Route 666
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Still-smouldering hearths allowed smoke to trickle from chimneys into the sky. The party had little time. These sod-busters would rise with the sun.
Hendrik dismounted. His leg thrilled with pain as he came down on the hard ground, but he did not cry out.
IV
Boston, 1843
The man in the mirrored glasses claimed to be of the Ute, but Hendrik knew he was no Plains Indian. He might be a native of Araby or a Chinaman or an inhabitant of the moon, but he was not from the West. He could just about pass, with his thin face and leather skin, but he had about him a quality not of the Americas.
The back room at Samuel’s Tavern was usually reserved for dice or cards. If extra payment were made, one could conduct business with Molly or her sisters in the relative warmth and comfort of this place rather than in the foul-smelling alley outside. The confined space was infernally hot. The only light came from the stove, which cast glowing bars of red on faces and walls.
Fires burned in the Ute’s spectacles.
The company was much reduced. Hendrik, Joseph, Eddy. And the Ute. Hendrik was in a fog as to how this party had assembled, and what bargain had been struck between them.
Now, Eddy and Joseph leaned forwards, hellfire striping their attentive faces, each fixed upon the bogus Indian as if held rapt by a speech. In fact, the Ute was silent.
The drink had burned out of Hendrik’s brain, leaving behind a ruin of aches. Midnight was long past but dawn was a way off.
From inside his jacket, the Ute produced a book. He laid it, open, on a table. The pages were covered in neat symbols, cipher or foreign script. The ink must be silvered, for the writing caught firelight and seemed to waver on the page.
“Words of fire,” Joseph breathed. “The Truth is written in flame.”
Eddy shook his head, denying something.
“Do not reject this revelation, brothers,” Joseph said.
The Ute took off his fabulous spectacles and laid them on the book. His eyes were deeply shadowed, lending his upper face the empty-socketed look of a skull.
Joseph reached out for the spectacles and picked them up. Hendrik wanted to tell his brother to throw the damned things on the floor and stamp them into fragments.
The Ute turned to look directly at Hendrik. Minute sparks shone in his eyes.
Hendrik was pinned to his chair. The heat hung heavy on him.
Joseph set the spectacles on his face and adjusted them. He gasped in amazement. Tears emerged from behind the reflecting circles and trickled down his cheeks.
“I see,” he breathed, “I see… Truth.”
He snatched up the book and turned pages, as if absorbing paragraphs of sense in a second. He hurried on, nodding and laughing and sighing. Lenses flashed as his head bobbed.
“Lord,” Joseph said, not profaning the name, but invoking, praying…
Hendrik did not know what was happening. The room was stifling, heat squeezing the head and pinioning the limbs. Eddy was intent on Joseph, impatient for his turn.
The Ute sat as still as a stone.
Joseph had been well up on his scriptures as a child, but possessed of a wild streak. He had run with the barefoot and savage Irish. Their parents, respectably Dutch-speaking after generations in the New World, had expected to be shamed by him. But it was their first-born, abandoning law books for the West, who had proved the greater disappointment. They were both dead now, buried in a cold and crowded churchyard.
After minutes that stretched like hours, Joseph took the spectacles from his face and, hands not shaking, laid them down. He was transformed. Hendrik saw a new calmness. His brother had won battles with himself. He beamed like a happy baby, but his smile was frightening.
The Ute’s gaze swivelled, neck moving like a snake, and he looked to Eddy.
The poet swallowed and took the glasses. He put them on, looking not at the book but at its owner. For a moment, he stared the Ute full in the face.
A scream began deep in Eddy’s chest and exploded from his mouth with the force of a cannon-blast. In the tiny room, it was as loud as thunder, as high as the wind.
Eddy stood, stool falling away, and staggered as if smitten. Hendrik was on his feet, arms out to catch the poet. He met surprising resistance. The little man fought like a bobcat, screeching as if dying.
“What is it?” Hendrik asked, seeing his own face in the mirrors over Eddy’s eyes. “What do you see?”
