Modern Classics of Fantasy, page 52
“Where the medicine herbs grew?”
“Why, yes, Mr. Limekiller. Where they grew. As I suppose they still do. No one really knows, of course, what still grows down at Cape Mantee, though Nature, I suppose, would not change her ways. It was the hurricanes, you see. The War Year hurricanes. Until then, you know, Government had kept a road open, and once a month a police constable would ride down and, well, at least, take a look around. Not that any of the people there would ever bring any of their troubles to the police. They were…well, how should I put it? Tom, how would you put it?”
Tom thought a long moment. “Simple. They were always simple.”
What he meant by “simple,” it developed, was simpleminded. His aunt did not entirely agree with that. They gave that impression, the Mantee people, she said, but that was only because their ways were so different. “There is a story,” she said, slowly, and, it seemed to Jack Limekiller, rather reluctantly, “that a British man-of-war took a Spanish slave ship. I don’t know when this would have been, it was well before we came down and settled here. Well before The War. Our own War, I mean. It was a small Spanish slaver and there weren’t many captives in her. As I understand it, between the time that Britain abolished slavery and the dreadful Atlantic slave trade finally disappeared, if slavers were taken anywhere near Africa, the British would bring the captives either to Saint Helena or Sierra Leone, and liberate them there. But this one was taken fairly near the American coast. I suppose she was heading for Cuba. So the British ship brought them here. To British Hidalgo. And the people were released down at Cape Mantee, and told they could settle there and no one would ‘vex’ them, as they say here.”
Where the slaves had come from, originally, she did not know, but she thought the tradition was that they had come from somewhere well back in the African interior. Over the course of the many subsequent years, some had trickled into the more settled parts of the old colony. “But some of them just stayed down there,” she said. “Keeping up their own ways.”
“Too much intermarrying,” Tom offered.
“So the Bayfolk say. The Bayfolk were always, I think, rather afraid of them. None of them would ever go there alone. And, after the hurricanes, when the road went out, and the police just couldn’t get there, none of the Bayfolk would go there at all. By sea, I mean. You must remember, Mr. Limekiller, that in the 1940s this little colony was very much as it was in the 1840s. There were no airplanes. There wasn’t one single highway. When I say there used to be a road to Mantee, you mustn’t think it was a road such as we’ve got between Port Cockatoo and Shiloh.”
Limekiller, thinking of the dirt road between Port Cockatoo and Shiloh, tried to think what the one between Port Cockatoo and the region behind Cape Mantee must have been like. Evidently a trail, nothing more, down which an occasional man on a mule might make his way, boiling the potato-like fruit of the breadnut tree for his food and feeding his mule the leaves: a trail that had to be “chopped,” had to be “cleaned” by machete-work, at least twice a year, to keep the all-consuming bush from closing over it the way the flesh closes over a cut. An occasional trader, an occasional buyer or gatherer of chicle or herbs or hides, an occasional missioner or medical officer, at infrequent intervals would pass along this corridor in the eternal jungle.
And then came a hurricane, smashing flat everything in its path. And the trail vanished. And the trail was never recut. British Hidalgo had probably never been high on any list of colonial priorities at the best of times. During the War of 1939-1945, they may have forgotten all about it in London. Many of Hidalgo’s able-bodied men were off on distant fronts. An equal number had gone off to cut the remaining forests of the Isle of Britain, to supply anyway a fraction of the wood which was then impossible to import. Nothing could be spared for Mantee and its people; in King Town, Mantee was deemed as distant as King Town was in London. The p.c. never went there again. No missioner ever returned. Neither had a medical officer or nurse. Nor any trader. No one. Except for Malcolm Stuart…
“He did try. Of course, he had his own concerns. During the War he had his war work. Afterwards, he took up a block of land a few miles back from here, and he had his hands full with that. And then, after, oh, I don’t remember how many years of stories, stories—there is no television here, you know, and few people have time for books—stories about the Mantee people, well, he decided he had to go have a look, see for himself, you know.”
