I’m bimmm-fff-iiii-ttt-ing.
Leave off me with your bloody chops, you cur. Bite the rope, not me. Already so much blood slicks up the wound I can hardly get a grip on it and I’ve still got the sawing to do.
I’m fainting, I’m going to faint.
Then faint, in Christ’s blood, faint.
I can’t.
Stop that screaming, someone will hear.
They’re all dead.
Are you sure? They could be like us, they could be resurrecting and fit to kill, or a half-dead cook with his knives.
What—you go wiping the blade on your sleeve like I’m a bloody joint of lamb?
The lice won’t stick if I drag it across me clean. If I douse it with water, the sharks swarming will come. Breathe when I do. Breathe.
Breathe, breathe—where did you get a knack for this breathing and butchering?
Bother. The shot is too far in.
You’ll cry if I die.
From joy to be rid of you! Sing out or talk, your shrieks make the cutting hard.
O, the merry old man of Bis-do-bee!
Better.
I dreamt of a mermaid the size of a whale with a place to move around inside her, a pleasure place.
Really? Maybe I dreamt it too and didn’t tell you. There’s the shot. Now, hold still. This blood is so bloody slippery.
Give me that cutlass! Give it to me! You’ll do me no more harm.
I’ll knock you in the head with it, I will.
The cutl—
Egad, I will have to chop the whole of the leg, to the joint and around. You’ll not be thanking me for this. Use the courage you swore to when Luggams made you the pirate you didn’t want to be.
My head. You didn’t have to crush my brains out!
Now to the coals again.
Coals!
Just a quick burn.
My leg.
As soon as I have you trussed, I’ll toss the leg over and goodbye, just like that. Goodbye in the dark and good riddance. Then I’ll steal the bo’sun’s false leg if he hasn’t rolled off, and make you a new one, bye-the-bye, to fit. A leg you can jew up a dance on the spot for the ladies—but hold still now and stay quiet and quit that bleeding.
Four hundred gold pieces?
If there be a pirate left to pay you for the leg. The ship be ours now, and all its little treasure to split between us. There’s a squall in the dark that’s coming for us, but the sails still be strong. We could be in for a flip.
The ship’s leaning on her shoulder already, the fish will be climbing my boots by dawn.
Boot.
Aye, the one.
13
The ship sails itself.
14
Days Later
Having to haul the fly-besotted enemy overboard, it’s another offense against us.
They could’ve left the charts.
They could’ve left the sails unslashed, the rigging primped and the rudder sound.
Where are we? We’ll never see our shores again in this drift, unless we are taken and hanged.
Hanged.
Will you shut that parrot up?
Hanged.
Hold the beak.
The governor himself sat with Shanks and Luggams, and refit their ship in sight of Boston harbor. I heard the mate tell of it.
Home is not Boston harbor.
If we could but steer home.
It’s not so far off when it comes to measuring from sea to sea.
A visit home is your grave day.
O’Maury, O’Mallory, they grow their own crosses—
They sit on the shore a-counting their losses
The lassies come begging with boils on their -
And still you keep dancing
And still you keep jigging
Praising the glory of the Cutlass King’s lashes.
You made that up.
I made it up while Luggams slept, and sang it in my sleep while he forbade it. I love to sing. I learned from Ma’s husband, the sixth.
Hanged.
You know, in another week, I’d have had a solid gold cutlass. We were going up against the King of Cutlasses in a week, the great pirate of España with his knives of gold.
Soft knives, that, in solid gold.
Oh, yes, he would have been our next except you had to practically bleed to death, wriggling round the deck like a briney shrimp, chasing me with your leftover leg.
Shrimp, never.
Hanged.
I’ve heard of a parrot that could recite all the rivers in Africa.
There’s enough talking between the two of us.
But if you were to—
I’m not dead nor drowned in the drink yet.
Tis’ a fine leg I made for you, yours is. It’s the table that’s not much anymore.
I fear my stump is spoiling. Even the spoils you took are spoiled.
That ham they had!
The velvets stood up with mold.
I look nice enough in them, my stitchery done best without the wash of blood.
Butchery, not stitchery.
Hanged.
Shut up! Shut up! I can’t stand it.
Our dead foe taught it, to lash himself with warning.
“Save the cook” is better. That’s what I’d teach it. Every time before I stick someone, I ask Cook? first, not brother.
A spate of brothers and all of them like you, with your time pieces a’rusting, and foul, desperate boats.
Hanged.
Brothers all, brothers who will make you drink seawater soon enough.
You knew that would bring up the pearls. They were all I had from two years of repairing watches. Now all I have is my leg, the lost one, swimming beside the ship. Would that it would guide us.
By the by, you are free now. Free of the pirates’ hold.
Free to die? I swore, didn’t I?
Hanged. Hanged.
It’s a smart one, to fly off so fast as that.
You should never have released it.
It’s taken such a liking to you. Pretties your shoulder.
Begone! Begone! It’s just waiting to see if I die of my leg. A bird of prey.
