Hello to the Cannibals

by Richard Bausch

  Nevertheless, the fear takes possession of her, and what she sees, in spite of herself, is the dim alcohol-smelling cabin of the small coast steamer, with its four wrapped shapes in it, those dead men. It is as if she’s seeing this for the first time, as if some psychological screen had protected her from the actuality of the vision until now. She knows it is her fear that gives her this sense, and that it is not true. She knows it’s the storm, the violence of the waves on the other side of the wood, that makes every thought seem to harrow her soul, but she can’t blot any of it out, can’t get the image from her mind of those four trussed shapes, elongated white shapes, that she should have known in the first instant were corpses. Her own horror tosses her, as the ship is tossed in the whining blasts of windswept rain.

  Finally, she rests against the pillows piled at her back, her hands still clasped. Perhaps she drowses a little. She opens her eyes, feels the rocking of the ship, then does drift off, in a swoon of horror, a dread fall through darkness. She sees her brother in an open carriage, wearing a black cravat and holding an earthen jar, and something about his face tells her he’s dead. She comes awake with a cry, and gets off the bed, drops to her knees, then lies down on the hard floor, curling her legs up. She has never known such terror. She puts her hands over her head, crying, and the roar of the ship changes—a clatter, a shattering. The ship must be sinking; there is a sound like an explosion, oddly mingled with something utterly incongruous: musical notes, struck simultaneously. Not sequential melody, but a percussive ringing, as if several hands were attempting at the same time to hit the same group of notes. The explosion comes again, and again there is the sound of the struck notes. Then there is more glass shattering, more thudding of wood and steel, and, still again, the curious, jangled, several notes struck together. She half believes this is a terrible dream, the last dream before death. Slowly, because it is intolerable to remain where she is, she brings herself to her feet, wipes her eyes, and moves to the door of her cabin. Outside, water sloshes back and forth on the deck, and she sees no one. The sky is black, and there’s a sheet of rain out of the blackness, the sea tumbling over the gunwale and crashing down on the surface of the deck, all foam. She closes the door and quickly gets into her camisole and dress, her boots, which she laces while sitting on the floor of the cabin. Her fear is roiling in her, climbing the back of her neck, but she sees water running through the bottom of the doorway, and decides that the ship has hit something in the ocean and is sinking. She cannot feel anything now but the urgency to get out of the cabin and see what is happening, and once more there’s the sound of the eerily discordant, banging mass of musical notes. She gets to her feet, having twice to brace herself on all fours for the rolling of the ship, and moves to the door, which she opens again, looking out at the tumultuous night, the surging, angry sea, which is even darker, swept by fierce wind and rain. When the pitch of the deck is away from her cabin, she takes advantage of this and allows herself to be half-thrown to the opposite side, and the entrance to the saloon, the door of which gives way with the force of her coming against it. She nearly tumbles into the confusion and destruction of the place, and then scarcely misses being crushed by something large and solid and black, rolling toward her. She ducks and it hits the door frame, and there is the same tuneless clatter of notes, and the ship wrenches the other way, so that the thing rolls from her, to the other side of the saloon, where it slams against an overturned table and the wall, from which a lantern hangs precariously by a partly broken chain. The light plunges crazily on the walls and ceiling, jerks with each blow of what Mary now sees is a piano sprung from its moorings and being tossed by the motions of the ship. She starts toward it, and is hit, and stunned, by something flying through the air. She topples over, and again has to dodge the onrush of the piano, and when she rises again, a little dazed, she sees a young woman in the white uniform of a stewardess standing against the wall to her left, hands flat against the surface, eyes wide with fright. The piano has struck a shelf, and bottles of beer are rolling on the floor, along with containers of sauce, and one tin of fruit. Mary rushes to where the piano has lodged momentarily under the swinging lantern, and with all her strength pushes against it.

  —Come on, she shouts to the other young woman. Grab ’old of it.

  The stewardess braces, then lurches in Mary’s direction as the ship begins to roll again, and all the weight of the piano shifts. They are both holding it now, pushing with every ounce of strength they have, trying to keep their feet planted, until the ship rolls back, and the weight is less, the piano resting against the inner hull, under the wildly swinging light. The other woman begins to shout for help, and the ocean starts tipping things back in the other direction, the piano growing heavy again, nearly insupportable.

  —I can’t, the stewardess says. I can’t hold it.

  —Yes, you can, Mary tells her. But she believes she’s losing her own grip.

  Finally, another pair of hands takes hold, and then more, and the two women are surrounded by sailors, Captain Murray among them.

  —Save what ye can of the ale, Captain Murray shouts.

  And soon there are several men working in the room, expertly balancing themselves with the unsteady footing, as the ship pitches to and fro. Mary supports herself in the entrance of the cabin, watching them, and a sailor she hasn’t spoken to before looks at her, tilting his head curiously, and then seeming to show concern.