Were the Mantee people really eating raw meat and raw fish? He would bring them matches. Had they actually reverted to the use of stone for tools? He would bring them machetes, axes, knives. And … as for the rest of it…the rest of the rather awful and certainly very odd stories … he would see for himself.
But he had seen nothing. There had been nothing to see. That is, nothing which he could be sure he had seen. Perhaps he had thought that he had seen some few things which he had not cared to mention to Jack, but had spoken of to the Shiloh people.
They, however, were not about to speak of it to Jack.
“Adventure,” said Amelia Lebedee, dismissing the matter of Mantee with a sigh. “Nobody wants the adventure of cutting bush to plant yams. They want the adventure of nightclubs and large automobiles. They see it in the moving pictures. And you, Mr. Limekiller, what is it that you want?—coming, having come, from the land of nightclubs and large automobiles…”
The truth was simple. “I wanted the adventure of sailing a boat with white sails through tropic seas,” he said. “I saw it in the moving pictures. I never had a nightclub but I had a large automobile, and I sold it and came down here and bought the boat. And, well, here I am.”
They had talked right through the siesta time. Tom McFee was ready, now, to return for the few more planks which the sawmill might—or might not—have managed to produce since the morning. It was time to stand up now and to make thanks and say good-bye. “Yes,” said Amelia Lebedee, pensively “Here we are. Here we all are. We are all here. And some of us are more content being here than others.”
* * * *
Half past three at the Cupid Club. On Limekiller’s table, the usual single bottle of beer. Also, the three chaparitas of rum which he had bought— but they were in a paper bag, lest the sight of them, plus the fact that he could invite no one to drink of them, give rise to talk that he was “mean.” Behind the bar, Alfonso Key. In the dark, dark back, slowly sipping a lemonade (all soft drinks were “lemonade”—coke was lemonade, strawberry pop was lemonade, ginger stout was lemonade…sometimes, though not often, for reasons inexplicable, there was also lemon-flavored lemonade)—in the dark rear part of the room, resting his perpetually sore eyes, was old Captain Cudgel.
“Well, how you spend the night, Jock?” Alfonso ready for a tale of amour, ready with a quip, a joke.
“Oh, just quietly. Except for the manatees.” Limekiller, saying this, had a sudden feeling that he had said all this before, been all this before, was caught on the moebius strip which life in picturesque Port Cockatoo had already become, caught, caught, never would be released. Adventure! Hah!
At this point, however, a slightly different note, a slightly different comment from the old, old man.
“Een Eedalgo,” he said, dolefully, “de monatee hahv no leg, mon. Bec-ahs Eedalgo ees a smahl coxm-trce, ahn every-teeng smahl. Every-teeng weak. Now, een Ahfrica, mon, de monatee does hahv leg.”
Key said, incredulous, but still respectful, “What you tell we, Coptain Cudgel? What?” His last word, pronounced in the local manner of using it as a particular indication of skepticism, of criticism, of denial, seemed to have at least three Ts at the end of it; he repeated “Whattt?”
“Yes, mon. Yes sah. Een Ahfrica, de monatee hahv leg, mon. Eet be ah poerful beast, een Ahfrica, come up on de land, mon.”
“I tell you. Me di hear eet befoah. Een Ahfrica,” he repeated, doggedly, “de monatee hahv leg, de monatee be ah poerful beast, come up on de lond, mon, no lahf, mon—”
“Me no di lahf, sah—”
“—de w’ol’ people, dey tell me so, fah true.”
Alfonso Key gave his head a single shake, gave a single click of his tongue, gave Jack a single look.
Far down the street, the bell of the Church of Saint Benedict the Moor sounded. Whatever time it was marking had nothing to do with Greenwich Meridian Time or any variation thereof.
The weak, feeble old voice resumed the thread of conversation. “Me grahndy di tell me dot she grahndy di tell she. Motta hav foct, eet me grahn-dy di give me me name, b’y. Cudgel. Ahfrica name. Fah true. Fah True.”
