Delivering Virtue

by Brian Kindall

  One day, as I was tossing my stones, I heard some ladies talking and laughing behind me on the strand. It was common to see the wives of the wealthy merchants and ship owners taking their promenade in the afternoon. They dressed in all their finery, often sporting lace parasols, and wearing the most lavish of gowns. They were in an unspoken competition to see who could outdo the next in the elegance and fashionable statement of their attire.

  One woman in particular always shined above the others. She was slightly taller than the rest, and thin, with a perfectly placed mole above her upper lip. I knew that her name was Chantal, and that she was my father’s wife, although how I attained this information I do not recall. Through my father, she had connections in London and Paris, and so always outdid the other ladies with the latest cut of her dress. On top of that, she had the audacity to bring a small poodle as a sort of living accessory to her stylishness. The lap dog was nearly as done up as was she, all ribbons and coifed just so.

  On that afternoon, while the ladies were busy jabbering about this thing and that, that mutt took an opportunity to quietly slip off his leash and go exploring. I watched him lift his nose to the breeze and sniff. If a dog could grin, he most assuredly did.

  In no time, he had found the putrefied corpse of a cod that had washed up onto the sand. He ran his pink tongue along the corners of his mouth. And then, in a state of pure animal rapture, he rolled and rolled in that fly ridden offal. At last, completely satisfied with himself, the little scoundrel slunk back to his mistress.

  I was down to my last stone, but I dared not turn away and miss the show I sensed forthcoming. Soon, I knew, that woman would catch a whiff of her dog’s perfume. And sure enough...

  “Oh!” she cried, and wheeled about.

  The odor must have risen all at once, because, in unison, the other ladies politely, but urgently, placed their hands over their noses, smiling from behind their kerchiefs with pained expressions.

  “Chou-Chou! Non!”

  The poodle looked up, wagging the pompon on his tail. His curly black coat was decorated with fish scales and slime.

  “Oh! Zut alors!”

  The woman bent to pick up the dog, but then, thinking better of it, she instead furled her parasol onto its cane. She raised it up and brought it down with a whack on the little dog’s back. Whack! Whack! While the other ladies watched.

  I was a fair distance away, but my eyes met those of the dog. He just stood there, taking the blows, not even trying to run away. One could see that he was not a bit sorry for what he had done. He was merely suffering the wrath of fools.

  “C’est la vie,” he seemed to say to me. “It is how I am made. What is one to do?”

  I looked down at the last stone resting in my palm. It was nicely shaped and curiously blue. It looked very much like a stone teardrop. I took and tossed it as far as I could into the surge and swell of the ocean – Plunk!

  Whack! Whack! went the woman’s parasol, even over the hiss of the waves.

  The blue stone sunk into the depths, just one of the many stones yet to come.

  “Donc!” I said, and then I turned and ran down the beach just as fast as I could go.

  I DID NOT RECALL falling to sleep, but now, abruptly, I found myself surfacing in the waking world.

  The vestige of some beautiful specter wavered in the shadows before me, and then slipped into the pool. I heard it part the waters and sink away. I felt myself reaching after, but sensed, from that confusing middle ground of dreams, that I had in truth remained motionless the whole time, and had not so much as lifted my little finger.

  I laid there, gathering the disparate fragments of my cognizance. It was a problematic act to accomplish. I felt rather like a puzzle scattered on the ground – nonsensical, and in pieces. But eventually, those pieces began to join together, more or less in order.

  I became aware of an inordinate pressure building in my brain. I was certain that a horse had his hoof resting on my forehead and was pressing down, testing to see at what point my skull would bust open like a ripe carbuncle. But when my eyes fluttered open, there was no horse standing over me – only air and sky. And blurred stars – far away – winking out, one by one, in the grayish glow.

  “Dawn,” I croaked, swallowing at the terrific dryness that had embraced the region of my larynx. “But where art thy rosy fingers?”

