The Island, page 20
It was twilight when the pinnaces reached the cove, and half the men had a head start on tomorrow’s hangover. Jack the Bat had finished his jug of rum-and-gunpowder and was at work on a bottle of hundred-proof vodka, borrowed (“on account,” he insisted) from Beth’s share of the booty. Over and over, he sang a song that had only two lines: “Hey boys, up go we, Molly’s caught her skirts on the manzanilla tree.” Nau’s second fell out of his pinnace while lowering the sail at the entrance to the cove. He was unable to swim, and he kicked and thrashed until someone threw him a line and then—to the merry guffaws of the rest of the crew—proceeded to pee on him as he was towed toward shore.
A Boston Whaler was beached in the cove, and a man stood beside it, waiting. In the near-darkness, Maynard did not recognize the man: All he saw was a white linen suit, with the trousers rolled up to the knees. Then he heard the man call, “Well done, Excellency! If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly.”
Windsor.
“Say hey, Doctor!” Nau cocked his arm and threw something at the shore. “Your purse. Poor perhaps, but all she had. And what have you brought me?”
“Powder—two kegs—and medicine to cleanse your wretched persons.” Windsor picked up the purse and put it in his pocket.
The pinnaces were run up onto the sand, the cargoes unloaded onto the beach.
Justin and Manuel walked a pace behind Nau as he approached Windsor.
When Windsor spotted Justin, he said cheerfully, “Now, there’s a lad. Give me your name again, boy.”
“Who he was is gone,” said Nau. “Now he is Tue-Barbe.”
“A fine name. So, Tue-Barbe, how goes the battle?”
“Fine, sir,” said Justin.
“He is worthy,” Nau said. “Time will come, he and Manuel will vie for leadership.”
“Top shelf. Survival of the fittest. Keep the line pure.” Windsor surveyed the cargo being stacked on the beach. “She was rich. I thought so. Their talks with the mainland suggested it.”
“Aye, but a worthless cargo. Drugs, the scribe called them.”
“Who?”
Beth had led Maynard out of the pinnace and stationed him on the beach while she supervised the separation of her share.
“The scribe.” Nau pointed at Maynard.
Windsor crossed the beach to Maynard and examined him, unbelieving, as if suspicious that Maynard was a practical joke. All he said was, “Why are you alive?”
“Hello to you to.”
“I tried to save you, but you were pigheaded. Now you should be dead.”
“Well . . .”
Windsor said to Nau, “Why is he alive?”
“It’s a tangled web,” Nau replied. “I’ll unravel it for you over a glass.”
Windsor insisted: “He should be dead! That’s the way.”
“That he will be, and before long. He knows it, we know it, it is a fact. Meanwhile, he scribbles for us.”
Windsor did not argue with Nau. He whispered to Maynard, “I don’t know how you did it, but whatever it is, it’s finished. Believe me.”
“You’re threatening me?” Maynard smiled. “Please . . . don’t bother.”
“Just believe me,” Windsor repeated. He turned away.
Maynard took a guess. “You worried I’ll contaminate your laboratory?” Windsor halted. “This is your perfect society, isn’t it?”
“Not yet.” Windsor could not stifle a smile. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Mencken, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
“Come, Doctor,” Nau called. “Your jug is full and your dandelion is lonesome.”
Beth fetched a crude wheelbarrow from the underbrush, and she and Maynard loaded her goods aboard and pushed them back to her hut. Sounds of celebration were carried on a fresh breeze throughout the island: shouts and laughter, squeals and curses, bottles breaking and bodies stumbling through the bushes.
“Sounds like a real blowout,” Maynard said as they stacked cases and cartons and mesh bags in the hut until there was barely enough room for them to squeeze by one another.
“Warming up for council.”
“Council?”
“We’ll go by and by. We’ve other business first.”
He looked at her, expecting an explanation, but all he saw was a peculiar sad smile that he could not interpret.
When all the goods were stored, she said, “What rum pleases you?”
“I don’t know rums.”