A slight sound of surprise broke Limekiller’s silence. He said, “Excuse me, Captain. Could it have been ‘Cudjoe’…maybe?”
For a while he thought that the question had either not been heard or had, perhaps, been resented. Then the old man said, “Eet could be so. Sah, eet might be so. Lahng, lahng time ah-go…Me Christian name, Pe-tah. Me w’ol’grahndy she say. ‘Pickncy: you hahv ah Christian name, Pe-tah. But me give you Ahfrica name, too. Cahdjo. No fah-get, pickney?’ Time poss, time poss, de people dey ahl cab] me ‘Cudgel,’ you see, sah. So me fah-get…Sah, hoew you know dees teeng, sah?”
Limekiller said that he thought he had read it in a book. The old captain repeated the word, lengthening it in his local speech. “Ah boook, sah. To t’eenk ahv dot. Een ah boook. Me w’own name een ah boook.” By and by he departed as silently as always.
* * * *
In the dusk a white cloth waved behind the thin line of white beach. He took off his shirt and waved back. Then he transferred the groceries into the skiff and, as soon as it was dark and he had lit and securely fixed his lamp, set about rowing ashore. By and by a voice called out, “Mon, where de Hell you gweyn? You keep on to de right, you gweyn wine up een Sponcesh Hidalgo: Mah to de lef, mon: mah to lef!”And with such assistances, soon enough the skiff softly scraped the beach.
Mr. John Samuel’s greeting was, “You bring de rum?” The rum put in his hand, he took up one of the sacks, gestured Limekiller towards the other. “Les go timely, noew,” he said. For a moment, in what was left of the dimmest dimlight, Jack thought the man was going to walk straight into an enormous tree: instead, he walked across the enormous roots and behind the tree. Limekiller followed the faint white patch of shirt bobbing in front of him. Sometimes the ground was firm, sometimes it went squilchy, sometimes it was simply running water—shallow, fortunately— sometimes it felt like gravel. The bush noises were still fairly soft. A rustle. He hoped it was only a wish-willy lizard, or a bamboo-chicken—an iguana—and not a yellow-jaw, that snake of which it was said…but this was no time to remember scare stories about snakes.
Without warning—although what sort of warning there could have been was a stupid question, anyway—there they were. Gertrude Stein, returning to her old hometown after an absence of almost forty years, and finding the old home itself demolished, had observed (with a lot more objectivity than she was usually credited with) that there was no there, there. The there, here, was simply a clearing, with a very small fire, and a ramada: four poles holding up a low thatched roof. John Samuel let his sack drop. “Ahnd noew,” he said, portentously, “let us broach de rum.”
After the chaparita had been not only broached but drained, for the second time that day Limekiller dined ashore. The cooking was done on a raised fire-hearth of clay and sticks, and what was cooked was a breadfruit, simply strewn, when done, with sugar; and a gibnut. To say that the gibnut, or paca, is a rodent, is perhaps—though accurate—unfair: it is larger than a rabbit, and it eats well. After that Samuel made black tea and laced it with more rum. After that he gave a vast belch and a vast sigh. “Can you play de bonjoe?”he next asked.
“Well… I have been known to try…”
The lamp flared and smoked. Samuel adjusted it…somewhat…He got up and took a bulky object down from a peg on one of the roof-poles. It was a sheet of thick plastic, laced with rawhide thongs, which he laboriously unknotted. Inside that was a deerskin. And inside that, an ordinary banjo case, which contained an ordinary, if rather old and worn, banjo.
“Mehk I hear ah sahng … ah sahng ahv you country.”
What song should he make him hear? No particularly Canadian song brought itself to mind. Ah well, he would dip down below the border just a bit…His fingers strummed idly on the strings. The words grew, the tune grew, he lifted up what some (if not very many) had considered a not-bad-baritone, and began to sing and play.
Manatee gal, ain‘t you coming out tonight,
Coming out tonight, coming out tonight?