  I licked my lips with a withered tongue, and was delighted to find them dampened with dew.

  Everything felt to be saturated with a heavy condensation. It soaked coolly through my shirt. It was wet on the back of my hands, and on my face. That dew was the closest thing to rain I had experienced in such a long time, and although somewhat chilling and uncomfortable in its penetrating sogginess, it was just as soon refreshing besides. The dew felt somewhat cleansing, like, of sorts, a naturally occurring spit bath.

  My mind mists began to lift, and I was able to sort the remnants of my dreams and separate them from the more tangible parts of the preceding night. I remembered the owl.

  A taste of milk.

  The touch of skin coming together with warm skin.

  A resounding whack.

  And then, in a rush, everything came back to me properly categorized.

  I quick struggled to lift myself from the grass. The weight of my head was excessive and unmanageable. The ground shifted and tipped beneath me as I raised up – like the deck of a ship riding a rough sea – eliciting from my stomach pit an intense queasiness that instigated a surge of nervy sweat from all the pores of my body. I nearly upheaved, but only belched – a foul licorice-scented bile that stung my nostrils and seared my throat tube all the way back down to my innards. I gagged a bit, coughed, and then, resting on an elbow, turned to the side.

  Turtle Dove!

  She lay in the grass, still sleeping.

  My Indian Princess. Ma Belle Sauvage.

  Lost to her own secretive dreams.

  She lay picturesquely among the scattered bowls. A nearly nonexistent smile graced her mouth. The dew, like tiny jewels, beaded her upturned breasts. I fancied myself taking up a lover’s symbolic residence in the gentle heart sheltered beneath those breasts.

  “When the midnight of absence the day-scene pervading

  Distills its dew o’er the bosom of love…”

  Oh, what splendor!

  I smiled to myself. I surely could have admired her forever. But I was eager that she should wake, and that we should take our first steps forward in this life as a man and woman joined in the singularity of marriage. I placed my hand on her belly. I felt the dew drops disperse between my fingers and her skin. It was a sensation I knew, even then, that I would remember for the rest of my days.

  “Dove,” I whispered, and gave her a tender shake.

  Her flesh rocked gently beneath my touch, causing the dewdrops to stream down the slopes of her breasts and pool in the shallow valley lying between.

  “My love,” I said more loudly, and then, with a smile, “Mrs. Rain.”

  But then my own heart dropped away inside of me. My calls fell on deaf ears.

  She could not hear me now from where she was. That world was too far away.

  “Oh!” I said. “Oh, love!”

  I fell forward upon her lifeless form.

  Like a babe, I clung to her.

  And then I commenced to weep and weep.

  HOW MANY TIMES CAN a man’s heart be broke before it will cease to mend?

  This I wondered as, dulled by grief, I swaddled Turtle Dove’s body within the folds of her buffalo robe.

  The others stood behind me near the pool, watching. I did not endeavor to hide my tears, and they, likewise, did not conceal their own sorrow. The horses held their heads bowed low. Virtue waited silently beside them.

  “I can only guess…” I told the group, and sniffled. “I can only guess that the Dark Angel’s latent poison must have finally dislodged inside of our dear Turtle Dove, and then promptly worked its evil.” For there had been no
indication that she was sick.

  I tucked the robe in tight under her arms and legs, and bound it around the Indian woman with a length of rope, doing my best to mimic the way she had prepared her dead husband and son. I tried to make a fashion of that same style of odd, if not macabre, cocoon. Her head remained sticking out the top. My intentions were to respect her Blackfoot ways, enact her Indian rites, although in truth, I felt to be a bit of a white man muddler in my efforts at this undertaking.

  I then went to a stagnant little backwater down the stream and brought up heaping handfuls of clay churned with white gypsum mud. I carried the dripping glob back and gently rubbed it on Turtle Dove’s face all over. The clay began to dry at once with the warmth of the sunshine, and her countenance hardened under its alabaster death mask. She looked very much the same as she had when we had first met in my boyish dream, only now her eyes were closed, and I felt a whelming upsurge of sorrow at this thought of what we both had lost, and what we never now would have.

