The Amalgamation Polka

by Stephen Wright

  “Kissing a nigger like that,” he hissed savagely. “As if she were goddamn royalty.”

  “Please,” requested Liberty, in an access of emotion that startled him, so much unsaid and undone for so long, “I ask you never to employ that loathsome word in my presence ever again. It stains the very air around us.”

  “May I remind you, young Mr. Fish, that I still possess a weapon which even now is aimed squarely at your heart.”

  “You wouldn’t kill me even if you could see your target.”

  “And why, pray tell, not?”

  “It would ruin your grand experiment in human husbandry.”

  “But I may not be of sound mind, as you yourself have suggested more than once, and a certain flooding of the heart could conceivably topple what few paltry pillars of reason remain, in which case the actions of my finger could take place in total isolation from the monitor of my brain.”

  “Then you’d better pray you are a good shot.”

  Maury’s stifled laughter sounded through the closed cabin like a bad case of the hiccups. “I’m only doodling you, lad. I wouldn’t harm a hair on that precious amalgamator head of yours. Besides, you’ve got good bumps. But please, try to refrain from talking back to me. Insolence doesn’t become you, and it agitates my blood.”

  “Well, you might give a tad more consideration to the sensitivities of those in your company.”

  “Feisty as your mother indeed.”

  The floor shuddered, the ship moved on, the muffled strain of broken sobs began to emanate from the corner where Tempie sat huddled.

  “What the hell’s wrong with her now?” hissed Maury.

  “She misses her mama,” replied Monday in a low, mournful voice.

  “We all miss our mama,” Maury whispered contemptuously. “Life’s a damn trial.”

  “With you as presiding judge,” added Liberty.

  “Well, there are not many in this confounding existence who truly understand the difference between right and wrong.”

  “You understand nothing.”

  “And a green cob like you presumes to educate me in the just ways of the world?”

  “Your world, thankfully, is defunct.”

  “Hush!” Maury cautioned sharply. “Hush now. What’s that?”

  No one dared move or speak, ears attuned to the faint, incongruous sounds now drifting toward them across the tide, a chorus of male voices lifted in song, complete with pipe and fiddle accompaniment, the tune swelling steadily in volume to become instantly recognizable as that jaunty old favorite “Pop Goes the Weasel.”

  “Federal sailors,” murmured Liberty. “Near, very near.”

  “One squeak out of anyone,” warned Maury, “and he’ll feel my fingers about his throat.”

  The ship’s engines slowed; the music stopped. In the interval Liberty thought he could hear laughter, conversations even, though the words remained out of reach, indecipherable. Somewhere beyond what now appeared to be a painfully thin hull—“third of an inch of fine Birmingham steel,” the captain had bragged—there obviously loomed a U.S. frigate and all the lethal potentiality that implied. Affecting an imperturbable calm, he stoically awaited the first ball. After months of training himself to expect death in some pleasant sunlit meadow, Liberty was rather disconcerted by the prospect of such a visitation while trapped in a metal can afloat in a midnight sea.

  Suddenly, from Tempie’s corner came a tremulous keening, a solitary, animal cry such as is heard in the western forests in the dead of winter when the temperature drops and food is scarce, rising precipitously in volume until, amid a brief scuffling, it was, with a strangulated gasp, abruptly extinguished, the ensuing silence penetrated by Maury’s distinctive accent, raw, menacing, “Quit your bawling, you miserable wench, or I’ll cut out your tongue right here, right now, with this same blade I used to teach your mother a lesson or two. Now, nod your head if you’ll hush, and I can let you go. Nod your head. All right, yes, that’s good now, breathe easy, right, we’re fine, we’re all fine.”

  “Hardly the word I would use to describe our current condition,” Liberty observed.

  “And what word would you prefer, Dr. Johnson?”

  “Oh, I don’t know—‘damned’?”

  Then, all at once, the night fell in, a tearing noise went up and popped, and then commenced the deep crunching roars, one after another, of ejaculated iron. The Cavalier’s engines shuddered to life. The water exploded.

  “They’ve seen us,” cried Maury, excited as a boy at the circus. “We’re being fired upon.”

  “I’m familiar with the symptoms,” muttered Liberty.

