And then he reached into his bowl and pinched a chunk of meat. He lifted it dripping and stuffed it into his hole and chewed. Grease sparkled down his chin whiskers. “Mmm,” he muttered. “Tender.” He reached to his lips and pulled out a small bone, sucking it clean before tossing it rattling into the silver pail.
I bent over my bowl and spooned a bit of broth into my mouth. It gave off a flavor of boiled seawater and flesh.
Revolting.
Wicked.
Taboo.
I blenched and gagged.
Of course, the signs had been there all along.
The clues.
I should not have been so shocked.
But when a man is so single-mindedly working toward his objective, he tends to ignore the more subtle indicators that run counter to his desires. He goes into a survival approach of denial and self-imposed ignorance. This, I found, does not ultimately serve him, but he does it all the same.
I cautiously stirred the concoction and lifted it into the light to see.
“Zut!” I mumbled. “Alors!”
There, in that puddle of broth, curled up like a stewed crab, bobbed an infant’s tiny fist.
NEXT THING I KNEW I was running in sand. Stumbling to my hands and knees. Retching up. And then lifting myself and running on some more.
All of Eden was washed in bright moonlight, but I could not see clearly where I was going. I was blinded by my desperation to put as much distance as I could between myself and that room full of baby-chomping cannibals. My cordial-soused state made this a difficult aim to achieve.
I fell again.
And again.
The world seemed to have picked up its spinning.
I might have just stayed down at last had I not found myself compelled to move forward by a rising cackle of laughter. It came from behind me and caused the hairs to bristle on my neck. I staggered to my feet and fled onward through the palms.
“Ho-oooooh-ha-ha!”
The voice was surely that of a siren, or harpy.
“Adamiiiiaaaaah! Wheeeeeere aaaaaare youuuuuuu?”
That is when I understood that it was Lamia and she was hunting me down.
“Don’t you want to play with me?”
No I did not.
I hurried blindly along the atoll.
This chase went on and on. But although I ran fast as I could, the lady obviously possessed supernatural powers. She drew evermore near. I could not seem to outrun her, and soon enough I felt her footfalls close behind me.
I put forth a great rush of effort but hooked my toe on a limb and went down once again. This time when I got to my feet, I found myself in a clearing with Lamia.
She laughed. “Why, there ain’t nowhere to hide, sugar drop.” She pointed to the lagoon. “Less you want to swim.”
I crouched, preparing to spring away.
Lamia found this a great fun game of tag, laughing all the more.
I leaped to the side, but she matched my move and headed me off.
I feinted to the right, and then dodged quickly back left.
But the witch was nimble and swift; she cut me off again.
She laughed. “Don’t you want some real woman, sweetness? Afore you’re all married up and stuck with that little girl?”
Panic gripped my heart.
“All I want is comfort,” I whimpered, “and contentment.”
“Oh.” She grinned. “Well, if that’s all you need…” She arched her back and, with a spray of buttons, ripped open her blouse. Her breasts let loose like a pair of bottle-nosed dolphins. She hefted them one at a time in her palms. She waggled them so they jiggled. “Come here and meet Comfort and Contentment.”
Breasts had never looked so fearsome.
I leaped to the side, as did she.
I jumped the other way, but she was already there when I landed.
We circled one another in the clearing.
First one direction.
Then the other.
This demonic pas de deux went on for a moment longer, until at last, after a cursory tussle, I found myself flat on my back with Lamia athwart my thighs.
She laughed and held my wrists. Her moonlit dugs quivered and bulged. A wind had blown up and the tendrils of her hair waved like wild snakes.
Part of me did not want to give in to her, and part of me, I confess, did. But as these opposing forces were not communicating in any intelligible way, and as Lamia had her own ideas on the subject, she took control of the action.
“No,” I mumbled without conviction.
But she ignored this plea and ultimately overpowered my feeble resistance.
Lamia fumbled with my trousers.
And her skirts.
Then she slid down onto me.
I felt all swallowed up.
A great and inexplicable sadness consumed me then as the ghost of my chastity floated away to the sky.
“La petite mort,” I sniffled.
Little death.
The rest of the encounter went as one might predictably imagine.
I AWOKE TO AN old familiar solitude.
Darkness.
Emptiness.
A rumble of thunder.
And rain.
It poured onto my face from out the invisible sky.
Instinctively, I opened my mouth and stretched my tongue to catch the drops.
Such a mighty thirst!
Such a pounding in my head!
Those raindrops, so wet and cool, splatted all over my body. They soaked into my clothes. I felt them pooling on my chest and belly, running over my skin.
But I did not move.
I just lay there, a confusing mix of relief and regret holding me pinned to the ground. I lay trapped under the weighty revelations of all my cumulative guilt and shame. Dark as it was, I could see the shadowy approach of my own moment of reckoning. I could feel it beating toward me over the waves, carrying with it the monstrous cargo of all my worldly wrongs.
It seemed too much to hope that my fortunes would ever turn for the better now.
And still, like a child, I lay there shivering and clinging to my old hopeful dreams, silently praying to whatever gods were listening that this rain might somehow serve as my baptism, and that all my sins would be miraculously washed away.