“You must have a favorite.” She pointed at the cases. “Vodka rum? Whisky rum? Gin rum? Rum rum?” She waved her hand proudly. “I have them all. I am rich. Roche would die a second death to see how rich I am.”
“Whisky rum.”
Delighting in the role of munificent hostess, Beth tore open a case of scotch and presented Maynard with a bottle. For herself she took a bottle of vodka. She opened hers and gestured for him to do the same. Then, “Wait,” she said. With her fingernails she scraped the dirt floor of the hut and uncovered a key. She unlocked Maynard’s chain, unwrapped it from his neck, and cast it aside. “There,” she said.
The muscles in Maynard’s neck and shoulders felt suddenly elastic and alive. Gingerly, he touched the skin the chain had abraded raw. “Thank you.”
She nodded. “Drink.”
“Why . . . ?”
“Why drink? Because . . .”
“No. Why . . . that?” He indicated the chain.
“No reason.” She shook her head, but she wouldn’t look at him. “You are to be trusted.”
“All of a sudden?”
“You would have me replace it? No? No! Be quiet and drink.”
They sipped from the bottles. The liquor, neat, burned on the way down and then pooled warmly in the stomach.
“You have brought me good fortune,” Beth said.
“That’s something, I guess.”
“It is too bad.”
“What is?”
She gestured, vaguely, at the world. “Everything.” She took a long pull on the vodka bottle. “But . . . that is the way.”
Maynard sipped and said, “You know what? The way is a pain in the ass.”
Beth laughed. “Well, perhaps . . .”
“You know,” Maynard said carefully, hoping not to sour her mood, “my offer still stands.”
“What off—?” Beth knew. “No. It is too late.”
“Why?”
Beth shook her head, dismissing the thought, and set her bottle on the floor. “Come.”
“Where to?”
“Come. I told you: other business.”
She took his hand and led him to the beach, where she bathed him with, it seemed to him, extraordinary tenderness.
They started back up the beach, but halfway to the underbrush she stopped and said, “Here.” She dropped to the sand, dragged him down beside her, clamped her mouth on his, and rode him with a fierce intensity. Then, breathing heavily, she touched his face and said softly, “You have been good to me.”
There was nothing in her words to distress him, but the flat finality in her voice made his heart race.
They walked along the dark paths, following the now-concentrated din of revelry. They came to the edge of a clearing, and Beth paused and peered ahead, as if checking for ambush.
“What are you worried about?” Maynard asked.
Beth held a finger to her lips and said, “Ssshhh.”
She dashed across the clearing, and Maynard, following, saw the empty catamites’ lodge.
They came to the clearing where the prostitutes lived, and again Beth paused warily before crossing.
They continued silently along the path. Suddenly, from the underbrush, an enormous man bulled his way onto the path and blocked their passage. He was roaring, drooling drunk. He staggered across the path, stumbled into a bush, righted himself, and swiped viciously at the air with his cutlass. “Stand!” he cried.
“Stand yourself, Rollo,” Beth said, “if you can.” She seemed neither frightened nor alarmed, but resigned to an unpleasantness.
The big man weaved and squinted at them. “However many ye be, have a glass with me or I’ll have at ye with my hanger!” He waved his cutlass at them.
“Let us pass, Rollo.”
“Ye’ll not pass until ye’ve drunk to my honor.” He reached behind a bush and dragged onto the path a case of Kahlúa. He knocked the neck off a bottle and held it out to Maynard. “Drink. To my honor.”
“No, thanks.”
Rollo bellowed and lunged at Maynard. Maynard sidestepped and, as Rollo passed, punched him in the kidney and knocked him to his knees.
“A fine blow!” Rollo said as he lurched to his feet. “Rattled my guts. Now’’—he wiped the neck of the bottle on the seat of his trousers—“drink or I’ll have at ye again.”
Maynard glanced at Beth, who said, “Pacify him.” So Maynard sipped from the bottle and passed it to her. She sipped and muttered, “Your honor,” and returned the bottle to Rollo.
Pleased, Rollo said, “My honor.” He drained the bottle and pitched the empty into the shrubbery. Then, giggling, he removed the case from the path and tottered back to his hiding place, to await the next passers-by.