They fell against the stove and Hendrik felt searing pain in his hip. The poet broke loose and twisted around, the skirts of his coat flying, upsetting the table. Hendrik smelled his own scorched clothes. The Ute seemed mildly interested in the commotion. Joseph was still transported to the heavens. Words scattered among Eddy’s screams.
“The maelstrom at the heart of all,” he babbled. “The colossal maelstrom, always sucking, devouring, destroying! The void inside the night’s maw, where darkness and decay and death hold illimitable dominion over all…”
The poet threw himself against a door, his whole body shaking, and battered with his fists. He was snivelling and sobbing, liquid tracks pouring down his face. The latch was displaced and the door swung outwards into the alley.
“Tekeli-li” Eddy screamed, a birdlike jabber, “tekeli-li, tekeli-li, tekeli-li…”
A blast of icy air blew into the room, killing the flame in the stove. The heat was exhausted at once. Hendrik’s face stung with the sudden cold.
Eddy was a shadow in the doorway, struggling to free himself of invisible things he found in his hair and clothes. In his ululation, pain mixed with panic.
“Tekeli-li, tekeli-li, tekeli-li…”
The poet turned and ran, caroming off the wall opposite and tearing away into the night. The Ute bent down and picked up the spectacles. Eddy had dropped them. Hendrik heard him in flight, a clattering of boots on cobbles and an extended garble of terror.
Hendrik stood in the alley with the Ute, struggling with his own panic. The poet’s nonsense had in it something of the screeches of the Seminoles, the howling of wolves, the drone of the Mexican degilello. They were all the sounds of death. Moonlight fell all around. Hendrik looked to the stranger, who held out his spectacles, offering them with a sly curve of a smile.
Eddy had fallen silent or was beyond earshot. Joseph was alone inside. Hendrik looked at the glasses, so odd and innocent in the Ute’s weathered hand.
The offer was still there.
V
Utah Territory, 1854
Brother Carey stripped to the waist, arranging his neatly unpegged clothes in a parcel which he fastened to his saddle. His skin was pink in the early light, unmarked. Hendrik’s own chest and limbs were a map of his campaigns, each engagement marked with a scar.
The Paiute waited patiently, holding aloft torches whose growing flames were barely visible in the early morning light. The Ute laid out the pots of paint on an unrolled skin.
Carey finger-streaked his face blue and red, and drew designs on his chest, circling his nipples with angry eyes, drawing a toothy mouth on his belly. He looked like no sort of Indian Hendrik had ever faced.
Pretending to be savages was an American tradition, dating at least to the Boston Tea Party. The pretence masked a deeper truth. Europe was used up; now, America was the battleground of Darkness and Light. His brother had wrapped the whole thing around the Cross of Jesus, but Hendrik knew this was an older conflict and that, in ways he would never understand, it was nearing its end.
Armageddon would be a city in America. The foundations were already marked out with lines of blood.
The Ute squatted by the paints. Hendrik could see his own savage face reflected in twin miniature. He was painted like death, face blackened, black outlined with red.
Today, the Brethren of Joseph and their allies, the people of the Paiute, would ride against the invader. This was the Brethren’s territory, no matter how the claim might be disputed. If the action meant war with the United States of America, then the Joseph
ites were prepared to take arms and protect themselves.
The Brethren had been provoked sorely. And the Gentiles had fired warning shots at the Indians.
Satisfied with his war paint, Hendrik returned to his horse. He fastened his belt around his waist. His bowie knife hung heavy on one hip, his .36 Colt was holstered on the other. In a pouch that hung from the back of his belt, his razor nestled.
In all the meetings, the Elders had agreed that the Gentiles were to be run off the land. A good fright should accomplish that. There was no reason to harm them.
No reason.
Clegg inspected the new-painted Brethren, commending them as compleat heathens.
Hendrik took his hat from the horn of his saddle and set it on his head, then mounted his horse. The Indians called the Josephites Black Bonnets. A torch was given to him; he held it aloft, a signal for all. He looked up at the sky and saw no birds. He scanned the horizon and saw no strangers.