“S’il vous plaît,” I muttered.
And then those raindrops turned to tears.
WHEN I WOKE AGAIN, it was nearly midday.
The rain had stopped.
Gulls circled like vultures.
I lay curled in a fetal attitude with the sun scorching down on me so that I was slow cooking under its tropical heat. My soggy clothes fairly steamed.
Prompted by discomfort, I rolled over. I coughed and hugged my ribs. I wheezed and grabbed hold of a nearby stump and pulled myself to my knees. Every piece of me was besieged with hurt. I felt chewed up and spit out. I gripped the stump in both my hands and then, upon sensing it was not a stump after all, lifted my throbbing head only to find myself nose to wood with a grave marker.
This might have served as a shock at other times, but not so much right then.
I focused my eyes on the inlaid epigraph and read, “Here lie the bones of Wilhelmina Merriwether…”
One sensed the Devil grinning with amusement at his little joke.
I knew for certain then that my previous night had been no mere nightmare brought on by Sister Rachel’s backhanded cordiality. No. It had not purely been my intoxicated imagination. That terrible tryst had actually occurred here on this macabre mattress of wet sand and skeletal scraps.
I glanced around at the other graves, overcome, as I did so, with a wave of the shakes. I staggered to my feet, brushed the sand from my thighs, and pulled my pants up from around my ankles. I was at a loss for what to do next, or where to go. I did not relish the idea of rejoining those Shining Barbarians but knew that I at least needed to quit this funerary venue for fear its ghosts might leap from the earth and drag me down to their drear
y realm. To this end, I limped quickly away through the palms.
*****
I would have much preferred a more placid emotion to the one I was enduring in that moment. Although I had doubtless survived a most traumatic apogee the night before, I sensed with no small niggling of forebodement that my waking nightmare was not entirely complete, and that some even more heinous climax lurked in my immediate future. This dread became all the more intense with the savage laughter of children.
I came out of the trees to find all the Edenites pouring out of their huts and hurrying down the beach. They wore big smiles, the ladies chortling and holding up their skirts as they trundled along, the men running on ahead with the youngsters.
When I turned to see their objective, I spied a large ship in irons inside the reef. Its canvas was slack, and sailors climbed in the rigging, furling the sails on their yards. A skiff had already been dispatched from the ship and was nearly to the shore. The villagers were rushing to meet it.
I walked out onto the beach and watched.
Few were the visitors who graced the atoll, and so an unreasonable frenzy of celebration had overcome the islanders.
I looked into the sky – blue and clear – no sign of the clouds that had brought the quenching rains.
An albatross soared high overhead. I found myself filled with envy for the bird’s abilities.
Little birdy up so high,
what keeps you up there in the sky?
I then sensed myself becoming the object of the combined attention of everyone on the beach. When I looked their way, I realized that, yes, sure enough, they were all watching me, some of them even pointing.
I peered back over my shoulder, thinking that with any luck I was mistaken, and they were possibly pointing at someone coming up behind me.
But no. I stood alone.
I studied more closely the ship in the bay and realized, for the first time, just what I was seeing.
“Oh!”
The vessel’s mast had been repaired, and its general fettle looked to have been miraculously restored to its original state of unsinkable seaworthiness. The figurehead gleamed in the sunshine, her upthrust bosom white as milk, her blue-as-the-sea eyes still forward peering, her big red wooden lips ever-puckered for a kiss. One would never have believed she had so recently been tossed belly up in the stormy sea.
What Cloud’s resurrection meant to my fortunes did not immediately register in my understanding, and I turned to the crowd in an effort to sum it all up.
“Oh,” I said, as I began to realize. “Oh.”
My first instinct was to take off my shoes. I sat and did this, and then placed them side-by-side on the sand. It was a great relief to have them off my feet. I wiggled my toes and spread them. Then I stood again.
Like a scruffy host of angels, the Edenites parted to let pass the oarsmen from the skiff.
This little contingent saw me, paused to listen to the villagers, and then stomped my way.
I felt to be reuniting with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
The entourage consisted of none other than Captain Archibald Nilsson; First Mate Biner Starkey; Bosco, Ship’s Boatswain; and one Sweet Molly.
I was amazed and pleased to see they had survived the storm, and hopeful that their arrival might mean my rescue from this fiendish colony of cannibals.
But my hope faltered when I saw Him.
Adamiah.
My little friend and commiserate.
And yet his appearance did not exude friendliness. Not at all. Even over the distance, I could see that he was grinding his teeth in a manner indicating a barely contained rage. His fists clenched at his sides. He appeared like the Second Coming of Christ – none other than the very figure I had hanging on my wall. Only now, instead of a merciful expression of divine equability, that would-be savior looked to be on the verge of harrowing the very pits of hell.
I took a deep breath and forced myself to smile, trying my best to appear tickled pink to see my old shipmates.
They made no reciprocating gesture of affability and continued marching my way.
I raised my hand and waved in greeting.
When this too failed to elicit any sign of friendliness, I did the only thing I could think left to do.
I ran.
