. I couldn’t bear to undertake the experience of more suffering. And people always suffers in a novel, sir, if it’s worth the ink and paper.” He battled the damp rebellion in his eyes. “I’ve even ’ad to give up reading about Mr. Pickwick, I ’as. I couldn’t bear it no more, knowing as ’ow all ’is ’appiness is bound to be torn from ’is bosom. Not all Sam Weller’s wits can’t save the poor man, sir. ’E goes to ’is sufferings over and over again. Without end, sir, without end! As if that Charlie Dickens ’as trapped ’im up forever in the pages, so ’e can’t never escape. It ain’t Christian, if a fellow such as me dare point it out. It ain’t near honest to pin a fellow down on the page so’s ’e can’t get up again, to make ’is sufferings eternal, so to speak, without no ’ope of recovery by and by. Even the voodoo lot ain’t cruel as that. At least not most-wise.” His features begged for a kinder world. “A writer fellow must be ’orrible wicked, sir, to go killing folks with ink and making everyone suffer for ’is pleasure. And for profit, sir! The scribblers takes money to make the innocent suffer in their books. It just ain’t right to do a thing like that.”

  “Then read the Holy Bible,” I advised him. Startled I was by the reversal of our positions. I could not think of anything else to say.

  “I’ve tried that, I ’as. Reading the Gospels and what-not. But it’s even worse than taking up a novel. What they done to poor Jesus, after ’e tried so ’ard to be nice to all of ’em. ’E wouldn’t ’urt a fly, and look what they does to ’Im.” His eyes gazed through the window as he recalled his collisions with the word of the Lord. “And as for that Old Testament, the parts what ain’t Bedlam mad are mean enough to keep a fellow from ever trusting ’is neighbor, what with all those wicked kings and smitings and general misbehaviors. And it do take a terrible long time only to tell us we ought to behave ourselves better.” He shook his head in the deep sorrow of memory. “Poor Jesus ends up even worse than Pickwick.”

  “The Gospels,” I attempted to explain, “bear tidings of God’s sacrifice for Mankind.”

  Mr. Barnaby returned his eyes and sagging cheeks to me. “But I doesn’t want ’Im to sacrifice ’Is son, sir. It ain’t ’alf right, that. When the poor lad ain’t done nothing the least bit wrong. It’s a punishment ’e didn’t deserve. And I suspects ’e didn’t ask for it, neither. No, sir. It’s too much like this war of ours, started by the fathers in their pride and fought out with the blood of the lads they sired. There’s been too much of that sort of thing, if you asks Barnaby B. Barnaby. I’d like the Gospels better, I would, if Jesus ended up old and plump and ’appy.”

  IT GREW EVIDENT that, for the present, Mr. Barnaby was no more susceptible to the beauties of our faith than Jimmy Molloy or even Mick Tyrone. Queer it is that so many of the fellows of whom I am fond will not be led to salvation. I hope in time to help them see the light.

  Meanwhile, Mr. Barnaby had calmed sufficiently for me to risk a query or two. I would have liked to begin by asking about the message in the pot, but knew enough of men to see that first he would need to free himself of any news he had about the girl.

  “What’s this about the lass, then?” I asked. “Alive, is it?”

  “I can’t say exactly what’s wherefore, sir. And I can’t say precisely what ’appened. But I know she’s alive, as sure as my father’s own name was Barnaby Barnaby.”

  “But what evidence have you?�
�

  He leaned toward me, making the mattress lament. “It was whispered to me, it was. Whispered in a crowd. I was making my enquiries among the lads I knows in the Faubourg Marigny—about your Fishers of Men, sir—when a negro comes up behind where I can’t see ’im and whispers in my ear, ‘She’s alive, and she ain’t been spoiled.’ But when I turned myself about to confront ’im, sir, all I saw was the back of ’is wooly ’ead.”

  Considering the fellow’s distraught condition, I asked, “Are you certain, then, that all was not imagined? Look you. Many’s the wish so strong it plays with our senses.”

  He shook his head. “On my honor, as a gentleman’s gent and one-time ’aberdasher. If I’m speaking of phantoms, may I never ’ave me appetite back again, sir. May I never see bread nor buttermilk.”

  “All right, man. If such words were, indeed, spoken, then why? Why should anyone tell you such a thing? If not to deceive us?”

  He rolled his shoulders, which were considerably narrower than his hips. “What’s the sense in anything anymore, sir? The whole world’s at sixes and sevens.”

  “But someone may be trying to mislead you. To divert my attention.”

  “But she’s alive, sir! That ought to count for something.”

  “Perhaps it is only a lie,” I cautioned, although I believed myself that the poor lass lived, that the blood splashed about my room was a false concoction. I did not want to raise his hopes too high. “Why should we credit a whisper from a stranger?”

  “Why doubt it, sir? Why doubt it? Ain’t you forever preaching we must ’ave faith? It seems to me, it do, that the odds is even as to whether the fellow meant to do us ill or meant ’er good.”

  “Even so … what would you have me do?”

  At that, he slumped profoundly. “I was ’oping you’d ’ave an idea yourself, sir. For I’m all out. The pockets of my brain are empty, and them what was willing to talk to me was them what had nothing to say. I ain’t come forward an inch with your Fishers of Men, sir. Scared up and down the street, folks are. I never seen the negroes in such fear.”