  —Yeh’re wounded, miss.

  The stewardess, a girl with very red hair and large blotchy freckles on her face, steps up and puts a soft white cloth on Mary’s cheek.

  Mary sees blood on the cloth, and touches her own fingers to the place on her cheek.

  —It’s a cut, the girl says. And then she indicates a small crescent-shaped wound on the side of her arm. Me, too, mum.

  There’s a strange light in her eyes. Mary can’t quite discern what it might mean. More than a moment passes before she can take her own gaze away.

  —You took it upon yerself, the stewardess says. Where did yeh get the gumption?

  Mary realizes it is admiration in the girl’s eyes. The knowledge of this confuses her for a few seconds. Then it pleases her so much that she experiences a surge of affection for the other. It’s almost elderly, though she cannot be more than four or five years her senior.

  —We did it together, she says to the girl. The two of us.

  —I’d still be cringing against the wall if you hadn’t come in, the girl says.

  Mary smiles, wiping the blood from her own face with the cloth.

  —And if you ’adn’t come to my aid, I’d still be dodging that piano.

  The girl laughs. But then she contains herself and straightens, brushing the front of her dress, because Captain Murray has approached them from the opposite wall. He taps the girl on her shoulder.

  —Work to do, he says. A lot of cleaning up.

  —Yes, sir, Cap’n.

  He turns to Mary.

  —You seem to have saved the day. I don’t know that that thing might not’ve gone through the hull. He reaches into the pocket of his shirt and brings out a silk handkerchief, which he touches to the side of her face. For an awkward moment the two of them seem to be taking turns stanching the blood, which still issues forth steadily from the cut. He steps closer and takes her by the chin, excusing himself, once again touching the cloth to the place.

  —It’s not deep, he says. It won’t scar.

  She breathes the several odors that emanate from him: talcum, pomade, tobacco, and whiskey; it all combines to cause an obscurely agreeable sensation in her, as if she were in a room of home. She looks into his gray eyes, meaning to express her satisfaction in him, in his presence. It occurs to her that she likes him, exactly as she once liked Mr. C. F. Varley the electrical engineer, and Guillemard, in his way. And Batty. There is no sex in this liking, even as she appreciates the tactile sensation of his fingers holding her chin. It is a pure, creaturely feeling of contact, and a
memory of rooms when her father was in them, the charms there, the talk and the happy excitement of anticipation, the adventures he would relate, the places she would hear of, as he held forth, smoking, one leg crossed over the other, a man who had been all over the world.

  —Thank you, she says to Captain Murray.

  —I believe I am the one in your debt, Miss Kingsley.

  When she returns to her cabin, she closes the door and looks at the place where, earlier, she lay in such terror of her own solitary little life in the immense, turning world. Without quite voicing it to herself, she understands now, finally, that the one hedge against this fear (the fear on the periphery of which she has lived since she was a very small girl), the one weapon available to her for battling it and keeping it at bay is action, even if the action is nothing more than movement from one place to another.

  EIGHTEEN

  1

  Dear Lily and Tyler,

  We’re settled in at 1123 Burgundy Street, right in the middle of the Quarter. Miss Violet Beaumont has been driving us around in her pickup truck. The three of us make quite a picture, I’m sure. She’s taken us to some of the best places, off-the-wall places nobody else seems to know about—a wonderful barbecue place no bigger than a living room, run by a black family named Rachambois. Very nice folks, quite at home—they live upstairs—and they made us feel at home.

  I wanted to tell you both that I can’t begin to express my sorrow over what happened, and how awful it was leaving the house that way, when you-all were suffering so. But it seemed for the best—Manny especially felt that the last thing you-all needed was to have us to worry about. That following day, and for the three days after, we thought long and hard about coming back for the service. Buddy was so kind to us. But we had already been there a couple of days and it seemed that it would’ve only added to everything for poor Millicent, who can’t think about herself and would have therefore been worried about us. It simply felt like it would have been an intrusion. So Manny sent the flowers and I hope they expressed something of our sorrow.

  We think of you-all, every day, and we hope you’ll keep in touch. I’ve got a job at another bookstore, not as good as the one in Charlottesville, but the pay is good, and Manny is looking for something in the newer part of the city, though he’s being quite well taken care of, as I am, by Aunt Violet, who is, as my father used to say, something else—and I’d love for you both to meet her. Lily, Aunt Violet could be Mary Kingsley, or someone so much like her that you’d feel you knew her in the flesh. Aunt Violet has never been married. She’s done exactly what she wanted to do all her long life, although until she was nearly twenty-eight she did nothing but care for her sick father, who had her when he was already old, and fought alongside Stonewall Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley. He was in his seventies when she was born and lived to be a hundred and three. The guy was thirty-five years old, Lily, when the Civil War began. Imagine it. He lived through it, achieved the rank of major, retired at the end of the war, and moved to Louisiana to start up a dry-goods business. There’s a picture of him on the mantel. He looks like George Bernard Shaw—long white beard and a lot of white hair. He had a talent for making money and for surviving horrendous mistakes. Aunt Violet has thousands of Confederate dollars in a trunk in the attic—his hedge against the day when it would all turn around and the Yankees would collapse. He had hordes of women, and outlived most of them, and then when he began to sink, waited eighteen years to complete the job. Aunt Violet cared for him through all that time, and when he died she up and went to Japan, where she lived for three years. She’s been around the world (she taught high school here for nearly five decades, using most of her summers for travel—she even spent some time in West Africa, and knows some things about Mary K.). She was fascinated to hear of your interest in her.