“How long’ll he play that game?” Maynard asked as they continued along the path.
“Till he topples. He’s harmless enough.”
“Harmless! He was joking?”
“Oh no. He’d kill you sure enough, but if you drink with him, he’s a cub.”
They walked on, toward the sounds of celebration. “Suppose he did kill somebody,” Maynard said.
“Rollo? He has.”
“What happens to him?”
“Happens?”
“There’s no punishment?”
“If it’s a child, yes, that’s butchery. He wouldn’t. But a grown person . . . that’s a fair fight.”
“Suppose he ambushes him.”
“Anyone who can’t defend himself against a reeling sot like that . . . he’s no loss.”
The company was gathered in the clearing before Nau’s hut. The brim-full rum pot, surrounded by ruptured cases of various liquors, stood in the center, simmering over charcoal embers. Drunken men and women were sprawled everywhere. As Beth led him into the clearing, Maynard stepped over a pair of grunting, sweating, copulating bodies.
Jack the Bat, clad only in a pair of rubber boots, sat in the sand with a half-dressed whore in his lap. Jack the Bat was weeping copiously, and as Maynard passed he heard him say to the whore, “But Lizzie dear, I’ve always loved you! You’re my heart’s desire.”
“There, there, Jack,” the whore replied, stroking his neck. “I can’t run away with you. Where would we run to?”
“I’ll build you a cottage at the end of the island. Make me happy!” Jack the Bat blubbered. “Say you will.”
“There, there, Jack. Have another drink and we’ll have another go, and you’ll feel better.”
Hizzoner leaned against a tree stump, sucking on a bottle of brandy and offering catechism to a sleeping whore. He asked questions, and, receiving snores in response, pronounced learned answers to himself. “Yes, you could become Magdalen,” he said thoughtfully. “But a question of theology remains. Is it enough simply to stop taking pay for your services, or must you stop rendering them altogether? If you give them away, are you Magdalen or Samaritan? Or wanton? I must consult the Scriptures.” Hizzoner consulted the brandy bottle, and rambled on.
Nau sat in front of his hut, alone, drinking rum from a pewter chalice. His eyes monitored the behavior of the company, but he did not interfere—not when voices rose, curses were exchanged, bottles broken. Evidently, his presence was sufficent to maintain a certain order.
“Ah, scribe,” he said when he saw Beth and Maynard. “Come to chronicle the downfall of Rome? It’s rare we have a day worth celebrating thus.” Nau noticed that Maynard was not tethered. He spoke sharply to Beth. “Where is his leash?”
Beth bent down and whispered to Nau, who smiled and nodded and said pleasantly to Maynard, “Come sit by me, then, and share a glass.”
Maynard put a hand on Beth’s arm. “What did you tell him?”
“Only . . .” Beth looked away. “Only that you are trustworthy.”
Maynard sat down. Nau filled the chalice and passed it to him. “You might have been a trump, in another time.”
Maynard drank. Behind him, in the hut, he heard a slap and a giggle and a high voice squealing, “Oh, you rogue!” He raised his eyebrows at Nau.
Nau chuckled. “The doctor is having his way.”
Windsor’s voice, petulant: “You’re a nasty tease, and I won’t have it!”
The sound of another slap came from the hut, and then a sigh.
Suddenly, Nau seemed to sense something wrong amid the crowd, as if an undrawn line had been crossed. A voice yelled in anger. There was a slap, and a cry of genuine pain.
“Hold!” Nau commanded.
The crowd quieted. Basco Tom was on his feet, his dagger poised above a cowering whore.
“Basco! Leave it!”
“I’ll cut her, l’Ollonois. You’ll not stop me.”
“No,” Nau said evenly, “I’ll not stop you.”
The crowd waited.
Basco prepared to strike.
“But as you cut,” Nau said, “bid farewell to your hand. I’ll have it off myself.” He stood and took a knife from his belt.
Basco paused.
“Lay on,” said Nau. “Cut her. It will be a costly cut, but you’re a man who knows the worth of things. If a cut’s worth a hand, so be it.”
