The Prince of Tides

by Pat Conroy

  “Talk to me, Tommy,” Randy whispered again. “Talk me some honey, sweetheart.”

  Then I heard it through the wind. I recognized the sound from somewhere out of the past but could not name it correctly. It was like the cry of a rabbit being lifted from a field, impaled by a hawk’s talons. The wind was blowing furiously through the trees and the branches beat against the roof of the house. Again I heard the sound and again I could neither place it nor say where it was coming from. Could they hear it? I wondered. I moaned loudly, covering the sound.

  “I like it when you moan, Tommy,” Randy Thompson said. “I like that so much.”

  “Please. Please,” I heard my mother cry out, and I heard the sound outside in the rain again and this time I knew it. It was the sound of a wheel turning against an ungreased axle. It was a sound of late summer during those heady brawling days when Luke and I began our inexorable preparation for our last football season. It was the sound of the early August regimen when Luke and I had put on our pads and cleats and begun the very personal process of hardening our bodies for the games of September. He and I would take positions behind the tiger’s cage and together we would push the cage up and down the road until we dropped from exhaustion. In this seizure of harsh conditioning we pushed ourselves to the outer limits of all human endurance to make ourselves stronger than all those other fierce boys who would come charging toward us across the contested lines of scrimmage. Daily, we hurt ourselves in our uncompromising effort to hone our bodies with a cruel discipline of our own invention. We drove that cage up and down that road until we could not stand without our knees buckling under our own weight. In the first week, we could push the tiger’s cage only a few yards at a time. By the time practice began, we could drive it for a quarter of a mile until we fell in the road, dizzy in the August heat.

  Now I could hear Luke’s struggle as he pushed the cage toward the house alone, the wheels digging deep into the wet earth, his movements betrayed by the creaking of the axle of the left wheel.

  I cried aloud when the man came inside me, mingling his semen with my blood.

  As he rose off me, the knife pressing tighter against my throat, he said, “Now, how do you want to die, Tommy? Which are you more afraid of? The knife or the gun?”

  He backed me up against the wall and put his pistol against my head as he held the blade against my groin.

  He lifted the blade against my balls and said, “The knife, eh, Tommy? I thought so. I’m gonna cut ’em off, Tommy, and hand them to you. What do you think about that, Tommy? I’m gonna slice you apart a little bit at a time. I just fucked you in the ass, Tommy. I own you now. They’re gonna find you with my come up your asshole, Tommy.”

  I closed my eyes and my arms stretched out wide and his face was almost against mine; as he kissed me and I felt his tongue roll around in my mouth, my right hand came to rest on a piece of cool marble. His eyes remained open as he kissed me, but slowly my fingers wrapped around the neck of the statue of the Infant of Prague my father had stolen from Father Kraus’s church in Germany after the war.

  Savannah and my mother were crying in their bedrooms.

  I heard my mother scream again. “Tom,” she cried, and her voice broke my heart.

  I heard the wheel move again and then I heard a slight thump against the back door.

  Then there was a loud knock at the back door, as though a neighbor had come calling.

  “Don’t move, Tommy. Don’t say a word or you’re a dead boy,” Randy Thompson whispered to me.

  Callanwolde sprinted out of my mother’s room, zipping up his pants. My mother was lying naked on her bed, her arm covering her eyes. Callanwolde was joined by my sister’s rapist, who came out in his underwear, his fading erection outlined against his briefs. Both of them took positions around the room and pointed their guns toward the door.

  “Run, Luke, run,” my mother screamed from the bedroom.

  Callanwolde opened the door quickly and I saw the cage door slide open.

  The man who had just raped and sodomized my mother stood face to face with a Bengal tiger.

  Randy Thompson, who had raped me, stood transfixed, his eyes on the entrance of the cage, as Caesar roared out from the semidarkness and moved toward the light of the room.

