An Embarrassment of Riches Read online

  “A curse! A curse!” he shouted into the swollen gray heavens. “A curse, by God’s wrathful hand, on those red devils!”

  The words had barely left his mouth when those very heavens opened wide their floodgates and it began to pour.

  “To the boat! Back to the boat!” Bilbo shouted at us through the downpour, beckoning with his huge, apelike arm.

  “We cannot just leave them to rot,” Uncle protested loudly.

  “This is the frontier, sir!” Bilbo shouted back.

  “Thou scum! I shall not leave ’til they are buried like Christians.”

  Bilbo had already begun wading out to the keelboat with Neddy on his shoulders. Uncle stood fast. The dwarf leaped aboard whilst Bilbo hoisted himself on deck. There he stood, dripping in the downpour, a hand upon the pistol in his sash.

  “Come, I say!” he importuned us.

  “No,” Uncle shouted back.

  Bilbo drew his pistol and held it up.

  “I shall count to three,” he said. “Come aboard or rot with them. One….”

  “For Godsake!” I pleaded with Uncle, shivering in the cold rain.

  “Two….”

  “Please!”

  “Three.”

  Bilbo pulled the trigger. The pistol clicked emptily, its charge already spent upon the porcupine. The villain laughed.

  “You contumacious dunderhead!” he shook his fist at Uncle. “Even if we had the leisure to bury those poor wretches, we do not have at hand so much as a shovel!” Bilbo burst out laughing again. Uncle maintained his resolute posture, but glanced about at the ground as though flummoxed.

  “We could weight them with stones and commit their bodies to the river,” he suggested. “Thee has claimed to have served in the navy under Captain Jones. Surely thee has heard of burial at sea.”

  “At sea one has no choice, sir,” Bilbo riposted. “’Tis a prophylactic measure. Either one carries a stinking corpse on board or one disposes of it. What does it matter if these poor souls are eaten by catfish or worms or buzzards?”

  Uncle was already gathering stones.

  “All right, all right, by the everlasting cod of Christ! Gather your stones and let’s be done with it!”

  And so we bound the poor brutalized Bottomleys in shrouds of burlap, weighted them with stones, and committed their bodies to the confluence of the two rivers with a few words of consecration, that they might meet their Lord and Savior in a better world than this one.

  4

  Notwithstanding one’s being held captive by the likes of such offal as Bilbo; or of stumbling upon a scene of barbarous murder such as that terrible aftermath at Bottomley’s Station; or of being, in general, defenseless in the midst of a vast and hostile wilderness filled with unfriendly savages and roaring beasts—there is no occupation so easy and restful as floating down a great river on a keelboat. By the converse, there are few occupations so tedious as poling such a craft against the current.

  We departed the dolorous site of pillage and murder and made upstream on the Dismal. The[O4] turgid progress, but in those stretches where the river narrowed between brooding, tree-topped clay bluffs, our labor was arduous. Uncle and I would stand at the prow of Megatherium, brace our poles against the river bottom, and, leaning against said poles, walk to the rear of the boat along the narrow deck, or runway. Then: up poles, a quickstep back to the bow, and the same hard procedure over and over and over. Bilbo stationed himself on the cabin roof, one jaundiced eye clapped upon us, the other scouring the shadowy banks or bluffs for signs of Indians, pistols at hand, Neddy and Bessie seated beside him with a brace of rifles and supply of ball, powder, and patches, ready to reload. And always, held fast between Bilbo’s bootheels and the wooden crate that served as his throne, was a specimen jar of Monongahela whiskey.

  Hardly a moment went by that I did not expect a hail of arrows to issue from those drear bosky banks, but I was to be happily disappointed in this respect. For though the river teemed with life—with deer (Odocoileus virginianus) and elk (Cervus elaphus) drinking at the water’s edge; bear (Ursus americanus) with cubs frisking on the sandbars; raccoon (Procyon lotor) grubbing daintily for insect provender upon the shore; otter (Lutra canadensis) and whelps sliding comedically down their chutes as though for the sheer pleasure of it; heron (Ardea herodias) and crane (Grus americana) winging majestically overhead; ducks of two dozen species plying the eddies with their chicks in flotilla; wolves (Canis occidentalis) baying in the distance, and songbirds lilting by the multitude in the verdure—for all this teeming of life, it was our good fortune not to cross paths with that most dangerous denizen of the forest: man.