  I applied the white clay to my own face as well. Had I had any hair to chop off, I most assuredly would have. I am certain I looked pathetic and grotesque in the eyes of those around me, but I did not care. I had adored her, and this was the only way now that I could find to express that fact.

  With a piece of charcoal, I then drew a pair of eyes on her white forehead, again, in the manner I had seen used on her dead family. My efforts were a bit clumsy – the eyes were of mismatched sizes – but all in all, it was a respectable attempt considering. I blew the bits of cinder away, and then, kneeling, struggled to lift her into my arms.

  I staggered to a nearby cottonwood tree with a trunk that forked about five feet off the ground. I adjusted the cocoon over my shoulder so that I might more easily heft it into the tree’s crotch. It was not easy to do. At first I failed to get her high enough, and then, once I had, the body tumbled down onto the ground with a thump. This was disconcerting, and not at all according to the idealized choreography of the ritual I had mapped out in my head.

  I sighed, and steadied myself with a hand against the tree, waiting for my wooziness to subside. Admittedly, the liquor opiate I had ingested the evening before was now affecting my equilibrium and causing an intermittent seasickness that made any physical act most challenging. But soon my vertigo passed, and I attempted once again to lift the corpse into the tree. I was about to fail once more, when I sensed Virtue beside me, placing her hands on the bundle and pushing upwards. Her help was enough to complete the task, and at last, Turtle Dove’s shrouded body rested in the crotch of the tree.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  Virtue smiled and stepped away.

  I used another piece of rope to secure Turtle Dove to the tree, insuring that she would not be pulled down by a coyote, or toppled by the weight of the inevitable vultures. I then stepped backwards and, with sorrow, assessed my work.

  I was surprised to see that my old clothes – the very shirt and trousers so burnt and torn during our ordeal with the prairie fire – were still hanging in the branches of the tree where, on that very first day at the pool, I had left them out to dry. They waved languidly in the breeze. I was about to step forward and yank them down, when it occurred to me to leave them be. I did not know clearly what they represented – perhaps some vestige of my former self – but they seemed appropriately placed there near to my dearly departed Turtle Dove. In a way, I suppose, I imagined it to be symbolic of our togetherness, although such logic was surely thin and personal. At any rate, they remained in the tree, flapping and empty.

  Turtle Dove’s vantage afforded her a peaceful view of the pool. So much had happened here in these last few days. So much good and bad. Time had seemed to stand still. Her painted eyes peered out onto the scene. That grassy plot was where she had stitched my shin, and touched my tattoo. There was where she had swum in the pool’s coolness. And of course, there was where we had effectuated our love, and from where, soon after, her soul had left this earthly world behind.

  “Oh, Dove!” I whispered, and set forth on producing a new round of teardrops.

  The others waited.

  I did not want to leave her there now. The moment felt incomplete. But then I suppose that is always how it is when someone dies prematurely and of a sudden. So many things are left unsaid; so many loose ends are left undone.

  The pool kept up its plinking and tinkling dirge.

  The sun beat down.

  And then I remembered something. How could I have forgotten?

  “I’ll be right back,” I told Virtue and the horses.

  *****

  In a minute, I returned with the poem I had composed the evening before. “Let us gather round,” I said to my friends.

  The horses and Virtue moved closer, forming a half circle before the cocoon.

  “I will now read this bit of verse, inspired by Turtle Dove, as an encomium to her everlasting loveliness.”

  Now I had not reread the poem as of yet, or revised its lines to make it a more smooth flowing and polished work of art, but as I was still inspired by the thought of Coleridge’s Kubla Khan, I boldly began to read.

  “Oh, Turtle Dove! Oh, Turtle Dove!

  I crave your love, Oh, Turtle Dove!

  Blue butterflies are in the sky,

  Darkened now by night.