  I saw the tiger lunge out of shadow and a shot rang out as Callanwolde screamed. He staggered backward, screaming, with his face locked in the tiger’s jaws. Randy Thompson raised his gun as I brought the marble statue into my hands and gripped it as if it were some sanctified Louisville Slugger. As Caesar tore the face off the man who had raped my mother, portions of Randy Thompson’s brain hit the far side of the living room wall. I had nearly decapitated him with the fury of my swing, the taste of his tongue still fresh in my mouth. Straddling him and forgetting the tiger and the third man and the screaming, I kept beating Randy Thompson’s face in until it no longer looked like a human face. With cold aim I drove fragments of his skull deep into his brain.

  Floyd Merlin was screaming and firing his pistol at the same time, wild careless shots, and blood flowed from a wound near Caesar’s shoulders. Callanwolde was moaning softly beneath the weight of the tiger until Caesar swung his paw and tore the man’s throat off to the backbone. Floyd Merlin backed up, firing, screaming. All pandemonium was loose in that house, and the smell of death and the sweet odor of brain and the radio playing a song by Jerry Lee Lewis made Floyd Merlin know just before he died that they had chosen wrong when they chose the house of Wingo. Still moving backward he fired his last shot at the tiger and saw me rise up with that statue in my hands. I moved quickly to my left and cut off his retreat to the back door. Savannah had gone to her closet, loaded her shotgun with healthy intent, and came roaring out of that room as the most dangerous woman on earth. The girl Floyd Merlin had raped put the barrel of her shotgun against his groin and pulled the trigger. She cut him in half and his blood and viscera half blinded me as Luke burst past me and grabbed a dining room chair, which he thrust out and stuck in the face of the tiger.

  “Freeze,” Luke said. “I got to get Caesar back in the cage.”

  “If Caesar doesn’t get back in that cage, I’ll blow him to kingdom come,” Savannah said, weeping.

  The tiger turned, bleeding, and staggered toward Luke. Caesar’s jaws were bloody and he was hurt and disoriented. Caesar swung at the chair and broke off a front leg but Luke kept backing him toward the door.

  “Easy, boy. Back to the cage, Caesar. You done real good, Caesar.”

  “Caesar’s dying, Luke,” my mother said.

  “No, Mama. Don’t say that. Please don’t say that. He saved us. Now we’ve got to save him.”

  The tiger left bloody prints on the floor, like grotesque and sudden roses imprinted on fine-grained wood, as he retreated toward the back door. He turned his head once, then struggled toward the safety of his cage. Luke pulled the cage door down and locked it.

  Then my family fell apart, broke down, wailed like damaged angels as the wind bore down hard against our house and the radio played on without the slightest trace of pity. We wept hard with the gore of our attackers on our hands and faces, on our walls and furniture and floors. The statue of the infant Jesus lay beside me, covered with blood. In less than a minute we had killed the three men who had brought ruin and havoc to our home, and had established their incumbency in the heedless ordinance of nightmare. In our sleep they would rise from the dust of our terror and rape us a thousand times again. In immortal grandeur they would reassemble their torn bodies and burst into our rooms like evil khans, marauders, and conquerors, and we, again, would smell their breath in ours and feel our clothes ripped away from our bodies. Rape is a crime against sleep and memory; its afterimage imprints itself like an irreversible negative from the camera obscura of dreams. Throughout our lives these three dead and slaughtered men would teach us over and over of the abidingness, the terrible constancy, that accompanies a wound to the spirit. Though our bodies would heal, our souls had sustai
ned a damage beyond compensation. Violence sends deep roots into the heart; it has no seasons; it is always ripe, evergreen.

  My body shook as I cried and I raised my hands to my face to cover my eyes and unconsciously covered myself with Randy Thompson’s blood. I could feel his sperm leaking out of me. He had told me something true before he died; something in me would always belong to him. He had mortgaged a portion of my boyhood, had stolen my pure sanction of a world administered by a God who loved me and who had created heaven and earth as an act of divine and scrupulous joy. Randy Thompson had defiled my image of the universe, had instructed me exceedingly well in the vanity of holding fast to faith in Eden.

  For fifteen minutes, we lay on the floor of the slaughterhouse that had always been our home and sanctuary. Luke was the first to speak.

  “I better call the sheriff, Mama.”