“Them Gentiles won’t know what’s hit,” Brother Carey said, laughing with no humour, “they’ll keep running till they’ve sea around their boots.”
Hendrik let his torch fall, flame slicing through the air…
VI
1843–1848
After that night in Samuel’s Tavern, Joseph Shatner was a reformed man. He permanently and publically abjured drink and dissipation. He persuaded Molly O’Doul to join him in abstinence. Saintliness spread to Molly’s sisterhood. Hendrik took the pledge for his own reasons but found little comfort in purity.
Joseph still preached; now his sermons were conducted in chapels and meeting halls, not ale-houses and street-corners. He spoke, eyes burning with the fire of the Lord, of the revelation that had come unto him. The Book was opened. Shining cities would rise in the West, dedicated to the glory of God. Sin was to be obliterated utterly.
The Ute was perpetually in attendance, hanging back, never speaking. Most took him for Joseph’s manservant. He seemed to smile now, though it was impossible to gauge whether his stone features actually changed their habitual configuration. He still wore the spectacles.
Always, the offer was there for Hendrik. He could look through the spectacles, like Joseph, like Eddy.
How bad could it be? Joseph had found purpose in his vision, had seen the path to a shining city. He had followers. His congregation donated money. Joseph was better clothed now, always in black. His followers copied his style, his distinctive hat. Even more women clustered around him. Many of the better sort. Sister Molly was among the most respectable of the Brethren of Joseph. Joseph had renounced carnality, but Molly had something of the position of a consort. In order to get to Joseph Shatner, many of the men and women who would most have scorned Molly O’Doul had now to deal with the former drab.
Hendrik made inquiries about Eddy. The fellow had, as he had insisted, some small measure of fame in the world of letters. Having returned to Philadelphia post-haste, his pen was more active than ever. His genius flowed unabated, though it was reckoned morbid and unhealthy. He could not have been seriously harmed by what he had seen, what he imagined he saw, through the marvellous mirror-glasses.
So why was Hendrik afraid?
The Church grew. Brothers wore black frock coats and circular hats, sisters looked like widows in black bonnets and smock-dresses. There were many such sects in New England, all apparently thriving, talking of Utopian communities to be built in the unpeopled West, or giving dates in the imminent future which would mark the Day of Judgment. Creeds flourished: Mormons, Mennonites, Danites, Millerites, Hittites, Shakers, Esoterics, Hutteriah Brethren, Quakers, Agapemonists, Seventh Day Adventists. But, Hendrik knew, the Josephites were different. Even the Mormons, who had their own spectacles, were less plagued by miracles than the faith founded by his brother.
When Hendrik and Joseph reoccupied their father’s town house, it became the headquarters of the Brethren. Between sermons and gatherings, Joseph Shatner shut himself away with the Ute. Hendrik tried not to know what passed between them but Joseph could not resist sharing the wonders that were disclosed. He was setting everything down in his own testament, The Path of Joseph.
Joseph tried to share his revelation. His Brethren were receptive to the message, so why not his brother? If only Hendrik would look through the marvellous glasses, then he would truly understand.
Hendrik remembered Eddy’s cries. If Joseph had seen a shining city, what had assaulted the eyes of the poet?
“Tekeli-li, tekeli-li, tekeli-li…”
The echo of Eddy’s babble resounded in Hendrik’s skull.
He considered setting out for California, but something kept him in Boston. Perhaps he knew that no matter how far he went, the Church of Joseph would spread to encompass him. His responsibilities, however they had been neglected in the past, were with his brother. He was the head of the family, even if Joseph was head of the Brethren.
The Word of Joseph spread. The Path of Joseph was published, despite vandalism at the contracted printers, and disseminated among believers. Converts flocked to Massachusetts and many found temporary accommodation in the Shatner household. Sister Molly presided over chaste dormitories. Rules were handed down: buttons were forbidden as fripperies, coffee was condemned as an impure stimulant, “thee” and “thou” were required forms of address.
