The River of Kings: A Novel

by Taylor Brown

  Hunter glances over at the bag of ashes still strapped to his boat.

  “Didn’t change much, I’d say.”

  Lawton glances in the same direction. He spits out his wad of dip.

  “No. I reckon not.”

  22

  Fort Caroline, November 1564

  Le Moyne holds a plank in place while the sawyer cuts it to length, the teeth of his saw gnawing at the oak. Both of them are shirtless, glowing in a sheen of sweat despite the coolness of the fall sun. Le Moyne cannot but notice the veins jumping out against their skin, the bone-lines so much sharper than they used to be. Their bodies are like countries drying up, stony landscapes of ridge and hollow upon which a few purple creeks pulse. Saturiwa’s gift-bearers come but scarcely now, and the woods are quiet. A muted landscape, leafless, that rattles in the wind. The deer have disappeared. The raccoons and squirrels.

  The savages have hunted us out of game, whisper the men. They wish us to starve.

  It is a plot. They wish to protect their gold.

  Le Moyne says nothing, focusing only on his work. He sets the plank on a stack, squaring it with the others, then sets another upon the sawhorses.

  “How many more?”

  The sawyer shakes his head.

  “Never count, Le Moyne. Look only to the next.”

  Laudonnière has ordered the construction of two barques to replace those stolen. Each is to be thirty-six feet at the keel with a single mast, shallops equipped with sails and oars for river navigation. He wants them completed in no more than a fortnight. All, without exception, are to apply themselves ceaselessly to the task.

  These will convey them upstream—to the land of Utina, king in the west, and to the Apalatci beyond. But what a long and tiresome voyage that will be, snaking them ever deeper into this land that has failed already to feed them. That has yielded no gold as yet. Nothing but rumor. Again and again, Le Moyne looks up from his work to find men sitting at their stations, tools stilled. They stare longingly at the 120-ton brigantine, the Breton, floating idle upon the river. They imagine the ship’s belly full of gold, plowing the ocean home.

  In the afternoons, he goes out with the hunting parties. They are clumsy in their leather boots, crunching through the brittle woods, scaring their prey into trees and holes. He has better luck on his own, exploring with sketchbook and arquebus, a single man beneath the halls of cypress. Endless flights of birds pass overhead, flying south, and sometimes at dusk he glimpses great assemblies of stilt-legged wading birds, brown-plumed, that limp gently upon the lilied surfaces of lagoons.

  In the bestiaries, the animal compendia of his youth, the world was the Word of God, spoken in stone and flesh, and each creature bore symbolic meaning. There was the mother pelican who stood in her piety, wings endorsed, vulning herself: spearing her breast with the point of beak, her young flocked beneath her, waiting to be revived by the blood of her wound. If she is the symbol of Christ, what are these birds that limp so humbly on water, like hobbled saints? They are endless; so many that, if startled, they could blot out the sun, thumping great winds from their thousand wings. He wonders whether future men will stand so small and infrequent in comparison, so shrunken and hungry—or will they rise in this land, swelled with faith and supper?

  He prays for forgiveness, then aims his arquebus at the nearest bird and fires.

  There are fewer fires now in the nights. Instead, the men huddle in their huts to whisper. The noblemen especially, their hands blistered and red-torn, unaccustomed to the common labor of shipbuilding. The nobles Fourneaux and La Croix come to Le Moyne one night, showing him by lamplight a list of those who have given their names for the cause of mutiny. There are many. He refuses to add his own.

  “Our commander has set us between warring tribes, Le Moyne. He has broken his word to the man who would provide us food for winter, has kept all treasures to himself or favored subordinates. He has let our barques slip through his hands, and now the diligence he imposes for their replacement is immoderate.”

  Le Moyne says nothing.

  “Do you believe these grievances invalid, Le Moyne?”

  “It is your methods to which I will not consign myself.”

  “If you will not side with us, we cannot guarantee your safety when the day of reckoning comes.”

  “It is God to whom I will look for protection at such hour.”

  Fourneaux’s bottom jaw juts out. He looks at the close walls of the little hut, as if searching for something.