  “Well, I don’t reckon our present sequestration matters much at this point. What say we amble topside and take a gander?”

  “Are the Yankees going to kill us all?” asked Monday.

  “No, not all. You they’ll lock in a cage and put on display in the White House. What do you think they’re trying to do, you old fool, give us a peck on the cheek?”

  An ominous whistling came rapidly upon their stern, alternating in pitch as it trailed, fading away.

  “Hear that?” demanded Maury. “We’re already outrunning ’em.”

  “I don’t want to die,” Monday pleaded.

  “None of us do,” confirmed Liberty.

  “Monday, I leave this naughty child in your charge. Should any further problems arise, you have my personal permission to administer the proper correction.”

  “How do I do that?”

  “With a ready hand, you dolt.”

  “What if she starts up with that blubbering again?”

  “Remember Octavia?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Same way.”

  “But Master, Octavia was a mule.”

  “And a damned impertinent one at that. Just do as I command and God shall add another shiner to your hoard in heaven.”

  “Sure would like to feel a touch of those hard bits in my fist every now and again. I’m the poorest rich man I ever knew.”

  “I haven’t time to dispute theological trivialities with a dunce. Just know that come Judgement Day we’re all going to get paid.”

  “Oh really, reverend,” declared Liberty. “Now there’s a show I’d wait in line to see. Figure I’m due a considerable bounty for this particular skylark.”

  “Out the door with ye,” ordered Maury, thumping his grandson on the shoulder. “It’ll be hooks and hot cinders for you and your godless breed.”

  The imperturbable Captain Wallace was up on the bridge, casually pacing to and fro in a pair of carpet slippers, pausing at each turn to peer intently aft through a set of French field glasses. The sky was being lit at periodic intervals by a succession of rockets in whose stuttering glare could be glimpsed the dark, minatory shapes of two U.S. vessels steaming straight toward the Cavalier, in whose foaming wake shells were exploding harmlessly in great geysers of white water.

  “Ah,” Wallace pronounced with a grand gesture, as if welcoming latecomers to a Sunday social, “I fear our little bubble of excitement has burst. Look how they strain to catch us. There’s not a cruiser in their navy can match our speed.” Another shell dropped screeching into the waves some hundred yards astern. “See? We’re already out of range and the interval can only increase. I was just about to send for you gentlemen, especially you, Mr. Maury, since as a former military man I thought you might enjoy a taste of the old powder again—from a suitably distant vantage, of course,” the effervescence in his voice almost contagious.

  “I never spoke of my service.”

  “You didn’t? How odd. Well, sir, your bearing speaks for you, as well as your age. You are certainly of sufficient years to have participated in one or another of your country’s numerous armed squabbles. You peace-loving Americans, when not busy killing each other, always seem to find yourselves engaged with foreigners of some stripe or another.”

  “Yes, mainly you people.”

  Wallace responded with a peal of laugh
ter. “Well done, sir. I do appreciate a sharp tongue.”

  “Then attend to this, English. When I was a whey-faced youth back in ’12, I did indeed carry a musket with the honorable George Croghan at Fort Stephenson, and, I’m proud to report, did dispatch several of you unsavory lobsterbacks to a godless infamy.”

  “Yes, but now we all wear gray, do we not? Oh look, there’s a pretty thing.” A shell, detonating prematurely, sent a shower of sparks glittering down into the sea. “I’m sure, Mr. Maury, you endured the hardship, the privation, the etc., etc. of the common foot soldier, but tell me honestly now, is there anything more thrilling in the annals of modern warfare than a spirited dash beneath the very iron snouts of a superior, all-but-encompassing enemy force? I shall miss the stimulation immensely. Peace, I’m afraid, is doomed to be a dreadful bore.”

  “And quite the unprofitable bore at that,” interjected an out-of-breath newcomer, wheezing fitfully from the effort of maneuvering his ample bulk up the various staircases and ladders from below. A round, beef-colored man, he was, even in these desperately pinched times, conspicuously rigged out in a fine linen suit that was actually clean, with matching waistcoat and hat. Behind him stepped a tiny, dog-eyed woman as narrow in flesh as her companion was broad, her delicate frame all but swallowed up by a massive emerald gown to which had been affixed dozens of ribbons announcing various prizes in horse racing, marksmanship, spelling and pie baking.