Oh, Manatee gal, ain‘t you coming out tonight,
To dance by the light of the—
An enormous hand suddenly covered his own and pressed it down. The tune subsided into a jumble of chords, and an echo, and a silence.
“Mon, mon, you not do me right. I no di say, ‘Mehk I hear a sahng ahv you country?’ Samuel, on his knees, breamed heavily. His breath was heavy with rum and his voice was heavy with reproof… and with a something else for which Limekiller had no immediate name. But, friendly it was not.
Puzzled more than apologetic, Jack said, “Well, it is a North American song, anyway. It was an old Erie Canal song. It—Oh. I’ll be damned. Only it’s supposed to go, ‘Buffalo gal, ain’t you coming out tonight,’ And I dunno what made me change it, what difference does it make?”
“What different? What different it mehk? Ah, Christ me King! You lee’ buckra b’y, you not know w’ehnnah-teeng?”
It was all too much for Limekiller. The last thing he wanted was anything resembling an argument, here in the deep, dark bush, with an all-but-stranger. Samuel having lifted his heavy hand from the instrument, Limekiller, moved by a sudden spirit, began.
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,
To save a wretch like me.
With a rough catch of his breath, Samuel muttered, “Yes. Yes. Dot ees good. Go on, b’y. No stop.”
I once was halt, but now can walk:
Was blind, but now I see…
He sang the beautiful old hymn to the end: and, by that time, if not overpowered by Grace, John Samuel—having evidently broached the second and the third chaparita—was certainly overpowered: and it did not look as though the dinner guest was going to get any kind of guided tour back to the shore and the skiff. He sighed and he looked around him. A bed rack had roughly been fixed up, and its lashings were covered with a few deer hides and an old Indian blanket. Samuel not responding to any shakings or urgings, Limekiller, with a shrug and a “Well what the hell,” covered him with the blanket as he lay upon the ground. Then, having rolled up the sacks the supplies had come in and propped them under his head, Limekiller disposed himself for slumber on the hides. Some lines were running through his head and he paused a moment to consider what they were. What they were, they were, From ghoulies and ghosties, long Ieggedy feasties, and bugges that go boomp in the night, Good Lord, deliver us. With an almost absolute certainty that this was not the Authorized Version or Text, he heard himself give a grottle and a snore and knew he was fallen asleep.
He awoke to slap heartily at some flies, and the sound perhaps awoke the host, who was heard to mutter and mumble. Limekiller leaned over. “What did you say?”
The lines said, Limekiller learned that he had heard them before.
“Eef you tie ah rottlesnake doewn fah me, I weel freeg eet.”
“I yield,” said Limekiller, “to any man so much hornier than myself. Produce the snake, sir, and I will consider the rest of the matter.”
The red eye of the expiring fire winked at him. It was still winking at him when he awoke from a horrid nightmare of screams and thrashings-about, in the course of which he had evidently fallen or had thrown himself from the bed rack to the far side. Furthermore, he must have knocked against one of the roof-poles in doing so, because a good deal of the thatch had landed on top of him. He threw it off, and, getting up, began to apologize.
“Sorry if I woke you, Mr. Samuel. I don’t know what –” There was no answer, and looking around in the faint light of the fire, he saw no one.
“Mr. Samuel? Mr. Samuel? John? oh, hey, Johhn!?…”
No answer. If the man had merely gone out to “ease himself,” as the Bayfolk delicately put it, he would have surely been near enough to answer. No one in the colony engaged in strolling in the bush at night for fun. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered. He felt for and found his matches, struck one, found the lamp, lit it, looked around.
There was still no sign of John Samuel, but what there were signs of was some sort of horrid violence. Hastily he ran his hands over himself, but, despite his fall, despite part of the roof having fallen on him, he found no trace of blood.
All the blood which lay around, then, must have been—could only have been—John Samuel’s blood.
All the screaming and the sounds of something—or some things—heavily thrashing around, they had not been in any dream. They had been the sounds of truth.