TO WHERE, ONE MIGHT reasonably inquire, did I think I was going? For Eden offered few enough crannies in which to hide. And yet, as I sped away, the little atoll’s protectionary limitations were not foremost on my mind. I was as panicked prey to hungry hunters. Indeed, in Nature’s overarching hierarchy of big-fish-eats-little-fish, I had just been demoted to the status of the lowliest and most delectable minnow.
I bolted through the settlement, scattering a squawk of chickens.
I ran by the cooking pit, along the beach, and on past the mummified relic of the whale.
Even my inner voice seemed unnerved.
Get away! it urged. Get your ass out of here!
I sensed my pursuers closing in behind me but did not look back. Instead, I turned and fled into the trees, instinctively putting as many obstacles as I could between them and me in order to slip from their view – this feeble strategy being the best I could come up with under the pressing conditions.
I fled.
And fled farther.
After a long and breathless dash through the palms, I came to the natives’ village. They were going about their usual business, tending nets and playing games, when I burst into their little compound like a madman. The children all squealed and scampered to their mamas. They gaped at me curiously as I galloped through their midst.
I stopped before a throng of women gutting fish.
“Hello, ladies!” I bowed, panting and holding my knees. “Please forgive…my rude interruption… But I am being hounded by bullies…and am…in sore need…of protection!”
They only grinned shyly, waggling their heads and laughing.
I took a moment to catch my breath, considering how better to solicit their assistance, but was disrupted from this tactical reconnoiter when I heard someone at the edge of the village shout, “There he is! There!”
I spun to find a pair of Edenites pointing my way through the huts, directing Bosco to my immediate whereabouts.
“Bother!”
I huffed and hastened on as fast as my weary legs would carry me.
It was then that I began to realize the full extent of my predicament.
Even if they did not catch me up soon, my chasers eventually would. How many times could I reasonably hope to outmaneuver them within the confines of this tiny annular isle?
I staggered beyond the village toward a spit jutting out toward the reef. My mind was awhirl with far-flung plans for escape.
Perhaps I could circle back and burrow into the graveyard, posing as a corpse until they gave up their search. Or maybe I could climb a tall palm and disguise myself as just another nut in its boughs. Of course, these schemes were frantic and stupid – slapdash offerings from a rattled brain.
But then, from nowhere, I recalled that coin I had found in my pocket back in San Francisco. It was as if someone had tapped me on the shoulder and held it up for me to see. Its image flashed again before my mind’s eye, floating in air, revolving slowly as it tumbled in the soothsayer’s ethereal white light. I became instantaneously hypnotized by its aura. My legs continued to churn beneath me, but they grew removed from my awareness. That little coin, in all its unassuming vapidity, had somehow served to deliver me to this very moment. Even through all the ups and downs and twists and turns of these last months. Surely that had been no false bearing. There had to have been some intervening hand – some guidance offered me by an all-knowing power beyond mere chance.
I felt myself running more slowly toward the sea.
The notion that I was possibly being helped by the gods served to somewhat mitigate my panic and, oddly, buoyed me with an irrational faith. As I loped down that sandy spit, I felt as if I were sprouting wings, so lig
hter-than-air grew my spirits, so joyful my ridiculous soul. This childlike hope clouded my vision as I slowed some more, and then some more, until at last, enchanted as an idiot, I gazed down at my feet only to realize I had left the shore far behind me and was now, rather miraculously, walking on water.
*****
All of creation slowed down as I trod out over the waves.
The earth grated to a stop.
And the sun and the stars and the moon.
Gulls flapped by on dreamy wings, smiling as they passed.
My bare soles padded over the water – ker-slap – ker-slap – ker-slap –
I raised my arms at my sides, as if balancing on a fence rail, and traipsed on toward the reef.
It occurred to me then that I could just keep right on going, buoyed on the motherly ocean, walking and walking ever farther toward the horizon until, some glad and glorious day, I might finally reach that fabled point where the longitude of true comfort meets a latitudinal contentment at the conjoining edges of heaven and the sea. I needed only to stay the course – ker-slap – ker-slap – never stopping – ker-slap and ker-slap – on and on forever to paradise.
“Yes,” I mumbled. “I will do it.”
This became my full intention right up until the instant I was distracted by the distant hollering of men.
Gruff voices filled with vengeance and righteous rage.
I should not have looked back at them.
I should have just kept right on going, leaving them to the pettiness of their terrestrial preoccupations. But I turned away from the open ocean and squinted back toward the beach. A dozen fellows were pushing a canoe into the water, piling onboard and taking up the paddles. Bosco was at the bow, barking out orders.
“Oh,” I thought vaguely. “Huh.”
I peered down at my lily feet.
Sharks zigged and zagged beneath me.
I scratched my jaw, weighing all the pieces of the situation in my thoughts. Even in that decisive moment, I could not help but ponder my life’s old hopes and dreams – both the pleasant ones, and the not so much – all the way back to my childhood days in Cherbourg. I had doubtless not lived as honorably as I should have in these intervening years. I had made no small number of mistakes. The line between the sacred and profane had so many times been blurred.
Fortuna and the Scapegrace Page 27