  Nights, we anchored offshore, and though our commander tried to establish a shift of watches ’twixt himself and the dwarf, it was a pretense soon abandoned, for I would wake in my bindings in the morning to their polyphonic snores.

  Likewise, as the days followed, one upon the next, we ventured now ashore. Neddy was sent abroad in the forest to procure succulent viands for our supper. I was regularly conducted into the woods for two purposes: (1) by Bilbo, to survey our whereabouts in respect to the alleged fountain of youth, the neighborhood of which we were presumably nearing, and (2) by Bessie, to be amorously abused, with the ever-vigilant Neddy ever close at hand to superintend, lest I escape. The girl grew more insatiable with every assault. I was helpless to rebuff her.

  It was upon one of those enforced debaucheries that I looked around the thicket in which she was having her way with me, and spied a sprig of phrensyweed. It was just as Uncle described it—a timid shrub of compound treble leaves, irregularly toothed or lobed, cordate, slightly reddish, and conspicuously hirsute. As Bessie hauled upon my haunches, I reached over her head and seized the weed in my hand. When the shameful act was concluded, and she lay panting in stuperous exhaustion upon her back, I tucked the leafy treasure inside my shirt.

  As soon as we returned to the boat, I drew Uncle to the bow, out of the others’ earshot, and took out my specimen. He rolled his eyes and groaned.

  “Thou poor, luckless rattlebrain,” he said. “That is not phrensyweed.”

  “No?” said I fingering it in chagrin, “’tis just as you described it: hairy, cordate leaves—”

  “Hairless. Hairless!” Uncle despaired.

  “O,” said I. “Well, ’twas an honest mistake. What is this weed, by the by?”

  “Rhus toxicodendron,” Uncle said.

  “What a grandiose appellation for such a trifling botanical.”

  “’Tis poison oak, Sammy,” Uncle said.

  I turned my palms down and watched the leaves flutter into the muddy water below.

  “Gentlemen!” Bilbo hailed us from his throne-crate above. “May we have your attention, please?”

  Uncle and I traded glances, wondering what portentous news the scoundrel was about to inflict on us now. The trio was grouped atop the cabin as though in a formal portrait scene—Bilbo, the paterfamilias, seated; Bessie at his right; and Neddy, the loyal pet, on his haunches to the left. I could not help wishing I might paint a portrait of the motley clan just in this pose, if only to have some image to fling darts at in that longed-for future when we should be rid of these incomparable dregs.

  “What a treat is in store for you, my hearties! So happy is my darling Bessie that she has agreed to give a performance. What shall it be? Eh, partners? Some Milton? Herrick? A little Suckling, perhaps? Shakespeare? Spenser’s Faerie Queene? Name it and the piece is yours.”

  “Has she any Cowper, per chance?” I asked with a slight sarcastical edge, alluding to one of our more modern masters of the strophe.

  “Cowper!” Bilbo guffawed. “Why, that melancholy, mealy-mouthed country Methodist!”

  I was taken aback.

  “That morbid misfit of a moping mooncalf!” Bilbo railed on, quite beside himself with mirth, and began to recite with actorish verve:

  “I see that all are wanderers gone astray

  Each in his own delusions; they
are lost

  In chase of fancied happiness, still wooed

  And never won. Dream after dream ensues;

  And still are disappointed. Rings the world

  With the vain stir. I sum up half mankind

  And add two-thirds of the remaining half

  And find the total of their hopes and fears

  Dreams empty dreams …”

  I was impressed that he knew the work, let alone that he had committed the verse to memory.

  “What rot,” Bilbo commented and laughed again. “Well? What do you say, my lambs?”

  I scratched my chest in some perplexity whilst Uncle frowned.

  “All right, I shall choose for us. ‘Spring,’ by Mr. William Shakespeare.” Bilbo folded his shovel-like hands in his lap, closed his eyelids languorously, and smiled. Bessie stepped forward, cleared her throat, and curtsied.