The game then, before it returns.
Black teeth—Queen of spades.
Blind eye—My deuce.
Nine o’ hearts—Pegleg.
Bit pecker—Double sixes.
Fiver—Hook hand.
Pieces o’ eight.
You win.
At least the bleeding’s stopped.
Pull down the canvas to shade me. I hate all fish though I could swallow a white-fleshed one now, I could.
Hanged.
It’s just come back to check on your leg.
Hand me the poker. With the cutlass and the redhot poker, I’ve got twice the chance of killing it.
Take care, your leg’s not—and the wallow of the boat—
Never mind the leg. I’ll get it, I’ll get it. It’s not so high that I can’t—with this poker—
Watch out! The deck there—the rope—
Once more—I’ll get it sure this time, I will—If I have to hear its gallows’ talk once more, I’ll—
You missed by a length.
I’ll throw this belaying pin at you too, I will, if you don’t stay quiet. I think I nicked the wing of it. A nick and a jab, it was, and a good one with the poker. You don’t see the bird now, do you?
I don’t see the poker neither.
I would sleep but the pain—every wave jolts it—I can’t abide the pain in my leg. Or what it once was.
Calm yourself. You’re bleeding again.
That is not the death smoke that the priest makes, smoke traveling from the far yonder of the boat?
Not incense, no. But smoke it is. Where did you throw that damned hot poker?
Not far enough, not overboard. I can see the fire rising.
15
1723 Desert Island
I love an island.
I love an islan
d with a bit of wood on it.
Yes, we could use a bit of wood, deserted and empty as it is.
With my leg burnt to ash, I think of wood more than you, I ponder quite a bit over wood.
I would have paddled my own soul to heaven and back for you to get at the wood of our skiff but it drifted. I pressed hard at the oars but our boat stood still with you screaming Fire! of your leg.
I was afeared you had forgotten me.
It was enough to drag your sizzling leg ashore with that cutlass trying to drown us both. Who could see the bloody shore for the smoke of the boat burning and your leg? I couldn’t. I was glad for the island, happy for dawn at last.
It’s not just the dunes, the dunes suck down the prince of legs, it’s this stick I suffer forward on, this twisted length of rotten driftwood you think is so bloody perfect.
You wouldn’t want a leg of palm. The Queen’s ton it would be. Real wood will float in from the boat. Just wait.
I’ll crawl from one end of the island to the other, from leeward to windward, that’s my waiting. Cannibals wait, I can’t.
You are an idiot.
Tis true. Soon enough a lost shrike or a pigeon or that Hanged will come flying over the island and instead of eating the seed in its beak like a glutton after all its flying for days and days with nothing at all for food, it will drop its seed over a soft patch of sand where the seed will take root and sprout and then branch over our heads to make a place for the gluttonous bird to rest in after all his flying for days and days. Just for me a fine leg will be grown from the tree which we’ll then saw down in great haste, having waited as we must, fully for twenty years, but having eaten the bird some years back.
Sea almonds! Wherever I step.
I thought they were stones of a rough sort, hampering my way like every anthill and crack.
Your cutlass could break them open if I could but use its rubied hilt or its broadside.
It is all I have, in protection—and to practice my carving. We must get a gull to drop these almonds from high onto a rock.
You’ll be buttering gull on toast in heaven before it obliges us with that great trick. Your cutlass. Now.
I’ll run you through first.
You are such a pirate.
I am a legless man in distress. Stand back!
Try for a button on the first mate’s canvas or the lace and underthings of McDougall fast across my chest. Come on.
Bless my cutlass, you are such a sight swimming in all those clothes. They are barely dry.
McDougall was really the one for fancy clothes, always pawing through the chests. I heard him say he was careful not to shoot through the actual hearts of the well-dressed gentlemen so as not to ruin the lace at the front.
At least it’s cloud season on this island, and cool for all this you are hauling on your body like it was all you had.
It is.
Hanged.
Mercy!
It liked the fire, it warmed itself by the flames.
Get thee away from me.
Egad.
That was fair close. I swear upon my gobspit that island birds eat more than others, they have that much more to drop.
Make yourself calm. The bird is gone.
I’ll play calm when there’s no more wave. What? The print of a hand?
A print of a hand.
A cannibal’s for sure.
Or a monkey’s. There’s the palms here for them.
The belt of the earth is higher than this, and monkeys winter in places warmer, or I would.
No footprints, just these marks of a body dragged behind. Another like you, legless.
We must find and succor him!
And share rations? The sea almond splits only in two. You were right, it must be a cannibal’s.
Hanged.
Oh, why couldn’t we be put ashore according to the rules, with a loaf of bread, a bottle of wine and a pistol with one load? Why did we have to burn and sink? Why this bird—
When the rain comes, you’ll catch it in your mouth in the midst of your caviling. Me, I’ll find a cup in a shell.
To the cannibal then, we’ll toast him.