  “Don’t you dare,” I heard her say in a furious voice. “We’re Wingos. We have too much pride to tell what happened today.”

  “But we have to, Mama. We’ve got three dead men in our living room. We’ve got to explain that to someone,” Luke said.

  “Those aren’t men,” she said. “Those are animals. They are beasts.”

  She spat on the body of the man who had raped Savannah.

  “We’ve got to get Tom to the doctor, Mama,” Luke said. “He’s hurt.”

  “Where are you hurt, Tom?” she asked, but her voice was disembodied, figurative, and she spoke in a dispassionate tone as though she were addressing strangers.

  “The man raped Tom, Mama. He’s bleeding,” Luke said.

  She laughed, but the laughter was out of place, lunatic, and said, “A man cannot be raped by another man, Luke.”

  “Well, no one told it to that guy. I saw him doing something to Tom,” Luke said.

  “I want these bodies out of here. I want you boys to take them deep in the woods and bury them so no one will ever find them. Savannah and I will scrub this house down with a hose. I don’t want there to be a trace of these animals when your father gets home tonight. Get control of yourself, Savannah. It’s over now. Concentrate on something nice, like shopping for a new dress. And get some clothes on. You’re naked in front of your brothers. Tom, you get dressed, too. Right this minute. I want you to haul these carcasses out of here. Stop crying, Savannah. I mean it. Pull yourself together. Think of something pretty—a romantic ride down the Mississippi in a river boat. The music is playing. The wine is flowing and a breeze is cool against your face. A well-heeled gentleman comes out of the moonlight and asks for a waltz. You’ve seen his face in society quarterlies and you know he comes from one of the richest families in New Orleans. He raises thoroughbred horses and eats only raw oysters and champagne . . . ”

  “Mama, you’re talking crazy,” Luke said softly. “Let me call the sheriff and he’ll know what to do. I’ve got to call the vet and see if he can help Caesar.”

  “You won’t call anybody,” she said fiercely. “This didn’t happen. Do you understand? Do you all understand? This did not happen. Your father would never touch me again if he thought I had sexual intercourse with another man. No fine young man would ever marry Savannah once the word got out that she wasn’t a virgin.”

  “Jesus Christ,” I said, incredulous, looking at the naked bodies of my mother and my twin sister. “Dear God, please tell me this is a joke.”

  “Get dressed, Tom. Now,” my mother said. “We’ve got lots of work to do.”

  “We’ve got to tell somebody about this, Mama,” Luke pleaded. “We need to get all of you to a doctor. We’ve got to help Caesar. He saved our lives, Mama. These men were going to kill you.”

  “I’m thinking of our family’s position in this town. We can’t do it to Amos and Tolitha. We can’t do it to ourselves. I refuse to walk down the street while everyone wonders if I wrote that monster that letter in prison. They’ll use that letter against me. They’ll say I got what I deserved. But I won’t have it. I won’t play into their hands.”

  “Mama,” I said, “my asshole is torn up.”

  “I don’t allow language like that used in my house. I simply will not tolerate vulgar talk from my children. I’ve raised you to be decent and refined citizens.”

  Luke and I carried the bodies of the three men to the pickup and stacked them in a grisly heap on the bed of the truck. My mother handed me a Kotex, which I stuffed in my underwear to stop the bleeding. She and Savannah were throwing buckets of soapy water on the wooden floor when we left the house and my mother had started a fire in the back yard where she burned two throw rugs and an easy chair the blood had ruined. She seemed bizarre and vulnerable and crazy as she shouted out orders to us. Caesar, hurt grievously, would not let Luke near the cage to tend to his wounds. Savannah wept and had not said a word since her ordeal had ended.

  We buried them in a shallow grave deep in the forest near a tree engulfed by kudzu. We knew the kudzu would cover their graves by next summer and the green roots would twine among their rib cages. I was shy around my brother now, ashamed that he had seen what he had, so we worked in exhausted silence. As the shock of the afternoon wore off, a fatigue so overwhelming as to be sedative entered my body. I sat by the grave and shivered, frail and depleted. Luke had to lift me up and carry me back to the truck.