  “‘Hwing,’” she said. “Hy Hwanga Hwingwim Hwonkmah.”

  “Hwang honk honk pwee hwang hwinga muh

  Hwang honka-thmah honk hinga-wuh

  Honk cuckoo-honk huh hwonga hue

  Hoo pwanga honkoh wuh hwonkong,

  Huh cuckoo honk, hunh hwonga pwee,

  Hwok honka muh; huh hwun twung he,

  Cuckoo!

  Cuckoo, cuckoo! O, hwonk huh fwuh,

  Hwonpwongkong hoo huh muhwee eeh!

  Hwong honka pah huh honka hwong,

  Hah muhhah hong huh plungmuh hwong,

  Hwong murhuh hwon, huh hoo, huh hwang

  Hwong muhhuh huh huh honka honk

  Huh cuckoo honk, honk hwonga pwee,

  Hwok honka muh; huh hwun twong he,

  Cuckoo!

  Cuckoo, cuckoo! O, hwonk huh fwuh,

  Hwongpwongkong hoo huh muhwee eeh!”

  She curtsied again. The air resounded emptily with the drone of flies. The very songbirds in the trees seemed goaded to silence. Bilbo gazed at his offspring with a look of total and unequivocal pride, a tear of joy glistening on his leathery cheek.

  “Bravo! Bravo!” he lauded her, clapping his hands. Neddy joined in enthusiastically. Bessie, meanwhile, squirmed and blushed girlishly in place, as any maiden thrust to center stage might do. Uncle finally joined the applause, his heart no doubt wilted by the abysmal proceedings. He even poked me in the ribs, as if urging me to show the poor creature some sympathetic appreciation. Not wanting to appear an insensitive boor, I deigned to join in. It was at the very first clap that I felt a burning sensation in my hands. It was as though someone had tossed me an hot coal, and I, stupidly, had caught it. I looked down at my palms. The bubbly blisters of poison oak had begun to spread in all their sickening, rubescent glory.

  Every cloud has its silver lining, we are told. While the affliction of my oak poisoning tormented me for days, I was relieved of my duties both as poler and as studsman to the egregious Bessie; for Bilbo grew more jealous of my health and well-being the closer we drew to our putative destination. Thus, Bilbo himself now manned the starboard pole whilst I replaced him on the cabin roof.

  Even so, it did not become a pleasure ride; for besides the awful itching and burning of my skin eruption was added a new torment as the days grew ever warmer and summery: mosquitoes. By mosquitoes I am not talking about a few pesky, droning mites sullying the twilight hour, but of multitudes, clouds of ravening bloodsuckers, active at all hours of the day and night, and from which there was no escape. Not even the cabin proved a sanctuary against their relentless onslaughts. We soon learned that the only protection from the marauding hordes was to swaddle ourselves in as many layers of clothing as possible—making for, let me assure you, sheer torture in that heat. And while this swaddling protected one from the remorseless stabbings of those tiny, winged brutes, it only aggravated my prior affliction, ’til I swear I would have preferred the nullity of death than continue this manner of living. At times, I was reduced to weeping, such was my misery.

  It was after several days of this continual assault, that one of us—possibly Bilbo himself—had the bright idea of firing our iron brazier and charging the coals with whatever dank rubbish the forest floor afforded that might produce the densest, foulest, most mephitic smoke possible, and thus drive away the bugs. In so doing, we had to risk attracting the notice of Indians. But no hail of arrows answered, and the smudge pot neatly quelled the siege of insects. Soon normality—such as we knew it—once again reigned on board Megatherium. A week passed. My hands and chest began to heal. The river narrowed.

  It was four o’clock in the afternoon, the last day of this peaceful week, when we heard an insistent far-off nattering, as of the sound of dry leaves in an autumn breeze. But it was a balmy day in midspring, and minute by minute this noise grew louder and more alarming. Uncle and I (I had resumed my duty) stopped poling. Our entire company looked at one another in apprehension of danger.

  “Set the anchor at once,” Bilbo ordered. The noise increased in volume.

  “Indians?” I turned to Uncle.