  “The Fripps!” declared Captain Wallace, as if reuniting with lost relatives. “Welcome. Our circle is complete. Allow me to introduce you to Mr. Asa Maury here and his grandson, Mr. Fish.”

  “The Maurys of Redemption Hall?” asked Mr. Fripp excitedly.

  “The same,” Maury answered with a curt nod.

  “Well, if that don’t beat all nature. You and I, I suspect, might be cousins. All my papers are packed, but, mind you, once we get to Nassau I promise to consult my genealogies. Look, Phoebe,” he said, turning to his undemonstrative wife, “blood kin.”

  “Isn’t everybody in the low country related to everybody else?” asked Maury.

  “I know it can sometimes seem so, but, if I recall correctly, I believe one of your grandmother’s sisters married a great uncle or something or other of mine and moved to Fib’s Head back in colonial times.”

  “The tie seems rather slender, does it not?”

  “That’s what I shall determine once I lay out my charts, but I am rarely mistaken about such matters, am I, Phoebe? History is my pastime.”

  “I don’t mess with that truck,” replied Mrs. Fripp.

  “As I was just saying,” interjected Captain Wallace, moving adroitly to fill the awkward silence, “I had hoped you all might have an opportunity to at least get a glimpse of the fireworks, but at thirteen knots we’re outrunning the show rather rapidly.”

  “Well, we would have been up here sooner, but—women,” explained Mr. Fripp, with an indulgent smile toward his wife. “Even in the heat of battle all thought is ever upon appearance.”

  “Shut up,” returned Mrs. Fripp.

  “Oh, look!” Wallace pointed to the northwestern sky, where a sputtering ball of white light arced gracefully downward to its extinction beneath the waves. “How they’d like to give us a sound peppering.”

  “Magnificent!” pronounced Mr. Fripp, or Mr. G. D. Fripp, as he insisted on being addressed, wiping his large, shiny forehead with a perfectly pressed bandanna. “I’ve always enjoyed a good nightly bombardment. Reminds me of the Fourth, I suppose. Of course once those batteries commenced their devil’s work upon Charleston itself, we had to vacate the city. Mrs. Fripp’s nerves are as frail as glass. You know she can hear a sewing needle fall to the carpet from an adjoining room.”

  “Yes,” confirmed the woman in question who had discreetly positioned herself as close to Captain Wallace as possible without giving offense, as if seeking shelter in the shade of his commanding presence, “and this pathological exaggeration of normal female delicacy has been, I dare to say, a thankless burden, an outright curse.”

  “Now, Phoebe,” cautioned her husband, “don’t go getting all lathered up again. We must ration the medicine we have until we reach the Bahamas.”

  “Tell me, madame,” asked Captain Wallace, “when we were passing within earshot of that Federal ironclad, what could you perceive of the activity on board? With your keen senses you must have apprehended all.”

  “I heard some frightful out-of-key singing.”

  “As did we,” added Maury.

  “And the usual cursing, spitting and gambling that inevitably occurs whenever men gather together in large groups.”

  “Could you see,” inquired Maury politely, “the very pips on their cards?”

  Attempting to suppress his laughter, Wallace let out an equine snort, earning him an immediate glare from both Fripps.

  “I would hope, Mr. Maury, that such an unseemly remark implies no discourtesy to my wife.”

  “No, no, not at all, G. D. I merely stand in awe before Mrs. Fripp’s singular talents. I wished I possessed such sensory endowments.”

  “Easily said,” commented Mrs. Fripp tartly, “when you have not endured at firsthand the suffering which accompanies such dubious ‘gifts.’”

  “Then I apologize, madame. I intend no ill will toward you or your husband. We are all in the same boat, so to speak.”

  “Excellent! Well turned!” exclaimed Captain Wallace, briskly rubbing together his large, callused hands. “May I suggest then that we repair to the wardroom where my personal chef, the noted Joe Cox, former head man at Delmonico’s up in Gotham, or so he claims, has prepared a marvelous table d’hôte of such length and breadth as to astonish all. I have found that nothing quickens the appetite like a successful breaching of the line, particularly if one has drawn fire in the process. Tonight we feast on the joy of being alive.”