16
So—the hand was yours. Why, why, why do you follow us? We’re but lost lads ruined from greed with nowhere to go even if we change one island for another.
I chase you best through water.
Without your cane you will not gain on me here on land. Except that we are marooned. But for a drink of water, I could use the water.
Rest your wants. The parrot knows the way to fresh water—that’s why you should heed it.
My brother will kill the parrot first and drink its blood.
Tell him the cannibal sent it and if he lets it out of his sight, it will squawk to the cannibal of his fire.
He thinks the cannibals are roasting his leg. Every night he wakes screaming that the other leg’s gone and bades me to touch it. For him I concocted a salve from a plant as I cut from the shore. Except for the bird, he is better.
I’m sorry that the bird recites “Hanged” so willfully. He must have been cheap, that’s all I can say, with a teacher not so skilled as I. I would have taught him “Water.”
Oh, for a lime! Get us off this island now, we are bound to this sand and tree and its almonds. Oh, but for a few fish.
All I can do is follow and wait until you will follow me. Our father despises you every day for not choosing the sea, for locking yourself to the land. Feel around your neck.
I have no gills if that’s your meaning.
The mixing of the races does not always come true. Pity. But the sex is always sure. You’re my sister.
Don’t touch me there.
After Peters caught me, I sang the wrong pirate off the gallows. When first a creature like me comes up out of the deep, all humans and time are alike. I knew you to be a pirate, just not where. After you slipped me your brother’s name signed by you, I knew you better. Except you were male. Show me your females.
I will not.
I will swim beneath the poop deck.
Not that! It is hard enough.
Together we will tell Father you have returned.
I know nothing about this father. Leave me be.
He is the father you seek. Didn’t your mother tell you?
My mother told me of many fathers, none wishing death upon me.
Although Father is not weighed down by gold and other appurtenances, just by the fishy depths, the pirates so often cannot keep their ships afloat even on sunny days and their treasure sinks to him of their own accord.
All of that treasure is his?
And yours, by way of family, with the squabbles that attend it.
I can’t breath underwater.
You haven’t tried. Gill/girl. It’s just a slip in the writing. Let me teach you exactly how they come together.
Oh, no—that’s a lesson I don’t want.
Two sister fish we are, and one knows the ways of the shore and can sing a sailor to the very brink, and one trails her hair the way they do, until it catches a sailor.
I have heard the singing when I press my ear to the hull. I have heard my own.
A pirate sees the hair in the tide before he swings, a true wild swag of it. He has to sing back quick or his nether part will grow longer and longer with him a’dangle on the rope. We are uncommonly clever about a man’s parts, as you will be too. You must come with me, for the love of our father who abandoned you because he could not stay.
The world is scarce of love, it washes few and drowns most of those.
You will not come?
There it is—the rain at last. I must race to the shells I have collected and nurse my brother.
You are bound to your brother as fast as husband to wife.
Don’t come upon him or he will think he is raving for sure and I will have to attend his supporations all over again. And don’t leave any more of your prints. He will become a cannibal himself if he is reminded.
/> You send me away after all my trouble? Why can’t you see that you know your rightful place all along, and long now to swim there?
I am no girl, nor fish. I am not your sister, nor your father’s child. I am a pirate on a pirate’s island, with no past at all, and surely no future. Do not slander what little I have left. Begone from me. Leave my sight!
17
In the beginning, everyone lived beside water.
I like that. Beside and not in it.
Everyone lived beside water that was sweet and you could drink all of it. You didn’t wait for a storm, you didn’t wait for a bird to show it to you.
Water, I want water.
You should not have scared the bird.
Let it fan me with its water-love, let it fly to me with a key to water around its green neck. I didn’t mean to throw so many rocks.
Sit down, sit down. The dew can be sucked from the leaves on the morrow. Let us try again for a water story: Tataunga, the great chief—
—whose teeth crushed shells, who cannot see his business his belly is hitched out so far, who keeps pirates behind staves to dance on his fire.
The savage king Tataunga gives a great feast in praise of water, with grog and beers and soups—
Not soup. Never soup again. Too much rope in the soup.
Tataunga possessed two beautiful daughters, begot by a woman flung off a maharajah’s vessel.
Named Ma.
They are all named Ma who have you as a son.
One of the daughters escaped the evil Tataunga and the other stayed below and kept her fins. The son who is not so beautiful is from another father.
So many fathers. What of the fish woman?
She’s a whale. Small, but not perch or something with silver in its skin.
Whale, fish—they are all mostly water.
O, hateful water, oh beautiful water.
This beautiful fish with watery fins and skin the color of ruby beaches at sunset the boy befriends, speaking to her just long enough to get her true secret.
Many palms sway behind Tataunga as he dances—what secret would that be? The secret of life? I know that secret, it’s the thing that Tataunga does at night to his last and final daughter.
No, not at all. The fish gives him the secret of death instead, that’s it, the fish tells him how death fights us.
Pirate Talk or Mermalade Page 5