  “I fear the eyes of our God do not fall upon this land, Le Moyne.”

  “Then perhaps it is best you leave it.”

  Fourneaux smiles.

  “Ah,” he says. “Now you have the idea.”

  * * *

  A Sunday morning, the air bright and crisp as old memories of the Lord’s Day. Laudonnière stands, as requested, before the men of the fort. He wears a slashed leather jerkin, sleeveless, over a bloodred doublet, the white ruff of his collar hackling his neck like that of an angry dog. La Caille detaches himself from the assembled crowd.

  “Sir, the men here gathered have requested that, as one friendly with all parties, I present to you their petition.” He bows slightly. “I have agreed to do so.”

  “Present then, La Caille.”

  “Sir, they recognize you as the supreme lord of this province, the right and lawful lieutenant of His Majesty the King. They protest themselves ready to pour out their lives upon this foreign soil if necessity so dictates. However, they believe such a sacrifice contrary to the best interests of their nation and king.”

  Laudonnière grunts, unimpressed.

  La Caille goes on to remind Laudonnière that provisions for an entire year were promised upon their embarkation from France, and many men of noble position have set forth upon their own expense. But the fort’s rations have dwindled to no more than a month’s supply. He reminds the commander of the difficulties in trading with the Indians, their retreat from the land, the game following suit.

  “The men here assembled believe some urgent action must be taken. Otherwise we shall starve. They beseech you, their commander, to make ready the Breton for sail. They will set forth into New Spain—Terra Florida—for obtainment of supplies.” La Caille clears his throat. “By purchase or otherwise.”

  “Piracy,” says Laudonnière. “It is this of which you speak.”

  The crowd shifts, wordless. Their commander looks upon them as if from a height, his hands clasped behind his back.

  “You have not the authority to request any account of my actions. I am your commander, and it is in me alone that His Majesty’s power resides. As for your worries of hunger, I have yet some provisions in my own personal stock that I will make available to you for trading with the Indians. When the shallops are ready, we will take these on short excursions upriver and along the coast, gathering sufficient provisions to stead us through the winter. As for sailing south into Spanish territory, I forbid it. No man here will abuse any subject of the King of Spain.”

  The crowd disassembles but slowly, amid groans and whispers. Le Moyne fears them a constellation of heated stars, their fate already set. Later that day he looks up from his work to see the nobleman Fourneaux sitting high upon the ribbed joinery of a barque. He smiles at Le Moyne and sets his thumb between his teeth, as if to bite it off.

  23

  Sapelo Sound, Georgia, 1992

  Hiram Loggins watches the golden yolk of sun falling before him, the serrated edge of the coast waiting to sink in its teeth. The sky has grown smoky with dusk, and he is entering the sound that will lead him home. He can almost feel the treasure curled up in the holds beneath his feet: a boatload of famed Georgia white shrimp, soft-bodied and sweet-fleshed in their great bins of ice. The new boat has changed everything, who he is and what he might become. The possible paths of his life fork like the creeks before him, many-mouthed. Last year the government made the shrimping fleet install Sinkey Boone’s turtle excluder devices on every
net. A lot of the shrimpers blamed the TEDs for their poor catches. But Hiram has no grounds for complaint. Every time they winch up the nets, he can feel the boat foundering slightly at the great weights it pulls out of the depths, the balled hearts of sea-flesh that might make him a man of station and clout.

  A catch.

  He has two little ones crawling the rug at home now. Boys. He put that off as long as he could, but Jo-Beth wouldn’t be denied. He was never much for children, and there was always the fear that Annabelle wouldn’t want him if he went that far with his wife. But those little ones cause strange twists in his chest. A weakness, he thinks. He will make sure they grow up strong. Strong enough to survive the damage he knew as a boy. The darkness. And still, despite himself, he stares in the direction of the screen-porched house where Annabelle lives with her Chevy-lover, and he thinks what he always does: one day.

