Canaan's Tongue Read Online Free PDF Page A

Redeemer. His face was blank as milk.
    “I reckon it served its purpose.”
    His expression grew slightly pinched. “Ah! And what purpose was that, by your reckoning?”
    My smile began to wilt. “I reckon, sir, that those horses—”
    “Now look
here,
you cripple-faced river muck,” the Redeemer bellowed, slamming down his cup like a gavel. “Did you
once
look me in the face when I was on that pulpit?”
    “I looked—; yes,” I managed to reply.
    “You
looked
! Well, then! Didn’t you see me?” He was standing up now on the ricketing bench, swaying from side to side like a squirrel on its hind-quarters. “Didn’t you see me weep?”
    The bench teetered frantically under his weight—: he was obliged to flutter his arms wildly to keep from falling over. He looked for all the world on the verge of weeping
now.
I kept my eyes fixed on the bench. It looked to have been pilfered from a school-house, or possibly even from a church.
    “I saw you make your introductions to that poor spinster,” I said, mustering my last courage.
    “I’ll tell you
once,
and once only, google-eye,” the Redeemer said, sitting reluctantly back down. “I meant every word I preached at Lafitte’s Chute.”
    “To be honest, sir, I wouldn’t care a damn—”
    “I’ll thank you not to use
curse-words
in my presence!” he shrieked at the top of his voice, his face going purple and white by turns.
    This last utterance so bewildered me that I was unable to make any reply to it at all.
    “Who was this spinster, then?” the bar-keeper called over after a time. Though still a young man, as far as I could judge, his face was creased like the skin of an old potato. He moved stiffly and drunkenly. “Put the fear of Guh!—Guh!—God into her, did you, Reverend?”
    The Redeemer laughed. “I made the Word flesh for her passingly, Kennedy—; that’s all it was.” He turned to me and winked. “What’s your drink, pilgrim?”
    “Rye,” I said cautiously, expecting some new paroxysm. But the Redeemer simply kicked a stool toward me. I sat down on it gingerly.
    “Where do you hail from?” he asked, pushing a pint-flask across the table.
    “Kansas,” I answered. In his last question I’d again heard the patois of the river-flats. I poured myself a middling swallow. “Yourself, sir? I’d guess from your accent—”
    “Kansas!”
he crowed. “Well, I’ll be a bare-assed injun! I’d have taken you for one of our own, God’s truth!”
    For some reason I blushed at this. “I’ve been on the river for quite some time, Mr.—”
    “How old are you, Kansas?”
    “Twenty-five.”
    He nodded. “And what was your father, in the territories?”
    “A distributor of the Holy Writ.” I stared down into my cup. “Not unlike yourself.”
    “Ha! Of a different caliber
altogether,
by your way of talking, sir.” He grinned. “Quite a thing, in these parts, to come across a river-rat that talks like a king’s bishop. Eh, Kennedy?”
    The bar-keeper waved a hand, whether in agreement or indifference I could not have said. The Redeemer’s eyes bored into me as before. I felt sullen and restless under their attention, like a cow in need of milking—; there was a quality to the Redeemer’s interest, however, that was more flattering than any compliment could have been. Question followed question in a fevered rush. He was not simply curious about my life—; he was intoxicated by its most trifling detail. As terrifying as his interest was, it was as undeniable as the packed-earth floor beneath us. My loneliness—the steady companion of my last years—cooked away, as we spoke, like hot oil on a skillet. I’d not have got up from that table for my weight in Spanish ivory.
    “Your father, Kansas,” the Redeemer said, raising his cup to his lips. “What might have been his church?”
    I’d not spoken of my father since the night I’d left his house. “Methodist,” I said.
    “Meth-o-dist,” he echoed, still holding the cup