Rumours spread. Irresponsible gossips alleged Josephites practised animal sacrifice, that The Sisters were held as communal property by the Brethren, that Gentile children were kidnapped into the Church. These absurdities reached the less scrupulous periodicals, who hastened them into print. Wild stories gained great currency and idlers competed to embroider the legends with grotesque frills. It was said the Christ that Joseph Shatner worshipped had goat’s horns.
Gradually, public meeting places ceased to be available for Josephite gatherings. Brethren were abused in the streets, sometimes severely, and the Shatner household was daubed with paint and filth by unknown vandals. Local ordinances were passed limiting the rights of Josephites to worship, to own property, to hold public office. With each slight, Joseph became more sure of himself.
Hendrik remained on the Council of the Brethren but the true inner circle was restricted. It consisted of Joseph Shatner and the Ute. Hendrik tried to learn more of the Ute. Little that was concrete emerged, though Hendrik consulted frontiersmen who concurred with him that the man in the mirrored glasses was unlike any Indian who ever walked.
In the basement of the Shatner mansion, Joseph built a private chapel. He passed many nights there, secluded with the Ute. Peculiar smells seeped upwards and filled the house. When Hendrik asked his brother what went on in his night rituals, Joseph told him he was seeing further, piercing more mysteries, rending aside the veil…
“You wear the spectacles?”
Joseph nodded and held his brother by the shoulders. “Thou too must look through the lenses, Hendrik. The Revelation was for us three. Poor mad Poe could not understand what he saw. Only I have accepted the gift of sight. It is not too late to see the city, my brother.” Hendrik shook Joseph off.
In September 1846, Hendrik returned late one night to find the house afire, an angry mob gathered around. As he made his way through the crowd, Hendrik heard stories from all sides. He could not believe a fourth of them.
Recently there had been a rash of disappearances among children of good families. Investigating the crimes, the authorities, acting upon anonymously provided information, had breached Joseph Shatner’s cellars and surprised him in his chapel in the midst of some rite. Hendrik heard a dozen obscene accounts of the scene that had been disclosed. Two children, allegedly, had been recovered.
At the edge of the crowd, watching the house burn, he found the Ute. Hendrik started forwards, but the Ute gripped him by the arm and held him back. The upper windows blew out with the heat, showering glass onto the cobbles. As they fell, the shards sparkled with fire. Hendrik heard his brother calling for him. Joseph, hatless and bloody, was in the grip of stern officers.
Two empty-faced children, swaddled in blankets, stood with one of the officers, regarding the fire with no especial interest. They were Joseph’s accusers.
Finally, Joseph was wrestled into a closed cart. As it trundled off, mobs pounded on the cart and Josephites pounded on the mobs. Running fist-fights spread through the streets. Hendrik heard more shots. A fire engine arrived, amid a tintinnabulation of bells, too late to save the Shatner house but in time to prevent the spread of the conflagration to the neighbouring residences. Water gushed and steam rose.
The Ute released Hendrik and gave him something. The mirror glasses. Fierce indignation burned in Hendrik’s breast. The timbers of his father’s house cracked and fell in upon themselves. From the heart of the dying fire came a roar as of a stricken lion.
“Yes,” he said.
He put on the spectacles.
For an instant, the night sky was a blaze of white and the flames were black. The Shatner house stood not in the city of Boston but on an infinite plain of white sand, of salt baked under a pale sun. Joseph was alone.
No, not alone.
The distant echo of Eddy’s “tekeli-li, tekeli-li, tekeli-li!” sounded from the throats of horrid, birdlike things.
Hendrik tore the glasses from his face and gave them back to the Ute. He had almost, but not quite, accepted the gift. In that moment, he truly became a follower of Joseph.
Within days, he was calling upon his long-forgotten legal education and fighting in court. No respectable lawyer would undertake to appear in defence of Joseph Shatner, who was accused of disgusting offences. A few wretched apostates drifted away from the Church, but an overwhelming number stuck by their new faith as its founder was pilloried. Hendrik was not surprised when Sister Molly told him the flow of new converts was unabated. Martyrs attract followers.