  He slides the boat through shallow creeks, over hidden shoals, avoiding oyster beds that would shred the feet of men run aground, and on they chug toward the docks of Darien. Shrimp boats are tied all along the waterfront, a forest of trawling booms and green-woven nets. Before them stands the Darien bridge set like a concrete gateway between river and sea. From here, their blessings descend each year. He watches the waters curve out of sight, upstream into the Altamaha, and he squints as if he might see in the distance the mountains that feed the river. He sees none. The coast has bloodied the sun, swallowed it. A ruddy glow over the western horizon, the last red-burped bubble like from a dying man’s mouth.

  He shakes his head.

  They dock and offload their catch and Hiram is paid in cash, an enormous sheaf of bills that he divvies up among the crew. A couple of them are new, former Soviets who came scrabbling up American shores when the Iron Curtain crumpled. Hiram doesn’t like it, but they’re old Black Sea fishermen who work for next to nothing. He just makes sure they keep their traps shut when the Coast Guard or DNR hails the boat, sniffing for permits or prohibited catch, perhaps the skunky odor of square grouper.

  A man does what he has to.

  Full dark now and he climbs into the cab of his old slant-six Dodge, battleship gray with a white camper top. The motor is small but purrs as if factory-new, not even a tick from the valves—the work of long hours under the hood. He rides up Fort King George Drive, paralleling the river until he meets the old coastal highway and turns through town. It’s dead, no traffic but the prowl cars of the sheriff’s department tucked like roaches in the shadows along the road. The old seafood restaurants are all closed now, kudzu climbing the walls and curses finger-written in the dust of their windows, hobos asleep out back. The fast food restaurants along I-95, lit up like football stadiums beneath their soaring arches and crowns, get all of the business now. It seems his luck runs counter to this place, his well rising even as the town dries up, left like an oxbow scar as the great river of steel and glass was redirected inland along the interstate.

  He wheels the truck into a gas station and buys a six-pack of Michelob in the can. His money smells like fish but spends like any. Like always, he left the main portion in a lockbox hidden behind a bulkhead in the galley of the boat. His life savings. He dreams of it there. He dreams of taking that money one day to a jewelry store up in Savannah, watching the clerk snatch it up without even a flare of the nostrils, counting off the bills like a winning hand.

  Annabelle.

  This is what you missed.

  He crushes his first can and throws it into the bed of the truck, hating himself for these dreams that drive him. He cracks open a new can. It’s foamy and good, a golden brook that settles and numbs him. He drives past the fruit stands that once fleeced southbound Yankees with games of dice and chance, with bets on bottle pyramids that couldn’t be struck down by a Nolan Ryan heater. The old joints are abandoned now, rotting, their slick-haired owners moved on.

  He slows to turn off the highway onto the dirt drive that leads to his home, holding his breath as he passes the concrete-block church that lines the road, the sign lit up by flickering spotlamp:

  HOLINESS CHURCH OF CHRIST THE KING WITH SIGNS FOLLOWING.

  He doesn’t know if the Catholics ousted Uncle King, or if it was the other way around. The man still wears his old dog collar but has two adopted children now, little coal-black orphans who squat barefoot day and night in the gravel lot of the old cut-and-shoot bar that’s now his church.

  Hiram ran into the man once last year, on a drunk night in July. The Fourth. He stumbled into the bar, looking for a drink under the bright-popping sky, only to find the man standing open-armed before the emptied shelves, as if waiting for him.

  “Blood brother,” he said.

  Hiram stumbled backward out the door, the man’s sea-gray eyes cutting through him like a sword. They saw the boyhood shame, the body buried in the black riverbed of their history. This man who saved him once, before they were even grown—the day they did grow up. Hiram turned away from him. He walked out into the darkness, his skin burning, his fist clutched tight against the scar that bound them.

  If a man could give blessings, perhaps he could take them away.

  24

  Altamaha River, Day 2

  Dusk is coming down on the river, deepening shadows and turning the water thicker, darker. The groan of the river deepens, the choral throat of it. Bats skitter across the purple gulf of sky, hunting. They pass Fort Barrington, a private landing, the site of a frontier fort from Revolutionary times. Nothing left now of its bastions or blockhouse.