  I see the stars flash in their wings -

  A beatific sight.

  I hear your voice upon the stream,

  Recalling now our white-faced dream.

  You sing a song of water,

  While Sweet Virtue sleeps like a daughter.

  I smell your milk across the way, Oh,

  Its honey doth my heart asway!

  I long to suck your nipple…”

  At this point I paused and cleared my throat, forcing down a surge of nausea.

  “And from your breast now take a tipple…”

  I was feeling bad.

  “As I hear the plash and ripple…

  Of…”

  And then, in ill-timed fashion, I retched.

  A great upsurge of licorice muck issued forth from selected orifices on my mud-caked face.

  I doubled over, heaving and heaving, painfully purgating the poisons that had been percolating on my insides. This went on for some time.

  At last, my convulsions ceased. But alas! My vomitus had splashed all over my hands, and over the poem held therein. I stood in a puddle of corruption, assessing the damage.

  “Whoa!” I moaned, “Oooh-Ahhh!”

  I tried to wipe the filth from my paper pad, hoping to finish my eulogy, but saw that it was hopeless. The ink had run, and the text was too marred to be deciphered. The poem was lost almost before it had been found.

  I stood hunched over, considering this. “Oh, well,” I said, and shrugged. “It needed considerable work anyway.”

  And then I tossed the poem to the side.

  Turtle Dove looked down on us from on high. Even from under her deathly vestments and mask, she exuded a loveliness that seemed almost holy. “Go now,” she seemed to say. “And take my memory with you.”

  I tipped my hat to her. “Farewell, my love.”

  Virtue went and laid a flower at her feet.

  And then we prepared to move on, wondering what perils could possibly surpass this latest blow to our spirits and sense of purpose.

  TURTLE DOVE’S PASSING ALL but sapped our collective enthusiasm. It was hard now to remember our objective, or why it even mattered. The horses clumped along with their eyes half closed, as if after a long and tedious day of pulling a plow. Virtue – riding Genevieve – rarely spoke. She traveled in a sort of hypnotic meditation. She seemed placid enough, but one could only guess at what she might have been thinking. I especially felt to be wandering aimlessly, aimlessly, leading everyone more or less in a westerly direction, toward the setting sun, but with no great sense of urgency. My heart ached. What did it matter if we made the City of Rocks by first snow? In the big picture, who cared if Nehi ever got hi
s bride, or me my thirty thousand dollars?

  “Hell,” I muttered. “What if I never scribble another line of verse as long as I live?”

  Would the human race be any the worse for it?

  In the throes of those dark days, I greatly doubted that it would.

  By and by, the terrain began to transform around us. The prairie at last surrendered to a rougher ground, with withered scrub brush and sage and the occasional stunted hackberry tree replacing the ubiquitous tall grass. This new landscape was unlovely to gaze upon. It was crisscrossed with dry ravines, bony ridges, and studded with sandstone plateaus placed like colossal headstones across the bleak topography. One sensed that we were gaining elevation, creeping ever upward on a ramp of slightly tipped earth that would lift us ultimately to the Continental Divide – that north-south crest that runs down the American map like a wrinkle in the backside of a whore’s bloomers. The air was cooler too, causing one to feel that summer was most assuredly at its end. I suppose this change in scenery and subtle sense of progress might have marginally shaken our apathy, but not to any extent we noticed.

  Our sorrow was too great.

  *****

  After a few days, my clay mourning mask began to itch something dreadful, what with my whiskers sprouting underneath and trying to work their way through its impermeable plaster consistency. It did no good to scratch, as I only came away with bits of chalk under my nails, affording me no relief. I was beginning to think I might go mad with the irritation, when at last we came to an ugly little stream winding in the bottom of a gully. The hollow was choked with stinkweed and brush and brambles. We were in need of water – our continuous necessity – and although this creek had little to recommend it, we could not be sure how long before we would find one better. We rode along its high bank for a ways until we came to a place where we could get down to the water.