Basco said, “She offended me.”
Maynard saw the muscles in Nau’s back relax. “It must have been a mighty offense.”
“It was.” Basco was responding to Nau’s sympathy. “I offered her good value to see her naked, but she refused.”
The whore, too, felt the tension ebb, for she spat in the sand and said, “Good value! A stinking kiss and a tin of peas!”
“It’s fair value! I had no designs to touch you.”
“I’m a prostitute, not a picture! A man doesn’t feast only with his eyes!”
Nau said to the whore, “What do you deem fair value?”
She got to her feet and dusted off her smock, prepared to negotiate. “Well, seeing that I’m not in the business of window-shopping, I offered him proper feast. And all I asked . . .”
“All!” Basco shouted.
The whore continued primly, “All I asked was his pretty locket.”
“Too dear for an ogle.”
“I promised more than an ogle.”
Nau said, “What locket?”
Basco’s expression dissolved into dread. “Nothing. It’s nothing. I was in error.”
“No great prize,” said the whore. “A pretty little thing . . .”
“What locket?” Nau held out his hand.
Maynard saw Hizzoner stir from his religious reverie and rise to his feet.
“A bauble,” Basco said, smiling lamely. “A trinket.”
“I’ll have it.” Nau’s hand was still extended.
“Of course!” Basco stopped at the rum pot and dipped his cup. His hand shook as he raised the cup to his lips.
He stood before Nau and reached into his pocket, but there his hand froze: Nau had the barrel of a pistol pressed against his forehead.
“Leave it.” Nau glanced to the side. “Fetch it, Hizzoner.”
Hizzoner dug into Basco’s pocket and came out with a double-barrel percussion derringer.
“Well!” Nau said.
Now Basco was terrified. “The locket’s in there! I swear!”
“I’m sure. And well protected, too.”
Hizzoner found the trinket and passed it to Nau. It was not a locket, but a gold ankh on a gold chain.
“How long have you had this?” Nau repeated.
“Years! A keepsake.” Basco’s eyes were crossed, focusing on the pistol barrel.
“How long have you had this?” A third time.
“I swear . . .”
“How long have you had this?”
Basco knew very well what was happening. Sweat poured down his face.
Maynard looked at Basco and knew—analytically, matter-of-factly, without shock or chagrin—that the man was dead. Whatever Basco had done (Maynard assumed theft) had been heinous enough by itself, and Basco had compounded the offense by lying, not once but three times. Maynard had become so inured to carnage that he wondered only how, not if, Basco would die. And, he noted idly, a new part of his brain, or of his humanity, must have atrophied, for he no longer even cared about not caring.
“The drink, l’Ollonois,” Basco said. “The battle . . .”
“You took this from the woman,” said Nau. “This is why she bit you.”
“I . . .”
Hizzoner said, “He kept a secret from the company.”
“A trinket!”
Nau said. “We were boys together, Basco.” Then he pulled the trigger.
The top of Basco’s head exploded in a shower of splinters, and he fell to the sand, an uncapped bottle.
Nau put the pistol back in his belt and tossed the ankh to the whore. Two men dragged Basco’s body out of the clearing.
Slowly, arduously, like a steam locomotive pulling away from a station the revelry regained its momentum.
Nau refilled his chalice, sipped from it, and passed it to Maynard. “How would you write that, scribe?”
Maynard shrugged. “Another death. Here one minute, gone the next. That’s how you treat it, isn’t it?”
“Basco was a friend.”
“Were you sad to kill him?”
“I will miss him, but it had to be done.”
“There’s no forgiveness, even for friends.”
“No. Forgiveness is weakness. Weakness becomes a crack; a crack becomes a rent, and soon there is riot. They expected no less from me.”
There were footsteps behind Maynard, and he heard Windsor say, “I heard shrill notes of anger, and mortal alarms.”
Windsor stood in front of the hut, cinching his trousers. He had a half-empty bottle of scotch under one arm. His face was flushed, his eyes glassy. He was followed by the lithe blond catamite with the black leather codpiece. The catamite posed by the doorway, smug and narcissistic.