  A long table had been set with the precision and reverence of a communion altar, the damask of a purity few had seen since before the war, if then; the flatware of solid silver, the bone china from Boston and the food itself arrayed in quantities normally associated with a family Thanksgiving: oyster soup, baked sheepshead, roast turkey with egg sauce, roast beef, scalloped oysters, stewed kidneys, sweet potatoes, eggplant, turnips, parsnips, beets, stewed tomatoes, apple pie, raisins, chocolate and, placed at frequent intervals among the steaming platters, endless bottles of claret, burgundy, sherry, catawba and, of course, champagne.

  “Captain Wallace,” boomed Maury, “you have exceeded the bounds of extravagance. Reminds me of Christmas dinner at Redemption Hall back in yonder times when Father still presided over the clan.”

  “No short commons on this vessel,” replied Wallace proudly. “Please, everyone, take your seats. I’m sure you’re all familiar with the wearisome notion of our earth as a prison and we its inhabitants as condemned inmates who can never be certain when the man in the black hood is going to come knocking on the door. Well, if this be so, why fritter away our brief sojourn in funks and humours? Eat! Drink! Celebrate!” He raised the first of what would be numerous glasses of French wine.

  “I see you are a gentleman of breeding,” commented Maury. “Of what stock do you descend?”

  “As British as black pudding, Mr. Maury. My family, apparently, was a tribe fatally prone to—how do you folks in Dixie so charmingly pose it?—‘itchy feet.’ Consequently, my heritage is a parti-colored coat of Irish, Welsh, Scottish, with a dash of Dutch thrown in for seasoning.”

  “Interesting. One might deduce from your carriage and demeanor that the strain would be somehow”—he took a delicate pause—“more wholesome.”

  “Do I strike you, Mr. Maury, as one diseased?” His eyes glittered in the gently shifting lantern light with an unquenchable, alert amusement.

  “Surely, Captain, you must be cognizant that certain beneficial traits tend to become hopelessly diluted when submerged in foreign streams.”

  “Hadn’t given the matter much thought, actu
ally.”

  “A subject of fathomless depths upon which I can expatiate enthusiastically.”

  “Why don’t we first occupy ourselves with the delights of this phenomenal meal,” suggested Liberty rather hurriedly, reminding himself uncomfortably of his own ever-abustle aunt Aroline. “We have—what?—three days at least aboard this ship, time enough to investigate the perplexities of all the major sciences from alchemy to phrenology.”

  “Capital idea,” seconded Wallace, again raising his glass and casting a roguish glance around the table. “A toast, then, to the Union. Now and forever.”

  Solemnly, Maury lowered his crystal. “Not even in jest, sir, not even in jest.”

  “But wouldn’t you agree, Mr. Maury, that life would be an intolerably grim affair did we not indulge our fancy now and again?”

  “An age of drollery this is not.”

  “Quite true. But I have discovered over the course of an uncommonly eventful existence that mental equilibrium is best maintained by learning to appreciate the chinks in things, the gimcrack juxtapositions, the slapdash air to even matter itself, learning, Mr. Maury, to spot the joke. A pertinent example: Back in ’61, when I first shipped on this ill-starred Confederacy, skinnier, dumber, more arrogant than I am now, I received a commission as a full-fledged privateer, letter of marque signed by ol’ Jeff Davis himself. On our maiden voyage, about fifty miles east of Nantucket, we chanced to run across the USS Giza, a trim little bark who, at a single shot across her bow, judiciously showed her colors. Our first prize, and in a mad pitch of excitement we scrambled over her rails and actually attempted to pry open the cargo with our bare nails. And what do you think we found in all those precious barrels? Perfume, sir, a veritable lake of cheap eau de cologne the crew started guzzling down like rum until they realized what it was. I couldn’t get the scent out of my nostrils for weeks. But let me tell you, I managed to extract a good chuckle out of that fiasco for days later and, frankly, also happened to turn quite a princely profit. Always a ready market for ladies’ luxuries, even amid the smoke and screams, eh, gentlemen? And madame?” he added, with a fluid touch to the brim of his cap.