  “I’m sorry they hurt you, Tom,” he said. “I’m sorry I didn’t get there sooner. I forgot something or I wouldn’t have come back to the house. I don’t even remember now what I forgot. I saw their footprints in the road.”

  “Mama’s crazy, Luke.”

  “No, she isn’t. She’s just afraid. We just got to go along with her.”

  “She’s making it sound like it was our fault or something. No one would blame us. People would feel sorry for us if they knew. They’d help us.”

  “Mom can’t have people going around feeling sorry for her, Tom. You know that. And she never could accept help, from anyone, for anything. That’s just the way she is. We just got to help each other and help Savannah.”

  “This isn’t right,” I said. “Why can’t this stupid goddamn family ever do anything right?”

  “I don’t know. We’re just peculiar.”

  “The whole family just gets raped and we kill the three guys that did it. And I mean we kill them deader than shit, Luke, with their guts spread all over our house, and she makes us pretend that nothing happened.”

  “It’s peculiar,” he repeated.

  “It’s crazy. It’s nuts. It’s sick. And because Mom and Dad are crazy that means we’re going to be totally fucked up our whole lives and all our children are going to be fucked up and that’s the way it’s going to be until kingdom come. It’s messed Savannah up bad, Luke. What’s this going to do to her? Tell me. She’s seeing dogs hanging from meat hooks and that’s just from living day to day with Mom and Dad. What’s going to happen to Savannah?”

  “She’s going to do whatever she has to do. Just like all the rest of us.’

  “And me. What’s going to happen to me?” I said, beginning to cry again. “I mean, you don’t just walk away from a day like this without paying a price. Two hours ago I had a guy humping me, Luke, while he stuck a knife to my throat. I thought I was going to die. I thought he was going to butcher me like a hog in the living room. He kissed me, Luke. Then he was planning to kill me. Can you imagine killing someone you’ve just kissed?”

  “No, I can’t imagine that.”

  “We can’t let Mom do this, Luke. It isn’t right.”

  “We already have, Tom. We just buried all the evidence. There would be too much to explain now.”

  “People would understand, Luke. We’ve all been in shock.”

  “In a month, you won’t even remember that it happened.”

  “Luke, I’ll remember that it happened if I live to be five hundred.”

  “It’s best not to talk about it. It happened and that’s that. I’ve got to figure out a way to help Caesar.”

  Caesar was dying in his cage wh
en we returned to the house. His breath was labored and his great yellow and black body was stretched out against the bars. When Luke stroked his head Caesar made no protest. Luke nuzzled his head against the tiger’s and stroked the dazzling fur along the spine.

  “You were good, Caesar,” Luke whispered. “You were so good and we had no right to keep you locked up in this little shitty cage. But you finally got to be a tiger, Caesar. God, if you didn’t prove you were one hell of a tiger, boy. You were pure hell, Caesar, and I’m going to miss you bad. And you were the goddamnedest tiger who ever lived. I swear you were.”

  Luke lifted his rifle to Caesar’s head, and with tears streaming down his face, he put a bullet through the tiger’s brain.

  As I watched, unable to console my brother, I knew that I would never again see a boy from South Carolina weep over the death of a Bengal tiger.

  By the time my father arrived home from the shrimp docks that night, we had buried Caesar, removed all traces of the afternoon’s mayhem, and expunged all signs of that singular and life-changing affair. I took the tractor and obscured the tracks of the three men imprinted on the wet earth along the island road. We found the car they had stolen in Georgia and the map with Melrose Island circled in ball-point pen on the front seat. Luke and I rolled the car off the bridge and sank it in the fifteen-foot channel. The house glistened with the fury of my mother’s desire to wash every vestige of the men from our home. Her knees bled from her exertions with a wire brush on the oak floor. The statue of the Infant of Prague soaked in a tub of bloody ammonia. Savannah stayed in the shower for over an hour, washing herself obsessively, cleaning the stranger out of her. My mother directed Luke and me as we rearranged the furniture. Nothing was to be like it was that morning. We washed windows, curtains, and scrubbed out bloodstains that had dried in upholstery and the frayed edges of rugs.