  A dark hump soon rises from the water, spined black, an island long and slender like an anchored ship. Lawton points and Hunter nods. They nose their boats through the shallows, working their way through a maze of half-drowned trees, the branches snarled like the guard-wires of a fort. They pull their boats onto the bank and open the deck hatches, retrieving the supplies they need for the night. There’s an old campsite with a view downstream. Lawton unsheathes his machete, the blade gleaming in the falling dark like a giant tooth. He hacks through the vines that overgrow the place while Hunter hauls away the shed limbs that litter the ground, chopping them for firewood with his hand-ax. Before long they have the site cleared. They build a fire and eat their dinners from pouches, then sit staring into the flames, watching them shiver and crack. Lawton adds another log and squints, grim and intent, as if reading something in the swirl of embers set to flight. After a moment he reaches up for his paddling vest where it hangs drying from a branch. Down comes a silver flask, fire-glazed in his hand. He looks at Hunter.

  “Tell you what, little brother. If a turkey was the national bird, this here would be the one.”

  “Wild Turkey?”

  “One-oh-one.”

  Lawton has a pull and exhales through his teeth, then hands the whiskey to Hunter. Hunter sets the spigot to his lips and flips up the flask. Sweet fire, like burning oak, roars in his mouth, barrels down his throat. It’s the color of the river but so much hotter, a brown flame that settles warmly over his dinner.

  Lawton watches him.

  “That’s high-proof, boy. Careful now.”

  Hunter swallows doubly full, belching through his teeth.

  “Careful your own damn self.”

  Lawton grins, taking the flask for a second pull.

  “What are the college boys drinking these days?”

  “Cheap beer mainly. Bourbon and Coke. Girls are into these flavored vodkas.”

  Lawton shudders.

  “Jesus Christ, I seen those. Can’t think of a better way to get sick.”

  “Or get a girl’s clothes off.”

  Lawton flicks his trigger-finger free of the flask.

  “There’s a way to do it, brother, and that ain’t it.”

  Hunter thinks Lawton might elaborate on what the way is, but he doesn’t. He hands back the flask. It floats between them, back and forth, as if on a string. The bourbon sets the blood booming in their ears, the woods roaring. They belch hot, watching the fire-scrawled trees. Lawt
on clears his throat.

  “Didn’t mean to give you shit earlier, ’bout your major and that.”

  Hunter nods and looks down at his bare feet. A black ant is crawling between the furrows of his foot bones. He lets it walk onto his finger, sets it aside. He caps his knee with his hand.

  “I know.” He pauses. “It’s just that sometimes I wish I could do what you do.”

  Lawton has been watching him. Now he looks out across the river, flask in hand.

  “You don’t, brother. You might think you do, but you don’t.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I know it ain’t what it seems. Everybody wants to know if they could do it. Make it, I mean. Hell Week and that. But doing the thing itself, once you’re in, that’s another thing entirely. The shit I seen…” He shakes his head.

  “Do you like it?”

  “Like it?” Lawton stares into the red core of the fire, his beard lit like a fiery mane. “Like it,” he says again, testing the words. He sets the spigot to his teeth. “I try not to, brother.”

  * * *

  Hunter lies awake a long time in his sleeping bag, listening to a barred owl hoot through the trees. The cadence ancient: Who cooks for you? Who cooks for all? He can picture it out there somewhere, round eyes piercing the night. Hunting, hunting. He looks at his brother. Lawton’s face is just visible in the withering firelight, his brow knit, his strength unbroken even in sleep. Hunter closes his eyes. He wonders what ghosts or beasts will visit him tonight, what giants or worlds aflood. The river croaks and groans, gurgles and whispers and plops. Sleep washes him, and soon he is drifting, edged on dream. He hears an echo on the river, the sound of a tiny motor muttering its way downstream. He sees a man standing tall against the moon, his weapon poised like a judgment over the silvery skin of the waters that float him.

  Uncle King.

  Now darkness.

  25

  Fort Caroline, November 1564