  He only shrugged his shoulders and searched the endless verdure, as we all did. The cacophony rose yet higher, a clacking that evoked in my mind the story of the Egyptian plagues.

  “Locusts?” I ventured.

  “Wait….” Bilbo growled with a look that combined both horror and awed expectancy. “Wait … wait …!”

  To the west, a shadow seemed to fall across the sun, though there was not a wisp of cloud in the slot of sky above the river. The noise grew deafening.

  “… They come!” Bilbo cried, and from over the treetops swept a flock of flapping, chirruping creatures in numbers so vast as to paralyze the imagination. The sky turned blue-black with them. Day became the meanest twilight. It was actually a matter of some minutes before I realized the cloud was composed not of ravening locusts, but of sleek, winging birds.

  “Passenger pigeons!” Bilbo shouted above the pandemonium.

  One could only encompass this spectacle with the awe that greets the most fundamental mysteries of existence. For so immense was the multitude of birds that any calculation of their total was like unto that schoolboy’s riddle of trying to reckon the grains of sand on the Great South Beach.

  I cannot say how long we stood upon the deck gazing at this spectacle, but it could not have been more than a minute, for no sooner did the inexhaustible flock begin to darken the sky, than the white rain of their droppings commenced to splatter the deck of our craft and ourselves. Bilbo cried, “To the cabin, quickly, everyone!”

  Here we huddled in the most intimate, odious, and fearful confinement for the remainder of that day, the night, and most of the following day. There was no telling exactly when night did fall, so utterly did the birds blot out the sun, but as the hours crept by we could detect a definite change in the character of the noise they were producing—from the flap-flap-flap and chirrup of mass flight to a different racket of snapping twigs and crunching foliage, as though they were devouring the entire wilderness. Then they commenced a chorus of cooing that resounded like a March gale.

  “Listen, my lambs: they’re roosting,” Bilbo said. His daughter was whimpering with fear. “Don’t worry. Don’t cry, my pearl. That cracking and snapping is just the branches breaking under the weight of these vermin. So stupid and prolific are they that they pack themselves hundreds to the branch, and the branches give way and break and fall upon those a’roosting likewise beneath, and so on, killing these birds by the thousands.”

  The din went on all night long, the forest creaking and crackling as though it were aflame, while the cooing gradually desisted. Then, dawn shining through the rough planks of our cabin roof, the cooing recommenced, built to a fantastic hullaballoo, and transmodulated into the creatures’ flight song. With a turbulence that compared to one of the nor’easters that rake my coastal home, the incalculable flock rose out of the trees as a united body, once again blotting out the sun, and began a new day’s journey. Again the white rain fell, nattering upon the deck most of the day. It was not until late afternoon, when sunlight sh
one down the companionway, that we dared venture outside. And when we did, O, what a noisome, desolate sight greeted our squinting eyes.

  I had no sooner climbed up top when I lost my footing and fell into the viscid white slime that coated our deck an half-inch deep all over like some diabolical frosting on a cake. So disgusted was I, that with not a moment’s hesitation I leaped overboard into the river, itself polluted with the guano to a cream and coffee color. Dead pigeons by the hundredfold floated feet up in the sluggish current like so many sops in a gigantic consommé.

  “Are you all right, old fellow?” Bilbo cried to me from the deck, ever more solicitous of my weal.

  “Only disgusted,” I called back, trying to wash the muck off my clothes.

  The others looked glumly about the boat and surrounding forest. Even Neddy wore a look of revulsion. The treetops as far as one could see on either bank of the river were broken and befouled. Many limbs hung askew as after a bad storm and pigeons hung entangled in the twigs where they had died, while the forest floor was littered with countless more bodies of the profligate birds. One could only wonder at the extravagance of a nature that might deprive so many individual members of a species their lives, yet still suffer to exist in such vast flocks.

  “We’d better clean her up, my hearties,” Bilbo muttered. “We can’t be running deeper into Indian country painted white like a floating Methodist church.”

  Uncle merely stood at the prow shaking his head in astonishment. Though he had seen many curious marvels in his life, from Niagara’s booming cataracts to the great seal rookeries of Labrador, I don’t believe he had ever witnessed an extravaganza like the mass flight of these pigeons.