  How is the pregnancy; and how’s the job going for Tyler, and are you both getting back to some kind of normal life? I don’t mean that question to sound glib, or unfeeling. I do have the sense, though, that Buddy would not want anyone spending too much time moping around, even for him. My father, when he was still comfortable with me, once said, upon the death of a cousin of mine, “You honor his life by living your life as fully as possible.” I know it sounds like greeting-card stuff, but I think it’s true. I feel the truth of it.

  Please write when you can. And think of driving down for a visit. We would both so love for you-all to meet Aunt Violet. Maybe soon after the baby comes?

  Both of you call us the minute there’s news, or if you get an urge to head down this way. The number’s enclosed. I remember so fondly Tyler telling me about the impulse honeymoon you both had down here—and what a lovely time it was. How awful it would have been to have planned it. How marvelously surprising it had turned out to be.

  Those are the kinds of surprises I love. So think of surprising us. Aunt Violet says to plan on surprising us (wicked grin). That’s Aunt Violet.

  Love,

  Dominic

  Dear Dominic,

  It was so good to hear from you. Aunt Violet sounds wonderful. Can’t write much now—contractions. They’re called Braxton Hicks, and are not significant, except that they’re uncomfortable.

  We are all getting along here. Tyler and I have found a place. Millicent seems better, and Nick’s natural humor seems to be returning, though slowly. He goes to work and comes home. I’ve never seen anyone work so hard. He is the most considerate and kindly person now. He hardly ever jokes, and when he says anything at all that might be construed as such, it’s always at his own expense. And it was always, now that I think of it, mostly at his own expense. I feel so sorry for him sometimes—he just seems lost. He reads—the Bible, lately, and Shakespeare. He serves Sheri as if she’s a queen, and she’s like a frightened little girl a lot of the time. Nick takes care of everyone, it seems, and I’ve been learning how to cook. The house is very quiet. Tyler and I keep to ourselves, and sometimes I see in Tyler the pain he’s carrying. He keeps it all bottled up. I’m planning for the baby mostly by myself (not a complaint—really! Ha!), and I feel most of the time like a kind of spiritual nurse, except those times when I need comforting myself. We are all working to comfort each other—to get used to the difference: Buddy not here.

  Well, this must be short. I have to write my parents, in their separate houses. And I wonder now, with a kind of hard pressure, how I could’ve been so unhinged by their separation, as if that were the worst thing that could happen. How selfish I’ve been. I blamed my father—who is human, and flawed, like the rest of us—for not being who I thought he was. I’ll try to write again soon. And I’ll call you—or someone will—when the baby arrives.

  Love,

  Lily

  P.S. Tyler says “Hey.”

  Lily and Sheri were sitting in the living room of the little rented house, with its view out the small picture window of the giant red edifice being constructed an acre away: girders and stairs and wood framed into skeletal squares of imaginary living space. You could actually make out something of what the layout of these apartments was going to be, but at this stage of construction it might as easily have been a ruin. Several bulldozers were sitting idle in the foreground, their insectile shapes suggesting giants of some uncataloged genus or order, with their extended squarish metal arms and bucketlike fronts. There were large sections of ground disturbed around them, piles of dark earth, where preparations were under way to build a lane in from the main road. It had snowed the night before, and patches of it still lay on the dry grass, melting away in the chilly sun. Sheri had come unexpectedly for a morning visit, and the place was a mess. There was still unpacking to do. In boxes along one wall was Tyler’s hunting gear—all of which he had decided to discard or give away. On the table, cups of coffee and tea were scattered, on either side of a small box of chocolate doughnuts Sheri had brought with her. The two women had spent the last few minutes striving, with meaningless chatter, to get through the awkwardness they both felt. Lily had put th
e radio on and they had listened to the weather, and spoke about that a little. Sheri went on for a few minutes about things at the house—Millicent walking around in a daze, but managing to keep up with the order of things and with some of the aspects of running the dealership; Nick showing consideration, and other qualities—patience and solicitude and strength—that she hadn’t known he possessed. This was said with an air of offhandedness, which Lily suspected was an attempt to fend off questions about him. She wished the other woman would leave her alone, finally. She was tired. The baby had kicked all night and kept her up. She had so much work to do.